The man under the Umroth banner was Ser Tobias, and he couldn’t keep the grin off his face, and neither could Francis Atcourt or de Beause or any of the other household knights.
The emperor’s inspection was detailed and personal, but it was clear that the men were ready; horses groomed, kit clean.
The emperor reined in by Kessin. “You’ve lost weight,” he said.
“Vittles was poor, Cap’n,” Kessin said with a smile. He was still a big, broad-shouldered man with a heavy gut, but his eyes no longer vanished when he grinned. He dismounted and produced fifty-two arrows, a long coil of rope, his section of a portable scaling ladder and a clean, rust-free shirt of maille and a brigantine, a steel bridle gauntlet, and a fine storta, a curved Etruscan saber. His hardened steel basinet was polished like a mirror and had a fine red and white silk turban woven around it in an intricate pattern.
Kessin saw the emperor looking at the turban. “Which Ser Pavalo showed us a better way o’ windin’ her,” he said. “Cap’n. Sir. Highness.”
The emperor walked around Kessin’s horse, looked at the shoes, and then back at Bad Tom. “Are all the horses in this good shape?” he asked.
Tom nodded in satisfaction. “The Venikans gave us the best horses,” he said. “And I bought some remounts from the Ifriquy’ans. And we just had almost a week on good grass wi’ oats.” He nodded. “Lookin’ good, Kessin.”
“He needs a bath,” Gabriel said with a smile. “And some food. He’s starving away to nothing.”
“I am, that,” Kessin said.
Gabriel gave him a Rose Leopard and rode over to Ser Tobias.
“Me?” Ser Tobias asked. He dismounted, and began to strip out of his harness, and his squire came forward to help him strip his kit. In a minute, it was laid out on the ground: armour, maille, cloak and eating kit, purse and sword and dagger, a small Ifriquy’an war hammer, and a heavy wool hood.
“You’re the newest,” the emperor said with a smile. “Who taught you to clean armour anyway?”
“You,” Ser Tobias said. “And Jehan.”
Gabriel swatted his former squire on the back. “Tom? Any other awkward sods I ought to examine?”
Tom shook his head. “Not a one.”
“Ser Michael has your tent assignments. Gentlemen and ladies, the gate is waking up. We will be fighting in four days. Eat well and rest.” He mounted up.
“Just like hisself.” Kessin nodded to Cully.
Cully made a face.
“What?” Kessin hissed.
“He’s worried,” Cully said. “I never like it when Cap’n’s worried.”
Dawn.
There were two stakes in the ground; each stake was six feet tall, and they were planted on the field of Arles, exactly one hundred and twenty feet apart.
Bodies of archers were drawn up facing inward on either flank, their file leaders touching the marker stakes. The casa was drawn up facing the area between the stakes: forty knights wide. Behind each knight was a squire, and behind each squire, a fully armoured page.
And behind the pages, ten ranks of scarecrows with fifteen-foot pikes, formed so close together that there didn’t seem to be room for men to breathe.
Cully and Tom Lachlan walked up and down; Cully had archers loft blunt arrows and played with the angle of his supporting wings, and Tom Lachlan moved the casa and its supporting block of spearmen back and forth, back and forth. He formed it and unformed it, ordering every man to run for his life, sounding a whistle and ordering them back to the ranks. He did this over and over, for hours, until his knights hated him, sweating through their arming clothes and rusting their newly polished armour despite the chilly autumn morning.
Cully did the same with the archers: run, re-form, run, re-form.
“There’s Sauce!” called Francis Atcourt, and every head turned.
The Army of Etrusca was marching onto the field of Arles. And there was the emperor, with a guard of Vardariotes around him, and six Nordikaans in constant attendance.
“I hope she gave the poor bastards a day to polish their kit,” muttered Kessin.
“Eyes front,” roared Bad Tom.
They broke and re-formed again, facing the gate.
“When do we go through the fuckin’ thing?” muttered Atcourt.
“When we’ve stopped whatever is waitin’,” Tom snapped. “Ever think o’ that?”
Atcourt shook his head. “Tom, I’m a tired old man. And I know how to form on the marker.”
Tom Lachlan didn’t snap. Instead, he smiled. “Right ye are,” he said. “One more time and we can go and see the company.”
He blew his whistle. Then he leaned over to Cully. “Practice shootin’ o’er our noggins, Cull. Imagine somethin’ as big as a dragon.”
Cully went back to drilling the archers.
The Army of Etrusca was preceded by almost six hundred wagons and carts, six traveling forges, a herd of remounts, and a second herd, a vast sea of beef. Dozens of Vardariotes in working clothes came up on their spare ponies and began to drive the cattle into fields and pens already marked, and Blanche could be seen, with her ladies and Master Julius, riding from pen to walled field, counting and marking, inspecting the food supply.
Behind the baggage and the wagons and the food and the remounts came the army; led by the company, hundreds and hundreds of archers; Iris and Elaran, northern irks, and Urk of Mogon, and Cat Evil and Tippit, Jack Caves and Half Arse, sober and polished within a whisker of perfection. No Head grinned at Cully and he and Smoke saluted the emperor for their ranks and then arrayed the archers as Ser Danved led the men-at-arms onto the field. Ser Milus saluted with his lance and the Saint Catherine banner dipped, and Gabriel found that he had tears in his eyes.
“I feel as if I’m looking at my youth,” he said. He hugged Sauce.
Behind him, quite spontaneously, the casa was mounting their horses and forming ranks, as if, after four hours of ruthless drill, they wanted nothing more than to stand on parade.
Tom Lachlan rode forward. He, too, embraced Sauce.
She grinned.
“I hear you won,” Bad Tom said.
Her grin now split her face ear to ear. “That I did,” she said.
The company was in a long column, formed by sections of sixteen—four knights, four squires, four archers, four pages—four wide by four deep.
Sauce raised her baton. “Company will form line from column by wheeling to the right by sections!” she screeched. “March!”
The whole column flowed, every section wheeling as little doors all together, to the right, and the column became a solid line, hundreds of men long, faced in armour, tipped in steel.
“Halt!” Sauce roared.
Silence.
Sauce drew her sword, held it up before her eyes, and flashed it down by her side.
Conte Simone’s chivalry began to enter the field of Arles behind the company, riding to the left. Behind them came more troops, and more: crossbowmen, spearmen, Venikan marines.
But among the company, discipline was breaking down; men embraced their friends; wives threw themselves into the ranks; men and women from the company dismounted to embrace their comrades in the casa.
The emperor watched them, beaming, and when Sauce’s face grew stormy, he put a hand on her shoulder.
“Let them have their day,” he said. And with Michael and Bad Tom and Sauce at his back, he rode down the field to congratulate Conte Simone, to shake his hand and inspect his knights before meeting all the other officers.
That night, a dent was made in the army’s supplies of wine and ale, as the two armies renewed their acquaintance and told their stories; tales of the Patriarch’s sorcery locked horns with stories of the Umroth; Long Paw regaled his old messmates with the story of the salamander, and had to tell it again for Gabriel, slightly worse for drink, and Morgon Mortirmir. The rear guard, under the Duchess of Venike, marched into a riot at twilight; they had marched all day to keep the timetable, and found not f
ood but drink awaiting them.
Cattle were slaughtered and new fires built, and men and women went from fire to fire, talking and listening. Long Paw found himself standing with one arm around Cully and another around No Head, listening to Duke talk about loading a cannon in the face of a charging not-dead mastadon; Conte Simone sat on an armour basket with a horn cup of wine and listened to Philip de Beause talk about jousting. Sauce spent time with Count Zac, but then found that she wanted to wander and enjoy the moment of triumph, and he wanted to drink with Nordikaans, so she left him to it and walked about, wearing her old arming coat.
She was fairly drunk when she found Tom Lachlan standing alone, looking at the stars.
She thought of walking by, but by then he’d noticed her, and he turned, stumbled, and grinned.
They looked at each other like wary predators.
“I hear you killed an Umroth with a lance,” she said.
“A’weel.” Tom’s grin widened. “Ya’ ken, he was already dead.”
Somehow, that seemed really funny, and the two of them roared together.
“An’ ye warred down yon Patriarch,” Tom said.
“He was eashy.” Sauce made a face. “Easy.” She frowned. “That’sh bullshit, really.”
Tom nodded. “Oh aye,” he admitted. “It’s never easy, is it?”
“They just fuckin’ die,” Sauce said. “People die.” She looked at people around a fire. “I didn’t even like Kronmir. And he’sh dead.”
Tom nodded.
“Don’t fuckin’ die, Tom,” Sauce said.
“Nor you, lass,” Tom Lachlan said. He kissed her, and she stumbled off. The evening was warm, and she shed her arming coat and headed back to one of the fires where wine was being served.
Sukey emerged from her wagon and put her arm through Tom’s. “Somehow I always think you two will end together and I’ll be left at the post,” she said.
Tom looked after Sauce, and then down at Sukey. “Na,” he said. “I don’t e’en think o’ her that way.”
“Not e’en drunk?” Sukey asked.
Tom was just discovering that Sukey was wearing a kirtle with nothing under it.
“I’m nae that drunk,” he said. He ran a hand up her bare leg to her bare thigh. He growled.
“I hoped not,” Sukey purred.
Ser Michael spent the next day passing orders. He had meeting after meeting, most of them in the open on the vast parade field, while a dozen other officers conducted inspections, while armourers tinkered and arrowsmiths passed out sheaves of arrows and horses were fed and shoes repaired and every magister in the host put in a share of time magicking arrows. Michael drew up lists, and passed them: orders of march, subordinate appointments.
By the time the church bells were singing out the midday, there were thousands of men and women facing various problems at pairs of stakes one hundred and twenty feet apart. More than a hundred practitioners, led by Mortirmir and Petrarcha, stood in another field, casting and casting, working potentia, passing ops, sharing palaces in the aethereal. The whole army was treated to a spectacular display as they raised a set of layered shields powered as a choir, each shield like a snakeskin armour, composed of thousands, tens of thousands, of scales that interlocked, and moved, flowed, layered up, and thinned out at the will of the conductor.
The emperor moved from meeting to demonstration to drill, watching, coaching, joking. He watched the mamluks of the Sultan of Ifriquy’a ride into camp; he saluted them graciously.
“No one has done this in two thousand years,” he said.
Tom Lachlan shook his head. “What do we ha’e? All told?”
Michael raised a tablet. “Fifty-six thousand, two hundred and seventeen,” he said.
Tom stood in his stirrups. “And ye’re takin’ ’em all?” he asked.
“Every blessed one,” Gabriel said.
“Ye’re a loon,” Tom said. “How many fights?”
The emperor shook his head. “No idea. We have to pass through at least three gates. I’m fairly confident it’s three. It might be four. Or five. At least two fights.”
“How do you figure?” Michael asked.
“The rebel and the shadow expect an ally to come through this gate,” Gabriel said. “So there’s someone on the other side right now.”
“Aye,” Tom said, brightening. “Who is it?”
“Little green cheese eaters,” Gabriel snapped. “How do I know?”
“Ye generally pretend that ye know everything,” Tom said. “I just like to see ye squirm.”
“And the second?” Michael asked. “Is whoever Ash expects to find at Lissen Carak?”
Gabriel shrugged. “I don’t know. Is Ash trying to conquer or defend?” He looked around. “But assuming that the will is concentrated there, and Ash is there, then they might have an ally waiting on the other side of the gate. Or one or both of them is leaving, bent on the conquest of other … places.” He reined in, looking over the vast, flat field. As far as the eye could see, tens of thousands of men and women were eating, polishing, building, drilling, shooting, wrestling, cursing. The breeze raised little dust devils. The sun shone down, still fierce enough to burn Tom’s nose.
“… or …” the emperor said. “Damn.”
He turned Ataelus to face his staff. “It doesn’t matter. Morgon and I have a plan for the first moments, when the gate starts to open.” He shrugged. “And after that we play it by ear. This is as far as the plan ever made it, really. Fighting—a lot of it—and then, when we come through that tunnel, if we win, there will be another set of plans, for rebuilding. For feeding the Albin and the Brogat from Etrusca. And eventually, for preparing to face all this again in some hundreds or thousands of years.”
Tom Lachaln nodded. “A’weel,” he said. “I plan to get drunk tonight, and perhaps chase Sukey around a tent if she doesn’a move too fast. That’s as far as my plans go.” He looked across the plain. “An’ that’s all your notion o’ wha’ waits for us?”
Gabriel nodded his head. “Yes.”
Tom made a face. “A’wheel, then.” He smiled.
Chapter Ten
The road to Lissen Carak—Ser Gavin Muriens
Ser Gavin marched his army, better rested and better fed than in days, into a day blessedly free from rain.
“Where is he?” Gavin asked Tamsin.
She shook her head, watching the skies. “It is like a miracle,” she said. “I can say this much: Something took him away in the last fight. Something surprised him, or hurt him. My guess is that Master Niko hit him hard, but I would have thought I’d have felt that.” She smiled. “I’m sorry, Gavin. I really don’t know. I would like to see Tapio alive. I would like …” She shrugged.
“I’d like it all to be over,” Gavin said. “I was tired of being second fiddle to my brother, and now I think I’d happily be a second fiddle for the rest of my life.”
The sun rose, and the army marched east. Before the sun was halfway across the sky, Gavin’s advance guard reported contact with the Count of the Borders and his prickers, northern horse, and by midafternoon, Gavin had the near infinite satisfaction of bowing to the Prince of Occitan and introducing the Queen of Faery, who sparkled with pleasure.
“You are far west of where I expected you,” Gavin said to Count Gareth.
The Count of the Borders nodded. “Mayhap a foolish notion,” he said. “But I wanted to be here to support you if you were close pursued.”
“As far as I know, I’ve broken contact, and the enemy is moving along the north bank of the Cohocton,” Gavin said.
“I put all my foot into the works at Lissen Carak and came on,” Count Gareth said. “Ranald Lachlan and the queen’s advance guard should be only two or three days behind me; we should arrive at Lissen Carak together.”
“Pray God that the dragon can’t break past your infantry,” Gavin said, deeply worried. “How is your hermetical support?”
“Thin,” Count Gareth admitted.
&
nbsp; Gavin’s eyebrows seemed to knit together.
The Wild—Bill Redmede
Well north of the river, the Jacks and the irks moved very slowly east, sometimes making less than ten miles a day. The country was broken; the western flanks of the Adnacrags in autumn, with beautiful stands of beech interspersed with vast marshes and alder brakes that ran for hundreds of paces. The irks moved easily, the men less so.
Bill Redmede leaned on his bow and looked at the endless golden leaves. “We’re too far north,” he said.
Tapio shrugged. “We have to be well to the north,” he said. “We cannot afford even the chanssse of detecssshion.”
Redmede shook his head. “My people have mayhap five shafts a bow,” he said. “I agree; we cannot fight. But this is mortal slow.”
Kwoqwethogan was recovering. He raised his head. “I know these trees,” he said. “I know that great burl there, by the stream.” He pointed with a bronze talon, and Redmede could see an ancient maple with a burl the size of a farmer’s table growing from the side.
“We call him the old god,” Kwoqwethogan said. “We are not so far from roads the people travel. Over the next ridge is one of our trails. It runs to the Sononghelan; what you call the Black.”
Redmede’s heart flickered with hope. “A trail?”
“Broader than my shoulders and smooth as my tail,” the warden replied.
Redmede sighed. “Damn.”
The Cohocton—Ash
Ash’s war of metaphysical logistics had reached its limits, and the loss of his well in the north demanded an instant counterattack. But for the first day, he had to be careful; he’d overspent his resources, and he was vulnerable, and the endless limitations of the real continued to cloud his plans.
He abandoned a grandiose plan to trap the remnants of the enemy army with a force of bogglins thrown across the Cohocton with sorcery; he gave up the notion of throwing bridges of ice or even stone at key positions. He had the power, but it would have a cost. Even as it was, he knew he’d lost a sizable number of bogglins; some to the enemy, and some simply wandering off to live their own lives or return to their nests.