TWOLAS - 03 - Warhost Of Vastmark

  At his side, a figure bright as a gilt-trimmed icon in a steel cuirass edged with gold chasing, Lysaer s'Ilessid turned blue eyes spiked to a baleful charge of humour. 'Why mind the rust? Your gear's sure to need scouring tonight just to clean off the bloodstains.'

  'I don't care how many shepherds' tents our patrols counted out on the heights. Those tribesfolk can move like wind itself and today's shown no movement to report.' Diegan lifted his chin to scan the peaks which ringed the vale like the glistening, crusted teeth of a wolf's jaws. 'Either nothing's up there, or they're holed up like stoats, just watching us work up a lather.'

  Lysaer smiled. 'Did you truly expect this would be easy?'

  'Never.' But through the past weeks, riding in exhausting zigzag patterns up and down rocky corries as strike teams were dispatched to drive Arithon's lighter forces before them like scrap sweepings chased by a broom, Diegan found his temper worn to breaking. Too many of the unseasoned garrison men boasted on their successes, that the archers always broke and ran under attack. If today the prince's troops held the Shadow Master's encampments surrounded, the creeping suspicion lingered that they were for a surety being led.

  Lord Diegan held no illusions. When his warhost was finally permitted to close, when the shepherds and clansmen stood their ground, courage and armed might were not guaranteed to bring victory. Arithon s'Ffalenn would not be cornered without an ugly fight. His blood would be bought in fallen bodies, his sorceries crushed at last under the weight of sheer numbers.

  'Well, we haven't long to wait,' Lysaer finished in frigid certainty. 'Our enemy is near. I can sense his presence.'

  A staccato rattle of hooves on shale marked an inbound scout, who crested the rise ahead of the advance army. Pressed flat to the neck of his mount, he thundered straight for the cluster of command standards and reined his hill pony to a head-shaking halt. 'Your Grace, my Lord Commander, we've made contact.' He unfisted a hand from his reins and pointed up the vale toward the stony rim of the knoll which divided the swale of the valley. 'We've seen royal banners there. A band of armoured enemies lie entrenched in ambush behind.'

  'Halt the columns,' Lysaer said to Lord Diegan. As the ranks around him shuddered still to a magnified creak of harness, and horn calls repeated the command down the vast length of the line, he snapped his fingers to the page boy who trailed on foot by his stirrup. 'Hand me my glass.'

  His eyes, cold sapphire, stayed fixed on the crest of the knoll as he accepted the brass casing and snapped its segments open. Trained upon the summit, the eyepiece yielded a grainy view of silver-pebbled helms, a ranked thicket of pole weapons, then the standards of Shand and Vastmark, accompanied in presumptuous arrogance by the leopard device of Rathain.

  Lysaer felt a sharp sweep of heat cross his skin. His eyesight seemed to blur momentarily out of focus. A half-sensed brush of cold that might have been magecraft prickled the hair at his nape. For an instant, he almost saw a black-haired figure lift a mocking, triangular chin to taunt him over the blade of a black sword.

  The animal snarl that arose in his throat was nearly too savage to repress. Fired to white fury, Lysaer clenched his fingers on brass and fought a blistering, sharp battle to retain his grip on self-command. Wise in restraint since the disaster provoked at Minderl Bay, he jerked down the glass and snapped it shut. 'He's there. There's a fighting force behind him.'

  Which statement required no name to qualify; his steely majesty hammered over in tight anticipation, the Prince of the West met his Lord Commander face on. 'In my name, for the deliverance of all people, lead the advance. Let right prevail over darkness.'

  Diegan's salute held matching eagerness. 'Mine the honour, highness. In your name and for the memory of Etarra's city garrison sacrificed on the banks of Tal Quorin.' And, he added inwardly, for the dishonour of my lady sister.

  Then he filled his lungs, raised his shout. The trumpet notes of his staff officer relayed the signal to attack down the lines.

  The Prince of the West and his personal bodyguard relinquished their place in the advance guard. While one chosen company peeled away to stand with them on a vantage lent by high ground, the main body of the royal warhost juddered into motion, to sweep up the throat of Dier Kenton Vale and close upon the knoll, and lay waste to the Shadow Master's allies. At their backs, a figure of inspiring magnificence on his gold-maned war-horse, Lysaer raised his fist. He threw back his head and shouted in glad satisfaction as his gift swelled and answered. Then he opened mailed fingers. Raw light slapped forth, a blinding hot fireball hurled skyward to carve a scalding arc across the heavens.

  The elemental burst exploded in blinding force at the zenith to a blast of distant thunder. Visible for leagues, the signal would alert the supporting forces from Jaelot and Alestron in position beyond the mountains of the rim wall. These would enact a simultaneous advance up the far slopes of the cliffs. The steel ring that hedged Dier Kenton began its closing march to crush the trapped quarry, over ground too stony for pit traps, too bare for ambush or cover. This time, the ragtag dregs who defended the Master of Shadow would be left no direction to run.

  While the central deployment of the warhost rolled in dust and noise up the broad spread of the valley, Lysaer unclenched locked fingers and passed the glass to the most keen-eyed of his scouts. 'Keep watch,' he commanded. 'If you spot any sign of the enemy, tell me.'

  Not for nothing had the prince practised with his gift through the years of preparation at Avenor. Bowfire and shadows had been Arithon's key defences at Tal Quorin. Lysaer bared even teeth. Praise be to justice, now, he had the finesse to forge his gift into a countershield for both. A silky, sure smile curved his lips. If need be, he would fire the very spine of the mountain, burn out the entrenched bands of tribesmen and archers, and light the way for his troops to advance and claim victory.

  * * *

  Tucked into a rocky declivity in the rimrocks above Dier Kenton Vale, the Mad Prophet stood at Arithon's back, his plump hands pressed white against the royal shoulders that had not stopped trembling since Lysaer's signal bolt had roared aloft.

  'Steady,' he murmured. 'Hold steady.' Then, as the distant glitter of the s'Ilessid bodyguard settled on station behind the rear ranks amid the low hills to the west, 'For the love of Ath, don't look now.'

  Arithon gave a choked-off smile. Balled in a crouch with his hands locked around his knees, his eyes swathed under a black binding tied off with spell-turned knots, he was most effectively blinded to the movements of his enemy. Dakar and his war captain must serve as his eyes. Since the botched tienelle scrying aboard the Khetienn, the spellbinder had earned the clear right to ask permissions of him even a Fellowship Sorcerer might hesitate to impose.

  The time was past for uncertainties, beyond all reach of regrets. Meshed into the pattern traced out through cold auguries, Rathain's prince could only hope his unreserved consent would lend Dakar the leverage to help him if the mad onslaught of the curse became too great to endure.

  In the event such constraint let him down, in final threat, his black sword Alithiel lay unsheathed and waiting.

  The chance shrank his heart, made his nerves flinch in dread, that the terrible, edged beauty of the Paravian starspell might be turned against him again. He dared not frame the possibility that one day even this measure might fail him. The sweat which ran down the slant of his jaw arose as much from that fear as from grief for the trap set in the path of Lysaer's warhost.

  The spread of thin sun on his shoulders, the smell of wild thyme and wind-caught evergreen held the untrustworthy peace of a drug dream. Needled by circling thoughts, Arithon shifted.

  A firm, bearing pressure thrust him down as Dakar said, 'Damn you, prince, not yet.'

  Yet a masterbard's ear could pick out the spellbinder's cranked tension, and know: the platitude masked the surety that the advance ranks drew within bowshot of the cluster of banners on knoll. The circle of illusionary spellcraft that had lured twenty-eight thousand to advance would not ho
ld together in close proximity.

  An outraged shout of discovery floated up, sliced by the peal of horn call.

  'Lord Diegan's troop?' Arithon asked, a thin tug of humour tilting one corner of his mouth.

  'The very same. Their scouts just brought word of the helmets.' Dakar snorted back a laugh at the snarled disarray as the proud centre companies from Avenor converged, yelling outrage,'The banners, the staked ranks of armour and pikestaffs seemed a pitiful ruse to have made grand fools of them all.

  'I tell you,' cried the foray's captain, his humiliated anger shaved brittle by distance. 'That knoll is bare of any enemies! There is no ambush, no hidden strike force at all.'

  Yet Lord Diegan had learned deadly caution under Pesquil. Tenacious as a lashed mastiff, he deployed a half-company to quarter the ground to be sure. The knoll swarmed with movement. A foot soldier rendered toy-sized against the span of the vale raised a sword and in a fit of silent fury hacked down the royal leopard standard.

  That flash of bare steel and the wind-caught shreds of green silk for some unnamed reason ignited Dakar to slow rage.

  'Now,' he ground out in a whisper.

  Arithon stilled underneath his grip, locked for a second against the horrific inevitability of the moment. Then, as he had once loosed a bowstring to launch an arrow streamered in red ribbons, he deployed his gift in unreserved signature of his presence.

  Shadow ripped out and battened Dier Kenton under implacable darkness.

  Cries of terror ripped up from the valley, followed in fated sequence by Lysaer's defending counterplay of light. The burst of illumination sheeted through to create a flickering, sulphurous twilight. No longer the green fool, the Prince of the West would not fire blind strikes at an enemy which offered no target. His response came tempered, sufficient in force to provide his troops with the illumination they required to close and fight.

  'More,' Dakar whispered.

  Arithon spun his darkness thicker, deeper, smothering his half-brother's effort in what seemed an effortless parry.

  In direct touch with the tension which knotted the muscles beneath his hands, Dakar was not deceived. 'Lysaer's gotten stronger with his gift, has he not?'

  A nod snapped back in response. Arithon braced through a hard shudder, and the dark coiled out like steel bands, laced warp through weft in anchored struggle.

  The impact of Lysaer's bolt was less seen than felt, a fan of hot wind burdened in a cracking scent of ozone. The report followed, a smothered whump of compressed air that shivered the stone underfoot.

  A sound escaped Arithon's lips. His hands locked into sweaty fists as he deepened his shadows yet again. Lysaer's next counterburst bowled a crescendo of thunder across the heavens. The thrust came straightforward in control, directed skyward, its aim to sear off the unnatural night and reclaim an untrammelled field for battle. Yet even expended without solid target, the princes' paired gifts clashed in violence.

  The booming concussion of shocked elements hammered earth and air like a physical blow, then recoiled off the walls of the peaks.

  For an instant, the mountains seemed to quiver in echoed, resonant response.

  Caught in a flickering, flaring, tainted wash of daylight, Dakar followed with mage-sight the wrenching scream of force as the unstable faults in the shale slopes below surrendered their last ties to gravity.

  A tortured rumble rocked bass echoes down the vale. The grumble built, compounded into a grinding, full-throated roar as the shoulders of the mountains front and centre buckled and let go, followed like unravelled crochet work by the slopes on either side. Soil and vegetation sliced away from the scarp. Half-glimpsed through torn thickets of shadow, lit lurid by the unnatural tangle of sheared light kinked like sword cuts through absolute dark, the slow-motion crumple of boulders and torn soil gained frenetic speed in a race to meet the exposed valley. As if ploughed to rolling chaos by the impact of a giant's fist, the mass surged in a wave down the steep rims of the vale.

  The vanguard of Lord Diegan's troops glimpsed their doom through the sickly yellow twilight, their panicked screams battered under and lost in the roaring complaint of outraged earth. Horses reared on shaking ground. Pennons dipped, cast out of nerveless fingers. Ranks of pike-men compressed in raw terror, their weapons juddered into recoil like a tailor's pins in crushed cloth.

  Then the caroming breaker of rock and soil smashed down from the middle, and on both flanks. The companies in the vanguard were sprayed aside, then harrowed under like shell soldiers abandoned to the muddied teeth of flood tide.

  The rearguard array became chewed, then engulfed, mashed under the surge in the moment they wheeled in hopeless flight. If any screamed, their cries were drowned out. If any prayed, none were answered. Where an army had marched like steel-studded velvet over grass, within a heartbeat and a breath, of living soldiers, there were none.

  The peaks channelled between them a racked furrow of turned stone and puffed dirt. The titanic, roiling thunder of debris milled on in a mindless torrent that dwarfed human works and consumed all things in its path.

  Minutes passed, while the mountains shook to their roots from raw noise.

  Then, in slowed force, the barrage dragged thin and slackened, spent into a last, dying tumble of stray boulders. Fanned like a rucked, brown train in its wake, a flayed span of ground wide enough to stun reason was left to settle into dust and racked stillness. Stabbed through by the distress of displaced birds, the thinner wails of human survivors offered up ragged refrain: those few set by luck on the unfaulted rise where the hills were too mild to slide, and one isolate group in the swale, protected where the shoulder of the knoll had parted the riven marrow of the earth.

  Separate from the advance, the company of the prince's personal guard was also untouched. Spared only by distance, the men in their immaculate surcoats stared in dumb shock at the site where their comrades had marched. The demarcation was a cruel one. Like a ripped edge in cloth, the scar ended and whole grass flicked in breezes silted with grit churned up by the mass of downed stone.

  Strewn at Lysaer's very feet, in disembowelled earth and crushed hope, a mass grave site: ploughed into irretrievable oblivion the pulped bits of tissue, wood and dented steel of what once had been twenty-eight thousand dedicated men.

  The howl of the Prince of the West clove the morning, shrill with grief and wild pain. The light of his gift left his fist. A flashfire bolt of distilled energy shrieked across distance and slammed against the summit of the knoll. Impact carved up a flying gout of rocks, an eruption of dead matter that yielded his rage no balm of satisfaction.

  Lysaer wept for his impotent strength. The Shadow Master's spelled decoy of banners and empty helmets flamed and melted under impact of his grief, leaving the site razed bare.

  * * *

  Thrown off his berserk mount when the slide boomed past, then knocked flat a second time by the light bolt's raw thud into the hillcrest above, Diegan, Lord Commander of the royal warhost, struggled up from his knees. Around him, spent thunder cracked and slammed in flat echoes against the changed face of Dier Kenton. His hip and one shoulder flamed protest, the joints wrenched and bruised from his falls. Since the knoll had blocked his view as the cataclysm struck, he cast a dazed glance at his surroundings. On all sides, he saw harrowed earth. The day hung dimmed with dust, the sky itself stained grey-brown. Limned in murk, the headwall of the vale on three sides lay cloven into a barrier of raw cliffs, floored over in acres of rubble. Where scant minutes before his brave army had marched under order and flocking standards, there remained only knife-point shards of splintered shale, struck and jumbled and stirred by mad forces across a valley dismembered into waste.

  The vista was one to numb the mind.

  Diegan heaved in a strangled breath, half-mad from shock and disbelief. He felt delirious; light-headed. As if through the ordinary course of an eye-blink, firm rock had exploded and rearranged itself into some diabolical landscape out of Sithaer.

&nbs
p; Sick white, shaking, he scrubbed grit from a skinned forearm, then resettled the rucked weight of his mail and adjusted his sword from blind habit. Through air hazed with pulverized rock, he sensed other movement and belatedly found he was not alone.

  The handful of survivors sheltered by the knoll were regaining their feet, coughing dust. Some, crazed beyond reason, had drawn swords. A few were unmanned by fear. One lay moaning in misery, trampled or kicked by someone's panicked horse. The blue-purple pulp of his gutted abdomen established at a glance that he would not be rising, nor would another, apparently thrown onto the impaling point of a pole weapon. Nearby, someone's squire crawled on his hands and knees, sobbing the name of his mother.

  The first flame of rage licked through Diegan's horror. His throat was too dry to swallow, and his tongue, too thick to curse the name of s'Ffalenn. Avenor's Lord Commander choked on the tainted taste of soil and shrank in guilt for the warning a band of condemned men had entrusted to his hearing one dismal night in falling rain.

  'Dharkaron avenge!' he strangled through a seizure that hooked like a sob in his throat. For the gut-wrenching horror of his straits all but felled him. The diabolical threat sent by Arithon, that he had brushed aside from expediency, had been, every word, meant in earnest.

  Unknowing, the Prince of the West had marched his forty thousand into jeopardy.

  Thrown headlong into wholesale ruin, Lord Diegan beheld the Master of Shadow's promised vengeance. The scope of the disaster saw every justification to silence the testimony of twenty-five men remade into a fool's play. A brother's self-serving passion for retribution for his sister had cost Lysaer's allies tens upon thousands of lives.