Darknesses (13 page)

West
of South Pass, Illegea

T
he
Praetorian Legions rode
and marched westward along the high road and
passed through the cut in the red cliffs—carved with the forgotten abilities of
the Duarchy long before the Cataclysm—that marked the western end of the South
Pass. The overcaptain of scouts rode along the shoulder of the high road toward
the Praetor, slowing his mount as he neared, and announced, “The nomads remain
drawn up on the hills to the north a good four vingts west of here, Praetor,
and we have scouts on the rise facing them. They have not moved.”

“The
position where the Legions will form is less than two vingts from theirs, is
that not correct?” The Praetor looked westward, checking the clear silver-green
sky, then the rolling plains that spread westward into the distance, split by
the dark gray of the high road, the one called the Lost Highway, for reasons
buried with long-past generations.

“Yes,
sir.”

“That
is well within the range of your devices, is it not, engineer?” asked the
Praetor, looking back at Vestor, who rode beside the cart horse that pulled the
first third of his equipment.

“It
is,” Vestor replied.

“You
should be ready to set up all ten of your devices when we reach there, without
delay.”

Vestor
looked at the Praetor. “There are tripods but for six, Praetor.”

“I
will have the other carts sent forward, along with the archers you trained, and
you will set up six, and have the others open to the sun and ready to replace
those. The nomads will certainly not give us time to replace the devices once
they experience them in battle.” The Praetor frowned. “In battle, one must have
all ready to use at once. One may not get a second chance.”

“Against
grassland nomads?” Vestor blurted.

“We
were all grassland nomads, or some such, once,” the Praetor replied dryly,
turning his mount so that he could call back his orders. “Bring forth all the
carts of the engineer!”

Vestor
stood in the stirrups, just to stretch his legs for a time, swaying from side
to side before he dropped back onto the leather of a saddle that felt like
iron. He kept riding, silently.

In
less than a glass, only slightly past midday, the Legions had arrayed
themselves across the rise, waiting. In the center of the Praetorian forces,
just to the east of the highest point on the ridge, where the Praetor’s banner
flew, Vestor finished setting up the sixth tripod and adjusting it. Then he
began to place the crystal weapons in each tripod.

“Praetor!”
At the urgency of the call, Vestor looked up from the second tripod, held
steady by an archer as the engineer slid the device into the restraining clamps.
Vestor looked to the north. He expected to see the nomads advancing, but their
lines remained motionless. All he could see was a flock of large birds, hawks
perhaps, rising in the distance behind the nomads.

“Praetor!”

At
the second call, Vestor focused on the birds, for there was nothing else
moving. He swallowed as he saw, truly saw, the creatures climbing into the sky,
with their long blue wings, and the men upon each, so small compared to the
pteridons they rode that they looked like dolls. The flying creatures had to be
pteridons, although Vestor had never seen one except as depicted in ancient
drawings, or in the figures of a leschec set.

“Pteridons…”
he murmured. “Pteridons…” The glint of blue metal caught his eye, blue metal in
the hands of the pteridon riders. Abruptly, he rushed to the carts. “Hurry! We
must get the devices ready! You must aim them at the pteridons!”

“Pteridons?”
asked one of the archers. “There aren’t any—”

“There
are now!” snapped the engineer. “What do you think those things are?”

As
quickly as he could manage, he placed the rest of the devices in their tripods,
and tightened them in place. He glanced to the north, into the silver-green
sky, and at the pteridons that swept southward toward the Praetor’s forces.

“Once
they cross the middle of the valley between us, fire your weapons!” Vestor
stationed himself at the tripod on the eastern end. There he raised the device
and swung it toward the oncoming pteridons and their riders. He pushed the
firing lever forward. The device hummed, and red-limned light flashed
skyward—missing the pteridon at the point of the wedge. He swung the beam
again, and this time, sliced through the wing of one of the giant fliers on the
flank. For a moment, he watched as the pteridon cartwheeled out of the air,
throwing its rider clear, a nomad in blue who spun like a doll in the sky
before plunging earthward. Then he forced himself to aim at a second of the
fliers. Again, he missed, as he did a third time.

The
pteridons were now almost overhead, and dropping into a near vertical
dive—right at him. An eerie scream rose to the west. From the corner of his
eye, Vestor thought he saw a blaze of blue flame shoot skyward. Something blue
flashed above him, and the heat was like a furnace, but passed quickly—except
that another blast flared to his left.

A
high whine started, and began to climb. Vestor threw himself to the ground, as
did the archer immediately to his left. Before either quite settled on the
green spring grasses, fragments of metal flew around and past them. Vestor
looked at his left arm, then eased a small splinter of metal from his tunic and
out of his arm, although it had barely broken the skin. Another burst of blue
flashed over the hillside, and the screams of agony shivered the air once more,
with another wave of heat, and the sickening stench of burned flesh.

Vestor
lurched to his feet, and glanced at the tripods. Where the two farthest to the
west had been, blue flames had flared, and were beginning to subside. The tripods—half-collapsed—were
sticks of charcoal. The third tripod had vanished, the archer nowhere in sight.
The next two tripods—and their archers—were untouched. Vestor looked up.

The
pteridons had swept past, and were turning for another pass.

“Aim
ahead of them! Just a bit!” Vestor followed his own advice…and missed. He
readjusted…and saw another pteridon go down, and then another, its wing severed
by one of the other archers. The lead flier and its rider were less than a
hundred yards away, when Vestor managed to slice through the long neck of the
beast to the left of the leader. For some reason, he had trouble focusing on
the leader.

Then
more blue fire swept across the ridgetop, and Vestor threw himself to the
ground, feeling the air turn furnacelike where he had been standing moments
before.

When
he staggered up, he discovered he was the last one standing, and his tripod was
the only one erect. He glanced to the west, but where the Praetor and his
banner had been was nothing but a mass of blue flame, and greasy white-and-gray
smoke.

The
device on his tripod was beginning to whine, and Vestor slammed the apertures
closed and spun the clamps open, before pulling the device from the bracket and
running to the cart to try to get a replacement before the pteridons turned
once more.

He
glanced up to see another group of fliers sweeping from the northwest, and
flames flaring across the entire ridgeline. As the flames and the lines of blue
light that fed and created them flashed toward him, he dived and rolled for the
back side of the hill.

A
combination of overtaxed crystals and skylance flames exploded, pushing him
into a series of rolls that tumbled him a good hundred yards downhill.

For
a time, he just lay sprawled on the damp grass.

“Engineer!
Is that you?”

Vestor
struggled into a sitting position, then made out an officer—the overcaptain of
scouts, riding toward him, leading a mount without a rider.

“You
want to see Alustre again, mount up. The Praetor’s dead, and those things—”

“Pteridons,”
Vestor said involuntarily. “They’re pteridons.”

“Whatever
they are. They’re burning everyone to cinders. Don’t think they’ll do well in
the pass. Not enough room for them to get close. The marshal’s ordered everyone
to retreat to the pass.”

Vestor
struggled up into the saddle, one-handedly, realizing belatedly that he could
move neither his left hand nor his arm. Then he rode after the overcaptain. He
did not look back.

O
n
the last Quinti before the turn of summer,
in the dry and dusty
midmorning, under a sky of blazingly clear silver-green, Alucius rode eastward
along the river road at the head of the second squad. A half vingt ahead rode a
pair of scouts, and to his left rode Anslym. Although it was barely midmorning,
Alucius found himself blotting his forehead with the back of his tunic sleeve,
wiping away both sweat and grit, and having half emptied one of his water
bottles.

“Haven’t
seen a trace of raiders in almost a month, sir,” Anslym said. “Think we’ll see
any more anytime soon?”

“I
wouldn’t think so,” Alucius replied, “but common sense said that the two groups
we fought off shouldn’t have even been out here.” He shook his head. “I hope we
don’t see any. We’ve only got enough ammunition for patrols, and not a stand-up
battle against raiders.”

“Has
Colonel Weslyn sent any messages about ammunition and supplies?”

“Nothing
new except a reminder to be very careful about both…and a statement that both
powder and sulfur are once more getting hard to come by.”

“The
sulfur comes from Lanachrona, doesn’t it?”

“It
does,” Alucius said, glancing ahead at a plume of dust, before looking back to
Anslym once he saw that the dust had been raised by a farmer’s oxcart headed
westward toward the squad, presumably to market in Emal. “It’s always been a
problem. I’d hoped the new Regent for the Matrial would encourage trade with
the Iron Valleys, in goods like sulfur, but it hasn’t happened.”

“The
Madriens don’t like to trade that much, do they?”

“They
don’t have to trade as much as we do. They produce more different things. They
don’t care for most lands in Corus.” That was being generous. From what he’d
seen, Alucius wasn’t sure that the women of Madrien had much use for any other
land in Corus. Pushing that thought away, Alucius looked toward the River
Vedra, his eyes traveling over the eddies in the black water. Eddies? He turned
and studied the river more closely, seeing not just the eddies near the shore,
but the two yards or so of drying mud on the shore below the matted grass and
low undergrowth that marked a shoreline that, after the spring runoff, seldom
varied much. He couldn’t recall seeing the water level that low, especially so
early in the year. That meant there hadn’t been nearly the usual snowfall up on
the Plateau. With no snow or rain to speak of in two months, and none in sight,
and the river already so low, the outlook for the crops wasn’t good—on top of
everything else.

“Sir?”

“I
was thinking about rain,” Alucius admitted. “If we don’t get more, then the
farmers won’t have good crops. By next winter, food will cost much more, and
tariff revenues will be even lower because people will be buying less.”

Anslym
frowned.

“Lower
tariffs mean fewer coins for the militia—and we’re already short of things.”

“Most
of the men—”

“Are
scheduled to be released at the turn of the year. But they probably won’t get
release bonuses, the way they have in the past, and they might even get out a
month early—with no pay for that month, and they’d be going back to families,
and farms and crafts that will be having trouble feeding the people there.”
Alucius added, “That’s if we don’t get more rain. But it’s still early in the
year, and that could change.”

The
way matters were going, Alucius wasn’t about to wager that the Iron Valleys
would get more rain. Or that the Lord-Protector wouldn’t find a way to use the
drought to Lanachrona’s advantage.

Tempre,
Lanachrona

T
he
younger man in the violet-blue tunic
looked up from the Table of the
Recorders. An expression of annoyance crossed his narrow lips before he spoke.
“Can you recall that scene again, Recorder?”

“As
you wish, Lord-Protector. I had thought you should see this.”

“I
don’t know what I am seeing,” muttered the younger man.

The
ruby mists swirled and revealed a scene as if observed from the sky. Two
forces, each on a ridgeline, faced each other. To the south of the southerly
force was a great high road that ran east and west, vanishing into the Spine of
Corus to the east and disappearing into the rolling hills to the west.

The
Lord-Protector studied the scene in the Table of the Recorders, intently, for
he had not believed what he had seen the first time. Again, he watched the two
forces. As before, a flare of flame, tinged with silver, appeared near the
banner of the southern force, a force with livery of black and silver, or, in
some places, silver and gray. Then a second flame appeared. Before long, the
entire crest of the hill was in flames, and the forces in disarray, retreating
hastily back along the high road back behind the redstone cliffs.

The
Lord-Protector looked to the Recorder of Deeds. “I saw flames from nowhere,
blue flames, that destroyed an enormous force. The other force did not move at
all. Some of the flames were tinged with silver, and that means that they were
called forth by Talent.” He paused. “But…how can anyone call forth that much
flame? And where were those who did so?”

“You
did not see all that happened,” explained the gray-haired Recorder. “Blue was
always the color of the Myrmidons of the Duarchy, and their skylances created
blue flames. That is what the records claim.”

“I
did not see any pteridons or any skylances. The only blue I saw was the livery
of the northernmost force—and flames from nowhere,” the Lord-Protector pointed
out.

“No…that
is all the Table showed you. It cannot show creatures of Talent, or great users
of Talent.”

The
Lord-Protector rubbed his forehead. “Would you make yourself clear? I have
little time for games and riddles.”

“I
believe that Aellyan Edyss found—somehow—pteridons in the Council Vault,
protected against time. Or he has found the secret of creating them. They are
creatures totally of Talent, and the skylances are weapons totally created by
Talent. You could not see either, because the Table cannot show them. You could
see the results, the uncontrolled fires, and the rout of the Praetorian
Legions.”

“You
are certain?”

“I
am certain that he has some Talent-based creatures and weapons. Whatever they
are, they did what you saw.”

“So…I
have this…Regent of the Matrial to the west, with her crystal spear-thrower. I
have to the north an officer in the Iron Valleys Militia that your Table shows
as a danger to me, although it cannot say why, and now I have Aellyan Edyss to
the west with creatures of such Talent that they can rout an army far larger
than any I could field without stripping every outpost in Lanachrona.”

“The
Table shows what is, Lord-Protector.”

“The
matter with the Iron Valleys Council is not resolved, and yet it may take weeks
or months for them to understand that they have no real choice.” The
Lord-Protector massaged his forehead with his right hand. “Now, with this, I
cannot afford to fight in the north, no matter how long I must wait,
otherwise.”

“Perhaps
both the threat of power, and the offer of benefits…”

“Benefits?”

“It
could be that there is something else, still, that might help persuade this
Council and yet enhance your power.” The Recorder paused, then asked, “Have you
not said that the Militia of the Iron Valleys has many companies that are the
equal of the Southern Guard?”

“Yes.
I would not say such too openly, but all know it is so. Especially the one
commanded by the herder captain.”

“Perhaps
you should make them—and him—your ally. Would not an ally be better than a foe?
They have a militia they cannot afford to pay and support for a defense they
would not need, were you to offer them guarantees of their liberty and freedom
to trade.”

The
Lord-Protector’s head jerked up. “Not a bad thought, but how…?”

“That,
Lord-Protector,” replied the Recorder of Deeds, “I cannot say. I can see how
the pieces might fit, but you are the leader who must discover how to encourage
those involved to see it as you do.”

“Or
as they would like to see it,” mused the younger man.

After
a time, a slow smile crossed his lips. He stood slowly, nodding to the Recorder
as he left the small, marble-walled chamber.