Legends II

by Robert Silverberg

  The Empire Trilogyconcerns itself with conflict back on the Tsurani homeworld, where for much of the first and second book we see “the other side of the Riftwar.” Lady Mara of the Acoma, a girl of seventeen in the first book, is thrust into a murderous game of politics and ritual, and only through her own genius and ability to improvise does she weather unrelenting attacks on all sides. Aided by a loyal group of followers, including a Kingdom slave named Kevin, whom she comes to love more than any other, Mara rises to dominate the Empire of Tsuranuanni, even facing down the mighty Great Ones, the magicians who are outside the law.

  The Serpentwar Sagais the story of Erik, the bastard son of a noble, and Roo, a street boy who is his best friend. The Kingdom again faces invaders, but this time from across the sea. The story of the two young men is set against the Kingdom’s hurried preparation for and resistance against a huge army under the banner of the Emerald Queen, a woman who is another agent of dark forces seeking dominion over the world of Midkemia. More of the cosmic nature of the battle between good and evil is revealed, and Pug and Tomas again have to take a hand in the struggle.

  TheRiftwar Legacy series contains three novels regarding events taking place a few years following the Riftwar, featuring more adventures of Jimmy Locklear, Prince Arutha, and other characters from the original series.

  Legends of the Riftwarare novels set in the period of the original Riftwar series, but featuring new characters in different locations, revealing more intimate stories that took place during that epic conflict.

  Feist sees Midkemia as an objective, virtual world, even though a fictional one. He regards all the tales set in Midkemia as historical novels and stories of this fantastic realm.The Messenger is a tale from the middle years of the Riftwar, when the war had turned into a struggle along a stable front.

  THE MESSENGER

  RAYMOND E. FEIST

  The wind whipped the trees.

  Their branches swayed and creaked in protest as the last brown leaves of the fall were sent flying. The shushing sound of the pines and firs as their needle-laden branches seemed to wave in protest was a forlorn harbinger of long winter nights and frigid days rapidly approaching.

  Outside the command tents, soldiers huddled close to their campfires. Snow should be weeks away, but many of the local men could sense an early winter was coming. The cold cut through padded overjackets like a blade of ice. Soldiers who had put all their undergarments on as well as two or even three pairs of stockings—forcing their feet into their boots—were complaining of numb toes if their feet got wet. Locals knew it was going to be a bad winter. Many turned their eyes skyward, anticipating the first flakes that would surely fall soon. This winter would come early, would come hard and linger too long.

  The foothills of the Grey Tower Mountains were rarely forgiving to men caught exposed when the weather turned suddenly, and the soldiers of the Kingdom of the Isles were equipped to deal with all but this harshest of seasons. They expected to be back in the cities of Yabon province when winter’s full fury was unleashed, billeted in barracks and houses, warm before fireplaces and protected from the snow piling up outside their windows. But the experienced veterans knew that unless the weather turned a more gentle aspect their way soon, the columns of soldiers soon leaving the front would be marching through thigh-high drifts of snow as they reached LaMut City, Ylith, and Yabon. Some wounded who might make it back home in a more normal season would surely not survive such a march.

  All around the camp a sense of anticipation was building, for surely the Dukes conducting this war would realize an early and hard winter was soon upon them and the fighting would stop. The Commissary chief and his cooks and helpers, the Quartermaster and the boys in the luggage who were inspecting the scant remaining weapons and clothing available to the soldiers, all paused from time to time to look at the sky, to sense the coming weather and to ask, Is it time to go home? The armorer held up a dented cavalryman’s breastplate to inspect what could be done to mend it, while his apprentice fed coal into the hearth; both wondered if the armor would be needed, for it must be time to go home, wasn’t it? Soldiers nursing wounds in the infirmary tents, the cavalry in their tents, and the mercenaries in their bedrolls and bundles who slept in whatever shelter they could find, all wondered, Is it time to go home?

  Inside the command tent, Vandros der LaMut looked at the orders that had just arrived and nodded in agreement.

  He looked to his senior captain, Petir Leyman, and said, “We’re going home for the winter. Orders from Dukes Brucal and Borric.”

  “About time,” said the rangy captain. He blew on his hands for emphasis, even though his heavily padded gauntlets kept his fingers warm enough. Then he grinned. “I’ll ensure we have ample firewood put by back at the castle, m’lord.” He lost his smile. “This is feeling like a bad winter coming.”

  The Earl of LaMut looked out the open tent flap, past the brazier that kept him relatively warm, and said, “We’ll have plenty of snow to push through by the time I’m called to the Commander’s Muster up in Yabon.” He sighed, barely audible, but a sigh nevertheless. “Assuming I can get there. This feels like a bad winter, indeed.”

  Leyman nodded.

  Vandros stood up and said, “I need a messenger to ride to the forward positions.”

  He crossed to the field map on his command table and pointed. “These three positions, Gruder here, Moncrief here, and Summerville there.” His finger stabbed each location. “I need them to withdraw in order. It’s cold enough the Tsurani should be pulling back to their own winter billets.”

  “Should is a dangerous word, m’lord.”

  “Agreed, but they’ve never moved against us once the snows start. They’re just as cold out there as we are, and they’ve been around long enough to know that snow is only days away. They’ll retreat to their own winter camps.”

  “They should do us all a favor and stay there come spring, m’lord.”

  Vandros nodded. “Send word to Swordmaster Argent we’re starting the withdrawal. I’ll follow in a day or two with the rear guard.

  “And tell whoever you send to be careful,” Vandros added. “I’ve got a report of a Minwanabi patrol-in-force that’s somehow wandered off course and gotten itself lost east of the King’s Highway, north of LaMut. No one’s sure where they’ve gone, but they’re certain to turn up at the most inconvenient time.”

  Leyman said, “Yes, m’lord.”

  “And send a messenger to me,” he added as the captain left the tent.

  Vandros reflected while waiting for the messenger. He had been a young officer in his father’s court, a Captain of Cavalry, the Light Horse, the most dashing unit of soldiers in Yabon. Vandros remembered with a sense of age beyond his years the harsh education the Tsurani had provided. After years of bloody warfare, all illusions of war’s glory were dispelled.

  The Tsurani, aliens from another world—though it had taken a long time for more than one Kingdom noble to finally accept the reality of that fact—had reached the world of Midkemia via a rift, a magic doorway through space, that brought them to the Kingdom of the Isles. As fortune had it, they had landed in a high valley, up in the Grey Tower Mountains. The good news was that that made it difficult for the Tsurani to strike quickly outside the valley. The bad news had been that it made it nearly impossible for the Kingdom to dig them out of their foothold high among the peaks.

  Tough, unrelenting fighters, the Tsurani wore brightly colored armor made of some alien material, bone or hide or something unknown on Midkemia, fashioned by unknown crafts to a hardness near that of metal. They had attacked without warning the first spring of the war, seven years earlier, and had swept down from the mountains to claim a large area of both the Kingdom of the Isles and the Free Cities of Natal.

  The war had been a veritable stalemate for all its seven years, since the first campaign. Vandros shook his head slightly as he considered the seemingly endless fight. He had been Earl for five of those years, and thi
ngs had gone from bad to worse. Three years earlier the Tsurani had launched an offensive against Crydee, to the west, attempting to wrest the entire Far Coast from the Kingdom, by moving down from the northernmost stronghold, but the siege had failed. Since then, a stalemate.

  While they were holding their own militarily, the cost was staggering, with taxes rising every year and fewer soldiers to be recruited. It was so bad this last year Vandros had been forced to hire mercenaries to supplement his levies to the Duke of Yabon. A few had proven worthwhile, but most of them were little more than bodies to throw in front of Tsurani swords.

  And the weather. He had lived here all his life and he knew this was going to be a punishing winter. Blizzards were not uncommon during the coldest months of winter in the region, but today the air felt as if a blow could come at any moment. The duke’s order to withdraw to winter billets was coming none too early, in Vandros’s opinion.

  The messenger appeared at the tent door. “M’lord?” he said as a means to announce himself.

  “Come in, Terrance.”

  The young man came to stand before the Earl and snapped to attention. He wore the traditional LaMutian uniform of the Messenger Corps. A round fur cap, flat on top, sporting a shining golden badge of the corps on one side, perched on his head at just the correct, jaunty angle. The forest-green jacket was cut at the waist, and bedecked with gold braid at the shoulders and sleeves, with six pairs of golden buttons down the front. The messengers wore tight-fitting gray riding trousers with a full leather seat, tucked into low riding boots of black leather. Each man carried a cavalry saber, and a belt knife, but little else. Vandros knew the rider would have a heavy coat he’d wear over the rig, once he was on the trail, but otherwise he carried only one ration of oats for his horse, and a water skin. Speed was the hallmark of the Messenger Corps.

  Vandros looked at this particular messenger with a slight twinge of irritation. He was a distant cousin, his grandfather’s great-nephew, and had used his relationship to the Earl to worm his way into the army at what Vandros considered too young an age, despite the objections of his mother. The boy was just too young and inexperienced. Still, he was here, and there was nothing the Earl could do about it that wouldn’t dishonor the family. Terrance was barely sixteen years of age, one of those children born just weeks before the Midsummer’s Day when his first birthday was celebrated. He still didn’t need to shave.

  But there were boys younger serving, Vandros reminded himself, and the Messenger Corps was not the same as serving with the Light Horse or the Heavy Lancers. The boy was a fair swordsman on or off horseback, so he could have been easily assigned to a unit at the front. Only his exceptional skill as a rider elevated him out of the cavalry, for only the finest riders in Yabon served in the Duke’s Messenger Corps.

  “Your turn?”

  “Yes, m’lord,” said Terrance. “Captain Leyman sent for two of us, and Williamson Denik was next, so he’s riding to LaMut, and I was after, so here I am.”

  Messengers served in rotation, and no captain or noble could change that without earning the messengers’ ire. Every group within the army had its traditions. And this one made sense, for without it, certain senior messengers would take only the easy runs, along safe roads, leaving the more hazardous duty to newer riders.

  Vandros said nothing for a moment. He wished he had known that his young, if distant, cousin had been near the top of the rotation, for he could have instructed Petir to order Williamson to the command tent, then sent Terrance on to LaMut and relative safety.

  Vandros pushed aside these thoughts and pointed to the map. Terrance knew the map as well as the Earl did: it was a section map, showing the entire campaign area and some of the surrounding countryside.

  No one knew why, exactly, the Tsurani had invaded. Attempts at parley had been repulsed, and the best reasons for the invasion were still only speculation. The one finding the most favor among the nobles of the Kingdom was a Tsurani desire for metal. From the scant intelligence gathered from captured Tsurani slaves—the soldiers died fighting or killed their wounded before retreating—metal was very rare in most forms on their homeworld. Still, Vandros found that explanation lacking. Too many men had died without strategic gain for it to be over something as simple as metal. There had to be another reason; they just didn’t know what it was.

  Terrance looked at the map, each mark and line memorized already. The region shown was bordered on the west by the Grey Tower Mountains. To the west lay the Duchy of Crydee, and the shores of the Endless Sea. But those areas were under the command of Prince Arutha and the Barons of Carse and Tulan, and of no concern to Earl Vandros. His area of operation was limited to the border between the Duchy of Yabon, along the former border of the Free Cities, and into the foothills of the Grey Towers.

  Vandros’s index finger stabbed at three locations on the map, one to the southwest of their present location, another due south of that, and one slightly southeast of the second. Those three bases, along with Vandros’s headquarters camp, were the foundation of the Kingdom’s defensive line throughout the region. Forces from any of the four camps could quickly respond to any Tsurani offensive.

  But they were impossible to supply during the harsh winters of the region, forcing the Kingdom to withdraw each season as the snows came.

  “Messages to Barons Gruder, Moncrief, and Summerville: inform them it’s time to withdraw.” He gave specific instructions on who was to pull out first, how he wanted the order of march, and when he expected them to reach their designated city for billeting during the winter.

  Terrance studied the map, committing his route to memory, and said, “Yes, m’lord. I have it memorized.”

  Vandros knew better than to ask him to repeat the orders, for he knew he would hear them back exactly as he had given them. Besides being a good rider, having an accurate memory was a requirement for the corps. While some reports and documents were sent by messenger, all military orders were given orally, so documents might not fall into the enemy’s hands should a rider be killed.

  “Staged, orderly withdraw. Defensive combat only,” said the Earl. That meant an order to the field commanders to avoid conflict with any Tsurani units if possible while they retreated eastward. The assumption being the Tsurani would not be looking to gain territory this late in the season; rather, they would be seeking out warm winter shelter for themselves.

  “Staged, orderly withdraw. Defensive combat only,” repeated the messenger.

  Vandros said, “You sound a bit stuffy, there? Are you fit to ride?”

  “Just a bit of a cold, m’lord. Nothing to speak of.”

  “Then go,” said Vandros. “And, Terry?”

  “Yes, m’lord,” said the youngster at the tent flap.

  “Stay alive. I have no wish to have to explain to your mother how I got you killed.”

  With a boyish grin, he replied, “I’ll do my best, sir.”

  Then he was gone.

  Vandros pondered sending someone so young into harm’s way, then resigned himself to the fact that this was the essence of command, and he had sent many young men and boys into harm’s way in the five years he had been Earl. And while he would rather Terrance was riding to LaMut, there was probably little danger of his being exposed to enemy action this late in the year. The Tsurani were probably trying to stay warm as much as his own men were. He stopped worrying about Terrance, and started thinking about the order of march for the bulk of his army, billeted right outside this tent.

  He could hear them talking and laughing as he sat down at his table.

  As was usual, Terrance endured the taunting jokes and laughter of the regulars in the camp as he walked toward his tent. “Isn’t that one pretty!” exclaimed a grizzled veteran. “I think I’ll keep it as me pet!”

  The men around the campfire laughed, and Terrance resisted the impulse to say anything. He had been cautioned by the older messengers when he had first joined the corps the previous spring that such taunting w
as common. The messengers were seen to have what the others thought was a “cushy” billet, for often they could be seen sitting around their tents for days, waiting for orders to ride. Of course in a battle they could be riding constantly, with little or no sleep and scant food, having to negotiate their way through the heart of combat to take messages to field commanders. But then the other soldiers were too busy keeping alive to notice the comings and goings of the messengers.

  Terrance was tall for his age, a little more than six feet in height, and just starting to develop a man’s broad shoulders and back. But he was blond and blue-eyed, and his beard refused to do more than dust his lips and chin with a faint blond fuzz, much to his irritation, for it was tradition among the Messenger Corps to grow a mustache and chin beard, what they called a “goatee.” Terrance had attempted to grow one, but had started shaving again after a month, as his looked ridiculous. The other messengers had not spared him from their teasing, but several had said privately that the beard would come and not to worry. Shaving would even encourage it to grow faster, several had suggested.

  Terrance found keeping silent and his expression blank served him well, for he hated the thought that anyone might see how uncertain he felt at times. He knew after his first month in service that he had overreached himself, but throughout the seven months he had been with the corps, he had faced little true danger. Still, he couldn’t shake the constant worry that he might break under pressure or somehow fail, both justifying his family’s condemnation of his enlisting in the service so young and bringing disgrace to them all, including the Earl. He just hadn’t thought of that responsibility at the time, and now he regretted having acted rashly.