Forest For The Trees (Book 3) (14 page)

Tru crossed the room to speak with the tome perusers. 
Minna, after loading him down with enough weight to stagger a knight accustomed
to wearing full armor, followed him to a barren desktop, giving him brief
instruction on how the content abbreviations at the top of each page explained
the report’s subject.  Atop the table they started spreading pages over an
ever-widening surface.

Marik became absorbed by the work.  The abbreviations,
at first a hindrance, quickly allowed him rapid comprehension once he grew used
to them.  By far the majority of reports dealt with the fleeing and surviving
townsfolk.  Seven villages had been assaulted in the first few days.  Since
then, surrounding settlements had evacuated before the violence could claim
additional lives.

That meant the black soldiers could have expanded
their claimed territory without any immediate signs.  The potential area they
controlled was twice the size of the area in which they were unequivocally
known to be.

For what he wanted, most of the papers he breezed
through were worthless.  The information was too old, the facts obviously
distorted by the incredulous panic the report drafter felt coursing through
him.  Shaky letters would have been enough to reveal that, yet Marik, who had
faced the foe in person, easily saw the flaws.  There were no eight-foot
barbarian hordes ravaging the countryside, nor twenty-foot monsters that
breathed noxious poisons.  Various claims of immunity to weapons could be
accounted to the unfamiliar armor worn by the enemy, which he knew could repel
sword strikes in startling ways.

He explained it to Minna as they worked.  “These
creatures are terrifying.  Just seeing them in the scryes can’t prepare you for
them.  Only firsthand experience really lets you understand their power.  Their
roars punch you straight in the heart to the point they disrupt the rhythm of
your heartbeats.  Their muscles are so strong they can tear through almost
anything.  And once you finally get close enough, you smell their musk, which
tries to overwhelm your brain.  Your mind is screaming ‘predator!’, and your
instincts are howling for you to run away.  Their predator’s presence is
powerful enough to overwhelm any creature’s whose presence is less than
theirs.  That’s why most of these reports are so incoherent.  It’s the result
of the reporter’s first contact with the creatures.  Only killing one of them,
or seeing one killed, lets your mind finally start to deal with them
rationally.  Only that lets you overcome their presence.  Knowing that they are
vulnerable.”

Several reports were repetitive.  They winnowed
through them, expunging those duplicates detailing the same enemy detachments,
aware that several of the papers set aside likely contained differing
estimates.  The numbers were only offered on a ‘best guess’ system.  When they
attempted to accurately guess at the overall enemy size later, whatever number
they arrived at would certainly be off.

Their progress increased as the marks passed.  Minna,
by seeing what he sent back to her, gained a feel for what Marik needed. 
Between them they blazed through the pile faster than he would have imagined.

Once they had determined which pages were best suited
to the task, they crossed to a massive map displaying Galemar that hung beside
the scrying mirrors.  Rather than hanging against the bare wall, a massive cork
board provided a backing, allowing artful pins to be placed at need.

Several pins were already marking various elements.  A
handful of blue-headed pins were scattered across the east.  From their
position, he felt they were leftovers from the last time the map had been in
use during the Nolier battles.  Only one small cluster of yellow pins marked
the western border with Tullainia so far.

Green pins were scattered across Galemar, representing
the scattered men in service to their homeland.  Most were in the east, or on
their way there.  The only force of consequence in the west hovered forty miles
away from the stolen lands at the Stoneseams’ foot, awaiting reinforcements. 
Reinforcements that were heading the other way.

A dozen yellow Tullainian pins were stuck into the
area around Armonsfield.  Marik quickly plucked them off.  Both he and Minna
held papers in their left hands, shifting their attentions from the pages long
enough to locate the correct point into which they needed to jab a yellow
marker.  He would have preferred black pins, except he saw no colors other than
Galemar, Nolier and Tullainia.

“Why wasn’t this done as the reports came in?” Marik
wanted to know.

Minna kept her eyes fixed unerringly on the words she
held.  “The reports came in to the knight-marshal’s analysts.  They delivered
them to us in stacks with no sorting at all, pages from different reports mixed
together.  I’ve spent all my time organizing them back into proper order.”  She
sniffed loudly to emphasize, “Their entire focus is on Nolier.”

Marik, with effort, refrained from shaking his head in
disbelief.

When they stuck the last pin in, Tru came to stand at
his side.  “Pretty ugly.”

“Yes,” Marik agreed, gazing at the display.  Without
question, the current positions were off.  Armies constantly moved, reorganized
and altered their patterns unless they were digging in to create a fortified
position, which looked to be the case only at three occupied towns.  “The
numbers don’t look good.  Supposing, if the scryers are right, no heavy
reinforcements have crossed through the pass in the last two eightdays. 
Roughly guessing, we have twelve-thousand enemy soldiers across a land area
twenty miles out from the mountains’ base, and anywhere from forty to sixty
miles long.”

“Ugly.  That’s what I said.”

“The monsters are too strange.  None of the reports
are valuable since the men who saw them have nothing to judge against…so no
credibility when their claims are at odds with each other’s.  What do you know
about them?”

“They aren’t Devils.”

“I already know that,” Marik snapped.  “And I know how
tough they are to kill, and how strong they are!”

“I didn’t want you to get confused.  The people in the
white robes are using sorcery, so some would think that means the beasts are
Devils.”

“Sorcery?  But they weren’t summoned?”

“Yes.  They can’t be summoned with sorcery since they
aren’t Devils.  Or Spirits.”

“How can a sorcerer control ordinary beasts?”

Tru shrugged.  “Not the same way they control Devils
or Spirits.  We don’t know.”

Marik wanted to thank him for providing an answer that
answered nothing…except that would serve no purpose.  Comprehension in this
case helped only in that it made the enemy less mysterious.  An irritated reply
would serve no purpose.

“I suppose the beasts live wherever these invaders
come from, then.  They’ve tamed…no.  Not that.  I know better than that.  They’ve
somehow…
harnessed
these creatures the way you might force a wild horse
into tack and bridle.”

“Could be,” the magician agreed.  “Kara and Covell
think they might have been made with magic.  But no one else thinks that
possible.”

“Who are they?”

“Covell?  He came down from Rubia nine or ten years—”

“No!” Marik interrupted.  “Are they enclave mages, or
cityguard mages?”

“Oh.  Both are enclave.”

Which left several other enclave mages in
disagreement.  The odds were heavily against it.

Yet who knew with magic?

“We need better information.”

“Well, that’s not all.  Our sorcerers have been
studying them through the scryes, watching it all.  They say one white robe can
control three of the beasts, usually.  A stronger one can do four.”

Marik reviewed the battle in the Stoneseams Pass,
followed by the one at the Eighteenth Outpost.  “That tallies.”

“Whatever they do, they must have learned it wherever
they came from.”

“They look like Galemarans,” Minna stated.  “Not tan
like the Tullainians or brown like the northern kingdoms.”

“I’d be suspicious that they were Noliers pulling a
surprise march,” Marik added, “if it weren’t obviously impossible to pull off
without anyone knowing.”  He glanced sidelong at Tru’s black skin, making up
his mind to ask once and for all.  “Where are you from, anyway?”

“The archipelagos off the south coast.  My island is
about ten day’s sail off Nolier.”

The reply surprised Marik.  He had never heard of the
place, never seen it on any of the maps he’d looked over.  Of course, the only large
map he’d ever studied before this one had been the similar version in the
records office at Kingshome.

It would be easy to sway from the issues before them. 
He ignored his curiosity.  “Did we get any estimate on the number of beast
controllers?  The white robes?”

Minna shuffled through the piles they had made on the
floor under the map.  “Not a good one.  Could be around fifty, unless the
sightings were of the same groups.  All these numbers come from the mages.”

“And only half the groups might have been spotted
through the mirrors in any case.  So that means a hundred-fifty to
three-hundred possible beasts under their control.”  After a beat, he
commented, “I don’t like it.”

“They won’t all be in one place,” Minna opined.  “The
commanders would scatter them over the area they held.”

“Not too widely,” Marik countered.  “So far they have
always sent the beasts in first, hitting the defenders hard and softening them
for the black soldiers behind.  There would be no reason to change that.  The
beasts are scattered, you’re right, but only into a handful of groups near
their front lines.  They would want the beasts ready in case we make another
surprise attack against them.”

Marik continued speculating for the next two
candlemarks with Tru and Minna.  At times, the magician would call other magic
users over from their efforts to speak on the points they were individually
studying.  They were invariably annoyed at the interruption, each sounding
harassed.  Marik ignored their ire and offered no apologies.

By the time servants carried away the crumb-coated
plates from lunch, he believed he had gained a solid feel for these strange
invaders.  Many questions remained unresolved, but the scattered details meshed
with what he had experienced and witnessed.

The most important mystery he wanted solved was where
the enemy mages were, and what they might be doing.  So far the only magic
users the scryers had uncovered wore white, controlling the beasts.  That
covered those enemy mages possessing sorcery since any person gifted with that
talent would certainly be recruited as a controller.

There still remained the other three major talents. 
Where lurked the magic users with the talents for magecraft, magician’s spells
and geomancy?

Marik kept asking; Marik kept receiving no
satisfactory answer.  The enclave laborers had no facts to give.  Continued
harping on the issue would not be the means of attaining a change in that
status.

Celerity never returned.  Marik was about to leave. 
He had received what he could from the enclave by way of current information. 
Before he enacted his escape, Tru asked if he were ready to look at the
mountain through the scrying window.

“No, I doubt I’ll see anything new.  The scryers gave
us the best details they were able to locate, and I just returned from the
Stoneseams.  I already know the lay of the land there.”

Confusion marred the solid features of the dark
magician.  “Who said scrying the Stoneseams?”

“You asked…wait.  What
did
you ask?”

“No one told you about the mountain?  I wondered why
you didn’t want to see it right away.”

“Which mountain?  In the Stoneseams range?”

“No.  Come look at it.”

Tru brought him to the window rather than the
mirrors.  Minna trailed behind in silence.  Upon catching the window scryer’s
attention, he asked, “Have you done the mountain yet?”

“Nah.  We did it only ten or so marks ago after the
midnight bell.  Won’t have changed much, will it?”

“Pull it up so we can have a look.”

“Eh.  You know Celerity said we needed to be careful
how much we use.  It’ll all be gone in a month if we keep sinting it.”

“Sint some more.  It’s for special.”

The man glanced around Tru at the shabby mercenary. 
He pursed his lips with a shrug, passing responsibility for the matter to Tru,
who must be superior in the enclave.

A measure of light-colored earth was pulled from a
cask the fellow rolled out from under a different desk.  Many such casks were
present, each with different labels.  Marik read
Tullainia, 0031.

“Does the Tullainian king know we have a cask of his
kingdom’s dirt?”

Tru filibustered.  “All the kingdoms get samples of
their lands from everywhere, so the mages can look in on any place they need
to.”

“That’s
their
lands.  Collecting earth samples
from across the border seems like outright spying.”

“You need to know what things your neighbors are doing
if they get to doing things.  And everybody does it.  It’s not like I went over
and stole anything and…well, it happens, you know?”