Ragnarson had noticed. “This’s the critical point,” he said, looking down at the still untested Alteans. “Will they hold when they realize what’s happening?”
“Back!” Mist snapped. “I need room!” The pink became scarlet flame; from it rose dense red smoke. In moments, within the smoke, an immense horned head with Stygian eyes formed. This thing was no moonscraping monster such as had loomed over the Kapenrungs, but Bragi guessed it would stand a hundred yards tall. It seemed to grow from the earth itself.
Mist stood with arms outstretched and head thrown back, screaming in a tongue so liquid that Ragnarson wasn’t sure she was using words. A strong chill wind began to blow, whipping her hair and garments.
He checked his tame sorcerers.
As the Gosik took on awesome solidity, the twelve hurled their counter-weapons. Bolts of lightning. Spears of light. Balls of fire in weird and changing colors. Stenches that enveloped the tower. A misty thing the size of several elephants that coalesced between the armies and trailed bloody slaughter through immobile legions before attaching its hundred tentacles and dozen beaked mouths to one of the Gosik’s legs...
Mist brought her hands together sharply. Down the canyon, echoing from wall to wall, ran a deafening, endless peal of thunder. Over the Gosik a diadem of lights appeared, sparks in rainbowed rings racing angrily. The diadem began to fall.
Ragnarson wasn’t sure, but from its enclosing circle, it seemed, a nebulous face as ugly as the Gosik’s glared down, swelled till all the interior was a gap through which a hungry mouth prepared to feed.
A touch of shadow crossed the parapet. A few hundred feet up, a lonely eagle patrolled, above Mist’s unnatural wind, apparently unconcerned with the human follies below. For an instant Bragi envied the bird its freedom and unconcern. Then...
He released a small, sharp gasp. For an instant the eagle flickered and was an eagle no longer. It became a man and winged horse far higher than he had thought, almost above visual discrimination. He turned to ask Turran’s opinion.
Turran had missed it. Everyone had. All attention was on the Gosik.
Every magick in the valley had perished.
The Gosik itself came apart like a crumbling brick building, chunks and dusts falling in a rain that masked O Shing’s tower. It bellowed louder than Mist’s thunder had done.
Turran groaned, clawed at his chest, staggered. Ragnarson stared, thinking it was his heart.
Mist screamed, a cry of pain and deprivation. She fell to her knees, beat her forehead against parapet stone.
“It’s gone,” Turran groaned. “The Power. It’s gone.”
The Queen tried to stop Mist. “Help me!” she snapped at the messengers.
Ragnarson leaned over the parapet. His wizards appeared to have gone insane. Several had collapsed. Most were flopping about like men in the throes of the falling sickness. The Thing sped round and round in a tight circle, chasing its own forked tail. Only Varthlokkur seemed unaffected, though he might have been a statue, so still was he as he stared at the Gosik of Aubochon.
Ragnarson looked up again. The eagle slid toward Maisak, to all appearances a raptor going about its business. He frowned. That old man again. Who was he? What? Not a god, but certainly a Power above any other the world knew.
Ragnarson’s companions remained unaware of any-thing but the sudden vacuum of sorcery. For Turran and Mist it was a loss beyond description, almost a theft of the soul.
V) Opening round
O Shing wasted no time. The legions moved. High on the Thing’s brew and Bragi’s quickly spread tale that western sorcery had conquered the eastern, the troops waited with renewed confidence.
Shinsan advanced behind a screen of Sir Andvbur’s infantry, the rebels more driven than leading the assault. Theirs was the task of neutralizing the traps. Theircasualties were heavy. Ragnarson’s bowmen had a tremendous stock of arrows, and easy targets.
Before the lines met, Ragnarson’s troops sprang one of their surprises. He had had the Alteans armed with javelins, a tactic unseen since Imperial times. Their shower reassured his troops of the foe’s mortality.
“Runner!” Ragnarson snapped. He sent orders to ready the second line.
“So much for being Shinsan’s ally,” Bragi muttered. Several thousand rebels, between his own and Shinsan’s lines, were being cut down by friend and foe.
Bragi’s first line held better than he had expected. He blessed the Thing.
The Alteans held the Third. The flanking legions, under merciless bombardment from Phiambolos’ and Kiriakos’ engines, had increasing difficulty maintaining formation.
The enemy commander sent Sir Andvbur to clear Seidentop. Karak Strabger he would not be able to reach unless the Alteans broke. Kimberlin’s men got entangled in nasty little battles in brushy ravines and around Phiambolos’ fortifications.
Ragnarson had his heliographers send a message. Altenkirk and a thousand Marena Dimura were hidden on the slopes east of Seidentop. They were to take the rebels and Sixth Legion in the rear. Ragnarson didn’t expect them to do more than keep the enemy off balance. What Ragnarson wanted most was to compel O Shing to commit his reserve. The First Legion, waiting patiently before their emperor’s tower, would be the key.
The first line wouldn’t compel its commitment. The Altean left had begun to waver. He ordered his archers withdrawn behind the second line. He didn’t want them lost in a sudden collapse. He then sent messages reminding his second-line commanders that under no circumstances were they to leave their positions to aid the first line.
The Alteans yielded slowly. The enemy wedged open their junction with the mercenaries. Altenkirk attacked. The fighting round Seidentop grew bloody. The Marena Dimura, high on the Thing’s brew, refused to be driven offtill they had taken terrible casualties. They, too, did better than Ragnarson had expected. They forced Sir Andvbur to abandon his assault. And they gave better than they got. Kimberlin’s troops were unable to pursue them. But in the meantime the Alteans had gotten split off the mercenaries. The commander of the Third Legion was ready to roll up both halves of the line.
Ragnarson expected the reserve legion to drive through the gap, against his second line. But no. O Shing held it.
“They’re burning the bridge,” Turran said from behind him. The man had recovered, though now he seemed a little insubstantial.
Bragi turned. Yes. Smoke rose from the pontoon. Haaken had either lost or won his part of the battle. There would be no knowing which for a long time yet. He wished he had arranged some signal. But he hadn’t wanted any false hopes raised or despair set loose.
The mercenary regiments began to crumble. Crowding Seidentop for its supporting fire, they withdrew. Prince Raithel tried to do the same, but had more difficulty. The fighting washed up the foot of the sugarloaf. Kiriakos couldn’t give him much support.
Ragnarson glanced at the sun. Only four hours of light left. If Shinsan took too long, the battle would stretch into a second day. For that he wasn’t prepared.
Clearly victorious, the legions disengaged, puzzling Ragnarson. Then he understood. O Shing would send the fresh legion against the center of the second line while the third backed off to the reserve position.
For a time the battlefield was clear. Bragi was awed by the carnage. It would be long remembered. There must have been twenty thousand bodies on the field, about evenly distributed. The majority of the enemy fallen were rebels.
Sickening. Ragnarson loathed the toe-to-toe slugfest. But there was no choice. A war of maneuver meant enemy victory.
O Shing allowed the legions an hour’s rest. Ragnarson didn’t interfere.
Before, the numbers had been slightly in the enemy’sfavor. This time they would be strongly in his. But his men would be greener, more likely to break.
Two and a half hours till sunset. If they held, but Haaken couldn’t carry out his mission, could he put anything together for the morrow?
It began anew. The First Legion drove it
s silent fury against Kaveliners who outnumbered it three to one. The flanking legions held Anstokin and Volstokin while strong elements of each turned on Seidentop and Karak Strabger.
The Thing’s false courage continued to work. The Kaveliners stood and continued believing their com-mander was invincible.
Ragnarson turned away after an hour. Even with the support of the most intense arrow storm Ahring could generate, Shinsan was getting the best of it.
And, redoubt by redoubt, Kiriakos and Phiambolos were being forced to yield their fortifications. By nightfall Karak Strabger would be cut off. Seidentop would be lost. Captured engines would be turned on the castle come morning.
Then he caught moving glitter at the eastern end of the marsh. It was Sir Farace and the horse, come round the marsh through the narrow strip where Haaken and Reskird had pulled a near repeat of Lake Berberich.
At first O Shing was unconcerned, perhaps thinking the column was the Captal’s returning. H ow long would it last?
A while. Long enough for Sir Farace and Blackfang to ford the Ebeler. O Shing and his Tervola were intent on the slaughter before them. Anstokin was being driven into the streets of Baxendala. The Kaveliners were being decimated, though the arrow storm was wreaking its havoc too. Volstokin was desperately trying to retain contact with Phiambolos, who had begun evacuating Seidentop. A hundred pillars of smoke rose from pyres marking abandoned engines. The main battle was lost.
“Turran.” Bragi glanced at the sun. “Can we hold till dark? Would they keep on afterwards? Or wait till dawn to finish it?”
“We can hold. But you may have to send the mercenaries and Alteans back in.”
“Right.” He sent orders to Prince Raithel to stand by.
Peering toward Sir Farace, he saw that Haaken and Reskird had brought their infantry. Blackfang had had good reason for burning the pontoon. If Sir Farace failed, there would be no one to hold the right bank. Trolledyngjans. Proud men. Fools eager, even facing incredible odds, to balance their earlier defeat at Maisak.
The knights formed hurriedly, in two long ranks. O Shing’s generals finally awakened, began to form the reserve legion facing them.
Shrieking trumpets carried over the uproar around Karak Strabger; the best knights of four kingdoms trotted toward the best infantry in the world. Haaken, Reskird, and their infantry ran at the stirrups of the second wave.
Had he known there would be no magic, Ragnarson reflected, he would have chosen a knights’ battle. It wasn’t a form of warfare with which the easterners could easily cope.
The first wave went to a canter, then a full charge, hit before the Third Legion had finished reforming.
What followed was a classic demonstration of why heavy cavalry had become the preferred shock weapon of western armies. The horsemen plowed through the enemy like heavy ships through waves, their lances shattering the front ranks, then their swords and maces smashing down from the height advantage.
Had the Shinsaners been anyone else they would have been routed. But these men stood and silently died. Like automatons they killed horses to bring knights down where their heavier armor would be a disadvantage.
The second wave hit, then the infantry. Without that second wave, Ragnarson reflected, the first might have been lost simply because the enemy didn’t have the sense to run. They would have stood, been slaughtered, and have slowly turned the thing around...
If the legionnaires would not panic, O Shing would. With trumpets and flags he began screaming for help.
Altenkirk and his Marena Dimura, now completelycut off, launched a suicide attack on Kimberlin, madesure the rebels did nothing to save the eastern emperor.
“We’ll survive the day,” Ragnarson said, spiritssoaring. He drew his sword, gathered his shield. “Time tocounter-attack.” The Tervola were trying to disengage forces to aid their emperor, who was in grave danger.
As he and his staff howled out the castle gate to join Kiriakos, Ragnarson saw that Sir Farace had shifted his attack. While the stricken Third Legion ordered itself around O Shing, Volstokin’s seneschal had wheeled his lines and charged the First from behind.
Ragnarson’s immediate reaction was anger. The man should have gone for checkmate... But he calmed himself. The knight had seen more clearly than he. O Shing was only a man. This battle was no individual’s whim, it was a playout of a nation’s aspirations. The Tervola could and would replace O Shing if necessary, and could win without him. With few exceptions their loyalties were to ideas, not men.
The sun had reached the peaks of the Kapenrungs. The slaughter continued shifting in favor of the west. The Sixth and Eighth tried to close a trap but were too weary and heavily engaged to act quickly enough. Sir Farace withdrew before the jaws closed and formed for yet another charge. Before dark all four legions had suffered the fury of the western knighthood, the sort of attack Breitbarth had meant to hurl against Ragnarson at Lieneke. The assault on Baxendala had been broken.
Shinsan disengaged in good order. Ragnarson sent riders to Haaken and Reskird, ordering them to recross the Ebeler before they were trapped. Altenkirk he ordered off Kimberlin. Sir Farace he had stand off from the withdrawal. The mercenaries and Alteans, who had had a respite, he kept in contact. With the remnants of one mercenary regiment he launched a night assault on the rebels.
He had judged their temper correctly. Most of the common soldiers yielded without fighting. Sir Andvbur accepted the inevitable.
Though it meant straining men already near collapse, Ragnarson kept the pressure on Shinsan throughout the night, allowing only his horsemen to rest. All of them, even those who had fought afoot. With the rebel knights out he could afford to launch cavalry attacks.
O Shing resumed operations at dawn, withdrawingtoward Maisak with the First Legion in rearguard, masking his main force with trenches dug during the night. The situation left Ragnarson in a quandary. As soon as he sent his horse in pursuit, the First, evidently rested, came out to challenge his exhausted infantry. He didn’t want to settle for the single legion the enemy seemed willing to sacrifice. There was no predicting when the Power would return. If it did do so soon, Shinsan could still turn it around.
Both sides had been drained. Nearly ten thousand Shinsaners had fallen. Virtually all the rebels were dead or captured. Haaken had sent word that the Captal and his pretender were in hand. And Ragnarson feared his own losses, not yet determined, would include more than half his force.
His allies from Altea, Anstokin, and Volstokin refused to join the pursuit. The Kaveliners and mercenaries grumbled when he made the suggestion, but had less choice. He compromised. They would advance slowly, maintaining light contact, till O Shing had evacuated Kavelin. His allies undertook the destruction of the Imperial Legion.
VI) Campaign’s end
Approaching stealthily, cautiously, unexpectedly, the Royalist forces of Haroun bin Yousif came to a Maisak virtually undefended. In a swift, surprise night attack they carried the gate and swept the defenders into eternity. In the deep dungeons they found the portals through which Shinsan’s soldiers had come. Bin Yousif led a force through, surprised and destroyed a small fortress near Liaontung, in the Dead Empire.
Returning, he destroyed the portals, then prepared surprises for O Shing’s return. If he returned.
He did, skirmishing with Ragnarson’s troops all the way. The would-be emperor, trying to salvage control of the Gap, threw his beaten legions at Maisak’s walls.
Soldiers of Shinsan did not question, did not retreat. For three bloody days they attacked and died. Without their masters’ magicks they were only men. As many died there as had at Baxendala.
When O Shing broke off, Ragnarson, with Haroun, harried him to the ruins of Gog-Ahlan.
There Turran told Bragi, “There’s no percentage in pushing him any more. The Power’s returning.”
Reluctantly, Ragnarson turned back toward Kavelin.
SIXTEEN: Shadows of Death
I) New directions and vanishing
allies
When Bragi went looking for Haroun, his old friend was gone. Side by side they had harried O Shing, moving too swiftly to visit, then the Royalists had evaporated.
When Bragi returned, autumn was settling on Vorgreberg. For the first time in years there was no foreboding lying over the capital. The rebellion was dead. All but a few of its leaders had been caught. But recognition of Gaia-Lange and/or Carolan remained unsettled.
In Ragnarson’s absence the Queen had restructured the Thing along lines proposed by the scholars of Hellin Daimiel, adding commons drawn from among Wessons, Marena Dimura, and Siluro. Final judgmental authority had been vested in three consuls, one elected by the commons, another by the nobility. The third was the Queen herself. Before he reached Baxendala returning, Bragi learned that he had a painful decision to make.
Representatives of the commons met him in the Gap and begged him to become publican consul.
He was still worrying it when he reached Vorgreberg.
The crowds had turned out. He accepted the accoladesglumly. Haaken and Reskird grinned, shouted back, clowned. His soldiers wasted no time getting themselves lost in taverns and willing arms.
Sourly, he entered Castle Krief.
And there she was again, in the same place, wearing the same clothing...
And Elana was with her. Elana, Nepanthe, and Mocker.
Haaken leaned close. “Remember the tale of Soren Olag Bjornson’s wife.” It was a Trolledyngjan folk story about the vicissitudes of an unfaithful husband.
Bragi started. If Haaken knew, the liaison might be common knowledge.
Maybe a consulship would keep him too busy to get in trouble with either woman.
II) The new life
Ragnarson accepted the consulship, retained the title Marshal, and received a vote of generalship from High Crag. His most difficult task was integrating his arrogant, overbearing Trolledyngjan refugees into Kaveliner so-ciety, and, with the Queen, making compensation to the mercenary regiments. Ravelin’s finances were a shambles.