Demon King (54 page)

The fat man stared for a while longer, then, without saying more, walked back to his hut, using the same erratic path as before. He disappeared into his hut, and further shouts brought no other signs of life.

“Yes, sir?” the domina asked. He was keeping his lips quite firm, but I heard buried laughter from the ranks.

I thought I had the situation in hand. “The reason he thinks he’s safe,” I said, “is that the way to his village is under water. It zigs and zags and unless you’re familiar with the path, you’ll go over your head.”

“Yes, sir?”

“I was watching where he put his feet,” I said. “Put men out on line. Swimmers all. Have other men behind them with ropes. Walk forward until you find the beginnings of the path. Once we find that, I’ll lead us into the village, and we’ll see what song he wishes to sing.”

“Yes, sir.”

And so it was done and, after a very wet, very muddy hour, the beginnings of the path were found. Men paced ahead carefully, probing with saplings, and it was as I said — there was a path just under the water, graveled and wide enough for four men to walk abreast. We put stakes on either side of the path so we wouldn’t lose it, and eventually it wound to where the man had stood.

“Very well,” I said. “Svalbard … Curti … Domina, give me half a dozen other men. Behind me.” I splashed forward, with perhaps five hundred or so soldiers watching. I felt a bit foolish, but remembered that a leader had to be willing to wade in the shit as well as ride in the parades. Without mishap we made it to where the track ended.

“Very good,” I said, feeling confident. “Now, he was standing here, and when he left, he went …”

And four paces forward I went into water well over my head. I surfaced, spluttering, and Svalbard hauled me back to the path. There was real laughter from the bank.

“Let me try, sir,” and the big man waded out in a different direction and promptly stuck himself in quicksand. It took Curti and another soldier to drag him free. After that, I was willing to be a little less a leader, and let others probe for the path. Another hour, and we still hadn’t found it.

I saw a galloper back at the bank, and the domina waving, and knew the messenger was from the emperor, who was wondering what the hells was holding up the advance. Very well, I decided. These marsh people could have their gods-damned swamp and piss on ‘em. I went back to shore and ordered the march to continue, avoiding the village.

As we moved away, I swear I could hear laughter echoing across the dismal waters from the village.

• • •

The Time of Rains began, and travel was as it had been a year ago — a good day was when it only drizzled, and a bad one when you couldn’t see your squad leader through the downpour. The rivers and creeks rose, and the way was always muddy.

One night, the army was waiting for our pioneers to throw bridges across a swollen river, when a galloper found me and said the emperor wondered if I cared to dine with him at the headquarters of Tribune Aguin Guil. I said I’d be more than delighted and, as dusk rose, rode back to Guil’s headquarters.

He had pitched a huge pavilion that must’ve taken half a dozen carts to carry, and great fires roared around it. Magic must have dried the wood, for I hadn’t been able to build more than a smoldering smudge pot for four days, and had had no hot food for the same time. I licked my lips, smelling wonderful odors — of roast beef, freshly baked bread, and spices. Quite suddenly fatigue slammed me, and I felt like what I was — a very wet, very hungry soldier, not a little discouraged and feeling near the end of his rope.

I saw servants wearing fresh, clean, dry uniforms, laying out plates on linen-clad tables, and the plates winked gold reflections of the crystal lamps hanging above the comfortable chairs. I heard laughter, some of it women’s, and the clinking of glasses, and I saw the emperor’s carriage drawn up outside.

I reined Brigstock in and slid from the saddle. A man came up and saluted. He wore a legate’s sash. When tribunes entertain emperors, horsemen or even lances are too low-ranking to be horse holders.

“Tribune á Cimabue. The emperor is delighted you were able to make an appearance.”

“Not nearly as delighted as I am,” I said, and started toward the pavilion. I turned back to the legate, to ask if it was possible to find some grain for Brigstock, and saw, just at the fringes of the firelight, twenty or so men. They were all footsoldiers, none with a higher rank than private or axman, and all were wet, ragged, and dirty. Their beards and hair looked as if they’d been plucked from scarecrows. None of the men appeared to have eaten for a day or more. All that was clean about them was their swords and spears.

I knew all of them, for these were the men who’d followed me from the terrible retreat at Sayana through the ghastliness of the Tovieti suppression and the Kallian campaign. After that they’d been with me in a hundred nameless skirmishes and confrontations on our borders. They were slovenly, crude, mostly uneducated. They smelled and swore and couldn’t be trusted around taverns or bordellos.

But they’d always been there, and when I’d ordered them forward they’d cursed me for a murdering son of a bitch — and gone. Men from their ranks died as often as not, sometimes screaming, sometimes quietly, sometimes with a rough jest on their lips.

Now they stared at that golden pavilion, faces quite blank.

I walked back to the legate.

“Sir?” His expression was a little fearful, as if the first tribune had found him doing something wrong.

“Those men there?”

“Yessir?”

“Were they there when the emperor arrived?”

“I don’t know, sir. I suppose so.”

“Did he see them?”

“I couldn’t say, sir.”

He glanced over at the ragged warriors. “Is there something wrong, sir? Should I order them away?”

“No. But you might be good enough to tell the emperor I was called away on urgent business. Be sure and extend my apologies.”

I no longer felt the rain, or my creaking bones. I remounted, and rode back forward, and spent the rest of the night with the pioneers, up to my chest in icy currents, lashing together crudely cut logs.

At dawn, someone gave me a cup of barely warm tea and a scrap of bread, and I found it a banquet. I mounted Brigstock and rode across the creaking bridge, shouting for the army to move out.

• • •

The marshes never stopped; they just slowly grew shallower and dryer, and there were more hummocks and trees growing from solid ground. Now we were in the Belaya Forest, and a vast feeling of relief ran through the ranks that the worst was over. At last we could see, through the light rain — actually more of a mist — the ground rise toward a series of rolling almost-foothills. The army was marching toward them on a series of tiny peninsulas that wound together. To our left and right — west and east — was the last of the swamp. We quickened our pace, wanting dry feet, dry fodder, and the chance to build a fire on the rising ground ahead.

Our last elements were clearing the fingers when the Maisirian army attacked from the marsh.

Their magicians laid spells of confusion, of indifference, of a kind of invisibility, so no one would trouble about what lay to the west, believing, without ever investigating, that there was nothing but mud and dankness. There the Maisirians had concealed themselves and waited.

They charged without even a signal and surged out of the swamp, ululating battle cries as they came.

They should’ve left us room for panicked flight. If the ground to the right had been forest or
suebi
, the troops might have broken. But with swamp on all sides except the front, there was nowhere to run.

The Maisirians still hadn’t learned that our army marched with fighting men scattered throughout the column, so they weren’t hitting just support units. After they’d butchered the stragglers and hangers-on, they slammed into corps led by Mercia Petre and Myrus Le Balafre.

These two reacted instantly, calmly if loudly, ordering all elements to turn left and prepare for the attack. Their officers and warrants bellowed terrible punishments for anyone who didn’t kill his Maisirian or six, and Saionji herself help the one who hesitated or dreamed of flight. The truth of the training was there: Make a soldier more afraid of his leaders than the enemy, and he’ll fight hard and long.

There was also a rage, long-buried, simmering, that the Maisirians wouldn’t stand and fight, but keep on with their endless back-stabbing. Now they were before us in the open, and we wanted blood.

The column turned on its left flank and went on line. Supply and other “soft” units were shouted to the right, to the new rear. I won’t pretend all this happened smoothly, or even happened in all columns. But there were enough soldiers who’d dropped their packs and had swords ready, and enough archers who’d grabbed a handful of shafts from quivers and sent them arcing toward the enemy, to stop the Maisirian first wave.

Before the second wave could attack through the hesitating first, other soldiers seized the stakes carried below our wagons for the bivouac stockades, and rammed them into the soft ground, angled toward the enemy. Then the second wave slammed into our lines.

I was well forward with the Twentieth Heavy Cavalry, the emperor’s carriage not far behind me, when a rider galloped up — although I’d already guessed what must be happening from the din.

Officers were shouting orders, and men were shrugging off packs and knocking bedrolls off their horses, lances and swords coming into their hands.

I slid from the mare I’d been riding, to mount the already-saddled Brigstock. I kicked him into a gallop, back to the emperor’s carriage. Tenedos had his wagons drawn into a circle, his bodyguard dismounted and ringing the site. He was ordering robed Brethren about, and the area was a scurry of staff officers and acolytes. An acolyte was sprinkling colored powder on the wet grass in arcane patterns, since there was no other way to mark the meadowland, and braziers were being lit. Magicians were ordering herbs mixed and dumped into the braziers, and unrolling bundles and sorting through their contents.

“Damastes, take charge of the cavalry,” the emperor ordered. His voice was completely calm. “Take ‘em out and try to hit these bastards on their flank. I’m going to bother them a bit myself. I’ve already sent reinforcements back down the line to Le Balafre and Petre.”

I saluted, and rode Brigstock back to the Twentieth. My gallopers and the Red Lancers were waiting. I sent quick commands to the dominas commanding the screen on the army’s former front: We’d march out to the right, then swing back to the fighting. After we turned, we’d go on line and take them. At the walk, we moved out.

I felt a sort of shimmering, a crawl and shiver on my muscles and nerves. Magic was about. The emperor’s spell was being cast. I was on the fringes, and saw trees and vines twist and lean, and felt malevolence, until we were “recognized” as friendly. This was the spell Tenedos had cast against Chardin Sher’s army, in the forest around the village of Dabormida. I’d thanked Tanis back then that I hadn’t witnessed such an evil. But now I would. The trees would come alive and reach for their foes. Branches would strangle, trees would fall and crush, roots would rise to trip and tear. Men would go mad in this horror, seeing things that must not be, and run screaming, to be crushed by another terror or cut down by the oncoming soldiers.

The trees were moving, coming alive, as if a gale were twisting them, but there was no wind and the rain fell straight from the sky. Men turned, looked at me, and their faces were white, afraid. I pretended laughter and shouted something about the emperor’s magic striking hard, and they forced courage. Then the crawling sensation was gone, and all was normal. I didn’t know what had happened, but logic said the Maisirian wizards had broken Tenedos’s spell.

Now it would be their turn, unless the emperor could rebuild his power quickly. He wasn’t quite fast enough, and red splashes flickered through the rain. It was as if fireflies were attacking, or perhaps those tiny redbirds that flocked through Cimabue’s jungles in the Time of Births. Then they were on us, and they weren’t anything sensate or friendly, but bits of pure flame, straight from Shahriya’s realm, unquenched by rain, drawing close. They found, clung, and flared, and screams began.

One touched my forearm, and a fiery brand seared. The flame grew bigger, feeding on me, on my energy, and my mind reeled in agony and fear, remembering that greater fire I’d flung myself into not long ago. My other hand scrabbled at my waist, and Yonge’s dagger was in it. I scraped frantically, and the flame fell away, and the pain was gone, though my sleeve was scorched through. At first I thought it was the silver of the knife’s pommel and hilt, but then I realized I’d touched the flame with bare steel.

Other men made the same discovery, and scraped swords, knives, even arrowheads across the tiny killers, and they vanished. But there were those who hadn’t been quick enough, or who panicked. Their bodies became flame, and they fell, writhing, and were dead. Horses reared, neighing in terror and pain as they burned. The formations nearly broke, and then the flames were gone, as if the rain instead of a counterspell had quenched them.

The emperor sent an order down the line for Le Balafre and Petre to attack. But those two hadn’t needed orders, knowing as they did that the best counterattack is immediate, and the best way to break an ambush is straight into it. The two tribunes were the first to charge, swords high, beside their banners. Our men shouted loud for Numantia, and attacked.

They cut down the second wave and the remnants of the first wave, and moved on, lines wavering, then firming, rain washing blood from their spears and swords as they rolled inexorably toward the Maisirian lines.

Now it was time for me to put my cavalry on line, strike for the Maisirian left flank, and rip them apart. Except that …

I make no claims to having the slightest ability in magic or any sense beyond a normal man’s. So perhaps I heard something, far distant. Or possibly there might’ve been the gleam of armor, or a flag, or even a fire.