The hastenoch were close behind her.
Redmede had an arrow on his bow, and he leaned out—well out—brought the back of his thumb to his mouth, and loosed. His shaft went into the thing’s haunches, all the way to the fletching; his second shaft went in within a hand’s breadth of the first, and Stern Rachel matched him on the left, and two of the monsters sank.
The irk woman’s exhausted mount got its forefeet onto the bank, but its eyes were glazing.
Two Albin militiamen jumped forward, reached down, and plucked the armoured irk out of the water even as her brave mount seemed to slump and grow smaller.
“Now, Albinkirk!” Redmede roared. “On your feet!”
The crossbows stood. They made two packed ranks, and their captain called orders, and the steel bows leveled at the hastenoch and the foremost Rukh, just a few yards away.
“Shoot!” called Captain Stark.
The heavy arbalests didn’t miss. Their bows were very powerful indeed; the bolts short, squat, and heavy, with broad steel heads like chisels.
The rangers on either flank stood again and began loosing at close range; no more ordered volleys, but every archer loosing as fast as she could nock and draw and find a target.
The Moreans had stopped throwing lead bullets. At this range, every slinger picked up stones the size of a dog’s head. A sling stone that heavy, thrown by a Morean mountaineer, could knock a Rukh dead in a single cast, break a hastenoch’s leg or hip, shatter the limbs of a stone troll.
For a moment, in the bestial mathematics of war, it was all a perfect balance among the speed of the hastenoch, the fears of the rangers, the resilience of the Rukh, the power of the bows, and the weight of the arrows and bolts and stones.
The Rukh pressed forward; the hastenoch filled the marsh with their cries, tentacles flapping. A Morean magister died in fire, and a levin bolt struck the Albin militiamen, killing a dozen outright.
And then a Rukh fell; a hastenoch flinched; a militiaman from the south Brogat spanned his crossbow a little faster than he might have despite the burns on his hands, got a bolt in the groove, and loosed at a range of ten inches in the very face of a monster’s fangs, and his mates, emboldened, held their bank another moment, and another …
… and then the balance was shattered. The fall of the arrows was unrelenting, and there were not enough monsters. Between one beat of a terrified heart and the next, everything changed, and desperate battle gave way to heartless, ruthless massacre. The hastenoch and the Rukh were trapped in the swamp as ducks are trapped by hunters, and they cried and trumpeted and squawked and bled and died. The survivors broke back out of the water to the north, and found the irk knights waiting; they’d ridden at no great speed along the old dam, and now they were like figures of myth, rising in their saddles to throw lances of gold into the tight-packed and despairing creatures.
Syr Ydrik rode down one of the adversariae, the great wardens, with his engorged purple crest. Hearing the stag hooves, the shaman whirled and loosed a bolt of aethereal fire from the haft of his stone-bladed axe, and Ydrik’s lance of gold was shivered and unmade. But the old irk leaned out from his high saddle, already taking the long, slim axe off the cantle, and with his left hand he gathered potentia. His axe batted aside his opponent’s next working, and his next, as the stag surged under him; the wave front of his fear passed through the warden’s and then his savage counter filled the shaman’s defences with fire, and his axe crashed down; no random blow counting on strength, it cut a steady line, turning the stone axe by so little that the warden never knew the blow that sent half his skull to the ground ahead of the collapse of his body.
Syr Ydrik pivoted his tired stag and he reared it, and whirled his axe over his head, and the rangers cheered. He subsumed his dead foe, drawing the thing’s power to himself.
War in the Wild.
And then they picked up their wounded and ran for the main army, twelve miles away.
They moved quickly and silently in the pouring rain, and the sound of the rain covered them. The rangers were all grey with fatigue; even the dark-skinned men and women looked grey in the early light.
It was their sixth day of the little war; chewing on the enemy’s flanks, worrying him like dogs on a boar, trying to distract the flankers, trying to kill the high-value monsters on whom Ash’s battle plans must depend. It was a very personal war, less about high strategy and more about training, toughness, dogged determination, stamina, pain tolerance, food, and sleep. About how well a man performed when he couldn’t think or see; about how well a woman knew where her dirk was when her mind would no longer obey her; about remembering to keep your bowstring dry when you hadn’t eaten in two days or slept in three.
For Harald Redmede, it was about picking battles and battlefields, and never making a mistake. Because one mistake and they’d all be dead; no one had the energy for a heroic last stand. The Redmedes planned the swamp ambush, and the attack at the place they all called Bogglin Gully, and brilliant, one-sided massacre of a whole clan of wardens at Cornfields, when Ash’s creatures attempted to collapse the alliance rear guard. One Redmede commanded; the other was already searching for the next battlefield, the next ambush, the next massacre site.
And each day the risks changed, and grew; Gavin Muriens had warned the Redmedes that they were training Ash’s army, and it was true; the enemy kept better watch, they covered their flanks, they were far more cautious in pursuit. After Cornfields, the enemy mounted wardens on some hastenoch, whether or not the tentacled trolls were under compulsion, and with this monstrous cavalry, they covered their main body; no match for the irk knights, but capable and able to call on sorcerous support from their shamans.
The day after Cornfields, Ash returned to the skies. He stayed well back from the fighting, but his eldritch powers were far beyond anything the rangers could muster, and his observational skills made ambush even more difficult. There was a rumour that Ash was wounded; that he had a gash that dripped gore, visible a mile away. It was a good rumour, and it gave folk heart; unlike the rumour that there were ten thousand dead of a new plague in Harndon and Liviapolis, where horned men and fungal spores were defeating the best efforts of human magery.
Or so it was said.
The Redmedes gave their people a day of rest; the grammarian spent it laying primed traps with the great Duchess of the West, Mogon. The alliance, despite everything, seemed to have the initiative in the woods; the grammarian used it to hide his devices, and when next Ash’s horde surged forward, their movements were constantly punctuated by bursts of fire. By noon, the woods north of the Cohocton were afire for three miles, and the wind blew from the east, and Ash had to come in person and quench the fires before his whole horde disintegrated.
That night, Tamsin cloaked the whole alliance army again and it marched all night, twenty-two leagues, all the way to the fords, where, so long ago, Bill Redmede had found enough Outwaller corn to keep his starving rangers alive. Behind them, the sky was black from the volcanoes burning in the west at N’gara, and darker still from the forest fires burning north of the river.
The fords were a set of rapids in the Cohocton, where the Black ran in from the north, and where, just a mile downstream and one great, flame-coloured ridge east, the West Kanata came down from the high Adnacrags. Autumn had touched the woods with fire; the woods were orange and gold and pale green.
Gavin Muriens sat his riding horse at the edge of the Ford, the shallows between the two rapids, and pointed with his little axe at the far side.
Mogon shook her proud head. “If we cross, we concede the north bank to Ash,” she said.
“So what?” Gavin said. “Ten leagues east of here there’s a village—Redesdale-on-the-wall. After Redesdale there’s a road. On a road we can fly.”
“It’s not much of a road,” Tapio said. “I looked at it in the spring.”
Gavin nodded. “Let’s look at this,” he said. “We need to beat Ash to Lissen Carak. And hold there until
we’re relieved; at least until the queen can come for us from Albinkirk.” He raised his eyebrows. “The rangers are exhausted; Syr Ydrik looks as if he lost a fight with an octopus, and Bill Redmede looks like old pea soup. We cannot expect them to fight every day. And I need to get a message through to the queen.”
Ser Gregario tugged his beard. “My people are better, though,” he said. “Four days of hot food and sleep.”
“That’s my point,” Gavin said. “If we pass south of the river, one of two things happen. Either Ash passes us by, in which case it’s a straight race to Lissen Carak, and we have all the advantages; think of the fortified bridge on the river, and the magicked gate. Right? Or he follows us south of the Cohocton.” Gavin waited a moment to let that sink in. “Then we’ve won. In fact, we’ve won clean, and even if he kills every one of us, he’ll lose ten days doing it and have to march all the way back here to cross.”
Tapio gave Muriens half a smile. “You alwaysss planned thisss, man?” he asked.
Gavin allowed himself one of his brother’s smug looks of triumph. “Yes,” he said.
Tapio nodded slowly and looked at Tamsin. “It isss brilliant,” he said. “Why has Asssh not consssidered this?”
Gavin looked off to the east. “Maybe he has. Geography is a harsh reality. He needed to defeat us at Cornfields; maybe that’s why the wardens took such a foolish risk.” He shrugged. “Mayhap Tamsin and Gabriel are taking up all his time.” He turned his horse. “Listen, I don’t know why he’s missed it; but unless he has some terrible trick under his black wings, we can buy our people four days free of death, unless he comes against us directly.”
The grammarian nodded. “I can make that cost him,” he said. “And I can reach the queen, or perhaps Harmodius, if Ash leaves us space to breathe.”
Tamsin showed her fangs.
“Predators like their prey to be much smaller than they are,” she said. “Predators do not like to be hurt. He is like a giant cat. He will want us divided, fearful, and weak, before he pounces.”
Gavin pointed across the fords. “Whereas if we retreat across Cohocton, we will be well rested and strong,” he said.
Tapio allowed himself a smile. “You give me a little hope,” he said.
Arles—The Red Knight
Ariosto landed neatly inside the castle courtyard. A dozen very thin men were re-laying flagstone in the yard and as many more were repointing the damaged stonework from the siege, and there was scaffolding running all the way up the great tower that dominated the ancient fortress and the hill on which it stood and the plain of Arles below it.
Gabriel had kept his eyes on the scaffolding during Ariosto’s descent. He no longer spent every takeoff and landing in a state of mortal terror, but the spiraling, leaf-fluttering drop into the courtyard had been especially insane.
Show off, Gabriel thought.
There she is! Ariosto sent. And sure enough, Blanche emerged from the doorway of the tower in a dark blue gown with ermine at the tips of the sleeves and the collar. She looked at him, and he had eyes for no one else; not Kaitlin coming behind her, not Michael.
He dismounted as gracefully as he could manage, and bowed, and she curtsied, her head held perfectly, a very model of good manners. He made himself walk slowly across the newly laid flags and across a trench; he looked away from her to smile at two workmen who were staring in awe at Ariosto, and then he jumped the trench and he was standing with her.
“My lord,” she said with another curtsy.
“My lady,” he managed. “My God, how I missed you.”
She smiled. “I summoned the council as soon as Ariosto was sighted.”
“What if I tell you,” he said softly, “that I came only to see you?”
Her smile told him a great deal; it flirted with him, it hid from him, and it hung evocatively from the left corner of her mouth. “The saddest thing,” she said, “is that even if you mean that, the council will prove more important.”
“I doubt it,” he said, with some fire.
Far above the plain and the newly flagged yard, the Emperor of Man sat in his sweat-damp flying clothes and drank a cup of Etruscan red wine.
“The gonnes worked,” he said to Ser Michael, who had his legs stretched out before him, and a cup of wine, and was rubbing Kaitlin’s feet. Kaitlin sat in an ancient oak settee, its wood almost black with age, carved with saints who had once been painted, and her feet were in his lap.
Michael nodded. “I knew they’d work,” he said with satisfaction. “I wish I’d been there.”
Gabriel scratched his beard. They all made him feel dirty; their clothes were clean, their bodies were clean, and there was food. He hadn’t eaten his fill in eight days.
Blanche entered with the Queen of Arles and her ladies, and Gabriel rose, feeling less than elegant, and returned their bows and compliments.
“Comnena is taking our starvlings back to Etrusca,” Michael said. “Ser Milus has brought the main army back over the pass. He’s a day’s march away. Sauce is …”
Behind Blanche’s shoulder was a woman Gabriel didn’t know, young, blond, and pretty. And behind her …
Gabriel lunged forward. “Sukey!” he said, and rose and gave his company head woman a hug.
Sukey was tall, more handsome than beautiful—tall and strong with jet-black hair that had a shockingly white stripe in it from an old injury. The white patch and the scar by her mouth combined to give her a piratical look.
But in years of marching with her, Gabriel had never seen her look so well rested. Nor so well dressed.
“Careful of my gown,” Sukey said with a grin. “It’s only a loan.”
Blanche kissed her on the cheek. “You loaned me your best once,” she said.
Sukey kissed her back with gusto. “It was a good investment, as I hope you’ll allow. One look at you an’ I knew the cap’n would keep you.”
Clarissa de Sartres looked out the window. Her marshal came in, and behind him was a man in a Yahadut scholar’s cap and a long gown of spotless black velvet. With him was a very handsome man with a heavy black beard and long Ifriquy’an robes. With him were two mamluks.
Blanche indicated the scholar with a graceful wave of her arm. She wore scent, and she had been practicing that gesture. “Magisters Qatb al-Din al-Shirazi,” she said, “and Yusuf Bin Maymum.”
He rose and bowed to them both. The Ifriquy’an was not much older than he was—perhaps thirty—and very young to be titled magister. Of course, Morgon Mortirmir was only eighteen …
Michael had carefully rid himself of his wife’s feet and was now leaning against the carved stone hood over the great fire hearth. On it, Saint Michael was killing a dragon.
Sukey took a seat at the long table. “I brought them,” she said. “From Venike.”
“She also brought in Convoy Four,” Blanche added.
Gabriel was tempted to roll his eyes. I know. I’m the captain.
He looked around—Michael, Clarissa, Blanche, Kaitlin, Sukey, Pierre La Porte, the two scholars, a handful of household servants, the mamluks, and Michael’s squire, Lord Robin. He thought, I trained most of you. Why do you suddenly assume I don’t know what’s going on? Yet at the same time, he acknowledged that they were trying very hard to show him that they knew their jobs; Sukey was proud of having had her first command; Blanche was working to be an empress and not a washerwoman, Clarissa was working at being a queen, and he needed them all. Everyone needed everyone.
“Ser Alison has changed her plans somewhat,” Lord Robin said deferentially, and he handed Gabriel a flimsy with a trace of blood on it.
“Bird injured?” Gabriel asked. At some very real level, the fate of the world rode on the wingtips of the imperial messenger service.
“C.2 was attacked by something. He survived to make it here, and he’s being healed.” Robin glanced at Blanche.
Blanche nodded at the two robed men. “Our guests are astrologers,” she said. She was clearly already used to bei
ng the head of the meeting. Gabriel chewed on that a moment.
“I have been trying to catch you for weeks,” the younger man said.
The Yahadut scratched under his cap. “I, also,” he admitted.
Gabriel couldn’t help himself; the impulse was too strong. “I was expecting three wise men,” he said. “But not until after the baby is born.”
Kaitlin heaved with laughter, her beautiful complexion temporarily splotched. Most of the others either looked away, or looked at him. Blanche stared at him.
“Eh?” the Yahadut asked. He glanced at Kaitlin. “This was meant to be humourous?”
“In a blasphemous kind of way,” Gabriel said.
“Don’t let him interrupt you,” Blanche said. “It’s just his way.”
Gabriel sat back.
The two scholars looked at each other, and the Yahadut put his hand on his heart and bowed, as if granting his space to the younger.
The younger man stepped forward to the head of the table, and waved his hand. As soon as he gathered power, Gabriel’s adamantine shield of gold exploded from the aethereal.
Gabriel was already out of his chair, his hand on his sword.
The man froze. “I mean no harm!” he cried in heavily accented Archaic.
Gabriel saw that both Blanche and Clarissa had swords in their hands.
Michael had a small shield of his own; he had clearly been learning. “Magister al-Shirazi,” he said, his voice attenuated by the shield. “It is not acceptable to summon power in the presence of the emperor without permission.”
The magister released his crafted ops. “My apologies, my lord,” he said.
Gabriel rose and bowed. “I think we’re all a little on edge,” he admitted. He put back his shields, pried his hand off the sweat-stained grip of his war sword, and forced himself to smile. “It has been a difficult time,” he said with a shrug, and folded himself back into his chair.