Surrender to the Will of the Night (8 page)

Three thousand men went into camp in the hills northeast of Brothe, the troops under strict orders to do no damage to vineyards, olive groves, truck farms, farmers, or farmers’ daughters. The Brothen peoples, of all classes, were neither to be offended nor aroused.

The guards at the city gates had orders to prevent Patriarchals from entering. However, they lacked all suicidal inclinations. When Pinkus Ghort raked them over the coals later they would be healthy enough to enjoy his fury.

Hecht went straight to the Castella dollas Pontellas. The Fortress of the Little Bridges was the commandery of the Brotherhood of War in Brothe. The fighting monks had close ties with the Captain-General. For the moment.

Asgrimmur accompanied Hecht. As the great monuments and palaces along the Teragi came into sight, the Instrumentality said, “There is a cruel something hidden beneath this city. An evil something that feeds on fear.”

Pella said, “Dad, I thought Principaté Delari said he’d get rid of that.”

“He did say, didn’t he?”

“And he said he did it.”

“Maybe he was wrong.”

“When can we see Mom?” Pella hardly pretended not to be manipulating those who had taken him in. Hecht did not mind.

“Soon. I have to see Colonel Smolens first. I have to get our new friend set up where people won’t worry about him.”

Trouble was likely if anyone connected this man with the northerners who butchered their ways through Brothe during the run-up to the Calziran Crusade. The Brotherhood of War, in particular, nurtured an abiding grudge.

“Presten and Bags can take you if you just can’t wait. But you’ll have to stay inside once you get there. They can’t stay around to look out for you. They have families they want to see, too.”

“Can I? I can’t wait to see Vali and Lila.”

“Go. But remember. You can’t leave the house. You
can’t
!”

“I got it, Dad. I got it.”

4. Stranglhorm, at Guretha, Shadowed by the Ice

Stranglhorm had been the seat of the Master of the Grail Order for two centuries. A sprawling fortress of small city size, it never faced a serious threat, though it had been besieged a dozen times. The fortifications expanded with the decades. Growth ended only after the Grail Knights pushed the frontiers of the faith so far out that countless subsidiary strongholds had to be built to protect roads and shrines, and to provide local sanctuaries. The pagans called their lost territories the Land of Castles.

Stranglhorm crouched on a moraine, brooding over a bend in the Turuel River, which emptied immediately into the Shallow Sea. Once the waterfront had seethed with activity. A city, Guretha, took life alongside the river, then spread across it, trailing stone bridges behind. But now Guretha was a city swiftly dying.

The Shallow Sea had grown shallower. The Grand Marshes had drained or had frozen. New land had been exposed by the recession of the waters. Navigation had become impossible, except in fits and starts when the tides were favorable. A new breed of ship had come into being. It was wide, had a shallow draught, and was stout enough to survive periodic groundings. When the waters were not frozen.

The northern gulfs of the Shallow Sea no longer thawed. Colonies of sea people no longer existed east of the Ormo Strait. In fact, the mer were almost extinct. Only a few colonies, much diminished, survived in the Andorayan Sea, around underwater wells of power still leaking feebly.

Most all Andoray lay beneath the ice. North Friesland, likewise. During winters the Ormo Strait threatened to become covered with great arching bridges of ice.

The tidal currents were too fierce for the strait itself to freeze. Their power would be tamed only after the level of the seas fell a lot farther.

Where there was any warmth at all hardy men held on, confident that God would turn the seasons. That the wells of power would wax strong again. As in legend they always had.

The Chaldareans of Duarnenia and principalities east of the Shallow Sea had withdrawn to Guretha and other coastal cities established by the Grail Order. Many continued on, desperately, following the Shirstula River south into countries where they would be unwelcome because of their desperation. Clever kings and princes used some to begin clearing lands abandoned since the plague-ridden end days of the Old Empire, when populations had fallen by more than half.

A strange, small army came to Guretha, out of the icy wastes. All thin folk with bones and skulls in their hair, carrying standards made of flayed manskin and totems built of human heads and bones. They seemed half dead themselves. There were no elderly among them. They brought their women and children right up to the edge of the fight. Their eyes were empty and hollow. They reminded their enemies of the
draugs
of yore, the dead who rose against the living. They did not talk. They attacked. They took food where they found it.

Guretha resisted. Of course. The Grail Knights fought. They committed great slaughters. But wherever resistance solidified something irresistible soon appeared. It wore the shape of a man but had seven fingers on its left hand, six on its right. It was a foul, pale green with hints of brown patches. Its skin appeared polished. It had hard cat’s eyes and smelled of old death newly freed from the ice. It carried a cursed two-handed sword so ancient it was made of bronze. Though soft metal, that blade did not yield to the finest modern steel. It broke through the stoutest shields and breastplates.

The Grail Knights were veterans of long wars. They did not waste themselves on forlorn hopes. Two encounters convinced them they could not overcome Krepnight, the Elect, hand-to-hand.

They stopped fighting. Gurethens who were quick retreated into Stranglhorm. Laggards fled across the bridges to the south bank of the Turuel. The city militias held the bridges. The invaders tried to flank them by crossing over in captured boats.

Krepnight, the Elect, stalked the Grail Knights to their fortress. Archers and crossbowmen kept the accompanying savages at a distance. They were a mob, not an army. What drove them? They were starving, yet seldom allowed themselves to be distracted by food or loot.

The Grail Knights withdrew, over the great drawbridge spanning the dry moat in front of the fortress gate. Engines atop the wall laid missile fires on the attackers. Krepnight, the Elect, suffered several hits. The savages yanked the offending shafts out of him. He forged ahead, undeterred.

Fierce, panicky shouting broke out inside the gate. The drawbridge had risen but a foot when its chains jammed. Then the outer portcullis fell five feet and refused to descend any farther.

Shrieked, frightened orders rattled around inside Stranglhorm. Get the inner portcullis down! But the backup refused to budge.

Decades had passed since the machinery had been asked to do anything but sit and rust.

The attackers cried praises to the Windwalker. They wanted to swarm across that drawbridge. But they would not move ahead of Krepnight, the Elect.

Krepnight, the Elect, would open the way.

The weird thing stepped up onto the drawbridge and crossed, sharp teeth betrayed in triumph. A Grail Knight in full battle gear, astride a huge charger, appeared behind the partially descended portcullis. He bellowed an order that it be raised so he could couch his lance and dispose of the monster. But the portcullis would not rise, either. The Grail Knight turned away, swearing by the body parts of the Founders that he would slay the monster once it came into the forecourt.

Krepnight, the Elect, advanced like confident doom. Today would see the end of Stranglhorm, Guretha, and these faint champions of a spineless southron god.

Krepnight, the Elect, ducked the portcullis and strode forward, charmed sword tasting the darkness of the passage.

Came a roar like all the thunders of a vast storm unleashed at once. Pale, eye-watering smoke billowed out of the gateway. Savages fell by the score, slashed into chopped meat.

The Grail Knights and their hardy foot swept beneath portcullises miraculously healed, then across a drawbridge suddenly fallen into place. The butchery began. Man and boy, mother and child, no mercy was shown. The heathen had shown none themselves. Few escaped. Only a boy named Boogha lived to carry news of an inexplicable defeat. And he died cruelly for having disappointed the Windwalker.

5. Lucidia, Tel Moussa: Sorrowful Truth

Nassim Alizarin faced the visitor across a low table. The meal was the best he could provide. That it was a sad failure would tell this boy too much. Would give him something to carry away with him.

The Mountain remained carefully composed. His age and former status left him unschooled for accepting a boy of sixteen as his superior. Birth meant little among Sha-lug. The slave warriors began as equals and established status by deeds. But this was Azim al-Adil ed-Din, grandnephew of Indala al-Sul Halaladin, upon whose sufferance the Mountain depended. The great Indala’s not so secret ambition was the unification of all al-Prama into a single kaifate that could concentrate fully on the liberation of the Holy Lands.

Amenities complete, it was time to approach the point. But the boy demonstrated a decorum beyond his years. “The Arnhanders of Gherig. How do they behave?”

“The current crop are pirates, not holy warriors. They extort bribes from every caravan coming through from Dreanger or the coast. And call it taxation.”

The boy laughed. “We do the same. And charge every Chaldarean a head tax simply for being Chaldarean.”

Nassim missed the point. That was a “So what?” That was as God Willed it. “Mark me. One day Rogert du Tancret will overstep. He has no respect for God or al-Prama.” In this Nassim said nothing that even the Crusader lords did not whisper among themselves.

Rogert du Tancret was a powerful warrior but not a man given to considering the consequences of his actions. He was lord of a crucial border bastion, in continuous contact with the enemies of his religion. Having not one diplomatic bone in his body, he was not the man to occupy so delicate a post. The Crusader lords all agreed.

But they would do nothing to move Rogert out of the crucible. It mattered not if he was a dangerous fool or a drooling idiot. His patrimony could not be denied. Further, Rogert had blood connections with most of the grand families of the Crusader states and many in Arnhand. Not to mention, he stood high in the affection of the Brotherhood of War, for title to Gherig and its dependencies would pass to the fighting priesthood on Rogert’s death.

By right, of course, the way those people saw things. The Brotherhood had chosen the site for Gherig, had designed the fortress, and had provided the captive artisans to build it.

Nassim shook off his reflections. Rogert would face his hour in time. It was Written. He needed to attend this pup from the warlord’s clan.

The boy said, “It doesn’t look like there’ll be a significant threat from the Unbeliever anytime soon. My granduncle’s agents in Rhûn and the west say the Patriarchy is too fluid and confused to get up to any mischief here. And the Grail Empire is ruled by a woman.”

“A good time, then, to push the interloper out of the Holy Lands.”

“True. On its bald face. But God, in His Infinite Mercy, may offer us a different test of faith.”

“The Hu’n-tai At.” The Mountain had heard that the horse peoples were not satisfied with the destruction they had wrought in the Ghargarlicean Empire. Far outposts of the kaifate had suffered their attention of late. Several scouting forces had roamed through the northeastern dependencies. The mountains and deserts up that way had served to protect better than had the local armies. But now the Hu’n-tai At could strike directly west out of conquered Ghargarlicea.

“Tsistimed the Golden. He’ll come. And he’s never been stopped once he decides to add a city to his empire.”

The Hu’n-tai At did not “add cities” to their empire. They looted them, then destroyed them, leaving only ash, ruins, and starvation.

The boy added, “The nomads are suffering from the changing climate. Snow and ice claim more pastureland every year.”

Old news. “Which we’ve heard all my life. A Hu’n-tai At scouting force was caught inside the Holy Lands a few years ago. Near Esther’s Wood.” And crusaders, Lucidians, and Dreangereans alike had combined to exterminate them.

The boy inclined his head. “Someday it will be a reconnaissance in force. Tsistimed is considering sending one of his grandsons with ten thousand veterans.”

Nassim was impressed with the quality of the warlord’s intelligence. He said as much.

“There are Faithful among the caravaneers who travel the east road. They talk to Faithful among the Hu’n-tai At. And Tsistimed does little to conceal his ambitions. It matters not if his enemies know his plans. They’ll be crushed anyway.”

The Mountain knew that kind of arrogance well. His erstwhile friend Gordimer the Lion had it in plenty.

It would be interesting to see the Lion and the Golden butt heads. Though neither was in his prime, now.

The great terror of the east had become an armchair warrior, they said.

He was ancient.

No one living remembered a time when Tsistimed the Golden and the Hu’n-tai At were not a storm beyond the northeastern horizon. No one living recalled a time when captains and kings were not more interested in local squabbles than in preparing for the onslaught to come.

“How does this concern us?” Nassim asked.

“Tel Moussa overlooks the road armies use to march to and fro between Dreanger and the lands between the rivers. The road armies follow north and south crosses that road southwest of Gherig, at the edge of the Plain of Judgment, by the Well of Remembrance.”

Nassim nodded. As a youngster he had known veterans of the Battle of the Four Armies, that the Arnhanders called the Battle of the Well of Remembrance. Hard feelings from that still poisoned relations between Lucidia and Dreanger. “An important site. The crusaders were defending it when they stumbled into the trap set by your illustrious relative.”

“Any Hu’n-tai At army will follow the traditional route.”