It did not matter. Nor did Mari’s past, futile attempts to make him promise not to risk his own life to save hers. Alain looked at Mari, doing her exhausted best to present herself as the hero the commons needed, and knew that he could not endure this illusion of a world if the one thing, the one person, who made it real for him were to leave it. He would save Mari.
No matter the cost.
Chapter Two
“It’s time, Lady.”
Mari, certain that she had closed her eyes just a few moments ago, looked up at the pre-dawn sky over Denkerk. She heard the nickering of horses being saddled and the movements of men and women preparing for another day of tough riding. It would have been much easier to feel sorry for herself if those others hadn’t been experiencing the same misery.
“Are you all right?” Alain asked, sitting up beside her.
“You mean aside from my thighs and my butt? Sure,” Mari said. “I was just wondering again if horses were designed as instruments of torture.” She shoved herself up, grimacing at the pain of stiff and sore muscles. “How are you? You’ve been sort of moody.”
Alain paused before answering. “I am concerned about you.”
“Thanks, but it’s not like this is the first time we have had to worry about people trying to kill me. And you.” She would not let herself think about fear, now that they had come this far.
Mari made it to her feet, gritting her teeth against the hurt the movements generated. At least the discomfort distracted her from worrying about what would be waiting at Dorcastle.
Major Sten walked up—or perhaps limped up would have been a better description. This hard ride, coming on the heels of his swift ride south, must be very difficult for him to endure. Sten saluted Mari. “Lady, the commander here tells me that there should be barges waiting at Danalee that we can ride downriver to Dorcastle.”
“Barges?” Mari perked up at the news. “How about the horses?”
“There should be enough to carry all of them as well.” Sten made a face. “A lot of barges should be coming upriver from Dorcastle. Evacuating the people of the city.”
“Oh.” The thought of all those people fleeing the city before the Imperials and the Great Guilds struck took the glow off the news. Mari rubbed her back and backside with both hands, trying to massage away some of the stiffness. The town had offered her and Alain a very nice bed inside a nice house, but she had felt obligated to sleep outside along with the Tiae cavalry. “Let’s see how quickly we can get to Danalee.”
One of the local militia officers came running up. “Lady? We’re going to send a strong detachment along with you. Scouts have already started up the road to spot any danger before you reach it.”
“Do you have warnings of danger along the road?” Alain asked, his voice reverting to that of an emotionless Mage.
Mari gave him a sharp glance to remind Alain how he was speaking and earned in return the tiny changes to his expression that passed for a sheepish look of apology.
The Confederation officer, who had probably never spoken to a Mage in his life, froze in mixed dread and indecision.
“You don’t have anything to fear from my Mage,” Mari told him.
Alain made an obvious effort to put more feeling into his voice. “I am sorry.”
“Ah…that’s…all right,” the officer said, relaxing. “We had heard about the daughter’s Mages but…it’s hard to believe until you see it. Ah…your question, Sir Mage. No. We do not have anything specific. But we have already heard from towns up the road which have learned that the daughter is coming. The word is spreading fast. If the Great Guilds hear of it, they may attempt something.”
Mari exhaled in exasperation as she pulled out her far-talker, thinking that surely this trip was already hard enough without worrying about her former co-workers gunning for her. The far-talker was one of the new models her workshops were building, smaller and better than those the Mechanics Guild depended on. But its range was still pretty limited. She squinted at the device in the dim light, switching the frequency to that usually employed by the Guild. “Let’s see if anyone close enough to us is talking about it.”
She knew that the locals were staring at the device. It was one of the technologies that the Mechanics Guild had kept secret from the common folk. “This is called a far-talker,” Mari explained. “It lets people talk across long distances.”
Something murmured faintly from the far-talker. Mari turned up the volume and held up the device to get better range.
“…on her…north?”
“…rumors…orders…Longfalls.”
“Avoid…get back…”
“…what…Mages…?”
“…crazy…die…Dorcastle…”
Mari glared at the sky as the faint voices faded out. “There’s something in the air that impacts the range of these devices. Something that changes with time of day and weather.”
Major Sten spoke cautiously. “Could you tell what those voices meant?” From his attitude, he might have been speaking of the words of a mystic oracle.
“Not really.” Had the Guild heard that she was moving north? The last bit, about someone crazy dying at Dorcastle, certainly sounded like the outcome the Guild expected for her. “Just fragments of sentences.” She looked at Alain, who shook his head to indicate his foresight had provided no clues either, then replaced the far-talker in her jacket pocket. “Let’s get going.”
With fresh horses and spares for all the riders, they made good time again despite everyone’s fatigue and soreness. As they moved up the road toward Danalee, the pain of riding alternating with the pain of walking, Mari had to force herself to perk up every time the column passed through a town or village. The people running out to see them—to see her—wore the expressions of hope that always tore at her. Some of those watching cheered at the sight of her, others cried, and if not for the discouragements of Major Sten and the Confederation militia a long tail of eager volunteers would have joined the march to Dorcastle.
“Stay and protect your homes!” Mari called until her throat was sore, imagining those poorly armed and untrained volunteers encountering the fearsomely implacable Imperial legions. “My army will be coming this way in a few days!”
Early on the morning of the second day, as the column passed through a rolling countryside dotted with groves of trees and devoted mostly to pastureland, Alain said a single word whose emotionless intensity cut through the fatigue in everyone. “Stop.”
Mari, jerked out of her own fog of weariness, looked from Alain to the road before them as she reached for the pistol under her jacket. “What is it?”
“Danger is ahead,” Alain said, his eyes searching the road. “I sense two spells being used.”
Major Sten exchanged glances with the commander of the Confederation militia. “The scouts up ahead haven’t reported anything,” the commander said, apparently more worried about contradicting Alain than by any dangers posed by the road.
“If the spells are those for concealment, then your scouts may already be dead,” Alain said.
“What’s beyond that low ridge ahead of us?” Mari asked.
The commander looked to his soldiers, one of whom spoke up. “The road curves, then enters a cut in the ridge.” He paused, worry apparent. “It’s called the Throat Cut, because when these areas were still being settled bandits would spring down onto travelers.”
Alain stared intently. “There are Dark Mages. Two, I think, trying to hide their presence but failing. Something…they are not alone. Others there distract them.” He pointed slightly to the right. “They are on that side of the road.”
“They’re waiting for us,” Major Danel said. “I’ll take Tiae’s cavalry up the road as they expect.”
“While we circle around and hit them from behind?” Major Sten said. “Lady Mari and her Mage can wait here—"
“No, we can’t,” Mari said before she could really think about it. “We won’t sit here safely while others face d
anger. We'll ride with the main group.”
“But, Lady—"
“You will want me there,” Alain said, his Mage voice cutting off all debate. “Mari, there is a sense of familiarity to one of the Dark Mages. We have encountered that one before.”
“Really?” Mari paused to think about the Dark Mages they had met in the last couple of years. “Let me get something from the wagon. Major Danel, your soldiers with rifles should prepare them. We might end up facing something that lances and swords can’t cope with.”
While the others stared at her as they took in her words, Mari rode back to the wagon and hefted out one of the dragon killers. She returned to the front of the column, the long tube of the DK balanced before her across the pommel of her saddle. “Any time you’re ready,” she told Major Sten and Major Danel.
Sten saluted, then led the Confederation militia cavalry off the road to the right, where scattered low trees and bushes offered cover for their movement. The group swung wide to come up behind the right side of the cut ahead.
Major Danel waited, the horses of the Tiae cavalry shifting restlessly at the inactivity, some of them looking ahead with their heads erect, ears up. “They sense something,” Danel said.
Alain nodded. Mari could tell that he was readying himself to cast spells if needed. “Is there much power here?” she asked. Mages could sense the power they needed to help cast spells, but her every attempt to detect that power using Mechanic instruments had failed, leaving it a mystery to her.
He nodded again. “Enough. Unfortunately, that means enough for the Dark Mages as well.”
Danel looked to the right, up ahead, to the right again, then gestured to Mari. “We should start, Lady.”
“All right,” Mari said. “Keep the pace we had before. Everyone stay alert, but don’t look like you’re expecting trouble.” She realized having a dragon killer balanced in front of her didn’t exactly look like no one was anticipating an attack, but odds were that none of their foes knew the tube represented a weapon.
Mari paused as Major Danel directed a half-dozen Tiae cavalry to positions ahead of them. Alain gave her one of his looks, the one that hoped she wouldn’t argue with common-sense measures to limit her exposure. “All right,” she repeated in a low voice to him, checking that her pistol was ready as well as the rifle in the scabbard next to her saddle. “Between the DK, the rifle, and my pistol, I’m a mobile arsenal.”
Her words drew grins from the cavalry, relieved to hear the daughter joking about the coming fight as if she had no fear.
She realized that she really had become very good at faking it.
The column got back into motion, the horses walking ahead at a steady pace, snorting and staring as they picked up the nervousness of their riders. They crested the low ridge, giving a good view of the land sloping away before them, and not far down the road the cut that the Confederation rider had warned of. Brush grew alongside the road and up along the cut.
“Why wasn’t that vegetation trimmed back?” Mari grumbled to Major Danel.
“You’ll have to ask the Confederation,” Danel said, his gaze searching the land ahead. “At a guess, they haven’t worried about danger here for a long time, enough to have stopped taking such precautions. Lady, we can now see the road far enough in front of us that we should be able to spot the scouts. They’re not in sight, which means trouble. We’re fortunate your Mage is with us.”
“I’ve often been fortunate to have him with me,” Mari said. “I’m not sure how I survived before that.”
The forwardmost riders were still about fifty lances from the near edge of the cut when Alain held his hand palm up before him and stiffened with concentration.
A spot amid the brush looking down on the cut erupted into flames.
A long moment later, another fire burst to life a little distance from the first.
Mari heard shouts of surprise as the ambushers found the tables turned on them. She held her reins tightly as hooves thundered from the right, where the Confederation cavalry was charging the rear of the ambush. She could hear battle cries and the clash of metal on metal.
Men and women armed with a variety of swords and crossbows leaped from the brush and into the road, fleeing the fires and the charge by the Confederation cavalry. Major Danel shouted a command and the Tiae cavalry leapt into motion, hitting the off-balance ambushers before they could gather their wits. Most tried to run, only to be speared by the lances of the cavalry before they got far.
In that moment, when victory seemed already won, Alain called out loudly. “Beware!”
Mari saw something appear at the far end of the cut, a large shape suddenly visible above the vegetation cloaking that area. “Get your people back here!” she yelled at Major Danel, dismounting and holding tightly to the dragon killer.
Danel was surprised by the command, but had been a soldier long enough not to ask questions when urgent orders were given. “Recall! Everyone back!”
Mari handed off the reins of her horse to the first cavalry to get back to her, standing in the center of the road as the soldiers rode quickly past on either side. Alain dismounted to stand beside her, his long Mage knife in his hand.
“There is more than one spell creature,” Alain said to her. “I am certain from the feel of the spell that the other is not a dragon.”
“Then we’ll deal with the dragon first,” Mari said, her heart pounding and her breath coming faster as she tried to sound and act calm. She prepared the dragon killer as a massive creature at least four times the height of a tall person stepped onto the road at the far end of the cut. “Make sure no one is right behind me!” she yelled to the cavalry.
The dragon glared down the road, fixing on the cavalry moving about to the rear of Mari, and with a dreadful roar came charging toward them, its massive tail held out behind it, its mighty hind legs pumping, the claws on its smaller forelegs extended, its mouth open enough to expose wicked teeth larger than daggers, the armored scales covering the beast glinting in the morning light.
Taking a deep breath, trying not to think about what would happen if she missed, Mari advanced one leg to steady her aim, balanced the dragon killer tube on her shoulder, and aimed through the sight on the weapon. Despite her fear, a small part of Mari noticed that Alli had improved the sight. She had forgotten how fast dragons could move when they were attacking.
This one had gotten far too close far too quickly, its armored chest filling her sight.
Mari squeezed the trigger, feeling the heat as the rocket inside the tube ignited with a roar that rivaled that of the dragon and sent a spray of fire out the back.
The rocket sprang out, crossing the distance to the oncoming dragon in an instant, leaving a trail of smoke to mark its path. The crash of the warhead going off filled the world, echoing back from the sides of the cut.
The dragon staggered as the rocket struck, first coming to a halt, then stumbling to one side. As the smoke of the explosion cleared, a massive wound could be seen in its chest. The spell creature wavered, then fell, hitting the ground hard enough to make rocks bounce.
Mari inhaled deeply again, standing up and dropping the empty and now useless tube, her body quivering with reaction.
“There is a Dark Mage down there who created that dragon,” Alain told Major Danel. “That Mage must be killed before another spell can be cast.”
“Yes, Sir Mage!” But before Danel could send his cavalry charging past the carcass of the dragon, another dread form appeared, shambling forward through the smoke drifting down into the cut from the still-burning vegetation along the ridge.
Shaped like a very broad and extremely tall person, the troll had skin whose hairiness and thickness exceeded that of a boar, and a face whose crude features resembled the work of an amateur attempting to sculpt something human. It moved much more slowly than the dragon, but with a merciless sense of indestructible menace.
Mari sighed, not liking what must be done next. She found trolls repe
llent, but also felt angry at their creators. The trolls themselves were tools used by the Mages who could create them, weapons that could not question their orders but could feel pain. “Major, dismount your soldiers with the new rifles. Send some of your cavalry with lances around the side of the cut and get the Dark Mages who created these spell creatures.”
“Yes, Lady.” Danel gave the orders, some of the cavalry racing off to the side while others came to stand beside Mari and Alain.
“Steady your weapons,” Mari directed the soldiers. “Aim for the troll’s eyes. That’s its most vulnerable point. Space your shots. Take careful aim between each one. The troll is slow enough that with this many rifles we can kill it before it reaches us.” Her voice, far steadier than she felt inside, reassured the soldiers who hefted their new weapons with renewed confidence.
Someone brought Mari her own rifle. She took the weapon, unwilling to leave to others a task that she knew had to be done.
“It knows nothing but killing,” Alain said beside her. “It can do nothing else.”
“I know,” Mari said. “We have to stop it, because it can’t stop itself. This will be a better world when Mages who can create trolls are gone from it.”
The troll had reached the dragon’s remains, slowing even more to make its ponderous way past the dragon’s tail.
Mari brought her rifle to her shoulder, aiming, her sight on the troll’s left eye, small and dark beneath a heavy brow ridge. She fired.
A ragged volley marked the soldiers firing as well.
The troll jerked from several hits, but kept coming. It shambled forward, a slow, large target for the rifles, its head jolting from the shots slamming into it.
There was something terrifying about the way the creature could absorb such punishment and keep advancing. Mari, who had already faced trolls, felt her own nerve wavering. She might have dropped back a short distance except for the knowledge that the Tiae soldiers were all looking to her to bolster their own resolve. She couldn’t retreat without seriously rattling the soldiers beside her, so she stood firm despite her growing uneasiness.