Once A Hero (32 page)

As the Reithrese armies pressed us north and east, their Haladin allies cut us off from a southern retreat to the freestate. We pushed back into the Hiris mountains, and, wary of being trapped the way Tashayul had been in the Roclaws, the Reithrese advanced carefully. Using small scouting parties and relying largely on wizards, they decided they had us precisely where they wanted us until spring. Employing their formidable elemental magicks, they brought winter early to the Hiris range, filling all the passes, leaving the Red Tiger and his rebellion trapped in a high mountain-valley forest.

Their magicks were potent indeed. Winds howled demomcally and blew away any lingering summer warmth. Snow fell heavily during the days, then the night brought such bitter cold that the snow froze over into a crust. The day following such a freeze would bring rime-tinged winds that drove corn-kernel ice crystals across open meadows in the winter equivalent of desert sandstorms. Because of the time of the year, bringing winter to the mountains early was not terribly difficult, so the Reithrese wizards put a great deal of effort into bringing us the worst winter ever seen right there in the mountains.

The reason they were so willing to brutalize us with the weather was because they truly believed they had the entire Human rebellion trapped in the mountains. What they really had was a volunteer force of just over two thousand individuals, including two score of our sorcerers, who agreed to make it look to the Reithrese as if a much larger force were in that valley.

The soldiers in the force divided their time between setting up ambushes for Reithrese scouts and maintaining the appearances of a camp suitable for housing an army fifteen times the size of the mountain force. They did that by pitching tents and maintaining fires—both difficult tasks in the unnatural winter.

The sorcerers worked more subtly to annoy the Reithrese. Since Reithrese magickers are powerful, they tend to hold their Human counterparts in contempt. Our sorcerers used that arrogance against them by weaving concealment spells that functioned on multiple levels. The result was that any Reithrese sorcerer trying to use his powers for reconnaissance ended up with an incredible amount of spurious data and reports. Thus the Reithrese could not sort the truth from fictions concerning our army.

This heroic effort bought us the time we needed for the Red Tiger's plan to work.

The snow in the passes, which was so easy for the Reithrese to dump on us because of the seasonal proximity to winter, would, for the same reason, be impossible to melt away until spring approached. That meant that in trapping us, the only way the Reithrese could get to Jarudin would be to move back through the Elven holdings, or down and around through Kaudia and up through Centisia. In blocking the mountains, the Reithrese had cut themselves off from the most direct route back to Jarudin. However they ended up going back to the capital, it would take too long for them to counter our grand plan.

The army itself had pushed on hard through the Hiris mountains and had reached the Ispari side before the snows began to fall at all heavily. Aarundel and I remained in the mountains to organize the camp while the Red Tiger regrouped and rested the army in a valley two hundred miles south of Jarudin. There they brought in an early harvest, built siege machines, then slowly moved north toward Jarudin—the capital.

Once we were satisfied about the situation in the mountains, Aarundel and I used the Sylvan circii translatio to rejoin our forces. The trip that time proved even more tiring for me than before, but we had two days to recover before the army caught up with us. More remarkable was the Dreel's ability to accompany us on the trip despite his refusal to wear the silver chains that Aarundel and I needed to travel.

"Magick I am," he hissed, tapping his chest, "things I need not."

As much as I wouldn't have minded leaving him behind in the mountains, I was glad he came through. In fact, he seemed less tired than either one of us. While he did not steal a sheep during the journey, he did hunt down a stag when we arrived, and having to sup on venison did my recovery no harm.

Within a fortnight, at the culmination of two long, bloody years of fighting, the Human host reached Jarudin. An inelegant sprawl of local redstone, imported marble, and, for one tower, Reithrese basalt, the imperial city had been designed by Tashayul as a monument to the vitality he had once known. With his death the grand drive to finish the city had faltered, so Reithrese architecture gave way to Human as the walls surrounding the city were completed.

Tashayul's death hurt more than the desire to complete his capital. Without Tashayul's leadership, the Reithrese Nation broke into antagonistic political factions. While there was still a strong, imperially-minded contingent—led by Takrakor—the opposition groups appeared to wield enough power to prevent further expansion. The Red Tiger felt, and I agreed, that if we could take Jarudin away from the Reithrese, the imperialists would be terribly embarrassed and might be consumed by their isolationist foes in Reith.

Toward that end the Red Tiger's army stood arrayed around the imperial city. Sixteen thousand Centisian warriors made up the core of the army, with three thousand in light cavalry, two thousand archers, and the rest distributed among pikemen, swordsmen, axmen, and irregulars. Despite their name, the latter troops were the best, being huntsmen and errant warriors classed as bandits or heretics by the Reithrese Empire. Sture's Exile Legion added a thousand light cavalry and some well-drilled infantry. The rest of our infantry were farmers, who, despite two summers campaigning, had been more at home harvesting crops for the march north than waiting to lay waste to Jarudin.

The light cavalry formed the wings of our host, with the infantry and archers in the center. In front of them was the Steel Pack and the newly formed Steel Hunt. With my blessings and support, Drogo had split from the Pack and formed up his own heavy-cavalry company. Being from Centisia himself, he picked more of his countrymen to fill the ranks, and they all pledged their personal fealty to the Red Tiger. While they were not quite as fierce as the Pack, I took pride and pleasure at having the Hunt behind us.

The fact that we had arrayed ourselves in a classic battle formation must have astounded the Reithrese in the city. They had massive walls between us and them, and enough supplies in the city that they knew they could wait us out. Even if our catapults and ballistae, onagers, and trebuchets were able to cast stones or shoot missiles over the high walls, the damage done would be minimal, and magick could be employed to destroy the most offensive machines. Their troops, who seemed to enjoy standing on the walls and shouting taunts at us, were clearly not of a mind to sally forth and give us some sport.

Ours was, to their eyes, a halfhearted attempt at sieging an impregnable city. They could easily wait us out and send for troops to lift the siege if we became a nuisance. They grew contemptuous enough of us to let Human traders come out to sell us various wares and intelligence about the city itself. The only chance we had of taking the city would involve a miracle, and both sides knew it.

The Red Tiger sent a runner to bring Aarundel and me his tent. The miracle was at hand.

A giant of a man, bigger than either Aarundel or myself, Beltran greeted us warmly and poured each of us a goblet of wine. "Tonight we dine at the emperor's table."

"I can hardly wait," I lied as I acknowledged Sture's half nod in my direction. I gathered, from the redness on the tips of his ears, he had been again at Beltran about a special mission for his Lightning Elite cavalry or using his coal-mining sappers to bring Jarudin's walls down. "How nice to see you again, my Lord."

"The pleasure is all mine, Neal." Sture, while not a small man, was shorter than any of the rest of us in the room and used a woolen cap to hide the fact that his black hair had thinned dramatically in the last three years. His brown eyes glittered with intelligence, but there were times I wondered if he was actually able to see beyond the tip of his long, slender nose. "I wish your Steel Pack the best of luck in the coming assault."

If I could have bottled the tone of his voice, I could have used a drop of it in Jarudin's wells to poison the entire population. Ignoring him, I smiled at the Red Tiger. "Plans have been finalized, then?"

"I believe everyone understands his part in this." Beltran gulped his wine and swiped the excess from his bushy red beard with the back of his left hand. "Will you be ready to ride in an hour?"

I nodded. "The Pack will. What is our target?"

The Red Tiger moved to the table sitting in the middle of his tent and used his goblet to pin down one corner of the map he unrolled. Sture held down the other side and studied the map as if he could change the writing on it by force of will alone. "The Steel Pack will go in at the Dragon's Tower. You will have the Veirtu riders coming after you." He shifted a finger along to point at a separate tower. "The Steel Hunt and I will hit the Griffin's Tower at the same time."

The plan made sense. The octagonal city, as I could see from the map, had been laid out like a wheel with the Imperial Tower at the hub. Each of eight main roads led out from it to the eight main towers on the walls. Entering the city at the Dragon and Griffin towers, we would pass through the quarter of the city given over to Men. We hoped that our fellow Men would not be as hostile to our attack as their Reithrese masters, which might let us get deep into the city before we met serious resistance.

I looked up at him. "You expect the Veirtu to draw their sorcerers to us?"

"I agree with Neal's skepticism on this point." Sture's head came up and he nodded condescendingly toward me.

"My Lightning Elite is a mounted force that has sorcerers more fully integrated into it. We would be a lightning rod—no pun intended—for any sorcerously inclined defenders."

Aarundel grabbed the back of my belt, preventing me from stepping forward to throttle Sture. "I believe, Duke Sture, you mistake Neal's question. He was not doubting the Pack's ability to work with the Veirtu, merely wondering what the Red Tiger's intent was in attaching them to our unit."

The Red Tiger, having ignored Sture's comment and Aarundel's reply to it, nodded grimly. "I know that will make it difficult for you, Neal, but the Veirtu should be able to offer some protection. If the sorcerers cannot raise the walls again, the rest of our host can get through and the battle is won. Both of our forces have to push on through and head straight for the Imperial Tower. The more effective we are in drawing the Reithrese to the heart of Jarudin, the more likely our success."

Aarundel studied the map, then nodded. "Speed, then, is our armor and spear point."

"And the Lightning Elite is the swiftest cavalry we have, my Lord."

Beltran sighed. "I agree, my Lord, which is why I have designated it to consolidate our gains once the Pack and Hunt are through the gaps. If your men fail, we will be trapped with no hope of victory."

"I understand, my Lord." Sture studied the map a little longer, then looked up wearily as if certain of a coming disaster.

"Speed is vital, Imperator, as it has been throughout our war." The Red Tiger lifted up his cup, and the map rolled up into a tube, slapping against Sture's fingers.

"When next we meet, my friends, the Reithrese capital will be ours."

"Provided the towers come down," Sture muttered. Beltran confidently plucked a small piece of marble from the table, tossed it in the air, then caught it in a fist. "They will fall, Sture, they will fall, and when they do, the empire goes with them."

The tactical application of magick in combat is very difficult for reasons that are relatively simple to understand. As with sword fighting, for every strike there is a parry. In magick each spell has a counterspell. The efficiency of a sorcerer, or the skill of the swordsman, determines success, but with magick it takes a lot of energy to accomplish a result, so having it countered could be quite debilitating. A wizard capable of throwing a spell only once is akin to an archer with only one arrow. If he misses, he becomes useless.

The best use of magick in our assault would have been to cause huge upheavals of land at the base of the walls to bring them down. Aside from the fact that none of the wizards on our side, including the whole lot of the Veirtu, had sufficient power to do such a thing, that plan had problems because the Reithrese had already laid counter-wards against that kind of spell. In effect the walls were immune to magickal attack, which accounted in part for the incredible confidence of the defenders.

The Red Tiger had worked out a way around their wards. Magick considers part of a stone the rough equivalent to the whole stone itself. Mages call this the Law of Holomorphism. It says that a part is considered a model for the whole, and the larger the part, the stronger the link.

The little stone the Red Tiger had shown me in his tent had been brought out from the city by one of the traders and had come from either the Griffin or Dragon Tower. Had the Reithrese wards not rendered them proof against it, magick could have been used to crush the small stones, thereby crushing the larger ones. Because we had to use other methods, Beltran had dozens of such small stones married to far bigger stones with a little mortar. Those larger rocks were loaded into our trebuchets and made ready to shoot at the walls.

The spell created by the Red Tiger's wizards was cast upon the smaller piece of stone attached to each missile. To avoid a counterspell working against it as it approached the magically warded walls, the spell itself would function only until the stone had reached the apex of its arc. Until that point the magick would alter the flight of the missile to keep it flying on a course that would reunite it with the piece of the wall from which it had been taken. As it began to fall from the sky, natural forces would guide it into its target, so no magick could cancel the spell and spoil the rock's aim.

Though not as powerful as an earthquake, I was willing to gamble on it's effectiveness. The spell had been tested while the siege machines were being built and, so I was told, had worked very well. Fursey Nine-finger and Gathelus had watched the tests on behalf of the Pack and agreed to the plans the Red Tiger had laid out at the start of the campaign, so I saw no reason to hold reservations about the magick.