He had outrun the Captal, almost flying into the arms of the eastern barons, who were pursuing Sir Andvbur Kimberlin, then had
made
a way to the side, out of the inescapable trap of a box canyon. At least, his enemies had thought it inescapable.
While they had taken the measure of one another and he had goaded them into fighting, his men had cut stairs up the canyon wall. Abandoning everything but weapons, they had climbed out one by one. Meanwhile, with a few Trolledyngjans and Itaskians, Ragnarson had harassed the Captal’s surviving Shinsaners so they wouldn’t get the best of the barons.
The desultory, constricted, unimaginative combat between pretenders had taken four days to resolve itself. The barons had had numbers, the Captal sorcery and men fanatically devoted to his child-pretender.
Ragnarson felt that, this time, he had won a decisive victory. He had won time. The Captal couldn’t muster new forces before winter sealed the Gap. The succession might be determined by spring. And the eastern Nordmen had been crushed. For the moment he and Volstokin commanded the only major forces in Kavelin. If he moved swiftly, while winter prevented external interests from aiding favorites, he could fulfill his commission.
And he could return to Elana.
If Haroun would let him. What Haroun’s plans were, he didn’t know.
He had sent his men up the stone stairs, over mountains, and into the Gap behind the barons. The animals and equipment he had abandoned had become bait. They had rushed to the plunder.
Ragnarson’s captains, led by Blackfang, had struck savagely. In bitter fighting they had closed the canyon behind the Nordmen. Bragi and a small group had held the stairs against a repeat of his own escape.
There was no water in that canyon. Ragnarson’s animals had already devoured the sparse forage. The arrowstorm, once the mouth narrows had been secured, had been impenetrable. The Nordmen had had no choice.
There had been more to it, as there was to all stories: heroism of men pushing themselves beyond believed limits; inspired leadership by Blackfang, Ahring, Altenkirk, and Sir Andvbur; and unsuspected bits of character surfacing.
Ragnarson studied Sir Andvbur. His judgment of the young knight’s coolness and competence had proven out during Kimberlin’s operation around the headwaters of the Ebeler. Under him, the Wessons had shown well against the barons, particularly during disengagement and withdrawal.
But the first thing he had done, after getting his troops safely into the box canyon, had been to throw a tantrum.
“Both leaders think they can handle us later,” he had said.
“You sound bitter.”
“I am. Colonel, you haven’t lived with their arrogance. Kavelin is the richest country in the Lesser Kingdoms, and that’s not just in wealth and resources. There’re fortunes in human potential here. But you find Wesson, Siluro, and Marena Dimura geniuses plowing, emptying chamberpots, and eating grubs in the forests. They’re not allowed anything else. Meantime, Nordmen morons are pushing Kavelin toward disaster. You think it’s historical pressure that has the lower classes rebelling? No. It’s because of the blind excesses of my class… Men like Eanred Tarlson could help make this kingdom decent for everybody. But they never get anywhere. Unless, like Tarlson, they obtain Royal favor. It’s frustrating. Infuriating.”
Ragnarson had made no comment at the time.
He hadn’t realized that Sir Andvbur had a Cause. He decided he had best keep an eye on the man.
Blackfang and Ahring took seats beside him. “We should get the hell out before Shinsan tries for a rematch,” said Haaken. “But there ain’t nobody here who could walk a mile.”
“Not much choice, then, is there? Why worry?”
Blackfang shrugged.
“What about the prisoners?” Ahring asked.
“Won’t have them long. We’re going to Vorgreberg.” He glanced up. The sky was nasty again. There had been cold rain off and on since his withdrawal from Maisak. It was getting on time to worry about wintering the army.
Two days later, as he returned to the march, the Marena Dimura brought him a young messenger.
“Wouldn’t be related to Eanred Tarlson, would you?” Bragi asked, as he broke Royal seals.
“My father, sir.”
“You’re Gjerdrum, eh? Your father said you were at university.”
“I came home when the trouble started. I knew he’d need help. Especially if anything happened to him.”
“Eh?” But he had begun reading.
His orders were to hasten to Vorgreberg and assume the capital’s defense. Tarlson had been gravely wounded in a battle with Volstokin. The foreigners were within thirty miles of the city.
“Tell her I’m on my way,” he said.
The boy rode off, never having dismounted. Ragnarson wondered if he could get there in time. The rain would complicate river crossings in the lowlands. And Tarlson’s injuries might cost the Queen the support he brought her by force of personality. He might lead his men to an enemy city. “Haaken! Ahring! Altenkirk! Sir Andvbur!”
ii) Travels with the enemy
“Woe! Am foolest of fools,” Mocker mumbled over and over.
The dungeon days had stretched into weeks, a parade of identical bores. Kirsten had forgotten him due to other pressures. Those he could judge only by his guards. Always sullen and vicious, they became worse whenever the Breitbarth fortunes waned. News arrived only when another subversive was imprisoned.
One day the turnkeys vanished. Every available man had been drafted to resist Volstokin’s perfidy.
After crushing resistance, Vodicka visited the dungeons. Mocker tried to appear small in his corner. The Volstokiners were hunting someone. And he had had a premonition.
“This one,” he heard.
He looked up. A tall, lean, angular man with a wide scar down one cheek considered him with eyes of cold jade. Vodicka. Beside him was another lean man, shorter, dusky, with high, prominent cheekbones and a huge, hawklike nose. He wore black. His eyes were like those of a snake.
Inwardly, Mocker groaned. A shaghûn.
“Hai!” He bounced up with a broad grin. “Great King arrives in nick to rescue faithful servant from mouldering death in dungeon of perfidious ally. Breitbarth is treacher, great lord. Was plotting treason from beginning…”
They ignored him.
Mocker sputtered, fumed, and told some of his tallest lies. Vodicka’s men put him in chains and led him away. No one explained why.
But he could guess. They knew him. He had done El Murid many small embarrassments. There was the time he had sweet-talked/kidnapped the man’s daughter. There was the time he had convinced an important general that he could reveal a shortcut through the Kapenrungs, and had led the man into an army-devouring ambush.
Still, daylight seen from chains was sweeter than dungeon darkness. And at least an illusion of a chance to escape existed.
He could have gotten away. Escape tricks were among his talents. But he saw a chance to lurk on the fringe of the enemy’s councils.
He got to see a lot of daylight—and moonlight, starlight, and weather—the next few months, while Volstokin’s drunken giant of an army lumbered about Kavelin’s western provinces. Vodicka wanted his prizes near him always, but never comfortable.
Mocker didn’t get along with his fellow prisoners. They were Nordmen, gentlemen who had barely paid their ransoms to Bragi’s agents when taken by Vodicka.
Ragnarson had won himself a low, black place in Vodicka’s heart. He had already plundered the best from Ahsens, Dolusich, Gaehle, Holtschlaw, and Heiderscheid provinces. Bragi’s leavings were not satisfying the levies, who had been called from their homes for a campaign that would last past harvest time.
Vodicka kept escalating his promises to keep his army from evaporating.
Mocker wished he could get out among the troops. The damage he could talk… But his guards, now, were men of Hammad al Nakir. They were deaf to words not approved by their shaghûn.
His chance to escape had passed him by.
The looting improved in Echtenache and Rubbelke, though there a price in blood had to be paid. In Rubbelke, sixty miles west of Vorgreberg and fifteen north of the caravan route, a thousand Nordmen met Volstokin on the plains before Woerheide.
Vodicka insisted that his prisoners watch. His pride still stung from the difficulty he had had forcing the Armstead ford.
Vodicka was more talented at diplomacy and intrigue than at war, but refused to admit his shortcomings.
Tons of flesh and steel surged together in long, thunderous waves amidst storms of dust and swirling autumn leaves. Swords like lightning flashed in the thunderheads of war; the earth received a rain of blood and broken blades and bodies.
Volstokin’s knights began to flee. Enraged, Vodicka prepared to sacrifice his infantry.
Mocker watched with delight and game-fan commentary. The Nordmen had no infantry of their own. Unhorsed, without the protection of footmen, they would be easy prey for Volstokin’s more mobile men-at-arms.
The shaghûn asked Vodicka to hold the infantry. He would turn the tide.
Mocker had encountered many wizards. This one was no mountain-mover, but was superior for a survivor of El Murid’s early anti-sorcery program. If he were an example of what the Disciple had been developing behind the Sahel, the west was in for some wicked surprises.
He conjured bears from smoke, unnaturally huge monsters misty about the edges but fanged and clawed like creatures bred only to kill. The Nordmen recognized them harmless, but their mounts were impressed beyond control. They broke, many throwing their riders in their panic.
“Now your infantry,” said the shaghûn.
“Woe,” Mocker mumbled, “am doomed. Am condemned to hopelessest of hopeless plights. Will never see home of self again.” His fellow prisoners watched him curiously. They had never understood his presence. He had done nothing to enlighten them. But he had learned from them.
He knew who planned to betray whom, and when and how, and the most secret of their changing alliances. But Mocker suspected their scheming no longer mattered. Vodicka’s and Bragi’s armies were the real powers in Kavelin now.
Vodicka’s leadership remained indecisive. Twenty miles from Vorgreberg he went into camp. He seemed to be waiting for something.
What came was not what he wanted. From his seat outside Vodicka’s pavilion, Mocker listened to the King’s curses when he discovered that the Queen’s Own, though inferior in numbers, were upon him. While the surprise attack developed, Vodicka and the shaghûn argued about why Tarlson was so confident.
Mocker learned why they had been waiting.
They were expecting another Siluro uprising.
But Tarlson should have anticipated that possibility. Had he rounded up the ringleaders?
Mocker supposed that Tarlson, aware of his position, had elected to rely on boldness and speed.
He brought his horsemen in hard and fast, with little armor to slow them. From the beginning it was obvious he was only mounting a raid in force.
Yet it nearly became a victory. Tarlson’s men raged through the camp, trailing slaughter and fire. One detachment made off with cattle and horses, another drove for the Royal pavilion.
Mocker saw Tarlson at their head, shouted them on. But Vodicka’s house troops and the shaghûn’s bodyguards were hardened veterans.
The shaghûn crouched in the pavilion entryway, chanting over colored smokes. If there had ever been a time for a Mocker trick, this was it. He had begun to despair of ever winning free. He wracked his brain. It had to be something that wouldn’t get him killed if he failed.
A not-too-kind fate saved him the trouble.
A wild thrust by a dying spearman slipped past Tarlson’s shield and found a gap behind his breastplate. The Wesson plunged from his saddle. With the broken spear still protruding, he surged to his feet.
A youth on a big gray, hardly more than a boy, came on like a steel-edged storm, drove the Volstokiners back, dragged Eanred up behind him. Tarlson’s troops screened his withdrawal.
In minutes it was over, the raiders come and gone like a bitter breath of winter wind. Mocker wasn’t sure who had won. Vodicka’s forces had suffered heavily, but the Queen’s men might have lost their unifying symbol…
Mocker reassumed his muddy throne. His future didn’t seem bright. He would probably die of pneumonia in a few weeks.
“Ignominious end for a great hero of former times,” he told his companions. He cast a promising, speculative glance the shaghûn’s way.
iii) Reinforcements for Ragnarson
Two hundred men sat horses shagged with winter’s approach, forming a column of gray ragged veterans remaining death-still. The chill wind whipped their travel cloaks and pelted them with flurries of dead leaves while promising sleet for the afternoon. There were no young men among them. From beneath battered helmets trailed strands predicting life’s winter. Scars on faces and armor whispered of ancient battles won in wars now barely remembered. Not one of that hard-eyed catch of survivors wore a name unknown.
From distant lands they had come in their youth to march with the Free Companies during El Murid’s wars, and now they were men without homes or homelands, wanderers damned to eternal travel in search of wars. Before them, a hundred yards away, beyond the Kavelin-Altean border, stood fifty men-at-arms in the livery of Baron Breitbarth. They were Wessons, levies still scratching where their new mail chafed, warriors only by designation.
Rolf Preshka coughed into his hand. Blood flecked the phlegm. Paroxysms racked him till tears came to his eyes.
From his right, Turran asked, “You okay?”
Preshka spat. “I’ll be all right.”
On Preshka’s left, Valther resumed sharpening his sword. Each time they halted, sword and whetstone made soft, deadly music. Valther’s eyes sought something beyond the eastern horizon.
Preshka waved a hand overhead.
The column took on metallic life. The mercenaries spread out. Shields and weapons came battle-ready.
The boys beyond the border saw their scars and battered arms, and the dark hollows where the shadows of the wings of death had passed across their eyes. They could cipher the numbers. They shook. But they didn’t back down.
“Be a shame to kill them,” said Turran.
“Murder,” Preshka agreed.
“Where’re their officers? Nordmen might be less stubborn.”
The
scrape scrape
of Valther’s whetstone carried during a lull in the wind. The Kaveliners shuddered.
Rolf turned. Several places to his right were three old Itaskians still carrying the shields of Sir Tury Hawkwind’s White Company. “Lother. Nothomb. Wittekind. Put a few shafts yonder. Don’t hurt anybody.” Qualifications for the White Company had included an ability to split a willow wand at two hundred paces.
The three dismounted. From well-oiled leather cases they drew the bows that were their most valued possessions, weapons from the hand of Mintert Rensing, the acknowledged master of the bowmaker’s trade. They grumbled together, picking targets, judging the breeze.
As one three shafts sped invisibly swift, feathered the heads of leopards in the coats of arms on three tall shields.
The Kaveliners understood. Reluctantly, they laid down their arms.
Preshka coughed, sighed, signaled the advance.
East of Damhorst he encountered a band of Kildragon’s foragers. They were lean men with a few scrawny chickens. The larders of twice-plundered Nordmen were growing empty; Kildragon wouldn’t permit looting the underclasses. Since Armstead, Reskird had been fighting a guerrilla campaign from the Bodenstead forest, hanging on even after his enemies had given up trying to hunt him down. He had lost a third of his Itaskians, but had replaced them several times over with Wessons and Marena Dimura. He and Preshka joined forces, continued along the caravan route toward Vorgreberg. Other than Volstokin’s army there was no force strong enough to resist
them. The Nordmen had collapsed.
Preshka wondered where Bragi was. Somewhere deep in the east at last rumor. After Lake Berberich, Lieneke, and Sedlmayr, he had disappeared.
Rolf moved fast, avoiding conflict. There was little resistance. The faces he saw in the ruined towns and castles had had all the fight washed out. He always explained that he was bringing the Queen’s peace. His force grew, as angry, defeated, directionless soldiers abandoned the Nordmen for the Queen.
He passed south of Woerheide, heard the peasants mumbling about sorcery. It was chilling. What did this shaghûn have in his bag of tricks?
And where was Haroun? As much as anyone, bin Yousif was responsible for events in Kavelin. His dark ways were needed now. But there was hardly a rumor of the man.
Then came news of Tarlson’s action near Vorgreberg, and of the Queen’s forces wavering while mobs bloodied the streets of the capital.
And still no news of Bragi beyond a rumored baronial force having pursued him into the Savernake Gap.
When Preshka’s scouts first reported contact with Volstokin’s foragers, Rolf told Turran, “We can’t handle Vodicka by ourselves.” He considered his mercenaries. They had come on speculation, on the basis of his reputation. Would they fight?
“We can distract him,” Turran said. “Eat up small forces.”
Valther sharpened his sword and stared eastward. Hints of mountain peaks could be seen when weather permitted.
“He’s been dallying for months,” Reskird observed. “Should’ve driven straight to Vorgreberg.”
“Was it his idea?”
“Eh?”
“El Murid’s people might’ve conned him. So he’ll be too unpopular to rule once he’s done their catspawing. Want to bet there’s a Siluro candidate in the wings, waiting till Bragi’s been disposed of?”
“Might take some disposing,” Kildragon observed. “He’s beaten Volstokin before.”
“This mob’s got a shaghûn. A first-rater, you can bet.”
“We haven’t reached a decision,” Turran interjected.