This time, Omeyo’s bow was deep and likely sincere. “As you say, Master.”
In seconds, he heard the man shouting orders left and right as he disappeared into the darkened sea of bodies that was the End’s host at night time. Omeyo’s orders were soon echoing around the meadow, followed by whip cracks and the neighing of startled horses. Within a quarter hour, a great clearing opened between the End’s command tent and the thralls at the distant front line. His host had split approximately in half, as the third and fifth armies moved into positions along the left and right edges of the battlefield. The sixth army continued to struggle with the Svarren at Ander’s back, while the first and second continued to engage the Queen’s forces at the front. If only he still had the fourth army at his disposal. The End wondered if they would return in time to be of any help whatsoever. He wondered, too, if he oughtn’t to finish what Tarmun Vykers had started and blast the survivors to the last hell for their humiliating failure. Bah! No time for such pointless musings! The End rose into the air and surveyed the battlefield. He sensed Pellas’ mind out there, in the dark, probing, testing his defenses. He found the anomaly that signified Vykers. Not with the Svarren, where he’d spotted him last, but near the front line, amongst the Queen’s forces.
The End frowned. He’d been hoping to provoke an attack by the Queen’s forces, but that was before Vykers joined their ranks. This changed the equation in ways he’d of course considered but hoped to avoid. No matter, this action on the left and right would be over in less than an hour, he believed – too short a time for the Queen’s men to overcome the first and second armies and reach the command tent. Perhaps the sight of the forest afire would even frighten those uphill. Men were such fragile creatures, after all.
*****
The Fey, in the Forest
Fire streaked towards the trees, just as Toomt’-La had promised. The self-designated End-of-All-Things was such a destructive creature. But that also made him predictable. This time, the children of Nar were ready. An uncanny and practically invisible mist exhaled from the trees and everything hidden within them. As the attackers’ arrows arrived, they were snuffed out, as surely as waxen tapers dipped in water. The bundles of flaming kindling dipped in pitch and launched from catapults met the same fate, and even the End’s Shapers struggled with their magic.
“What sort of a thing burns a forest out of spite?” the satyr asked.
“My brother,” Aoife replied, unable to think of a better answer.
“His thralls will have to enter sooner or later.”
The A’Shea held her tongue. What could a human say, after all, that would make any sense, any difference?
The enemy himself intervened, repeatedly sending lightning and fire into the trees, finally managing to set them alight…before the fey folk extinguished the flames. Aoife could well imagine her brother’s frustration; what she didn’t know was whether it made him more dangerous or more careless. Too soon, his thralls and their minders pushed into the woods, so numerous that Aoife felt certain her own death was imminent. Crazed peasants trampled the undergrowth in search of prey. Mounted mercenaries reared up behind them, forcing the action inwards, ever inwards.
The Children of Nar were paradoxically merciless and elated to receive this chance at vengeance. They snatched the End’s thralls in plain sight, strangling them in roots, burying them in thick humus. They tore them limb-from-limb, exactly as the End had done to their trees so many months before. Many of the thralls were swiftly carried into the canopy, where they were disemboweled or dropped upon other thralls. In the greenwood at night, the ensorcelled peasants were at a decided disadvantage. Some of the fey folk perished, to be sure. Perhaps even hundreds. Yet, the damage they inflicted upon the End’s armies was ten times as bad, or more. Again, the End tried to set fire to the forest; again, he was repelled. An hour into the skirmish, he appeared at the forest’s edge, to see for himself what the difficulty was.
Without knowing why, Aoife stepped from the shadows and revealed herself to him. Anders went as hard, cold and still as if he’d been carved from alabaster.
“I might have known,” he said.
“You might have. But you did not. Surely you didn’t believe there would be no price to pay for the crimes you’ve committed?”
Though the fighting raged around him, Anders existed in a bubble of calm. “I should never have left you alive. But then, I was young. Hardly more than a boy.”
“And less than one, now,” Aoife retorted.
“You misjudge the situation,” Anders warned his sister. “It is true you have grown in power, though I know not how. But next to me, you are like a firefly circling a volcano.”
“You should have been an actor,” the A’Shea taunted. She had no idea where this sudden surge in courage came from, but, at the moment, she dared not examine the question too closely.
“And you, a corpse. I plan to rectify that oversight immediately.”
But even as the sorcerer raised his hand to attack, his sister disappeared, whisked away somehow, somewhere, by elements of the forest itself. Anders searched the night and found her, impossibly, beyond his reach. In his wrath, he sent earthquakes rattling through the woods and meadow and still the forest would not relent or retreat. With a thought, he blinked back to his tent.
Long minutes later, a series of horn blasts summoned his armies back to the center of the meadow, back to their previous positions. The End had been rebuffed.
*****
Long, In Battle
Long’s unit and the army it belonged to had been assigned to support the End’s troops at the front and so, for the nonce, the old soldier found himself frustratingly uninformed about the massive troop movements just downhill of his position. The first army remained stalled at the second trench, neither gaining nor losing ground, so it didn’t look like Long would be moving any time soon. Strange, to be bored while one’s stomach was tied in knots. Long took the opportunity to gaze north again. He watched with interest as the End’s armies tried and tried, unsuccessfully, to put fire to the forest that flanked their battlefield. This was followed by a prolonged engagement that gave no evidence of greater success. In fact, the End’s forces eventually returned to the middle of the meadow. Those capable stared back into the trees with resentful or fretful looks, or at least that’s what Long inferred from their body language. The thralls, of course, were largely oblivious – agitated, but oblivious.
Long searched again for any sign of his friend, Yendor, always making sure he stayed out of range of the Queen’s bowmen, although he couldn’t have said why if anyone asked him. Yendor had been on horseback, so the obvious thing to do first was look for a dead or lamed horse, struck, perhaps, by the same archers Long avoided. Wandering fifty or so yards to his right and then left, Long found a number of dead horses, but none of them looked like the one Yendor had been riding. Some still had riders attached, equally dead. Others had managed to gallop free of their masters, only to succumb to their injuries further on. The absence of Yendor’s horse was a hopeful sign, though he might have been thrown from its back and lie, even now, in any of the myriad piles of human dead already being picked over by crows. When the sky lightened, he knew, it would be easier to search. Unfortunately, it would also be easier to see other things best unseen. And then there was the End’s promise to make Long lead a charge into the teeth of the Queen’s forces. It came to Long, then, that he was undeniably in the last few hours of his life. He would die fighting those he cared about on behalf of someone he abhorred.
He wished he could think of some way to go out a hero, to die a hero’s death.
He was out of ideas and nearly out of time.
*****
The End, In his Host
“Your thoughts?” the End demanded of General Omeyo.
“Those in the forest derive their strength from the forest. I do not think they’ll attack us in the open.”
The End considered this. “Then, what is the point
in their presence here?”
Omeyo shook his head. “To prevent our use of the woods either to attack the Queen’s forces or escape them?”
“Why would we want to escape them?” the sorcerer thundered at his general.
“We would not, of course.” Omeyo answered adroitly. “But those in the forest may underestimate our resolve.”
“And the Svarren to our rear?”
“Dead at last.”
The End acquired a far-off stare. “Yes, that is my sense of it, as well.” After a moment, he added, “I should like to have some of those creatures in my host some day. They might prove sturdier and even more ferocious than these human thralls. How many have we lost in that attack?”
Omeyo was again careful in answering. “Master, I do not wish to provoke your ire. I have noted time and again that you do not like bad news – and I cannot blame you. But I would not join the ranks of generals who have displeased you, especially when I can still be of help to your cause.”
The End’s eyes were black pools of malice, his thin lips practically invisible in their tension. “I understand your point, General. But I asked you a question, and I will not ask you twice.”
“We are still counting,” the man answered quickly. “But the Svarren killed at least twelve thousand of our thralls and perhaps twice that.” Omeyo closed his eyes, waited. When he opened them, his master was gone.
Back in his tent, the End brooded. “Bring me the boy!” he said aloud, “And some red wine.”
His servants had learned to stay alive by being as unobtrusive as possible. Despite Anders’ magically-enhanced senses, he was barely aware of them most of the time. A skeletal, utterly hairless man in a rustic robe emerged from the shadows, carrying Shere’s son. Without a sound, he set the boy down near the End’s feet and backed away again. Anders heard the faint clink of a brass cup on the table near his right hand and was pleased to see not a trace of the servant who’d brought it in his peripheral vision.
“Boy,” Anders said to the child. It looked up at him immediately. “Things have become decidedly more complicated than I anticipated. Have I made mistakes, you ask? I have not. I do not. But sometimes fate can be…contrary. What is my sister doing here? If she cannot attack and knows I would never retreat through the woods, what does she hope to accomplish? Surely, she cannot think to witness my defeat. At the hands of the Bitch Queen’s army? Hardly! Any one of the armies in my host could crush those vermin, and I have many armies. But…this business with the forest and Vykers’ Svarren, along with the sudden appearance of Pellas has been embarrassing. And that, of all things, I cannot have. I cannot have my generals and lower soldiers doubting me. I cannot have the enemy doubting me. It is time to push the whole host down the Bitch Queen’s throat. Let her choke on it.”
*****
Aoife and Toomt’-La, In the Forest
“And now?”
“That depends upon your brother.”
Aoife screwed up her mouth, as if she’d just bitten into something terribly sour. “As always,” she said. “At least we got him to retreat.”
Toomt’-La nodded. “That is curious. For whatever reason, he seems to believe we’re not a threat to him or his host.”
“Meaning he knows something we do not?”
“Or he assumes something that is not true.”
Aoife tired of the cryptic nature of this conversation. “I wish Tarmun Vykers would do something more substantial than stare at Anders’ host. He’s supposed to be a legendary warrior, but so far, I have seen nothing to merit that reputation.”
Once more, Toomt’-La cocked his head at an inquisitive angle.
“What?” Aoife demanded.
“Oh, nothing,” Toomt’-La responded with exaggerated nonchalance.
“You don’t fool me, you mischievous satyr! What’s on your mind?”
The mischievous satyr grinned. “The real question is, what is on yours?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Aoife asked, knowing full well what it meant.
Toomt’-La shrugged. “I just find your leap from discussion of your brother’s plans for our forest to the subject of Tarmun Vykers rather…convenient.”
Aoife fumed. “You are becoming too human!” she said.
To which, naturally, the satyr took umbrage. “Me? Human? Take that back this instant, or I’ll…”
“You’ll what? Turn me into skunk cabbage? My reference to Tarmun Vykers was about this battle and nothing more!”
“Indeed?” Toomt’-La asked in a knowing way.
“Yes, in fact, you are never to mention the warrior around me again!” Aoife said, fairly shouting now.
“But you are the one who brought him up in the first place!”
“And I’m the one who’s dropping the subject, too. And I’d advise you to do the same.”
“Excellent. I shall never again mention Tarmun Vykers in your presence.”
Aoife frowned most severely at him.
“Question, though…”
“Yes?”
“Am I allowed to say the name Tarmun Vykers when you are not present? Is it acceptable if I refer to some other Tarmun or Vykers? How about ‘the legendary warrior?’ Is that allowed? May I still say ‘the Reaper?”
Aoife screamed in irritation. “Enough, Toomt’-La! Enough!”
After an extended silence, the satyr spoke. “We shall wait until your brother is at his most preoccupied, and then we shall give him a taste of the agony he visited upon Nar.”
*****
Vykers, the Queen’s Army
“What’s your assessment?”
Vykers looked at the old Shaper. Why did they always have to use words like ‘assessment?’ “Looks like the End got beaten back by our friends in the forest.”
D’Kem searched him. “And what makes you think they’re our friends?”
“I gave ‘em a chance to kill me a while ago, and they only sent some A’Shea to talk to me.”
“Really?” the Shaper asked, clearly intrigued. “An A’Shea?”
“Yes. I was surprised, too.”
D’Kem began pacing, talking to himself. “Even at this height, I can’t see the whole picture. What’s an A’Shea doing in a forest of fey folk?”
The Reaper rolled his eyes, but kept his mouth shut. Time was, he’d have mocked the old man for even mentioning fey folk. Then, he’d met the Five (now Three), battled the dead in Morden’s Cairn and come into possession of a bleedin’ magic sword. “I thought you wanted my assessment,” he reminded the other man. “I wasn’t finished.”
“Oh?” D’Kem asked.
“His host has quieted down somewhat, so I’d say he’s killed the last of the Svarren chomping his ass.”
“Now, there’s an image,” D’Kem said.
“Unless there’s a magical shit storm still to come, I can’t see what he’s got left to him but an all-out attack. We play by those rules, I don’t see how we can win.”
“As I said, I believe this all hinges on our ability to get you within striking distance.”
“Well, I wish he’d hurry the fuck up!” Vykers grumbled. “If we’re gonna fight, I wanna fight.”
“That’s exactly why he’s making us wait.”
“Well,” Vykers began, “that, and he wants the taste of losing to those woodlings outta his troops’ mouths before tries us again. That’s not good for morale, you know.”
D’Kem was impressed. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Master,” Number 3 interrupted, “Is there any chance of a meal before hostilities resume?”
“Mind if we hit the mess tent?” Vykers asked the Shaper.
“That could create quite a stir,” D’Kem responded, “which, now I think on it, might be just what we need about now.”
Vykers looked, found a ladder. “And, no offense, but the boys and I’ll be taking the normal way down.”
“Suit yourselves,” D’Kem smiled.
“I always do,” the Reaper repl
ied. On the way down the ladder, he sought out Arune. You’re awfully quiet.
I’ve been conversing with Pellas.
The whole time?
The whole time.
The old Shaper rose in Vykers’ regard. Anyone who could carry on two conversations at once…amazing. And, uh, the subject o’ your conversation?
Arune was coy. Oh, this and that.
I hate it when you do that.
I know, was all she said.
*****
Long, In Battle
It was difficult to tell whether the eastern sky became lighter or merely less black. One might think that amounts to the same thing, but it did not feel so to Long Pete: lighter was cause for hope; less black might be an anomaly, an aberration.
Steel, Blood & Fire (Immortal Treachery Book 1) Page 45