Meng Chiao responded, “This is the Seventeenth, Lord. This was Lord Wu’s legion.”
Shih-ka’i smiled within his mask. “I see.” The man spoke as if his remark explained everything there was to know about the legion.
Lord Wu, in his time, had been one of the great Tervola, but he had been one of those unfortunates seduced by recent politics. He had died mysteriously in Lioantung when that city had been the seat of Eastern Army.
A demon appeared. It howled grotesquely. It stood fourteen feet tall and had a half-dozen arms. It pranced around cursing the man who had summoned it. After receiving orders, it whirled, estimated the enemy force, changed shape.
Shih-ka’i watched it become a copper rhinoceros of epic proportions. It galloped toward the enemy. He loosed a sigh of disgust. “Someone isn’t taking this seriously.”
The shiny rhino trundled past Hsu Shen. It bellowed heartily and charged the nearest horsemen. It rumbled around in circles, flipping its nose horns this way and that. It overwhelmed opponents by virtue of sheer mass.
“A clown thing with a certain effectiveness,” Shih-ka’i admitted grudgingly. He did not feel a demon of that temper befit the dignity of a Tervola.
The demon shifted shape again, became octopod. It armed six tentacles with swords seized from its victims.
A dragon rider came out of the sun. It put a spear-bolt through the demon. The thing did not approve. It yelped like an injured puppy, faded away.
A dozen more Outside monsters joined the fray. They stopped the riders briefly. Hsu Shen and his men came puffing up the dune.
“Centurion, put these men through first. They’re exhausted.”
“Yes, Lord.”
Shih-ka’i examined the progress of the evacuation. It looked too slow. Too damned slow.
The riders pushed forward despite heavy casualties. They surrounded Shih-ka’i’s dune-walled position, then waited at a respectful distance. Lord Ssu-ma laughed. “You’ve got us now, don’t you? No chance for us to get away, eh? All you have to do is bring up the infantry and finish us, eh?” He directed his Tervola to concentrate on the nearest foot soldiers.
He stared at the stone thing. Was it stupid? If it kept on this way, its entire army would be destroyed before it broke out of the desert. Not many of the fallen remained in condition for reanimation.
That pleased Shih-ka’i.
Sure as he lived, he knew the master of the dead meant to march across the world. And once his armies broke out of the wasteland they would begin to swell. That explained why the thing was squandering manpower now. It anticipated no difficulty acquiring replacements.
The enemy infantry came on in such numbers that the demons, under constant attack from above, were swamped.
Shih-ka’i glanced back. The evacuation was going well. A man every ten seconds. Six a minute. Sixty every ten minutes. Three quarters of the force had gone. The others had formed round the portal. The maneuver was a tactical success already.
Give me a little luck, he thought. Let the portals remain useful a few minutes more. Let the stone thing persist in its profligate stupidity.
He did gloom about his minor exploratory thrust having become an embattled retreat which threatened to embroil the entire Eastern Army in an unexpected war. A big war. At a critical juncture in Shinsan’s history. He guessed there were fifty thousand enemy soldiers scattered around the desert. They seemed to have stopped coming from their place of hiding.
They did him a favor, did the foe’s infantry. They followed the example of the cavalry. They elected to surround him before making their attack. Shih-ka’i stepped into the portal just before their charge began. There was but one man behind him, his faithful Pan ku. They came over the dunes and found a whole lot of nothing. The Tervola had pulled their bolt hole in after them.
“What are they waiting for, Lord?” Tasi-feng asked. Four days had passed. The foe had not come west. Recon reports painted a portrait of confusion on a Brobdingnagian scale.
“I don’t know. Maybe we got our bluff in on them. Maybe they won’t come at all.”
“Do you think so, Lord?”
“Not really. But a daydream doesn’t hurt if you don’t put much faith in it. Anyway, let’s not be ungrateful for the gift of time.” Shih-ka’i had not expected to have time to move people into the mountains and get them dug in. He would not have given an opponent that edge.
He had gotten what he needed and more. The Seventeenth’s two field brigades were in place and waiting. Elements of the rest of Eastern Army were assembling at the fortress. If he were given another week, he thought, transfers would bring in enough people and thaumaturgic equipment to destroy thrice the number of zombies he had seen near the lonely mountain.
He had stripped his army of Tervola. The troops were coming overland under the command of their noncommissioned officers, with some units transferring in as opportunity arose. He was drawing Tervola and equipment from Northern Army, too, pushing his writ from Lord Kuo to its limit. He had ignored the predictable outrage of the Commander, Northern Army.
Northern Army was also on the march, but there was no way it could contribute troops here. Shih-ka’i had directed its three legions to assume a defensive posture along the west bank of the Tusghus, a broad river lying roughly midway between the Seventeenth’s old headquarters at Lioantung and the fortress on the edge of the desert.
The transfer streams were being pushed to their limits within Eastern Army’s territories. Too many miles lay between the fortress and even the closest of the legionary main forces.
“Hsu Shen,” Shih-ka’i called. “Evacuation report.”
The Tervola scuttled over. He had developed an obsequious manner since his rescue. “Finally getting some cooperation, Lord Ssu-ma. They believe our activity more than our word.” He was speaking of the native tribes. Shih-ka’i had ordered them evacuated beyond his third defensive line, the Tusghus. In the absence of orders to the contrary, he meant to make the foe pay for every mile of advance, and to deny him any opportunity to strengthen himself with local bodies.
His legion commanders believed he was overreacting. He argued that only overreaction had salvaged the earlier probe into the desert.
“Lord Chang. Have you found Lord Kuo?” Shih-ka’i desperately wanted to confer with his superior. He was considering asking permission to commandeer additional Tervola should the fortress be lost.
In private even Pan ku chided him for anticipating such an extremity.
Chang Sheng commanded the Twenty-Third, the legion stationed immediately south of the Seventeenth. He was another of the dozens of Tervola banished to Eastern Army. He had held a seat on the Council of Tervola before his rustication. He resented Lord Kuo, resented his fall, and resented serving under a pig-farmer’s son. He was not a happy man.
Before all that, though, he was a soldier of the Dread Empire. His army was at war. “No, Lord. He’s gone to ground. There isn’t a trace of him. I’d guess he doesn’t want to be found.”
“So be it. Get some sleep.” Chang Sheng had been searching for Lord Kuo more than thirty hours. “He’ll know we’re hunting him. He’ll have a reason for remaining silent. I’ll accept it as tacit approval of my request for permission to act in accordance with our needs.”
“Lord, I’d say it means the Matayangan situation is ready to blow up.”
“Probably so. Worse luck.”
Meng Chiao strode in. He was supposed to be in the mountains. He saluted Lord Lun-yu. “The enemy are moving up now, Lord.”
“Be there in a few minutes. Their strength?”
“Thirty thousand plus, Lord. All infantry.”
Tasi-feng glanced at Lord Ssu-ma. Shih-ka’i kept his mouth shut. He had assigned the mountain operation to Tasi-feng and the Seventeenth. He had assumed the larger task of directing the movements of the army. He could not run out and check the disposition of every century. He nodded at Tasi-feng.
Lord Lun-yu asked, “Are the men clear on the rul
es? Injured to transfer immediately. Enemy casualties to transfer if portal time is available. To be dismembered otherwise. We have ten to fifteen minutes to incapacitate a body before shock terminates and it can be animated again.”
“They’ve been advised, Lord.”
“Good. Remind them not to turn their backs on enemies who are down. They might get up again.”
Shih-ka’i smiled into his mask. He wasn’t the only mother hen.
“As you command, Lord.” Meng Chiao departed.
Tasi-feng asked Shih-ka’i, “Will you be coming through, Lord?”
“Later, maybe. Just for a minute, to get an idea of their strength and tactics. I’ll be too busy here to interfere much.”
Tasi-feng bowed slightly. “I’d better double-check my signals with the batteries before I leave.”
“Go easy on the shafts if you can.” Shih-ka’i had been able to gather just forty-nine. Tasi-feng had explained that most of the thaumaturgic arsenal had been transferred to Southern Army.
“I intend to, Lord.”
“And watch the flyers. The air is our weak flank.”
“Yes, Lord.” Tasi-feng bowed slightly and departed before Shih-ka’i could fuss any more.
I’m as antsy as an old maid, Shih-ka’i thought. Let be, Ssu-ma. These are good men. They have millennia of experience between them. Field experience. Their soldiers are the best. If they can’t stop this army of the dead, it can’t be stopped.
Why was he so terribly nervous?
Because of the dragon riders? The autopsy hadn’t told him anything good. They were nine feet tall. They were immensely strong. They were partially immune to attack by the Power. In all probability, in life, they had been smart, quick, and deadly, and had wielded the Power in their own right. A demand upon the libraries of Shinsan had produced no knowledge of any such creature having existed within the era of reliable historical records.
Shih-ka’i could not discover what had caused the desert, nor who had built the cities lying in ruins in the forests facing it. A search of the oldest legend-histories had produced only a passing reference to a great stone god of the east, a guardian facing an endless sea. Cautious, daring reconnaissance had confirmed that the continent ended not far east of the solitary mountain. Beyond lay nothing but an island and ocean.
The description of that island piqued Shih-ka’i’s curiosity. In Ko Feng’s reports on the Pracchia conspiracy he had referred to an island in the east. It had sheltered the laboratories of the conspiracy and the headquarters of its mastermind. This island fit Ko Feng’s description. He wondered if these armies of the undead were another Pracchia gambit... How could that be? All the High Nine but Ko Feng had been killed at the Battle of Palmisano, or earlier. Both the west and Shinsan had made every effort to eradicate subsidiary nines following the war.
Lord Ssu-ma thought he would very much like to land a force on that island and see what had been left behind. The Pracchia conspirators had controlled some interesting sorceries. Lord Ko had been unable to salvage any. Most had been under the aegis of one Magden Norath, a renegade Escalonian who had guarded his secrets well.
Shih-ka’i made a quick inspection circuit of the fortress.
Preparations were proceeding perfectly, if too slowly to soothe his nerves. He took a deep breath. “Pan ku, let’s see what’s happening in the mountains.”
7 Year 1016afe
Conspiracies
MIST WAS ABOUT to retire when a nervous servant announced that the King wanted to see her. “He’s here?” she asked, startled.
“We had him wait in the library, My Lady.” The woman’s tone conveyed a plea for understanding. The monarch could not be told to come back when his visit would be more convenient. Astounding enough that he should just drop in off the street, though this King was uniquely plebeian in his habits.
“What does he want?”
“He wouldn’t say, My Lady.”
Moths gamboled about in Mist’s stomach. This had a bad smell. “Tell him I’ll be right down. See if he’ll take some brandy.”
“Certainly, My Lady. Shall I waken Marta?”
“I’ll dress myself.” She took her time, composing herself by chanting verses from the Soldier’s Ritual used by the warriors of her homeland. She did not leave her bedchamber till she was convinced that she was in complete self-control.
“You’re out late,” she observed as she entered the library. A tic of irritation pulled at one eye. Her warmth sounded false in her own ears.
The King scanned her quickly, his gaze impersonal. He was unimpressed by her beauty. She always felt inadequate in his presence: felt like she had a great hairy mole on the end of her nose or a livid scar across her cheek. He and Michael Trebilcock and Varthlokkur were all immune to her carefully crafted looks. Weird and frightening that so many such men should surround her, making treacherous the ground on which she was accustomed to operate, leaving her uncertain and inclined to become flustered...
“I was over at my house. I wanted to see you. Thought I’d save a trip and do it now.”
“You look exhausted.”
“I had a rough day. Excuse my manners. They may not be what they should.”
Her preparations were inadequate. Already she was growing flustered. She gobbled, “What’s on your mind?” and was immediately dismayed. She hadn’t wanted to be so direct.
“Just call me curious about what you and Aral are up to.”
Damn, she thought. She managed to mask her surprise. “Up to? What do you mean?”
“Let’s say I’ve noticed the coming together of what appear to be the elements of a `situation.’ I always try to be reasonable. Thought I’d give you a chance to explain before I got excited.”
“So?” The moths were back. Brandishing tusks dripping venom. Suddenly, she understood why Varthlokkur was in town. If Bragi thought he needed his back covered, he wassure...
“These are the ingredients: One exiled Princess of Shinsan, minus the tempering influence of a good man who fell at Palmisano. One young merchant of considerable wealth and influence, perhaps bedazzled. From the staff of Lord Hsung’s Western Army, Tervola who remain secret supporters of the Princess in exile.”
Mist held her breath. How could he know that? That damned Trebilcock! He really did have somebody inside Lord Hsung’s headquarters. She’d hoped she was wrong about that.
“Interestingly enough, these ingredients have come together just when my spies tell me Shinsan has been caught with what looks like an explosive crisis on its Matayangan frontier.”
Gods! Did he know everything? Did Trebilcock have an agent here in the house?
“A handy distraction,” the King continued. “Now, if you were me, wouldn’t all those things make you wonder?”
He spoke with an odd formality. Rather like a magistrate, she thought. His voice was tight. His gaze wandered nervously, but she was too distracted to seize and use his discomfort. She drifted away inside herself, trying to select a response which would not compromise her ambitions. Finally, “You’re right. I was approached by people inside Shinsan. By a traditionalist faction opposed to Lord Kuo’s penchant for change, and disturbed by the empire’s increasing instability. I’m the last living descendant of the founder, Tuan Hua. I was shaped during the Dual Principiate of the Princes Thaumaturge. They think I could reimpose old-fashioned stability and values, given a chance. So far it’s just been talk. I don’t think anything will come of it.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve been approached before. These groups never have enough power or influence. And what they really want, instead of what they say they want, is a figurehead. A legitimate pretender who can assume their sins after they’re in power. A scapegoat, really.” Was he listening? Accepting? His face remained as impassive as a gambler’s.
“And you wouldn’t settle for that.”
“No. You know me that well.”
The King steepled his fingers under his nose. For a moment he seemed to b
e praying. “Where does Aral fit?”
“He’s a merchant. The trading climate would improve if a friend of Kavelin ruled Shinsan. He’s been trying to assemble financial backing for a coup. I haven’t had the heart to shatter his hopes.”
The King examined the spines of her books. She hoped she sounded plausible. She had rehearsed for this interview countless times, knowing it to be inevitable, but it had come early. All her planning had toppled around her. She could not recall her lines. She could but tell most of the truth and hope that it would be enough.
He took a deep breath, decided not to say whatever was in his mind. She was sure he had been about to bring up his secretary’s embassy to Lord Hsung. Were it as successful as it sounded likely to be, it would rob her of all hope of enlisting the support of Kavelin’s mercantile community. Her only real option was to sabotage Prataxis’s efforts. She hadn’t yet crossed that bridge. And now she knew she didn’t dare. Surely he’d just caught a glimmer of the possibilities. If anything happened now, the blame would be laid at her feet.
He was playing his old, old game of giving the villain all the rope he wanted.
“Sounds good,” he said at last. “Kavelin would benefit. Assuming Shinsan’s historical inertia could be altered. Otherwise what damned difference does it make who’s in power?”
What? He wasn’t going to raise hell? He was going to agree with her? Despite Prataxis? She let him sit through an extended silence while she marshalled her composure. He didn’t seem to notice. She asked, “What are you saying?”
“That I wouldn’t be averse to a scheme. But I’m not too excited about you involving my people without you and me having an understanding up front. Also, right nowyou are one of my people. You’re Chatelaine of Maisak. My first line of defense against Shinsan. We have here what Derel would call a potential conflict of interest. I wouldn’t want to find myself worried about my hold on the Savernake Gap.”