“As an act of good faith, some information which, I believe, only I outside the Nordmen councils possess.”
Ragnarson’s eyebrows rose questioningly.
“The Captal of Savernake has been making the rounds of the barons. He slipped out of Sedlmayr just before you arrived.”
“So?”
“He claims the true child of the old King is in his custody. You’ve heard the stories about a changeling? He’s trying to find backers for his ‘real’ heir.”
“The Captal,” Bragi interjected. “He’s old?” He described the sorcerer he and Mocker had encountered in Ruderin.
“You’ve met?”
“In passing. You’ve told me more than you realize, friend. I’ll return the favor, but don’t spread it around. The power behind the Captal is Shinsan.”
Mundwiller went pale. “What interest could they have in Ravelin?”
“A passage to the west. A quietly attained bridgehead against the day when they move to attain world dominion. All spur-of-the-moment speculation, of course. Who knows the motives of Shinsan?”
“True. We move at the second hour. I’m to lead you to the postern we hold.”
IV) Savernake Gap
Bragi occupied Sedlmayr without disturbing its citizens’ sleep, capturing the Nordmen and disarming their troops. Baron Kartye had assumed he would decamp in the night.
Sedlmayr taken, Ragnarson secured Delhagen, then decamped in earnest.
Ragnarson departed with twenty-five hundred men, over half of them Kaveliners. None were men he had given Reskird to dispute the Armstead ford. If forced to fight, he would miss those bows.
Kildragon, he learned, had held the ford so successfully that he had almost turned Vodicka back-till the Baroness Breitbarth had surprised him from behind. He had barely gotten out. Fleeing east, he had encountered Volstokiners who had crossed the river above him. He had abandoned everything but his weapons, swum the Ebeler, and was now hiding in the Bodenstead forest.
Vodicka had shown his gratitude to the Baroness by making her prisoner and sacking Damhorst. That gentleman had abandoned all pretense, was destroying everyone and everything as he advanced toward Vorgre-berg.
The barons harrying the capital now eyed him as the greater danger.
In Volstokin itself there was trouble, bands of horsemen cutting, in the guerrilla style, at the roots of royal power. Ragnarson suspected Haroun.
Good. Nothing prevented him from doing what he wanted. He marched eastward, passed within twenty miles of Vorgreberg, struck the caravan route east of the city and, spreading panic among the Nordmen, swept on till he entered Savernake, at the juncture of the Kapenrungs and Mountains of M’Hand, where the Savernake Gap debouched into Kavelin. He consideredthe Captal the most dire threat to the Queen.
His arrow-straight drive didn’t slow till he had entered the Gap itself and had climbed above the timberline. Then he stopped cold. He summoned Blackfang, Altenkirk, Jarl Ahring, subbing for Kildragon, and Sir Andvbur Kimberlin of Karadja, in command of the new Wesson battalion.
The five considered the Gap above. Behind them, men seized the opportunity to rest.
“I don’t like it,” Ragnarson said. “Too quiet.” The pass did seem as still as a desert.
“Almost as if time had stopped,” said Blackfang. “You’d expect an eagle or something.”
Altenkirk spoke to one of the Marena Dimura. The man examined the road ahead.
Ragnarson, blue eyes frosty, studied the sky. He had scouts out. They were to send up smoke in case of trouble.
“I’ve been this way before,” said Sir Andvbur,” and have heard tell it gets like this when the Captal’s expecting a fight.”
The Marena Dimura said something to Altenkirk, who translated, “The scouts are still ahead of us.”
“Uhm. The Captal knows we’re coming. In Trolle-dyngja they defend passes by rolling rocks down on people. Altenkirk, put a company on each face. Have them root out anything bigger than a mouse. It’ll be slow, but caution’s more important than speed now.”
“It’s only four or five miles to Maisak,” said Sir Andvbur. “Around that bluff that looks like a man’s face. It’s built against the mountain where the pass narrows. The Imperial engineers used natural caverns for barracks, laying the least possible masonry.”
Bragi had gone through the Gap to Necremnos once, a few years after the wars, but his memories were vague. He had been in a hurry to see a woman.
Marena Dimura filtered up the rugged slopes. The troops below perked up, saw to their weapons. The day-after-day, week-after-week grind of the march, without a pause to loot or fight or carouse, had eroded morale. Prospective action lifted that.
“What’s that?” asked Ragnarson, indicating a wisp ofblackness over the formation Sir Andvbur had pointed out. “Not smoke?”
“The Captal’s sorcery, I’d guess,” said the knight.
“Send your people for more firewood. We’ll make our own light. Have some men stand by with what we’ve got. Ahring, bring your best bowmen up to support the Marena Dimura.”
Once they had left, Ragnarson told Blackfang, “Maybe it’s mother’s witch-blood, Haaken. I’ve got a bad feeling.”
“You’re sure this’s the sorcerer from Ruderin?”
“Reasonably.”
“Think I’ll have a bad feeling myself.” He chuckled. “Here we sit without even Mocker’s phony magic, getting ready to storm a vassal of Shinsan.”
“That’s my worry, Haaken. The Captal’s just supposed to be a dabbler. But what’s Shinsan put in?”
“Imagine we’ll find out.”
“Haaken, I don’t know what I’d do without you.” He laughed weakly. “Don’t know what to do with you, either, but that’s another problem.”
“Don’t start your death dance yet.”
“Eh?”
“We’ve been through the campaigns. You’re going to tell me how to run things after you’ve found the spear with your name.”
“Damn. Next time I’m using new people.” He laughed.
Marena Dimura shouted on the slopes. Something broke cover, ran a few yards toward them, then fled the other way. A bowstring twanged. The creature jumped, screamed, fell. Ragnarson and Blackfang moved up, a dozen bowmen at their backs.
“What is it?” Blackfang asked. The body was the size of that of a six-year-old. It had the head of a squirrel.
“Coronel!”
Bragi glanced up. A Marena Dimura tossed some-thing. He caught it. A child-sized crossbow.
Haaken caught a quiver of bolts, pulled one out, examined its head. “Poisoned.”
Ragnarson had the word passed, saw shields start to be carried less sloppily.
“Poor fellow,” said Blackfang, turning the corpse withafoot. “Didn’t want to fight. Could’ve gotten off a shot.”
“Maybe the light was too bright.” Ragnarson studied the black cloud growing over the bluff with the face of a man.
During the next hour, as the sky darkened, the Marena Dimura flushed two score creatures of almost as many shapes. Several of Ragnarson’s people learned the hard way about the poisoned bolts. The little people weren’t aggressive, but they got ferocious when cornered.
“Wait’11 you see the owl-faced ones,” Ragnarson said as they reached the natural obelisk he had marked as their goal for the hour. “Some as big as you, and even uglier.”
“Speaking of ugly,” Haaken replied with sudden grimness.
They had found the missing scouts.
The men hung on a gallows-like rack, from curved spikes piercing the bases of their skulls. The flesh was gone from their faces, fingers, and toes. Their bellies had been ripped open. Their bowels hung to the ground. Their hearts had been cut out. Painted in blood on a pale boulder were the Itaskian words, “Leave Kavelin.”
“That’s Shinsan work, sure,” Blackfang growled.
“Must be,” Sir Andvbur agreed. “The Captal’s dramatics were never this grisly.”
“Get that writing cleaned up,” said Ragnarson. “Then let the men see this. Ought to get them vengeance-mad.”
The sight did stir a new, grim determination, especially among the Marena Dimura. Hitherto they had done no more than flush the Captal’s timorous creatures. Now they hunted for blood.
Intensity of resistance rose sharply. Bragi moved more archers up to support the Marena Dimura, and Trolledyngjans to shield the bowmen from any sudden charge. He had fires and torches lighted and slowed the advance to an even more cautious pace.
A little later, while they waited for the Trolledyngjans to clear the road of a band of armored owl-faces behind a boulder barricade, he asked Sir Andvbur, “How long before the snows come? Soon?”
“Within the month, this high up.”
“Bad. We’ve got to take Maisak or they’ll have all winter to strengthen it.”
“True. We couldn’t maintain a siege once winter came.”
“Not with what we’ve got. Haaken, get those boulders cleared. We don’t want bottlenecks behind us.”
Against continually increasing resistance, Ragnarson’s men had the best of the casualty ratio.
It became completely dark. The men grew concerned about sorcery. There was little Bragi could do to reassure them.
As they neared the bluff, resistance ceased. Ragnarson ordered a halt.
“I’d trade my share of the plunder for a staff wizard,” he muttered. “What do we do now? Even during the wars nobody rooted the Captal out. And then he was using more normal defenses. Why should he fear an attack from this direction?”
“It’s the caverns,” said Sir Andvbur. “Maisak’s built over their easternmost mouths. There’re lots of openings here on the west slope. During the wars, once he’d pushed some scouts past, El Murid almost took Maisak by sending men back underground. Most vanished in the maze, but some did reach the fortress.”
“He didn’t seal them?”
“Those he could find. But what’s been sealed can be unsealed.”
“Uhm. Altenkirk, pass the word to look for caves. But not to go in.”
The next phase of the Captal’s defense exploded on leathery wings. Flying things, from man-sized like the one Ragnarson had seen in Ruderin to creatures little bigger than the bats they resembled, suddenly swarmed over-head. Bragi’s staff were the focal point, but escaped injury. The winged things’ only weapon was a poisoned dart impelled by gravity.
“This can’t be his last defense,” Ragnarson declared.
“There’s an open, flat place the other side of Stone Face,” said Sir Andvbur. “Suitable for battle.”
“Uhm. Could we see it from up top?” Ragnarsonindicated the highest point of the formation. No one answered. “That’s what we’ll do. Haaken, take over. Don’t go past the bluff. Altenkirk, give me three of your best men. One should speak a language I do. Sir Andvbur, come with me.”
V) Woman of the mists
The peak provided a god’s eye view of the pass and Maisak. From it Ragnarson saw things he hadn’t cared to view. In the open area Sir Andvbur had described, drawn up in line of battle, statue-still among hundreds of illuminating fires, were the most fearsome warriors he had ever seen, each clad in black, chitinous armor.
“Shinsan,” he whispered. “Four, five hundred. We’ll never cut our way through.”
“We’ve beaten armies three times our number.”
“Armed rabbles,” said Ragnarson. “The Dread Empire trains its soldiers from childhood. They don’t question, they don’t disobey, they don’t panic. They stand, they fight, they die, and they retreat only when they’ve got orders. And they’re the best soldiers, fighting, you’ll find. Or so I’m told by people who’re supposed to know. This’s my first encounter.”
“We could bring bowmen up.”
“Right. Having come this far, I can’t pull out without trying.” He turned to send a Marena Dimura to Blackfang and Ahring. “Sir Andvbur. What do you make of that?” He indicated the far distance, where countless fires burned.
“Looks like the eastern barons have gotten together.”
“Uhm. How far?”
“They’re still in high pastureland. Near Baxendala. Three days. Two if they hurry. I don’t think they will, considering the showing you’ve made. They’ll piddle around till it’s too late to back out.”
‘’Think they’ll come after us? Or wait there, hoping we get the worst of the Captal?”
Sir Andvbur shrugged. “You never know what a Nordmen will do. What’s unreasonable to a logical mind. Tell you what. If you want to go ahead here, I’ll take my Wessons down and set an ambush. We won’t be much help against Shinsan.”
“This requires a staff meeting,” said Ragnarson. “Those Shinsaners will wait. Let’s slide back down.”
To his surprise, he found his officers unanimous. They should try taking Maisak. They found the presence of Shinsan unsettling, but an argument for immediate attack. The advance base must be denied the Dread Empire. The baronial forces they would worry about later.
They were getting a little blase about the barons, Bragi feared.
He detailed Sir Andvbur, the Wessons, Altenkirk, and half the Marena Dimura to prepare a reception for the barons twelve miles west, in the pines around the tiny lake and marshy meadow where the Ebeler had its headwaters. As always, he chose ground difficult for horsemen.
He prepared meticulously for his engagement with Shinsan, bringing up tons of firewood, having his men erect a series of rock barricades across the floor of the pass, preparing boulders for rolling down on those positions as they were lost, and locating dozens of snipers on the slopes to support the Trolledyngjans, who would do the close fighting. He had several thousand arrows taken to the bluff top. And he sent Marena Dimura to hunt ways to bring small forces against Maisak itself, and to locate every possible cave mouth. He invested a day and a half preparing.
From the bluff it looked as though the enemy hadn’t moved, though Bragi knew they rotated for rest. “Well,” he muttered, looking down at all that armor, “no point putting it off.” Blackfang was awaiting the first onslaught. “Loose!”
Twenty shafts began their drop. In the gloom and shifting light, downhill shooting was tricky. Ragnarson didn’t expect much, though his bowmen were his best.
But figures toppled, a few with each flight. Their armor wasn’t impervious.
“Gods, are they mute?” one archer muttered. Never a cry echoed up. But Shinsan’s soldiers fought and died in utter silence. It disconcerted the most fearless enemies.
The enemy commander had to make a decision. From his Marena Dimura Ragnarson knew a force couldn’t be sent up the bluff from the Maisak side. Shinsan would have to withdraw into the fortress, or advance, to break through and secure the bluff from behind. Standing fast meant slow but certain slaughter. The peak was high enough that arrows from bows below were spent on arrival.
Shinsan did three things: sent a company against Ragnarson’s walls of stone, withdrew forces that couldn’t be brought to bear, and rolled out a pair of heavy, wheeled ballistae with which they fired back.
“Take care!” Ragnarson snapped after a shaft the size of a knight’s lance growled a foot over his head. “Duck when you see them trigger. You won’t see the shaft coming. You, you, you. Put some fire arrows on them.”
He had a sudden premonition, pulled five men back and had them watch for an aerial attack.
“Colonel, they’re moving a platoon to the canyon.”
“Hurt those you can. Mind the ballistae. You men, look sharp. Now’s the time they’ll come.”
And they did, a swarm of leather-winged hellspawn who, though anticipated, exploded upon them in a sudden shower of poisoned darts. The bigger ones tried to force his archers off the bluff. One man plunged to his death. Then they were gone.
Ragnarson searched the rim for grapnels with depending lines, found two, smiled grimly. He would have tried that himself. Those gone, he threw the enemy casualties after t
hem. He expected Shinsan would send the winged things each time reinforcements went in below, and wasn’t disappointed. His men soon slaughtered most of them. He lost two more people. The arrow fire scarcely slackened. He plied a dead man’s bow himself.
A messenger came from Blackfang. The first barricade had fallen. The spirits of the men remained good, though they were awed by the prowess and determination of theirenemies. They knew they were in a real fight this time.
Ragnarson had had seven barricades erected, manning the first four with a hundred men apiece. The rest of his forces were building an eighth and ninth. To beat him Shinsan would have to seize old walls faster than he could build new ones.
The first four hours of fighting were uneventful, Haaken’s Trolledyngjans hacked it out toe to toe with Shinsan while the Itaskians showered the enemy with arrows. Casualties were heavy on both sides, but the ratio favored Ragnarson because of his superior bows. Even fighting from barricades the Trolledyngjans got the worst of the close combat.
When Haaken sent word that the fifth wall was weakening, he began withdrawing from the bluff. Otherwise he would be cut off. It would have been nice to have denied it to the enemy, but he thought the battle would be decided before Shinsan could take advantage of it. He left two Marena Dimura to keep an eye on Maisak.
Before he departed, he examined the western slopes. It should be true night down there. He saw no campfires, but did spot the beacon Sir Andvbur was supposed to light when the barons neared his position. Assuming he beat Shinsan, which wasn’t likely, could he handle the barons? His men would be weary and weak.
“Colonel.”
He turned.
A new dimension had been given Shinsan’s attack. He wondered if it were because of his withdrawal.
From Maisak’s gate came the woman he and Mocker had seen in mists in Ruderin. She rode a dark-as-midnight stallion trapped in Shinsan armor. Both moved in intensely bright light. Even at that distance Bragi was awed by the woman’s beauty. Such perfection was unnatural.