Brok Gelasen had once stoically endured a thousand outrageous demands from his wizardly clients as a cloakmaker. He was one of the best of his trade, but no matter how fine the cloth, how small the stitches, and how well-placed the pockets, some magocrats would never be happy. He had weathered a thousand dire threats and countless insults in the course of his trade while still managing to turn a profit on his wares. The cloakmaker had brought the same patient endurance to his duties as one of the draxi.
“We’ll outrun them, still,” Bui assured him. I hope the Mardux has beaten the first army. It would be really bad if the draxi were pinned between the first army and the second.
The Drakes systematically checked the path to the Lapis Amnis on the eastern front, jabber guer weaving back and forth along a swath almost a mile wide until they reached the river’s bank. Bui hoped they hadn’t noticed that the part of the river they were scouting was now more of a lake.
If even the Mar mapmakers can’t keep the maps of rivers up to date, why would the Drakes notice a difference?
The striped guer at the rear made low trumpeting noises, and the Drake army entered the Lapis, jabber in the fore and spiny-tailed flanking them. The striped guer waded in soon after. Bui encouraged his men to taunt the enemy, enrage them. Make them commit. He eyed the place where the lake narrowed, a few yards within the range of the Mar traps.
A handful of spiny-tailed guer were close to the narrows, and they swirled around, screaming at each other. They had bumped into the Mar’s trap, a plug made from Power, damming the river. Bui saw several striped guer, partway into the water, turn their heads to listen.
“Tell Arn to do it now,” he told the relay, who sprinted off to deliver the message.
The striped guer trumpeted again, and the thousands of Drakes in the river doubled their speed. The jabber, past halfway, raced for the south bank. The spiny-tailed, smaller and weaker, turned back. The tall striped guer pressed on with spiny-tailed archers on their backs.
The Mar fell back, and a handful appeared on the south bank from under the obstruction, led by Arn. Behind them, the tunnel of Power they had built vanished much faster than it had been created, and the lake began its swift return to river, taking the Drakes with it — into the two-mile swath of traps that the adepts had set up earlier, and that the Drakes had carefully avoided.
The Mar faded away as the Drakes drowned. Spiny-tailed died first, then jabber, and finally the striped guer, who could brace themselves for some time but tired. The river ran with fire as it funneled its writhing, screaming load into the traps.
“They didn’t expect that,” Brok said dryly.
“I’m not complainin’,” Bui told him, unable to resist grinning broadly. He turned to a relay. “Tell Arn that was great work.”
The relay ran to comply even as another arrived, breathless.
“Some of Arn’s didn’t make it out in time.”
“How many?” Bui asked.
“He’s still countin’, but at least twenty, so far.”
Twenty Mar compared to a lakeful of Drakes. Any general would consider that a bargain.
“Sen’ some ‘depts downstream to fish out their bodies. I’d like to burn as many as they can fin’. We’ll remem’er their sacrifice.”
The relay nodded and ran west.
Bui gave orders to rebuild what traps they could while keeping an eye on the edge of the Drake army for their next charge. The enemy waited just long enough for the Lapis to return almost to normal, and then the trumpeting began.
The splash of the first thousand howling jabbers sent a chill down Bui’s spine.
We can stand and hold them off, or we can turn and run. But I don’t know what’s behind me right now.
“Glovers, stren’then the traps. Guardians, be ready to push them.”
Rank after rank of Drake pushed into the river and died — each pushed into the traps by the rank behind it, all the way to the rear of the army.
“More than half the gloves’re gone,” reported one of the runners.
“Striped guer’ve crossed the river three miles east,” reported another.
“Brin’ all the ‘depts to the fortifications,” Bui ordered. “We’re goin’ to run soon, an’ I don’t want to leave anyone behin’.”
The guer had reached the guardians’ walls on the south bank. Soon, they broke through the line in half a dozen places, forcing the draxi to resort to spears, knives and desperate fire magic to close the breaches.
“Th’east flank’s collapsin’!” a breathless runner told him.
“We’ve spotted stingers comin’ from the west,” warned another. “They must’ve crossed out of sight downstream.”
“Let’s leave,” Bui said. We should’ve left after the first wave. “South. Leave traps to slow them.”
Another runner arrived from the eastern flank. “The Drakes’ve turned the other way. They’re goin’ east, now.”
Bui raised an eyebrow but didn’t rescind his first order.
What are they doing?
The adepts had begun to evacuate, leaving a trail of traps in their wake. When they were several miles south of the Lapis Amnis, Bui ordered a head count. They had only lost twenty adepts. The best estimate of Drake casualties was close to five thousand.
Without magic, we couldn’t have hoped for battles as successful these have been. We can attack our enemies with impunity and escape before they ever come close to us. Every battle, they must storm a fortress made of fire.
The draxi turned east, moving quickly using Mobility. Abruptly, they found themselves looking upon a column of adepts armed with wands and spears marching north.
Bui sighed in unmistakable relief, and many of the draxi wept openly in their joy.
The Mardux has come, and he has brought us reinforcements.
* * *
Without the reconnaissance stones, the wizards would have lost the Duxy of Flasten. The ochres were perfectly camouflaged and able to shape themselves as if made of soft clay, which, as far as Horsa could tell, was exactly what they were. Torutsen by itself wouldn’t allow the weards to see them, for whatever part of the ochres was alive was buried deep enough under their muddy coats to conceal the dispersion of myst. Horsa had been able to modify the recon stones to track them, though, and now the ochres fled from their path.
Many Mar would go hungry until the next crop of wild rice could be planted and harvested, however. To eliminate the ochres lurking beneath the water, the wizards had boiled away hundreds of marshes and wild rice fields, leaving only steaming patches of scorched, cracked clay. Even the Teleport War had not created such total devastation in the areas it touched, but the wizards could tell from the lack of friendly casualties and the vanishing number of ochre motes on the recon stones that they were winning.
They had met no Mar in two spans of sporadic clashes with the ochres. Every town was empty, and the decomposing corpses were too few to account for all the disappearances. Ragnar seemed certain that the mundanes had fled ahead of the ochre invasion. The strange Drakes were disconcertingly difficult to fight without magic, after all.
Horsa had his doubts, though he prayed desperately that they were unfounded.
The army of more than thirty thousand wizards came within sight of Flasten Palus. This was the first place any refugees were likely to go.
“Weard Verifien, recon the city. I want a full account of its condition,” Ragnar said.
Horsa nodded and did as he was told — obedient as he had sworn to be.
“There are no signs of magical defenses, Dux Groth. No ochres, either.” On a hunch, Horsa made one more sweep of Flasten Palus. “No Mar, either — at least no living ones.”
Ragnar frowned. “Set the recon stone for regular sweeps of the surrounding area and leave it here to help our sentries keep watch. Weard Verifien, I am bringing you and a hundred of my magocrats with me into Flasten Palus. I cannot wait until tomorrow to learn what has happened to my city. The rest of the army wil
l make camp here for the night. Keep a sharp watch. There could still be ochres in the area.”
“Not within nine miles,” Horsa reminded him. “And ochres do not move quickly. Set sentries, as well. The reconnaissance stone can be fooled by enemy wizards, but only an enchanter can completely hide from enemy eyes.”
“Agreed.”
Ragnar gave orders to the wizards. Soon, the army’s fires burned everywhere on the open marsh. When the generals were satisfied that the rest of the army could operate without them for a while, Horsa, Ragnar and eleven nonagons disappeared into the Tempest.
Flasten Palus’s southern gate hung open. Several dozen Mar corpses lined both sides of the dirt road that led to the entrance as if they had been moved out of the path of a marching army. Scavengers had already rendered it impossible for Horsa to guess at a specific cause of death, though most showed battlefield injuries of some kind — a twisted neck, a severed head, a missing limb and even one whose torso faced the opposite way from his feet.
“Still reconning, Weard Verifien?” Ragnar murmured.
Horsa reconned but found nothing — no Mar, no ochre, no Drakes of any kind. He said as much to Weard Groth. The news relaxed the dux no more than it had relaxed him.
The wizards cautiously entered the city. Flasten Palus looked nothing at all like Domus Palus. Mud daub and sod huts dominated, but there were a few wooden structures here and there. The outer wall was little more than a very large palisade, and Horsa knew the central keep was yet ahead.
It has more in common with Rustiford than with Domus Palus, he reflected. In fact, Rustiford probably has more wooden buildings than Flasten Palus. The city is just bigger.
“Split into nonagons and spread out,” Ragnar said. “Look for signs of what might have happened here and where the people might have gone. Weard Verifien, you are still with me. We will head for the ruins of the keep.”
Ruins? It must have been destroyed before the ochres reached it.
Groups of wizards wound through the streets and away from each other. Horsa, Ragnar and a nonagon of Flasten magocrats walked down the central street — if a trampled dirt path a couple of paces wide could be called a street. The corpses piled up outside the gates were not the only signs of struggle they saw. The stench of death that hung in the air was strong enough to make some of the wizards sick, and none of them talked about food. Weapons and corpses were strewn helter-skelter wherever they went, but the dead were all Mar — some wizards, but mostly mundanes. Huts had been burned down in some places, though the fires had long since gone out.
Burned by the attackers or by the defenders? Horsa wondered.
They reached a small public square, and Horsa almost gagged at the sight and smell. The ground a hundred feet across was covered in dried blood, and someone had raised a pile of corpses at the center of the square. Decomposition had already begun, but Horsa could tell that these were no victims of battle. There were no weapons in the area, and the victims in the pile appeared to be mostly old men and women. Many looked like they had been savaged by the sharp teeth of some large predator.
“Ochres do not leave marks like those,” one of the greens pointed out.
No one responded. They didn’t need to. Everyone feared they knew exactly what was responsible for this carnage.
Damnens.
“Burn it,” Ragnar growled.
“Dux Groth, won’t that just attract their attention?” asked an auburn.
“Do it. I am not in the habit of letting dead Mar rot.”
The wizards summoned fire and turned the pile of corpses into a funeral pyre.
“Weard Verifien, will you give us a prayer?” the dux asked.
Horsa did not respond right away, surprised as he was by the request in such grim surroundings. He nodded to acknowledge he had heard and tried to compose himself.
“Watch over us, my fellow Mar,” Horsa murmured to the sparks and thick smoke that rose up from the pile. “Shelter us with your darkness and guide us with your light. By your sacrifice, we are warmed. By your sacrifice, we can see. By your...”
A snort from one of the huts at the edge of the square interrupted him — a sound like laughter but lacking any human mirth.
“To arms!” Ragnar snapped, drawing his marsord.
Horsa had his marsord out an instant later, and the nine wizards with them were not slow to ready their spears. They stood there in silence for what seemed like at least a minute, but nothing leapt out at them.
Horsa reconned and found no Drakes in the city. With a second quick spell, he noted that two of the nonagons had vanished, and three others had suffered losses.
“This was misguided,” he whispered to Ragnar. “We must withdraw.”
The dux had no chance to respond before a tall humanoid stepped into the square. The damnen had a body that looked like a shadow and claws as long as knives. It snorted and strolled toward them, betraying no fear of their weapons and bright cloaks.
Ragnar stood his ground, but his magocrats shied away from the dread Drake, pushing Horsa back with them. A sudden wall of fire sprang up in front of the damnen as one of the wizards panicked, but it vanished when the creature ran through it.
“Look out!” Horsa shouted at Ragnar, but it was no use.
The damnen passed through the fire without a mark on it. Ragnar lashed out with his marsord, but the damnen parried it at the hilt, knocking the weapon out of his hand. A small line of crimson appeared on Ragnar’s wrist where one claw had grazed it. Before anyone could react, the damnen grabbed the red by the neck and lifted him off the ground.
The Flasten wizards rushed forward to strike it with spears, but the damnen did not wait for them to engage it, fleeing with surprising speed. One thrown spear grazed its thigh as it ran, but no other came close as it widened the gap between itself and its pursuers. Two of the wizards used magic to keep pace, moving out of sight of their companions in seconds. Only the muffled cries informed Horsa that they had caught up with their prey.
One damnen did not kill everyone in Flasten Palus. If there are damnens here but no Mar survivors, either the Drakes killed everyone in Flasten Palus or they have taken prisoners.
Mar told terrifying stories about the fates of those whom the damnens took prisoner, and Horsa did not intend to learn the truth of them first-hand. He called the myst and escaped into the Tempest, only belatedly realizing he was leaving a hundred wizards to die.
* * *
Katla did not wait quietly in the Delegates’ tent city for an end to the war. Her incessant lobbying made few friends and more enemies, but most of the words she planted led to dissension between the delegates, which was all to the good.
She had started with the spiny-tailed guer, who wanted a swift and easy war with the Mar and not the agonizing sacrifices she had promised on Sven’s behalf. By this point, they could see that was not going to happen.
Most of the Hue — those gobbels from the Morden Moors — had gone to invade the Takraf Protectorates along with the Nineteenth Wave of the Mass, but they had left a hundred of their best warriors with Katla, ostensibly to protect her from stinger coercion in future meetings of the Delegates, though she noted that they were quick to point out the advantages of supporting the Hue in every meeting since she had supported their attack on the Protectorates.
The Gue delegate spent most meetings opposing any measure the ravits — and especially the Koh — supported, even though his lone vote had no weight compared to the ten votes carried by the ravits and their insero allies. The jabber guer seemed largely uninterested in her, though they seemed glad to fight a Mar civilization worthy of their race’s glorious reputation and had mobilized their forces more eagerly than any other Drake race.
Katla knew Doh Zue Sah — the leader of the Delegates — did not trust her, but it was impossible to read the striped guer’s reptilian features for any sign beyond her tendency to find arguments against anything Katla said, even if the guer ultimately supported the Mar when it
came to a vote.
I wonder if she trusted Brack more.
Katla almost pitied every Drake tribe that had no delegate present for the meetings of the last few months. Whenever the Delegates needed someone to do an unpleasant or impossible task, they immediately handed it to a tribe that lacked a representative to protest. The spiny-tailed guer delegates were the worst offenders by far — quick to find excuses for delays in the mobilization of their tribes’ shares of the Waves. The jabber guer were bad in their own way, but rather than avoiding battle, they seemed eager to place their warriors in battle.
The stinger delegates waste no time in delegating the dirty work to other tribes, Katla mused.
A spiny-tailed guer arrived in her tent with a vial — her regular dose of morutsen, which was the only thing preventing her from slaughtering the Delegates or escaping to inform the Mar of the limits of the Mass’s intelligence. Even with insero-mounted ravit messengers, it took a month or more for any information to get to a Wave from the Delegates, and Katla suspected any messages the Waves sent back took just as long.
Katla seized the container and drank without comment, but she instantly had to force herself not to screw up her face in surprise. She eyed the departing stinger, looking for some mark of its tribe but found none.
One of the spiny-tailed guer tribes is preventing them from dosing me with morutsen, and they’re being subtle about it. But which tribe and why?
Katla had little time to consider the possibilities, much less how she should react, before another spiny-tailed guer arrived.
“The Delegates call Yee Ka Lah to the Delegates’ Tent for a meeting,” the guer said.
“Did they mention the subject of the meeting?” Katla asked as she rose to follow him.
“Word has reached the delegate of the Ko that the Twenty-first Wave has been mobilized and awaits the Delegates’ instructions for its deployment.”
Katla tried to remember the composition of the Twenty-first Wave, but it eluded her for most of the walk to the Delegates’ Tent. She was only ten paces from her destination when the realization struck her.
The Twenty-first Wave is made up of ravits mounted on insero, and is no smaller than any other wave.
Suddenly, the Mass’s shortage of military intelligence did not seem like such a handicap.