Rik’s mouth was dry. What did the General suspect? Why had he mentioned Inquisitors? “I have no idea, sir.”
There was no mirth in the ancient General’s cackling laughter. “I am not entirely sure I believe you.”
Rik wondered what he was supposed to say to that. He was in no position to argue with the supreme commander of the army. Technically speaking, he was still under his authority in the eyes of the law, even if he was no longer a soldier. At this moment, despite what he said, Azaar was the dictator of Kharadrea and would be until Queen Arielle sent someone to replace him.
"Leave Rik alone, Azaar," said Asea. "He's your guest and he's been adopted into our clan."
“Of course, where are my manners? I apologise, Rik. I have yet to congratulate you and I have something to give you - a gift to welcome you into our extended family.”
He summoned a servant with a gesture and the man brought a long wooden case. Asea looked up with interest, her gaze flickering between her brother and Rik. The servant gave the casket to the General and he offered it to Rik with his own hands. “Go on, take it!”
Rik took the box. It was made of a wood he had never seen before, ancient and polished. There was a smell of wax and incense about it and his thievish instincts told him at once that it was old and valuable.
“Open it up!” said Azaar. Rik did so and saw that there was a blade contained within it. The sword was long and straight and there were runes set on the blade. It was quite the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
“A princely gift,” said Asea. “That blade came from Al’Terra, didn’t it?”
Azaar nodded. “It was made before we came to this world. See that you do nothing to disgrace it.”
Rik realised that this sword was probably worth more than all the things he had ever owned put together and then some. It was a weapon that could protect its owner from magic and which could kill daemons and Nerghul and other monsters.
“If this boy is going to be your bodyguard, I suspect is going to need a weapon like that,” said Azaar. He snapped his fingers and the servant brought a scabbard. It was plain and gave no hint of the wealth represented by the sword it was made to contain. Rik slid the blade home and then strapped the scabbard onto his belt. It hung there as if it had been made for him, and he barely felt the weight.
He bowed low to the General and said, “I thank you, sir. It is a gift beyond price.”
“My sister has brought you into our family. I want the world to know that I have welcomed you too. It may prove some protection to you in the days to come.” He shrugged and then maliciously added, “Then again, it might not. I am not without enemies myself.”
“I will do my best to see that I bring no disgrace on you or your sister,” said Rik.
“You’d better, boy. You’d better. Tomorrow we meet with the Sardeans so you’ll have a chance to live up to those words.”
“Look at them,” said the Barbarian, he pulled the sausage he was warming out of the fire and pointed the spit in the general direction of Sergeant Hef and his family. The Sergeant, his wife and all of their kids were on their knees praying, beside the small tent they all shared.
“It’s good someone is praying for our survival,” said Weasel “Maybe the Light will listen. You never know. Stranger things have happened.”
“Waste of time,” said the Barbarian, taking another slug from his vodka flask. The burning liquid scorched his throat. He offered the flask to Weasel who took it gratefully enough. “If your time is up, your time is up. No amount of praying will do any good.”
Weasel gave him a crazy lop-sided grin after he had finished a long pull on the flask. “You know that for certain, do you?”
“How many guys have you seen pray the night before battle that had their brains blown out the next day?”
“A fair number,” said Weasel “But I’ve known a few that prayed and they were spared too. Who is to say it didn’t make a difference?”
“I’ve never prayed before battle and I am still here.”
“There’s some would say it’s because you’re too stupid to die.”
“Show me where they are and I will show them how stupid I am.”
“Why this sudden interest in religion?” Weasel asked. “It’s never bothered you before.”
The Barbarian considered voicing what was on his mind. He felt ashamed. It was not the sort of thing a man was supposed to admit to. He kept a wary eye on the praying family and eventually managed to force the words out. “I am worried,” he said at last.
“About what?”
“Things.”
“What bloody things?”
“I’ve heard folk talking. Some of them think the end of the world is coming- what with the dead men walking and the Elder demons waking and all.”
“I could see where they might get that idea,” said Weasel. “But it’s not like you to allow an idea to force its way into your head uninvited.”
“I know and that’s one of the things that’s bothering me. What if they are right? What if the end of the world is here?”
“Not much the likes of you and me can do about it, is there? I doubt God or his Shadow are going to pay much attention to what we think.”
“That’s it you see, maybe they would if we prayed to them.”
“If you think it would help, maybe you should give it a try.”
“What about you?”
“I am not much of the praying kind.”
“But it might help. Maybe a couple of extra prayers might swing the balance. They say in the balance of power between the two is very close.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I’ll pray with you.”
“I thought you have to be sincere when you pray.”
“Believe me when I ask God to spare us and give us some loot, I will be sincere.”
“Fair enough, let’s get started then.”
“What now?”
“No time like the present.”
Weasel gave him a nasty grin. “I just thought of something.”
“What’s that?”
“You never prayed before any other battle and you’re still here, right?”
“Right.”
“What if that’s why you have luck?”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Well you never prayed before and you survived. Why break a winning streak, that’s what I am saying.”
“You think if I pray I might die in the next battle?”
“You said yourself that you’ve seen it happen to lots of others. Do you really want to risk it happening to you?”
“You’re winding me up right?”
“No- I am just asking you to think about it.”
“You’re winding me up.”
“All right, I admit it. Do you want to pray or not?”
“I’ve gone off the idea now.”
“Somehow I thought you might.” Strange witchfires burned on the distant hills. It was a long time before the Barbarian dropped off to sleep.
Chapter Nineteen
A red dawn burned over the distant hills. A rising cloud of dust announced the presence of the Sardean army. It approached on a long front. Overhead bonded devilwings flapped across the cloudy sky. Batteries of cannon were emplaced on hills near the village of Weswood. A huge mass of infantry deployed onto the plain in the shadow of the guns.
Drums beat, eerie, monotonous, deeper-toned than any marching drum he had ever heard, resonant with strange sorcery. There was something about their noise that set the pit of his stomach to fluttering and made his own heartbeat sound louder in his ears.
Sardec raised a spyglass to his eye, awkwardly because of his hook and focused it on the distant enemy. Dozens of colourful banners rose above the Eastern companies. There were thousands of blue-tunicked Sardeans arranged in regiments but it was what lay between those formations that worried him.
Legions of dead men marched to the beat of those awful drums. Burning eyes glared out of pale f
aces. Rotting flesh curled away from sere muscle and grinning lipless mouths. The walking dead were unarmed but threatening nonetheless in their sheer alien strangeness.
Oddest of all was the way they were drawn up in ordered ranks. Always before, the restless dead had been nothing more than a mob of hungry, savage monsters, showing no more grasp of discipline than a pack of feral wyrms. These were different. They had the semblance of an army, with cohesion and order. They obeyed a will greater than their own, and it was troubling to think of what might be able to command the obedience of such a gigantic inhuman host.
The stink of rotting flesh left too long in the sun wafted across the space separating the forces and slammed into the nostrils with the force of a punch.
“Looks like we’ve found all the missing deaders,” he heard the Barbarian say.
“They’ve all joined the Sardeans, I notice” said Weasel. There was a note of worry underlying the jocular tone. There was sorcery at work here of a very nasty sort. If even the Foragers, who had encountered dark magic before, felt this worry, it could be having no good effect on the moral of the rest of the Talorean force. How did you fight against an army of the already dead?
Sardec let his gaze move on over the seemingly endless ranks. There were squadrons of cavalry on the flanks near the hills, as far away from the dead men as possible, presumably to avoid spooking the horses. Closer to them were human infantry and massive war wyrms, too stupid to be dismayed by the presence of the magically animated. As far as he could tell none of the beasts had been reanimated themselves.
It was hard to say what the odds were. The actual Sardean army might have been no larger than the Talorean force except for the presence of the walking corpses. Those gave it the appearance of a tidal wave of sorcerously animated flesh that would sweep over the red ranks with irresistible force. His own troops appeared pitifully few compared to the numbers of their enemy.
Sardec did not like this at all. He fought against a feeling of rising hopelessness, wondering of the breeze carried some dispiriting magic along with the stench of rotting bodies. He did not rule out the possibility although he suspected that the simple sight of such unwholesome sorcery was enough to dampen the spirits of any sane creature.
He let out a long breath. Finally the real enemy was in sight. It was relief in its way. Soon the battle to decide the fate of the West would begin.
The headquarters bustled with activity. Azaar and his suite stood on the hills overlooking the battlefield at the centre of a swirling hive of activity. The old General studied his dispositions through a spyglass and calmly gave orders to his adjutants.
Rik watched the armies begin to marshal. The huge formations of the Sardeans lumbered into position, a massive sea of walking dead surging forward in advance of the regiments of the living. Overhead dragons circled. There were at least a score of Sardean ones keeping a watchful distance. Their Talorean counterparts, fifteen strong held formation crucified on the wind above the red line of battle. The monstrous wyrms bellowed challenges that were loud as thunder but above everything sounded the eerie inhuman beat of the alien drums calling the dead to war.
He had heard some of the older Terrarchs complaining about the Army of the Dead. This was not how wars were fought. It was contrary to all the principles of decent warfare. They did not seem to have grasped that someone was in the process of rewriting all those rules with a view to winning a final victory over all opposition, not just acquiring personal glory and renown. It seemed that Terrarchs were learning the lessons of war that humans had known from the very start. He could not bring himself to feel any sympathy but he could not find it in himself to gloat either. He had a vested interest in seeing the Talorean army win this battle and anything that reduced the chance of that happening was not something he could approve of.
Asea was now garbed in full battle gear. Ancient armour made from mobile strips of enchanted leather swathed her form. A liquid silver mask, its forehead bespangled with a glowing gem, shielded her face. In one hand, she held a long white wand carved in strange runes. A lightning lash and a truesilver blade were scabbarded on her belt. Karim stood nearby scanning the area as if some terrible threat might emerge even from the command tent.
Asea was the focus of a lot of attention. Azaar consulted with her often on matters of sorcery and even of strategy, asking her opinion on everything from the strength of the spells cloaking them from enemy diviners to the possibility of Nerghul and other vicious creatures being concealed within the oncoming horde. Rik was close enough to her to catch all of her responses. She replied clearly and concisely when she knew the answer. She let him know when she did not have anything except an opinion. The General and his staff listened respectfully, regardless.
More sorcerers went about their business drawing complex patterns in the wet earth, filling them with coloured sands. A few had already been dispatched to the front line bearing rune-sealed flasks whose contents radiated power even to Rik’s relatively unschooled senses.
The voices whispered their unease to him, and something else. There was something happening over there in the enemy ranks that drew their attention and perhaps something else. Maybe it was like calling to like.
Riders raced into the clearing outside every few minutes bearing new reports from the scouts. Magisters wrote the results of their divinations down on heavy paper, affixed their seals and sent them to the High Command. Messengers on foot brought communication from every part of the vast camp.
Rik felt as out of place as he would have at a Royal ball. He had no place here, no role other than to act as a bodyguard for Asea, and perform whatever small tasks she might allocate to him. Even then, Karim seemed much better trained and far more ready to perform these duties.
He was suddenly all too aware that he was a long way from home and in the presence of an enemy army that might soon overwhelm them. There was a strong possibility that in the next few hours everyone present on this hilltop and every Talorean soldier within hailing distance might well be either dead, captured or a walking corpse. There were no guarantees that any of them would witness many more dawns.
Asea beckoned him over. “Go and make sure Tamara is not up to any mischief,” she said very softly. “Get her out of the cellar and make sure she is ready to go if we have to leave this place in a hurry.”
Her tone was more alarming than the sound of those distant drums. It suggested that she had decided the day was already lost.
A galloper came up from the regimental headquarters bearing his instructions. Sardec broke them and saw that they were simple enough. Hold their position and wait for the enemy to advance and engage. Avoid the undead concentrations if possible. He guessed they were most likely going to be targeted with cannon and sorcery as they moved in.
That made a certain amount of sense. Talorean gunnery was generally held to be superior to Sardean so the Imperials would most likely not be too keen to engage in an artillery duel. Sardec was not so sure about the magical side of things. Normally the Sardeans would hold the upper hand, but Asea was present and she was worth any three normal Magisters at very least. The enemy force had superiority in cavalry and wyrms so that would give them the advantage close in as well and that was without considering the undead.
Sergeant Hef came over and asked for instructions. “We are to form up in the front of the line and wait for the enemy to come to us.”
“Right you are, sir. Does not look like we will have long to wait.”
Rik led Tamara up into the light. As they walked uphill the truesilver chains glittered on her wrists and around her neck. She looked about as happy as Rik felt, which was to say not at all, as she surveyed the battlefield beneath them.
“There are even more walking dead than I expected,” she said, looking into the distance.
“Your friends have been busy.”
“They are no friends of mine. Why are you here? Did you get bored listening to the high muckety mucks giving orders and come over for a ch
at?”
“Lady Asea asked me to come and check on you.”
“Is she afraid I might eavesdrop on your plans and take them to enemy?”
“Maybe - could you do that?”
Tamara glanced around warningly. There was no one within earshot but that might not mean anything given the number of sorcerers present among both armies. “Only if I could get within earshot of Azaar and had access to have a dozen carrier pigeons and a pen and paper.”
“Cunningly we have not provided you with any of those things.”
“Indeed and thus it is that I have had to content myself with watching the troop deployments and speculating on what my countrymen are up to.”
“Have you come to any conclusions?”
“They are up to nothing good, that is for sure.”
“The profundity of your analysis astonishes me.”
“Men are often surprised by my acumen in matters military.”
“Why did you really come here?”
“Amazing as it doubtless seems to you and as quite frankly astonishing as it seems to me, I told Asea the truth. Those people over there are my enemies. They are the enemies of our entire civilisation, of every living thing on this world unless I miss my guess.”
“And yet your father fought for them.”
She gave him another warning look but he ignored it. He was in a strange mood this evening, full of foreboding and not quite caring about the consequences.
“I do not think my father was sane as most people reckon sanity.
“You have my full agreement there. But you fought for your father for a long time.”
“I suffer from an undue degree of filial piety. I served the Terrarch not his cause.”
“Some would say the two are the same.”
“I can see you are going to be tiresome on this subject, Rik.”
“It’s an unfortunate tendency I have.” They fell into a not uncomfortable silence. Rik studied the battle lines below them. Somewhere down there his friends were preparing to go to fight on what might prove to be the last day of their lives.