“You need rest,” Sukey said.
“We are out of time. Is everyone fed?” he asked.
Sukey nodded, on the edge of anger. “Fed, and horses foddered. I’m out; unless we send back to Arles or start looting these poor irks, we’re done.” She shook her head. “Of course, I have forty useless wagons of loot and Umroth ivory …”
“Not useless,” Gabriel said. “Well done, Sukey. I hope everyone had a nap.” He looked around; there was Michael, his great sword in his hand; there was Tom Lachlan, already dismounted, with the lances of the casa dismounted right behind the white banda; there was No Head, and Francis Atcourt; Sauce, directing Conte Simone’s knights. The vast hall was packed with soldiers; maybe twenty thousand men and women, a few irks, and a single bogglin.
He walked back, pressing through packed and armoured people. He was dripping as he walked, but he wasn’t cold. The people were warming, even this vast place.
He found Blanche. “Wish me luck,” he said. “If this one isn’t it …” He shrugged, “Then I don’t know where we are.”
She kissed him. “Go,” she said. She smiled. “You look like a fantastical beast, my love.”
He smiled. His feeling of joy remained, and he squelched back across the hall, and men called out to him, and he paused to kiss Oak Pew on the cheek.
He got back to the pedestal, and he nodded to Mortirmir. “May I borrow your voice?” he asked.
“Of course,” Mortirmir said. He snapped his fingers.
Soldiers.
We have marched and we have fought. Now, I hope, we will find what we seek.
If our guess is correct, this will be a fight. You need to be ready. You have drilled for this. Follow the drill and we will win quickly and with a minimum of fuss.
Ready?
There was a roar. And then three giant cheers, a flood of sound echoing from the high ceiling, three roars that shook the mountain.
Gabriel stood very straight. “Ready?” he called to the red banda, first at the gate.
“Get on wi’ ye,” shouted an archer. Men laughed.
Ready? he asked in the aethereal.
They all answered him; Mortirmir, Tancreda, Petrarcha, and a dozen lesser lights.
He turned the key four places.
And pressed down on the jewel.
Instantly he felt the will fighting him for control of the gate, and his heart soared with victory.
Got them! he yelled.
Mortirmir appeared inside his palace, and then Petrarcha in long, blue velvet robes, and Tancreda in the habit of a Liviapolitan nun, and as they entered they took his aethereal hands. The other casters, mostly Morean and Alban university students, pushed potentia into the link.
The will pressed against the gate.
Gabriel pushed back.
Mortirmir laughed. “Anytime,” he said.
If the struggle for the gate was like arm wrestling with hermetical will, Gabriel did the equivalent of rotating his adversary’s hand and wrist. He slammed his opponent’s arm down on the metaphorical table.
The gate opened.
It was open for exactly as long as it might take a faery to blink her eye.
Mortirmir displaced a small, round egg of pure gold through the gate.
The gate shut.
Three. Two. One. They all counted down together.
Gabriel reached for the gate again.
No resistance.
He flicked it open, and the sun of a bright day fell across the line of the red banda.
They were looking out across a rocky down slope; volcanic, the earth red brown, the stone grey and black in contrast, with clumps of grass and a marvelous yellow sunlight. It was warm.
The air was full of dust, so full of dust that nothing of the landscape was visible beyond a few spear’s lengths.
The ground outside the gate was thick with the corpses of bogglins. They were messily dead, their juices splattered across the ground in front of the gate.
“Go,” Gabriel said.
The red banda marched through the gate. They marched forward two hundred paces, flowing around an ancient altar and two downed basalt columns and a huge volcanic rock and halting with both flanks resting on dry streambeds.
The white banda went through the gate and wheeled to the left by sections of lances. The casa came through on horseback, at the double, and formed to the right, and by then, the first wave of enemy had appeared out of the dust and died.
Mortirmir had passed the gate. He took a moment while Tancreda and Petrarcha raised immense shields in the ops rich air to draw the baselard from his hip and slit open the carcass of a bogglin.
Gabriel looked down at the mass of the thing’s pink-grey innards.
“Not bogglins,” Mortirmir said. “And look.”
Gabriel knew what he would see. And it caused his heart to swell with joy; it meant they were on track, it meant he was right …
A worm. An Odine possessor worm in an alien bogglin-thing.
“We did it,” Morgon said, and for once his adolescent superiority was utterly punctured, and joy covered him, and he threw his arms around Gabriel, who pounded his back.
Tom Lachlan looked down from his great black horse as if the two were idiots.
“Ye’r wode!” he said.
Gabriel thought he might cry, the relief was so great. So painful.
“Ye can tell ’em. Are we fucked?” asked Tom.
“No,” Gabriel said. “No, Tom. We’re fine. There’s nothing left now but the fighting.”
Tom’s face broke in his broad grin. “Ah, laddy. Now yer fewkin’ talkin …” He looked up. “Watch yer pennons!” he roared. “Keep your dress!”
He rode off, and the army continued to pour through the gate even as the archers of the red banda engaged a charge of imps, the small greyhound-sized monsters quick and deadly and very vulnerable to plunging shafts in this open ground.
Gabriel mounted the big bay. “Do you have a name?” he muttered. “I’ll call you John.”
John pricked his ears.
The attacks coming at the face of his square were uncoordinated, the creatures clearly Odine-animated. Gabriel watched the army unfold; there was confusion early on when the casa wheeled up into line as the Venikan marines came up on their flank; almost a half-century of Venikans died, caught moving by a flood of imps and a tide of sorcery, before Peterarcha stepped forward and countered it. Conte Simone was surprised by another assault coming from behind the gate, because it had a two dimensional quality that was evident only to the hermeticists; but the Etruscan knights were all fully armoured, from toe to groin to helm, and the imps found them almost invulnerable, and even a man pulled down by their horrible strength was cut free without loss.
Despite the setbacks, it was not a battle, or if it was a battle, it was one of near constant movement. The army fed through the gate, and the army advanced, filling in from the flanks, scouting the ground fifty paces ahead. It called for constant management; a bad decision could result in fifty people lost, or taken but the company stepped forward, stepped forward again, shaking off the counter attacks and occupying the ground and the magisters began to shift from defensive to offensive and the rate of movement increased.
Gabriel began to feel like a spectator. He rode back and forth along his line, making corrections, but he avoided the aethereal. He was on the edge, and he knew it; and he was damned if he was going to God before his task was finished.
But when the immediate ground of the gate was clear, his staff pulled themselves out of their combat roles; Michael was back at his side, and Tom Lachlan, and Sauce, and Milus.
Michael looked at the imperial standard flapping over their heads in Toby’s fist.
“Like old times,” he said to Sauce.
She gave him a grin. Her face seemed lit from within with the ferocity of her joy, and that look was reflected in every archer, every man-at-arms, every marine and every waggoner. The golden emperor raised his sword and pointed; Adri
an Goldsmith sketched rapidly with charcoal in his book, and Francis Atcourt prayed.
The line moved forward.
Gabriel rode up a little hill that resembled a protruding tooth. “We’re behind them, and our surprise is complete. Have you found the target, Mortirmir?” he asked.
“Target?” Sauce said.
Michael shrugged. “Long story. We figured the last gate had to be held by Odine, ready to back Ash. Or the will. Or both. Had to be, really.”
Andromeche Sarrissa, one of the Morean students, was with the banner. She said, shyly, “We’re looking for the Odine Will, my lady.”
Sauce nodded. But her eyes were on her Etruscan infantry; their line was starting to trail off into the increasingly low ground to the right. “We sound really cocky,” she said. She smiled. “Tell his nibs to keep me up-to-date on what to kill.” She turned and rode off to the right, already shouting orders.
Now, for the first time in a long time, the whole of the company was displayed together; almost a thousand lances, with two hundred more in the casa. Carts appeared from the gate, and bags of livery arrows were delivered by pages through the dust, bags of twenty-four heavy arrows held by leather spacers. Other pages appeared with water. Wounded men were dragged to the rear, inside the box that continued to form out of the gate, but the front of the army vomited arrows that fell like a wicked sleet, and the enemy died.
Three hours into the action, Gabriel could see the sea off to the right, beyond a marsh; a glorious expanse of seamless blue.
“Found it,” Mortirmir said.
Instantly, all the magisters’ faces fell, like puppets with their strings cut, but that was only all of them turning inward.
Gabriel joined them, cautious about his expenditure.
They all joined hands, and he stood aloof; Tancreda provided a lead, and they powered shields they’d woven and laid aside, the new, fractal shields of interwoven scales and leaves.
A titanic bolt of purple-white lightning struck their shield.
There was leakage, and in the center, six lances of the red banda died; Ser Richard Smith; Kessin the archer, and Lowper, and twenty other men and women who’d marched across four worlds and fought their way from Lissen Carak to Arles were turned to ash.
Five paces away, Urk of Mogon drew a heavy clothyard shaft to his four cheeks and released into the clump of irks who seemed rudderless and stood in the open. By him, Heron drew, grunted, and loosed. The smell of cooked flesh floated over and Urk’s mouth cracked open to expose his sensory organs to the wonderful smell of cooked human flesh. It was all unconscious; he was drawing his next shaft from his belt, listening for Smoke’s orders.
Forty paces away, Edmund cursed. “Heave!” he roared. His voice cracked, but the wheel came free from between two huge chunks of volcanic rock and the falconet rolled forward again. There were twenty men on each drag rope, every one of them with a hand gonne slung over their shoulder, and a dozen smaller gonnes on platforms were moving forward on donkeys; a last-minute innovation by Sukey.
But there had been no time to employ the slow falconets; he had his third set of crews on the drag ropes and his fourth set ready, but the gonnes moved more slowly than the rate of advance.
There was a purple-white flash that illuminated a faery forest of golden light hundreds of feet in the air. A concussion rolled back over the panting men. The sound rolled like thunder.
Tom Lachlan raised his long sword. “We only get home by going forward,” he roared. “Follow me!”
The casa went forward into the fire.
Out on the right, the Vardariotes joined the line, which was now more than a mile long and seemed to outflank any resistance.
Count Zac didn’t need direction or orders. He could feel the vacuum in front of him, and he moved his command more rapidly, and Comnena linked on him, and they began to pass the main line.
Edmund’s gonnes fell farther and farther behind as the casa accelerated away. And began to turn like a door on the hinge of the Nordikaans, swinging inward.
Two thousand paces to the left, Simone raised his visor just in time to see the five hundred-fold forked purple lightning strike the center. But like Count Zac, he could feel the absence of the enemy, and he pushed his knights to mount; their stumbling advance became much more fluid; and the Venikan light horse suddenly had Sauce at their head and they were outpacing him, spreading through the thorny brakes and probing out to the left of the road.
The third pulse of purple-white burst on the center. It was followed by a massive surge of bogglins, or whatever they were; they had long spears and they came in dense clumps. This time, it was all coordinated, and on the flanks of the central phalanx there appeared two massive blocks of Grecklins (Snot coined the term for them between one shaft and the next) who had crossbows.
The company archers shot them away.
The lightning didn’t even scorch the ground.
The company went forward. The Saint Catherine streamed in the breeze; and by it, a sable banner with three lacs d’amours and the red banner, a massive golden lion on scarlet silk.
Gabriel was under the red banner now. He’d raised his new passive shield over the center of the center; it seemed to him the only contribution he could make.
“How are we doing?” Michael asked. “To me, it looks like we’re winning.”
“We’re winning so handily that I’m saving myself for the real fight,” Gabriel said. He looked to the right; where he could see Robin Carter and Gadgee and Scrant all drawing their bows together, and beyond them, a hundred men and women he knew by name; thousands; there was Oak Pew, calling orders, and there, far off on the plain, the brilliant sun shone on the red coats of the Vardariotes as they turned inward and there was Zac, and the Scholae drew their sabers and they shone like the spears of the phalanx of angels in heaven.
The magisters cantered up.
The phalanx of enemy spear-creatures was melting under the shafts of the company, but they stood, stolid, stubborn, waiting. Their unshielded crossbowmen were gone; already lying in long rows in the volcanic dirt, like sea wrack washed up after a storm.
Edmund’s gonnes appeared, and with the surviving Nordikaans covering them, they ran forward, the heavy bronze tubes bouncing up and down as forty strong men and women hauled them by ropes, another dozen carrying the trails of the long carriages.
The enemy will rose and cast, and Gabriel’s passive shield of hope and joy swatted it to earth. Gabriel didn’t even realize that his wave front was as wide as the front of the whole red banda; that as he went forward, it went forward, like a great power of the Wild.
Edmund’s sweating apprentices dropped the trail on Blanche, the first falconet. Cat Turell, eyes squinting through the dust, traversed the tube until the mouth was squarely in the center of the spear-things phalanx.
Another apprentice came forward with a wooden plug bound with twine; inside were one hundred and forty four iron balls. It went into the dragon’s mouth.
Morgon Mortirmir spread his arms.
“Everyone ready?” he said. He raised both eyebrows and favoured his wife with a look.
She blew him a kiss.
The Ifriquy’an kid whirled the porte-fire through the air as if he’d been doing it all his life and put it to the touch hole of the falconet.
Twenty four iron balls blew through a corner of the enemy phalanx, passing diagonally through the dense-packed things.
A shrill shrieking erupted.
Kaitlin, gonne two, fired.
Clarissa, gonne three, fired.
Morgon cast. In the real, he and Petrarcha and Tancreda were momentarily outlined in light, and then an uncountable number of lines of fire arced away into the heavens. They burst, all together, in tens of thousands of lines of angry red that raced earthward, arcing and turning at impossible angles like lightning on a dark day.
All this in the time a congregation might say “Amen.”
They struck all together silently.
Gabriel motioned with his sword. “Forward,” he said. He nodded to Payam, whose Mamluks were now filling the field behind the company. The Ifriquy’an waved. The Mamluks were deploying from column into line at a canter.
“What is happening?” he asked.
Michael turned his horse. “The Odine have formed up a great army to invade,” he said. “We’re pulling it to pieces. Just as we planned. Morgon is now pounding their wormy masters.”
“Il Conte Simone is now turning their flank,” Payam motioned with his Fell Sword. “Perhaps I should join him?”
Gabriel shook his head. “There’s no flank to turn,” he said. “This is not a formed host. The will …that is, this will … They weren’t ready. It isn’t ready.” He shook his head. “It is what I dreamed.” He turned to Michael. “Go see what the left is doing. Pavalo, on my word, I want you to exchange lines with the casa. In a little while, we will face the Odine.”
Payam nodded. “Allah hath a thousand hands to chastise,” he said with a smile. “And we have brought a few thousand more.” He smiled broadly. “We have faced the Odine a few times.”
Gabriel went back to watching the company.
The enemy phalanx stood its ground in the center, and died. Too late they attempted to charge, but their cohesion was failing them, and the gaps torn in them by gonnes and shafts were too great to heal.
Gabriel followed them forward, his body burning gold so that now, in bright sunlight, he gave off light. He paused to watch No Head cutting up another corpse. One of the not-bogglins.
“Need Mortirmir to be sure,” No Head said. “Looks to me like this beastie’s been bred to host the worm.”
Gabriel frowned.
The company went forward over the last of the phalanx, and there was a moment of vicious hand to hand, a cloud of dust, and the line buckled, knotted, and moved on, righting itself. The flanks were still pressing in.
The company had taken losses. There were fifty men and women down; knots of magisters tried to save those taken by worms even as they tried to fight their mates.
Gabriel winced that it had become routine to his people.
The banners pressed forward, and the fighting slackened. Ser Milus began to consider ordering his people to mount, but he rode over to Gabriel.