Lesson of the Fire (44 page)

Somewhere down the adepts’ line, an arrow
took flight, followed by a hundred more before Bui could react.

“Don’t shoot! We’ll need those arrows
later!” Bui screamed, but someone had already put a stop to it.

A few arrows hit, however, but the premature
attack only seemed to spur the jabbers forward. Enough jabbers were
in the river now that the stingers began their march forward, and
the river was more than three-quarters full of living bodies.

Dinah’s shriveled teat, it’s like leading an
army of mapmaker children across the Fens of Reur.

A fountain of water flung a few jabber guer
up into the air, and Bui was about to shout at his adepts again
when a dozen more explosions appeared up and down the line — the
Mass had reached the traps.

Ten seconds later, the entire river seemed
to be in the air, and jabber guer rained on the First Wave. Some
hit the mud beach with thumps and cracks, setting off more
explosions of mud and fire.

Through the rain of river water, some of
which was turning to steam, dozens and then hundreds of jabber guer
broke through in great leaping bounds, hardly touching the ground.
But the mud beach was so littered with traps that most of them set
off something.

“Fire! Fire at anything you can see!” Bui
screamed as a particularly fast and lucky jabber took one final
leap and landed among the stunned adepts. It was quickly dispatched
as arrows filled the air, and someone was dragged away to be
healed.

Bui stared back at the river, rushing in on
itself again. Most of the traps had been used. Jabber corpses
floated downstream, and jabber bodies littered the mud beach. More
than half their traps were gone now, and the stinger guer swam
deliberately toward him.

This will soon be the
safest place to cross,
Bui thought
woefully, trying to see through the steam for the striped guer. A
gust of wind cleared the air for a minute, and he suppressed a
shout of shock.

Across the river, the striped guer and two
large bands of jabbers and stingers were moving upstream.

He had no time to think. A score more jabber
had leapt across the last line of traps and scrabbled at the wall
to reach his adepts, and skirmishes were breaking out up and down
his line. Gesturing to his special escort, Bui grabbed his spear to
help in the nearest fight.

The jabber had killed someone, and it
launched itself at a fear-stricken adept as Bui cast his spear into
its side, knocking it into the ground. The guerrilla was on it
immediately, stabbing at the throat with a knife. He wrenched the
knife and spear free and looked at the terrified adept.

“You. Go down the line, and order everyone
back one hundre’ yards. Go now!” he barked, and the adept fled. He
pointed with the blooded spear at two of his escort. “Follow him
and make sure he does it. An’ order a line of traps set atop the
wall. Quickly, the stingers’re almost upon us.”

“What about us?” someone asked.

“You’re comin’ with me. The striped guer are
headed upstream.”

They jogged upstream behind the wall,
ordering the adepts down and setting explosions along their mud
wall. Bui killed two more jabbers and passed nearly a dozen guer
corpses before the ground started shaking — the stingers had
reached the traps on the mud beach.

Their view north disappeared in mud and guer
as the body of the stingers hit the traps. Bui risked a glance back
down the line. As far as he could tell, the adepts were retreating.
A few ran up and down the wall, randomly setting traps and
pocketing the used gloves.

Someone grabbed his shoulder, dragging him
to a halt, and a stinger corpse landed a few feet in front of him
with a crunch. It started to move, and one of his escort stabbed it
with a spear.

“Thanks,” he said, breathlessly.

“You’re always tellin’ us to watch where
we’re goin’,” the blood-and-mud-covered woman said. “You should do
the same.”

He grinned fiercely at her, and they passed
the last of his adepts.

Up here, more jabbers had made it past the
traps, and with no one to fight, were milling around. Bui made note
of this as, covered in his own explosions, he speared one and
knifed a second. His escort, which had somehow grown to more than
hundred, fell on the unsuspecting jabbers, and real battle
ensued.

Maybe their boss died
crossing the river, and they had no idea what to do,
he thought, stepping to one side to avoid a leap
and hamstringing a guer attacking someone else.
Maybe they had orders just to cross and then wait.

Suddenly he was fighting a stinger guer, and
brought his knife up to block the tail. They had made it past the
traps, and he had no idea where they were.

“Press forward!” he shouted. “We need to
stop the striped guer!”

Most of his small army disengaged and ran
east, conserving their magic to heal themselves. Glancing around,
Bui saw all of the jabber were down or too injured to run, and the
stinger he had killed had been one of only a handful.

More will come.
He risked a glance toward the river.

The mud beach was gone, the river
permanently rerouted, shallower and slower. But the river was red,
too, as far as the eye could see, and thousands upon thousands of
the First Wave of the Mass drifted slowly toward the great delta of
the Lapis Amnis. More littered the chewed and torn shallows where
the beach had been, and more among the ruined wall behind him. A
few Mar cloaks could be seen among them, and shouts from the west
suggested more skirmishes had ensued.

Someone near him shouted, and his head
whipped forward. The striped guer had entered the river, a few
hundred yards above the traps.

How can we stop them? We
have no traps; most of my army is downstream.
Then he remembered the milling jabbers.
They have orders.
And he thought he
knew what they were.

“Stop,” he ordered, looking back down the
line. The exhilarated adepts around him gathered in confusion.

“We’re winning,” one said, and they all
began to cheer.

Bui nodded. “We’ve won,” he said. “But that
pocket we just passed through? There’s one on the downstream flank.
And this is their leader. We may have killed more than half of
them, but that was because we had the traps. There are no more
traps.”

He gestured back the way they had come. “But
we know they had orders, that they’re followin’ a plan. That gives
us time. So we retreat, and let the rest of them by us, you
understan’? We send a messenger to the weards at Domus and let them
take care of this.”

He looked north, across the river.

“There’s another Wave we have to prepare
for.”

Chapter 36

“
Mardux Sven Takraf did not invent the
wand. The Kaliheron taught their apprentices how to wield magic ‘by
the staff’ (Ies). Nor did he pioneer mystalton (spell-shaping
spells), which were an innovation of farl enchanters. But the
Blosin gloves are his — marrying mystalton with Ies in a way that
did not violate Bera’s Unwritten Law. The Blosin gloves allowed him
to overcome the limitations of his tor and focus on mysdyn. With
them, as long as he knew the pattern of an application, he could
wield it simply by designing a series of wands that would build
increasingly complex mystalton until he had a mystalt that could
generate the pattern of the desired application. With the Blosin
gloves, no spell — not even morutmanon — was beyond his
ability.”

— Weard Oda Kalidus,

The Origin of Nothing

Horsa was praying when they brought the cyan
to him.

“Weard Verifien,” the cyan said. “It’s Eda
Stormgul. I know you remember me. The Mardux sent us to ...”

“Eda?” It was like a dream. The reality of
the battles he had fought, trying to outthink and outpace Ragnar,
had made him forget the rest of Marrishland. “Oh Marrish,” he
moaned, as though waking from a deep sleep suddenly.

“Horsa,” Eda snapped. “I’ve come to warn
you. The Mass is marching against Domus Palus. If the Drakes find
it undefended, you will have no temple left to pray in.”

The severity of her expression froze his
blood.

“You are serious.”

She nodded.

“How many Drakes? Thousands? Tens of
thousands?”

“At least a million,” Eda said, trying to
look as certain as she could.

Another chill gripped Horsa in spite of the
summer heat. “The Mass ... Sven said it was myth,” Horsa whispered
in fear. He glanced at the weards who had brought her to him, saw
the looks on their faces range from disbelief to outright disgust.
Did no one really believe?

But Eda does, and she would never lie to me
about something like this.

“Call together my council,” he said, though
he heard his own voice as if it came from very far away. “We need
to discuss this immediately.”

* * *

“We are less than fifty miles east of the
coast,” a lavender reported, “and at least part of Flasten’s force
is twelve miles east of us.”

“How close are we to Domus Palus?” Horsa
asked.

“Less than a hundred miles. We cannot be
certain because every village looks the same out here, and the Mar
in the area have long since fled.”

“And the magic our recon spells noticed just
to the north?”

“I do not think it is Flasten. They would be
headed north, not south.”

“Unless they are as lost as we are.” He
hated the bitterness in his voice, but he could not keep it out.
His men were long used to his dour nature, though. They knew he
wouldn’t lead them on a mapmaker’s folly.

“We are not lost, Weard Verifien. We are not
sure of exactly where we are. Most of the landmarks have been
destroyed. Surely even Flasten would be able to guess the way to
Domus Palus.”

“If it is Flasten, they are in our way,”
Horsa said.

“We could break through their eastern arm
and creep up along their flank,” the lavender suggested.

“That will take too long, and Flasten will
suspect your destination before you reach it. Domus Palus would
face a double threat from Flasten and the Mass,” Eda said.

The lavender sneered at the cyan’s speech.
“We do not know that the force to the north is Flasten. Perhaps the
Mardux is sending reinforcements.”

“Send a dozen nonagons,”
Horsa said. “I want eyeball recon this time. We need to be sure of
who they are.”
Cyan Eda might be, but I
will listen to her as much as a lavender.

“Yes, Weard Verifien.” The lavender would
not even think of questioning his general.

They were on the move within minutes. In
addition to the nonagons, the Domus army had experimented with
several formations. V formations for some assaults, jagged lines
for others. This time, the detachment would travel in a tight
circle used in pinpoint strike missions against vulnerable points —
quick strike and, if necessary, an equally quick retreat even in
the face of heavy losses.

An hour later, they returned with dire news.
Flasten’s army stood between them and Domus Palus. Horsa listened
to the report with an impassive expression.

“Weard Verifien?” one of the lavenders
asked.

He turned to them. “Pass the word to every
nonagon you can find. And every pentagon. This war is no longer
important. I need to find Flasten’s general. We will need his
help.”

Once their protests were defeated and they
were gone, Horsa went to his tent. He sent everyone away, threw
himself onto the ground and wept. He was not alone in his grief,
for throughout the camp, the veterans of the Teleport War also wept
for the victory they might have had.

* * *

A year in the mud, and Ragnar had lost his
marsord. Somewhere in the muck and grime of their magical battles,
Dinah was taking the weapon back to the minerals that had made it.
The Domus army had lost almost a third of its number, and Ragnar
had lost less than a tenth. He outnumbered them now — dramatically
outnumbered them.

But with the news he had received of his
father’s death only a few hours ago, the red found he did not
care.

At least I have a marsord
once more,
he mused blackly, staring at the
gilded blades in his hand.

“Weard Groth, we have taken a prisoner.”

Ragnar looked up. A yellow stood between two
cyans.

Ragnar walked forward.

“I am Weard Horsa Verifien, general of the
Domus army,” the yellow said. “I have come to negotiate
surrender.”

“Surrender?” Ragnar was
astounded.
After a year in this muck,
surrender?

“The Mass approaches from the north. We
would side with you to defeat it.”

Ragnar scowled. “If we accept your
surrender, you will be prisoners and may not use magic. You will
all become slaves according to Bera’s Unwritten Laws.”

“This war among Mar must stop, otherwise
Domus Palus will soon be no more. Our war already has destroyed a
third of the Domus army and a tenth of yours.” Horsa took a deep
breath. “We may be the last wizards remaining who can stop the Mass
before it consumes Marrishland.”

“What trickery is this?”

“The Mass still lies beyond the range of
your recon spells and mine, and I could easily falsify the result.
You must trust me.”

“Why?”

“I am a priest, and by the Oathbinder and
Marrish, my patron, I swear the threat is real.”

“I accept your surrender. Assemble your army
for my inspection. Then we shall consider our options. Do not even
consider a mapmaker’s stratagem, or I really will take you all as
slaves and sell you to the likes of Weard Wost.”

Horsa bowed and wiped sweat from his
brow.