The Warrior King (Book 4) (22 page)

Whelan didn’t seem to be focusing on the battle itself, apparently already noting how the initial struggle would play out. Instead, he was looking at other forces not yet committed. His hand twisted at the hilt of Soultrup, which remained in its sheath. He wore a second, shorter sword on his left hip, as if not trusting the magical weapon to support him if battle came.

“Move Macklin next to the road,” the king said after another minute of consideration. “Send his riders east four hundred yards. Bring the rest of them up next to the Arvadans.”

The trumpeter lifted his horn and let out two short blasts and one higher, longer blast. Faces turned toward the castle from below. Now that Lord Macklin had been called, the signalers waved flags to give the specific command. They repeated the orders, and a force of several hundred men turned from their march and came toward the Tothian Way. A small mass of riders broke off and moved several hundred yards east, where they disappeared into a copse of trees.

Markal could see Whelan’s strategy; if the enemy army broke through the hills, Macklin’s mounted force could come around to harass their flank and delay them long enough for Eriscobans and Balsalomians to get their combined forces into position. And at the same time, he could see what Ismail seemed to be driving at. The greatest mass of Whelan’s supply caravan was in two big encampments on the highway in front of the castle, together with all of the wagons, camels, mules, and draft horses that had carried all of those goods east on the Tothian Way. Ismail didn’t need to win the battle or even seize the castle. If he could break into the supply caravan, he could burn and pillage at will. With no means to feed and outfit his army, Whelan would be forced to abandon the eastern khalifates and take refuge in Balsalom.

The Balsalomians between the hills seemed to be giving way too soon. Already, they looked ready to collapse, and Lord Macklin’s riders had not yet come around to attack Ismail’s rear.

“Hold your ground,” Whelan grumbled as he turned from moving around his pieces like a game of al-shatranj so that he could study the main battle. “The Harvester take them, they’re falling back already. I thought Pasha Boroah was made of stronger stuff.”

Ismail had his forces up against the hills and now sent men scurrying like a stream of ants to drive the bowmen from the heights. Before the bowmen fell back, however, they waved red and black flags toward the castle to signal what was happening between the hills.

“Giants,” Hoffan said. “And mammoths. That’s why.”

Markal was surprised that the dark wizard had committed them to this battle. The entire struggle was a risk for the Veyrians, a gamble of reaching those supplies. Since Daria and the griffin riders had driven off the dragons, and King Toth himself remained wounded within the Dark Citadel, the mammoths and giants represented the most powerful weapon left in the enemy’s command. He’d expected them to be held in reserve in case the combined armies reached the gates of Veyre.

Whelan turned to Hoffan. “Take the reserve. Relieve Boroah. I want that line held.”

Hoffan nodded and went running down the steps to the bailey.

Markal looked around the castle, concerned at how few men would remain once Hoffan rode off with the horsemen massed out front. That reserve was the last major force between the enemy and this position.

Whelan must have noticed his alarm. “He’s marching for our supplies.”

“Until he sees the king unguarded in the castle, the gates lying in ruin.”

“I’m not unguarded.” Whelan grinned and slapped him on the shoulder. “I have a wizard. And these castle walls. And twenty Knights Temperate plus sufficient bowmen to drive away attackers.”

“Whelan . . . ” Markal began, concerned.

But the king was already turning back to the field of battle. Outside the gates, Hoffan had taken a horse and was now leading the mass of cavalry. They trotted down the hillside, picking up pace as the companies got themselves organized.

“There,” Whelan said in a grim tone about ten minutes later when Hoffan’s forces had interposed themselves between Ismail and the highway. “Now you see.”

He paused to give instructions to his signalers, who waved furiously at a mass of Eriscoban footmen who were moving at a rapid march down the highway toward the battle. There were as many as two thousand men who would soon be joining the few hundred guarding the supply caravans, but they wouldn’t arrive in time to plug the mass of enemy soldiers that had pushed the Balsalomians out of the way and came streaming toward the highway, now less than a half-mile distant. Hoffan, however, would be arriving in time to meet them, forcing them to fight another delaying action while more defenses organized.

Markal eyed the nearly empty hillside between the road and the castle. That worried him. He glanced at the sky, searching for threats from the air. Nothing.

“Are you sure it’s wise to commit your reserve so early?” he said, when his search had turned up nothing.

“I’m not—it’s still in reserve. Look, here comes Lord Macklin. Sound the charge.”

The trumpeter gave two short blasts, followed by a single long note, which hung its brassy tones in the air over the battlefield.

Macklin’s mounted force, which Whelan had earlier positioned should Pasha Ismail break through the Balsalomians, now swung in from the flank, while the footmen came in to plug the lines. Ismail’s men stalled as they fought this new force. Meanwhile, the Balsalomians had fallen back, but kept the enemy from breaking out fully from where they were delayed between the two hills. Ismail’s cavalry had come around the hillside, but several companies of Whelan’s pikemen, together with a smaller force of horsemen, were keeping them from breaking through. Ismail had been counting on them to sweep clear the battlefield ahead of the main army so he could march on the supplies.

“And the battle turns,” Whelan said. An element of grim satisfaction had entered his voice.

Everything seemed to be going perfectly. Ismail and his ten thousand men, together with giants and mammoths, had failed to break through. Thousands of men from the combined armies were entering the battle. And now Markal understood what the king was doing with the other pieces marching seemingly far from the battlefield. Their path was bringing them up and behind Ismail’s army. Shortly, the enemy would find his path to retreat severed.

“Bring back Hoffan’s reserve,” Markal said.

“It’s almost over.”

“It’s just starting.”

“It only looks that way,” Whelan said. “Every piece has been put into position. It is now a simple matter of playing out the positions.”

“You sound overconfident—it worries me.”

“I’m not overconfident, I am grimly determined. The enemy took a terrible gamble, but we were prepared. Our numbers are better, our position is superior. The only advantage he has is those mammoths and the giants, and they are hemmed in where they can be neutralized.”

“Then why not bring back the reserve?”

“Because as soon as our forces come in behind him, Ismail will realize he is trapped, and then he will attempt to break free. I intend not only to destroy his army but capture Ismail and his personal guard as well. Hoffan may be needed to run him down.”

Whelan looked down at his hand, which was still resting on the pommel of his sword. He removed it with a deep sigh. Markal realized that his friend had entered the battle uncertain, afraid that he would be facing a final, desperate struggle here at the castle, which would necessitate drawing Soultrup. And then they would see if Memnet’s forces were able to hold the gardens against Pasha Malik. But that was no longer a concern, thankfully.

“I’m sorry,” Markal said. “I shouldn’t have doubted you. You are a true warrior king and a fine general.”

He was about to ask Whelan what he intended to do when Ismail was defeated, if now would be the time to push the final fifty miles to Veyre to lay siege to the Dark Citadel itself, when action on the battlefield caught his eye.

A small band of riders broke free from Ismail’s harried army. Some fifty or sixty men in all, they cut through the first ranks opposing them and came charging toward the Tothian Way.

“So soon,” Whelan said. “Ismail must have received word from the rear. All the better. It won’t be long.”

After breaking loose from the main battle, the small band of riders tangled with the left flank of Lord Macklin’s cavalry. For a short time—no more than a minute—the two forces mixed, the dust and chaos of battle obscuring details. Then a small wedge of riders cut free and came galloping up a dirt road toward the highway. Markal had supposed Ismail’s personal guard would be experienced and powerful enough to fight clear, much as Whelan’s personal guard of Knights Temperate would have done, but it was discouraging that Ismail’s entire force seemed to have emerged unscathed from the short brawl.

“Poor showing, Macklin,” Whelan muttered. “You should have stopped them.” He turned to his signalers. “Bring Hoffan. Quickly, now.”

Hoffan’s men came down the highway, prepared to cut off Ismail’s small force fleeing the battle. They would arrive at the junction where the dirt road met the Tothian Way before the enemy and outnumbered them a good eight to one. For a long minute, the two sides both raced toward the same spot. By now Ismail must have spotted Hoffan and would know he would never reach the Tothian Way in time. What then? Would he veer back toward his army, or would he try to escape over the empty countryside north of the highway?

To Markal’s surprise, Ismail’s men kept charging. The two sides were only a few hundred yards apart now, Hoffan’s already arriving at the junction of the two roads, where the mountain lord quickly positioned his men to bring the maximum strength against the enemy when he arrived. And still the enemy charged, horses running flat out, men with their swords drawn and glinting in the afternoon sun. They showed no fear, they—

They are ravagers.

The thought came to Markal’s mind, and he knew it must be true. He glanced around the castle, at the shattered, partially reinforced gates, at the fifteen or twenty Knights Temperate in Whelan’s personal guard, and at the small number of archers on the walls. He looked down at the empty hillside between here and the mass of supplies and animals on the highway. It was guarded by a few hundred of Lord Denys’s men, but they had formed a defensive position to protect the supplies, not the castle behind them.

The enemy slammed into Hoffan’s force. For a moment, the two groups of cavalry—one small and wedge-shaped, the other twenty deep and twenty across—shuddered and held position. Then Hoffan’s men ripped apart like a sheet of paper torn in two. The enemy galloped straight through them, leaving a fissure of dead and dying men and animals falling on the road.

They ignored the supply caravans and raced straight toward the castle where Whelan and his men were directing the battle.

Chapter Twenty-one

“This way, quickly,” Lassitius pleaded with Chantmer. “It is my master—he is dying. The sultan insists that you come at once.”

Chantmer sprang up so quickly from the bed of nails that he gouged his bare skin. The young mage who had been tattooing his skin fell back with a scowl.

“Hurry, I beg of you,” Lassitus said as Chantmer pulled on his robe.

The eunuch rubbed his hands and muttered in a worried tone as he led Chantmer from the hall out through the courtyard. Roghan stood in one corner of the gardens, already watching through narrowed eyes. He rubbed the chain around his neck. Tattoos completely covered his body, all the way up his neck to his chin. Chantmer gestured for him to follow. Roghan snapped his fingers in turn at two of his most trusted apprentices, and the three of them fell in behind Chantmer and Lassitus.

“Who is dying?” Chantmer asked, confused by what Lassitus had said. “It isn’t—it’s not the sultan, is it?”

He could hardly dare to hope. And yet it was too soon. He wasn’t ready, and he had not yet tested Roghan’s loyalties.

“No, it’s not Mufashe. Please, more quickly.”

Ah, then it was Faalam.

Chantmer had recovered his wits and was loath to come stumbling into the throne room out of breath and flustered. So he ignored the eunuch’s pleas and slowed his pace. The man rushed ahead into the room, with Chantmer and the three mages following.

Faalam lay on the floor inside. He was on his back and had torn at his robes and his chest, as if trying to rip the poison out of his flesh. His eyes rolled back in his head, and his breath came in short, shallow gasps. A silvery metallic spittle oozed from the corner of his mouth.

“My wizards!” Mufashe cried, rushing over. The sultan looked distraught, his jeweled turban askew and his eyes bugging out. “Some evil spell, some curse or poison—you must remove it. Please, I beg of you. He must not die.”

So much begging. Such language from Lassitus was one thing, but how unseemly for the sultan to be so distraught at the loss of what was only a slave, after all.

Yes, but this slave runs the palace, controls the taxes, regulates the viziers and the regional sheiks.
 

Chantmer bent over Faalam and took his hand. He glanced at the others in the throne room: concubines and wives watching curiously from their pillowed nests in the corners, a dozen bare-chested, muscular palace guards, household servants, a minister with a half-unraveled scroll, the mages who had followed him in. If he’d discovered Faalam lying ill in his own chambers, Chantmer could have emptied the rest of the silver bite into his mouth and destroyed him at once.