Inside there were a half-dozen buildings, all made of wood and covered with daub made from dried mud and straw. Smaller wattle-and-daub huts had sprung up around the larger buildings, and a fair-sized town had evolved. Erik could see why the Saaur at the gate had ordered them to remain outside; it was quite close inside this fortress.
He heard laughing and moved toward what he assumed would be an inn, and once inside he knew he had been correct. The room was dingy with smoke and poor light, but the stench of ale, spilled wine, and human perspiration struck Erik like a blow. Suddenly he was terribly homesick and wished to be nowhere so much as back at the Inn of the Pintail. He pushed down the sudden surge of feeling and made his way to the bar.
The barkeep, a stout man with a florid complexion, said, “What’ll be?”
“Got any good wine?” asked Erik.
The man raised an eyebrow—everyone else seemed to be drinking ale or fortified spirits—but he nodded and produced a dark bottle from beneath the counter. The cork was intact, so Erik hoped the bottle was fresh and not resealed. Old wine tasted like vinegar mixed with raisins, but you couldn’t convince the average tavern keeper he couldn’t just stick the cork back in at the end of a day and unseal it again the next and not have his customers complain.
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The barman produced a cup and poured. Erik sipped. The wine was sweeter than he would have liked, but not as cloying as the dessert wines made to the north of Yabon. Still, it was acceptable and he paid and indicated the barkeep should leave the bottle.
He glanced around the room and saw Biggo on the far side, trying to look inconspicuous and failing mightily. He leaned against the wall, behind a table where five men gamed with two Saaur. The lizard men were too large for their chairs, but they hunkered down as best they could and seemed intent upon the game. Erik recognized the sound of knucklebones, as they called dice here, rattling across the table and the accompanying shouts of the winners and groans of the losers.
After a few minutes, Dawar stood up and left the game. He came over to Erik and said, “Got a minute?”
Erik motioned to the barkeep for another cup and filled it. Dawar sipped and made a face. “Nothing like the wine from the grand vineyards of home, is it?” he said.
“Where’s home?” asked Erik.
Dawar said, “Far from here. Let’s go outside for a minute.”
Erik picked up the bottle and let Dawar lead him outside into the fresh, cold night air. The man looked one way, then the other, and signaled for Erik to follow him around the corner, into a dark place next to the wall, sheltered above by the palisades.
“Look, Corporal,” began Dawar. “Let’s have an end to the mummery. You’re the company Nahoot was sent to keep from coming this way.”
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“What makes you think that?” said Erik. “You’re the ones that jumped us.”
“I wasn’t born this morning,” said the man with a grin. “I know your Captain’s not your Captain, but the slender blond fellow is.”
“What do you want?”
“A way to get rich,” said Dawar, a greedy glint in his eye.
“How do you propose to do that?” said Erik, moving his hand slowly down to his sword.
“Look, I could maybe get myself a gold coin or two for telling Murtag you’re not who you say you are, but that’s a gold coin or two, and then I’m back looking for a company to join.” He glanced around.
“But I don’t like what I’m seeing lately, with this grand conquest. Too many men dying for too little gold. There’s not going to be much left of use to anyone if it keeps on, don’t you see? So I’m thinking I might be a help to you and your captain, but I’ll want more than wages and found.”
“You’ll get ample chance for loot when we take Maharta,” Erik said noncommittally.
Dawar took a step forward, lowering his voice.
“How long do you think you can keep this up? You lot are not like any company I’ve seen, and I’ve been around more than most. You talk funny and you have the look of . . . I don’t know . . . some sort of soldiers, without the parade ground nonsense, but tough, like mercenaries. But whatever you are, you’re not what you want people to think you are, and it ought to be worth something for me to stay quiet.”
“So that’s why you covered for us at the gate?”
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about most Saaur—which is why he’s stuck out here running this garrison and not with the main host. I figure I can turn you in any time, but I thought I’d first give you a chance to make me a better offer.”
“I don’t know,” Erik said, holding his wine cup to his lips with his left hand, while his right moved to the hilt of his sword.
“Look, von Darkmoor, I’ll stick with you until the end, if the pay’s right. Now, why don’t you talk this over with Captain Calis—”
Suddenly a figure loomed up behind Dawar in the darkness, and large hands reached around and gripped him by the shoulders. They jerked him around, and as he spun, they grabbed the back of his head and his chin and forced it in the opposite direction, and with a loud crack, his neck was broken.
Erik had his sword out as Biggo stepped forward.
“We found a spy,” he whispered.
“How could you be sure?” hissed Erik, his heart pounding as he returned his sword to the scabbard.
“I’m pretty sure no one’s called you von Darkmoor since we met up with this lot, but I damn well know no man’s called the Captain by name since then.” Erik nodded. Strict orders had been passed not to mention Calis by name. “How would he know who you were?”
Erik’s heart sank. “I didn’t even notice.”
Biggo grinned in the faint light. “I won’t tell.” He picked up Dawar’s body and hoisted it across his shoulder.
“What are we going to do with him?” asked Erik.
“Why, we’re going to take him back to the camp.
It wouldn’t be the first drunk carried out of here by his friends, I’m certain.”
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Erik nodded, picked up the fallen wine cups and bottles, and motioned for Biggo to leave. Erik set the cups and empty bottle down next to the door and hurried after the large man.
For a tense moment Erik expected a challenge at the gate, but as Biggo had predicted, the guards thought nothing of one drunk cheerfully carrying another back to the camp.
They rode out at first light. Erik had told de Loungville and Calis of the encounter with Dawar.
They had disposed of the body down in a wash, not too far from their campsite, making sure it was fully hidden by rocks. There had been a brief discussion after that and Calis had said whatever they chose to do, they’d do it far from the Saaur and the other mercenaries.
The only attention they received as they got ready to depart was one Saaur warrior who came down to ask what they were doing. De Loungville merely repeated they had been ordered to rejoin the host and the warrior grunted and returned to the fortress.
As Calis had suggested, this fortress was as much for keeping deserters from heading south as it was to keep the main army’s flanks free from attack.
At noon, while the men rested and ate trail rations, Calis told Erik to get five of the men from Nahoot’s company and bring them over to where he waited with de Loungville. When they appeared, Calis said, “One of your companions, Dawar, got into a fight last night over a whore. Got his neck broken. I don’t want to see any repeat of that stupidity.”
All five men looked baffled, but nodded and left.
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another. At last the final four men were fetched to Calis and he repeated the admonishment. Three of the men looked blank, but one of them tensed at news of Dawar’s death and instantly Calis had his dagger out at the man’s throat.
De Loungville said, “Take them away,” to Erik as he and Calis, with Greylock, led the man away to be questioned.
As Erik escorted the two men back down the line, several of the men asked what was going on. Erik said, “We caught another spy.”
A moment later a scream cut through the air, from behind a small rise some distance away. Erik looked over while the scream lingered, and when it ceased, he let out his breath.
Then it started up again, and Erik found every man looking off at the ridge. A few minutes later, de Loungville, Calis, and Greylock returned, all with grim expressions. De Loungville looked around and quietly said, “Get them mounted, Erik. We have a lot of ground to cover and little time to do it.”
Erik turned. “You heard the sergeant! Mount up!”
Men scrambled and Erik found the sudden motion a release. The sound of the spy dying under torture had set his nerves on edge and made him angry. The sudden movement seemed to lift that anger from him, or at least give him a place to focus it.
Soon the column was moving, heading toward the main array of the Saaur and the assault on Maharta.
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Onslaught
Erik bblinked.
Acrid smoke filled the air for miles, making it difficult to see any distance. Stinging wind carried the smell of charred wood and other less aromatic victims of the widespread fires.
Nakor rode back to where Erik brought up the rear. “Bad. Very bad,” he commented.
Erik said, “I haven’t seen a lot that wasn’t bad in the last week.”
They had been traveling for more than four weeks, heading across the plain toward the host surrounding Maharta. As they approached the site of battle, the area began to teem with all manner of passersby: patrols from the invading host, small companies of mercenaries who had decided to quit the city rather than fight—they tended to give Calis’s company a wide berth, though two had chanced a parley. When it was clear that Calis wasn’t interested in a fight, both companies had agreed to share a camp, and news.
The news was sobering. Lanada had fallen by treachery. No one was certain how, but someone had managed to convince the Priest-King to send his host 567
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north, leaving the city under the care of only a small company. The leader of that company had proved to be an agent for the Emerald Queen, and he had opened the gates of the city to a host of Saaur riding in from the southwest. The population had gone to sleep one night after a grand parade. The Priest-King’s war elephants, with their razor-capped tusks and iron spices ringing their legs, had lumbered out the gate, the howdahs on their backs filled with archers ready to rain death down on the invaders. At their side had marched the Royal Immortals, the Raj of Maharta’s private army of drug-induced maniacs, each man capable of feats of strength and bravery no sane man could achieve. The Immortals had been promised great glory and a better life when reborn if they died in the service of the Raj.
The next morning the city was in the hands of the Saaur and the populace awoke to the sounds of wailing as the invaders turned each household out, herding everyone, to the last man, woman, and child, to the central plaza, to hear the Priest-King. He had been marched out under guard and had informed the citizenry that they were now subject to the rule of the Emerald Queen. He and his cadre of priests were taken back into the palace and never heard from again.
The host of Lanada that had been sent north to face an army already behind them returned under orders from the Priest-King’s General of the Army, who handed over command to General Fadawah, then joined his lord in the palace. Rumors flew through the city, ranging from the Priest-King, his ministers and generals being quickly executed to them being eaten by the Saaur.
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One thing was clear, this conquest was coming to a head. With Lanada’s downfall a near certainty, General Fadawah had held back a token force at his position north of the city and sent the entire bulk of the host in a circling move around Lanada and down the far side of the river to Maharta. They had moved out only days after Calis’s company had deserted.
The benefit to the Queen’s army had been a swift strike south with almost no opposition. The detriment had been finding themselves on the wrong side of the river. Now the northern element from Lanada was moving down the main road between the two cities while engineers were throwing temporary bridges across the river some miles north of the mouth.
Erik looked at the blackened landscape; some locals had fired the dry winter grass to avoid being captured by the Saaur, he judged, for the brush fires had been started in several places. Only a cold rain had prevented a major conflagration on the plain.
Erik reflected on the cold weather and realized it was after midsummer back home. By the time they left Maharta, if they left Maharta, it would be nearly a year since he had fled Darkmoor.
One benefit to Calis’s company from the swift mobilization of Fadawah’s host southward was that most of the invading army was in the grip of turmoil and confusion. Moving closer to the front was surprisingly easy.
A day earlier an officer had tried to demand passes from Calis, who had said simply, “Nobody gave us anything on paper. We were told to move to the front.”
The officer had been totally baffled and simply waved them past the checkpoint.
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Now they were at the crest of a rise overlooking the river valley below, where the Vedra emptied into the Blue Sea. Erik squinted at the scene below.
Maharta was a city of white stone and plaster, bright in the summer sun, now reduced to grey by weeks of falling ash. It spread across two main islands, while several suburbs had arisen on smaller islands in the delta. The main city was surrounded by a high wall on the northwest, north, and northeast, while the remaining sections were flanked by river, harbor, or sea. Several estuaries and inlets provided a variety of anchorages in the deep channel of the river as well as along the coast. Sprinkled across numerous islands were villages, and on the western shore of the river, a large suburb with its own wall.
Nakor peered at the distant city. “Things move close to a finish.”
“How can you tell?” asked Erik.
Nakor shrugged. “See the garrison on this side?”
Erik shook his head. “No. There’s too much smoke.”
Nakor pointed. “Look, there, at the river and sea, where they join in the delta. There were many bridges there—you can see blackened foundations where they were burned—and some villages on the smaller islands, but there, on this shore, there’s a good-sized town, with its own wall.”
Erik squinted against the smoke and fading sunlight and saw a spot of light grey against the darker water. Studying it, he thought it might be a walled town, but he couldn’t be certain. “I think I see it.”
“That is the western precinct of Maharta. It is still holding.”
Erik said, “Your eyes must be as sharp as the Captain’s.”
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“Maybe, but I think it’s that I know what to look for.”
“What are we going to do?” asked Erik.
“I don’t know,” said Nakor. “I think Calis knows, but then, maybe he doesn’t. I
do know that we need to be over there.” He pointed at the far side of the river.
Erik looked at the massive host marshaled along the riverbank and said, “That seems to be everyone’s problem, Nakor.”
“What?”
“Being over there.” Erik pointed northward and said, “They say there are bridges being built ten miles north of here. If so, why is everyone marshaled down here near the coast? They can’t be thinking of swimming across, can they?”
“Difficult swim,” Nakor admitted. “Doubt that’s what they’re going to do. But I expect they have a plan.”
“A plan,” Erik said, shaking his head dubiously as he remembered what Greylock had told him about battle plans and the realities of war. He sighed. “All we have to do is go through this army, cross the river, and get the defenders to open the gate for us.”
“There’s always a way,” said the little man with a grin.
Erik again shook his head in uncertainty as the order to move down into the awaiting host was given, and suddenly he felt very much like a mouse invading a cat’s lair.
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veered away from them, and twice had to improvise explanations for provost officers riding patrol. He claimed to be confused about which campsite he needed to locate, and said he was among those who were going to be first across.
Both times the officers assumed that no one would be lying to be the first across the river, so in both cases they merely waved Calis along. But as they skirted around the central position of the army, they got some sense of how things lay.
A large hill was central to the host, with the Queen’s pavilion atop it. Around that tent were the officers’ tents and rank upon rank of Saaur guard, with Pantathian combat troops arrayed behind them.
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