The Silent Army (34 page)

Pre’ru looked at Tusk and shook her head, an amused expression on her scarred face. “What are you laughing about?”

Tusk grunted out the words as he continued to laugh. He gestured with the hand that had been on her shoulder toward the devastation. “You see? The Great Tide is upon us, indeed!”

Pre’ru laughed and shook her head at his antics. She had not known him in the Taalor Valley where among his many reputations he was known as a jester.

Tarag Paedori smiled too, as the waters started to recede.

“Oh,” he said. “I think we can do much better than that.”

Desh Krohan looked from the highest of the palace windows and next to him Merros Dulver gripped his sword hilt in fingers turned white by the pressure.

Nachia stood between them, and did her best not to scream with joy. They were settled. Until that last moment she’d continued to fear that they would sink to the bottom of Gerhaim and either learn to breathe water like the fish, or die.

“Well,” Merros said. “That could have gone much worse.”

“Still could,” Desh pointed to the black ships. They were, as one, turning toward Canhoon.

“I’ve enjoyed our chat, but I have to prepare for war.” The way he said it, Merros sounded like it was farewell.

“Don’t go.” Nachia’s voice was small.

“It’s not an option, Majesty. I am in charge of your armies and I intend to see that you have an empire to lead.”

Desh sighed. “There are more black ships coming this way. They are a day out yet, but they will get here soon enough.”

“Sink them!” Nachia turned her head so sharply to glare at him that muscles pulled and twitched like fire under her skin. “You, or your Sisters or any of the sorcerers here in Canhoon! Sink the damned ships!”

“Majesty, we don’t have the power–”

“If you found the power to raise the dead and lift a city, then find the power to sink those gods damned ships!”

“Nachia.” Merros’s voice was soft. “No. Don’t. We have the Silent Army. We have the Imperial Army. If you must use sorcery, wait until the last. Don’t lose that last defense.”

Without another word Merros left the room, shoulders squared and cape snapping with every stride.

Nachia shook her head.

Desh moved up behind her and placed a hand on both her shoulders, and she leaned back into him as she had on a hundred occasions through her life, already regretting snapping at him earlier.

He demanded no apologies, but instead simply held her.

“We’ll prevail, Nachia. I’ll make sure of that.”

“Don’t make false promises, Old Man. It belittles us both.”

Down below, horns sounded the assembly and from a dozen different quarters the soldiers came, moving from their barracks and assembling in the vast yard of the palace.

Somewhere in that crowd Merros Dulver would be speaking, talking to the forces left to him in Canhoon and preparing for the inevitable assault.

The Sa’ba Taalor were monsters. They could not be reasoned with. They wanted death and destruction. They wanted to crush the Fellein Empire and they were doing a fine job of it.

Somewhere below the very best of the Imperial Guard were gathered together to defend her. Nachia did not care. She preferred that none stay behind, none defend her. The Empire was more important than the Empress. It had to be. If not, why was she so worried?

Theran stood trembling on the shore.

His head ached. His body was cold and he could not stop his muscles from shaking even though he stood still. It was like a fever, but a thousand times worse.

He was recovering from what they had done, but it wasn’t easy. Someone had pulled the javelin from his neck. He’d heard bones crunch and felt his body go numb in the places where it did not scream.

The one with the skull helmet had spoken to him, his accent thick. “You have metal where you are from?” The man grunted and sat him up. “I mean the type touched by gods. It heals wounds.” Thick fingers probed the wound on his neck. “We heal you now, so you can talk to us.”

The pain had been enough to shatter him. He bucked, he kicked, he screamed and they held him still as white hot metal ran across his neck. Or at least it felt like it did until the pain vanished.

The man with the skull helmet moved his head for him and nodded. “Better.”

The giants around him were terrifying. There were easily a hundred, but he could see the leaders clearly enough.

That had been half an hour earlier. After he recovered enough to stand, they did worse to him. Now, they stood around him, the largest of the people, the ones he sensed were in charge.

“I do not think he likes us very much.” The one who spoke wore a vast helmet shaped like a monstrous skull, the mouth of the thing filled with teeth of varying sizes, all of them sharp and the smallest of them longer than his middle finger.

The woman next to him was large and scarred and had been the one to cause him the greatest agony in his entire life. A pain so large that five minutes later he was still trying to recover from the memory of it. He had screamed, begged and even tried to use his sorcery, all to no avail. He was too scared to concentrate on magic and his words apparently made no difference to the people around him. They were the Sa’ba Taalor, and he was ready to piss himself at the sight of them up close.

The coin she’d shown him was very large and made of gold. Her hands were smaller than the largest of the giants’ but not by that much. The golden disk filled her palm.

He’d looked at her and shaken his head at first, having no idea what was about to happen. The metal was pressed into his forehead. Her palm kept it there and her fingers moved into his hair as if she meant to caress and tease him.

Then the burning started. Theran felt the heat start and jerked, trying to get away, but her fingers pulled his hair tight and even as he tried to move his head one way and then another she did not let the pain escape. He wet himself. His arms and legs twitched and kicked and he beat at her as best he could with his hands tied behind his back and one of the bastards standing on his calves while he kneeled before the bitch who tortured him. If he could have, he’d have spat in her face, but he was too busy praying for death and his eyes were screwed shut as the metal melted across his forehead.

As intense as the pain was, it only lasted a few seconds and when he looked up she was still there, looking at the palm she’d pressed into his head.

There was metal left over, hot and steaming, and she had painted it across her cheeks in two nearly white-hot streaks that had cooled down and now looked almost like the golden trails of tears. Her flesh was not burned and he could not understand that. He did not want to know what his forehead looked like. The coin she used had been quite large.

The pain was gone. Theran was grateful for that much. It was all he had. They’d let him stand when they were done and he wanted to run, wanted to hide away, but he found he was too exhausted to do more than stand and shiver.

The last of them finally lifted the faceplate on his great helm and revealed a face that glowered just as well as the iron visage that hid him away.

They spoke among themselves and he listened. Currently he was not capable of much more. The pain was gone, but the memory of it lingered and now it seemed he had a fever.

The biggest of them, the one with the iron helmet, studied him carefully. Each of the man’s hands looked large enough to cover his face.

“I do not care if he likes us.”

Their words were not the common tongue of Fellein or any of the other languages he knew but he understood them well enough. They had their own sorcery then.

NO. NOT YOUR SORCERY. THAT IS WHY YOU ARE HERE. THAT IS WHAT WE WILL NOW UNDERSTAND.

The words smashed through his mind and Theran fell backward, his limbs moving and dancing, his teeth clenched in a sudden fit that threatened to break his teeth in his mouth. He could not breathe, could not control his movements.

The gray-skins around him watched on, not speaking, not moving, but staring as if he were a new form of bug they had never seen.

The thunderous voice was gone, but the presence that roared at him was not. He could feel it probing him, moving under his flesh, peeling his self away layer by layer as it examined him in great detail.

It was a violation that made control of his body impossible, and he continued to seize and kick for the eternity that the assault lasted.

When it was done Theran groaned. It was the only sound he was capable of.

When he finally had recovered enough he stared out at the waters, at Canhoon where it now rested, a city that had fallen from the sky.

He and the people around him stood on the edge of the waters amid the destruction caused by the city’s arrival. There was debris, of course. There were also corpses, though not as many as he might have expected. A great number of the citizens of Goltha also stood nearby, though they were not there by choice. They were injured or too scared to fight. In any event, they were there and they watched on as well.

The woman spoke to him.

“You are a sorcerer. You can make magic.”

It wasn’t truly a question, but he sensed that she wanted a response and so he nodded and said, “Yes.”

“You have spoken to a god. You have been judged by the Daxar Taalor. They wish for you to obey us.”

Theran sighed and nodded again. “Yes.” He liked to think himself a good man, but he was not strong. He never had been. One of the reasons he loved Goltha was that his vices had always been easy to accommodate. Women. Otha and other narcotics. Whatever helped him feel pleasure, he could access. A good man, but weak.

So very weak.

“We want to cross the waters. As they are, we would sink. You must freeze them.”

Her hand touched his hair again and he flinched. She lifted his sweaty bangs from his face and looked at the damage she had done to him with a coin and her hand. Her palm was unmarked. The gold on her face shone. Once again her fingers moved through his hair.

“You and I, we are linked. I have marked you and made you mine. The gods have willed this. You will obey me. You will do as I say. If you do not, there will be pain.”

He nodded. “Yes.”

Then he tried to reach out to Corin. He wanted only to warn them.

The pain was so much that he fell forward and vomited. His body felt broiled in heat, lit afire from the very inside of his bones outward. He could not move. He could not scream.

An eternity later the pain was gone. There was no lingering aftermath. It simply was not there.

“No.” The woman shook her head at him. “You will never speak to them again. If you try, you will hurt.”

Theran sobbed. “Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.” He nodded his head so hard he feared he might break something.

“Freeze the lake.”

“I can’t.”

He screwed his eyes shut again, fearing the titanic wave of agony. It did not come.

“Why?”

“What?”

“Why can’t you freeze the lake? Your people move cities through the air. Your kind brings lightning from the air. Why can you not do this?”

“Sorcery takes power. It has a cost. If I tried to freeze the whole lake, I would die. It would drain all of my life from me.”

She nodded her head and looked to her two companions. Though they spoke, he could not understand the language. The one with the skull helmet looked to him and then pointed to the people gathered together nearby.

“Then use them.”

“What?” He could not keep the shock from his voice.

“If you cannot do this thing alone. Use them. We will only kill them in any event.”

“I cannot do tha–” That was all he could mutter before the pain ruined his world again.

The woman said, “Use them.”

“Yes.” He cried as he spoke, but none of them cared.

She crouched down next to him as he once again became aware of the universe beyond his personal agonies. For the first time he looked into her eyes and realized that they shone with their own light. He might have been fascinated were he not so utterly terrified. “If you betray me, if you attack any of us, your pain will never end. Do you believe me?”

“Yes.” He nodded as hard as he could.

Her hand found his hair again and stroked through it. “Freeze the lake. Whatever it costs.”

“Yes.”

Theran didn’t trust his legs. He crawled through the muck and the debris, barely aware of what was beneath him even as he slithered over the corpse of a dead woman and her dead child.

When he reached the waters he reached forth with his hand and the gray-skinned monster that promised him pain crouched over him. Her hand moved over his chest and belly like a person petting a dog, or restraining it. His body moved over more corpses, dead and drowned, but he didn’t dare change his course.

“Not yet. Not yet, no.” She looked out at the waters, and the black ships that were crawling closer to the city.

One minute passed. Then three, five, ten and finally, “Now. Do it now.”

Theran did not dare disobey.

His hand touched the water and the water screamed.

Where his fingers touched, the ice started and grew quickly. The saturated mud under his body rose as ice formed, and the beach and shoreline all along the way did the same.

The surface of the water was not all that froze. He dared not take that chance. Instead he pushed with all that he had and the lake howled at the sudden change in climate.

A crust of ice ten feet deep formed in seconds and raced toward Canhoon.

Theran was aware of the screams behind him and felt his eyes sting once more with tears. They had to die. It was not a choice, still, he felt their deaths as they happened, felt the life ripped from body after body, torn from flesh that fell lifeless to the ground.

No matter their pain. He had already endured worse. He could not dare it again.

He was a good man, but he was weak. He kept telling himself that as the water froze and the air steamed with the change in temperatures.

The woman’s hand moved lower, until she touched his privates. “Good. That is good.” Had she been the most perfect female he had ever seen he could not have grown hard for her. She was a terror to him, a scarred, hideous beast that would haunt him for as long as he lived.