by M. C. Planck
“What about the slaves?” Christopher asked, but Karl shook his head.
“I would rather destroy slavery than free a handful of slaves,” he said, and Christopher could not argue. In any case, the fault was Christopher’s alone.
The next time he gave the ulvenmen a chance to send their women and children away to safety. His army grumbled at seeing so much tael escape, and grumbled even more at having to take the camp hut by hut instead of shelling it into rubble, but they accepted the price after taking the slaves alive. Christopher enjoyed a bit of pride, handing out I-told-you-so looks for free. D’Kan rolled his eyes at such sensitivity to monsters. Two days later they came across another camp, and D’Kan paid him back in spades.
This camp had refused to send away their dependents, and after the battle D’Kan had an explanation. In the cooking pits he found many fresh ulvenman skulls, large and small.
The women and children from the last camp had sought refuge here, and had been eaten instead.
“It is to be expected,” D’Kan said. “They can barely feed themselves, let alone scores of mouths that cannot fight or hunt. No doubt they took a selection of the youngest females, and tossed their old ones into the pot. And of course the tael from those sacrifices accounts for why this camp had so many ranked warriors.”
Christopher almost turned his army around and went home. He knew that if he let himself hate the ulvenmen for no worse a crime than being ulvenmen, he would not remain White for terribly long. Yet the perfidy of the beasts was indefatigable.
“Is there no other option than genocide?” he asked, not expecting an answer.
“This is not extermination,” D’Kan said, “merely culling. I assure you that some sneak through our fingers to hide in the swamp until we leave. In a generation all will be as before, and in need of pruning again.”
Christopher stared at the Ranger in horror. What was the difference between the hjerne-spica and what he was doing?
“Not quite the same,” Lalania said, reacting to Christopher’s palpable dread. “If we are thorough and exacting, they will learn not to take human slaves.”
“Perhaps we should stop the misery at its source,” Gregor mused. “The King ordered you to solve the problem once and for all; would not a final battle be more merciful than this endless suffering?”
D’Kan turned to the knight with his own horrified expression. “Obliterate their entire race? Solely for your convenience? I thought the White prided itself on stringent morality.”
“I’m just saying,” Gregor said, embarrassed.
“You’re okay with us killing any individual ulvenman, but if we kill all the ulvenmen you have a problem with that?” Christopher asked the Ranger.
“Death is a part of life. The ulvenmen certainly understand that. But to exterminate an entire race is a crime against nature. Surely you theologians can understand that.”
It was a valid point of view, if you didn’t think personal rights were terribly important.
“In any case,” D’Kan added, “if there were no ulvenmen, something else would move in. Who knows what horrors they hold at bay? And not only by force of arms. If a dragon thinks of this swamp as its larder, and we denude it, then perhaps it will transfer its attention to us. For this reason alone you should continue to cast a loose net and let some fish escape.”
“Can I make a truce with them?” Christopher asked Lalania. “Can we at least have a peaceful border?”
The minstrel shrugged, always unhappy at having to admit ignorance. “I don’t know. Absent some form of centralized authority, the best you can do is terrorize the entire population into fearing humans.” She was graceful enough to not point out that Christopher was responsible for that absence.
“You think too highly of yourself if you think you could have made a treaty with the shaman,” Karl said to her. “He would only seek to lull us into carelessness.”
“More to the point,” Torme said, “the manner in which the shaman would have enforced a treaty is precisely the kind of violence you are trying to avoid.”
Christopher turned to face his expert on the methods of madness. “So either we kill the ulvenmen, or the ulvenmen do it themselves?”
“Yes,” Torme said. “And left to their own, the ulvenmen would kill humans as well, and worse. At least under our hand they die quickly.”
From the faces of his council, Christopher could see that logic was sufficient for them.
“Then we will do it D’Kan’s way,” he said. “Do not pursue the ones who flee.”
“But those are the cowards,” Gregor objected. “You will create a nation of weaklings.”
“No, I’ll create a nation of ulvenmen smart enough to run away from people with guns. And maybe, someday, they’ll be smart enough to make peace.”
Thin gruel for his starving conscience, but there was nothing else on the table.
Christopher changed tactics for the next battle. He did not fully surround the camp, instead leaving one side open. Then he addressed the ulvenmen.
“Any ulvenman don’t wanna get killed better clear on out the back. And leave the slaves.”
Unsurprisingly, it had little effect on the outcome. Most of the ulvenmen preferred fighting and dying to running. Christopher found this mystifying, given that the jungle seemed like an easy place for a giant dog-man to make a living. He had to remind himself that they weren’t human beings. They clearly had a different set of values. Indeed, the chief source of dissatisfaction among the ulvenmen seemed not to be dying, but dying futilely. When they were engaged in hand-to-hand combat they fought with savage glee and excited barks even while they were being cut to ribbons. But most of the time Christopher’s men shot them down at range, and the howls of outrage were heartbreaking to hear.
Sympathy drove him forward, into the thick of battle. Gregor followed his lead, perhaps eager to release the flame that seemed to drive him in combat. Cannan, of course, required no excuse for reckless assault. Together they swept through the ulvenmen like a lawnmower through grass. The faces of his targets were obscured by his helmet and his rage, rendering them impersonal objects to be struck. The speed of the horse carried him past the damage he caused before he had to see its effect.
Afterward Disa put them back together again. Christopher did little healing these days, spending his magic to make his swordsmen even more supernaturally enhanced than they already were. The effects of his spells were only temporary, so choosing the time and place of battle was necessary to maximize their impact. Gregor’s comments about the stupidity of waiting to be attacked made sense now.
His men seemed heartened by his bloody role, looking at him with awe and perhaps pride, even while Karl objected.
“Do not expose yourself too much,” he said. “There may yet be surprises left in store.”
“Wise advice,” D’Kan agreed. This kind of full-frontal warfare was not what he considered strategy. Unlike the knights, he had been trained to strike and withdraw, choosing targets after careful consideration. “And in fact we may have found one for you.”
The Ranger led Christopher and his command party out of the open edge of the camp. A hundred yards beyond the camp lay a curious sight.
An old ulvenman, the oldest Christopher had ever seen, gray-muzzled and hunch-backed, was tied to a stake in the ground by a long rope, looking for all the world like a dog on a leash. He—or it; Christopher hadn’t figured out how to tell the difference between males and females—was unarmed. Which also meant naked, since the ulvenmen only seemed to wear armor, never clothing.
Intrigued, Christopher dismounted, but D’Kan paused him.
“Ware, my lord. I cannot see any trap or ambush, which implies that the danger is magical.” The young man had a pretty high opinion of his abilities.
“I will go first, then,” Cannan said. He leapt from his horse, strode up to the ulvenman without hesitation, and tapped it lightly on the forehead. Christopher couldn’t decide if this reflected an equ
ally high opinion of his own indestructibility, or perhaps merely a low opinion of the value of his own self-preservation. Most likely it just reflected a desire to upstage D’Kan.
The ulvenman yipped and tried to bite the hand that touched it. Christopher could see from its reactions that it was completely blind. And all but toothless.
“Nonetheless,” Lalania said, “do please cast some kind of detection.”
He didn’t have much left, but on the chance it would reveal something, he cast the aura spell. Perhaps to a dual purpose: he was relieved to see that Cannan remained the Blue he had been in the Cathedral. Their late orgy of violence had not shaken the man’s moral development. Christopher really wanted to examine himself, but the spell was not capable of that. His only clue to his status was that his avatar continued to grant him spells every morning.
He blinked, and stared again. The glow around the ulvenman was clearly green. Pale, shot through with streaks of red and blinking motes of yellow, but still green. There would be men in his own army who would be no better. Or even worse.
He looked away to clear his sight. Also, unwittingly, to spy on his comrades. Gregor’s White burned even brighter than Torme’s. Karl’s Blue seemed softer than he remembered. Lalania subtly gave him a gesture that could only be interpreted as unspeakably rude. Embarrassed to be caught in the metaphysical equivalent of eavesdropping, he forced his attention back to the scene.
“It’s Green,” he told Lalania. “How is that possible?” The behavior of all the ulvenmen he had encountered had been solidly in the camp of violence for violence’s sake, a hallmark of Red or even Black.
“It’s staked out like bait, so I’m not sure its moral status has any relevance to the status of ulvenmen at large,” she answered.
His one concession to conscience had been to keep the translation spell in memory in case it could be of use, even though it meant one less spell to bolster his killing machine. Now he felt vindicated. A tiny, tiny bit, but every drop counted these days.
He came forward and addressed it in the most respectable terms the ulvenman language would allow him.
“Toothless one, why are you left out as an offering to wild animals?”
The ulvenman sniffed the air once, in Christopher’s direction.
“You speak with authority, cub of man. Are you the god-man who leads the fire-stick horde?”
It was always interesting to hear one’s self described by others. “I am.”
“Then I am left as an offering to you. The chieftain said no more food could be wasted on a useless storyteller, and the god-man likes to talk, and so here I am.”
“Your chieftain is dead,” Christopher said. “He cannot deny you food anymore.” It wasn’t quite the words he had meant to say, but the intent was close enough.
“The joke is on you,” the old ulvenman replied. “I die soon. Even when the females chew my food twice I can no longer keep it down. You will get no stories from me.”
“I only want one story. Tell me how to forbid the ulvenmen from killing men.”
It barked, mockingly.
“Send us home. Send us back to Kotikoria, where the two moons leave the night dark sometimes, and the game runs plentiful and free. Where magic does not make terrible foes out of puny, hairless monkeys. Send us home, human, and we will forget about your stinkings and bad taste and horrible, sharp metals.”
Christopher sighed. “I cannot.” The ulvenmen, like the goblins and the humans themselves, were castaways here, their ancestors brought over by whatever capricious magic had delivered Christopher. He would need towering rank to find his own planet; he could never find their alien world. Perhaps no one could.
“We know this. No one can send us home. Our god Jumala has banished us to this place, to kill all or be killed. Today you win. I smell the blood of my kin on your hands. But tomorrow you may not win, and ulvenmen younger and stronger than I will feast on your bones.”
“No,” Christopher said. “That will never happen. If I cannot forbid the ulvenmen, then I must kill them all. Your shaman forbade and was obeyed, so tell me how to do the same.” There didn’t seem to be a verb for “command,” only “forbid,” which was not a promising sign.
“Keisari was a fool. I told all that no good could come of dabbling in magic, but the warriors no longer listened to my wisdom, even though many had cried out excitedly for my stories when they were but pups. Many times I said that some brave warrior should sneak into his tent and cut off his head while he slept, but fear of his golden fire-bolts was too much for them. It would not have been so when I was young.”
Christopher had been on the receiving end of those bolts, and he didn’t think they qualified as mere dabbling. “Has someone taken his place?”
The ulvenman shrugged. “We have not heard from the big camp since the great battle. Nor have we sent speakers to the big camp. Our new chieftain was not beholden to the big camp, and we were all tired of sharing our treasure anyway.”
When the tax system broke down, you knew you were dealing with complete social collapse.
“Tell me how to find the big camp.” Maybe he could influence the choice of replacement leader, toward someone more controllable. Or at least sane.
“You must go west, and north at the quickwater. Then west again. But it will do you no good. Destroy that canker and only stronger ulvenmen will result.”
“I hope for wiser ulvenmen.” If one old ulvenman could reach Green, who was to say more could not? “Like you, toothless one.”
“I am only wise because I am weak. The strong do not need wisdom. When I could hunt my own food and thrash my foes, I did not need to care for the good opinions of others. You will find no weak ulvenmen in the big camp. Keisari killed them all.”
“Keisari is dead,” he reminded the ulvenman. “You outlived him.”
The ulvenman shook his furry head in denial. “We all die. Life is to be lived hot, like blood. I should have died seasons ago, when I could no longer fight, instead of clinging on with stories for pups. Twenty years is too many.”
“What?” Christopher cried out. “What? How old are you?”
“Twenty, man-pup. Twenty times the floods have come and gone since I was whelped. More than any ulvenman I have ever heard of. But not as long as our human slaves, which grow and breed as slowly as trees. To live in servility is bad; to suffer it for so long is unthinkable. Your race must have displeased your god even worse than we did ours.”
“What?” Christopher said. “How old was Keisari?”
“Fourteen he was, still hale, but past his prime. He should have been slain by stronger and younger before you faced him. Perhaps a real hero could have defeated your god-magic.”
Christopher had felt crushing remorse at discovering that he had killed ulvenman children. Now he faced the dreadful fact that all of the ulvenmen were essentially children. How could he expect moral reasoning out of grade-schoolers armed with fangs and claws?
Too full of despair to speak, he simply stared at the ulvenman. Its weathered face, marked with scars; its knobby body, contorted, twisted, and thin. The ulvenman was suffering the ravages of decay at an age where a man would be starting his real life, marriage and career and adulthood.
“I can’t do this,” he said. But it came out in English, so no one understood.
“I have told you many stories,” the ulvenman wheezed, struggling to stand up. “Even of Kotikoria, our most sacred story handed down from warrior to pup for more generations than we can count. Now give me a boon, young pup. Give me the warrior’s death I should have had. Free me from this wretched leash and let me die fighting.”
The hollowness inside Christopher was disorienting. Wordlessly, sightlessly, he drew his katana and cut the rope in one smooth motion. Cannan, standing by impassively throughout the interview, ripped his great black sword from its scabbard as if by reflex. With the ringing of freshly drawn metal still hanging in the air, the ulvenman lunged forward, snarling pathetically.
Cannan severed it in half with a single stroke.
“They’re innocents, Cannan.” Christopher spoke to the knight in helplessness. “They’re all innocents. Even the guilty ones.”
“To draw breath on Prime is to ride the wheel of fortune. There are no innocents here.” Cannan cleaned his blade with no visible sign of emotion, but he did not meet Christopher’s gaze.
19
A WOMAN OF VALOR
Over the next few weeks Christopher drove his army mercilessly, marching miles a day in search of the fabled “big camp,” and destroying everything in their path.
He rode into each battle with the aura spell active, but all he found was a sea of Red. His ferocity in these assaults first enthralled, then terrified his men. He threw himself into the attack, trying to offset his guilt by exposing his body to the ulvenmen’s wrath. Knowing that the source of his battle ardor was sympathy, not hatred, would have only confused his soldiers. To be fair, it confused him. But an honest and quick death in battle was all he had to offer the ulvenmen.
When they broke and ran, he called off his troops and let them go. He was perpetually amazed at how few would flee even when given the chance. In some ways it was comforting; he could pretend that what he was doing was consensual. When that stopped working, he concentrated on finding the capital so he could peacefully end the war. Between the two he stayed busy fighting. Since both lies were so threadbare, he spent a lot of time fighting.
His advisors would not let him march willy-nilly into the swamp in search of his final objective. He had a supply line to maintain, food—for men and horses—and guns. The army traveled only as fast as it could build roads and forts, which was measured in single digits of miles per day and hours of itching frustration. Lalania’s lyre remained silent, saving the magic against need, so every foot of road and wall was built by human hands.
The quick-water turned out to be a river, and pinning his march along the banks reduced the number of camps they encountered. The camps were smaller, with less warriors but more slaves. This simplified Christopher’s life. Every camp he destroyed liberated more human wreckage, which fueled his rage for the next assault. Disa and Lalania began giving him sidelong glances, perhaps using their magic to check his aura. It was a relief to everyone when the Ranger announced that the big camp was now within striking distance.