The High King's Vengeance

by Steven Poore

  If she had dreams that night, she could not remember them. But she was so exhausted the following morning that she could scarcely stand, let alone climb into the saddle. Rais ordered two of his young Tertissian firebrands to lift her onto the bed of the cart that had become Arca’s home. Frustrated by her lack of energy, she had no choice but to let them manhandle her. She bit back the curses instead, and tried not to notice the smile Rais could not quite manage to hide.

  Diplomatic and correct, she thought. The bastard.

  “You look how I feel,” Arca said, from the other side of the cart.

  “I could say the same,” Cassia replied.

  “Aye, but I’m supposed to look this decrepit.”

  It was ironic, Cassia thought, that Arca actually looked better after a couple of days out of the saddle. Perhaps removing him from the fleapits and dockside taverns of Hellea had also improved his constitution. He certainly appeared more alert, more alive, than she had ever seen him before, though he still slept through much of the day.

  The column marched northwards once more, the cart rattling across the land in company with others that her small army had commandeered. Cassia followed Arca’s example and wedged herself into one corner so that she would not be thrown about when the wheels hit ruts in the road. The other goods loaded into the cart were lashed down with canvas and ropes.

  Arca dozed through the morning. Cassia envied him. Despite her own exhaustion she found it impossible to rest while being jolted about so much. Every so often she twisted about to stare at the northern horizon, where the rising countryside was outlined in dark colours. If she stared long enough, she could believe those colours pulsed just as the war drums thrummed in her head. Caenthell expected her. The High King marched down from the mountains to meet her.

  There was something else too, she realised, as the afternoon wore on and Arca had still not said another word to her. Another half-sound or sensation tickling at her thoughts. Something closer at hand than the first, questing tendrils of Caenthell’s vengeful spirits. Cassia was not certain, but she thought she had felt it before.

  Cracked stone . . . forms hacked and mutilated . . . slumbering, yet still listening. Still watching.

  She turned her head and found that the new sensation came from a more north-westerly direction. Outside the true North. Though Cassia had no map to steer her way – at least, not beyond the rough one Rais had sketched for the purposes of the march – she thought she knew what lay in that direction.

  Lyriss.

  Cassia turned again to watch Arca as he dozed beneath a thick blanket. Rest well, she thought. You will need it.

  11

  The prince dragged a stick through the dirt to mark their position. “This is the Castaria. And this is the Emperor’s March. It follows the sides of the mountains until the coast cuts east once more . . . up here. Like so. Keskor is . . .”

  He held the stick out to Cassia, waiting for her to take it. But she only shrugged. She was not sure where Keskor sat on any map. “In the foothills. Next to the mountains.”

  “Indeed. But where?” There was a touch of frustration in his voice. “We need to know where we’re going, Cassia.”

  “North. We only have to follow this road, Rais.”

  Cassia was still exhausted after the efforts she had made to awaken Malessar’s remaining shieldmen. That had been two days ago and as yet there was no indication the sorcery had achieved anything. She told herself that all things came in their time; that the stone warriors would hardly rise up fully formed from the ground before her – and yet she also knew that time was against her. Every day that passed brought new strength to the forces that had been pent up behind the shattered curse wards. Every day made the northern horizon that little bit darker, gave the air a more bitter edge. The drums in her head were not the only pressure she felt. Delaying their progress along the Emperor’s March for discussions of tactics and geography, of all things, only invited disaster. They would be caught between Caenthell’s great destructive power and whatever army could be swiftly mustered from Hellea to pursue them.

  The prince’s smile was fixed. He was plainly displeased, though it was unclear whether this was because of Cassia’s stubborn attitude or his own embarrassment. His officers, the young men he had named half-captains, watched the exchange in a mixture of curiosity and confusion. They followed Rais’s authority – for the time being at least – yet most of them were older than him. More than once Cassia had wondered if the only things that kept them in check were the prince’s pedigree and the novelty of the shieldmen.

  She sighed and shook her head. “I don’t have the benefit of your education. I learned the few things I do know from a perch on the wall that surrounded the school. Keskor is in the North.”

  Rais stabbed at the dirt. “There, then. That is as good a place as any.” He stepped around the scratched map, staring down at it and then looking up to challenge his half-captains. “Have any of you ever been so far North?”

  A few nodded.

  “And I came back with my purse still intact,” one noted with a grin.

  “Not your arse, though,” the man next to him joked.

  Their grins faded quickly as they remembered who commanded this force. Cassia glared, not trusting herself to be civil towards them.

  Rais cleared his throat. “Teon, you should know the ground there. Where would be the best place to build a camp?”

  The half-captain sobered as he thought. “My father told me there are no old forts still standing in the North. Even the ground they stood upon was levelled or given over to the legions.”

  “Speaking of which,” his fellow joker said, “there’s already at least one legion in the North, you know? I can’t think they would be happy to see us camped at their gates.”

  “We’ll see the truth of that when we reach a garrison town,” Rais said. “What I want to know first is how much time we have to make our journey. Cassia?”

  Cassia shook her head again and reached reluctantly for the stick he held. “Jedrell awakens slowly. Like an old man who has been shut away in a cell for too many years, he is stretching, testing his freedom, gathering his strength. But already he expands his reach. His control. He blights the ground itself.”

  Cassia marked the ground, in the space that Rais had called the mountains of the North. Then she began to move the tip of the stick in a small circle. “And the blight spreads.”

  This was what her dreams told her. The land of Caenthell was diseased, falling away like leprous flesh to reveal the contamination beneath. The warped spirits behind the curse wards revelled in their new-found freedom. All that prevented them from raging forth in a massive, insatiable torrent was the spirit of the High King himself. Just as vengeful, just as twisted, but far more intelligent and controlled. As though Jedrell revelled in the anticipation of the terrors to come as much as the feeding frenzy itself.

  Cassia had wondered how to describe what she felt – what she knew – to Rais and the others, but in the end she decided to keep her conclusions to herself. For the time being, at least. There was no sense in assembling a willing army only to disperse it with tales of panic, evil and voracious demons. Her father might have done that, just to spite himself or to enjoy the chaos he had caused with his stories, but she was not her father.

  Never that.

  Nonetheless, it was not fair to keep her fellow adventurers entirely in the dark. If the shieldmen had not frightened them away – and six months ago they would have frightened her as far as the other side of the world – then they deserved to know more of what they had set themselves against.

  “We will need higher ground,” she said thoughtfully. At Karakhel the mists had slowed when they tried to follow her up onto the fort’s walls. And in her dreams she always felt that the evil flowed downhill, past her, as she climbed into Caenthell.

  “Well, there’s plenty of that in the North too,” Teon’s companion said. This time nobody smiled.

  “
Quiet, Haemon,” Rais said. “You mean higher ground to defend?”

  Cassia nodded. “If we are still on this road when the High King comes down from Caenthell, then he will roll over us like a flood. We can defend from higher ground, and we can also attack from there. So I think we must be either in the mountains already, or set onto a hill directly in his path, when he does move into the Empire.”

  “And can we reach the mountains before he moves?”

  Cassia hesitated before answering. “I don’t think so. Not at this pace. We have to move faster.”

  “If we march much faster than this, we will lose wheels. And horses. And men,” Ultess told her.

  He and Arca were both present, as befitted their seniority, though neither man had looked likely to add anything to the discussion. Ultess had been content to make certain his men were drilled, disciplined, and as well-equipped as their lack of funds would allow. Arca, meanwhile, was still an introspective ghost of a man. He was strong enough to carry his sword now, but Cassia had not seen it unsheathed, and sometimes Arca glanced at it as though he had never seen it before, surprised to find it at his waist.

  Cassia looked to Rais for support, but the prince only nodded his agreement. “A forced march would work against us. Unless you know of a faster way into the mountains.”

  “There isn’t one,” Teon said. “The March is the best road we can take.”

  “Name the garrison towns between here and Keskor,” Rais said, gesturing to the stick Cassia still held. “Perhaps we can assemble at one of those.”

  She looked at the line that marked the Emperor’s March and realised she could not bring a single name to mind. It was no surprise, really; she had not come South along the March, after all. And Teon was wrong – there was another road into the North, even if they had all forgotten it was there.

  “Segrea,” Haemon was saying. He jabbed at the ground with the point of his sword – a light blade more suited to ceremonial occasions than to campaigning. “Not a garrison town itself, but it sits upon a hillside, and Lychor is just to the south of it. My uncle and I had dinner with the Factor there on several occasions.”

  “There’s a garrison at Keskor,” Teon pointed out. “If it has been overrun, then the survivors will probably make their way to Segrea first. If they haven’t already beaten back these ghosts.”

  There was a general murmuring of dissatisfaction at that. None of the men wanted to lose glory to the ordinary legions. As they conferred amongst themselves, Rais looked across to Cassia, as though seeking her approval. She considered for a moment and then nodded firmly. If Segrea was as far north as Haemon suggested, it should be close enough to the Antiachas hills for the other part of her plan – the part she had not explained to anybody yet – to play into it. And although Caenthell’s spirits grew stronger by the day, even by the hour, Jedrell would not be able to take the city before her army reached it. Still, she was running short on time. She had to move faster than this.

  “How far is Segrea?” Rais asked aloud.

  Haemon shrugged. “Four days, with fresh mounts and spares. Maybe five.”

  “Then pick half a dozen men to go with you,” Rais said. “Make for Lychor and Segrea as fast as you dare. I’ll give you letters for the Factor there. If he does not believe my words, I’m certain you, with your past association, will be able to convince him. By the time the remainder of this army catches up, I want the legion and the whole city set for siege and battle. We will follow as fast as we can with the remainder of the cavalry and the shieldmen. If they are as inhuman as they look, then they must be able to march through the night without ill effects.”

  Ultess looked on sourly. “Which my men will not be able to do, my lord prince. Do you propose your stone warriors carry them on their backs?”

  “Of course not, good quartermaster,” Rais said. The two men glowered at each other. “But this army will need a rearguard. And if your Emperor has recovered his senses and seen fit to despatch his own forces, then you will be perfectly placed to guide them onwards to Segrea.”

  “If they do not gut us first,” Arca muttered.

  “I will leave you with letters,” Rais said.

  Arca spat onto the ground. “Yes, I thought you might.”

  The prince did not appear to have heard his comment. Instead he turned to Cassia. “We will have to split our force if we are to have any hope of reaching a defensible town before the entire North is overrun. Are you happy to do this, Cassia?”

  She nodded. “Write your letters, Rais. And then we shall talk some more.”

  Rais looked faintly surprised, but he did not question her any further. As the half-captains and other officers dispersed with their new orders, Cassia hauled herself wearily back onto the cart. Now semi-covered with a sloping canvas lean-to to keep the elements at bay, it was where she spent most of her time. She had even ceased practising her forms; the exercise drained her strength too quickly for her to be of any further use during the day. Instead she sat and thought, and half-dreamed, and listened to the drums as they called her further up the road. She measured their strength, and the quiet power that watched her from Lyriss, and weighed that against her own. The great gulf between them was frequently enough to drive her to silent tears.

  Again she wondered how the ancient heroes had coped – how they had endured the pain, the pressure, the expectations placed upon them. How they even managed to draw breath when it seemed the gods themselves crushed the air from their lungs. Pelicos, Gelis . . . they must have inured themselves against all emotions and sensations. By being more than human, they must have become less than human.

  She wished she could do the same.

  When she awoke she realised that Arca was sitting at the other end of the cart’s flat bed. He stared out into the distance, chewing absently on a piece of bread that had been soaked and softened in cooking juices.

  “They’re coming,” he said.

  “Who?” Cassia rubbed her eyes. No matter how much she slept, she still needed more rest. “The Emperor’s men?”

  Arca grunted. His ragged beard glistened with the juices that dripped from his scarred mouth. “No, girl. Wrong way.”

  Caenthell? The spirits? Pyraete’s revenge had come so quickly? Cassia struggled to her knees and looked to the North. The war drums should have warned her first, she thought. And the sky was no darker than it should have been. Not by much, anyway. Night was coming, and with it the threat of rain.

  The March crossed a low ridge just beyond the camp. Rais had set outriders and perimeter guards up there earlier, and now they gathered to watch as a new force appeared on the hilltop and began the descent towards the camp. A phalanx of warriors, marching in a perfect square, their spears rigid and unwavering.

  Shieldmen. Even from here she could not mistake them.

  A few of the perimeter guards came down the ridge with them, trotting alongside, more in curiosity and awe than in fear now. There were others behind the phalanx, a scattering of men, mostly afoot, who must have followed the soldiers from wherever they had been awoken.

  Here in the main camp, men stopped to watch too. Word spread quickly, with calls and nudges, and the faltering sounds of campfire songs. Rais was already striding out to meet this phalanx, a pair of half-captains following closely behind him. He looked every inch the general.

  “Turns my stomach to see ’em,” Arca muttered.

  “Why? Because they’re not human?”

  “No. Because that damned warlock made ’em.”

  Cassia regarded him from the corner of her eye. It was easy to forget that Arca had encountered Malessar before, as a young man in Guhl’s Company, and that both he and Guhl had been lucky to survive the affair. The rest of their small squad, bent on looting the palace in Kebria, had not been so lucky. Arca had good reason to distrust anything the warlock had put his name to.

  Yet Baum had been no more trustworthy. He had used Arca and Ultess to manipulate her, and they knew it as well as she did. I
f Arca’s mind was troubled by this, if he had to make peace with himself because of it, then there was little she could do to help him. She had problems enough of her own.

  “We need them,” she said.

  “Aye, girl. So you say.” The old man did not sound convinced. In fact, Cassia thought, he sounded scared.

  “I need you too, Arca,” she said.

  He paused, midway through another mouthful of bread, and she saw the muscles of his jaw tighten.

  “Fifty years back, I’d have been happy to be buttered up by young girls,” he said at last. “But I’m a wreck. Last time I lifted a sword, I should have died. I’m no use to anyone, girl.”

  “Saihri must have thought otherwise,” Cassia pointed out.

  “That was years ago. I raised an army for you, didn’t I? What else do you need me for?”

  The shieldmen had reached the flatter ground beneath the ridge, and now they marched straight for Cassia’s wagon, as though they intended to report personally to her. It made sense, after all. She was the one who had summoned them. She stood in the cart’s bed, supporting herself with her staff, and watched the phalanx approach. Rais and his escort followed close behind, along with the stragglers the shieldmen had drawn with them.

  The troop halted and stood in silence. The rest of the camp had also fallen quiet, and footsoldiers and cavalrymen alike watched as Cassia counted the fresh additions to her command. Twenty-three shieldmen in total, and another fifteen men of flesh and blood, none of whom carried anything more than javelins, long-poled scythes, and short knives. Sorcery had brought these men to her, but not in the same manner that it had brought the stone warriors.

  Every weapon is a blessing, Meredith might have said. Every blade is one more that your enemy does not possess. It was small comfort to her. Meredith’s sword, when he had wielded it, had been worth more than every one of these soldiers counted together.

  She still had that weapon, but she did not know how to make use of it. Not yet.

  Cassia drew in her breath. For better or for worse, she must use what the gods saw fit to bring to her. With luck, these fifteen men would stay with her army once she told them why they were here.