by Damien Lake
“Is,” corrected the courier forcefully. “We believe the gold mines were the primary target of the Nolier incursion. They’ve had all winter to work the mines and transport the gold back to their side of the river.”
“How did they cross the Hollister? Both sides of the bridge maintain military outposts and facilitates.”
“The survivors of the border detachment say all was normal one moment, but the next a force of Nolier troops suddenly stormed their courtyard.”
“Do you suspect magery at work?” asked Tollaf.
“That is undetermined,” replied Fredrick.
“I didn’t ask if it was determined or not,” shot back Tollaf, out of temper. “I asked if it was suspected!”
“I have no knowledge in this area,” Fredrick admitted.
Torrance wanted to know, “Is there any intelligence on the Nolier mage capacity?”
“Certainly the Nolier court mages could be involved. At the last count, there were two mages, two magicians, two espers, one geomancer and one warlock. If the king recruited others to participate in this war, then we don’t know of it.”
“And the army mages?”
“Moderately talented magic workers good at communicating with the court mages, each with various spells from person to person. The numbers should be standard.”
“In other words,” Tollaf thought aloud, “they’re about equal with Galemar in terms of mages pledged to their crown.”
“Which is one of the reasons the seneschal didn’t play hardball,” added Janus. “He’s counting on us and our mages. We’d add six more skilled combat mages to the clique. Well, seven I suppose if you count your newest apprentice.”
“He’s not ready for anything like a battle,” countered Tollaf. “He might be useful in a very few specific circumstances, but other than that he stays away from the fighting!”
“That’s for the knight-marshal to decide,” Fredrick put in, earning no love from Tollaf.
The chief mage opened his mouth to deliver a hot-tempered reply when Torrance cut him off. “We’ll decided it when I speak to him and the seneschal personally. So we have fifteen to twenty known combat mages. If the Nolier king has been recruiting secretly, we might face double that, but I have my doubts. Mages are hard to find, harder still to convert to your cause, and I think I would know if there had been active searches for them. Now, what about their troop strength?”
“Our information tells us most of the Nolier Armed Forces are involved. Either they are on our side of the border acting as guards to discourage our attempts at reclaiming our land, or they are waiting across the river, ready to cross the Hollister on a moment’s notice.”
“Which is why the king issued a full muster call,” Janus added.
“Yes.”
“What’s the estimate on their troop size?”
“The last estimate before I left named troop strength in the vicinity of seventy-thousand.”
Torrance mused, “Galemar’s typical army numbers are about thirty-thousand, with half no better than garrison men scattered across the kingdom. Summon the reserves and every levy to gather in the nobility’s private guardforces, and we might be able to field twice that.”
“That still leaves us ten short,” Janus added.
“I think it’s close enough. This shouldn’t be a pitched battle, one against the other. They’re either planning to retreat as soon as we show up in force at the mine or push us back in a series of smaller confrontations.”
“That’s for the knight-marshal to decided,” Fredrick repeated. It sounded like his fallback position.
Torrance walked to his map on the wall over the fireplace. “Where’s the staging ground?”
“The Cracked Plateau, east of Ramshead.”
“That’s north of us for nearly two eightdays, if we go full company. Show me the frontline from north to south. Janus, are we well provisioned enough to spend that long on the road?”
Janus answered while Fredrick rose to study the map. “Should be. We were preparing to send out everyone for the season.”
“What about Nolier?”
He sniffed. “If they’re holding the Hollister, they can send as many wagonloads of provisions back and forth as they want. They have their entire kingdom to provide for their fighting men.”
“They’re not about to starve themselves out then.”
“Not too damned likely.”
Fredrick began pointing on the map, tracing his finger down the kingdom’s length. Torrance asked further questions, and the other two drank brandy while they chimed in here or there. When they finally finished for the night, the commander of the Crimson Kings had left the king’s courier little time to sleep. All in all, Torrance felt he came out ahead.
Chapter 21
Marik awoke in the night, unable to remember his dream. For several moments he remained unaware he no longer slept. Everything looked as bizarre as the halfworld of sleep. Upward slipped sideways while the ground rotated slowly, refusing to stay beneath him. After a moment he realized why.
He slapped his face once and blinked several times, regaining his sense of balance and shutting his inner eyes at the same time, returning his sight to the ordinary vision he had known over a lifetime. The magesight closed, the auras of the world around him concealed themselves. Things made a little more sense.
To gauge the time, Marik poked his head past the loose flap that formed the low tent. Morning still lay several marks off. The troubling dream that had jerked him from his sleep faded from memory, leaving only this new matter to worry over. Why had he awakened with his mage senses fully active? That had never happened before.
He lay back down between Dietrik and Kerwin, listening to the rainfall on the canvas ceiling, or he did when Landon’s snores kept from drowning it out. The fabric vibrated from the drops pounding against it above his head. These small army campaign tents might sleep four men, but they needed every available inch to do so.
At least Landon’s snores were familiar. He listened to the sound and pondered.
He knew nothing outside himself had triggered his mage senses. A quick check with those senses reassured him no magic worked in the vicinity, or none he could make out. Tollaf had yet to teach him any genuine knowledge associated with this craft. The old man merely showed him an action, then demanded that Marik replicate it. Marik had learned his shields and a weak attack he could use on a limited scale, yet if anyone asked him to explain exactly why what he did worked, he would be at a loss to respond intelligently.
To solve his dilemma, this only left, as far as he could see, the tales of his youth and his own feelings. Think back. You didn’t spend all those nights listening to every ballad or tavern tale at Puarri’s for nothing. He could remember tales where magic ran out of control, except none seemed to fit this situation.
After thinking carefully, he decided on two possibilities. One, my talent is growing and starting to take on a life of its own. Further self-examination revealed nothing significantly different now than at any other time over the last season, except that the cold ground and rain were slowly freezing him.
Which means two; I need more training to gain better control of my talent. He could guess which theory Tollaf would support.
But then, he had made no use of his skills in nearly a month. He’d walked two eightdays to the staging ground on the Cracked Plateau, then departed immediately for the front. Three-and-a-half eightdays since leaving Kingshome without once invoking his mage talent. Maybe it felt restless.
He severely disliked his talent yet the thought of it acting on its own beyond his control disturbed him. So…starting tomorrow he would use the magesight once or twice a day during the march.
That would even be in keeping with Tollaf’s wishes. Once they had arrived at the staging ground, accompanied by levies from other lords they’d met along the way, Tollaf had summoned him for a quick talk.
Marik’s first instinct when Yoseph delivered the command was to send a
message back telling the old man what he could do with his summons. At the time, his immediate concern had been to find the nearest cook wagon, except Yoseph had already turned away. Besides, he had made a deal with the old man to take his lessons seriously so the senile old bastard’s life would be easier. Maybe he should ante up a little, especially after clashing so often in the days before the departure. Kerwin still fended off demands for payment on wagers, stating that none of the predicted outcomes had come to pass and therefor nobody had won.
So Marik had gone to the old man, only to be told not to make an issue of the fact he possessed mage talent. As if he needed to be told that! Tollaf had also instructed him not to use his talent until the mages decided what to do with him.
Reassured that his apprentice felt no urge to do so, Tollaf had entered a large tent with a woman Marik recognized from Tollaf’s mirror. That would be Celerity, one of the top court mages. She shunned robes or any garb that Marik’s mind associated with magic users. Riding leathers, a coarse gray skirt, an embroidered vest, a heavy cotton tunic and a threadworn shawl constituted her wardrobe in the field. His brief glimpse through the tent flap revealed perhaps a dozen men and women sitting around a flat, portable campaign table.
Marik started to leave until he saw Commander Torrance standing in the falling drizzle with several others. Again Marik only recognized one other man, this being the king’s seneschal. They stood before an enormous pavilion tent with the flaps tied up to keep them open. Inside, a hundred other men sat, stood or huddled around braziers of smoldering coal.
Torrance noticed him, nodding only once. A muffled voice called the group inside the flaps. Marik had glanced in when he walked past. The seneschal had taken a position at one side. Beside him stood a man with a full head of gray hair and a clean uniform in the king’s colors with decorations covering his chest. Anyone wearing a clean outfit and that much brass in a rainy, muddy staging field must be the pack leader; the knight-marshal. The other men in the pavilion had all worn high quality clothing. Silks, velvets and tight weave all around. These would be the lords and nobles who’d come in person to answer the muster call, rather than merely sticking to the letter of their duty by sending only a tribute of men.
The commander would be one man among many in there, one voice from the choir of personal interests and blue blood self-importance. Except he would not be one of them, would not be an equal in their eyes. He was a merc, a hire sword, a coin-grabbing opportunist to them, no better than most back alley cutthroats who populated the dark byways in the larger cities. Just better organized.
Marik started to worry about the placement the Crimson Kings would receive in the overall battle strategy. He’d kept his eyes open from then on and noticed no other merc bands at the gathering.
In the end, they decided that the Kings, as a whole, would split into thirds, each assigned to different points along the frontline. That might be good or it might be bad. Only time would reveal which. On the third morning, a day-and-a-half after arriving, they had marched out. Commander Torrance took his third north to the area around the gold strike, while Lieutenant Baxter took his south to prevent a flanking movement by the Noliers. Marik and the Ninth were smack in the middle between them, along with whatever kingdom forces they would join. Each of the thirds were supposedly only another part of the larger army forces, yet Marik believed that point duty would unfailingly be assigned to the Crimson Kings detachments.
Lieutenant Earnell had addressed his squad upon departure, justifying Marik’s fears. The knight-marshal had decided the mercenaries would work most effectively under the lords they’d last contracted with. He theorized that the familiarity between the two would lead to efficient cooperation between the mercenaries and the regular forces. As Earnell spoke, a sinking feeling grew in Marik’s stomach, solidifying with the lieutenant’s final revelation.
“The last lord the Ninth served with was Baron Dornory, as you recall. He had to stay in his barony to keep an eye on his neighbor but he sent his son Balfourth to the muster as the head of his levy detachment.”
If anything could have been worse than taking the point in a full scale battle against thousands of enemy soldiers, it would be with Balfourth making the decisions for his company.
A noise drew Marik back to present, made by Kerwin throwing an elbow into Landon’s ribs. “Will you for the gods sakes shut the hells up already!” he hissed. Landon grunted in his sleep and shifted position, his snoring damped only by the blanket covering his face.
Marik tried to go back to sleep, unable to avoid thinking of his bunk in Kingshome. He had slept on the ground for a month. The closest he had come to comfort was the softer grass atop the Cracked Plateau, beside the canyon cutting halfway across the western stretch. The knowledge that no comfortable inn room or even a spot by a tavern’s fire waited once he reached his destination depressed him. While he tossed in his efforts to find a comfortable position wedged between his comrades, Marik wished he had thought to ask Tollaf for any workings that could help him fall asleep. If he must have this talent, he might as well know a worthwhile way to use it.
* * * * *
The rain had stopped, though Marik and the rest in the Fourth Unit were beginning to wish it still fell. An unforgiving sun replaced it, hammering down through a patchwork quilt sky, evaporating the rainfall and raising the humidity to unbearable levels. It felt hotter than it should, for the wind had also decided to take a holiday and vacate for more interesting locations. All in all, it made digging through the hard-packed ground a grueling task.
Marik wielded a heavy mattock while Dietrik, Hayden, Kerwin and Sloan attacked their sections with spades. Pierce used a similar mattock. He and Marik were resting as the shovels removed the earth and clay torn free by the two. Marik collared a passing page. The men nearly drained the lidded water bucket the boy carried.
Most of the youths fulfilling page duties were acting as waterboys during the construction. Though they performed a never-ending task, Marik bore no sympathy for their constant running back and forth from the water supplies to carry heavy, to their young arms, water loads for thirsty men.
Movement caught his eye when he dropped the dipper into the bucket. An army officer walked down the line, inspecting the workers. He pointed the man out to the others. The sight urged them back to their labors. Given the slightest opportunity, they knew from experience, the kingdom officers would seize on any excuse to spend entire candlemarks chewing on a group of slacking mercenaries. You’d think we were slaves at the whim of a sadistic taskmaster wanting to test the flexibility of his new sting whip.
On this second day, the officers were especially displeased already, since the men digging the earthworks around the encampment had failed to finish the job on the first. They hesitated not in the least to let the workers know it. The mercenaries were of the opinion that if the officers were in such a screaming hurry to get the job done, they ought to grab a spade and lend a hand.
This would be the stronghold for the Galemaran forces’ central division. They needed to hold the middle at all costs while the war waged on, which meant it needed to be as well protected and defensible as possible. That meant digging a dry moat around the camp while building layered earthworks lined with sharpened stakes.
With nearly seventeen-thousand men, Marik would have thought the task would be a quick chore. They soon discovered that the ground chosen by the higher-ups concealed hard clay under a foot of soil with a large quantity of stones mixed in for good measure. Also, the encampment, empty as it would be when the men were out in the field, still exceeded Kingshome’s size by several times. That excluded the supply wagons, which were bunched together to the west.
Once they established the main camp, smaller strongholds and supply depots would be placed in strategic locations across the Galemaran map. Marik knew when they finished with this backbreaking labor, their next duty would be to travel north and do it all over on a smaller scale. Of course, there would be fewer men
doing the work, so the job would likely be just as hard. After that he thought his time would be divided between guarding the supply lines or skirmishing with the Noliers.
Provided these plans survived the various engagements with the enemy, which, he had learned, rarely happened.
Sloan dropped a last shovel of clay chunks atop the canvas square, then grunted toward Kenley. The young man elbowed Knox and rushed forward to lift his end before Sloan could lose his temper. Kenley usually acted that way around Sloan now, the loner having finally had his fill of the newcomer. Owning the neighboring bunk would make anyone wary of the man, but Kenley’s exuberant attitude had pushed Sloan too far one day, and he’d threatened to cut the boy’s tongue from his head if he refused to still it. Most would have made the threat in the heat of anger yet Sloan had delivered it with such cold assurance that everyone, including Kenley, understood he meant every word.
Kenley had become easier to live with since then, whenever Sloan stood near at hand.
Knox grabbed his two corners while Kenley pulled on his. Together they made their way up the slope of dug earth to dump the load wherever the earthwork foreman directed them to.
The officer passed them, continuing his way down the trench without taking notice of the mercenaries while Nial, Floroes, Talbot and several others slid down the slope on unsure footing.
“At last,” exclaimed Dietrik when the others arrived. “I was beginning to think you blokes had fallen asleep in the sun.”
“Not a chance around here. Not without decent beer, or even a draft of the Tippin’ Tankard’s piss ale.” Nial sounded disappointed, whether at the lack of a brew or at the prospect of returning to work, Marik could not tell.
“I’m hungry enough for army fare, poor as it is. Though I think sitting a spell in the tent would do me better than lunch,” Dietrik replied.
“Let’s go, Dietrik,” Marik tossed over his shoulder after dropping the mattock’s handle into Talbot’s hand. “I’m too starved to wait for you.”