‘You might have just let me live,’ he said. He looked pained. ‘Sweet Jesu – I mean you might have let me die.’
‘No one ever thanks me,’ the Magus agreed.
‘I’m Gawin Murien,’ he said. Groaned. ‘What have you done to me?’
‘I know who you are,’ the Magus said. ‘Now they can call you Hard Neck.’
Neither man laughed.
‘I don’t really know what I did to you. I’ll work it out over the next few days. Don’t worry about it.’
‘You mean, don’t worry that I’m gradually turning into some loathsome God-cursed enemy of man who will try to slay and eat all my friends?’ Gawin asked. His voice strove for calm, but there was panic in it.
‘You have a vivid imagination,’ Harmodius said.
‘So I’ve always been told.’ Gawin looked at his own upper left arm and recoiled in horror. ‘Good Christ, I have scales. It wasn’t a dream!’ His voice rose suddenly, and his eyes narrowed. ‘By Saint George – my lord, must I ask you to kill me?’ His eyes went far away. ‘I was so beautiful,’ he said, in another voice.
Harmodius made a face. ‘So very dramatic. I seized the power to heal you from something of the Wild.’ He shrugged. ‘I wasn’t really fully in control of the power, but never mind that. Without it, you’d have died. And whatever you may feel about it right now, death is not better!’
The young knight rolled away, closing his eyes. ‘Like you would know. Go away and let me sleep. Oh, Blessed Virgin, am I doomed to be a monster?’
‘I very much doubt it,’ Harmodius said, but he knew that his own slight doubt was not very reassuring.
‘Please leave me alone,’ the knight said.
‘Very well. But I’ll be back to check on you.’ Harmodius reached out with a tendril of power and it was his turn to recoil at what he saw. Gawin saw his reaction.
‘What’s happening to me?’
Harmodius shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he lied.
An hour after full dark, the enemy struck. There was a whistle of arrows from the darkness, and two of the guildsmen on guard fell – one silently, the other with the panicked screams of a man in pain.
Guilbert had the wagons manned and alert in a hundred heartbeats. Which was as well, because a wave of boglins, announced by a sinister rustling, exploded into the north face of the wagon-fort.
But Guilbert was an old campaigner, and his dozen archers shot fire-arrows into the piles of cane and brush left around the old clearing, and most of them caught. And then, by the flickering light of spring bonfires, the guildsmen and the soldiers killed. Having negotiated the raspberry cane walls, the boglins were almost incapable of climbing the tall wagons after, and they died in dozens trying.
But the red arrows arching like vicious dragonflies over the fires began to annoy the defenders. The arrows lacked the potency to penetrate good mail, and their flint heads shattered easily, but they sunk deep in exposed flesh, and men who took them, even as a scratch on the hand, became fevered in an hour.
Harmodius went from man to man, pulling the poison by grammerie. He’d had a day to gather power and rest, and he was full of sunlight, his aids charged and ready except for the two wands, whose charging required greater time, attention, and investment.
When the fires burned down, he cast a powerful phantasm of light on a tree way out at the edge of the raspberry thicket. He repeated the spell six times, all the way around the wagon-fort, to back-light their attackers and blind their archers. But the Hermetic cost was immense, and he was shouting his power to the world.
As his sixth light casting began to fade, and the deadly, wasp-like arrows began to come in again, Harmodius felt the presence of an enemy. A practitioner.
Another magus.
There was a moment’s warning – possibly as the other one raised a defensive ward.
Harmodius raised his own. And then, like a man fighting with a sword and buckler, he pushed his ward across the open space between himself and the other source of power. If his ward was held close to his body, it could only cover him. Held close to the other magus, the ward could cover the whole convoy.
A simple exercise in mathematica that most practitioners never learned.
It cost a fraction more energy to maintain the ward over there than here. Energy exploded against his ward and was deflected. Irks and boglins died under the onslaught of phantasms which should have been supporting them.
Harmodius smiled wickedly. Evidently whoever was out there had a great deal of raw power and very, very little training.
In his youth, Harmodius had been an accomplished swordsman. And the practice of hermetical combat had many close analogues in swordsmanship. Harmodius had always meant to write a treatise on the subject.
As his adversary prepared another attack, Harmodius dashed through the labyrinthine palace of his memory, stacking wards and gardes in a sequence he’d practised but never used.
His opponent’s next attack came with more force – a titanic, angry upwelling of power that came as a lurid green stripe across the night.
His first ward was voided. The enemy had moved off line, realising the strength of his forward defence.
His second ward, however, caught the attack and subtly displaced it – and the third ward reflected it down yet another line – right back into the caster, who was struck squarely by his own phantasm.
His wards flared a deep blue-green – and Harmodius struck. In the tempo of the opponent’s own attacks, he launched a line of bright, angelic white – a line like a lance that connected his index finger and the enemy’s wards. It cost Harmodius almost no power, but the enemy, having over-committed to warding in the wrong place, now used his reserve ward to block . . .
. . . nothing. The light beam was just that. Light. There was no force behind it.
Like a fencing master going for an elegant, killing thrust, Harmodius drew power for his attack, and launched it, all in a tenth of a beat of a panicked guildsman’s heart. And as the blow went in – over one ward, under a second, and through the weakened energies of the third – he felt his enemy collapse. Felt him experience the despair of defeat.
And without intending to, he reached out and seized something – just as he had taken power to save the young knight. But this time, he took the essence of the enemy sorcerer much faster and more thoroughly.
His opponent’s power was extinguished like a candle.
Harmodius took a deep breath, and realised that he was now more powerful than he had been when he started the night.
He cast a seventh light without any opposition.
The irks faded into the brush, and the rest of the night passed as slowly as he’d ever known, but with no further attacks.
West of Albinkirk – Gerald Random
A horse length from the Magus, Random stood with Old Bob. The last exchange of phantasm happened incredibly quickly. Random had watched it.
In the distance, something screamed.
A cruel smile spread across Harmodius’s lips.
Random glanced at Old Bob, who was looking at him. ‘That was-’
Old Bob shook his head. ‘Legendary,’ he said.
In the morning, the convoy confronted the truth – the broken bodies of a hundred boglins lay among the wagons. No man could deny what they had fought. Several vomited. Every man crossed himself and prayed.
Random approached the Magus who sat, cross-legged in the open, greeting the rising sun with his arms across his lap.
‘May I interrupt?’ he asked.
‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ grumbled the Magus.
‘My apologies,’ Random said. ‘But I need some information.’
The Magus snapped his eyes open. ‘If you do not let me do this, I will have fewer arrows to my bow when they come again,’ he said.
Random bowed. ‘I think we should turn and go back.’
The Magus frowned. ‘Do as you must, merchant. Leave me be!’
Random shook his head. ‘Why s
houldn’t I turn back?’
Harmodius’ voice was savage. ‘How do I know, you money-grubbing louse? Do as you like! Just leave me alone!’
Old Bob was already mounted and Guilbert stood by his horse with a short, oddly curved bow across his saddle. Today was his turn to ride point.
Old Bob gestured tp Messire Random. ‘Well?’ he asked.
‘We press on for Lissen Carak,’ Random said.
Old Bob rolled his eyes. ‘What the fuck for?’
Random looked back at the Magus. And shrugged. ‘He made me angry,’ Random said, with simple honesty.
Old Bob looked at the pile of dead boglins. ‘You fought ’em before?’ he asked.
Random nodded.
‘Take every man to the pile and make him look at them. Careful like. In daylight. Make every man touch one. Make every man see where they’re weak.’ He shrugged. ‘It helps.’
Random hadn’t thought of any of those things. So he ordered it done, and stood there while Old Bob hauled a corpse off the pile.
The guildsmen flinched as he slammed the body down.
‘Don’t be afraid, lads,’ Old Bob said. ‘It’s dead.’
‘Fucking bug,’ said one of the cutlers.
‘Not bugs. More like-’ Old Bob shrugged. ‘Get the Magus to tell you what they’re like. But look. They have hard parts and soft parts. Hard on the chest. Soft as cheese here under the arms.’ To demonstrate, he took his arming dagger and thrust it into the muddy brown skin, which extended like membrane from the soft-hard chitinous armour of the torso, under the arm with no effort at all. Green-black ichor covered his blade, but none leaked out.
‘A thrust is always deadly,’ Old Bob said. He struck, and his heavy dagger blade punched through the thing’s tough shell, and a putrid odour filled the air. One of the salters vomited.
Old Bob walked over and kicked him. ‘Do that when you’re fighting and you’re fucking dead. Hear me? Look at it. Look at it!’ He looked around at the startled apprentices. ‘Everyone touch it. Take one off the pile for yourself, and try it with your sword. Do it.’
As Guilbert rode to the head of the column, he muttered to Harold Redlegs – loud enough to be heard – ‘Because the old Magus made him mad? That makes all sorts of sense.’
It didn’t make any sense to Random, either.
But an hour down the road, Harmodius rode up next to the merchant and bowed in the saddle.
‘My pardon if I was brusque,’ he said. ‘Sunrise is a very important moment.’
Random laughed. ‘Brusque, is it?’ he asked. But then he laughed. It was a beautiful day, the woods were green, and he was commanding the biggest convoy of his life.
Riding to war beside a living legend.
He laughed again, and the old Magus laughed, too.
Thirty wagons behind, Old Bob heard their laughter and rolled his eyes.
North of Albinkirk – Peter
The Sossag People had gathered almost their full fighting strength and brought it south across the wall. Ota Qwan said so, ten times a day, and the second full day in camp, he saw the whole fighting strength of the Sossag gathered in one place, the great clearing a mile south of camp. He stopped counting men when he reached several hundred, but there had to be a thousand painted warriors and another few hundred unpainted men and women. He’d learned that to be painted was to declare a willingness to die. Unpainted men might fight – or not, if they had other immediate interests, like a new wife or new children.
Peter had also learned that the Sossag had little interest in cooking. He had tried to win a place through efforts with a copper pot and a skillet, but his beef stew with stolen wine was eaten noisily and quickly by the band with which he travelled, the Six River Sossag who also called themselves the ‘Assegatossag’ or ‘Those who follow where the Squash Rots’ as Ota Qwan explained.
They ate it, and went about their business. No one thanked him or told him what a fine meal it had been.
Ota Qwan laughed. ‘It’s food!’ he said. ‘The Sossag don’t eat that well, and we all know what it is like to grow hungry. Your meal was excellent in that there was enough for everyone.’
Peter shook his head.
Ota Qwan nodded. ‘Before I was Ota Qwan, I understood what it was like to cook, to eat well, to dine.’ He laughed. ‘Now, I understand many things, and none of them involve fine wines or crunchy bread.’
Peter hung his head a little and Ota Qwan slapped his back.
‘You will earn a place. Everyone says you work hard. That is all the People expect of a newcomer.’
Peter nodded.
But that night he made a number of new friends. Dinner had been a simple soup with some seasonings and deer meat that Ota Qwan had contributed, and one of the reptilian monsters had come, sniffed the carcass of the deer, and made its strange crying noises until Skadai came at a run.
Peter had been afraid, but it had left them in peace, the deer meat had gone into the soup, and all was well.
When the soup was served, two of the boglins came out of the woods. They were slim without being tall – when they stood erect, they were only the height of a tall child, and their heads were more like insects then men, with the skin stretched tight over light bones perched on bodies with a bulbous armoured torso and four very mammalian appendages. Their legs were thin and heavily muscled, the arms whipcord-tight. They were hideous, and just watching one move was the stuff of nightmare. They didn’t mix much with Sossag, although Peter had seen Skadai speak to a group of them.
They also seemed to come in three types – the commonest were red-brown and moved very quickly; the second type were clearly warriors, with a more heavily armoured carapace and paler, almost silver, skin. The warriors were almost as tall as a man, and every appendage had a spike. The Sossag used the Albin name for those ones – wights.
And finally, there was what seemed to be a leader class – long and thin, like great mantis creatures. The Sossag called them priests.
These two creatures were both lowly workers, each carrying a bow and a spear, naked except for a quiver and a canteen. Peter tried not to watch the liquid sliding of plate on plate in their lower abdomens. It was disturbing.
They stopped by his fire. Both rotated their heads in unison, their strange lobe-shaped eyes seeing the fire and the man together.
‘Guk fud?’ said the nearer of the two. His voice was scratchy, almost a screech.
Peter tried to get past his fear. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.
‘U guk fud?’ said the other one. ‘Gud fud?’
The first one shook its head and abdomen – an alien display, but Peter understood it was showing impatience. ‘Me try fud,’ he screeched.
Peter still didn’t understand their shrieks, but the pointing claw-hands seemed to indicate his stew pot.
None of the Sossag were rising to help him. As usual, they had eaten to satiety and now lay on the ground, virtually unmoving, although every one of them was watching him. Ota Qwan was smiling – a hard, cruel smile.
Peter bent, turning his back on the creatures, and poured stew into a bowl. He added a little wild oregano and handed it to the nearer of the two monsters.
He took it, and Peter watched him sniff the bowl. He wished he hadn’t. Watching the thing’s not-entirely-inhuman nose split open to reveal a cavernous hole in the face with spiky hairs-
The thing made a loud scratching noise with two of its arms and poured the whole bowl straight into the hole in its face.
Threw back its head at an unnatural angle and screamed.
Then it held out the bowl for more.
Peter scooped two more bowls, put oregano on both, and handed one to each boglin.
The entire process was repeated.
The smaller of the two boglins opened and closed its beak-mouth three or four times, emitting a chemical reek that caught at the back of Peter’s throat.
‘Fud gud!’ it chirped.
Long, agile tongues of a shocking pink-purp
le emerged from their mouths, and they licked the bowls clean.
They emitted a long scratching noise together, and raced off, running lightly on the ground, bent half over.
Peter stood by his fire with two empty food bowls. He was shaking a little.
Skadai came. ‘You have been honoured,’ he said. ‘They seldom notice us.’ He looked like a man with more to say, but then he pursed his lips, patted Peter on the shoulder, smiled and loped off, as he always did.
Peter was still trying to decide what to make of the incident when the woman came and put a hand on the small of his back.
That hand on his back was a palpable thing – another means of communication, a thing he hadn’t expected, and it conveyed a wealth of information to him – so much, in fact, that an hour later he was between her legs . . . and moments after that another man kicked him in the head.
Such a blow might have killed, but the painted man was barefoot and Peter had a little warning. And despite being a former slave and a cook, Peter had been bred to war, so as the kick turned his head, as he ripped himself free of the dark-haired woman’s embrace, he was already moving, calculating, reaching for the knife he wore around his neck.
The painted man expected him to be easy prey. He screamed, in rage or feigned rage, and attacked again. Peter had rolled on his back with the force of the kick, and he had the knife in his hand, and when the painted man – his red and black and white mixed in blotchy patches that looked like a skin sickness – jumped at him, Peter killed him as easily as such a thing could ever happen. He rammed his blade deep into the man’s belly and then rolled him over as he screamed in shock and desperation, his wild eyes suddenly wide with the despair of agony leading inevitably to death.
Peter ripped the knife up his abdomen, spilling his guts and covering himself in the man’s gore.
Then, full of his own terror, he plunged the knife into the man’s eyes, one and two.
By then, the blotchy man was dead.
Peter lay there for a moment. Every one of the last hundred heartbeats was open to him like a long book, carefully read, and the remnants of his erection reminded him that he had passed from one extreme of life to the other in that time.
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