The Lion Returns

by John Dalmas

  Macurdy then wrote an order promoting Horgent two grades, to subcolonel, and named him commandant, bypassing Subcolonel Sojass for command.

  And before having that posted, he had Sojass sent to him. The Tiger XO stood rigidly at attention, while Macurdy, also standing, examined his aura thoroughly, without a word. When the subcolonel had waited long enough, Macurdy spoke.

  "Do you know why I asked you here, Sojass?"

  "No."

  "No what?"

  "No, Your Highness."

  "I asked you here because you were Idri's lover, or one of them. As Bolzar was." He paused, then added, "As Rillor was."

  The mention of Rillor took Sojass visibly by surprise.

  "He'd been her favorite for years," Macurdy went on. "She sent him to Duinarog last summer, to kill Varia and me, and Varia's ylvin lord. Even in failing, he endangered our trade and diplomatic relations with the Western Empire. Our bread and butter, Sojass. Your bread and butter."

  He peered questioningly at the man. "Do you realize what the Sisterhood and the empires are up against, with this invasion?"

  Sojass seemed puzzled by the question. "No, Your Highness," he said.

  "I'll have some reading assigned to you when we're done. You'll wait in reception while it's brought to you. Then you'll read it there, and I'll question you to see what you've learned. Understood?"

  "Yes, Your Highness."

  "Good. What do you think of Captain Horgent?"

  Sojass frowned at the change of subject. "Horgent is a good officer, Your Highness."

  "Why did Idri bypass him repeatedly for promotion? He was a captain when you were a sublieutenant."

  "I do not know, Your Highness."

  "Because, Sojass, he was with my army, with Omara's coven, in the Quaie War."

  The light dawned.

  "Bolzar will be executed on One-Day, for conspiracy against Sarkia."

  Sojass stood stunned.

  "I am trusting that you were not seriously corrupted by either Idri or Bolzar. I'm leaving you as executive officer, promoting Horgent to subcolonel, and making him your new commandant. Do you have anything to say to me about that?"

  "No, Your Highness."

  "Good." He surprised Sojass then by stepping around his desk and extending his hand. Flummoxed, Sojass met it, and they shook. Macurdy didn't try to grip him down, but he satisfied both of them that he could. It was the sort of action the Tiger could understand.

  From that point, whenever he encountered Sojass, Macurdy made a point of casual friendliness.

  * * *

  The next morning Macurdy met with Horgent and Grimval, and they worked on plans for raider training. Only Tigers would be sent to the empire. Grimval's Guards companies would remain as defense forces, at least for the time being. In training they'd play the role of escorts and road patrols.

  Macurdy began his own training in the geography of Yuulith. From a book, with guidance from Blue Wing, Vulkan, and Omara. Later he'd get a geography session from Finn Greatsword and his trade minister.

  And he read more than geography. Amnevi, having seen the sorcerer's stone that Blue Wing had given him, showed Macurdy a translation of an ancient book on sorcery and circles and stones. He wasn't sure what good it might do him, but it was interesting.

  * * *

  On Six-Day, Idri's corpse was placed atop her funeral pyre, and the oil-splashed wood ignited. Only a few attended, including her surviving clone sister, Amnevi. And Macurdy, who afterward, via the great ravens, notified Varia of Idri's death, and how it happened.

  Despite Idri's long enmity and cruelties, Varia quietly wept without knowing why.

  * * *

  Bolzar was throttled on the following One-Day, as Macurdy had promised. The execution was formal and private, carried out by the Tiger provost, a captain. The official witnesses were Macurdy as dynast-to-be, the dynast's deputy, and Subcolonel Horgent. As usual after executions, Bolzar's body too was burned, with the basic courtesies but without public attendance. Macurdy, Horgent, Sojass, and the sergeant major stood together, watching the smoke rise and thinking their own thoughts.

  On the second day after Bolzar's pyre, Sarkia died quietly in her sleep. Her pyre was attended by the entire Cloister, and by the King in the Mountain and the wofnemst of the Commonwealth of Asrik.

  Macurdy messaged Varia of this, too, and again she wept.

  31 Winter Wonderland

  Kurqôsz slowed to a walk, his face damp with a mixture of sweat and melted snowflakes. It had been snowing since midday, large wet flakes drifting vertically down, so thickly he couldn't see two hundred feet. At breakfast the ground had been tan. Now snow lay on it halfway to his knees, which were very high knees.

  At home he'd liked snow, liked to run in it. The hive mind showed the forefathers running on it, on broad skis split from birch and strapped to their feet, with furs laced on for traction. Their ancient homeland had been rich in snow, and the forefathers had run on skis to herd reindeer.

  He himself had never had time to learn the skill. Few did. The lands they'd migrated to seldom had prolonged snow cover except in the higher mountains. In winter it rained a lot and snowed only occasionally.

  Here in Vismearc he'd slighted running, as he had in Bavaria. He'd been too busy. Even on the march he'd slighted it, slowed by the pace of his human infantry. Then, after establishing their forward line on the Deep River, they'd begun setting up their winter base at the west side of the Merrawin Valley. And he'd begun running an hour each evening.

  That had been late Ten-Month, barely a week past. Even allowing for the cold autumn, there should nave been time to build hutments for the troops before weather like this. As it was, most of the huts consisted only of survey stakes set by the engineers. Stakes now buried. The huts completed were for voitar and the higher ranking humans. Even most of them were without real roofs—log walls with a tarpaulin over a roof frame, their doors and windows mere holes in the walls, with curtains, blankets actually, that one could hook shut, more or less.

  A truly wretched base camp! His father would not approve.

  As it was, his father didn't know, for the hive mind had proven to have distance limits. Well before his army reached Vismearc, the rest of the species had faded out of touch. The historical hive mind it carried, but as for current events—they knew only those of the army's own seventeen hundred voitar.

  They'd adjusted to the sense of disconnection, but it could still be disconcerting on occasion.

  His run hadn't taken him through the hutment area and the vast bedraggled tent camp. That would simply have aggravated him. Instead he'd run in the quiet forest, on a narrow woods road, then followed his tracks back. Already they were little more than a shallow groove in the snow. Now he could make out his quarters ahead—a forester's cabin at the forest's edge, simple but comfortable. The ylvin torch had missed it.

  He'd already decided to move his headquarters to a large manorial farmhouse he'd been told of. Not only the house, but the barns and other outbuildings had all escaped burning. It was much nearer the Deep River, where the 1st and 4th Divisions were on line. And where winter quarters were no more ready than they were in the Merrawin Valley base camp.

  * * *

  Major General Hohs Gruismak stood in the vacant doorway of his cabin, watching it snow. He'd never seen so much fall so early, or so fast.

  Gruismak was not a commander. He was a human, General Orovisz's hithik aide, and his job was dealing with "administrative" problems. Mostly problems that could have been avoided if he'd been allowed advance input.

  Troop morale had been low since Prince Chithqôsz's army had been brought north. Their stories of the small-folk—of their ferocity and devilish ingenuity—had spread like a grassfire through the rest of the army. Stories enriched by the notion that dwarven sorcerers had called down the storm and the flood.

  And now this damned snowstorm. The men had been busy much of the day trying to prevent the wet snow from collapsing their t
ents.

  The army, he told himself, should never have left the Merrawin River, only twenty-five miles east. True the locals had torched the towns and villages, but many walls remained, needing mainly roofs and doors. And to the north, patrols had found pine woods. Thus it hadn't been necessary to move west to the edge of forest. Poles for roofs, and logs for hutments, could have been floated down the Merrawin. While here the forest was mostly of hardwoods, harder to cut, heavier to haul and raise, and requiring far more time-consuming dressing with axes to fit together halfway decently. Nor were hithik soldiers skilled at such work.

  But none of that meant anything to Orovisz or the crown prince. They didn't have to solve problems. They just created them, and ordered others to solve them.

  He turned to his orderly. "Corporal," he said, "make damn sure your men don't let the tarp come down on us. Otherwise the provost will have a busy day tomorrow with his strap."

  "Yessir, General, sir!"

  Gruismak walked to his bedroll near the fireplace. The chimney wasn't drawing properly, and the hut was smoky. He sat on his pallet to pull off his boots. Not even a damned stool to sit on, he thought. He wished devoutly he'd never heard of Vismearc.

  * * *

  At about midnight the snow had ended. The sky had cleared and the temperature plummeted. Now the newly risen sun glistened off miles and miles of white. Men moved like lines of ants to the firewood piles, or huddled around the thousands of warming fires whose smoke settled and spread among the tents. It was cold enough, the moisture from their breath formed frost on their collars.

  Then officers appeared, human and voitik. Sergeants shouted orders. Reluctantly, heavily, the soldiers left their fires, or dropped the wood they carried, and formed ranks. Within minutes they were trudging through the knee-deep snow to their work details. The smarter of them saw the value of it. They needed to get their huts built, so they'd have effective shelter before winter arrived.

  Before winter arrived!

  * * *

  The great raven soared high above the Pomatik River, more than a hundred miles south of the invader's base camp. It was the twelfth of Eleven-Month. The past few days had been bitter cold, and he'd spent the night in the dense crown of a hemlock, sheltering from radiative heat loss. Now, circling in the hazy morning sunlight, he could see a broad ice shelf along each shore of the river, formed since the day before. Between the shelves, the channel was filled with ice that had broken away in the current. Unless it warmed considerably during the day, the bird knew, the river would probably freeze over by nightfall. If not, another such night would do it.

  It was something to call to Old One's attention.

  32 On the Move

  Winter had come with a vengeance to the country north of Duinarog, around the southern end of that great sweetwater lake called the Middle Sea. Cyncaidh's cohort had reached Southport on four three-masted schooners, two days after the season's first big snowstorm. There the snow had come on a cold wind, and drifting had been severe.

  Two days later, Gavriel's war minister, Lord Gaerimor, had arrived in a sleigh, a large cutter drawn by two strong horses. With him he brought five east ylvin refugees to serve the cohort as guides. A great raven had arrived on its own, to be Cyncaidh's communicator. The drifts had delayed arrival of their supplies three days longer, and a bureaucratic foul-up delayed arrival of their horses from the military remount reservation longer still. Meanwhile there was no additional snow, and temperatures much colder than seasonable gripped the land.

  On the day after the cohort's arrival, Varia had arrived in a light cutter pulled by a single horse. Through the several days till the cohort was ready to ride east, she stayed with Cyncaidh in the Southport Inn. Both of them recognized the extreme dangers in his mission, and on their last night, their lovemaking had been exceptionally passionate.

  Afterward Varia had laid awake thinking. If Raien was killed, what would she feel? What would she do? They'd been together for nearly two decades, two good decades. She would miss him in her bed, miss him around the house, and across the table from her at meals. Miss him in her life.

  She shook the thoughts off. He was remarkably good in the forest, a fine swordsman and skilled soldier. He'd come home if anyone did. But if he didn't—she was the mistress of Aaerodh Manor, and the mother of their sons. She'd return north, and adjust as necessary.

  By hindsight it seemed she'd begun loving Raien Cyncaidh even when she still hated him. Hated him for not leaving her free to find her way to the Ferny Cove Gate, which she'd imagined would take her back to Curtis.

  He had, of course, rescued her from Tomm the tracker, and the Sisterhood, but that hadn't been important in her feelings. She'd been attracted to him physically, perhaps from the start, but surely by the day they'd crossed the Big River. What had been most important, though, had been his considerate treatment, his decency and patience, and his love for her.

  She did not allow herself to dwell on the possibilities with Curtis. That would be treasonous. Raien lay beside her still breathing, still strong, still her husband and beloved. She had long since chosen to remain with him, and their love had grown and matured.

  * * *

  The next morning she said good-bye to her ylf lord, and to their firstborn, Ceonigh, a corporal in his father's cohort. It was saying good-bye to Ceonigh that caused her tears to spill. Ceonigh, whose life was just well under way.

  Wearing sheepskin greatcoats, the companies formed a column of twos on the road. A trumpeter blew "Ride!" and they trotted away, clattering over a heavy plank bridge across the Imperial River. The ice wasn't safe yet for horses.

  * * *

  It was Blue Wing who told the new dynast that the Great Swamp had frozen over. Macurdy planned to start north the next day, with both Tiger cohorts and a train of packhorses. They'd follow the route of the dwarves, who'd left ten days earlier.

  "So?" he said.

  "The shortest way to the enemy is over the Copper River Road and across the swamp."

  He frowned. "Not a lot shorter."

  "But shorter. And after the dwarves have crossed the Pomatik from the East Dales, the voitar may be alert to further crossings there. Something you pointed out yourself. But they'll hardly expect something from the Scrub Lands."

  "What about the Copper River bridges? I know the dwarves planned to replace the spans, but as short as they are on manpower now..."

  "They are already rebuilt."

  "Will the ice be thick enough to cross the swamp with horses?"

  It was Vulkan who replied. «Water which is shallow and quiet freezes more quickly than deep water, or water with a strong current. And for the first four days, the two routes are the same. If the weather continues cold till then, the ice should hold you.»

  Should hold, Macurdy thought. Should's not the word I want. "If we take that route," he asked, "will we be able to muster enough boats to cross the Pomatik?"

  "I'll find out," Blue Wing said.

  "You have trouble with numbers," Macurdy reminded him.

  "You need many boats. Many is not a number."

  «The North Fork of the Pomatik is frozen,» Vulkan pointed out.

  "That's the North Fork. What about lower reaches?"

  Blue Wing didn't answer at once. Instead he sought briefly, and found the memory stem of a great raven who'd seen it that morning. "Not frozen yet," he said, "but the backwaters are. If this cold continues..."

  First should. Now if. "All right. We'll start in the morning, and see how the weather's held when we reach the Copper River Road. Then I'll decide."

  * * *

  Finn Greatsword gave Macurdy and his Tigers free passage should they decide to take the Copper River Road. He also confirmed that the bridges were ready, and that the river level was low. Where it passed through the swamp, the current should be negligible.

  The next morning they left the Cloister. For four days the temperature never rose to the freezing point, and fell well below it at night. So on the fif
th day, the two Tiger cohorts turned east on the Copper River Road. Being mounted, they reached the swamp in three days. For the first mile below the dock, the river was open, though the swamp was frozen. Below that, ice covered the river, too. After another mile, Macurdy took an ax from a packhorse, and walking a little way out on the river ice, tested it. Four inches. Which was probably enough, but he remembered Melody, and backed away. A couple of miles farther he tried again. Five, maybe six inches. Getting on his warhorse, he started across, testing it. It held all the way, without a creak.