The Warrior King: Book Three of the Seer King Trilogy (27 page)

Somehow I didn’t think that was what Cymea meant. I wondered if she’d ever tell me, then wondered if I really wanted to know.

• • •

We carefully reconnoitered the Maisirian positions. First Cymea used sorcery, then I sent out skirmishers, with orders to avoid contact at all costs, and little by little, I filled in details on my map.

As Amboina had promised, there were Tovieti in the district, farmers, shopkeepers, some caravan masters, and their drovers. Cymea summoned them, refusing to tell me how, but daily men and women slipped up the road to the tower, and she and Kutulu talked to them, slowly building a complete picture of everything in and around Renan.

Then it was time to strike.

• • •

I planned the first attack to hit the hardest. The Maisirians didn’t know there were enemies within a thousand leagues — their patrols were pillagers, not scouts; their convoys from Renan were guarded by a handful of soldiers; and the camps’ security was as slack as any peacetime cantonment.

We would strike with magic and fire. Cymea took twigs, soaked them in a mineral solution, and chanted a spell over them. Then she built small fires around the tower’s courtyard, set soldiers around them with the twigs, and had warrants standing by with glasses. She chanted a spell loudly, then, at periodic intervals, from three minutes to a full hour, the warrants shouted orders, and the soldiers passed the twigs through the flames for an instant.

She had two other spells half-prepared, and we then rode down the road and toward the Maisirians, taking a circuitous course to the river, then south along it, until we were just beyond the loose perimeter around Renan.

Cymea felt a warning spell, so we withdrew to a copse and settled in for the night. I could see the lights of Renan in the distance, remembered it as once, an ancient, beautiful city out of time, full of magic and romance.

But our army had retreated through Renan after the Maisirian campaign, the Maisirians following, laying waste to all Urey. I wondered what splendor was left, Renan occupied once more by the loathed invaders.

At the beginning of the last watch, we were roused, saddled our horses, and led them to a farm pond for watering and grain from our saddlebags, while we shivered in the cold mist, near rain, chewing disconsolately on sour bread and dried meat. We still wore our mock-Maisirian uniform, but all of us had a red scrap of cloth around our necks, so we’d not be slaughtering each other in the coming confusion.

We went forward slowly, at the walk, along a winding course, a small pass through a cluster of hillocks. Here I told off one company of infantry. I was pleased they’d been angry at being cut out of the forthcoming action, rather than delighted at not going into danger.

I’d noted a distinctive rocky formation the day before, just after the pass widened into the valley, and when we reached it, I shouted for my buglers to send the troops out on line. That roused the Maisirians, but they had no more than a few minutes before we hit their vedettes and sent them fleeing or lying still in the mire.

Cymea cast her first spell, rocking in the saddle, and the sky behind us turned red, but not red with a false dawn, red with death fires and flame. Swirling through the mist, which blew in curtains around us, were ghost figures of horsemen, monsters, giants, striding forward as the bugles sang for the trot.

We went through their front lines, no more than shallow trenches for the most part, and were among them.

Our ears twinged as sound screeched, like pipes but shriller, setting my teeth on edge. Cymea had studied and learned some of Tenedos’s best spells. Then there were tents ahead, and we were slashing at tent ropes, canvas, anyone who stumbled out, gaping for an instant before we sent them back to the Wheel.

Chosen men tossed away the ensorcelled twigs as they rode, and after we passed some flamed up, far larger than the bits of wood warranted. The fire licked at the Maisirian canvas, and wet as they were, the tentage took fire. Other twigs would flame up later, adding to the chaos.

The sound changed, became lower, the screaming of terrified men and women. It built, and now it was echoed by human throats as the Maisirians broke.

A man wearing a gaudy uniform ran out of the darkness, an officer, but armed with an infantryman’s pike. I slashed it in two, cut him down, rode on as he fell. A man was mounting a horse, waving a sword wildly, and I killed him from behind and his horse stampeded as blood gouted, the dead weight of his rider slumping over the animal’s neck.

There was a group of soldiers, a
calstor
shouting at them, and he went down with Curti’s arrow in his bowels, and the soldiers fled, no warrant left to stiffen them to battle.

We cut through the camp to my real goal, one of the supply dumps that held I know not what under long rows of tarpaulins, and we smashed the wooden fence around it, and more fire twigs were scattered. There was a fence and my horse leapt it. Another balked, three men were thrown in the milling confusion, and others pulled them up behind, and we rode on, into open country.

We cut left, circling back the way we came, slicing through another camp, and fires were roaring up around the valley, not our arsonous flames, but the lamps of headquarters as officers came awake.

Again bugles brayed, and we slowed to a walk, the mule-mounted infantry caught up with the cavalrymen, and we hit the Maisirians as they stumbled into their battle lines, still not sure who was attacking, where the enemy was coming from.

We ravened on, destroying as we went.

I counted ten turnings of the glass, then commanded the retreat to be sounded, and we slashed back the way we’d come.

We’d tarried too long, or so it must have appeared to the Maisirians, and there were mounted men coming after us, far more than my hundred and a half. We fled, galloping hard, trying to look as if we ourselves had grown clumsy in fear, and the Maisirians came after us, and Cymea’s second spell, intended to give the enemy confidence, was sent out.

We thundered through the low pass beyond the lines as if demons were after us, then reined around.

Our ambush element rose up on either side of the track as the Maisirians rode past, and arrows spat and lances thudded into the bunched-up mass of horsemen.

We charged into the melee, as the ambush’s rear element closed the gate on the pursuing cavalry, and it was a nasty, swirling bit of various hells; then the Maisirians were able to break out to freedom, back to their lines.

“To horse,” I shouted, then heard somebody call, “We’ve got a prisoner! An officer!”

“Toss him across a mule and come on!” I shouted. “The rest of their damned army’s coming fast.”

We galloped away, Cymea now at the rear, casting spells of confusion, spells to suggest we’d turned off at this ford or into that thicket. Twice we stopped after crossing water, and she made other incantations to muddle our pursuers.

But the skirmishers I sent to the hilltops we passed didn’t see any pursuit, and I remembered how the Maisirians could either be the most dangerous or the most foolish of enemies.

Cymea rode up beside me, breathless, cheeks red with the wind and the driving rain.

“So that’s war?”

“That’s war,” I said. “When you’re on the winning side. It’s a whore’s get when you’re the one being ambushed.”

“Either way,” she said, “I didn’t like it much.”

I’d misread her expression for pleasure. Oddly enough, I liked her better for hating what we’d done.

“You’re not supposed to,” I said. “Just so long as you’re good at it.”

She nodded understanding, dropped back to add more bafflement.

• • •

The prisoner’s eyes opened, and he sat up. He rubbed his ribs and grunted.

“Bad enough knocking the wind out of me, you had to keep me foozled across that fucking jackass,” he grumbled.

I handed him a cup of wine. He drained it, glowered at me. “I should have known it was you. You bastard.” He looked at Yonge.

“And
you.
What a shit-heel
pair
of bastards.”

“How’d you ever get so gods-damned sloppy as to fall into that one?” Yonge demanded. “If you’d ridden like that on the border, I would have killed you ten years ago.”

“If I’d ridden like that back on the border, I would have deserved to die,” he agreed. “Now give me some more wine, Bandit Who Once Was a King, and try to stop gloating.”

He tried to stand, but his legs gave way. I caught him, helped him up.

“I thank you, Damastes of Numantia, Shum á Cimabue,” he said. “I wish I’d let them kill you back when we chased you across our border instead of playing the gentleman. Shit! Now you’re more of a Negaret than I am, it appears.”

It was Jedaz Faquet Bakr, leader of that Negaret tribe who’d met me at the Maisirian border and escorted me to Oswy. We’d ridden together, hunting, fishing, across the barren
suebi,
and I’d often thought enviously of his life.

“It’s only fair we took you,” I said. “Since you always insist on riding at the front.”

This was true, and of course it made sense that the half-horse, half-men Negaret had been first to pursue us, Bakr and his men the first of the first.

“A little far forward this time.”

“A little far forward,” I agreed.

“I’ve been fighting fools for so long I’ve gotten careless about someone who has brains enough to trap his back trail.” He sighed. “If you’re of a mind to kill me, I wouldn’t object that much. Perhaps I’m getting old and foolish, too old to lead my people.”

“Yak shit,” I retorted. “You’re just a prisoner. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. When we leave, I’ll cheerfully turn you loose, not even requiring parole, for I know you’d not honor it.”

“What about you, Yonge?” Bakr said. Back then, Yonge had disappeared just before we came on the Negaret. I’d known the Man of the Hills had been a smuggler and bandit, but never that he knew Bakr, evidently well.

Yonge picked up the flask of wine from the courtyard floor, drank deeply, then refilled Bakr’s flagon.

“You were a hard foe,” he grudged. “But never murderous. I don’t remember you ever killing any of my wounded unless they couldn’t ride, nor was your name connected with evil.

“I welcome you, Negaret, as guest to our camp. Now drink your gods-damned wine. It’s cold out here.”

• • •

We sent out daily raids, but none as large as the first. One or two men would lurk on a trail and waylay a messenger; five men would ambush a supply convoy beyond Renan and fire its contents after looting what they had time to take; twenty men would rise from the brush and volley arrows into a patrol, then vanish.

My Kallians were particularly good at this, for this was the very war they’d waged against me.

Others, Tovieti, crept into the camp and killed when they could, with dagger or silken cord.

I was bringing terror to the Maisirians. We had only four killed and seven wounded in half a time and caused a hundred times more casualties among the enemy. I knew I had only a brief time before Bairan, his army, and his wizards moved on a large scale against us and I’d have to flee.

Each time we hit them with more than a few men, Bairan and his entourage would ride out from Renan, spend a day or less, no doubt tearing commanders apart and promoting, possibly even having those who’d failed killed, a rather self-defeating Maisirian custom.

Kutulu, Yonge, and I spent some time talking to Bakr, happily loosening his tongue with wine. Like the rest of the Negaret, patriotism only applied when he was winning, so he wasn’t reluctant to talk freely about what had happened since Bairan had come back from Numantia after humbling us.

“
Very
full of himself,” Bakr said. “For the first time, I heard tales that our king was thinking beyond our borders. Why should we wait to be attacked by our old enemies on the south and east? Perhaps we should do what we did to you Numantians, except strike first.

“That, I must say, didn’t meet with much approval at court, I heard. We’ve always held to our lasts, and expected others to do the same.

“So Bairan shut up. For a while. But I think he’d gotten the taste of being a conquering hero firm in his mouth, although all of us know Numantia was really beaten by Jedaz Winter and Jedaz Suebi, eh?

“That’s his right,” Bakr went on. “He’s the king; kings think like that. Or, maybe
don’t
think like that, for surely there’s no logic or gain from such fantasies.

“He decided he was going to turn us Negaret into crack cavalry, and tried sending out some
jedaz
to various
lanxes
to train us, make us more like regular soldiers.

“Two, I heard, came to odd accidents. You remember the tale I once told you about the king’s
shum
who slipped when walking by the river at night? At least one of those
jedaz
was given a liberal coating of tar and sent back to Jarrah without his pants. It was good that it was the hot season.

“Next the king decided he was going to destroy the Men in the Hills, in the Disputed Lands, which we all thought was stupid, because if that happened all the little city-piddlers would come to the frontiers for free land, and what would happen to us Negaret then?

“But,” Bakr said, putting one finger beside his nose, “that was but a ruse, and for a moment I respected this Bairan, even though he wasn’t a Negaret.”

“Burning my frigging city wasn’t much of a ruse,” Yonge growled.

“Eh,” Bakr said. “Cities are stones. You can always pile new ones on top of each other, can’t you?”

Yonge was forced to grin and refilled Bakr’s glass. I realized both he and the Negaret were a little drunk, and determined to seize the moment.

“Who’s the new
azaz
?”

Bakr looked frightened for an instant, then covered his expression.

“I do not know, Damastes, and would never dream of asking. Perhaps there isn’t one, for when we marched south I saw no particular pig of a wizard kissing the king’s bum, but rather he was surrounded by a host of those mumbling men who wish they could become demons.”