Ranks had formed
on either side of it, protecting the opening as those in the middle moved through, and by now, most of the troops had already passed into it. They had formed into an inverted V formation, with the point of the opening of the V leading directly through the portal. Aedan was close enough to see it now.
All around them, the n-dssha trees and scrubby undergrowth were in flames, fanned by Gylvain’s wind as he circled round and round, keeping the fire burning while at the same time blowing the flames away from the troops and toward the undead attackers. There were fewer of them than there were before, and the ground was littered with dismembered, flaming body parts that writhed and jerked. The portal behind them appeared as a swirling, opaque opening in the air, outlined by smoke and flame. As the troops poured through, only a few warriors remained now, along with the emperor’s mounted retinue, which would not leave without Michael.
Aedan could not tell how much time had passed, but the sky was beginning to turn gray. The fire had spread outward from the battle, so that a wide swathe of forest was burning all around them, lighting up the area for a considerable distance and sending clouds of smoke into the air. As Aedan fought, with Sylvanna at his side, he glanced toward Michael every chance he got, when there was a moment’s respite.
The emperor’s movements were slowing now, the wrath fading. He had struck down all of his opponents and, in normal battle, his sword would have been red with blood. However, the undead had no blood, and all their blades had remained clean.
Aedan’s arm was tired from slashing and hacking for what seemed like hours. The muscles in his shoulder
burned with exertion, and he was breathing heavily.
But though the Anuirean numbers dwindled rapidly as the troops passed through the portal, so did those of the undead, falling aflame. Aedan cleaved one burning attacker from head to waist with a powerful stroke of his heavy blade, and the force of the blow almost made him fall from his saddle. Now there were no more of them within close reach, and he quickly turned back toward the emperor.
Michael had disposed of the last of his opponents, and though some still advanced through the trees, staggering on even though their bodies were in flames, there were none within reach. Aedon saw Michael slump, supporting himself with his sword, and knew the wrath had passed. At once, he spurred his tired mount and rode to Michael’s side.
“Sire! Sire, give me your hand, quickly!”
Looking dazed, Michael gazed at him dully, but he held out his hand.
Aedan took his right foot from the stirrup so that Michael could use it to get up behind him. He pulled him up onto his mount and felt Michael slump against his back as he got on. He was too weary even to sheathe his blade. His left arm went around him, and Aedan sheathed his own blade, then grasped Michael’s wrist to hold him steady. Immediately, he wheeled his horse and spurred it to a gallop, heading for the portal.
“Come on!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Pull back! We’re going through!”
The others needed no encouragement. They turned and followed Aedan and the emperor, the mounted retinue pausing only long enough to allow the foot soldiers to run before them. As they passed through the portal, the ranks guarding its entrance
collapsed their V formation and went through after them. The last ones shouted to Futhark, and the halfling raised his arms to close the portal behind them.
“Wait!” Aedan shouted. “Gylvain!”
He felt a breeze ruffle his cloak, then a familiar, lilting voice spoke in his mind. “I’m here.”
“All right!” shouted Aedan. “Go on, close it!” Three more flaming corpses staggered through the portal, and the men fell on them, hacking them to pieces until there were nothing but burning body parts upon the ground.
As Aedan watched the portal close, the air folding in upon itself in surreality, the glow of the flames beyond it disappeared from view, and only the gray light of dawn remained. In fact, he thought, the troops guarding the portal had not been the only ones left on the other side.
There had been many wounded they had been forced to leave behind.
Aedan hoped the fire had gotten to the poor devils.
Burning to death was an awful way to go, but there were some things that were worse.
He heaved a long and deep sigh of relief, then looked around and realized his relief was much too premature. As the sun began to rise, he saw the thick pine forest all around them and the heavy underbrush and realized they had not reached the safety of the open plains of Diemed.
They were in the Spiderfell.
“He’s up to something, by Haelyn, I can smell it!”
said Arwyn of Boeruine, smashing his fist down on the table and upsetting is goblet. The servants rushed to mop up the spilled mead, right the heavy silver goblet, and refill it. “Why has there been no word from any of our scouts or informants?”
“There has been word, my lord,” replied Baron Derwyn calmly. He knew that when his father was in one of his surly moods, keeping a calm temper and demeanor was advisable. “Our spies reported that the emperor-“
“The Pretender, you mean,” his father interrupted, scowling.
“Indeed,” said Derwyn, agreeing indirectly, though he still could bring himself to use that detestable term. He knew the truth and would not be a hypocrite, not for his father’s sake or anyone’s.
“They have reported that Michael left Anuire with his army over a week ago, but there has been no word of him since. And our scouts along the borders have reported seeing no signs of any advancing troops.”
Arwyn gritted his teeth and shook his head.
“They’ve gone into the blasted Shadow World again,” he said. “The question is, where will they come out? And when?” He smashed his fist down on the table once again, once more spilling his mead.
The servants mopped it up again and once again refilled his goblet.
Arwyn paid no attention to them.
“Our garrisons along the border are on full alert,” said Derwyn. “And advance parties of rangers have been sent out from Taeghas, Brosengae, and Talinie, in addition to our own complement, which departed to scout the border between our lands and Alamie.
There is no way they can approach unseen.”
“Unless he figures out some way to come out of the Shadow World well within our borders,” Arwyn said. “Perhaps even on the plain outside Seaharrow, itself.”
Derwyn frowned. “I thought you said that was not possible, that they needed to employ a portal in the vicinity of Thurazor or the Five Peaks region, where the ley lines come in confluence.”
Arwyn nodded, “Yes, and for a long time, I had thought so, too.
However, our halfling scouts tell me that it is possible to create a portal where there is no confluence of ley lines, though it entails great risk and cannot be done reliably.”
“How?” asked Derwyn.
“How in bloody bollocks should I know how?”
his father replied irritably. “You try to get one of those miserable knee-whackers to explain anything and all that happens is you get lost in word salad.
They’ll answer amenably enough, but half of what they say makes no bloody sense at all! The point is, it can be done, but there is no guarantee they will be able to open up a portal when they want to, or come out where they want to.”
Derwyn shrugged. “Then it amounts to the same thing, does it not?
They cannot do it.”
“But they can try,” said Arwyn. “And however slixn, the possibility exists that they just might succeed, despite the risks.”
Derwyn leaned back in his chair, frowning thoughtfully. Yes, he thought, that was just the sort of thing Michael would do. The risk factor, no matter how significant, never seemed to bother him. It had been that way when they had played war games as children, and it was the same way now, when they made war in earnest.
As if echoing his thoughts, his father said, “I wouldn’t put it past that miserable Prete
nder to attempt just such a thing.”
Derwyn gave him a quick glance. His father had repeated the old lie so often, perhaps he actually believed it now. It was as if he thought that if he said it often enough, it would become the truth.
At first, his father had insisted that a strong hand had to assume the regency when Prince Michael was abducted by a goblin raiding party and taken back to Thurazor. He had appointed himself regent and vowed vengeance on the perpetrators of the hateful crime, but after Lord Tieran had outfoxed him by fleeing with the empress and her daughters while his father made at least a token effort-more of a pretence, really-at leading a rescue party into the Aelvinnwode, the story had begun to change.
As soon as he found out that Lord Tieran had absconded with the empress, his father had flown into a wild rage, smashing furniture and kicking the servants. Then after he’d calmed down, he had sent out dispatch riders across the empire to report that Prince Michael’s remains had been discovered by his rescue party in the Aelvinnwode.
What his knights, who had been on that rescue party along with Derwyn, thought of this was anybody’s guess.
Needless to say, they had never seen any remains, because the entire thing had been a fabrication, but they knew better than to contradict their lord. Derwyn’s father had not seen fit to mention Aedan Dosiere in his dispatches, as he had not considered him important, which was fortunate for him, as it would have made later permutations of the story somewhat awkward.
After he made his formal alliance with Gorvanak, the goblin prince of Thurazor, his father changed the story once more. It would hardly do to vow vengeance on Prince Michael’s murderers and then enter an alliance with them, so the goblins of Thurazor could not bear the blame. It was bandits who had killed the prince, renegade brigands from the Five Peaks region, as had been revealed by certain evidence the goblins had turned over to Lord Arwyn. Precisely what the nature of this ‘evidence” was had never been made clear. But that was not the final version of the story, either.
When Aedan and Michael had appeared back in Anuire, that had to be accounted for somehow, so Michael was accused of being an imposter, a lookalike or some boy whose appearance had been changed by elven magic so that he would resemble the prince. Since Aedan had never been mentioned in the original dispatch, that made the next variation easier.
Aedan Dosiere, whose duty it had been to protect Prince Michael, was branded a coward who had fled his liege lord’s side when the bandits had attacked, and to safeguard his own claim to power and the reputation of his son, Lord Tieran had cooked up the outrageous tale that the two boys had been rescued by the elves. The boy who called himself Prince Michael was a damnable imposter, a pretender, a tool to enable Lord Tieran to justify his claim to power. And then, of course, after Lord Tieran died, the story needed to be modified once more, and the final version had it that this “Michael the Pretender” had merely assumed Lord Tieran’s place, following his plans, with “hidden interests” behind him to support his claim to the Iron Throne.
Exactly who or what these “hidden interests” were specified, but it was broadly hinted that was never the elves, those old enemies of humankind, were the ones behind it all.
Derwyn never thought people would believe any of these stories, but many did. Repeat something often enough and loud enough, and people eventually came to accept it. Or at least some people. And now it appeared as if his father had managed to convince himself, as well.
“With my own eyes, I saw the poor boy’s broken body. . .” was usually more or less how the refrain went whenever Arwyn told the story, with subtle variations, depending on his audience. And now he apparently believed it, too. Derwyn had no idea what to make of that, but he knew better than to contradict him.
He had been there. He knew that no bodies had ever been found, neither Michael’s nor Aedan’s nor anybody else’s. They had simply ridden out across the fields, headed down several forest trails without even going in very far, and then returned. It had all amounted to nothing more than exercising the horses. But none of the men who had gone out on that so-called “rescue party” ever talked about it, not even among themselves, so far as Derwyn knew.
The archduke was the man who buttered their bread, and they all knew it.
Derwyn didn’t like it. Not one bit. His father had always seen to it that he was trained properly and hard so that he could take his place one day and, to that end, as Derwyn got older, he eventually became his father’s second-in-command. He had led troops in the field against Michael, the rightful emperor, his childhood friend. He had seen him several times, once fairly close, and had recognized both him and Aedan.
Once, in one of the many battles over the years that had failed to resolve anything, they had almost crossed swords. The two armies had clashed, and it became a huge melee, dust raised like a cloud by churning hooves and feet, and it had been one of those occasions when suddenly, for a moment, one found himself in a small island of calm in the midst of a pitched battle. And there was Michael, mounted on his warhorse.
Derwyn had recognized the imperial symbol of Roele on his shield and tabard, as Michael had recognized the eagle of Boeruine on his. Derwyn had lifted his visor and Michael had done the same. For a moment, they had simply looked at one another, and then the tide of battle forced them apart. But in that one moment, Derwyn had seen the prince, the boy he had remembered. He had grown older, and his hair was longer, and a dark beard was starting to come in, but he had recognized his childhood friend. If he had ever harbored doubts about his true identity-and he had not-they would have been dispelled right there and then. It was Michael. No question about it. And the expression on his face had been one of sadness … and disappointment.
Derwyn felt torn. He was his father’s son, and even if he had not loved his father, which he did, despite his harshness, he would have owed him a son’s obedience. And the Duchy of Boeruine was his birthright. He had to fight to protect it. But to protect it from the rightful emperor, by whose ancestors’ grace they had the holding? That was treason.
Yet he was caught in a situation not of his own choosing, in circumstances he could not control. Be loyal to his father, and he would be a traitor to the emperor. Or else loyal to the emperor and a traitor to his father. Damned for a dishonored traitor either way.
Derwyn was tired of the civil war, though no one save the common people called it that. Michael called it a rebellion, which Derwyn supposed it was, in fact. His father called Michael a usurper and a pretender and called it a struggle against tyranny and referred to the forces under his command as “freedom fighters.” He would never admit to the truth, that in his bid for power, he had underestimated Tieran. Though they had never spoken about it directly, Derwyn realized … now … what his father had intended.
Back when it all started, eight years ago at Summer Court, he had not really understood any of it.
But now that he was older, looking back, he recalled how solicitous his father had been toward the empress, how he had tried to ingratiate himself to her, to charm her, taking every opportunity to do her some little service and express his sympathy for all she had been going through. He recalled being puzzled by his father’s manner toward the empress.
He had not acted that way with anyone else, not even Derwyn’s departed mother. Back then, Derwyn had assumed his father was merely being a gracious host and doing his duty to the empress. Still, there had always been a tension in the manner of the empress when his father was around. Now, of course, Derwyn knew why.
His father had been trying to court her. Derwyn supposed he might have been able to excuse it if it had been love, but he knew his father did not love the empress, no more than he had loved his mother when she was still alive. Arwyn of Boeruine did not love women. He possessed them.
What his father loved was power … and the fighting. That was where they differed. Arwyn of Boeruine loved war.
His son was sick to death of it.
How things had changed since
he and Michael were both children, Derwyn thought. He was only a few years older, but eight years of ceaseless campaigning had made a lot of difference. He had grown up hard and fast. He imagined Michael had, as well. That expression on his face when they had met on the field of battle that time had spoken volumes.
They were no longer children who dressed up in toy suits of armor and played at war with wooden swords, thinking it was grand and glorious.
They had learned the truth, that war was terrible and sickening and ate away at a man’s soul. So why, then, did his father love it so? What made him different? Derwyn couldn’t understand it.
They would never have thought that war was some noble and wonderful adventure if, as children, they had seen a battlefield in the aftermath of conflict. The ground torn up and littered with the bodies of the dead and dying, men with wounds so terrible that it made the gorge rise in one’s throat to look upon the sight, the moans and groans and screams of agony, the horrid buzzing of the flies attracted by the blood and the smell … the smell!
Nothing could possibly be worse, thought Derwyn, than the putrid smell of war. When a man died in combat, his bowels let loose, and after a battle had been fought, the smell of human excrement and as?
bodies rotting in the sun was so overpowering it brought tears to the eyes.
All those times when they had “killed” each other in their play and clutched at imaginary mortal wounds, each trying to outdo the other in the dramatic manner of his “death” . . . Would we have found death so dramatic, Derwyn thought, if we had actually seen it? He had seen more of it than he could ever have imagined, and there was nothing even remotely dramatic about it. Except, perhaps, its ugliness and pathos.
And the soldiers were not the only ones to suffer.
Derwyn had seen the tormented faces of the families as they waited on the streets along the route of the army’s return, watching anxiously, fearfully, for their husbands and fathers and sons. He had heard the walls and screams of wives and mothers when the men that they were waiting for did not return, or came back maimed and crippled. He had heard and seen the crying of the children when they saw the broken bodies of their fathers or learned that they were never coming back.
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