by Ben Blake
*
“Now,” Calesh said, and Amand bellowed an order.
Arrows flew from the brush behind them, trailing tendrils of smoke from the burning rags wrapped around the points. Half fell short or flew long, or else dropped harmlessly into the ravine. The rest struck the bridge.
Flames blew skywards in great gouts as the oil on the wood caught. Boards were flung up as well, or blasted through the fire in a storm of burning splinters. Men and horses screamed. Luthien could see shapes blundering through the inferno, blind and shrieking. Several walked right off the edge of the bridge. Many more fell straight through, to be dashed against the rocks forty feet below. One of them went on screaming even after he hit.
Roughly fifty of the Justified had crossed before the fire erupted. Some were flung out of their saddles by the blast behind them, or by horses that reared and threw them off in panic. Most managed to stay aboard though: they were good horsemen, whatever their other faults. They hesitated, suddenly aware that they were outnumbered now. Half of their comrades were stranded across the gully, and the rest were shrieking or still. Even Justified could count. They drew together, waiting for the charge.
Luthien swallowed. Men were burning, in the gully and above it, their flesh crackling like pork in a fire. He’d seen nothing as horrible as this since he came home, six years before. And now, God help him, now he would see the dragonnade, the charge of the Hand of the Lord with which he’d once been so intimately familiar. He had thought it left far behind him once.
“Amand,” Calesh said.
His voice was perfectly calm. A commander’s had to be, to impress confidence upon the men he led, and though Luthien knew how his old friend hated death he still found it hard to believe, at that moment. Calesh wore a slight smile, showing a glint of teeth. Luthien could not have done so. He had seen his share of death in Tura d’Madai, had dealt a fair amount of it himself, but he was a different man now. Killing was a sin he had no part of any more.
Amand urged his stallion forward, flanked by large soldiers who held their shields ready in case the Justified had an archer in their ranks. None of the All-Church men moved though. Amand went forward ten yards and then stopped, raising his stentorian voice above the crackle of flames.
“Stay here and we will not harm you,” he called to the Justified. “Follow us, and we will kill you all. Make no mistake about that. But if you stay, take this message to the general of your army: Sarténe is not yours to despoil. You will not be allowed to pillage and slaughter your way across our land. Go back while you can. Only death waits for you here.”
None of the cavalry answered. It seemed there would be no dragonnade after all though, for which Luthien was profoundly grateful. He wasn’t sure he could have dealt with that, on top of the burning. After a moment Amand turned his horse and rode back to rejoin the Hand of the Lord. Raigal Tai rolled the handle of his axe nonchalantly over his fingers, but Luthien thought he actually looked disappointed. That was insane. What kind of man would actually regret being denied a chance to die?
A voice inside him murmured that Luthien too had once felt that way, in those strange febrile moments when battle is close but not yet decided on. He ignored it, as he had grown adept at ignoring whispers in his mind and heart. No man was perfect in every corner of his soul, but that was all right. It was mastering those dark shadows that counted.
Calesh stayed on the ridge as Amand began to order their men to withdraw. He put the spyglass back to his eye and studied Parrien, from which smoke now rose in black lines through the still air. A large mass of soldiers had crowded together just outside the north gate, and their shouts drifted across the burned fields, louder than the noise of panicked citizens inside the walls. Over it all came a faint crackle, like pots banging in a distant kitchen. Luthien knew what that was. He had hoped never to hear it again.
“Oh, Japh,” Calesh said softly.
Luthien and Raigal exchanged glances behind their friend’s back. Neither spoke. Calesh was not such a fool as to go charging into Parrien in an attempt to rescue the youth, however badly he might feel at having sent him there in the first place. That he would feel badly was a given. It was just as certain that he wouldn’t let it affect him.
After a moment Calesh snapped the glass closed and stuffed it into a side pocket of his saddlebag. He glowered at the silent knot of Justified, as though hoping for an excuse to order his men to ride in and cut them all to pieces. They did nothing except look back at him, their expressions hard to read under their helmets. Raigal twirled his great axe again.
“Sometimes you have to roll the dice and pray,” Luthien said quietly. He pushed his glasses back up his nose. “And sometimes you take what you have and walk away from the table. I think this is one of those times.”
“I think so too,” Calesh said. From his tone you would never guess he had just been spoiling for a fight. “What about you, Raigal? Shall we head back to the Preceptory, and a mug of beer?”
“Might as well,” the huge man rumbled. “Since those bastards will drink all of mine.”
Kissing the Moon was by Parrien’s docks, of course. Luthien had stayed there a few times, though he had less in common with Raigal Tai than with either of the other two men. He liked the big northerner well enough, but Raigal was too loud where Luthien was soft-spoken, too impetuous where he was measured. It had made things difficult, in the years since they came back from Tura d’Madai. With Calesh missing, there had sometimes seemed little to share with Raigal.
It was different now, because Calesh was back. Luthien turned his horse and rode away with his friends, and tried to decide if he believed it would make any difference.
*
“That was Saissan,” Sarul said.
He was sure of it. From the moment that fire-rose had blossomed away to the west, even before the boom had rolled across the fields, he had known. The common soldiers had stopped to look, and two regiments of Glorified not yet committed to the assault on Parrien had hastily begun to turn to meet any possible new threat. None had come. But that didn’t matter: it would come, when Calesh Saissan decided he was ready.
Already Sarul had his agents in the Basilica hunting for the spy who had sent a warning to the Hand of the Lord, in Tura d’Madai. Maids and servants would be questioned about that, and if their answers were unsatisfactory then they would pay for it. If not for that cursed message Saissan would still be baking in the desert with the lizards, and orders could have been sent to the Justified and Glorified there to arrest all the Hand in a simultaneous strike. Meanwhile command in Sarténe would be between a known drunkard and the foppish, indolent Margrave with all his filthy ways. Instead the Sand Scorpion was here, and deny it as they would, the men of the other Orders were a little in awe of him.
But the matter was in hand. Sarul had set plans in motion long before he travelled north to join the Crusade army. Elizur Mandein was on his way to Saissan now, and he would kill him. After which, of course, Mandein himself would have to be dealt with. Really, the All-Church could hardly be seen to tolerate assassins, however useful they might be at times. It helped that Mandein was a thoroughly unpleasant man. When he was found floating in a sack in the harbour, it might be that nobody wanted to fish him out.
But first, he could deal with Saissan. Sarul’s hands clenched into fists at his sides and he kept staring west, even when the fire at the bridge had died away and Parrien began to burn behind him.
###
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