The Right Hand of God (50 page)

'Though there are some kings who will open their cities to him,' Mahnum offered. Indrett nodded to him in acknowledgment.

'True. But he does not want a long war, of that I am certain. He will try something as soon as the weather clears, something of trickery or magic, or perhaps both.'

Most of those in the tent nodded, and the conversation began to revolve around their movements. Should they

abandon the Nagorj at a time of their own choosing, or should they hold on until they were driven from it like a dog from a tabletop? What would happen once they descended into habitable lands? How many innocents would suffer as the war moved west? Was there any way they could use magic themselves to strike at the Destroyer?

Leith, who was finding the discussion uncannily reflective of the thinking that kept him awake through the bitter nights, said nothing but listened intently. These people had so little on which to base their decisions, and knew that wrong choices would result in thousands of deaths, but they sought a decision anyway, prepared to accept the consequences. How can they sleep at night? Don't they hear the fading cries in the snow?

The girl lay cold and unmoving on the pallet while steel-shod boots paced back and forth across the beautifully patterned rug. Life flickered in the ruined figure, a faint ember that teetered on the edge of going out. The man wearing the boots had for two thousand years practised the art of keeping broken bodies alive that otherwise could not hold on to life: only by the most extreme exercise of his art had the girl not died. She must have suffered indescribably from the measures he was forced to use. I will not give her up, he told himself. I must have that flicker alive to study. I must learn how she came by the Fire.

He could see right into the girl's deepest places. Her dreams were filled with colour, but not the fresh, clean colour of spring. Rather, she endured the pale ghosts of winter, the spiral towards darkness she had always hated, the cruel greys and drab browns that beckoned her onwards through the pain to sleep and oblivion. Yet at the heart of her dreams burned a small flame. From time to time it talked to her,

telling her not to go to sleep but to stay awake, that she still had something precious to share.

At those times the flame burned with a blue tinge, and the girl loved the voice, but knew it lied to her even as it seared her with a pain so far beyond pain that it made mere agony seem like surcease. Sometimes it whispered to her in sounds too fundamental for words, sounds that reminded her of the cooing a mother made to her child. As the voice whispered the flame burned yellow: the girl feared the voice but knew it sustained her, enabling her somehow to bear the pain that ought to have driven her down the spiral and into the darkness.

The day came when the girl could breathe freely without choking on her own blood, and the man with the boots finally relaxed. He emerged from his tent for the first time in a month, a haggard figure with the bearing of an old man, and finally gave orders to his perplexed commanders who had thought him insane if not dead. The battle for the girl's life was over; now the battle for Faltha could recommence.

The Falthan scouts should have delivered warning of the Bhrudwan offensive, but to a man they were slain by expert trackers who had followed them virtually from the outskirts of the Falthan encampment. Thus the first the assembled captains knew of the attack was the sound of distant screaming intruding on their meeting.

Instantly Indrett leaped to her feet, abandoning the chart they had been poring over. 'Out!' she cried. 'Out! Each to his command! We will not survive long at such a disadvantage as we must now be facing. Take your charges down the escarpment as soon as you can disengage.

We will reassemble on the river flats near Adolina!'

In that first hour the camp was nearly overrun. Bhrudwan

warriors made it as far as the striped tent, which had been abandoned only minutes earlier: they hacked at the incomprehensible charts until their officers told them to desist, but little remained to betray Falthan thinking. Some of the Falthan wagons were captured, but the food remaining in them had long gone rotten.

The fighting was quite unlike that which had taken place a month earlier. So completely had the Bhrudwans taken the Falthans by surprise that small knots of attackers and defenders fought all over the field: the Falthans had not been able to form a defensive line capable of holding the Bhrudwans back. As much as they wanted to remain and fight, as unhappy as they were to finally give up the Nagorj which so many of their fellows had given their lives to defend, the Falthan commanders realised that their only hope was to retreat and regroup. How had the woman seen it so early, so clearly? Those Firanese were witchy, none more than the family of the Arrow-bearer. Perhaps she too had powers beyond those of ordinary mortals.

Perhaps the Jugom Ark told her what to do. It was against everything they believed to have a woman leading the army, but if she could somehow deliver them, her sex could be forgiven her.

So long had the Deruvians and the Children of the Mist fought side by side, there was now little thought of them as separate forces. Their leaders were seldom seen apart, and this morning they fought back to back, together the match of anyone on the field. Te Tuahangata again wore no cloak, even in this heartless cold, and his torso rippled as he swung and ducked, avoiding a spear thrust with ease, then stepping forward and clubbing his foolish adversary. Prince Wiusago muttered curses under his breath: the men coming against them were Red-bibs, part of the well-trained unit that had

fought them on that very first day an impossibly long time ago. The man he fought relied on brute strength rather than finesse, but had technique enough to avoid Wiusago's best sallies: the match would not remain a stalemate for long. The curses grew louder. He would soon have to ask Tua's help yet again.

A groan told him the fate of the fight behind him. A moment later the incautious Bhrudwan opposite him jerked up his head as a giant green club whistled through the air towards him, a movement that exposed his breast to Wiusago's sword thrust.

'Once again, friend,' the prince said wryly, flicking his hair out of his eyes., 'Much more of this and I'll not be able to repay the debt.'

'I own you now, skinny man,' Tua replied easily. 'You coast-landers should not be allowed out of doors without an escort.'

'We must abandon this place, and quickly. Look: more of the Bhrudwans come to the battle.

We are not enough to keep them at bay.'

'We are twice as many as they! How can we not resist them? We should stay and fight!' The words were belligerent, but spoken for the sake of form.

'Very well. I'll come back tomorrow and rescue you, as I have had to do so many times already. One more time will make no odds.' He laughed, removing any sting his words might have had.

'So we run like cowards and bring the Bhrudwans nearer to our lands and our homes. That is the good sense of the First Men.' His voice flat, Tuahangata signalled his men to begin the retreat.

'It does not matter how many times we retreat, old friend, as long as at the end we advance,'

Wiusago commented; then

he, too, gave his soldiers the signal to abandon the field. 'And as long as we are alive to see the Destroyer brought down.'

By nightfall the bulk of the Falthan army had reassembled in northern Piskasia, though men and wagons still streamed down the winding path from the plateau high above. A count was ordered, sending officials scurrying around the encampment; by dawn the next morning the best estimate was that there were less than fifty thousand Falthans camped on the river flats beside Adolina.

'So what do we do?' the generals and tacticians asked each other. 'Where can we hold them?'

They called in villagers from the town, who advised them that there were many paths through the foothills of the Wodranian Mountains to their west which would allow the Bhrudwans access past the Falthan army. The debate that followed was hurried, with so little time before the inevitable assault from their enemy, and conclusions were rushed and often went unheard.

A short distance away, soldiers assembled a hasty barricade at the bottom of the escarpment, knowing it was a futile gesture, but knowing also there was little else they could do. Swords were cleaned, damaged spear-shafts replaced with the last of the surplus from the wagons, and many warriors had to fossick down by the river, picking over driftwood to find a shaft long and straight enough that might do to protect their lives for another day.

'We're in a bad way,' Indrett told her commanders. 'This place is indefensible, and the valley behind us is broad. 1 know of no place between here and Redana'a that might serve for us to make our stand.'

'There is one place.' A thin, patient voice cut through the murmuring that followed the woman's pronouncement.

'Unless they are prepared to wait until summer's heat, anyone who wishes to pass through to the rich plains of Straux and Deuverre, and ultimately to Instruere, must pass through Vulture's Craw. I have seen it! There the final conflict will be decided: there the Jugom Ark will be matched against the wiles of the Destroyer!'

Leith stood up, knocking his chair over. Sir Amasian! He'd assumed the man had remained behind in Fealty. He had so much to ask him!

'You have seen it? What nonsense is this?' Many of the commanders had little patience left, worn down by a month of uncertainty and fear, and were conscious that precious moments sped past without any decision.

'Not nonsense,' came a clipped voice, and Sir Chalcis stepped forward. 'We are the Knights of Fealty, the heirs of Conal Greatheart, he who drove the Destroyer from Faltha a thousand years ago. To us are regularly vouchsafed visions of what is to come. Who better to carry the promises of the Most High?'

More argument followed this pronouncement. Phemanderac quieted them with outspread arms. 'Do not dismiss such things lightly. I am Phemanderac of Dhauria. I make my home in the lost city of Dona Mihst. Enough of you know me to attest to my reliability. I have been a member of the Company and a companion of the Arrow-bearer since before we arrived at Instruere, and I was one of those who found the Jugom Ark. Legend and fact have become inextricably mixed in these days. Do you who doubt Sir Amasian's visions - which I beheld on the ceiling of Fealty's Great Hall - also wish to doubt the miracle of the Jugom Ark burning under your very noses? Sir Amasian foresaw the attack by the Lords of Fear on the Arrow-bearer: I was there, I saw the vision come true, though I did not remember it until afterwards. I think perhaps we should listen to what Amasian has to say.'

Indrett went over to the old man, and raised him from his seat. 'What do you have to tell us, Sir Amasian? What have you seen?'

'1 have seen far too much to speak of it at such a time as this,' he said simply. 'Nevertheless, I have been shown visions regarding the Jugom Ark. Twelve souls were called by the Most High to recover the mighty Arrow from its resting place and restore it to true Falthans. I saw the possible paths of these twelve faithful ones, the roads that would bring them to the place of final confrontation, and I drew these paths on the ceiling of Conal's Great Hall. One by one these souls abandoned their quest, most not making it past the borders of their own lands, and their paths have faded in my mind. But one path is still clear. It is the path of Leith Mahnumsen, who with his companions solved the riddle, found the Jugom Ark and now lead us in defence of our lands and people. I stood in the darkness and watched him study the prophecy, so I know that he knows what I say is true. Is that not so, Arrow-bearer?'

All eyes swung across the open space to where Leith sat, the Jugom Ark warm in his hand. 'It is true,' he responded, standing as he spoke. 'But, Sir Amasian, if you knew that the final confrontation, as you put it, will take place at Vulture's Craw, why did you not say so? Why did you let us pass by on our way to confront the Destroyer at the Gap? How many lives might have been saved if we had remained in the correct place?'

As he waited for a reply, Leith harboured a shameful secret hope: perhaps if it is his fault, this weight will lift from my shoulders . . .

'Truly, I did not know until we passed through. I have never been there before, you see.' He did sound apologetic. 'And should I have taken you aside at that moment, assuming that I could have found you in the snow, and suggested that we somehow miss out the scenes to come? Is there a shorter path to victory than the one shown to me by the Most High?'

Leith nodded sadly. He had suspected that it would not have been as easy as that. 'Are you therefore saying that we should make for Vulture's Craw now?'

'It makes good sense from a tactical point of view,' Indrett answered. 'We can choose our place of defence, and the valley there is narrower even than the Gap. If we can hold our lines with fewer soldiers, then fewer will die, and our warriors will have time to rest and recover from their wounds.'

'What do we need to do in order to—' began the captain of Deuverre's forces, but he was interrupted by a series of horn-blasts sounding from several different directions.

'Come, now!' Leith cried, filled with anger and a desperate weariness. 'Let us fight with whatever strength remains, so we can win ourselves time to retreat!' And with the decision made, the commanders of the Falthan army ran for their horses.

Later that day Leith found himself riding southwards, his horse stumbling with tiredness, the Jugom Ark barely flickering. It had been a day filled with horrible surprises. The Bhrudwans had changed their tactics, so that instead of meeting the Falthans on a broad front, they sent their most potent warriors against one small section of the Falthan lines, driving through at an angle, then turning further to their right and driving through the ranks of unengaged soldiers and out to the west. A full tenth of Leith's army was cut off before anyone realised what was happening, and though his forces made a number of attempts to rescue their comrades, the captured salient had eventually been engulfed by the Bhrudwans.