Both prisoners seemed amused by her arrival. As though they had shared some particularly hysterical joke, entirely at her expense, just a moment before she appeared.
Soulcatcher paid them no attention. She was much more concerned about how troubled her sister would have grown because of the absence of sorcery on the battlefield. If no one became too suspicious for another fifteen minutes...
68
The Taglian Territories:
Fire on the Middle Ground
Behind the brilliant fog of light masking Widowmaker I climbed down off my horse, then clambered onto the Voroshk flying post I would share with my former understudy, Murgen. The post had Magadan’s name painted on it in his native script. Over on the left, Lifetaker, too, was preparing to soar with that noted devotee of high flying, Willow Swan. All of the flying logs were ready to go up, each surrounded by an absurd wicker and bamboo framework carrying numerous makeshift attachments.
Somewhere back where I could not see them, Tobo and Howler were getting ready to take up a flying carpet creaking under the weight of warlike unpleasantries. The screaming wizard was still muttering under his breath because he had been forced to reveal his flying secrets to Tobo.
A huge volume of raw nastiness would be taken aloft, to be launched either when Soulcatcher betrayed her location or our attack began to bog down.
The latter did not happen. The evaporation of the Taglian front line was a daydream come true. The second line lasted only a little while longer. The third line, evidently comprised of the best and most motivated of the Protector’s troops, was more stubborn. Having spent too much time too close to Soulcatcher myself, I could imagine why the third force might have had a little extra motivation. Soulcatcher was not a thoughtful, forgiving commander.
Give her her due, though. She would not expect love or forgiveness from anyone superior to her, either. In the world where she had come of age that had been the norm. That world, of the Domination, had demanded ruthlessness and cruelty. It had forgiven neither kindness nor compassion.
The third line’s stubbornness failed to withstand the precision and confidence of our men. Fainthearts began to slip away and run toward that distant treeline, where somebody appeared to be rallying survivors.
The rout had only just begun when a dome of cardinal light popped into existence in an instant, straight ahead. It faded in seconds. I was making a clumsy effort to gain altitude when a second dome of light, this time carmine, appeared and faded to my left.
There were a half dozen more flashes, each in the family of reds, before I felt confident that I was high enough and dared to divert attention from the post’s controls long enough to see what Murgen had been babbling about throughout our climb.
The sorcery in progress appeared to have turned the earth a uniform black. Upon that surface something kept painting red flowers that spread from a pinpoint in an eye’s blink, almost black at the center but fading to flame yellow as the circle ended its expansion at perhaps twelve yards in diameter. From on high nothing but the sudden red chrysanthemums, blooming randomly, were readily visible. The earth looked like some bleak gameboard upon which a garden of deathflowers continue to blossom and gradually fade.
Whatever was happening, it was passive. Not coming to us. The sorcery had been in place already and was being tripped by our advancing soldiers. Who were not getting off lightly.
Soulcatcher did not make herself evident anywhere.
Way off to my left Lady and Willow vanished behind smoke as all the bamboo fireball launchers attached to their post sprayed the Taglian camp. Dozens of fires broke out down there but the red circles kept blooming amongst our soldiers.
I pushed my post forward half a mile. I told Murgen, “Saturate the wood. She’s in there somewhere. Where the hell are my crows? They’re never around when I need them.” They had disappeared during my climb to altitude. Maybe they did not like getting too far from the surface of the earth.
There was no sign of the Unknown Shadows anywhere. But I did not expect to see signs. Tobo had sent most of the hidden folk away last night, for their own safety.
You notice strange things in times of stress. I remarked the absence of crows around the battlefield. A rather bizarre lacking which I had not witnessed before, ever. But vultures had begun to circle above the wood.
Murgen shouted something about the enemy taking heart from our misfortune. I said, “Put the fireballs along the tree-line, then.” Which was really my task since I had to point the Voroshk post where I wanted the fireballs to go.
Child Shukrat, better schooled in the use of the post, swept in from the east, low, laying her fire down upon the Taglian line. She wasted hardly a fireball.
Our ground advance halted. Sleepy did not withdraw but neither was she willing to face any more killing sorcery.
I would not see how bad that had been until I was back on the ground. Which was soon enough because once we exhausted our fireball supply there was nothing more Murgen and I could do from above.
I had no trouble imagining Soulcatcher over there in those woods laughing her leathers off at how she had hurt us.
The Taglians launched one uncoordinated, inept counterattack which turned disastrous when they began to run away again. Soulcatcher’s sorceries did not distinguish between friend and foe, only between directions of travel.
We grounded well to the rear. I remounted my horse and went forward. Soulcatcher’s sorcery had been terrible. The site where each flower of light had bloomed remained defined as a red so dark it verged on black. The black itself was fading from around the circles, trampled grass gradually becoming visible like winter wheat sprouting. But weirder crops appeared within the circles.
Men, sunken into the earth, some only ankle deep, some up to their hips and more. Frozen in the advance, still in their lines. All suits of armor no longer tenanted by even a ghost of life.
Somebody had tried opening several suits. Inside there was nothing but charred flesh and bone. A quick calculation suggested we might have lost four or five hundred men to this horror, which had taken place almost faster than it can be told.
“There’s something wrong here,” I said. “Soulcatcher has stopped.”
“What?” Murgen asked. He was probing a deadly circle. He discovered that it was cool now and the visible surface was no thicker than a fingernail. “What’s that?” Later, when we collected the dead, we learned that they had not sunk into the earth. The apparently sunken portion was not there when we dug out around them. Possibly they had melted.
“Soulcatcher stopped playing with us. She had to be controlling those circles somehow. Otherwise they would’ve killed her own soldiers the first time they retreated. But that isn’t working anymore. What’s changed? What’s happened?”
Suddenly, the vultures above the wood all spiralled down rapidly, as though planning to attack something.
I said, “Let’s see what Sleepy is up to.”
Sleepy was sending scouts to explore the limits of the danger. So far no death flower had bloomed on our far flanks.
The vultures stopped their descent just above the treetops but continued to look more like raptors than carrion birds. One suffered an impulse to descend a little farther.
A golden-brown urine-colored strand darted up like a gigantic toad’s tongue. A splatter of light surrounded the bird. It seemed to become a black cutout of a vulture. The cutout shattered into a hundred fragments. Those fluttered down like falling leaves.
The remaining vultures chose to take their business elsewhere.
Nobody but me seemed to notice what was happening.
Where were my damned ravens? I could send them to see what was happening while keeping my own sweet ass high and dry. What was the point of taking on a mythic character if I did not get to do mythic kinds of things?
Moments later Tobo and Howler were above the woods, dropping prosaic firebombs on the Taglian forces.
Lady joined us before Sleepy’s scouts had found
out if we could safely slide around the ends of the killing zone. She had a map she presented to the Captain. One glimpse told me my sweetie had not wasted her time aloft. She had charted the deadly circles. And a pattern was apparent. The positions of those not yet tripped were evident. Unless Soulcatcher had been aware of our airborne capacity. Then the death circles would be there solely to herd us into something far more gruesome and cruel.
Sleepy summoned her battalion commanders immediately.
69
Midway Between:
The Unanticipated
Soulcatcher’s soldiers fought stubbornly for a while, along the edge of the wood, but had been too badly mauled already to last long under determined attack by our professional bloodletters.
Most of the Taglians had no desire to see their wives and children lose their husbands and fathers. Sleepy gave orders to let anyone who abandoned his weapons go.
Any Taglian economy inherited by the Prahbrindrah Drah would be better off if it was not crippled by a great slaughter of the empire’s young men. It was only now recovering from the horrible losses suffered during the Shadowmaster and Kiaulune wars.
“It wasn’t anywhere nearly as eloquent a victory as I’d hoped. But I’ll take it,” Sleepy said. “Despite our casualties. This war may have been won today.”
That earned her a lot of bewildered or disbelieving looks. Soulcatcher was still out there, in a really foul temper now. More unpleasant surprises could be expected.
“But if we keep after her she’ll be distracted when she reaches Taglios.”
Mogaba’s plans were a longshot. I said so. “And whatever sweet nothings his conscience whispered to him a couple months back, he’ll be a whole lot more worried about saving Mogaba’s skin once he has old enemies pounding on his door for real.”
Sleepy started to say something about Aridatha Singh but thought better of it.
A carmine flash appeared on the killing ground. Using Lady’s chart Tobo had triggered a booby trap by bombarding it from the Howler’s flying carpet.
Sleepy told Runmust Singh, “After Tobo’s done I want you to march some prisoners back and forth through there. I don’t want any of those things left active. Some kid might wander in there and get himself killed.” Like the countryside was swarming with stupid children.
I said, “I’d be more pleased if we could grab a few of those things for our own use. If Mogaba had something like that he might stand a chance of killing Soulcatcher.”
Lady ruined the fun. “She’d smell it out. She created those things. There’ll be safeguards so they can’t be thrown back at her.”
A whole lot of shouting started in the woods. Tobo and Shukrat darted that way, in case the soldiers needed help. Moments later Howler’s carpet streaked back our way.
Tobo did not bother to dismount. He just announced, “They’ve found the Daughter of Night. She’s in a cage. Soulcatcher ran off and left her.”
Lady and I exchanged looks. That seemed completely unlikely. Unless the girl was bait in a truly deadly trap. Which might be. Soulcatcher had sown the field of death that had consumed our soldiers without the Unknown Shadows noticing her doing it.
70
Midway Between:
The Capture
The cage was inside a halfway collapsed tent. Several fireballs had ripped through the fabric but had failed to set it afire. I told everyone, “Be extremely careful here. If there was ever a time when Soulcatcher would try to spring something on us this would be it.”
Sleepy had her henchmen push curious soldiers back. We were already closer to the tent than Lady liked — though that had as much to do with who we expected to meet here as it had to do with concern about sorcerous deadfalls.
Nobody had yet been able to sense anything active in that line.
Lady told Tobo, “Go over everything three more times. Then check it again. Howler, you go over it, too.” Of no one in particular she asked, “Where’s Goblin?” When she got no answer she turned on the men who had found the tent, all of whom were in perfect health despite having taken time to scrounge souvenirs before they reported their find. “Where’s the little man? The one who got away at Nijha.”
Shrugs. They might not know what she was talking about. But one brave soul did say, “There’s another cage under there. It’s tipped over and broken. Maybe he got away.”
Lady and I exchanged glances. Why would Goblin leave without the girl?
He would not.
Tobo called out, “There’s no danger here.”
Howler tried to concur but his voice gurgled off into a scream.
I said, “Something definitely ain’t right. Tobo, send your unseen pals out to scout around. We especially need to know where Goblin and Soulcatcher are. As soon as we can. We have to keep after them.”
Sleepy nodded irritated agreement.
Lady and I approached the tent warily.
Booby traps come in many forms.
As we had been warned, one broken cage was empty. The other lay on its side, door downward. One fine-looking woman lay sort of splattered all over inside, wearing not a stitch.
Lady stunned me by starting to rush forward saying something about her poor baby. I caught her arm. “Easy.” The body looked, to me, like it had been posed. It would excite Soulcatcher’s sense of humor for decades if she could get us to jump to our deaths over a child who had no more feeling for us than she did for the horses, cattle, and whatnot that passed through her life.
Lady paused but would not remain patient long. “What?”
“That isn’t Booboo. I don’t think.” But that naked flesh could not be an illusion, could it? Goblin used to do that sort of thing... But Tobo said nothing magical was going on.
I squatted, groaning as my knees creaked, reached through the bars and pulled dark hair away from the woman’s neck, which it had concealed.
I pulled Lady down beside me. Her knees popped as badly as mine had. “Look there. I do pretty good work, don’t I? You can hardly see the scars.” I exaggerated. The scarring was ugly. But not all that ugly for somebody who had had her head sewn back on.
“Check the foot. Which foot got hurt? The right one, wasn’t it?”
I uncovered the woman’s right foot. The injury done by Goblin’s booby trap, and Soulcatcher’s own crude self-repairs, were immediately obvious.
“I hate her even more than I used to,” Lady said. “Except for that heel and her scars she’s still looking just as sleek as she did on her nineteenth birthday. What’s wrong with her?”
I said, “I can’t tell from here. But I’m not getting any closer till I know it’s safe. Where’d Tobo and Howler go? Get them back here.” This remained a potentially explosive situation, even if no sorcery was active. Soulcatcher would be in a foul temper when she regained consciousness.
Lady mused, “The child must have a low opinion of our intelligence if she thought this would fool us.”
I wondered. Maybe we just showed up before the trap could be fully prepared.
When Tobo returned he told us, “Cat Sith just spotted Soulcatcher at the north edge of the woods. She has Goblin on a leash. She’s rallied some soldiers and has them building earthworks.” He became increasingly distracted as he stared at my sister-in-law.
Now was that not an interesting set of developments?
Sleepy blurted, “The Daughter of Night is pretending that she’s the Protector?”
Tobo almost reeled back when he realized that he was lusting after a woman five hundred years his senior.
Lady, always an advocate for swift and decisive action when she had been in command, insisted, “We need to press her. Whoever’s in charge. Every second she gets to pull things together will mean more casualties and difficulties for us later.”
Sleepy did not disagree. It was hard to argue with the truth. She went off to restore order and resume the advance. It was weird that the Taglians, already broken twice and neither well-trained nor motivated, would be rallying. B
ut Tobo insisted that they were doing so and he was not subject to fantasies. Of that sort.
It seemed unlikely that the Taglians would be well-armed. Most of the Taglian soldiers had thrown down their weapons the first time they fled.
Lady gripped my hand for a moment. “Think we’ll ever really get to see her?”
“You begin to wonder if she’s any closer, or any more real, than Khatovar, don’t you?”
Willow Swan came bounding up. “Is it true? Have we caught Soulcatcher again?”
“News spreads fast,” I said. “Yes. That’s her. I’m pretty sure. You’re welcome to join me while I examine her. To make sure.” He had gotten closer to her than I ever had as her one-time physician and surgeon. He would have a better chance of spotting physical evidence that this was one of Soulcatcher’s elaborate tricks. If he remembered anything at all after five years away.
I did not believe this was a trick. There was something badly wrong with my honey’s little sister. I felt that before I got my close-up look.
Swan examined and grumbled. He had no happy recollections of the way Soulcatcher had used him way back when.
But he was not driven by any particular hatred of her, either. Sleepy said, “You keep what this woman did to you firmly in mind, Willow Swan. I don’t want to see it happen again. And if I do get a whiff, you can count on getting kneecapped before you score.”
Swan wanted to rage and protest that there was no damned way that witch was going to get inside his head again. But he did not. He was only flesh and he recognized that that flesh was incapable of rational thought around any female who shared Soulcatcher’s family blood.
His record spoke for itself.
“Then why don’t we just kill her?” he asked. Wounded pride burned through his cool. “Right here. Right now. While we’ve got the best chance we’ll ever get. End it all forever.”
“We won’t because we don’t know what Goblin and Booboo did to her,” I snapped when Lady seemed strangely reluctant to disappoint a fellow whose passion had fixed upon her originally. She would not be developing a sense of compassion at this late date, would she? Or of family? She and her sister were one another’s oldest surviving enemies. “Soulcatcher won’t help us more than she absolutely has to but she will help. For a while.”