Dragons of War (40 page)

The emperor lifted his head.

"All I can say is what I tell myself ten times a day. It seems like an impossible task, but with those two, anything is possible."

General Hektor coughed politely.

"If I might continue, I will explain our present force dispositions. There has been significant progress in the past twenty-four hours.

"In Kadein we have the First Kadein and now the Cunfshon Legion of the Red Rose. On its way and due to arrive shortly is a mixed legion of reservists from Marneri, Bea, and Pennar. The Vo Legion is now mustered and on its way. A volunteer half legion is being raised in Minuend and Kadein. The Cunfshon White Rose will join them inside the week. Soon we will have seven legions ready to take the field."

"In the meantime, the enemy will be raping Arneis," sobbed Sausann.

Valembre stretched out a hand to comfort the Lady Sausann. "As long as the people are saved, we can recover. Fortunately, our folk were warned well in advance and most have fled to safety."

Sausann was not mollified. "How long will it be before we can meet the enemy on the field and destroy this pestilential invasion?"

Hektor sighed. "Lady Sausann must understand the need for caution. We need to adjust the battlefield to our advantage." He gestured toward the map on the table, a large scale map of central Arneis. "We expect the enemy to come straight down the main road to Kadein. The town of Cujac should be empty by now. Certainly we cannot hold the place. The walls came down a half century ago.

"We hope to block the enemy in front of Fitou and concentrate our force there. Eventually we will have thirty to thirty-five thousand troops there, sufficient to take the offensive."

"Yet the enemy has such a huge force," said Sausann.

"Imps can only be disciplined to a certain point. After that they fight in a disorganized mob. With seven legions, we can go on the offensive. But we will have to be careful. General Felix has assumed command of the army, and we can trust to his judgment. He is a sound man with a long career behind him."

"Indeed, we know that the enemy fears him," said Irene. "They made an attempt on his life three days ago. They failed."

Sausann looked into the steely glitter of Irene's eyes and felt once more that it was past time for her to retire from the world. She was no longer capable of such strength.

It was over. The gate was smashed, the walls overrun by imps. The garrison either lay where they had fallen or were driven ahead in disordered flight, to be harried by the Baguti cavalry.

The mists were reforming, sliding the dark face of the mountains into obscurity.

Thrembode the magician climbed back into the saddle. Damn Lukash, he'd done it again. Thrembode was torn between rage at the fool and glee, for here was another opportunity to call down the wrath of the Masters on the general's head.

Thrembode spurred across to where General Lukash sat his horse, in front of a cluster of aides.

"General, I have inspected the fortifications, and there are no living defenders here. The imps killed everyone. There is no one left to interrogate."

Lukash shrugged.

"We go on. We take the pass, and now we go on."

"You don't understand do you?" Thrembode spoke in anger. "Did you learn nothing from what happened before?"

In the massacre at Fort Redor, even the senior officers had been slaughtered, and Lukash had done nothing to prevent it. Some of them had even been tortured to death, roasted slowly over low-banked fires. In vain Thrembode had pleaded with the general to preserve the officers. They would be wanted in Padmasa for lengthy interrogations. Lukash had laughed at him and swigged whiskey from a silver flask.

Thrembode had immediately written to Administrator Gru-Dzek, sending the scroll west by the batrukh that visited for the day's news at dusk. A reprimand had come the next night. Lukash had read that scroll and paled, they were unhappy about the loss of the senior officers. This was not to happen again.

Lukash made a face.

"Magician, you think you can restrain these imps? Think again. They are not like men. They are more like vicious dogs except more intelligent."

"General, you are in command of these forces. It is up to you to keep some prisoners so we can learn about what may lie ahead. These would have been especially valuable. We might have learned much about the dispositions of the enemy forces on the other side of the mountains."

"It does not matter. We are too quick. We shall strike through to the coast. You'll have plenty of men to interrogate then."

"General, I have learned that it is best not to underestimate our enemies. I have also learned that it is wisest to obey the commands of the Great Ones. You have gone against their expressed wishes."

Lukash squeezed his eyes shut. What did they know of controlling one hundred thousand imps?

"I told them to keep a few alive, but the thrice-damned imps got out of control. When they scent blood like that, they go mad."

Thrembode heard some growling behind him and looked over his shoulder. A knot of trolls was fighting over a couple of men's corpses. They snarled and swung at each other with heavy fists and tore apart the bodies. Thrembode felt a primal disgust.

"You should stop that. It is wrong to let the trolls eat men."

Lukash was a misanthrope of somewhat extreme views. Abused in childhood by father and mother, he had been taking revenge on the world ever since.

"Let them eat what they want. We need trolls to feel content. They will fight better that way."

"It damages the morale of our men. You forget that we depend on men to keep this zoo of an army together."

Lukash set his face in stone. Thrembode knew the signal well. Lukash would be impervious to argument.

"General," said Thrembode in a quiet voice, "the batrukh flies tonight."

Another scroll would go back to Padmasa. they would be unhappy with their servant Lukash. The next night the batrukh might be ordered to take Lukash back to Padmasa. Such things had happened before. The threat was implicit.

Lukash growled in his throat from the strong urge he had to simply slay this stupid magician, but he overcame it, turned, and controlling himself with a great effort snapped orders to his aides.

Within a minute there were troll wardens down there herding the huge monsters away from the pile of enemy dead. Horses were being roasted for the trolls; they were to come and feast. They had fought well and were to be rewarded. With grumbles and snarls of disappointment, the trolls slunk away.

Thrembode watched them go. They were necessary, he understood that, but he disliked them.

Lukash was looking at him with half-lidded eyes. Given the chance, Lukash would have Thrembode thrown to the trolls for lunch.

"The batrukh is a mighty beast, is it not, General?"

Lukash chuckled greasily.

"Magician, you will be very powerful after we conquer the Argonath."

"I will remain a humble servant of the High Ones."

Lukash nodded. A weird smile split his face of boiled leather.

"Everything goes well, does it not? We have cut through to their heart. Now we shall kill them."

"Everything goes very well, General, but we still must have better intelligence about what lies ahead."

"They cannot stand against us! We shall crush them and pile their skulls high beneath the sun!"

Thrembode nodded somberly. The general was obsessed with this image. Thrembode detected an increasing arrogance, and suspected that Lukash might even be thinking that he could take control of the Argonath littoral for himself and hoist himself to great power. It would be the act of an insane man. THEY would act immediately. Yet Lukash dreamed. He dallied on the rim of insanity. He might yet tip over the edge.

Still mulling these thoughts, Thrembode rode to his wagon, which had been set up on an elevated rock worn smooth by the winds. The mist had closed in now. The world was lost in the white haze. Inside the wagon, he prepared a scroll for the batrukh. It had to be very special, for much depended on this scroll. Perhaps even the life of a certain magician.

They were not alone. Swarms of small birds and mammals lived in the granaries. Flocks of sparrows flitted between the bins while rats and mice infested the walls.

Hundreds of cats roamed the premises to keep them all in check. Teams of imps equipped with rat-killing dogs would sweep through every so often. For sparrows, they limed perching places and sent slave boys climbing the walls with rackets in hand.

A lean black queen cat was slinking along the side of the cobbled way, ducking through the piles of discarded sacks and barrels. She would surely investigate this drain.

The mouse smelled trouble sooner than that, however. Rats were nearby, not far down the drain. To such rats, they would present nothing but a quick meal.

Above the drain, about three feet up from the cobblestones, there was an opening in the brick wall of the warehouse. The wren cocked her head with a chirp. The mouse saw the space at once, slipped out of the drain, and climbed the broken wall. Fortunately, the bricks were crumbly, and the mouse had no difficulty in scaling it. She reached the aperture and ducked inside. The wren joined her in a moment.

But they had been seen. The cat accelerated in a streak of black fur. The wren gave a shriek of command and both small creatures plunged into the darkness for their lives. A feline paw slammed into the hole and claws slashed through the very space the mouse had occupied a split second before. The cat did not give up easily, her claws scraped along the bricks again and again as she fished in the hole for that tasty-looking mouse. Her intended prey was safe, however, moving down a narrow gap produced by a sag in the brick course of the outer wall. The inner wall was slabstone, and the passage broadened out in a space between the inner and outer walls.

They paused. There was smell, a very strong one.

The mouse sniffed, hesitated. Feelings of primeval social fear went through the little female mouse. They were on someone's territory.

A moment later, there was a loud challenging squeak, and a large dark-furred mouse appeared out of the dark. It was a male mouse, a mighty male mouse in his prime.

Ribela's mouse submitted to the alpha while Ribela sought desperately to cast a spell. He bit the female mouse and mounted her and then bit her some more to compel obedience and submission. He was pleased, however, she was a pleasant addition to his current harem.

Ribela gritted her teeth through this performance. She could have opted for a big male mouse like this one for her animant, but that would have meant endless fighting with other alpha males. So she had taken a female. The things she had endured for the cause! She deserved a statue, someday, in the main square of Andiquant.

When, at last, there came a momentary relaxation in his grip, she twisted her mouse free. He sniffed, and his eyes glowed in anger. She struck him with a stream of high frequency syllables, a spell so fast that it froze him in place. It broke after a moment because it had been set so quickly, but by then another had been concocted and delivered. This one took, and the male mouse slowed down to a crawl. It could barely move. Ribela's mouse came closer and began a longer spell casting, face-to-face with the big alpha male.

Meanwhile, the wren's eyes were adjusting to the darkness. She darted forward, exploring the space, keeping her distance from the big male mouse, who would be dangerous until Ribela had completed her work.

In the back of her mind, Lessis blessed Ribela. Casting a spell through an animantic familiar was an incredibly difficult task. It required a perfection of skill. Ribela's mind had to use the extremely limited mental power of the mouse brain to not only keep the mouse going, but also to hold up its corner of the animantic spell, which was a constant effort to maintain. On top of this came the difficulties of speaking a spell through the mouse vocal equipment. Proper voluminates were impossible. It was like writing music without half notes. Fortunately, Ribela was note perfect. Within three minutes, she had woven a spell about the big alpha mouse.

By then other mice, the females of this big alpha and a few youngsters, were showing themselves. The larger females edged closer, intent on attacking the stranger. They were puzzled by the subdued appearance of the alpha male and slightly hesitant, which was a good thing for the witch animants.

Ribela relaxed her grip, and the alpha male came awake with an almost audible snap. He sprang about stiff-legged and chivvied the other females back into their holes.

The wren was ahead, her beady eyes peering into the murk.

They had a long way to go, and little time.

The alpha male was ready, he would lead. Their strange little procession began at once, and they headed off down the dark, irregular passage.

Along the way they soon entered the territories of other alpha mice. The first male would then either fight the male or submit to it, if it was even larger than himself. Either way, Ribela would set an immobilizing spell on it, hypnotizing it if it was in its prime.

In this way their numbers increased to sixteen large male mice by the time they encountered rats.

Four of the mice were lost in the first encounter before Ribela was able to control the first buck rat.

After that, it became a little easier. Soon she had a pack of rats, and the male mice were released.

The mouse and the wren now progressed with twelve buck rats in front of them and ten behind. They killed a weasel, drove off a cat from its sleeping space behind a wall of hay in the granary horse barn, and convinced a young stable lad who glimpsed the whole party as it ventured across an open stretch of stable, that he was having a religious vision. The boy was still kneeling there mumbling prayers to great Aten, for he was a boy from far off Kassim, when he was found by the stable boss who knouted him to the bunks with curses.

Eventually they reached the central region of the Square, a great empty space open to the sky. In the middle were the statues of the five titans, the Masters themselves, carved in heroic mode with stern, handsome faces. They were clearly meant to be gods. Heruta Skash Gzug was in the center holding up a rod with a glowing star upon its end. Gzug-Therva, the Vanua Omega of their cultic hierarchy, stood beside Heruta shoulder to shoulder. Prad Azoz, Gshtunga, and Prad Datse stood a little farther back.