"Where does this lead?"
"Once it's finished, it will exit into the north woods. I'll move some supplies out there, too. Enough to let us put at least a day of distance between ourselves and Bressel."
Nak touched the stone, which had been smoothed by Dante repeatedly opening and closing it to work on the tunnel beyond. "Did you build this because of your virtuous need to plan for all contingencies? Or because you expect we'll have to use it by the end?"
"More the latter than the former."
"Hmm." Nak patted his belly, as if to comfort himself. "Well, we made it here. So at least your chances are a little better than they were the day before."
~
The first of the refugees began to arrive. They were Alebolgian and they carried sacks of valuables and mouths full of rumors. They told stories of the White Lich's short campaign through their lands, consuming and absorbing villages and towns, shattering towers with a thrust of his hand. Supposedly there hadn't been a single survivor from any of the places he visited. The only ones who had escaped had left before his army had even shown up on the horizon.
Within hours of the first Alebolgians entering the gates, the native Mallish began to exit through them. They too carried packs and hand-drawn wagons, individuals and whole families. At first there were only a few dozen, but as word traveled from quarter to quarter, more and more made their way to the northern gate, starting with a stream, and then becoming a river, hundreds and then thousands of citizens—many of them men of fighting age—disappearing into the forest.
Just as Dante feared they might have to shut the gates to prevent the entire city from leaving, the river of departures returned to a stream, then a trickle. From the chatter among the soldiers, the general mood of those who remained was that if anyone had a chance anywhere, it was in Bressel, where the strength of Mallon, Narashtovik, and Tanar Atain would combine to stand against the lich.
As favorable as that sounded, Somburr had accompanied the contingent from Narashtovik, and Dante assigned the spymaster to coordinate with Corson to determine whether the loyalists within the Golden Hammer were planning any uprisings or sabotage. But Adaine remained quiet, and as for Crown Prince Swain, there were conflicting rumors as to whether he was still within the city or had fled to establish his court in exile.
Two days after the arrival of the first Alebolgians, hundreds upon hundreds of Colleners came to the gates. Though there were plenty of Colleners living in Bressel, relations between the two groups were never good and had been recently worsened by Gladdic's war on the Colleners that past winter. The mob of Mallish who showed up at the gates to greet the incoming Colleners did not look friendly. But any thoughts of violence they might have had died as soon as they heard the news from the refugees.
The army of the White Lich had emerged from the ocean, and it had crossed the border into Mallon.
"Why would they shift onto land now?" the Drakebane said when they convened to discuss it. "That only serves to guarantee we know exactly where they are."
Dante shrugged. "The cliff we dropped on the lich's army at Alebolgia might have given him a small hint that we've been watching him all along."
"The Blighted can move faster over land. Could that be the reason for it? How soon can they be upon us now?"
"Two days," Gladdic intoned. "Perhaps three, if the Eiden Rane decides the Blighted need more rest before the attack."
"We'll keep a close eye on them." Dante moved to the tower's eastern window, as if he'd be able to see all the way to the border. "Prepare for battle in two days."
The city, so recently a divided battlefield of mob anarchy, cohered into a machine with a single purpose: survival. Axes rapped from the outskirts as people struck down trees to be brought back for palisades. The Drakebane suspended the law against citizens owning weapons, and both Tanarian and Mallish soldiers gave quick and dirty fighting instruction to every citizen willing to bear arms.
Dante rushed through the construction of the fourth ring of ditches, ramparts, and palisades. He couldn't complete as many earthworks as he wanted—not if he was going to finish reshaping the river, which he still thought could be vital even if the enemy had moved onto land for now—but just as he was despairing over what sections to leave open, he heard footsteps from up the road.
Commander Seto rode at the head of a column of Collenese refugees. He headed straight for Dante. "It looked like you could use some help. I made some inquiries and discovered these men were eager to help you in particular."
"They are?" Dante said. "What for?"
"You'll have to ask them. Something about you having saved their country from a legion of demons."
Seto turned in the saddle and lifted his arm. The Colleners jogged forward, mostly men with a few women mixed among them, farmers and soldiers with strong limbs and bodies, and nearly every one of them with hair as golden as ripe wheat. Several nodded at Dante as he passed, recognizing him from his liberation of their realm. Then one whooped with a Collenese cheer of some kind, and all of the others joined him, calling Dante's name in praise.
The next day passed so quickly Dante could hardly process it. Soldiers and militia drilled among the defenses. Priests—some dressed in gray and wielding the light, and others dressed in black and silver and carrying shadow—rode up and down the earthen spokes connecting the ramparts, learning how to quickly maneuver to wherever their skills were needed most.
As the Colleners dug ditches and piled the dirt into mounds, Dante traveled to the river and made one last round of adjustments to the channel he'd squeezed it into. Watching the blue waters rush past the walls and into the ocean, a cloud of dread passed over Dante's heart. He had a few fish in the water to watch for a sneak attack and he now sent them rushing up and down the river and out into the ocean. But he found no sign of Blighted, or anything out of the ordinary to explain the tremor in his bones.
The afternoon was spent in grand strategy with Drakebane Yoto and numerous nobles, commanders, and priests from Tanar Atain, Mallon, and Narashtovik. Dante had helped craft the strategy himself and spent more time watching the foreigners for signs of incompetence or the kind of submerged contempt that would hint at potential treason. But if any of the Mallish were plotting against them, they were better at hiding it than he was at spotting it.
The White Lich's army covered less distance that day than expected, to the point where it now seemed as though it would be another day before they could reach the city. That night, the entire enemy troop gathered on a hill to the east. Though it was more than thirty miles away, the strange lights that glowed from it were clearly visible in Bressel, with pillars of white, blue, and green flashing upward from the hilltop, and others answering from the sky. Dante and Blays took to the top of the keep to watch.
Blays leaned forward, resting his arms against the parapet. "What do you think they're doing?"
"I'm not sure," Dante said. "I can't get my moths close enough to get a good look."
"Yes, but what do you think they're doing?"
"Examining the situation as logically as I can, I'd say they're inducing people to ask me dumb questions I can't answer. The lich could be patching up any Blighted who were injured or wore down on the march. Or strengthening them with mystical lich-magic. For all I know, he's putting on a pretty light show to boost their morale."
"Or lower ours with something spooky and strange." Blays was quiet for a moment, then laughed unprompted. "I should have known better at this point, but I really expected that we were going to find a way to get our hands on that damned spear."
"Me too. But instead it was just another Quivering Bow."
"I wouldn't go that far. I had fun not finding the Quivering Bow. The norren were a lot of trouble, but they were good companions."
"Whereas the Mallish are the Mallish."
"Yep." Blays tapped his fingers on the battlement. "So do you think we'll win?"
"I've never seen so many sorcerers gathered on one side in my life. I
think we have a chance."
"Which isn't to say a good one."
"A one of indeterminate but likely small size."
"Funny, that's the same thing women think when they look at you." Blays tipped back his head as a new round of glowing green lights shot from the faraway hill. "You know what I've been doing the last few days while you've been moving dirt from one place to another?"
"Drinking?"
"No. Yes. Besides that."
"Drinking and then sleeping?"
"The gods have ordained that a good sleep is the natural sequel to a good drink. I'd think a fellow as pious as yourself would appreciate my devotion to their divine law."
"What have you been doing? Oiling down your sword?"
Blays snorted. "I've been looking into the past. With the stream."
Dante raised an eyebrow; ever since he had been taken by the lich, and revealed the way for a sorcerer to get around the power of the Odo Sein, he hadn't given the stream a whole lot of thought. Especially not with all his recent duties and worries.
"Bressel's past?" he said. "Why?"
"I figured a lot of great people have lived here and done a lot of big and important things over the years. Maybe they even tangled with a lich of their own at some point, or something like it. But I ran into a problem: as you might have noticed, Bressel is really, really huge."
"Meaning you have too much ground to cover?"
"I wouldn't even call it 'ground.' More like a 'giant tangled ball of people and time and things as dense as a wad of chewed-up oats.' Maybe Bel Ara could navigate it, but to me it was like being drunk at night in a strange city.
"But as it turns out, I'm actually kind of good at being drunk in strange places. After a while, I found my feet, so to speak. I saw a lot of things, good and bad. Nothing that stood out as especially useful to us, though. Except, I suppose, for the idea that Bressel has been through a lot. More than any of us can conceive. If this place can't last through the lich, then maybe nothing can."
Dante thought for a moment. "I'm not sure if that makes me feel a little better or a whole lot worse."
"I'm happy either way." Blays took hold of his right elbow, stretching it across his chest. "I did witness some interesting bits, though. What's the story they tell about how Bressel was founded?"
"The two tribes."
"No, I mean tell me the story."
"You don't know it?"
"Some people came around, piled up some rocks until it was tall enough to slap a roof on, and called it good?"
"You don't even know it! This is the story of how your own people began. Everyone should know where they came from!"
"First of all, they're not really my people. My ancestors are from Collen. Anyway, at this point I've lived more of my life in Narashtovik than I did in Bressel. So maybe I was just smart enough to know that there was no need to learn the history of a place that wasn't going to be home for much longer."
Dante tilted his head forward. "And do you know the history of Narashtovik's founding?"
"I believe the question at hand is about Bressel, sir."
Dante laughed and shook his head. "The story they tell about the founding of Bressel—and with it the founding of Mallon—is actually kind of relevant to what we're going through now. It's acknowledged that there were people in this land before the Mallish, but none of the numerous tribes that came here lasted more than a short while before being conquered, slaughtered, or simply disappearing. That changed, finally, with the arrival of the Stotts.
"The Stotts were from a forest in the west, pushed from their home by civil war. In time, they came here, where the river met the sea. They called the river the Chanset, and their new city Bressel. They made all the proper offerings to Taim, for they followed their branch of the Celeset just as they do today, and Taim gave his blessings to the city. For a hundred years, it prospered.
"But in time, the same troubles that had left the land empty came for them. Barbarians from the north began to enter their land. At first it was to raid, taking plunder in slaves, but the attacks soon grew bolder, more devastating. The city burned, its army shrinking with each attack.
"Just when it looked like the Stotts were doomed, the Helods appeared. This was a group from the eastern woods. Probably not much further than those hills the lich is currently encamped on, although the Helods were nomads, and it's said they originally came from further south. They'd had contact with the Stotts for some years, and had even wanted to join Bressel—but they were Arawnites, nether-users, and the Stotts had rebuked them.
"But their total heresy seemed a lot less appalling now that the Stotts were on the brink of extinction. And the Helods, whose pride had been stung by the Stotts' earlier rebuke, were willing to let bygones be bygones, since they were also about to be raped, enslaved, and murdered by savages. So they joined forces in a united defense of Bressel.
"Even then, the barbarians continued their raids, but year by year, the Stotts and Helods held their own, slowly pushing the northerners back into the forest. Until the day came that the raids stopped altogether, and the barbarians slunk off into the north and were never seen again.
"Needless to say this was cause for celebration. But after the ale had been exhausted, and the hangovers recovered from, the Stotts and Helods faced a new problem: now that they no longer had a common enemy to fight, they had to deal with the fact they were living together.
"The Stotts suffered the Helods the best they could—so they claim—but living shoulder to shoulder, it became harder to tolerate the former nomads, who were accused of vile deeds like defiling the dead, blood rituals, and animal sacrifice."
Blays looked aghast. "But nethermancers like the Helods would never do any of that."
"Yes, well, I'm sure they had their reasons. In any event, the Stotts outlawed some of the worst behavior, but within a matter of months, their fall harvest failed. That winter claimed many lives. And just as they emerged from it, and got ready to sow new fields, a plague fell over the city.
"In its wake, a riot swept through Bressel. The Stotts said the twin disasters were the punishment of Taim for allowing the shadowmongers to live within his once-blessed land. So the Stotts rose up and drove all of the Helods back into the east. As soon as the Arawnites were gone, the plague lifted. The next harvest was the most bountiful in forty years. Bressel thrived, and began to spread its influence across the land, founding a new nation known as Mallon.
"That's the story they tell. I have no idea whether any of it's true. Considering its message is that Taim is always right and even if nethermancers are useful in a pinch, they'll eventually always betray you, I have to imagine there are some embellishments."
"In fact, that's almost exactly what actually happened," Blays said. "Except for the part where it was the Helods who settled Bressel first, and the Stotts who came to them when everything was about to get burned to cinders. But the rest is right, including the part about when the famine and plague came, the Stotts booted the Helods out for their dark practices."
Dante blinked. "The Arawnites settled Bressel first? Why would the Mallish lie about that?"
"Why do you think, idiot? To give themselves legitimacy. If you and your dirty ilk were here first, a smart fellow could use that fact to start all sorts of trouble."
"Honestly, I don't think he could. Not at this point. The Mallish built this place, not the nethermancers. And we went on to build our own places to live." Dante gazed at the hills, which now sparked with symmetrical geometric lightning. "It's a pretty sad story when you think about it. We can get along with strangers as long as we're all fighting against a common enemy. But as soon as we win our peace, our differences break us apart again."
"Do you think it's wrong?"
"I'd like to," Dante said. "But after everything we've seen, and all the people we've fought for, denying it would be like denying that things fall when you let go of them."
The lights continued through the night. In the morning, the
lich resumed the march, the white bodies of the Blighted advancing beneath the trees like a river of snow. Dante had to keep his spies distant or risk getting mind-invaded by the lich again, but he pegged the troop count at fifty thousand, confirming his scouts' earlier estimates. It was the biggest single army he had ever seen.
A trained soldier was the better of a Blighted, but as for those, the defenders possessed just fifteen thousand—many fighting men both local and foreign had been lost in the Tanarian takeover. They had many more conscripted militia as well, and when you included the reserve force of less-fit fighters the city could draw on, they actually outnumbered the enemy. But Dante wasn't so sure that the countless farmers and fish-sellers who'd never carried a sword or spear would stand firm against the hungry rage of the undead.
Mile by mile, the lich shrank the distance between himself and his great prize. A last flood of citizens gushed from the city, fleeing north and west with whatever they could carry. And then the gates were shut and sealed.
Scouts and runners dispersed across the city. Drakebane Yoto brought his men to the eastern fields, digging them in behind the palisades. The Mallish, led by the gallant Lenard Pressings, Duke of Wenford, did the same, filling his part of the field with troops that two weeks ago might have been mustered against the Drakebane.
The Blighted picked up speed, as if they could smell the skin and flesh of their waiting prey, loping down the road until they'd cut the distance to ten miles by noon. Blays napped while Dante roamed across the ramparts, palms sweating. Gladdic kneeled in prayer, eyes closed, whispering to himself.
A cool wind blew in from the east, as if driven by the White Lich himself. Impossible though it was, sometimes the air seemed to smell of ice.
The Blighted slowed to a steady walk. Through the eyes of a dragonfly following far overhead, Dante saw the lich striding among them, the undead parting to either side.
Scouts rode in from the eastern woods, their faces pale with fear. Hundreds of Blighted were ranging ahead to clear the way for the rest. Within minutes of the arrival of the last rider, men cried out from the lines, pointing to pale figures moving within the trees across the open fields.
The Spear of Stars Page 23