The Warrior King: Book Three of the Seer King Trilogy (22 page)

I told him Tenedos had promised to destroy us by magic alone, and Yonge’s eyes widened.

“That I hadn’t heard,” he said softly. “Perhaps, then, there is a chance.”

I raised an eyebrow. Against the most powerful magician history had ever known?

“The gods, such as they are, don’t like someone who tries to set himself on their level,” Yonge said. “This emperor has not only forgotten honor, but modesty and common sense as well. Just because he could bring up a monster to take out one princeling and his flunkies doesn’t mean he has the powers to destroy an entire army.

“There may be a slight chance we won’t die on the morrow.”

“Not much of one.”

“No,” Yonge agreed, pouring more brandy. “Not much of one. I have a question. When you agreed to march at the head of these raggedy-ass farmers, did you have the sense to create something like my skirmishers to keep the clotpoles from stumbling into perpetual ambush?”

“I did.”

“What bumblefoot did you put in charge of it? Someone I know?”

“One of your captains. Sendraka. I made him a domina.”

“Hmmph. Not that bad a man … for someone from the flat-lands. I shall join him. What would be your orders?”

“First, a question. What really brought you here? As you said, it certainly couldn’t have been for the accolades.”

Yonge swirled the last of the brandy in his glass.

“Perhaps I was bored in Kait. I’d thought about giving up the throne for half a year now and going back to raiding. It’s very dull and stupid when everyone bows to you, and all you have to worry about is who’s conspiring against you, and all you have to wait for is the knife in the back from the man who wants to succeed you. Everything else is lies, nonsense, and gilt.

“Why did I leave my nice safe refuge, not two hours distant from the ruins of Sayana, cut around those stupid Maisirians, who are even worse at keeping guard than you Numantians, and come overland to this swamp?

“A better question: Why not?”

He drank off the brandy. “Enough sentimentality. What are your orders?”

“My plan is to hope we can withstand whatever sorcery he brings. Then I’ll use what’s left of my best to hold the line while the rest of the army tries to get across the Latane,” I said. “I’ve sent men north and south for every boat they can find. I’ve got enough now, back at the river, for perhaps a tenth of my army in a single passage.

“We need time. I’d like you to take a hundred … less if you think five score’s unwieldy … of the skirmishers, slip through the lines, and try to close on the emperor’s camp. I’ll send a wizard with you. When he senses Tenedos has begun his spell, hit their camp.

“Try to be enough of a nuisance to shake them a little. Maybe my magicians can seize that moment and break Tenedos’s spell, and it’ll be more days before he can re-send it. During that time, most of my men can shuttle across the Latane, and I can hold Tenedos here long enough for them to make good an escape into Kallio to reform.”

“Attack their camp with a hundred men?” Yonge said. “That sounds like an excellent way to get killed.”

“It is,” I said. “But why would a Man of the Hills be interested in an easy task?”

“I like this but little,” Yonge grumbled. “But I had to come see what you were about. Especially since you yourself have evidently decided to stay on this side of the river for a noble last stand. Perhaps I’ll live to join and fight in it, which might be amusing, more likely not. Very well, Cimabuan. Give me instructions on where I can find Sendraka and the rest of my thieves, and I’ll see what can be done. When do you wish us to move?”

“As soon as you’re ready,” I said.

Yonge gazed at me long, shook his head, and went out, into the ending night. He didn’t need to say anything. He and I both knew there was no chance I’d ever see him again, at least not in this life.

• • •

The morning was hot, still, and humid, as if a great storm was in the offing. A storm
was
coming, but not one brought by Elyot or Jacini. Tenedos’s spell was building.

Sometime around noon, a skirmisher came with Yonge’s compliments — which I doubted had been actually voiced — and told me the Kaitian and fifty other men, together with Sendraka, had gone through the forward positions. He said Yonge had told him to tell me he didn’t need any more stumblebums to give everything away.

I had Sinait and her magicians assembled, ready to cast a counterspell.

Chuvash, in spite of his growls that he wanted to fight, not run, had been put in charge of the evacuation and ordered to be on the last boat to put out. If he escaped alive, there would be at least one good officer on the far side of the Latane to rally around.

If I’d had twenty or thirty thousand cavalry, reliable cavalry, I would have chanced all on a pathetic hope and led a flanking attack on Tenedos’s lines myself and let his magical wards be damned. But I didn’t. Nor could I have left the army, for there was no one at all who could command this disaster-in-the-making.

What I expected was Tenedos would cast his spell, Sinait and her underlings would unsuccessfully try to break it, but at least slow it down; Yonge, whom I’d no sooner welcomed than sent to die would do just that, but confuse Tenedos a little and further slow him; Chuvash’s boats would shuttle back and forth as quickly as they could; Tenedos would either come back with greater magic or attack with conventional arms, and my rear guard and I would go down, possibly giving a quarter, maybe a bit more, of my rebels time to flee across the Latane and go to ground in Kallio or wherever.

Sooner or later a more capable leader than I would arise, in a year or a century, from the people or even from the Tovieti, and try to free Numantia from whoever’s lash it would be under.

But for me, there would be no capture, no surrender. I just regretted not being able to personally send Tenedos, and his unutterable evil, to Saionji and the Wheel.

But men are the dice the gods gamble with, no more.

At midday, the sun was blistering hot, and I felt the first crawlings up my spine and sensed the spell that would destroy us was now cast.

I was in the forward positions, Tenedos’s front about five miles distant. A heat haze shimmered over the dry grass and desiccated small groves, grew heavier, and I could feel the heat as it came in waves. I had a few seconds to realize this was the spell; then the grasslands burst into flame, not here and there as a wildfire does in the Time of Heat, but all at once. There was no wind, but the flames swept toward us.

An aide came from Sinait and said she was trying to fight the spell, but without success.

My line was wavering, and I had no choice but order them to fall back toward the river. The fire roared closer, then flickered, like a taper being blown on, almost going out, and I guessed that was Yonge’s futile but noble death. The flames roared higher, and I mourned the passing of yet another friend but was too busy, riding back and forth across the battleground-that-wasn’t, and somehow my men didn’t break but retreated like seasoned campaigners, covering for each other as they went.

From a hilltop, I saw Tenedos’s army start across the blackened ground behind the fire that was his shock troops.

We couldn’t find a place to fight from, for who could stand against fire? We moved back again, and again, and then I was on the final hillcrest, the long slope before me that ran down through trees to the Latane, about two-thirds of a league across at this point. There were boats on the narrow beaches and the river, shuttling men to the far shore.

“We’ll hold here,” I shouted, and there were men rallying around. One was the company of Lasleigh, Baron Pilfern, still forty strong. Pilfern rode back and forth in front of them, calling commands, and I noted his voice was calm, sure, and his men were as ready to die here, in this hells-owned spot governed by dark magic, as anyone.

There were other strong points, one Thanet’s cavalry, another under Lecq’s banner, others that were merely knots of men who would run no farther and found ground worthy of their deaths.

Kutulu was beside my horse. He wore a mailed coat a bit too large and a conical steel helmet that slipped from time to time. But he had a long, curving dagger in each gloved hand, and the gloves, I knew, were weighted with lead.

“I never thought I’d die as a soldier,” he shouted, and his voice was light, merry, as if he was making a joke.

I looked down the line of soldiers. This was as good a place to die as any other.

I must’ve spoken aloud, because Svalbard, sitting on his horse just behind me, growled, “The only good death is someone else’s.” His sword was ready.

The fire grew closer, and my eyebrows were hard, dry, and my nose full of the stink of burning.

Then came screams — from behind us! I whirled and saw Tenedos’s real spell.

Thak, the Tovieti demon, had once hidden in the Latane River before he attacked Tenedos and me, and perhaps the seer remembered, for the Latane was coming alive, brown water rising here, there, in swirls and eddies. The swirls firmed, grew taller, took shape, grew fangs and claws, ever-changing in their horror, and came across the water toward my boats.

Soldiers screamed, threw spears, shot arrows, without effect. Panicked, some dove overboard, flailing at the current that swept them into the monsters’ clutches.

I could dimly hear the screams of terror as boats were sent spinning, overturned, men torn by these demons’ talons, and the swift-flowing water was reddened by blood. The nightmares swept through the boats, tearing them apart, seizing the men in their jaws, and then they turned, moving slowly as if wading, not part of the Latane itself, coming toward the knotted, trapped army along the sandbars and beaches.

The fire before me roared higher, and I knew Tenedos’s magic was feeding off these deaths, as it had always fed on blood.

The demons were closer, if demons they were, and not simply created by magic from the water itself, as lesser magicians can create and animate tiny figurines from the living dirt.

Die well, my mind mocked, but how can you die well if your only enemy is water and fire?

I thought frantically of trying to charge through the fire, into the heart of the real enemy, but my men would see that as flight. There was nothing to do but accept death, embrace it quickly for an easy return to the Wheel, yet I couldn’t go without doing anything.

Blind in rage, I screamed at the heavens, and I swear my scream was answered by a rumbling, and for an instant I thought the third god, Jacini of the Earth, had been suborned and was allowing Tenedos to cast a final spell and engulf us in an earthquake.

But the rumbling came from above, and from nowhere clouds whipped across the sky, driven by tempest winds far greater than anything I’d seen, yet there was nothing but the roar of the fire and terror as the water monsters ravened toward the shore.

The wind swept down on us, straight down, but its passage had barely touched us when it changed direction, and blew hard, down the bluff to the river, and as it reached the water it grew stronger, a full gale, sending the water demons wavering, spray whipping from their extremities as I’d seen storm surf whip against the rocks of my island prison.

The wind screamed louder, and the clouds opened, and sheets of rain, torrential, poured down, and the fire steamed, smoked, bellowing its own pain.

Sinait’s counterspell was great, and I marveled at the power I’d not known she had. The rain grew greater, and I heard a horrible scream, echoing across the world, and saw the river monstrosities swirl, like so many inverted whirlpools, and vanish, and as they did, the fire behind me snapped out, like a candle pinched at bedtime.

The rain poured down over the blackened landscape, and I prepared for a counterattack through the ashes against Tenedos’s line. But there was no need. The rain broke for an instant, and I saw, distantly, Tenedos’s soldiery stumbling back, shambling as if they’d been shattered by cavalry.

I didn’t know what was going on, was completely lost. I looked back at the river and saw the greatest marvel of all.

Through the drifting clouds of wind-driven rain I saw boats coming upriver. I don’t know how many there were, many hundreds, thousands, of every sort, from tiny fishing punts to river trader’s launches to yachts to dinghies rowed by boys and girls, oceangoing pinnaces and even one of the great
Tauler-
type river ferries, all heading for the bloodstained sands my army was stranded on.

Numantia had come to rescue us.

Or that was what I thought.

• • •

The first order of business was to get out of immediate danger.

I sent all my gallopers, including Svalbard and Kutulu the horse hater on a riderless mount grazing nearby, to sweep the line, telling my soldiers that we’d live the day, and for them to withdraw to the river in good order, taking their weapons and wounded.

I sat on the hilltop, alone, and prayed to Irisu, Vachan, Tanis, and the war god Isa, giving thanks.

A scattering of men, perhaps forty, stumbled out of the fire-torn mistlands in front of me, and I put my hand on my sword, thinking they were some of Tenedos’s, separated in the tumult, either trying to surrender or lost.

Then I recognized them by their tattered brown shirts. Skirmishers. Better, I saw at their head Yonge, and he was half-carrying Sendraka.

I rode to meet them, dismounted, and helped lift Sendraka, who’d been clubbed down from behind and was still dazed, into my saddle, and we started toward the river.

“So you decided to live,” I said to Yonge.

“I did. It’s a bad day for dying, at least for me,” he said. “And did I not do well with my impossible task?”

“You did,” I said. “The spell lifted for a few seconds when you hit them, long enough for Sinait’s counterspell to work.”

“You idiot,” he said. “You pretend to command men, and you think that is what happened?”

“I
don’t
know, gods dammit,” I said, perhaps a little angry. “I’ve been sitting on this fucking hill all day being fucking noble, not out having fun with people like you.”