A Cruel Wind

by Glen Cook

  In late March Sir Andvbur went over to the Captal.

  What negotiations had passed between the two Ragnarson never learned, but he suspected Sir Andvbur’s idealism had motivated his treachery.

  The knight’s coup failed. Having foreseen trouble, and having gotten the man away from the center of power, Ragnarson then had surrounded him with trustworthy staffers. Few men joined Sir Andvbur when, after brief skirmishing, he fled across Low Galmiche toward Savernake.

  Loncaric and Savernake remained in the grip of unnatural winter. Ragnarson took the opportunity to pinch off the depending finger of Low Galmiche and eliminate the last rebel bastions near the Siege.

  When he could find nothing else, he wondered what had become of Mocker, Haroun, Turran, and Valther. And worried about Rolf. Though Preshka hadn’t been injured in the dungeon confrontation, the exertion had exacerbated his lung troubles.

  Yet everything went so well that he received the bad news from Itaskia with relief.

  Greyfells partisans had driven the Trolledyngjan families over the Porthune into Kendel. Kendel’s military ran hand in glove with Itaskia’s. A light horse company had swum the river and slaughtered the raiders. Kendel had decided to send the families on to Kavelin.

  What, Ragnarson sometimes wondered, was Elana doing? She wasn’t the sort to sit and wait.

  On the last evening of March, Ragnarson gathered his commanders to discuss the summer campaign. Meticulously prepared maps were examined. Where to meet the enemy became the point of contention. Ragnarson listened, remembering an area he had seen the previous fall.

  “Here, at Baxendala,” he said suddenly, jabbing a map with a forefinger. “We’ll meet them with every man we have. Talk to the Marena Dimura. Learn everything you can.”

  Before the inevitable arguments began, he strode from the room.

  The die had been cast. All time was an arrow hurtling toward the decision at the caravan town of Baxendala.

  He went walking the castle’s outer wall, to bask in the peace of what would soon be a chill April Fool’s morning.

  Soon, in the white gown she had worn the morning they had first locked eyes, the Queen joined him. Moonlight like trickles of silver ran through her hair, gaily. But her eyes were sad. Ignoring the sentries, she held his hand.

  “This is the last night,” she whispered, after a long silence. She stopped, pushed her arm around his waist, stared at the moon over the Kapenrungs. “The last time. You’ll leave tomorrow. Win or lose, you won’t come back.” Her voice quavered.

  Ragnarson scanned the black teeth of the enemy mountains. Was it really still winter there? He wanted to tell her he would return, but could not. That would be a blemish on his memory.

  She had sensed that he would always go back to Elana. Their relationship, though as intense and fiery as a volcanic eruption, was pure romance. Romance demanded a special breed of shared deception, of reality suspended by mutual consent…

  So he said nothing, just pulled her against his side.

  “Just one thing I ask,” she said, softly, sadly. “In the dark tonight, in bed, say my name. Whisper it to me.”

  He frowned her way, puzzled.

  “You don’t realize, do you? In all the time you’ve been here you’ve used it only once. When you announced me to Sir Farace. Her Majesty. Her Majesty. Her Highness. The Queen. Sometimes, in the night, Darling. But never Fiana. I’m real… Make me real.”

  Yes, he thought. Even when she had been no more than a conception spawned by Tarlson’s characterizations, he had felt an attraction that he had pushed off with formalities.

  “Gods!” a nearby sentry muttered. “What’s that?”

  Ragnarson’s gaze returned to the mountains.

  Beneath the moon, over a notch marking the approximate location of Maisak, stood a pillar of reddish coruscation. It coalesced into a scarlet tower.

  The world grew silent, as if momentarily becalmed in the eye of a storm.

  The pillar intensified till all the east was aflame. A flower formed at its top. The trunk bifurcated, took on a horrible anthropomorphism. The flower became a head. Where eyes should have been there were two vast Stygian pools. The head was far too large for the malformed body that bore it up. Its horns seemed to scrape the moon as it turned slowly, glaring malevolently into the west.

  The thing’s brilliance intensified till all the world seemed painted in harsh strokes of red and black. A great dark gulf of a mouth opened in silent, evil laughter. Then the thing faded as it had come, dying into a coruscation that reminded Bragi of the auroras of his childhood homeland.

  “Come,” he said to the Queen when he could speak again. “You may be right. It may be the last time either of us gives ourself freely.”

  Deep in the night he spoke her name. And she, shaking as much as he, whispered from beneath him, “Bragi, I love you.”

  iii) Elana and Nepanthe

  On the Auszura Littoral, Elana and Nepanthe, up late after a day of increasing, undirected tension, released sharp cries when the Tear of Mimizan took on a sudden, fiery life that was reflected in crimson on the eastern horizon.

  iv) King Shanight

  From the Mericic Hills, at Skmon on the Anstokin-Volstokin border, Shanight of Anstokin, restless before the dawn of attack, watched the scarlet rise in the east, a head with its chin on the horizon. After meeting those midnight eyes he returned to his pavilion, called off the war.

  v) Mocker

  In Rohrhaste, near the site of Vodicka’s defeat, Mocker suddenly erupted from an uneasy sleep, saw scarlet beneath the moon. For one of the few times in his life he was stricken dumb. In lieu he loaded his donkey and hurried toward Vorgreberg.

  vi) Sir Andvbur Kimberlin of Karadja

  Sir Andvbur and two hundred supporters, traveling by night to evade loyalist patrols, paused to watch the demon coalesce over the Gap. Before it faded, half turned back, preferring the Royal mercy. Kimberlin continued, not out of conviction, but for fear of appearing weak before his companions.

  vii) The Disciple

  In the acres-vast tent-Temple of the Disciple at Al Rhemish, a sleepy fat man moaned, staggered to the Portal of the North. This gross, jeweled El Murid bore no resemblance to the pale, bony, ascetic fanatic whose angry sword had scourged the temples and reddened the sands in earlier decades. Nor was his insanity as limited. The red sorcery stirred a mad rage. He collapsed, thrashing and foaming at the mouth.

  viii) Visigodred

  At Castle Mendalayas in north Itaskia a tall, lean insomniac paced a vast and incredibly cluttered library. Before a fireplace a pair of leopards also paced. From a ceiling beam a monkey watched and muttered. Between the pacer and leopards, on a luxurious divan, a dwarf and a young beauty cuddled.

  The lean old man, sporting a long gray beard, suddenly faced south-southeast, his nose thrusting like that of a dog on point. His face became a mask of stone. “Marco!” he snapped. “Wake up. Call the bird.”

  ix) Zindahjira

  In the Mountains of M’Hand, above the shores of the Seydar Sea, lay a cave in which dwelt the being called Zindahjira the Silent. Zindahjira was anything but silent now. The mountains shook with his rage. He did not appreciate being involved in intrigues not his own. But by his own twisted logic he had a responsibility to right matters in the south. When his rage settled, he called for his messenger owls.

  x) Varthlokkur

  Fangdred was an ancient fortress poised precariously atop Mount El Kabar in the Dragon’s Teeth. There, in a windowless room, tiny silver bells tinkled. A black arrow inlaid with silver runes turned southward. In moments a tall young man, frowning, hurried in. His haunted eyes momentarily fixed on arrow and bells.

  He was Varthlokkur, the Silent One Who Walks With Grief, sometimes called the Empire Destroyer or the Death of Ilkazar. He was the man who had ended the reign of the Princes Thaumaturge of Shinsan. Those Princes remained like trophies in an impenetrable chamber atop Fangdred’s Wind Tower. Kings trembled at the men
tion of Varthlokkur’s name.

  He was old, this apparent young man. Centuries old, and burdened heavily with the knowledge of the Power, with his guilt over what he had wrought with the Empire.

  He spoke a Word. A quicksilver pool in a shallow, wide basin ground into the top of a table of granite shivered. Iridescences fluttered across its face. A portrait appeared.

  Varthlokkur stared at a gargantuan, megacephalic demon whose ravenlike feet clutched the feet of mountains.

  This manifestation couldn’t be ignored.

  He began his preparations.

  xi) Haroun bin Yousif

  The long, cautious cavalry column was less than thirty miles from Al Rhemish when the northern sky went scarlet. Filtering four thousand Royalists through the Lesser Kingdoms and the Kapenrungs undetected had been a military feat which, meeting success, had astonished even its planner.

  The demon head loomed. Haroun gave the order to turn back.

  xii) The Star Rider

  On the flank of a snow-deep peak high in the Kapenrungs, on a glacier that creaked and groaned day and night, one surprised and angry old man stood between gigantic pillars of legs and stared miles upward at scarlet horror. He spat, cursed, turned to his winged horse. From its back he unlashed the thing known as Windmjirnerhorn, or the Horn of the Star Rider. He caressed it, spoke to it, glanced, nodded. The demon began to fade.

  He then sat and pondered what to do about these dangerous ad libs. O Shing was getting out of hand.

  xiii) King Vodicka

  Half an hour after the night had regained its natural darkness Volstokin’s King concluded that he had been used by greater, darker powers to play attention-grabber while Evil slithered in to gnaw at the underbelly of the West.

  After writing brief letters to Kavelin’s Queen, his mother, and his brother, he threw himself from the parapet of his prison tower.

  F

  IFTEEN:

  Y

  EAR 1003 AFE

  B

  AXENDALA

  i) The site

  Baxendala was a prosperous town of two thousand, twenty-five miles west of Maisak. Its prosperity was due to its being the last or first chance for commercial vices for the caravans. The mountain passage was long and trying.

  Ragnarson had chosen to fight there because of topography.

  The townsite had once marked the western limit of the huge glacier that had cut the pass. The valley, that became the Gap, there narrowed to a two-mile-wide, steep-sided canyon, the floor of which, near the town, was piled with glacial leavings.

  Baxendala itself was built against the north flank of a sugarloaf hill half a mile wide, two long, and two hundred feet high, astride a low ridge that ran to the flank of Seidentop, a steep, brush-wooly mountain constricting the north wall of the canyon. The River Ebeler ran around the south side of the loaf where the valley, in a long, lazy curve, had been dug a bit deeper, and, because of barriers a dozen miles farther west, had formed a shallow marsh three-quarters of a mile wide. The marsh lay hard against both the sugarloaf and the steep southern wall of the valley. A narrow strip of brushy, firm ground ran below the southern face. It could be easily held by a small force.

  Atop the sugarloaf, commanding a good eastern view, stood a small fortress, Karak Strabger. From it Ragnarson could follow every detail of battle. By anchoring his flanks on Seidentop and Baxendala, along the ridge, he could defend a space little more than half a mile wide. There was no more defensible site to the west, and but one equaling it farther east. And Sir Andvbur, having fought there last autumn, knew that ground better than he.

  Ragnarson descended on the town two weeks after the night of the demon. The Strabger family fled so hurriedly they left breakfast half-cooked in the castle kitchen. The rebel forces were training farther east, near the snow line. Three days after Bragi’s arrival an attempt was made to dislodge him. Baron Berlich led the rebel knights into another Lieneke. His attack collapsed under a shower of Itaskian arrows. Berlich himself was slain.

  The survivors, to Ragnarson’s dismay, suffered an attack of rationality. When they selected a new commander they chose the man he believed most dangerous, Sir Andvbur Kimberlin.

  Kimberlin opted for Fabian tactics. He took up a defensive position at the site of his previous year’s battle. His patrols tried to lure Ragnarson into attack. Bragi ignored them.

  Though Kimberlin’s force, at eight thousand, was the largest Ragnarson had yet faced, he was more concerned with the sorcery-rich army the Captal would bring out of Maisak.

  Bragi waited, skirmished, fortified, scouted, husbanded his resources. He constantly reminded his officers of the need to stand firm here. To, if necessary, endure the heaviest casualties. The enemy would be stopped at Baxendala, or not at all. The west depended on them. There would be no stopping Shinsan if this stand failed.

  ii) The waiting

  Ragnarson stood on the parapet of Karak Strabger’s lone tower and surveyed the power that was, for the moment, his. He had twenty-five thousand Kaveliners, plus the men he had brought south. In the west, on the horizons and beyond, great clouds of dust hung in the spring haze. Surprising allies were hurrying to join him.

  One cloud, on the caravan route, marked Shanight of Anstokin with the regiments raised to invade Volstokin. North of him came Jostrand of Volstokin and three thousand puzzled veterans of Lake Berberich and Vodicka’s defeat. In Heiderschied, rushing in forty-mile marches, was Prince Raithel of Altea, a hard-driving old warrior who had won glory and honor during the wars. Ragnarson hoped Raithel would arrive in time. His ten thousand were the best soldiers in the Lesser Kingdoms.

  He had heard there were troops on the move in Tamerice and Ruderin and kingdoms farther away.

  This curdling of the Lesser Kingdoms into a one-faced force with chin thrust belligerently eastward had begun the night of the red demon.

  The sudden power and responsibility awed Ragnarson. Princes and kings were coming to be commanded by a man who had been but a farmer a year ago…

  There were others who awed him more than Shanight, Jostrand, or Raithel.

  Beside the sugarloaf, above Baxendala, stood a dozen tents set off by ropes. One housed his old friend Count Visigodred of Mendalayas, another Haroun’s dread acquaintance, Zindahjira. The denizens of the others he knew only by repute: Keirle the Ancient; Barco Crecelius of Hellin Daimiel; Stojan Dusan from Prost Kamenets; Gromachi, the Egg of God; The Hermit of Ormrebotn; Boershig Abresch from Songer in Ringerike; Klages Dunivin; Serkes Holdgraver of the Fortress of Frozen Fire; and the Thing With Many Eyes, from the shadowed deeps of the Temple of Jiankoplos in Simballawein.

  One tent stood alone, as if the others had crowded away. Before it stood a battered Imperial standard. Within lurked the man whose capital-hopping had started so many armies toward Baxendala, whose name frightened children into good behavior and made grown men glance over their shoulders.

  Varthlokkur.

  His appearance guaranteed the gravity of the conflict. The high and the mighty, from Simballawein to Iwa Skolovda, would hold all else in abeyance till they knew what was afoot.

  Even the Greyfells party, Ragnarson had heard, had joined the truce.

  Ragnarson had mixed feelings about Varthlokkur’s presence. The man could, without a doubt, be an asset. But what about old grudges? Varthlokkur owed himself and Mocker.

  But Mocker, who had most to fear, was in and out of the wizard’s tent constantly, when not hiding from soldiers he had bilked with crooked dice.

  Ragnarson smiled weakly. Mocker was incorrigible. A middle-aged adolescent.

  He spied signal smoke up the Gap. Heliograph operators bustled about him. He returned to the War Room he had set up in the castle’s Great Hall.

  While awaiting the report, he asked Kildragon, “How’s Rolf?” Preshka had insisted on coming east.

  “The same. He’ll never heal if he won’t take time out.”

  “And the evacuation?” He had been trying to get civilians to
leave the area.

  “About hit the limit. The rest mean to stay no matter what.”

  “Guess we’ve done what we could. Can’t force people… Colonel Kiriakos?”

  He had surveyed the man’s work from the parapet. He and Phiambolos were working hard to complicate Shinsan’s attack.

  Kiriakos was the sort who, finding a pot of gold, would worry about getting a hernia hauling it away. “Too slow. I won’t get done if you don’t give me more men.” His projects were straining the army already. Trenches, traps, fortifications, chevaux-de-frise, a pontoon across the marsh a few miles west, and finding raw materials were devouring hundreds of thousands of man-hours each day. But Kiriakos was a bureaucrat born. There was no project that couldn’t be done bigger and better if only he were given more money and men…

  Am I getting old? Ragnarson wondered. What happened to my penchant for motion? His cavalry commanders had been asking, too. Shinsan’s was an army mainly infantry in orientation, with little missile weaponry. But Sir Andvbur was out there… All he could say was that he felt right fighting positionally.

  A Sedlmayrese sergeant came from the tower, drew Bragi aside. “Captain Altenkirk,” he whispered, “says he’s taken prisoners. The men called Turran and Valther, and a woman. The Captain thinks she’s the one you saw at Maisak.”

  Ragnarson frowned. A windy message for heliograph, susceptible of error. But justified if true. They had captured Mist? How?

  “Thank you. Send ‘Well done.’ And keep it quiet.” He retreated to a corner to think. So many possibilities… But he would know the truth when Altenkirk came in.

  He would have to take precautions. He headed for the wizards’ compound.