Moontide 02 - The Scarlet Tides (14 page)

We made that skiff together
, he reminded himself, smiling at the memory.

Music still flowed from the Rimoni camp, less frenetic now, the melody more intricate. There was singing, men on the verses and women on the choruses, and it sounded sad and lovely, reminding him of the ruined villas they’d passed over the past few days: the bleached bones of Empire.

He let his mind drift through a pleasant ‘what-if?’ fantasy of staying here, where no one knew he was a failed mage, with the Scytale safely in the hands of someone who’d know just what to do with it, someone like Antonin Meiros. He could stay here and maybe rescue sweetly alluring Anise from being an unwed orphan girl. They could dance under the moonlight every night, far from blood and war.

It’s not what I used to dream, but those dreams will never work out now …

‘Alron di Meersa?’ a girl’s voice called from beside his tent. He was momentarily startled, and his heart jumped a little.
It’s her
. He turned as Anise swayed between the willow fronds and then tiptoed to where he sat. Before he could rise, she’d swept her skirts beneath her and sat down. She put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Alron, si?’

‘Al-a-ron,’ he said, his heart thudding. He was glad it was dark so she couldn’t see him blushing.

She repeated his name in a sing-song voice that made little bubbles dance inside him, then tapped her own chest. ‘Ah-neesa.’

‘Anise,’ he repeated, making her beam with pleasure. She moved away from him, leaning back on her right arm, looking at him first with her left eye, then her right, and giggling as she did. She had a wide mouth and full lips, dark skin and a tangled profusion of black hair, not a beauty but pretty, and totally unlike Cym. Alaron couldn’t help smiling – and trembling, to be so close. ‘Uh, do you speak Rondian?’

She giggled, understanding enough to shake her head. ‘Rimoni,’ she tinkled, then cocked her head, her eyes catching the moonlight. ‘Magi?’ she asked him.

He nodded tensely.
These people were slaughtered by magi five hundred years ago—

But she didn’t seem to care. She said something like, ‘Ora mi mostra!’ He liked her voice.

‘You want to see?’ he guessed. He summoned the gnosis, just a tiny blue flame, and made it dance on his fingertips. She gasped, then giggled as he made it vanish, then reappear. She tried to cup it, then pulled away at the heat of it. Her laugh made his head feel like it might detach from his neck and float away.

‘È bello!’ she laughed, then she seized his hand and closed it on the flame, looked up into his eyes, waiting.

I’m going to get a knife in the back for this …

He kissed her. Seductively warm, moist lips covered his and pulled him in as her arms wrapped about him, sliding over the fabric on his shoulders and back. He seemed to fall into her, onto her, as she laughed throatily. It felt like a dream, like something that really ought to be happening to someone else.
Where’s this going?
he thought with both fear and exhilaration. It was very odd: he’d only just met her, couldn’t even hold a conversation with her, but he knew that he liked her – more than liked her.
Isn’t that strange?
He could imagine the teasing Ramon would give him for this, but that made him kiss her harder. That Muhren might appear at any moment apparently made it all the more imperative that he not stop.

Above them the moon limned the water with mercury and the stream gurgled with pleasure. He stroked her shoulders, as that seemed a safe place to touch her, only to find the dress falling away, leaving her warm, bare skin, soft and smooth and more wonderful than the richest fabric. She sighed softly into his mouth, pulling him onto her.

‘Anise!’ a young male voice called from somewhere amidst the trees. He broke off from kissing her as she hissed vexedly. She pressed a finger against his lips, shook her head.

‘Anise!’ The boy’s voice came from around the tents now. ‘Anise!’

She giggled in Alaron’s ear, making his skin tingle all over. ‘Ferdi,’ she whispered. ‘Mio fratello.’
My brother
, Alaron surmised. She wrapped her arms about him, held him to her. ‘Shhh.’ The boy moved about noisily, disturbing the horses a little, without coming near them.

After a minute or so, Ferdi stomped away, back towards the wagons. Alaron decided that Muhren must have stayed for another drink with Mercellus di Regia, and as Anise pulled his face back to hers, he found himself hoping he’d take his time.

Then she stiffened beneath him and her breath caught in her throat. He looked at her eyes, saw them widening at something above him and he went rigid, then looked up slowly, half-expecting to see someone standing over them, one of the quick-bladed Rimoni boys come to protect her honour.

It wasn’t a boy.

A cloud of massive shapes like giant bats was gliding across Luna’s face in a spiral formation, and it was bearing down towards the Rimoni camp. Even at this distance he could see they were giant, impossible creatures –
constructs.
And that meant Pallas, for only the Pallas animagi could breed such creatures in any number. And Pallas meant Inquisitors.

They’ve found us!

Anise pushed him away, a look of fear on her face, and Alaron was no less afraid. His heart was pounding as the beasts glided right over them.

There was no challenge, no threats, no warning; there was only lightning, blazing from above into the circle of wagons.

The Wandering Star

For centuries we have known of the heavenly body the Hebb call ‘Simutu’, the so-called Wandering Star. We now believe it to be a lesser moon, one with a highly elliptical orbit. That it draws most closely to Urte every twelve years, during the Moontide, is of course no coincidence. Simutu’s name is drawn from the Hebb word for copper, due to the moon’s colouration. The Hebb say that those born beneath Simutu are prone to madness and capable of prophecy.

O
RDO
C
OSTRUO
C
OLLEGIATE

Northpoint, Pontic Peninsula, Yuros
Julsep 928
1
^st
month of the Moontide

As the windship swung low over the mass of humanity clustered on the edge of the continent, Ramon Sensini felt his excitement rise. Two weeks of constant motion were coming to an end. That day they had broken through clouds about the Pontic Hills, where the ground fell away in a long sweeping slope towards the east and the glittering ocean and the clouds boiling on the horizon. All the travelling magi had gathered in the bow, pushing Ramon aside, and started cheering and pointing. The panorama was spectacular. The land ran towards a great rim where huge cliffs towered over the rushing waters hundreds of feet below. Even at this distance they could hear the roar of the waves pounding upon the cliffs. White clouds of sea-spray shrouded the coast, and the tang of saltwater hung in the air.

One of the travellers pointed southwest, where a dirty stain spread
over the green swathe. In the middle of it rose a huge spear of white, topped by a brilliant light. ‘The Tower!’ he shouted, and others took up the call.

Ramon squinted until he could make out a pale needle with a glowing blue light at its zenith. He felt his own sense of wonder stir. This was the legendary Northpoint, the prosaically named northernmost anchor of the Leviathan Bridge – Antonin Meiros’ continent-joining, epoch-changing Bridge. He tried to see further, but the distance defeated him. Even now, though, men were crossing to the eastern continent, bringing war and death, and soon he would join them.

Their windship landed west of the camp, amidst a forest of masts and spars looking like the aftermath of a forest storm. There were at least four dozen windcraft here, ranging from tiny skiffs to massive warbirds, more than he’d ever seen in one place, and it was only one of several landing fields he’d glimpsed from above. The stench of the camp rose to greet them as they touched down.

Wind raked the plains, whistling through the city of tents, setting the canvas slapping and the guy-ropes whistling in a scattered rhythm. Fields full of tents, boxes, barrels and mountains of grain were infested by swarms of dockers, worker ants dumping, shifting, carrying, loading and unloading thousands of tons of supplies for the war. The soldiers were the smallest part of this temporary nest of humanity. This place was Portage XXVI, three hundred acres of land ploughed and flattened for the windships to land on, and the same again for a camp swarming with the men of the legions. Outside the soldiers’ camp were twice as many more people: merchants and traders, wives and fiancées and children, whores of both genders, beggars and opportunists. Forty legions – roughly 200,000 men, were marching over the Bridge into Dhassa to join the eight legions already there, and two others in Dorobon colours were preparing to be shipped to Javon: a scarlet tide was bearing down upon Antiopia. The Crusade had begun. Already the vanguard were marching onto the Bridge, and every day two or three more legions joined them as the bottleneck of soldiery resolved itself.

The last two weeks had been a blur of motion for Ramon, starting with a windship journey from Norostein to the Brekaellen Valley. From there he’d taken further ships, cramped little vessels filled with a dozen fellow magi, mostly by-blows of magi promiscuity, with the odd disgraced high-blood horrified to be sharing the journey with such riff-raff. He was the only southerner, and the Argundians, Hollenians, Andressans and Metians onboard had been delighted to have someone to practise their bigotry upon. He could barely wait to lose them all. He shouldered his pack and scuttled away before anyone could manage a parting shot, verbal or otherwise.

The camp was a bewildering mess, the normal rigorously applied legion camp lay-out falling apart under the pressure of so many noncombatants and so much equipment and supplies. The livestock enclosures alone were larger than most of the legion camps. They were filled with either horses or hulkas, the massive bullock-constructs bred to move supply trains. The hulkas stood twice the height of a man, weighed eight to ten tons, and were bred by animism-gnosis, combining aspects of oxen and giant Antiopian beasts called elephants. They had neither horns nor tusks, and were bred to be placid and endlessly patient. Thanks to a radical recent gnostic advance, they now understood simple verbal commands and needed no driver. Some cavalry units had been similarly blessed with intelligent steeds; khurnes were horses bred for strength and speed, with a single vicious horn on their foreheads, and like the hulkas they had the intelligence to understand verbal commands.

Gazing up at the watchful eyes of a hulka, Ramon was reminded of his old college classmate Boron Funt, who was similarly massive, and similarly dour. ‘What do you want?’ he demanded grumpily. The hulka blinked slowly and looked away, as if its thoughts were too profound to share.
Creepy damned things.

He found a ragged child who agreed, for a copper, to guide him to the tent flying the legion flag with the number XIII emblazoned upon it. He flipped the kid his coin, then pushed his way tentatively inside.

A man looked up, squinted and scowled. ‘Sensini?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s “Yes sir”,’ the man growled. ‘And salute when I address you.’

‘Yes, sir, sorry, sir.’ Ramon saluted like he’d seen other men do and that seemed to suffice.

The man before him – his new commanding officer – was as ugly a mage as he’d ever seen, broken-nosed and belligerent-looking, with a receding hairline and the blotched skin of a drinker. Most magi took some care of their appearance, encouraged by the Church’s desire for magi to at least try to look semi-divine, but this man clearly didn’t care. His uniform was tatty, his boots scuffed, but he exuded tough competence.

‘I am Legate Jonti Duprey, Commander of the Thirteenth.’ Duprey looked over Ramon disapprovingly. ‘And you’re a sixteenth-blood mage? I asked for a damned half-blood!’ Duprey ran his fingers through his remaining hair. ‘What kept you?’

‘Delays in Norostein, sir,’ Ramon replied. He wondered how Alaron was. Had he found Cym yet? Leaving Alaron to cope on his own felt like sending a lamb into the desert, but if he hadn’t shown up for this legion posting, his paterfamilias would have turned nasty.

Duprey tapped the paper on his desk. ‘We march in two days, Sensini.’ Then the tent-flap opened and a hulking blond youth came in. Duprey peered at him. ‘Kippenegger?’

‘Yar, ycha bie Fridryk Kippenegger.’ The newcomer was clearly Schlessen. He had a pale complexion, his blond hair fell past his shoulders and he was built like a bull. He was clad in a tooled leather breastplate and wore his arms bare with copper armbands shaped like snakes coiled about them. His biceps were as big as any other man’s thighs. He wore two throwing axes and a sword as long as Ramon’s body.

Duprey rolled his eyes. ‘Sir. You call me “Sir”.’

‘Yar.’

Duprey waited, stony-faced. Ramon suppressed a smile.

Eventually the Schlessen twigged to what was expected. ‘Yar, sir.’ Kippenegger glanced at Ramon. ‘Rimoni?’

‘Silacian.’

The Schlessen grunted. ‘Stay away from my things.’ But he said it with a little smirk, perhaps a flash of the alleged Schlessen sense of humour.

‘You’re here to report to me, not chat,’ Duprey snapped. He sighed heavily. ‘It’s like this every fucking time: I have experienced, disciplined troops, but every Crusade I get new magi who know nothing about the legions. Why we can’t begin the conscriptions a year in advance of the march I don’t know. Actually I do: money.’ He hawked as if to spit, then decided against it – it was his own tent, after all. ‘So, welcome. Our full complement of magi will be allotted tomorrow.’

‘Allotted, sir?’ Ramon asked.

‘There’s a ballot for those magi not already commissioned to a specific legion. Most legions have a peacetime core of six magi, and then add the rest from the volunteers by allotment. You were assigned to us on graduation. You’ll be battle-magi, assigned to a specific maniple, understood?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Kippenegger blinked. ‘Yar.’ He frowned at the silence. ‘Er … sir.’

Duprey sighed heavily. ‘Right. Sensini, you’ll be assigned to the Tenth Maniple – I presume your papers mentioned this?’ He waited with a look of tired expectancy on his face. Legions were roughly five thousand men, divided into ten maniples. The Tenth Maniple was the non-combat unit: scouts, engineers, clerks, cooks and logistics, plus a contingent of archers: they were considered the lowest of the low. Most magi thought themselves above such an assignment.

‘That will be fine, sir,’ Ramon replied, trying to keep his voice neutral. In truth, his paterfamilias had practically skipped for joy when he’d read Ramon’s assignment letter: in his view, whoever controlled supplies and wages controlled the legion.

Duprey blinked, then looked relieved. ‘I suppose as a sixteenth-blood you had no higher aspirations, eh? Kippenegger, you’ll be battle-mage of the Ninth Maniple. I can’t imagine I’ll get anyone else as low-blooded as you two. The rest will be assigned from the allotment.’ He
grimaced. ‘Bloody latecomers, thinking they can wander in at the last minute and get the pick of the legions. Cretins.’

Ramon winked at Kippenegger. ‘Yes sir.’ The Schlessen stifled a grin.

‘Did I ask for an opinion?’ Duprey glowered sourly. ‘Forty-odd legions are crossing into Antiopia, four by windship, and the rest marching. Thank your lucky stars you’re magi; you’ll get a horse. Go and unpack and take the weight off your feet. We’ve added a new Secundus earlier this month, and we’ll get six more magi tomorrow so if you want the best beds, you’d better choose smartly.’ He jabbed a finger at the studious-looking aide-de-camp in the corner. ‘Nyvus, see these two to the mage-barracks, please.’

The aide was probably a non-mage, but he had an air of authority beyond his years. He led Ramon and Kippenegger from the command tent towards a larger pavilion. Not far off, Ramon could see a crowd of a hundred or more magi, obviously all recent unassigned arrivals, clustered about a big white pavilion near the command tent. He recognised faces from his own windship voyage and hoped none would be assigned to the Thirteenth.
But let’s face it, whoever we get are going to be pricks.

Inside the mage-tent, fourteen beds had been set out, each half-screened from the others. All were empty but three, which had sleeping men sprawled on them. The nearest woke the moment they entered.

‘Wha—? Oh.’ The man rubbed his eyes. Evidently some kind of security ward had jolted him awake. He waved a hand at Duprey’s aide. ‘Thank you, Nyvus, I’ll look after them from here.’ The aide left with a smart salute. ‘Nyvus is the most military man we’ve got,’ the mage commented, looking Ramon up and down. ‘Let me guess: Sensini?’

‘Si.’

‘And Kippenegger?’

‘Yar.’

The man stood up. He was wrapped in the crumpled blue cloak that denoted a pilot-mage. Ramon blinked at the geometrically patterned skirt beneath it. ‘Baltus Prenton, Windmaster of the
Thirteenth, at your service.’ He was clearly from Brevin, a cold wet northern province bordering Schlessen that had been ‘civilised’ by the Rondians, which had resulted in Brevians being held in contempt by both peoples.

‘You dress like a woman,’ Kippenegger observed grumpily. Ramon suppressed a smile. It appeared that thoughts made their way from the Schlessen’s brain to his tongue fairly unchecked, which promised to be amusing. Ramon wondered if he was trying to pick a fight with Prenton for some obscure reason, or whether there was some requirement among the Schlessens for chest-beating when dealing with other northerners.

The Brevian just smiled. ‘Why so I do. “Brevin, where men wear skirts and women wear trousers”, so the old jest goes. We call it a “kilt”, old boy.’

‘The men of Brevin are just hairier women,’ Kippenegger told Ramon with heavy contempt.

‘Can we dispense with the whole “my tribe’s better than your tribe” thing?’ Baltus Prenton replied mildly. ‘It’s rather tiresome and it serves no purpose, don’t you think?’

Ramon said quickly, ‘Fine by me. No one has anything good to say about my people anyway.’

‘That is because you are rodents,’ Kippenegger informed him. Then he frowned. ‘Ach, I suppose you are right. We’re going to have a bunch of Rondian
shizen
assigned to us so best we “vassals” are friends, yar?’ He extended his left hand. ‘Call me Kip.’

Ramon and Prenton shook hands right-handed with each other, then left-handed with Kip, and the Brevian gestured towards the two other men, still sleeping obliviously. ‘Coulder and Fenn: my countrymen, both battle-magi – Duprey’s not assigned the upper maniples yet; he’s waiting to see who he gets from the allotment.’ He nudged a bottle on the small table. ‘There is Brician red, if you want it.’

‘No beer?’ Kip grumped.

‘I was lucky to get the wine,’ Prenton told them. ‘The stores have practically everything except what you want, the traders are all
thieves and everything’s being shipped east, so no one knows where anything is anyway.’

‘Is that normal?’ Ramon asked. He smiled internally: when officers had no idea what was going on, there were profits to be made.

Prenton harrumphed good-naturedly. ‘Normal? What is normal? Listen, this is the second Crusade I’ve been on. Did you hear about last time? Damned nightmare, I tell you. The Thirteenth was assigned to a region in west Dhassa where nothing was supposed to happen. The men went crazy stuck in the desert with nothing to do while the villagers crept around at night slitting throats and poisoning the wells. Finally the legate snapped and loosed us on the town – total rampage, but against orders, you understand. We got decimated for mutiny – you know what that means?’