“Why, damnit? He was my friend.”
“Maybe because they have his son.” The wizard’s examination wasn’t gentle. “I had a son once…”
“Damnit, man, don’t open me up.”
“… but I think he died in an alley in Throyes. The Curse of the Golmunes again. But for Ethrian he wouldn’t be lying there now.”
Wachtel bustled in. He checked Mocker’s pulse, dug in his bag, produced a bottle, soaked a ball of wool, told Haaken, “Hold this under his nose.” He turned to Bragi.
“Get hot water. Have to clean him before I sew.” He poked and probed. “You’ll be all right. A few stitches, a few weeks in bed. It’ll be tender for a while, Marshall.”
“What about Mocker?”
“Neck’s broken. But he’s still alive. Probably be better off dead.”
“How come?”
“I can’t help him. No one could. I could only keep him alive.”
While Wachtel washed, stitched, and bandaged Bragi, Varthlokkur reexamined Mocker carefully. Finally, he ventured, “He won’t recover. He’ll stay a vegetable. And I don’t think you’ll keep him that healthy long. You’ll have trouble feeding him without severing his spinal cord.” His tone betrayed his anguish, his despair.
Wachtel also reexamined Mocker. He could neither add to nor dispute Varthlokkur’s prognosis.
“He’d be better off if we finish him,” the wizard said. His eyes were moist. His voice quavered.
Bragi, the doctor, and Haaken exchanged looks.
Ragnarson couldn’t think straight. Crazy notions kept hurtling through his mind…
Mocker twitched. Weird noises gurgled from his throat. Wachtel soaked another ball of wool, knelt.
The others exchanged glances again.
“Damnit, I’ll do it!” Haaken growled. There was no joy in him. He drew a dagger.
“No!” Varthlokkur snapped. His visage would have intimidated a basilisk.
“I’m the doctor,” said Wachtel.
“No,” the wizard repeated, more gently. “He’s my son. Let it be on my head.”
“No,” Ragnarson countered. “You can’t. Think about Nepanthe and Ethrian.” He struggled up. “I’ll do it. Let her hate me… She’s more likely to listen if it was me… Doctor, do you have something gentle?”
“No,” said Varthlokkur.
“It has to be done?” Bragi surveyed faces. Haaken shrugged. Wachtel agreed reluctantly. Varthlokkur nodded, shook his head, nodded, shrugged.
“You men,” Ragnarson growled at the soldiers who had come with Haaken and the wizard. “If you value your lives, you’ll never forget that he was dead when you got here. Understood?”
He knelt, grunting. The cuts were getting sensitive. “Doctor, give me something.”
Wachtel reluctantly took another bottle from his bag. He continued digging.
“Hurry, man. I’ve got a battle to get to. And I’m about to lose my nerve.”
“Battle? You’re not going anywhere for a couple weeks.” Wachtel produced tweezers. “Lay one crystal on his tongue. It’ll take about two minutes.”
“I’ll be at the fight. If somebody has to carry me. I’ve got to hit back or go mad.”
He fumbled the little blue crystal three times.
Ragnarson stared across the Spehe at Norbury. Tears still burned his cheeks. He had scourged himself by walking all the way. His wounds ached miserably.
Wachtel had warned him. He should have listened.
He glanced up. It might rain. He surveyed Norbury again. It was a ghost town. The inhabitants had fled.
He fretted, waiting for his scouting reports. The Marena Dimura were prowling the banks of the Lynn.
Again he considered the nearer bridge. It was a stout stone construction barely wide enough for an ox cart. A good bottleneck.
Behind him archers and infantry talked quietly. Haaken and Reskird roamed among them, keeping their voices down. Up the Spehe, Jarl and the Queen’s Own waited to ford the river and hit the enemy’s rear.
If he came.
Not today, Ragnarson thought as the sun settled into the hills of Moerschel. “Ragnar, tell the commanders to let the men pitch camp.”
He was still standing there, ignoring his pain, when the moon rose, peeping through gaps in scurrying clouds. It was nearly full. Leaning on a spear, he looked like a weary old warrior guarding a forest path.
Trebilcock, Dantice, and Colonel Liakopulos joined him. No one said anything. This was no time to impose.
Mostly he relived his companionship with Mocker and Haroun. They, with the exception of Haaken and Reskird, had been his oldest friends. And the relationship with his fellow Trolledyngjans hadn’t been the same. Haaken and Reskird were quieter souls, part-time companions always there when he called. There had been more life, more passion, and a lot less trust with the other two.
He reviewed old adventures, when they were young and couldn’t believe they weren’t immortal.
They had been happier then, he decided. Beholden to none, they had been free to go where and do what they pleased. Even Haroun had shown little interest in his role of exiled king.
“Somebody’s coming,” Trebilcock whispered.
A runner zipped across the gap between village and stream. He splashed into the river.
“Get him, Michael.”
Trebilcock returned with a Marena Dimura. “Colonel Marisal, he comes, The Desert Rider, yes. Thousands. Many thousands, quiet, pads on feets of his horses, yes.”
“Michael, Aral, Colonel, pass the word. Kill the fires. Everyone up to battle position. But quietly, damn it. Quietly.” Of the scout, “How far?”
“Three miles. Maybe two now. Slow. No scouts out to give away.”
“Uhm.” Badalamen was cunning. Bragi looked up. The gaps in the clouds were larger. There would be light for the bowmen.
“Ragnar. Run and tell Jarl I want him to start moving right away.” Ahring’s task would be difficult. His mounts wouldn’t like going into action at night.
The men had barely gotten into position. Shadows were moving in the town. El Murid’s horsemen came, leading their mounts. Soon they were piling up at the bridge.
Ragnarson was impressed with Badalamen. His maneuver seemed timed to reach Vorgreberg at sunrise.
A hundred men had crossed. Ragnarson guessed three times that would have crossed upriver. Five hundred or so had piled up on the south bank here.
“Now!”
Arrows hit the air with a sound like a thousand quail flushing. Two thousand bowmen pulled to their cheeks and released as fast as they could set nock to string.
The mob at the bridge boiled. Horses screamed. Men cursed, moaned, cried questions. In moments half were down. Fifteen seconds later the survivors scattered, trying to escape through brethren still coming from the town.
“Haaken!” Bragi shouted. “Go!”
Blackfang’s Vorgrebergers hit the chill Spehe. Miserably soaked, they seized the far bank, formed up to prevent those already over the bridge from returning. Once bowmen joined them they forced it, compelling the horsemen to withdraw upstream or swim back.
Badalamen reacted quickly.
Horsemen swept from the village in a suicidal, headlong charge, startling the infantrymen screening Haaken’s bridgehead. Arrows flew on both sides. More horses went down by stumbling than by enemy action.
Another force swept up the north bank of the Lynn, against the Kaveliners there.
The south bank riders hit the thin lines protecting the Spehe crossing, broke through. The arrows couldn’t get them all.
The struggle became a melee. Ragnarson’s troops, unaccustomed to reverses, wavered.
“Reskird!” Bragi called. “Don’t send anyone else over. Spread out. Cover them if they break.” With Liakopulos, Dantice, and Trebilcock helping, he scattered his forces along the bank, made sure the archers kept plinking. Victory or defeat depended on Ahring now.
Across the river Haaken Blackfang bawled like a
wounded bull, by sheer thunder and force of will kept the Vorgrebergers steady. He seemed to be everywhere.
Something drifted down from the north. It glowed like a small moon, had something vaguely human within it…
The fighting sputtered. Both sides, awed, watched the Unborn. Here, there, El Murid’s captains silently toppled from their saddles.
Haaken started bellowing again. He took the fight to the enemy.
A huge man on a giant of a stallion cantered from the village. In the moonlight and glow of the Unborn, Ragnarson saw him clearly. “Badalamen,” he guessed. He was surprised. The man didn’t wear Tervola costume.
His appearance rallied his men. Ragnarson yelled at his bowmen. Some complained they were short of arrows.
“It’s in the balance,” he told Trebilcock. “Tell Reskird to send more men over.”
Radeachar and Haaken cleared the west bank again. The Midlanders didn’t have to fight their way ashore.
“Wish I could get my hands on that bastard,” Ragnarson said of Badalamen. The reinforcements hadn’t made much difference. Badalamen’s men were, once more, confident of their invincibility, of their god-given destiny.
For Radeachar had attacked the eldritch general with no more effect than a bee stinging the flank of an elephant. Badalamen had hardly noticed. His only response was to have archers plink at the Unborn’s protective sphere.
Soon, despite their numbers, the Kaveliners were again on the verge of breaking.
Then Ahring arrived.
Not at the point of greatest danger, but up the Lynn, at the other bridge.
He led with his heavy cavalry. His light came behind and on his flanks. The knights and sergeants in heavy plate were unstoppable. They shattered the enemy formation, leaving the survivors to the light horse, then came against Badalamen from behind. The news reached him scarcely a minute before the charge itself.
Here Ahring had more difficulty. He was outnumbered, faced an inspired leader, and had little room to gain momentum. Nevertheless, he threw the desert riders into confusion. Haaken and Reskird took immediate advantage.
Ahring and his captains drove for Badalamen himself, quickly surrounding the mysterious general and his bodyguard.
Ragnarson laughed delightedly. His trap had closed. He had won. While his men slaughtered his enemies, he planned his march down the Lynn to relieve Gjerdrum.
In the end, though, it proved a costly victory. Though the last-gasp might of Hammad al Nakir perished, Bragi lost Jarl Ahring. Badalamen cut him down. The born general himself escaped, cutting his way through the Queen’s Own as though they were children armed with sticks.
Radeachar was unable to track him.
His entire army he abandoned to the untender mercies of Kavelin’s soldiers.
T
WENTY-NINE:
W
INTER, 1011-1012 AFE
A
D
ARK
S
TRANGER IN THE
K
INGDOM OF
D
READ
The dark man cursed constantly. The Lao-Pa Sing Pass, the Gateway to Shinsan, penetrating the double range of the Pillars of Heaven and the Pillars of Ivory, had no visible end. These mountains were as high and rugged as the Kratchnodians, and extended so much farther…
He was tired of being cold.
And damned worried. He had counted on using the Power to conceal himself in enemy territory. But there was no Power anymore. He had to slip around like a common thief.
His journey was taking longer than he had expected. The legions were active in the pass. He had to spend most of his time hiding.
When the Power had gone, he had learned, turmoil had broken loose in Shinsan, rocking the domains of several despotic Tervola. Peasants had rebelled. Shopkeepers and artisans had lynched mask-wearers. But the insurrections were localized and ineffectual. The Tervola owned swift and merciless legions. And, in most places, the ancient tyranny wasn’t intolerable.
Haroun made use of the confusion.
He traveled east without dawdling, yet days became weeks, and weeks, months. He hadn’t realized the vastness of Shinsan. He grew depressed when he reflected on the strength pent there, with its timeless tradition of manifest destiny. Nothing would stop these people if O Shing excited them, pointed them, unleashed them…
O Shing, it seemed, had hidden himself so far to the east that Haroun feared that he would reach the place where the sun rose first. Autumn became winter. Once more he trudged across snowy fields, his cloak pulled tight about him.
His horse had perished on the Sendelin Steppe. He hadn’t replaced it. Stealing anything, he felt, would be tempting Fate too much.
He had entered Lao-Pa Sing thinking the journey would last a few hundred miles at most.
His thinking had been shaped by a life in the west, where many states were smaller than Kavelin. Shinsan, though, spanned not tens and hundreds, but thousands of miles. Through each he had to march unseen.
In time he reached Liaontung. There, based on the little he understood of Shinsan’s primary dialect, he should find O Shing. And where he found O Shing he should find Mocker.
In happier circumstances he might have enjoyed his visit. Liaontung was a quaint old city, like none he had seen before. Its architecture was uniquely eastern Shinsan. Its society was less structured than at the heart of the empire. A legacy of border life? Or because Wu was less devoted to absolute rule than most Tervola? Haroun understood that Wu and O Shing were relatively popular.
O Shing’s reputation didn’t fit Haroun’s preconceptions. The emperor and his intimates, Lang and Tran, seemed well known and accessible. The commons could, without fear, argue grievances with them.
Yet O Shing was O Shing, demigod master of the Dread Empire. He had been shaped by all who had gone before him. His role was subject to little personal interpretation. He had to pursue Shinsan’s traditional destinies.
He was about to move. Liaontung crawled with Tervola and their staffs. Spring would see Shinsan’s full might in motion for the first time since Mist had flung it at Escalon.
The holocaust was at hand. Only the direction of the blow remained in doubt.
O Shing favored Matayanga. Though he realized the west was weak, he resisted the arguments of the Tervola. Baxendala had made a deep impression.
Haroun hid in a wood near the city, pondering. Why did O Shing vacillate? Every day wasted strengthened his enemies.
He scouted Liaontung well before going in. Hunger finally moved him.
His eagerness for the kill had faded.
He hadn’t heard one mention of Mocker yet.
He went in at night, using rope and grapnel to scale a wall between patrols. Once in the streets he took it slow, hanging in shadows. Had it been possible, he would have traveled by the rooftops. But the buildings had steeply pitched tile roofs patched with snow and ice. Stalactites of ice hung from their ornate corners.
“Getting damned tired of being cold,” he muttered.
The main streets remained busy despite the hour. Every structure of substance seemed to have its resident Tervola. Aides rushed hither and yon.
“It’s this spring,” he mumbled. “And Bragi won’t be ready.”
He stalked the citadel, thoughts circling his son and wife obsessively. His chances of seeing them again were plummeting with every step.
Yet if he failed tonight, they would be trapped in a world owned by O Shing.
It didn’t occur to him that he
could
fail. Haroun bin Yousif never failed. Not at murder. He was too skilled, too practiced.
Faces paraded across his mind, of men he thought forgotten. Most had died by his hand. A few had perished at his direction. Beloul and El Senoussi had daggers as bloody as his own. The secret war with El Murid had been long and bloody. He wasn’t proud of everything he had done. From the perspective of the doorstep of a greater foe the Disciple didn’t look bad. Nor
did his own motives make as much sense. From today the past twenty years looked more a process of habit than of belief.
What course had Megelin charted? Rumors said there was heavy fighting at home. But that news had come through the filter of a confused war between Argon and Necremnos which had engulfed the entire Roë basin, inundating dozens of lesser cities and principalities.
Argon, rumor said, had been about to collapse when a general named Badalamen had appeared and gradually brought the Necremnens to ruin.
Haroun wondered if O Shing might not be behind that war. It was convenient for Shinsan, and he had heard that a Tervola had been seen in Argon.
He could be sure of nothing. He couldn’t handle the language well.
Liaontung’s citadel stood atop a basaltic upthrust. It was a massive structure. Its thirty-foot walls were of whitewashed brick. Faded murals and strange symbols, in places, had been painted over the whitewash.
The whole thing, Haroun saw after climbing seventy feet of basalt, was roofed. From a distance he had thought that a trick of perspective.
“Damn!” How would he get in? The gate was impossible. The stair to it was clogged with traffic.
The wall couldn’t be climbed. After a dozen failures with his grapnel he concluded that the rope trick was impossible, too. He circled the base of the fortress. There was just the one entrance.
Cursing softly, he clung to shadow and listened to the sentries. He retreated only when certain he could pronounce the passwords properly.
It was try the main entrance or go home.
He waited in the darkness behind the mouth of a narrow street. In time a lone Tervola, his size, passed.
One brief, startled gasp fled the man as Haroun’s knife drove home. Bin Yousif dragged him into the shadows, quickly appropriated his clothing and mask.
He paid no heed to the mask. He didn’t know enough to distinguish Tervola by that means.
The mask resembled a locust.
In complete ignorance he had struck a blow more devastating than that he had come to deliver.
Haroun hadn’t known that Wu existed. Nor would he have cared if he had. One Shinsaner was like another. He would shed no tears if every man, woman, and child of them fell beneath the knives of their enemies.