The Warrior King: Book Three of the Seer King Trilogy (45 page)

“Suppose that the army is a little late in making its attack?” he said. “Suppose that the warders
do
have time to turn on us? What then?”

“Why would we be late … although I can’t deny that could happen, and we’ve got to give some latitude to the operation? There’s never been a battle that went as planned.”

“Suppose,” Jabish said, “that your plans are just as Jakuns suggests?

Except that you
deliberately
want to hold back for hours or a couple of days to give Tenedos a chance to destroy us?

“Wouldn’t it simplify matters for you and for your brothers in nobility after the war if there are no more Tovieti? If there aren’t any of us still alive to make you keep your promises about a new day, a day with justice for everyone?”

Now I understood why they’d come. I could have gotten angry, but chose not to.

“Jabish, I’d suggest you ask around about my reputation. I could say that I’m too honorable for that, but I know you believe honor is impossible for anyone in my position. So ask another question of some of the men who have served with me before.

“I’m not that subtle a beast. If I want someone dead, I’m more likely to challenge them to a duel than to put poison in their chalice.”

Jabish looked disbelieving, but I saw a trace of a smile on Jakuns’s face. Himchai looked, as always, sourly thoughtful.

“But a still better argument just came,” I went on. “You reminded me of the Tovieti rising what, fifteen, seventeen years ago? The Emperor Tenedos and I swore we’d obliterated your order then. We’d killed your highest leaders during the rising, destroyed the demon Thak, and then winkled the hidden Tovieti out of every part of society, tried and executed them. Don’t get angry, Jabish. That’s what happened, and the past is beyond changing.

“I’m not bragging about that. My point is,” and I spoke measuredly, hammering each home, “there still are Tovieti! You’re strong once more, you’ve got soldiers in the open serving well with me, your agents are a big part of the skein I’m weaving about Tenedos, your magic and your magicians are used and appreciated. If I wanted you destroyed, why did I ask, back when we paraded through Nicias, for your members to not show wild enthusiasm, for fear of being exposed to the warders or the Peace Guardians? Wouldn’t it have been simpler to ask that you all wave flags with your serpents’ nest on it, so you’d be ready targets?

“If Tenedos and I couldn’t destroy your order seventeen years ago, why should I have the arrogance to think I could now?”

I started to go on, but stopped, poured myself a glass of water, and drained it.

Jabish had her lips pursed, but Himchai was nodding slowly, ponderously.

“There’s only one more thing,” I said. “If you don’t do anything now, if you stand aside from this final battle, what do you think Numantia’s gratitude will be, when the war is won, when Tenedos is brought down? A pogrom such as we held years ago is terrible. But it’s far worse when the people themselves savage their own.

“You’ve seen that happen, you’ve seen what ruin the masses can bring to everyone. How many of your best-laid plans, back then, were ruined because the people lost control, went mad with bloodlust, and all dissolved into chaos?

“And if Tenedos wins? What then? I can tell you truly that he has a terrible fear of your order. He knows you exist, knows you’re fighting with me. If he’s victorious, don’t you think he’ll wreak terrible revenge on you, just as he will on me and everyone else who’s standing against him?

“I’m sorry. This is one time you can’t stay in your hiding places and ride things out.”

My argument hadn’t been that organized or coherent, I knew. Finally I had brains enough to shut up.

The three looked at each other. I couldn’t tell how they signaled their decision, but Jakuns was the first to speak.

“We’ll follow your orders,” he said.

“Yes,” was all Himchai said.

Jabish looked at me harshly, her lips thin. She and I would never be friends.

“We’ll fight,” she said. “But don’t think for a moment of betrayal.”

She stalked out of the tent, and the other two followed. Jakuns looked back, shrugged in what might have been slight apology, then the flap fell closed.

The last thing I needed was dissent this close to battle. I gritted my teeth, then started to consider the map I’d been studying.

Not five minutes later, Svalbard tapped at the tent pole.

“Yes?”

“Kutulu to see you.”

What now?

“Send him in.”

The slight man entered.

“You handled the matter with the Tovieti well.”

“You heard?”

“Of course.”

“All right,” I said, somewhat amused. “How do you eavesdrop in a tent that’s got Svalbard in front, damn all in the way of furniture to hide behind, plus half a dozen other sentries all around it making it impossible to approach secretively. Magic?”

“I’m not a wizard,” Kutulu said, frowning.

“But you have your methods?”

He nodded, saw me smiling, and his lips bent a little.

“I’m glad you approve of what I did,” I said. “Hopefully, the problem is solved, and we can continue worrying about the real enemy. Is there anything else?”

“I was wondering if it would improve the situation if that woman Jabish had an accident.”

“Fatal?”

“I can’t think of anything else that’d stop her troublemaking.”

“It’s tempting,” I admitted. “But no.”

“You’re sure.”

“I’m sure.” I chose my tone carefully, for I didn’t want to offend the Snake Who Never Sleeps. “That way is Tenedos’s way. Not mine.”

Kutulu half rose, then sat back down. His face was even paler than before. He bobbed his head.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right to reprove me. I wasn’t thinking.”

“My friend,” I said gently. “I wasn’t reproaching you, just reminding you of how I work.”

Again a touch of a smile came, and he rose.

“Thank you, Damastes. I, uh, I chose the right man to follow.”

Before I could respond, he scurried out. I shook my head. A very strange man, one none of us really knew.

I went back to the map and its simple lines, curves, and colors.

• • •

The phony rafts were going together well, and word came from upriver that the logging was also on schedule. More soldiers went south to join them, this time with just their arms, and Linerges and Ilkley went with them, together with a lot of our Tovieti warriors. They’d be the first to see action, and I hoped this would convince Jakuns and the others that I had no intention of deliberately sacrificing the Tovieti.

I also arrived at an emergency plan, a terrible last resort that would be far bloodier than what I’d already foreseen. Then I prayed I would never have to use it.

Command of the camp went to Chuvash, and I set the hour for the battle to begin, the battle that must end the war.

A battle always starts at night, even when the actual fighting doesn’t.

First are the sappers, those seldom-honored laborer-soldiers who make the fortifications, build the bridges, lay out the roads and then, as frequently as not, die fighting on them.

I could imagine every part of this battlefield, although it was far scattered.

Dusk …

Far upriver, the sappers labored, heaving the huge logs into the river, mooring them to the banks in long lines.

The wizards, too, haven’t slept, craftily building their spells to unloose at the right moment.

Full dark …

The magicians, here and upriver, cast spells of confusion, of fear, panic, and doubt. My few master sorcerers attempted to summon insects and vermin to the enemy lines, although this is seldom successful.

Other spells had been cast earlier, spells against rain, so the Latane’s current was very slow, and the river itself low, even lower than normal at the beginning of the Time of Heat.

There are others who didn’t sleep — those who’d been told off for the first wave; those who were about to enter their first battle; and, though they never admit it, their commanders, who pretend calm, confidence.

The assault troops upriver, Yonge’s skirmishers and the chosen infantrymen, waded into the water, and pulled themselves onto the logs or tied themselves to a branch, and the sappers pushed the logs out to be taken downriver, toward Nicias, by the current.

I’d become a master of faking it, of lying still and breathing deeply, appearing completely at ease, assured of victory. A few times I’d even deceived myself and had to be wakened at the proper hour.

Not this time, with everything riding on the matter and the battle plan itself ridiculously complex. Without Cymea, who would be among the first to go into action, there wasn’t much point in lying sleepless in my tent.

I went there for a couple of hours around midnight, but then returned to the command tent.

One of Kutulu’s spies, just across the river from us, in the heart of the enemy’s lines, moved past a guard post, around a warehouse, then out on a small dock. He slid down a rope into a small canoe and cast loose. He dipped his paddle slowly, careful to never make a splash, and let the river take him across. He met the challenge of one of my vedettes, was hurried to my headquarters. There was no sign Tenedos had found us out, and the army was on only quarter-alert.

Someone once said there’s never been a battle plan that survived the first spear cast, when all deteriorates into confusion, with only the poor foot soldier perhaps knowing what’s going on, his task no more than killing the man who stands against him, and then another and another until there’s no one left to slaughter or he himself welters in his gore.

The discs Sinait had used to show me Tenedos, back when we were building the army, had been improved. She’d found sometimes a picture could be made out, but more often the magician who carried it might be able to talk into it, and his words understood by all others with the mirrors. The problem would be not only hoping this spell would survive Tenedos’s magicians, but that everyone didn’t babble at the same time.

The logs were roiled downstream, soldiers clinging to them just as Cymea and I’d lashed our boat to a great log. Here and there, someone slipped off, or a log rolled and men were flung into the water, some managing to swim ashore, others being pulled under, men whose bravery had bade them make foolish claims about their water talents.

But the logs rushed on, hundreds of them, with fifteen or more men on each log.

That afternoon Sinait had a pavilion pitched near the river, just behind a hill to hide her actions from the enemy, and then began digging with a small, ensorcelled trowel. She could have been a somewhat oversize child at play, making tiny ditches for toy boats.

But this was hardly play.

When she’d finished sculpting the mud, she went to the Latane with her guards and ceremoniously filled a bucket, emptied it again, while chanting, then filled other buckets and poured them into the little ditches.

Now, deep in the night, braziers were lit and her magicians began chanting, and strange smells and sparks grew. The muddy water in her ditch appeared to begin flowing, as if it was part of a river with an invisible headwaters and mouth. I blinked, seeing the ground blur and change, until it was a perfect model of the Latane.

Sinait continued chanting, more loudly, still in a language I knew not, went to one end of her ditch, and opened a sack. From it she took minuscule splinters, barely visible to the eye, and carefully set them in the water. These were fragments cut from the logs now carrying soldiers toward Nicias.

The camp around me was silent, dark, but the men in their tents were awake, waiting, arms at hand. When the assault wave secured the peninsula, and the boats the Army of Numantia had assembled, they’d cross as reinforcements, and the battle for Nicias proper would begin.

The current took the bits of wood, washed them very slowly down toward the other end of the ditch.

Now we’d see whether her spell would take, whether she would, as promised, be able to guide these logs down the Latane into the branch on the other side of the peninsula across from us.

Amazingly, the splinters did just that, sliding into the proper channel.

Her chant changed, and they began drifting toward the banks and grounding.

I rode back to the command tent, dismounted, and listened.

Nothing for long moments. Had my troops run into some kind of trap and been cut down in awful silence? Then I faintly heard bugles and, across the water, saw torches flare as Tenedos’s troops came awake.

Svalbard came out of the tent.

“Sir. The wizards say we’re getting something from those mirrors.”

I hurried inside. One of Sinait’s magicians held up his disc, which was now blank.

“We had them for just a moment, sir. No picture, but a scatter of words. I think it was Angara, who was supposed to be with the lead elements. She said, and I’m repeating exactly, ‘ashore … by surprise … guards …’ then it cut off.”

Another magician yelped. There was a swirling flash on his mirror, then it steadied, and I saw a building in flames, running figures outlined by the fire, and a man’s calm voice: “second wing skirmishers ashore, a hundred yards short of where we were supposed to be, but no problem. No enemy waiting, all of our soldiers landed successfully, now moving — ”

His words cut off. Three, then four other sorcerers were reporting, and it appeared we’d landed successfully, Tenedos and the Army of Numantia caught in complete surprise.

Yet another bowl lit, and this one showed nothing for a long moment. “Sir,” a magician said, “this is one of the ones we gave the Tovieti.”

A woman’s voice suddenly came: “We’re moving into the main streets now. We fired Drumceat’s palace, he’s definitely dead. We hold Chercherin firm. So far, no response from the dog-emperor’s warders. Please hurry with your soldiers.”

I told Chuvash to get the troops assembled and sent a message to Sinait congratulating her, telling her to return to headquarters and begin the next stage of the wizard’s battle.