Gemmel lowered the spellstave, satisfied with work well done. “Nothing,” he repeated, “at all.”
*
Kalarr cu Ruruc stared at his magic mirror, drumming armoured fingers against the black ebony table-top, but the obsidian glass showed only his own shadowy reflection. He strode across the chamber floor and back again, noisy in his shell of scarlet steel, then stripped off one gauntlet and touched his fingertips to the volcanic scry-glass. Even with his own power flowing through its substance there was no change, as if the mirror itself defied him. Kalarr swore, and sent such a blast of force into it that the obsidian shivered, cracked, and shattered into fragments.
Duergar Vathach turned at the sound and glanced unimpressed at the glittering shards. “Feeling better now?” he said. The window behind him looked out on a wall of slowly drifting fog. “Only your Eye could find its way through this murk. You should have made another at once.”
“I told you then,” Kalarr leaned forward and his mailed fists crunched broken glass to dust against the table, “but since you clearly paid no heed, I’ll tell you again. Until the next moon-phase, I can’t.”
Such blatant lack of attention was not just disrespectful, it showed a misplaced confidence Duergar would have done well to hide. Not one of his secret plans had ever been as secret as he thought, making use of his summoned ally was more often that ally making use of him and best of all, the wristband and spellstone were gone. Kalarr sometimes toyed with telling him how things really stood, just to see the look on his face.
Such a revelation, no matter how amusing, would have to end with Duergar’s immediate death, and Kalarr still needed the necromancer’s traugarin army until Alba fell into his hand like a ripe plum. Then he would squeeze it so the juice ran through his fingers. And he would squeeze Duergar too, a snapped bone for every insult, a strip of torn flesh for every scornful glance, a scream for every lie, until the mangled remnants were beyond use even as material for necromancy.
The thought made Kalarr warm inside.
“Not much use, is it?” said Duergar, so provocative that Kalarr wondered if the man had been drinking. “Compared to my changelings—”
“Which made their last report at dawn, and nothing since. Yes. Explain how your changelings are so much better.”
The Drusalan hesitated, as if only now aware he was dancing on thin ice. “Can’t you dispel the fog?”
“If it was natural, yes. This is spell-built Concealment, and you know what the attempt would do to me.” Kalarr smirked like a shark, all teeth and no mirth, knowing how often Duergar tried to check the truth behind these claims of limitation and weakness. “Or are you hoping for it?”
“I could summon up a wish-wind,” said Duergar evasively, changing the subject. Kalarr’s smile grew wider.
“No. Don’t divide your focus. Just keep the traugarin strong until I’ve finished with the Albans.” He lifted his helmet and left the chamber, clattering down the spiral stairs with the necromancer at his heels. There were none of the usual guards, either living or traugur undead. They were all in the army gathered outside to obliterate King Rynert’s host, to win a victory so resounding even the most vacillating Alban clan-lords would accept it. Kalarr reached the donjon’s double doors and flung them open.
The boom as they bounced from their stops matched a reverberating stamp of feet as the army outside slammed to attention. Soldiers choked the courtyard, overflowing through its gates in rank upon rank until lost to sight in the swirling mist. Vermeil banners marked with cu Ruruc’s winged-viper crest hung above them, motionless in the damp grey air. There was a burst of cheering from his cavalry, human mercenaries since traugarin made useless horsemen, but heavy silence from the rest even when he swung into his horse’s saddle and raised one hand in salute.
“That’s what I miss about commanding corpses,” he said, running the chains of the flail he carried as a baton through his fingers. “The affection troops have for their general. These are so—”
“Lifeless?” Baiart Talvalin leaned against the stone balustrade of the stairs, a stoneware bottle of grainfire in one hand and an ale-mug in the other. “Hail to th’ mighty gen’ral!” He was very drunk, increasingly common for him, and consequently very bold. “Who d’you plan to kill next?” He gave Kalarr a wink from one watery blue eye then grinned at Duergar. “I mean, who else?”
The Drusalan necromancer glared and said nothing, while Kalarr merely pulled his helmet on and buckled its war-mask into place. The red armour made his face seem flushed with rage, but he was smiling as he walked his big roan charger across to Baiart and caressed one cheek with the flail’s dangling chains. Baiart flinched at the contact.
“You, perhaps,” cu Ruruc said in the kindly tones of a parent promising his child a treat. His helmet-crest nodded above him as he leaned closer to lay the flail’s haft along Baiart’s nose, between his eyes. “If you’re lucky, it might be quick. If you’re very, very lucky it might even be permanent…”
*
Gemmel leaned his weight on the Dragonwand as a bank of grey-white mist flowed across the distant Alban camp like milk poured into water, growing denser with every second. “That should hold for long enough. I’ve done everything I can.”
Aldric sat astride Lyard some distance away, shield on arm and slender spear braced against one mailed boot. Full battle armour encased both horse and man and, as Gemmel studied them, he felt once again that his foster-son was just as dangerous as any enchantment. There had always been a hard edge to Aldric. His father murdered, one brother murdered, the other disloyal; nothing to lighten the life of any young man, least of all a Northern Alban clan-lord. And now… Gemmel didn’t know if it was parting from Kyrin, or seeing the destroyed village, or some incident kept secret. What he did know was that menace hung about Aldric Talvalin like the fog, and it was on a very short leash indeed.
“What did you do?”
“I screened the army against death from a distance, so whatever Kalarr and Duergar might try will be useless effort. And I made sure this fog won’t lift until I do it myself. Barring accidents.”
“Accidents?”
“Unforeseen eventualities. I should be aching and exhausted after such an invocation, but thanks to this,” Gemmel patted the Dragonwand as a man might pat the neck of a favourite horse, “I’m not even tired.” He wiped one hand across his forehead and looked at the perspiration gleaming on his palm. “Well, not very.”
He pulled a small wooden box from his belt-pouch, flicked back the lid and took out the Stone of Echainon. When he placed it where Aldric had long suspected it belonged, in the dragon-head’s empty eye-socket, it locked there as if set by a master jeweller. For a second spellstone and spellstave glowed together, turning the mist skimmed-milk blue, until the light dimmed and everything returned to muted grey.
“Now we can meet Kalarr on—” He leapt aside as a small troop of horsemen thundered out of the fog, pennons fluttering with their speed, then laughed. “Though he may have more than us to—”
“Mount up, altrou! Move it!” Aldric’s yelled command didn’t invite questions. It sent Gemmel into his saddle more nimbly than he believed possible, but the Dragonwand hadn’t returned to its scabbard behind one stirrup when four of the riders came back. This time they had weapons out and ready.
Aldric met them head-on, driving his spear through one man’s chest and smashing another out of the saddle with the boss of his shield. Gemmel had vanished into the fog and he hoped the old man was all right. Then the other two horseman came charging in and he stopped worrying about other people.
A mace-head struck his shield hard enough to punch it back against his body, then poised high for an instant as its wielder decided between smashing skull or shoulder. That decision took a lifetime too long. Widowmaker sank half her length into the exposed armpit before the upraised mace fell and its owner fell with it, coughing a fan of blood across his horse’s neck as he tumbled to the ground.
Th
e last rider’s war-hammer hit Aldric’s armoured back at an awkward angle, and the lamellar scales on their web of lacing spread its bone-breaking impact into one that only knocked the breath from him. He twisted, flung up his shield against the next stroke, and replied with a forehand cut at a target almost out of reach. Almost was still close enough for a longsword. Isileth Widowmaker slithered along the hammer’s haft, snipped off four fingers at the knuckle like so many carrots and ended by splitting the man’s thigh bone-deep from hip to knee.
Aldric could still hear him, long after his horse had carried him out of sight.
Gemmel drew level again a few minutes later, glanced at the carnage and turned away with a shudder. For all his ability with a taiken it had been a long, long time since he last used one in earnest, and the sounds, smells and hazy images glimpsed through the drifting fog reminded him of why. Death from a distance by missile or sorcery was one thing. Steel was so…
Intimate.
Aldric watched Gemmel’s expression of controlled disgust for a few seconds while several brutal comments crossed his mind. He dismissed them all, because some hunters were like that. Unerring aim with spear and bow against animal targets didn’t always grant ability to kill human ones, or being at ease around someone who could. He had wondered sometimes which was better. Now he knew.
“Reality is never the same as practice, is it?” he said eventually. “You were a good teacher.”
“How…” Gemmel cleared his throat. “How did you know they were enemies?”
“I didn’t recognise their pennons, and I was wary. Then they attacked us, and I was sure.” Aldric wiped Widowmaker clean and slid her away. “If Kalarr hired horsemen he might have hired footsoldiers as well, and…” Distant bugles shrilled and he put the undeveloped notion from his mind. “Forget it. We’d better go. I don’t know what that troop was doing, and I’m not staying to find out. Follow me, altrou.”
“In this fog? Are you sure where you’re going?”
“I think so. I hope so. You’d better hope so too.”
*
On a clear, bright day the distant citadel of Dunrath-hold was visible from the crest of Embeyan Ridge where King Rynert raised his banners, but now there was only a wall of grey vapour with soldiers fading in and out of it like figures in a dream.
They were solid blocks of men rather than the small units Gemmel had advised. It would have meant proposing the tactic to his senior officers, then revealing where the suggestion came from, and finally explaining why they should take their instructions from a wizard. That word would be sneered, even though they all knew who had provided the dense fog protecting them. Rynert would have to persuade or, worse still, order them to do it, and with one confrontation inevitable he chose to avoid any others.
Instead he turned to the battle manuals every Alban general carried on campaign and drew up the army in open regimental order on the forward and reverse slopes of the ridge. Even if it wasn’t quite what Gemmel wanted, the formation was more flexible than a shield-wall. Whether it would be successful was another matter, because though regular soldiers followed orders with drill and precision, the aristocratic kailinin and their household warriors all too often went their own way.
With none of them able to see more than fifty yards, that way could easily be the wrong way.
The first engagement had already happened, an hour before. A flying-column of scout cavalry had surged from the fog to probe the fog-screened defences. They had been repulsed easily enough, in fact too easily because they were living men not traugarin, able to think for themselves, to realise when an unsuccessful attack should break off, or spot and exploit a weakness. Rynert wondered how many more were out there in the fog, a hazard out of all proportion to their numbers.
His army shifted with a chorus of rattling and clinking; shields raised, swords eased in scabbards and helmets pulled a little farther down. The noises stopped and silence returned, a vast oppressive stillness even more frightening than the sound of an army taking up final position. It was that same army, all preparation over, nothing left to do but wait for the killing and the dying to begin. Most men on this battlefield had never heard that stillness before, and all but the most headstrong hoped never to hear it again.
Rynert shuddered so violently that it made his armour rattle. He frowned, wondering why, then stripped off a gauntlet, licked one fingertip and held it up. The frown deepened to a scowl and a soft, venomous oath hissed past his teeth. A wind was rising. It was still no more than a movement in the air, but already the banks of fog were starting to drift.
And growing thinner even as he watched.
*
“It’s blowing away!” The impenetrable grey wall was now a shifting curtain growing more insubstantial with every passing second, and when Aldric swung round his voice was harsh and angry. “You told me this wouldn’t happen! What’s going on?”
Gemmel took the outburst calmly. “Wind,” he said. “An ordinary thrice-damned wind. About the only thing I didn’t cast securing-spells against.”
“You didn’t? Why the hell not?”
“Countering magic is difficult enough, but wind’s a force of nature. You have no idea how much power it would take to hold this fragile stuff against it.”
“But…” A warning glare from beneath the wizard’s eyebrows made Aldric hesitate for a second before stubbornness took over. “But isn’t this Kalarr’s doing?”
“What did I tell you? Don’t just ask bloody stupid questions, think. The strain would tear him to tatters if he even tried. And before you ask, it’s not Duergar either. He’s too busy maintaining the traugur-charm. No, this is just a breeze.”
“Just a breeze, he says.” Aldric laughed, hollow and sarcastic. “So despite all the plots and plans there’ll still be a battle.”
“There was always going to be a battle. But if Rynert doesn’t follow my instructions there’ll be a bloody massacre, and if we can’t find cover before this clears we’ll be part of it.”
“That would never do, now would it?” Aldric heeled Lyard to a canter and vanished for a moment, and when he returned he was wearing what passed for a smile. “You needn’t worry, altrou, not on that score. It’s this way.”
Gemmel didn’t move. Instead he watched Aldric’s face through thoughtful eyes until the younger man’s gaze flinched away. “So what score are you worrying on? Why are you so prickly? Was it those men you killed?”
The black helmet turned so the expression within its war-mask was unreadable. “I… Yes, a little. It was so easy. There was no risk, I was better armoured, better armed, better trained… Altrou, it was like killing children.”
“Children? You were the youngest of them all, and there was risk enough. Do your ribs hurt when you breathe? Children don’t carry maces, Aldric. They don’t try to break your bones. You’ve been bottling something up since we left Kerys, I won’t ask what, and you needed to vent some emotion.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“This is a battlefield. People die on a battlefield. They did, you didn’t. Forget about them.”
“Easily said.” The straps and scales of Aldric’s armour creaked as he drew in a slow, deep breath and stood in his stirrups, gasping with discomfort as yes indeed, the movement reminded him of that blow across the back. “Not easily done.” He looked at the wind-swirled fog, already able to see farther through it than he liked, then pointed at a clump of trees. Minutes earlier they had been invisible. “No more delays. Follow me.”
In managed woodland one coppice looked very much like another, and as they rode deep into the shadows Gemmel wondered what made this one different from any of the others condensing into view. Then Aldric told him.
The oldest trees had been trained down and sideways over many years, a growth so natural-seeming that whether in full leaf or winter starkness, only eyes trained in what to look for and where to look from would see them. North or south was “tau” for Talvalin, east-west was “hai” for ha
lathan, the old name for any crest-bird with wings spread wide like clan Talvalin’s eagle.
“Is this Dunrath’s back door?” asked Gemmel, trying to lighten the mood, “or the trade entrance?”
“It’s a last-ditch exit.” Aldric unholstered one telek, pushed it through his weapon-belt and tethered Lyard to a branch, loosely enough for the horse to pull free if no-one came back for him. “From the bad old days of the Clan Wars. If the lord had to escape from inside his own walls, his family would come up,” he leaned against a hollow stump and pushed with all his strength, “here!”
The whole stump shifted sideways and became the mouth of a tunnel dropping into darkness. “The entrance is low and narrow. Men wearing armour have to leave one at a time, bent double.” His right hand chopped downward. “So the lord could hold off an army while his people got away.”
“Until he got tired,” said Gemmel. “What then?”
“What do you think?” Aldric tapped the hilt of his black tsepan dirk. “When you’re hip-deep in heads, you don’t want to be taken alive by their friends.”
“I imagine not. Who told you about this useful place?”
“My father, years ago. It’s known only to the cseirin-born.”
“The lord’s immediate family?” Gemmel jumped to the obvious conclusion. “Baiart must know about it too! What if he betrayed it?”
“I hope not. He may have kept it secret for his own escape.”
“You hope? He may have? That’s flimsy, Aldric. That’s bordering on reckless.”
Aldric was already crouched in the tunnel-mouth, shuffling his feet for purchase on steep, half-remembered steps. “I know. But there’s one way to be sure, and I’m prepared to risk it. Are you?” With a scrape and rustle of black steel that proved how cramped the entrance was, he backed out of sight.
Gemmel was alone with the disinterested horses and a mist growing dangerously thin. “I’m right behind you,” he called, and worked the Dragonwand’s inflexible length through the narrow entrance before swinging his own lean, lanky frame down and in. “As if there was any other choice.”
The Horse Lord (The Book of Years Series 1) Page 28