TWOLAS - 03 - Warhost Of Vastmark

  In a candour that held no apology for the turned ground, the razed stone, the doom of all his proud war-host, Lysaer added in terrible quiet, 'Twenty-eight thousand men died because one sorcerer lured them onto trapped ground with clever tactics, then pulled down a mountain to kill them. There will be no retreat and no safety. Not until this one ruthless criminal has been overthrown and cut dead.'

  As his weary war-horse stumbled over a loose fall of shale, the prince gave on the reins from numbed habit. Above the metallic skitter of hooves and the rattling chink of loose rock, he summed up in ironclad resolve. 'Had I the same number to spend over again, I would do so for the same cause. Our losses here prove the true scope of the danger. With all of Athera set at risk, how dare I count a few thousand deaths as anything less than worthwhile? There can be no end. Never until Arithon s'Ffalenn is fully and finally brought down.'

  Field of Fear

  Assured by Caolle's scouts that the slide had effectively bottled the remains of Lysaer's assault force behind the cliffs of Dier Kenton, Dakar the Mad Prophet rolled his eyes heavenward and mumbled a disjointed prayer of relief. At least one aspect of Arithon's damnable scrying had seen itself through without mishap. With the frontline threat of Desh-thiere's curse thwarted through natural barriers, there now remained only the two garrison companies the Prince of the West had appointed to corner Arithon's forces from behind. These were engaged in mounting a sweeping advance on the slopes behind the rim wall of the vale.

  The commander entrusted with one arm of the flanking assault hailed from the city of Jaelot. Shadows and archers would hamper his bid to close access to the corries from the south.

  To Dakar fell the joy of dispatching the north wing of troops, led onto the field by Keldmar s'Brydion, brother to the Duke of Alestron.

  Since the morning's first signal to march, the hardbitten mercenaries had pressed in remorseless formation over gullies and fractured ground, harassed by spurious ambushes upon their scouts, and picked off singly by tribal bowmen. These would pause in the brush brakes and loose their one shot, then slip unseen through the scree. The duke's seasoned captains had been stung by small losses until even the most stolid of veterans were wont to fire crossbows into the furze when wind roused a ruffle of movement. They thought back on the thundering interval while the ground had quaked to some distant, cataclysmic disturbance and swore as uneasiness chewed their nerves. Through the shadeless afternoon, they fought and bled and advanced, hating the empty furlongs of baked moss and tough scrub grass, grazed the incongruous green of new velvet in the hollows where sheep had been pastured.

  The rise toward the north pass from Dier Kenton Vale raked up in forbidding, open rock, razed clean of brush by leaching summer winds and harsh gales. Cover was non-existent. Each step a man took scattered rattling shale, and the lowering light steeped every pocket of rock with shadow which could mask concealed archers. Alestron's men-at-arms met the challenge in grim confidence, determined in discipline as the landscape was hostile to their presence.

  Curled like a dried leaf in a cleft near the summit, Dakar admired the drill as ten polished companies of pikemen re-formed to begin the last ascent. Their sharp, block phalanxes rearranged into wedges, with fanned lines of armed bowmen and skirmishers sent ahead to clear the gulches before them.

  Keldmar disdained the finicky use of horns. His orders rang out in bullish shouts, interspersed with oaths and obscenities. Despite his pungent temper, the s'Brydion army moved into place like oiled clockwork. Their staff sergeants were brutes with a deathless love of fighting, to whom the noise and gut effort of war was the very sinew of life.

  The cohorts seethed upslope like boiled vengeance.

  Dakar puffed flushed cheeks until his beard bristled up like a blowfish. Beyond the passing malice of a bar brawl, he had small love for risks that favoured the chance of getting maimed. At drinking or dice, or for charming paid wenches, he would have had a fair contest against Keldmar s'Brydion. On a field of battle, the odds made a fool's wager, unbalanced enough that the Fatemaster's furies would laugh themselves stupid in prostration.

  The ultimate bungle, the Mad Prophet thought. A crazed man's machinations had ensconced him here with an armed band of clan scouts whose lives all relied on his wits. His Fellowship master would have buried his face in his hands and groaned for their faith in the ridiculous.

  A scuffle over rock, then a clipped password to a scout. The last tribal archer scrambled in, breathless for respite. To the Mad Prophet, in passing, he threw the tired comment, 'It's high time you came. We can't stay them on this slope. No cranny a strayed sheep could hide in.'

  Dakar rolled him a grimace, then said to the clansman who lingered, prepared to become the bearer of return messages, 'Tell Arithon to allow me two hours.'

  'That's sundown,' the scout said, his wolfish eyes on the immense force of mercenaries who tackled the scarp in practised order. 'You've cut things damned fine. If the advance isn't stemmed before nightfall, our people are going to start dying.'

  No matter how skilled, shepherd archers could not use bows in the dark. Once cornered in hand-to-hand battle, the s'Brydion mercenaries would hack their small numbers to ribbons.

  'Well, here's thanks in advance for your proud vote of confidence,' Dakar said, morose and punch-drunk with fatigue.

  He scrubbed sweaty palms upon his tunic and chafed. At the moment he felt good for nothing beyond craving for pillows in a cathouse beside some sultry doxy. The wistful heat of wishes could scarcely stir him to desire; not with hard Vastmark shale chewing dents in his backside, and the withering sun limning the hungry steel teeth of the s'Brydion warhost.

  No imagination was required to picture how Keldmar would rejoice to see one plump, dishonest gem peddler impaled arse down on a pike.

  Inspired to a wicked bent of afterthought, Dakar smothered down a chortle. To the dubious scout who awaited, he said, 'Take my message. If you don't want to spoil your humourless thinking, don't for a second look back.'

  The clansman went his way, dour and unmollified, while Dakar gazed with fresh interest downslope.

  The troops from Alestron could scarcely be pleased. Theirs was an honourless assignment, to labour in sweating files to scale a face of stripped rock, then engage a sneaking band of shepherds scarcely worth blisters to dispatch. Sun-baked and footsore from a punishing day in full war gear, pricked at each step by whining, small tempests of hostile arrows, many of their number would be inwardly longing to quit the field for missed comforts.

  Others would be irksome and cantankerous, hot for a thumping bloody skirmish with living foemen they could hack to twitching rags to relieve a lethal measure of frustration.

  Dakar bit his lip, his eyes half-closed in anticipation. The spells which exacted the least effort were fashioned illusions, the inconvenient, tangled little bindings designed to hook a man's thoughts and sow from them the dreaming recreation of whatever lust held his heart.

  From the ground underfoot, the Mad Prophet selected a stub of shale to use as a stylus. The runes he scribed like tiny seeds upon the air broke into motes, a haze fine as spider's silk caught to a sheen of dimmed silver. The light sparked and multiplied and strewed on the wind, a scarcely visible dusting of energies that by their drawn nature would gravitate and form to the dictates of human desires. For effect, and by way of fair warning, the Mad Prophet laced his finished work through the blank coils of the fogbanks which gathered to descend and girdle the heights after sundown.

  In typical fashion for all his maligned practice, some permission or small cantrip skimmed awry. The spell assumed an unruly life of its own and unreeled like blight to gnarl the peace of Ath's order.

  * * *

  Downslope, the men-at-arms under Alestron's banner marched squinting against the stabbing glare off scoured shale. Their feet were blistered, their backs sore from the rub of gambeson and chain mail. Thirsty and sweating, held to position by short-tempered commanders, their cohorts of mercenaries ploughed a
head in dogged competence. The first startled shout from the skirmish line bristled them into close shield rings, ranked fifty abreast and three deep down the rise.

  Which snapping, precise discipline did them small good as an uncanny mist fanned across the mountainside before them. It engulfed the rocks just ahead of their position, glutinously thick and glimmering a sickly, pale green.

  While men murmured and shrank and fingered talismans bought for small silver from dealers in arcane charms and herbals, Keldmar took a brash step forward. Just shy of the gesticulating vanguard he poised, hooked out his broadsword, and sliced at the yielding green mass.

  Nothing happened. He repeated the move, then added a whistling swing, yanked off his left gauntlet, and skimmed bare fingers down the steel. The metal proved neither hot nor cold to his touch.

  'Sorcerer's illusion,' he pronounced in contempt to the staff officers attendant on his orders. 'Foolish, to think we'd be cowed.' He hailed the veteran in charge of the advance scouts. 'Send in your best team for a look. If they find nothing and return, we press on as planned.'

  The wait passed in uneasy fidgeting. Men checked their weapons, tightened straps on their helms, or shrugged to rub pressure sores under the shoulders of their mail. No sound creased the quiet beyond the distant whistle of a wyvern, no movement beyond the heat waves rippling off day-warmed rock. Twitching off the hunch that they were as sitting targets, captains reviewed their divisions and watched Keldmar, who scratched his chin and with rankled impatience eyed the mist that never moved.

  The scouts returned, unscathed and puzzled. 'My lord, we found nothing. Just more queer fog and sharp boulders. The sun's out and clear just four hundred yards higher up.'

  'Well then,' said Keldmar, satisfied. He strode forward in bearish distaste, first reduced to a hulking outline, then to a blurred shadow within the bilious green mist.

  'Step lively, soldiers!' shouted the captain by the standard-bearer. Too brave to abandon their lord to his own devices, the whole mass of the army had no choice but to muster shrinking nerves and try to follow.

  The mist had no scent, no texture beyond the expected clammy pall of heavy moisture. Tinged gruesome colours in its sickly embrace, men started and swore and made grumbling complaint to bolster their faltering courage. The lack of visibility masked their officers' view of the flanking phalanxes. If some soldiers flinched from odd flickers of light, half-seen at the edge of strained vision, if now and again the chink of loose rock beneath someone's step raised an infinitesimal spark of glimmerance, soon enough they decided the uncanny gloom was harmless. Their talk lapsed to jokes and their thoughts drifted off into boredom.

  Dakar's insidious tangle of seals fixed on longings for distant wives and wenches; of dinner at a trestle and a foaming draught of ale in the camaraderie of a warm taproom; of a soft feather mattress after a hot bath, and uninterrupted sleep. Reality blurred and daydreams became manifest. The next thing men knew, they saw what they craved, in powerful, alluring fits of vision.

  Someone exclaimed, 'Fiends plague! There's my wife.' If her smiling, buxom beauty was brighter than reality, and if she appeared, beckoning, to swim through green air, the spiralling pull of magic caused the man to pay details no mind. He slammed to a stop and threw down his weapon to kiss his beloved on the lips.

  The first gap in the ranks was joined by another, as a second man dropped smiling to his knees, stuffed his mouth full of dirt and chewed with groaning relish. The horrified shieldmate who grabbed his shoulder was cuffed away and chastened. 'After hardtack for a month, my bowels are jammed. Bedamned if I'll leave a basket of pears here to rot!'

  One man hugged his helmet and murmured endearments. Another raised the butt of his dagger to his lips as if he swilled wine from a bottle. One quarter of the middle company simply plonked their arms down for pillows and snored. The bloodthirsty few who wanted to gut enemies screamed bull-throated war cries, whipped swords from their scabbards, and determinedly began hacking rocks.

  Buffeted amidst the unravelling chaos of Alestron's best troop of mercenaries, Keldmar stared about, red to the ears with flummoxed rage. 'Have you all gone crazy?'

  The scant few who heeded were mystified as he, as discipline came wholly undone. All but the most strong-minded veterans abandoned their march and fell victim to the allure of Dakar's spell. Like a jerked tear in a knit, neat drill undid into knots of rollicking celebration. Pikes clattered from emptied hands. Men whooped in abandon and threw themselves into ribald frenzy, stripping off armour and moaning prone on bare rock as if they lay coupled with their lovers. The banner bearer became engrossed in a weepy, long dialogue with his belt buckle. Around his curled form, the troop's most trustworthy captain leaped in tight circles, stabbing at gravel and shrieking about snakes in the grass.

  Keldmar lost his temper, kicked his staff officer in the flank, and received back a murmured endearment. He jabbed another man-at-arms with his boot toe, was ignored, then progressed through obscenities to blistering threats.

  'It's no use,' said a scarred old campaigner who had fought with the troops for twenty years. 'They've been spell-turned. If we take out the sorcerer, they'd recover.'

  Too irate to credit even sensible suggestion, Keldmar peered through the virid gloom. Perhaps a hundred men remained unaffected, ones who lacked imagination, or whose heartfelt desires were too weak or uninspired to spring the snare of ensorcelment. Some cursed and exhorted their afflicted companions. Another dedicated sergeant swiped at laggards with the flat of his sword, then got himself flattened by a burly pikeman, who howled a shocking profusion of epithets, then accused, 'Bedamned to you, man! Keep on clodding about and you'll upset the ale barrel for certain!'

  The next instant, a swirl in the soupy fog disgorged the commander of the second division, his flushed face running with sweat that dripped off the knurled ends of his moustache. 'Ath preserve! This madness gripes your troop, as well? We're fair paralysed. Every ninny in our ranks who pines for a wench seems bollocksed witless on some spell of illusion.'

  Keldmar cast a jaundiced eye after a battle-scarred campaigner who danced mother-naked over the engrossed forms of his fellows. 'Damn me, we'll get even. March any man you have who will listen. We've got to press on and skewer the sorcerer who's doing this.'

  'With pleasure!' The commander lent his shout to Keldmar's bellows to muster any standing soldier who could be hazed back to coherent action.

  A cobbled-together company of seventy-five regrouped and resumed the advance. Outrage drove them, and fierce thirst for revenge to punish the indignities visited upon their companions. They unlimbered swords and pole weapons, swore dire oaths at the mists, and resolved on their course to hack the first mage they found into whimpering meat.

  The advance scout they passed in amorous attempt to couple with his discarded byrnie gave their industry no second glance.

  'Useless,' groused a soldier who knew him. 'Spends all his silver in the bawdy house, does Gundrig, then sleeps while the whores rob him blind. Ten years, I've watched. Some things never change.'

  Someone else loosed a raw gust of laughter. 'Keep on like that, he'll hang his fool bollocks in his mail and bend the rest of himself beyond using. Habits are bound to change quick enough then. Most ladies don't like their fun kinked.'

  'Quiet!' snapped Keldmar.

  Something whined through the mist. A man four paces off crumpled at the knees and sprawled with a shattering, coarse cry. Blood spread across the breast of his surcoat, and his fingers raked the ground in grasping agony. Then the air came alive with a hail of shafts fired in terrible accuracy.

  'How can they see to take aim?' The troop commander ducked as men dropped from his ranks. 'Dharkaron himself couldn't cast his ebon spear and hit any sinners in this murk.'

  'It's got to be sorcery. Scatter!' Keldmar shouted. 'Fan out in skirmish lines and move!' He plunged up a low rise, felt bright sun splash his face. Through a dazzle of glare, he blinked, astonished to see the lance streamers o
f his strike force casting thin, smoky shadows over the top of the fogbank. No fool, he dropped flat. The marksman's shot dispatched to take him whizzed over his helm and smacked into stone downslope. He rolled out of reflex and escaped a second shaft, launched in an arc from above. Impact splintered into the lichens where he had lain a scant second before.

  'Jam your pole weapons upright as decoys and run!' he screamed. 'The tips are piercing through the mist and every man with a pike's a walking target!'

  The troops who had the presence to obey shed their pole arms and charged up the mountain, swords drawn and lips peeled from their teeth as they sucked burning breaths to ease exhaustion. The ground pitched and dipped, then rose again, steeper, and green mists gave way to clear air.

  A grey-clad line of clan archers threw down bows and quivers and drew swords to check them in a screaming clash of steel.

  These were Erlien's clansmen, tenacious and skilled. They had done battle with mercenaries before, and arrows had levelled the odds. Up and down the scarp, small knots of combat raged to curses and threats, snatched between clangs as blade bit blade in a lethal exchange of parry and feint and riposte. Men fell. Their blood slicked the shale in treacherous, slick patches. The clansmen pressed in, relentless.

  Keldmar found himself engaged, surrounded, then deliberately worried separate from his men. The enemies who pressed him took consummate care to drive him off-balance and corner him. Their swordplay was fresh, skilled, and agile enough to sting the grip of his hand through his heavy, leather gauntlets. Sliding on gravel, outnumbered beyond recourse, Keldmar fought and blinked through the sweat that burned into his eyes. His throat was rasped raw, his chest laboured. He knew no sound but the whistle of his own breath, and the sour, metallic shock of punished steel. Hazed backward until he could scarcely swing to parry, he found himself at bay against the side of a weed-tangled gully.