All Darkness Met (38 page)

Later the bent man wearily mounted his winged steed. His flight was brief. It ended at Liaontung.

THIRTY-ONE: Baxendala Redux

“Man, I don’t know,” said Trebilcock. He surveyed Ragnarson’s captains.

“What’s that?” Kildragon asked. Reskird was still grey around the gills from wounds he had received at Norbury. His left arm hung in a sling. Badalamen had overcome a dozen champions in fighting free.

“Might as well wait for everybody. Save telling it twice.” Trebilcock approached Ragnarson.

“Where’s your shadow, Michael?”

“At his father’s. Learning bookkeeping.”

“Last summer took the vinegar out of him, eh?”

“His father claims it gave him perspective. What I wanted to say.... I should tell everybody. Old friend of Aral’s dad showed up while I was there. First man through the Savernake Gap this year.”

“Oh? News?”

Ragnarson didn’t ask if it was bad. There wasn’t any other kind these days.

“Go ahead. Latecomers can hear it from somebody else.” He pounded his table. “Michael has got some news.”

Trebilcock faced the captains, stammered.

“I’ll be damned,” Bragi muttered. “Stage fright.”

“I just talked to a man from Necremnos.” Michael eyed his audience. Half he didn’t know. Many were foreign military officers. Most of his acquaintances were recovering from wounds. Gjerdrum still couldn’t walk without help. He’d had a savage campaign of his own.

“He says Argon is kicking Necremnos all over the Roe basin. The Fadema reappeared with a general named Badalamen and a wizard named Norath. Since then everything’s gone her way.”

A murmur answered him.

“Yes. The same Badalamen we whipped a couple months ago. But Norath, even without the Power, was the real difference.” He glanced into the shadows where the Egg of God lurked. It seemed excited. Did it know Norath?

“Magden Norath?” Valther asked.

“Yes.”

“I heard about him in Escalon. The Monitor exiled him for undertaking forbidden research. Everybody thought he was dead.”

“He’s running some nasty creatures ahead of the Argonese army,” Trebilcock continued. “The worst is called a savan dalage.”

“Means ‘beasts of the night’ in Escalonian.” Valther interjected.

“They’re supposedly invulnerable. They prowl at night, killing everything. Aristithorn has only found one way to control them. He lures one into a cave or tomb and buries it.”

“I hope our friends from the Brotherhood can find a better solution,” said Ragnarson. “I expect we’ll get a look at them ourselves. Anything else, Michael?”

“Necremnos probably won’t last through spring.”

“Anything about our friend in the mask?”

“No. But the man said there’s been a palace revolution in Shinsan. O Shing was killed. The Tervola are feuding.”

“Varthlokkur. That good or bad?”

The wizard stepped up behind Ragnarson. “I don’t know enough about what’s happening to guess.”

“Mist?”

The woman sat in an out-of-the-way seat. When she rose, the foreigners gawked. Few had encountered a beauty approaching hers.

“It’s bad. They’d overthrow him only if he were too timid. The Tervola have grown anxious to grab Destiny. They’re tired of waiting. As soon as they’ve decided who’ll take over, they’ll be here. The shame of Baxendala.”

“Michael, bring this Necremnen to Varthlokkur. Varthlokkur, if you can get in touch with Visigodred. ask him to send Marco to see what’s going on around Necremnos.”

Visigodred had returned home after Badalamen’s defeat in Moerschel. He was a genuine Itaskian count and couldn’t abandon his feudal duties forever.

“I’ll have Radeachar tell him.” The wizard left with

Trebilcock. Varthlokkur was developing a liking for Michael simply because the man wasn’t afraid of him.

Varthlokkur had lived for centuries in a world where mere mention of his name inspired terror. He was a lonely man, desperate for companionship.

Ragnarson peered after them, frowning. An hour earlier Varthlokkur had asked him to be best man at his wedding.

The pain hadn’t yet eased. Thoughts of Mocker made him ache to the roots of his soul. And in the wounds his friend had inflicted.

Wachtel insisted he had healed perfectly, yet he often wakened in the night suffering such agony that he couldn’t get back to sleep.

The temptation to drink, to turn to opiates, was maddening, yet he stubbornly endured the pain. Other voices whispered of his mission.

He turned to the Nordmen baron who was the Thing’s observer here. “Baron Krilian, haven’t you people found a candidate yet?”

Ragnarson hadn’t visited the Thing since his eastern expedition. There hadn’t been time. Derel Prataxis handled all his business with the parliament now.

“No, Regent. We’ve gotten refusals from everyone we’ve contacted. Quite offensive, some of them. I don’t understand.”

Ragnarson grinned. Men like Baron Krilian were why. “Anybody interested?”

“The Kings of Altea, Tamerice, Anstokin, and Volstokin have all hinted. Volstokin even tried to bribe old Waverly to push him in committee.”

“Good to hear you and the old man agree on something.” Waverly, a Sedlmayr Wesson, was the Regency’s whip in the Thing.

“We’re all Kaveliners, Marshall.”

That truism had faltered during the civil war. Previously, the tradition had been to close ranks against outsiders. The Siluro minority had plotted with El Murid and Volstokin. The Nordmen had been in contact with Volstokin and Shinsan.

The Queen’s side hadn’t been above it either. Fiana had received aid from Haroun, Altea, Kendel, and Ruderin. Ragnarson himself had come south partly at the urging of the Itaskian War Ministry.

Itaskia wanted a strong, sympathetic government controllingthe Savernake Gap and lying on the flank of Hammad al Nakir. The then War Minister had been paranoid about El Murid.

Ragnarson turned to the agenda, finally got his neighbors to lend him token forces. As the group dispersed, he asked, “Derel, what’d we get?”

“Not much. Fifteen thousand between them.” Prataxis leaned closer. “Liakopulos said the Guild will contribute. If you’re interested. He says Hawkwind and Lauder are still angry about Dainiel and Balfour,”

“I’ll take whatever help I can get.”

He didn’t expect to best Shinsan this time. Not without a hell of a lot more help than he was getting.

That evening he visited his home in Lieneke Lane, where Ragnar and his new wife were staying with Gundar and Ragnarson’s other children. The real ruler of the household was a dragoness named Gerda Haas, widow of a soldier who had followed him for decades, and mother of Haaken’s aide. Bragi didn’t visit his children much, though he loved them. The little ones exploded all over him, ignoring his guilt-presents to sit in his lap. Seeing them growing, seeing them become, like Ragnar, more than children, was too depressing. They stirred too many memories. Maybe once the pain of Elana’s loss finally faded....

Marco arrived two weeks later. He had overflown the middle east. He brought no good news.

Necremnos had fallen. The RoeIbasin was black with Shinsan’s legions. Tervola had allied with Argon and Throyes. The Throyens were camped at Gog-Ahlan.

O Shing was dead. And, apparently. Chin as well. The latest master of the Dread Empire was a Ko Feng. Varthlokkur spoke no good of him. Mist called him a spider.

“How did they get out?” Bragi demanded. “Marco says the Lao-Pa Sing is still snowed in.”

“Transfers,” Varthlokkur replied. “The Power has been coming and going, oscillating wildly, for months. They must be sending people through with every oscillation. They seem random, but maybe Feng can predict them.”

“They’ll come early, then. Damn. We might not get the crops planted.”

He planned to meet Shinsan as he had before, at the most defensible point in the Savernake Gap west of fortress Maisak. Baxendala.

Work there had been going forward all winter, when weatherpermitted. Civilians had been removed to Vorgreberg. Karak Strabger was being strengthened. New fortifications were being erected. Earthen dams were being constructed to deepen the marshes and swamps which formed a barrier across part of the Gap. A major effort was being made to construct traps and small defensive works which would hold the enemy while bowmen showered them with arrows, and siege engines bombarded them from their flanks.

Farther east, at Maisak-unreachable now-the garrison were striving to make the Gap impassable there. The fortress had fallen but once in its history, to Haroun, who had grabbed it by surprise while it was virtually ungarrisoned.

Ragnarson didn’t expect it to survive this time. He did hope it would hold a long time.

Every minute of delay would work to Ravelin’s advantage. Every day gained meant a better chance for getting help.

Wishing and hoping....

It wasn’t the season of the west. Already Feng’s Throyen allies were at the drudgery of opening the Gap road. They brought Feng to Maisak a week early.

Ragnarson stood in the parapet from which he had directed the first battle of Baxendala. His foster brother leaned on the battlements. General Liakopulos snored behind them. Varth-lokkur paced, muttering. Below Karak Strabger soldiers worked on the defenses. Fifty thousand men, half Kaveliners. Five thousand Mercenaries, Hawkwind himself commanding. Nineteen thousand from Altea, Anstokin, Volstokin, and Tamerice, the second-line states. The remainder were Itaskian bowmen, a surprise loan. They would make themselves felt.

Wagons swarmed behind the ranked earthworks, palisades, traps, incomplete fortifications. Long trains labored up from the lowlands. Baxendala had been converted to a nest of warehouses.

Bragi meant to compel Feng to overcome an endless series of redoubts in close fighting, under a continuous arrowstorm. Attrition was his game.

Marco said there would be twenty-eight legions supported by a hundred thousand auxiliaries from Argon, Throyes, and the steppe tribes. Ragnarson couldn’t hope to turn such a horde. He aimed only to cut them up so badly they would have bitter going after they broke through.

Bragi wasn’t watching the work. He stared eastward, over the peaks, at a pale streamer of smoke.

It was a signal from Maisak. While it persisted the fortress held.

Ragnarson used mirror telegraphy and carrier pigeons too.

Shinsan had learned. The Tervola brought dismantled siege engines. For a week they pounded Maisak. The Marena Dimura reported encounters with battered patrols which had forced the Maisak gauntlet. They finished those patrols.

Those little victories hardly mattered. The patrols were forerunner driblets of the deluge.

“Smoke’s gone!” Liakopulos ejaculated.

The mirror telegraph went wild.

“Damn! Damn-damn-damn! So soon.” Ragnarson turned his back, waited for the telegraphists to interpret.

It was a brief, unhappy message. Maisak betrayed, Tenn Horst.

The last pigeon bore a note almost as terse. Enemy led over mountains into caverns. ims! message. Good luck. Adam TennHorst.

It spoke volumes. Treachery again. Radeachar hadn’t rooted it all out.

“Varthlokkur, have Radeachar check everybody out again. A traitor in the right place here would be worth a legion to them.”

The weather was no ally either. A warm front accelerated the snow melt. Bragi’s patrols reported increasingly savage skirmishes.

Then Ko Feng attacked.

Two things were immediately apparent. Shinsan had indeed noted the lessons of the previous battle. And the Tervola hadn’t understood them.

Cavalry had ruined O Shing. So cavalry came down the Gap, steppe riders who had come for the plunder of the west.

Ragnarson countered with knights. Though grossly outnum-bered, they sent the nomads flying, amazed at the invincibility of western riders.

Three days later it was an infantry assault by the undisciplined hordes of Argon and Throyes, Again the knights carried the day. The slaughter was terrible. Hakes Blittschau, an Altean commanding Ragnarson’s horse, finally broke off the pursuit in sheer exhaustion.

Feng tried again with every horseman he could muster. Then he used his auxiliary infantry again. Neither attack passed Blittschau. The troops in the redoubts grumbled that they would never see the enemy.

When knights fought men untrained and unequipped to meet them, casualty ratios favored the armored men ridiculously. In five actions Blittschau killed more than fifty thousand of the enemy.

Ravens darkened the skies over the Gap. When the wind blew from the east the stench was enough to gag a maggot. After each engagement the Ebeler ran red.

Blittschau lost fewer than a thousand men. Many of those would recover from their wounds. Armor and training made the difference.

“Feng must be cra/y,” Ragnarson mused. “Or wants to rid himself of his allies.”

Liakopulos replied, “He’s just stupid. He hasn’t got one notion how to run an army.”

“A Tervola?”

“Put it this way. He’s not flexible. The pretty woman. Mist. Says they call him The Hammer. Just keeps pounding till something gives. If it doesn’t, he gets a bigger hammer. He’s been holding that back.”

“I know.” Twenty-eight legions. One hundred seventy thousand or more of the best soldiers in the world.

When Feng swung that hammer, things would break.

The legions came.

The drums began long before dawn, beating a cadence which shuddered the mountains, which throbbed like the heartbeat of the world.

The soldiers in the works knew. They would meet the real enemy now, dread fighters who had been defeated but once since the founding of the legions.

Ragnarson gave Blittschau every man and horse available.

The sun rose, and the sun set.

Hakes Blittschau returned to Karak Strabger shortly before midnight, on a stretcher. His condition reflected that of his command.

“Wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t see it,” Blittschau croaked as Wachtel cleansed his wounds. “They wouldn’t give an inch. Let us hit them, then went after the horses till they got us on the ground.” He rolled his head in a negative. “We must’ve killedtwenty.... No, thirty, maybe even forty thousand. They wouldn’t budge.”