“I’m pretty sure that’s what leaders do in a situation like this. Keeping up morale and all that.”
Sam chose that moment to let out a piercing yip.
“Is that an editorial comment, dog?”
Her owner said, “She’s probably hungry, as usual. Sometimes a bark is just a bark.”
Tess didn’t object to being guarded by Furat and his big, white hound. Somewhat to my surprise, she didn’t even put up a fight over the Hidden Moon Clan. They had joined the Shadowed Hand in all its missions, including what I’d taken to calling the Prophetess Protection Program. They were strange and dangerous, even by the standards of my former command, but they fit in surprisingly well.
“They’re not bad people,” Prophetess said, “but we need to get the Darkness out of them.”
“How about we at least wait until after this battle before we give up one of the few advantages we’ve got?”
“I’m not happy about your approach, Minos. How exactly are we different from Yoshana if we’re using the Darkness too?”
“Tess, the Darkness was in Owl and his people long before I met them. It’s not like we’re infecting anyone else. And after this is over, you’ll have an opportunity to help them give it up if they choose, an opportunity they wouldn’t have had if they hadn’t joined us. You’re going to be doing good here.”
She scowled at me. “‘I will give you all these things if you will just bow down and worship me.’ Satan was persuasive too.”
I laughed. “Well, that’s a promotion. I’ve gone from a mere symptom of the Fall to the devil himself.”
“Not funny, Minos.”
“Sorry. The waiting is always the worst for me. Aren’t you nervous at all?” The woman radiated a calm I found unfathomable.
“Of course I am,” she admitted. “But there’s nothing I can do about it, is there? So why get myself worked up?”
Why indeed? There was something I could do, though, so I left her and went to check troop deployments and rehearse our plan for the tenth time.
As it turned out, we didn’t have to wait nearly as long as I’d thought.
“They say the waiting’s the worst part, but I don’t think that’s right,” Furat said. I was coming to much the same conclusion. The experience of the Darkness Radiant was every bit as terrifying as the anticipation.
Rank on rank of spearmen and gunmen marched through the valley below us, a quarter mile away from the ridge line where we crouched under the cover of pine trees. They were flanked by cavalry, all ordered and resplendent in white tabards blazoned with Yoshana’s strange double-headed halberd. Trumpets and drums sounded a martial tune that hammered the air around us even at that distance.
It wasn’t that the enemy was a terrifying, barbaric horde. They were disciplined, clean, and - from my experience of them in Stephensburg - unusually polite. The problem was that disciplined troops trying to kill you under the command of a brilliant, murderous Overlord were far more dangerous than a wild, ravening mob.
“How ironic. That’s another one of my favorite Canticles of Holy Mary they’re playing,” Dee remarked.
Before the Cleansing he had said I reminded him of one of the Canticles, specifically one where a knight tried to sell his wife to the devil. “How many of those things are there?” I asked.
“Oh, four hundred or so. Written or compiled by King Alphonse the Tenth of Spain, also known as Alphonse the Wise. I always wondered whether he had any time to govern between composing canticles. Perhaps he didn’t and that’s why he’s remembered so fondly.”
“And why would Yoshana use one of those as her marching song? She may be the world’s greatest living general, but the Virgin Mary she’s definitely not.” It was hardly the most pressing question at hand, but a big part of me wanted a distraction from the very large array of troops passing by.
“This particular one promises salvation from sin and physical suffering for those who follow Mary. ‘As for their sins men may be crippled, so through the Virgin they may return to health.’ You can see the appeal of salvation through service to a divine power… and Yoshana does call herself a prophet.”
It didn’t take a lot of introspection to see his point. According to the Universal Church, Prophetess’ exorcism and baptism had given me a chance at redemption after all I’d done. The veterans of the Darkness Radiant would have their own sins on their consciences. The appeal of following Yoshana on a path to heaven was obvious.
“Man, there’s a lot of them,” Furat muttered. He, Dee, and I had come to survey the enemy column when our scouts had reported it. Everyone else was busy checking weapons and defensive positions. Nothing like the approach of the armies of darkness to get you focused on your readiness state.
“Must be ten thousand of them,” the big man continued.
I shook my head. “More like eight.”
He glared at me. “You’re an expert at counting enemy troops now, are you?”
“I’ve got more experience of it than I’d like. They still outnumber us two to one, and I’m seeing a lot of rifles. They’re better equipped than us. Maybe better trained too, with a year serving under Yoshana.”
“So if she decides to just turn this into a stand-up fight…”
“It’s not going to go well for us.”
Furat frowned. “You keep talking about how devious she is, and God knows that’s her reputation. What are the chances she just accepted your challenge to pull your army out where she could rip it up?”
I met his eyes. “Definitely not zero. The thought had occurred to me. Way back when I came up with the idea. It’s also possible even if she loses the duel, her men will attack anyway. That’s why we’ve still got three thousand troops defending Our Lady, and the Shadowed Hand has orders to grab Prophetess and hightail it back there if things go south. This is not a sure thing. It’s just the best chance I saw.”
Furat shivered theatrically. “I feel like a goose just walked over my grave.”
“No, more like an Overlord and her eight thousand soldiers.”
Woof! Woof woof woof! Sam’s whole chest shook as she barked her challenge at the passing army. The sound echoed in the valley.
“Dammit, dog,” I growled. Although surely Yoshana’s legions would have been barked at by plenty of farm dogs on their way here. I doubted they would pay much attention. I still crouched even lower behind the cover of the pine branches. “Furat, does that mean she senses something?”
He shrugged. “I don’t think so. She’s probably just excited to see so many people. That far away she couldn’t sense anything anyway.”
“Yeah, but some of them can make themselves almost invisible, and they might be scouting. Maybe somewhere a lot closer to us than the troops we can see.”
Dee chimed in, “Perhaps this would be a good time to rejoin our forces, Minos. They’ll be in need of your leadership.”
The cowardly occultist wasn’t wrong. We backed down off the ridge and headed back to camp, followed by the trumpets and drums of the Darkness Radiant and an uneasy prickling at the back of our necks that I hoped was just nerves.
Yoshana deployed her troops in a mirror image of ours, in a semicircle southeast of the hill. The formation was conventional, two wings and a center. Our scouts with telescopes reported the wings were commanded by Grigg and Roshel, the center by Yoshana herself. Those would be the Knights of Resurrection, her most loyal personal cadre, those who most fervently believed she was a messiah raised from the dead to deliver them.
Despite her numerical advantage, she made no attempt to flank us. If things went badly, I assumed the Knights of Resurrection would storm the hill and fall on our center, trying to get to Prophetess. I kept the Shadowed Hand around her, resisting the urge to put them in the woods to watch for infiltrators. Yoshana was devious, but she could also be very direct. I assumed with her advantages she’d opt for “hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle.” Of course, there was the old saying that “assume” makes an “as
s” out of “u” and “me.” Especially if your enemy was a better general than you.
The Darkness Radiant made camp leisurely, in good order. Precise and efficient, but unhurried. If they thought we might make a desperate rush as they settled in, they gave no sign. The long afternoon turned to twilight, and there was no indication they intended to do anything more than set basic defensive positions, pitch their tents, and have their dinner.
I made the rounds of my troops, trying to reassure them. The fact that Yoshana had brought twice our numbers wouldn’t be a coincidence. She’d have scouted our army while we were en route and made sure she had an overwhelming advantage, not least to intimidate us. Oddly, most of the concern I heard wasn’t because of the size of the enemy force, but because they were two weeks early. It had taken the men off guard, even though we’d arrived long before.
“We should send them a thank you note,” I joked. “Unless you wanted to keep eating that oatmeal for another two weeks.”
Most of the men gave me a polite laugh. A few seemed to be thinking that at least two more weeks of eating nasty oatmeal was two more weeks of being alive. To them I said, “Prophetess has beaten the Darkness before. She’ll beat it again.”
I didn’t mention the fact that I planned to use the Darkness to do it.
I went to Tess’ tent as the sun was setting. It was surrounded by torches, my special forces with the black imprint of the Shadowed Hand on their sleeves, and Hidden Moon warriors in their loose-fitting camouflage. When I pulled the flap open, I was greeted by Cat pointing a knife at my face. I was pleased. Security was tight.
“I brought dinner,” I announced.
Tess was sitting on her cot, eyes closed in prayer. A few moments later she opened them, smiled, and said, “What is it?”
“Oatmeal for Cat.” The paleo made a face. “Oatmeal for me. And… oatmeal for you.”
“Not much of a last meal.”
“No, but room service from the army’s commanding general has to count for something.”
She smiled. “I’ve missed how we used to spend time together.”
So had I, although that had mostly been on our long trek up to Our Lady, and it had largely been spent arguing, freezing, or running away from things.
“Mm. Me too. So, considering it might be our last chance, I thought I’d spend the night.”
Her eyebrows went up and she blushed. “That seems wildly inappropriate.”
“We’ve got Cat to chaperone and the Shadowed Hand outside. I thought it would be nice to sit and talk like in the old days.” We’d traveled together alone before Dee and then others had joined us. Some nights we’d huddled together for warmth. It seemed strange, after what we’d been through together, to need supervision now. Maybe we’d waited too long and the moment had passed. Maybe I’d lost any chance of being more than friends and colleagues that night at Our Lady when I hadn’t quite understood her suggestion in time.
“I’d like that,” she said.
Or maybe not.
We sat and talked and ate bad oatmeal and reminisced about days when nobody, including me, believed she was a prophet and nobody, including her, thought I was any kind of warrior. We’d spent a lot of our first months together cold, hungry, and terrified, but it had been a simpler time.
We both sat on her cot. Cat was cross-legged on the ground, as relaxed and boneless as her namesake - and just as ready to launch herself in hissing fury if provoked. In my darkest hours, the paleo had kept me human. Now she kept Prophetess alive. In a strange way, the skinny, wild girl who had been my apprentice and was now Tess’ bodyguard had become closer to me than family.
We talked for hours. Cat fell asleep. Tess was worried about her brother, Kafer, and what might happen to him if we failed here and Yoshana moved against Our Lady. She was even more concerned about Lito, the youngest of the three siblings. She assumed he was still back on their farm but feared he might have joined the army like Kafer. She didn’t know if he was alive or dead. That stirred up bad memories. My parents had sent me away years before as the Hellguard legions neared our home, after they’d turned on Yoshana. The battle had turned into an ugly, multi-sided melee between the Hellguard, Yoshana’s loyalists, Green Heart regulars, and a motley array of partisans. I didn’t know if my parents had fought there. If they had, I didn’t know if they’d survived. Yoshana herself had been struck down in the chaos, impaled with a spear. She had risen stronger. Others wouldn’t have been so lucky.
It must have been near midnight. Cat was snoring.
I stood up and stretched. “You’re right about it looking funny,” I said regretfully. “We’ve got too many responsibilities to have people wondering why I’m leaving your tent in the morning. I’ll go now.”
She stood too. “Thank you for coming, Minos. Whatever happens tomorrow… I’m glad you chose this side.”
“Whatever happens… so am I.”
I hadn’t even made it back to my tent before the Darkness Radiant started up with their drums and trumpets. They kept it up all night. Yoshana wanted us to know that as far as she was concerned, I had chosen the wrong side. And she wanted us to spend the night worrying about the consequences.
“Man, that’s getting annoying,” I groused to Railes as we sipped bad coffee outside my tent at first light.
“Just now getting annoying? You’re more patient than I am, boss,” my adjutant replied. The drummers and trumpeters must have been working in shifts. They were still at it. The Canticle of Holy Mary was catchy the first time you heard it. And the second. By the hundredth repetition it wore a little thin.
At one point in the night a single female voice had joined the music, high and clear and beautiful. It must have been either Roshel or Yoshana. I had no doubt one of the Overlords was using the Darkness to make herself heard. I couldn’t understand the language of the song. Dee had said the words promised salvation, but to me they portended doom.
I pasted on a weak smile. “I just try to look on the bright side. It’s got to be even louder in their own camp.”
“Bet they slept through it better than our guys, though.”
He was surely right. It wasn’t intended as psychological warfare against their own. “You sleep okay?”
“Oh, sure. I can sleep through anything. You?”
“Same.” And it was true. I might have fallen asleep in dread of what today would bring, but I still slept. Our experience in Rockwall’s army had seen to that, at least. “This whole brigade was at the Battle of the Cleansing. They know how to rest when God only knows what crap is going to land on them later.”
Which for the Monolith troops assembled here had meant nighttime attacks from me and the Shadowed Hand. Yoshana was a far greater terror than I’d ever been, but veterans of the campaign against me would not be easily intimidated. With that said, I hadn’t slept quite as well as I might have without the trumpets and drums, or the knowledge of the upcoming confrontation. Thus the bad coffee in the morning.
When the music stopped, the silence was shocking.
“Suppose that’s a good sign?” Railes asked.
“Suppose that’s a flying pig?” I pointed up the hill at the sentry galloping down toward us, practically stumbling over his own feet.
The man skidded to a halt and snapped off a rough approximation of a salute. “Sir! Someone approaching under a white flag from the enemy camp. Looks like a Select, sir.”
My adjutant and I exchanged glances. His raised eyebrow distorted the skull tattooed on his face. “That going to be Grigg, boss? The one you say is such a badass?”
I got to my feet. “Yep.”
“You sure it’s a good idea to go meet him yourself?”
“Best I’ve come up with.” Which wasn’t to say it was great. I’d anticipated Yoshana might send her Select lieutenant. I had toyed with the idea of sending BlackShield Jarl Lago to meet him, just to see how much that might disconcert the man who’d switched his allegiance from the Monolith to the Darkness Rad
iant. But in the end, going myself seemed like the least risky option.
Anyway, I was moving, and I’d look like an idiot if I stopped now. That combination of mindless inertia and fear of embarrassment seemed to explain a lot of human behavior. Or at least a lot of mine.
We had a whole platoon of thirty men guarding the top of the hill. I hiked up at the fastest march that would leave me some breath when I reached the summit, but Grigg was still there before me. My troops hadn’t tried to stop him, which was definitely for the best. Not just because he was carrying a flag of truce - mostly because he could have killed them all if they’d put up a fight.
I walked around the single, large tree and went to meet him. “Grigg.”
“Minos. It’s been a while.” He looked no different. Big, relaxed, supremely confident. A solid block of a man, as tall and broad as Furat and tougher, faster, stronger. The archetype of my race. Unfortunately sworn to the service of hell. He was radiating his usual “trust me” aura that almost made me forget who and what he represented.
“Yep. I already told Roshel, but I’ll tell you too. I really do feel bad about ditching you guys in the Darklands. But killing Prophetess for you wasn’t in the cards.”
He shrugged. “I never wanted it to come to that.”
“But it probably would have, if Yoshana had gotten her way.”
“I guess it probably would.”
We looked each other in the face for a moment, black eyes unblinking. He glanced away first. “Well, I don’t suppose there’s much point dragging this out, is there? She’ll meet you here at noon, if that’s all right by you.”
“That works. Unless she wants to rest up first? It’s been a long walk for you guys.”
“You really think she’s tired? No sense everyone sitting around here getting bored.”
There wasn’t really anything more to say, so I nodded. As he turned to go, I added, “By the way, my guys have a request. If your band is going to start up again, could they learn a different song? We’re getting kind of sick of the one you played all night.”
Passing Through Darkness- The Complete Cycle Page 66