The Shadow Sorceress (16 page)

In the midafternoon, Stepan gestured at the map spread on the study table. “Mynntar has scouted the back roads that circle the swamp where the road used to be. He is camped here on this hilltop. The one to the south is higher, but he would have to backtrack to reach the roads. As soon as the ground dries enough to support his horse, he will take this road past these orchards and either come back to the main road or continue on
this lane and strike here. With the warm wind from the south west, that could be soon. Already, the fields here are drying.”

Secca studied the map. “If we repair the road, and then follow this…we would have the high ground.”

“If…” Stepan said. “There is brush on the hillside. It would prevent a charge…” He cocked his head. “But low brush is no barrier to sorcery, is it?”

“No.” Secca hoped not.

“Then they would have to circle…if the sorcery did not complete the task.” Stepan looked to Secca.

Wilten nodded almost imperceptibly.

“How long before he can move?” asked Secca.

“The ground is drying, but it won't be firm enough for two or three days,” offered the graying arms commander.

“What about the main road?”

“Two days.”

“Then we should repair the swamp bridge on the morning after next, and take the hill overlooking his force and strike from behind.” Secca studied the map once more. “Is not this ridge harder ground?”

“So hard that it will not grow trees. Some say it was once a hold, generations into the past.”

“The wind has been blowing out of the southwest, instead of from the east. So we should get drier and warmer air, and on that ridge the wind will be at our backs, or mostly so.”

“So it will carry your spells?” asked Wilten.

Secca nodded.

“What if there is more rain?” questioned the overcaptain.

“Then we wait. He won't be able to move either,” Secca pointed out. She just hoped she was right. Then, she was hoping far more than was wise.

Under a clear sky, a strong and warm breeze blew from the south. The air was almost springlike as Secca and Richina rode eastward, near the head of the column of lancer companies from Loiseau and Synek. The day smelled clean, fresh, and Secca could not help but compare the brightness of the sky and the sunlight to what she worried lay before them.

“How do you feel?” she asked Richina.

“Good, but uneasy.”

“You are just going to repair a road. That's all. That's one of the things you've been trained for. You will do well. I wouldn't ask you if I did not think you would.” Secca kept her voice light and cheerful. “You're ready for this.”

“Yes, lady.” Richina did not quite meet Secca's eyes.

Stepan eased his mount up beside Secca's, riding on the shoulder of the road, far narrower than any major roads remaining in Defalk. “The scouts say that Mynntar has not broken camp, but that the lancers are sharpening blades.” He smiled. “I know your glass showed that earlier, but I am an old armsman, and I prefer to confirm what I cannot see myself.”

“He had planned to move tomorrow, you think?”

“I would guess so, although, if he finds we are riding, that all could change. And most suddenly.”

“Best we repair the road and move more quickly,” Secca said.

“As you can, sorceresses,” Stepan replied, “there is no hurry until the road is replaced. Then, speed becomes most necessary.”

As if on cue, the sandy-haired assistant sorceress began a soft vocalise.

In between her own vocalises, Secca went over spells in her
thoughts as they continued to ride through a morning that seemed too bright and too fresh for the battle that lay ahead. First, they needed to repair the road, then deal with Mynntar. She pushed back the thought that the battle with Mynntar might well be only the first of many, if indeed the Sturinnese had decided to attack and conquer Liedwahr. She could only fight one battle at a time.

In less than a glass, Secca and the column had reined up and looked eastward from the hilltop. Fifty yards downhill, the old track, now corraded with miniature gullies from the rain, ended in churned mud, and ten yards below that the brown water of the small lake began.

To the east, the hilltop where the road resumed was empty, showing not even a scout.

“They have no scouts near here,” Wilten said.

“That may be,” offered Stepan, “but if the sorcery works, then there will be no swamp to stop them, and we must be ready to ride quickly.”

“Our lancers are ready,” Wilten affirmed.

“As are those of Synek.” Stepan glanced to Secca. “Once your assistant is done…”

“The road can be used at once, but the players will have to pack their instruments and remount,” Secca pointed out.

Richina dismounted near the top of the road crest. She handed the chestnut's reins to Albar, the young lancer Wilten had detailed to care for her mount and Secca's while they were engaged in sorcery. Richina walked downhill several yards, studying the ground and the swampy lake below before turning and walking back to her mount, where she extracted a sketch from the top of her saddlebag.

While Richina studied the sketch, comparing it to the land, to the south of her, the players dismounted, and shortly the discordant sound of tuning began.

Secca kept studying the eastern side of the ravaged road cut, but could see no scouts. The wind remained steady from the southwest. Finally, she dismounted, also handing the reins of her mount to Albar, before walking forward, so that she stood perhaps three yards uphill from Richina.

As the tuning died away, Palian looked directly at the younger sorceress. “We stand ready, sorceress.”

Squaring her shoulders, Richina offered a faint smile, then cleared her throat. “You may begin, chief player.”

“On my mark…. Mark!”

Standing behind and to the south of her apprentice, Secca forced herself to take a slow deep breath as she watched Richina and listened to the younger woman's spellsong.

While the last words of the spellsong faded, an intense bluish glow blossomed over the swampy lowland that had once held road and bridge, a glow so bright that Stepan and Wilten looked away, as did most of the players.

The glow faded, revealing a causeway, one with a single archway for the stream, and faced with stone riprap and paved with the even stones of Defalk. The newly created causeway barely dipped between the two hills, while a deeper gorge had appeared between the hills and the arch of the bridgelike causeway.

Secca blinked. The hilltops on each side were lower, and the roadway was definitely stone-paved. She turned to Richina.

A broad smile crossed the sandy-haired young woman's face. “I…did it.” Then, her face went blank and she began to crumple.

Secca rushed forward and grabbed Richina, managing to keep her from pitching forward despite the younger woman's considerably greater height and weight.

Richina was breathing…but she was pale.

Stepan and Wilten had their mounts beside Secca almost immediately.

Secca glanced at Wilten. “She did more than was necessary. She will be all right, if she has rest. I'll need someone to take care of her. She'll need water and biscuits as soon as she wakes…”

Wilten opened his mouth as if to complain.

“She saved more men than will be needed to care for her!” Secca snapped.

“My personal guards will serve her, lady,” offered Stepan.

“Thank you.”

“My lady…I meant no ill,” Wilten pleaded.

“I'm sorry, Wilten,” Secca apologized. “I was worried about her. She did more than I wanted because she wanted to make sure it was right.” Secca hoped she hadn't upset the overcaptain too much.

Even before Secca could turn, two armsmen in Ebran green had appeared, apparently in response to a gesture Stepan had made and Secca had not even seen.

“We needs must ride now, Lady Secca,” Stepan said.

As the two guards carried Richina to the side of the road and laid her on a cloak of some sort, Secca remounted, glancing back to see another pair of Stepan's guards riding up behind the exhausted apprentice.

“They will keep her safe,” Stepan said to Secca.

“Thank you.” Secca turned to Wilten. “Are your lancers ready?”

“Most ready, lady.”

“We are almost ready to ride,” called Palian. “A moment only.” Her head turned. “Move, Bretnay!”

As the errant violino player scrambled into the saddle, Palian nodded in the direction of both Stepan and Secca.

“Where are the special archers?” asked Secca.

“Here, lady.” The lead archer, Elfens, raised a gray-gloved hand from his mount on the shoulder of the road behind the mounts of the players. “We are ready to let fly any and all shafts that you require.” The twinkling in his light brown eyes belied the somber tone of his words.

“We may require many shafts, Elfens. Stay close to the players.”

“Yes, lady.”

Even before Secca, Wilten, and Stepan reached the causeway, four scouts had quick-trotted out before the van and were riding swiftly eastward. One turned north and began to cross a brown-
grassed meadow, while the others followed the road, drawing away from the main force.

The clop of hoofs on the stones of the causeway seemed almost reassuring.

“A solid road,” Stepan said. “Would that we had more.”

“You can see what it takes out of a sorceress,” Secca pointed out, glancing to Wilten. “Had you seen such before, Wilten?”

“No, Lady Secca.”

“Did she…Was that because she is not experienced?” asked Stepan.

“She lacks experience. That is true, but we all have to start somewhere.”

Stepan nodded. So did Wilten.

The standard bearers and then Wilten, Secca, and Stepan came to the end of the new causeway and continued eastward.

“Another half-dek,” Stepan called. “We take the lane past the apple orchards to the north, and along the ridge line.”

The lane was but wide enough for three riders abreast, and that with the shoulders of the outside riders brushing the bare twig-ends of the tree limbs.

Stepan glanced ahead. Wilten glanced back. Secca began a vocalise.

Outside of the breathing of mounts moving across damp ground, and low murmurs, the air was silent, and even the wind seemed fainter.

At the sound of hoofs on the damp ground, the two officers stiffened, and Secca broke off the second vocalise.

A scout rode toward the officers and the banner, reining up.

“They must have seen us, sers,” panted the bearded Ebran scout. “Like an anthill turned by a plow, everyone's yelling and trying to mount. They'll be riding out real short like.”

Secca turned in the saddle. “Palian! Delvor! We need the players ready to play when we reach that ridge ahead.”

Stepan motioned to a lancer. “Have the first company forward. To me.”

“Yes, ser.”

Secca and Stepan had not traveled more than a hundred yards farther when, from the the north, came the sound of mounts, and
charging uphill were a good score of lancers in white, although they were still half a dek away, and barely visible because of the curve in the lane.

“Lady Secca…best get your players in place.” Stepan turned his mount and rode to the side of the lane. “To me! First company!”

Ebran lancers formed and simultaneously charged downhill after Stepan. Mud flew into the air, striking mounts, grass, ground, and tree trunks.

“Players! Players after me!” Secca urged the gray mare toward the open ridge line that lay less than fifty yards ahead. “Players!”

Riding alongside Secca was young Albar, bearing her banner.

Secca reined up and turned in the saddle as the mounts of the players appeared behind her.

Palian was already out of the saddle, uncasing her violino with one hand and motioning players into place with the other.

Not far behind were Elfens and the archers, and they were scrambling to string bows and uncover the quivers that had shielded their shafts from the weather.

“Here!” snapped Secca. “Stand and play! The short flame song!”

The dissonance of tuning rose, and then fell.

Downhill to the north, and even to the sides, Secca could hear yells, the sound of metal on metal, horses crashing through underbrush. She cleared her throat, trying to call up the spell, facing toward the enemy camp a good two hundred yards below and to the north, her back to the wind—or to what had been the wind.

In the distance, thunder rolled. Secca glanced up, saw the sky was yet clear, and realized that the low rumbling was from the Sturinnese thunder-drums. The wind, which had been blowing out of the south, began to die away with the rising volume of the rhythmic drums.

A gust of wind whipped through Secca's hair—cold but dry, and from the north—blowing hard and into Secca's face. She turned. “Chief players?”

“Ready!” answered Palian.

Delvor merely nodded.

Secca waited for the second bar, and then began the spell-song.

As the sounds of the players rose, so did the wind, whistling, and seeming to carry Secca's words back at her.

A thin line of lightnings flashed out of the cloudless sky, but only at the base of the ridge, just beyond the underbrush, cutting through a score or so of the burgundy-clad lancers, but those behind, and those in white, kept fighting, moving toward the side approaches to the ridge, and to Secca and the players. More lancers from Loiseau surged in behind Stepan's companies, but the enemy forces continued to push uphill, if more slowly.

The rolling thunder of the Sturinnese drums intensified, and a greenish haze began to creep across the sky.

“The arrows, lady! The arrows!” Elfens' voice barely carried to Secca, so strong was the wind, for all that he was less than five yards behind her.

The arrows? What arrows?
Secca blinked, trying to connect the words to what she was supposed to do, attempting to think as the thunder from the drums buffeted her and the players.

“The arrows. For the drums!” Elfens yelled.

For the drums?

Below and to the north, the groups of burgundy-clad lancers, untouched by either Defalkan blades or those of Stepan's lancers, or by Secca's spells, began to cut their way through Stepan's first company.

Arrows whistled toward the hilltop.

Secca shook her head. Her thoughts were as congealed as molasses in midwinter, but she turned to Palian. “The arrow song. The arrow song.”

“The arrow song on my mark. On my mark…”

“Archers! To the sorceress! Nock and fire from right behind
her!” Elfens voice was barely a whisper against gale that seemed to sweep out of the greenish northern sky.

The melody was ragged, but the pounding beat of the lutars of Delvor's second players seemed to steady the strings and horns, enough so Secca could think and sing.

Even before Secca finished the last syllable, Elfens' voice burst forth from right behind Secca. “Again, lady! Again!”

“The arrow song once more!” Secca ordered.

“As many shafts as you can loose while she sings!” demanded Elfens.

The repetition of the arrow spell was stronger.