Lesson of the Fire (52 page)

A handful of spiny-tailed guer were close to
the narrows, and they swirled around, screaming at each other. They
had bumped into the Mar’s trap, a plug made from Power, damming the
river. Bui saw several striped guer, partway into the water, turn
their heads to listen.

“Tell Arn to do it now,” he told the relay,
who sprinted off to deliver the message.

The striped guer trumpeted again, and the
thousands of Drakes in the river doubled their speed. The jabber,
past halfway, raced for the south bank. The spiny-tailed, smaller
and weaker, turned back. The tall striped guer pressed on with
spiny-tailed archers on their backs.

The Mar fell back, and a handful appeared on
the south bank from under the obstruction, led by Arn. Behind them,
the tunnel of Power they had built vanished much faster than it had
been created, and the lake began its swift return to river, taking
the Drakes with it — into the two-mile swath of traps that the
adepts had set up earlier, and that the Drakes had carefully
avoided.

The Mar faded away as the Drakes drowned.
Spiny-tailed died first, then jabber, and finally the striped guer,
who could brace themselves for some time but tired. The river ran
with fire as it funneled its writhing, screaming load into the
traps.

“They didn’t expect that,” Brok said
dryly.

“I’m not complainin’,” Bui told him, unable
to resist grinning broadly. He turned to a relay. “Tell Arn that
was great work.”

The relay ran to comply even as another
arrived, breathless.

“Some of Arn’s didn’t make it out in
time.”

“How many?” Bui asked.

“He’s still countin’, but at least twenty,
so far.”

Twenty Mar compared to a lakeful of Drakes.
Any general would consider that a bargain.

“Sen’ some ‘depts downstream to fish out
their bodies. I’d like to burn as many as they can fin’. We’ll
remem’er their sacrifice.”

The relay nodded and ran west.

Bui gave orders to rebuild what traps they
could while keeping an eye on the edge of the Drake army for their
next charge. The enemy waited just long enough for the Lapis to
return almost to normal, and then the trumpeting began.

The splash of the first thousand howling
jabbers sent a chill down Bui’s spine.

We can stand and hold them off, or we can
turn and run. But I don’t know what’s behind me right now.

“Glovers, stren’then the traps. Guardians,
be ready to push them.”

Rank after rank of Drake pushed into the
river and died — each pushed into the traps by the rank behind it,
all the way to the rear of the army.

“More than half the gloves’re gone,”
reported one of the runners.

“Striped guer’ve crossed the river three
miles east,” reported another.

“Brin’ all the ‘depts to the
fortifications,” Bui ordered. “We’re goin’ to run soon, an’ I don’t
want to leave anyone behin’.”

The guer had reached the guardians’ walls on
the south bank. Soon, they broke through the line in half a dozen
places, forcing the draxi to resort to spears, knives and desperate
fire magic to close the breaches.

“Th’east flank’s collapsin’!” a breathless
runner told him.

“We’ve spotted stingers comin’ from the
west,” warned another. “They must’ve crossed out of sight
downstream.”

“Let’s leave,” Bui
said.
We should’ve left after the first
wave.
“South. Leave traps to slow
them.”

Another runner arrived from the eastern
flank. “The Drakes’ve turned the other way. They’re goin’ east,
now.”

Bui raised an eyebrow but didn’t rescind his
first order.

What are they doing?

The adepts had begun to evacuate, leaving a
trail of traps in their wake. When they were several miles south of
the Lapis Amnis, Bui ordered a head count. They had only lost
twenty adepts. The best estimate of Drake casualties was close to
five thousand.

Without magic, we couldn’t have hoped for
battles as successful these have been. We can attack our enemies
with impunity and escape before they ever come close to us. Every
battle, they must storm a fortress made of fire.

The draxi turned east, moving quickly using
Mobility. Abruptly, they found themselves looking upon a column of
adepts armed with wands and spears marching north.

Bui sighed in unmistakable relief, and many
of the draxi wept openly in their joy.

The Mardux has come, and he has brought us
reinforcements.

* * *

Without the reconnaissance stones, the
wizards would have lost the Duxy of Flasten. The ochres were
perfectly camouflaged and able to shape themselves as if made of
soft clay, which, as far as Horsa could tell, was exactly what they
were. Torutsen by itself wouldn’t allow the weards to see them, for
whatever part of the ochres was alive was buried deep enough under
their muddy coats to conceal the dispersion of myst. Horsa had been
able to modify the recon stones to track them, though, and now the
ochres fled from their path.

Many Mar would go hungry until the next crop
of wild rice could be planted and harvested, however. To eliminate
the ochres lurking beneath the water, the wizards had boiled away
hundreds of marshes and wild rice fields, leaving only steaming
patches of scorched, cracked clay. Even the Teleport War had not
created such total devastation in the areas it touched, but the
wizards could tell from the lack of friendly casualties and the
vanishing number of ochre motes on the recon stones that they were
winning.

They had met no Mar in two spans of sporadic
clashes with the ochres. Every town was empty, and the decomposing
corpses were too few to account for all the disappearances. Ragnar
seemed certain that the mundanes had fled ahead of the ochre
invasion. The strange Drakes were disconcertingly difficult to
fight without magic, after all.

Horsa had his doubts, though he prayed
desperately that they were unfounded.

The army of more than thirty thousand
wizards came within sight of Flasten Palus. This was the first
place any refugees were likely to go.

“Weard Verifien, recon the city. I want a
full account of its condition,” Ragnar said.

Horsa nodded and did as he was told —
obedient as he had sworn to be.

“There are no signs of magical defenses, Dux
Groth. No ochres, either.” On a hunch, Horsa made one more sweep of
Flasten Palus. “No Mar, either — at least no living ones.”

Ragnar frowned. “Set the recon stone for
regular sweeps of the surrounding area and leave it here to help
our sentries keep watch. Weard Verifien, I am bringing you and a
hundred of my magocrats with me into Flasten Palus. I cannot wait
until tomorrow to learn what has happened to my city. The rest of
the army will make camp here for the night. Keep a sharp watch.
There could still be ochres in the area.”

“Not within nine miles,” Horsa reminded him.
“And ochres do not move quickly. Set sentries, as well. The
reconnaissance stone can be fooled by enemy wizards, but only an
enchanter can completely hide from enemy eyes.”

“Agreed.”

Ragnar gave orders to the wizards. Soon, the
army’s fires burned everywhere on the open marsh. When the generals
were satisfied that the rest of the army could operate without them
for a while, Horsa, Ragnar and eleven nonagons disappeared into the
Tempest.

Flasten Palus’s southern gate hung open.
Several dozen Mar corpses lined both sides of the dirt road that
led to the entrance as if they had been moved out of the path of a
marching army. Scavengers had already rendered it impossible for
Horsa to guess at a specific cause of death, though most showed
battlefield injuries of some kind — a twisted neck, a severed head,
a missing limb and even one whose torso faced the opposite way from
his feet.

“Still reconning, Weard Verifien?” Ragnar
murmured.

Horsa reconned but found nothing — no Mar,
no ochre, no Drakes of any kind. He said as much to Weard Groth.
The news relaxed the dux no more than it had relaxed him.

The wizards cautiously entered the city.
Flasten Palus looked nothing at all like Domus Palus. Mud daub and
sod huts dominated, but there were a few wooden structures here and
there. The outer wall was little more than a very large palisade,
and Horsa knew the central keep was yet ahead.

It has more in common with
Rustiford than with Domus Palus,
he
reflected.
In fact, Rustiford probably has
more wooden buildings than Flasten Palus. The city is just
bigger.

“Split into nonagons and spread out,” Ragnar
said. “Look for signs of what might have happened here and where
the people might have gone. Weard Verifien, you are still with me.
We will head for the ruins of the keep.”

Ruins? It must have been destroyed before
the ochres reached it.

Groups of wizards wound through the streets
and away from each other. Horsa, Ragnar and a nonagon of Flasten
magocrats walked down the central street — if a trampled dirt path
a couple of paces wide could be called a street. The corpses piled
up outside the gates were not the only signs of struggle they saw.
The stench of death that hung in the air was strong enough to make
some of the wizards sick, and none of them talked about food.
Weapons and corpses were strewn helter-skelter wherever they went,
but the dead were all Mar — some wizards, but mostly mundanes. Huts
had been burned down in some places, though the fires had long
since gone out.

Burned by the attackers or
by the defenders?
Horsa
wondered.

They reached a small public square, and
Horsa almost gagged at the sight and smell. The ground a hundred
feet across was covered in dried blood, and someone had raised a
pile of corpses at the center of the square. Decomposition had
already begun, but Horsa could tell that these were no victims of
battle. There were no weapons in the area, and the victims in the
pile appeared to be mostly old men and women. Many looked like they
had been savaged by the sharp teeth of some large predator.

“Ochres do not leave marks like those,” one
of the greens pointed out.

No one responded. They didn’t need to.
Everyone feared they knew exactly what was responsible for this
carnage.

Damnens.

“Burn it,” Ragnar growled.

“Dux Groth, won’t that just attract their
attention?” asked an auburn.

“Do it. I am not in the habit of letting
dead Mar rot.”

The wizards summoned fire and turned the
pile of corpses into a funeral pyre.

“Weard Verifien, will you give us a prayer?”
the dux asked.

Horsa did not respond right away, surprised
as he was by the request in such grim surroundings. He nodded to
acknowledge he had heard and tried to compose himself.

“Watch over us, my fellow Mar,” Horsa
murmured to the sparks and thick smoke that rose up from the pile.
“Shelter us with your darkness and guide us with your light. By
your sacrifice, we are warmed. By your sacrifice, we can see. By
your...”

A snort from one of the huts at the edge of
the square interrupted him — a sound like laughter but lacking any
human mirth.

“To arms!” Ragnar snapped, drawing his
marsord.

Horsa had his marsord out an instant later,
and the nine wizards with them were not slow to ready their spears.
They stood there in silence for what seemed like at least a minute,
but nothing leapt out at them.

Horsa reconned and found no Drakes in the
city. With a second quick spell, he noted that two of the nonagons
had vanished, and three others had suffered losses.

“This was misguided,” he whispered to
Ragnar. “We must withdraw.”

The dux had no chance to respond before a
tall humanoid stepped into the square. The damnen had a body that
looked like a shadow and claws as long as knives. It snorted and
strolled toward them, betraying no fear of their weapons and bright
cloaks.

Ragnar stood his ground, but his magocrats
shied away from the dread Drake, pushing Horsa back with them. A
sudden wall of fire sprang up in front of the damnen as one of the
wizards panicked, but it vanished when the creature ran through
it.

“Look out!” Horsa shouted at Ragnar, but it
was no use.

The damnen passed through the fire without a
mark on it. Ragnar lashed out with his marsord, but the damnen
parried it at the hilt, knocking the weapon out of his hand. A
small line of crimson appeared on Ragnar’s wrist where one claw had
grazed it. Before anyone could react, the damnen grabbed the red by
the neck and lifted him off the ground.

The Flasten wizards rushed forward to strike
it with spears, but the damnen did not wait for them to engage it,
fleeing with surprising speed. One thrown spear grazed its thigh as
it ran, but no other came close as it widened the gap between
itself and its pursuers. Two of the wizards used magic to keep
pace, moving out of sight of their companions in seconds. Only the
muffled cries informed Horsa that they had caught up with their
prey.

One damnen did not kill everyone in Flasten
Palus. If there are damnens here but no Mar survivors, either the
Drakes killed everyone in Flasten Palus or they have taken
prisoners.

Mar told terrifying stories about the fates
of those whom the damnens took prisoner, and Horsa did not intend
to learn the truth of them first-hand. He called the myst and
escaped into the Tempest, only belatedly realizing he was leaving a
hundred wizards to die.

* * *

Katla did not wait quietly in the Delegates’
tent city for an end to the war. Her incessant lobbying made few
friends and more enemies, but most of the words she planted led to
dissension between the delegates, which was all to the good.

She had started with the spiny-tailed guer,
who wanted a swift and easy war with the Mar and not the agonizing
sacrifices she had promised on Sven’s behalf. By this point, they
could see that was not going to happen.