The Conqueror's Shadow (44 page)

“My apologies, Davro. Perhaps if you stopped talking long enough for me to see anything other than your mouth, I might not have confused the issue.”

Seilloah snorted, and only the ogre's acerbic glare prevented it from growing into a full-bore chuckle.

“Yes?” Davro asked icily. “Was there something?”

“Why, Davro!” the witch said with false joviality. “Do you really think I would stoop so far as to mock you under such circumstances?”

“Which circumstances would those be? The ones where we're both awake and breathing?”

“Is there any chance,” Losalis asked pointedly, “that we might eventually get around to discussing the pending battle?”

As though waiting for just such a cue, the flap opened once more to admit Teagan and Ellowaine, followed by another man nearly as large as Losalis himself.

“I understand you've been wantin' to see us,” the chestnut-bearded warrior said, slumping down into a chair and placing one hand on the table before him. The other, fingers splayed, came to rest dramatically on his breastplate. “Well, here we are, sir, ready for duty and reportin' to be seen.”

“Stow the melodrama, Teagan,” his female companion snapped at him. “Let him get to what he's got to say so we can be back in our own tents, by our own fires. It's cold as Chalsene's ass out there!”

The last man to enter was named Ulfgai. A barbarian warrior from frozen lands far to the south, he'd been Losalis's second in command and had taken charge of the general's old company. The polar opposite of his former commander, he was pale, bordering on albino: His skin was pallid, his hair and beard some nebulous shade between blond and white, his eyes the light grey-blue of coldest ice. Unlike the others, he wasn't the least discomfited by the chill settling into the air around them. He had, in fact, left his heavy furs in his own tent and come to the meeting wearing only bearskin leggings and a light tunic beneath his breastplate.

“So why
have
you called us out here?” the southerner rumbled. “Perhaps you've lost the taste for it, but some of us have better pursuits in which to spend our few free hours.”

“You mean getting sloppy drunk and breaking things?” Seilloah asked acidly.

“You speak as though that was a bad thing.”

“The reason I asked you here,” Losalis announced loudly, “is that we have a decision to make.” He paused to ensure that all eyes were upon him. “Or rather, I have a decision to make, and I want your input on it.

“As you're no doubt aware—or,” he amended with a dangerous glance at Teagan, “you
should
be aware, if you've been paying attention—the Serpent's army is camped just outside Pelapheron. We're looking at a fairly hefty siege. Not a
long
one, given the techniques that Audriss has access to, but a large one.”

“Are you supposing that Audriss might hole up in this place for the winter months?” Ulfgai asked, idly spinning a thin-bladed knife around the fingers of his right hand.

“It makes sense,” Losalis admitted. “On the other hand, we're already a ways into the cold season. Any sane commander would have holed up weeks ago, and any sane army would have refused to come this far.”

“Hmmph,” the barbarian snorted contemptuously. “What you lot call winter—”

“However he's doing it,” Losalis continued, refusing to be sidetracked, “Audriss is keeping his armies fed and moving.” He turned his head slightly. “Unless you know of any reason why he can't keep it up?”

Seilloah shrugged, frowning. “Losalis, it's about all I can do to keep
us
fed as winter approaches. It's very difficult to make plants bloom and to call animals when they'd all much rather be hibernating. I can't imagine how he's managing it with so large an army, and since I don't know how he's doing it, I couldn't begin to tell you if he can keep it up or not.”

Losalis nodded. “I thought as much. So maybe he'll stop for the winter, and maybe he'll keep going. But in either case, I think we have to assume that Pelapheron will fall, just like all the others. Unless we interfere.”

Several shocked stares crossed the tent, forming a latticework of incredulity at about the level of Losalis's neck. They'd been trailing a day or so behind Audriss's army for over a month now, and they'd done nothing but harry the enemy's scouts, or ambush the occasional straggler. Those, in fact, were Rebaine's parting orders: Harass them, never let them forget that the enemy was on their tail, but do not provoke them. Let him continue to think Rebaine's army was no real threat, until the time came for a decisive strike.

“But is this really the right time?” Teagan asked hesitantly. “You know how I hate bein' the one spreadin' the doom and the gloom, but the Serpent didn't lose men enough to be worth mentionin' when he took Orthessis. We're still outnumbered by four or five to one.”

“Orthessis,” Losalis reminded them, “was largely abandoned and completely indefensible. The folk who stayed behind never had a chance, and we all knew it. Pelapheron, on the other hand, is a walled city with a full garrison. Not enough to hold Audriss off, of course, but maybe enough that a sudden strike from the rear could turn the tide.”

Ellowaine nodded. “A vise, then. Trap them between us and the wall.”

“Pretty much what I had in mind, yes.”

“If ye be wrong, it may just be costin' us our army,” Teagan pointed out.

“But if we
can
make it work, it may just end the war,” the larger man countered. “I've got scouts ascertaining enemy positions and viable strike points against Pelapheron's walls. You'll all have your specific unit assignments by morning.”

His grin was predatory, splitting his dark beard and making him resemble an unusually mirthful bear. “Get some sleep, people. We have something of a full day ahead of us.”

LOSALIS
, Davro, and Seilloah were once again alone within the tent's canvas walls. Grimacing irritably, Losalis relit the candle sitting in a shallow brass holder on the table before him, the candle that had guttered out at least four times already that evening.

“This is all well and good,” Seilloah said worriedly from the other side of the table, “but it doesn't address our other problem.”

“You mean the fact that Corvis has been gone for more than a month now?” Davro asked from the cushions, reclining comfortably and clasping his hands behind his head.

“Of course I mean that!”

“So where's the problem?”

The witch, exasperated beyond any concerns of dignity, actually stamped her foot. “Listen, horn-head, I don't give a damn about your problems with Corvis! We're all out here because of him, he's our godsdamn leader, and he's missing! What, other than making ever so useful and constructive comments, do you plan to
do
about it?”

Davro merely shrugged.

“Seilloah,” Losalis interjected, “what options do we have? Either Lord Rebaine was successful in his objective, in which case we have to assume he's got valid reasons for his absence, or he was unsuccessful, in which case he's dead or imprisoned. Since he's beyond our help if he's dead, and he's beyond our reach if he's been captured, I don't see there's much Davro, or any of us, can do.”

“If the two of you will excuse me,” Seilloah said stiffly, “I believe I'd best retire for the night. We have, as you were so good to remind us, a busy day ahead of us.”

The flap snapped shut angrily behind her, as though picking up an echo of the witch's agitation. Losalis glanced at the candle, which had once more blown out in the sudden breeze, and sighed.

WHEN THE SUN
, bleary-eyed and blinking, rose from his eastward bunk the next morning, it was to observe, with no small measure of surprise, the drastically changed world beneath him. The hardened earth and dormant trees surrounding Pelapheron were wrapped in a heavy coat of white, set to dancing by the light but persistent gusts that trundled through clearings and slid between trees. The world around the endangered community had reacted in advance, spreading a scab of snow across the wounds and scars soon to be inflicted.

Winter, long held in abeyance by the autumn's abnormal warmth, finally stretched its icy fingers across Imphallion, grasping its hard-won prize.

Not that something so insignificant as the weather would alter Valescienn's plans. Pelapheron's defenders were startled out of any lingering drowsiness by the sound of thousands upon thousands of men assaulting the city walls.

The Serpent's forces hadn't been camped long enough to have constructed any large siege engines, and they traveled with only a light complement of smaller varieties. A few ballista bolts lunged upward at the defenders, and now and again a small rock would smack into the wall, but by and large the invaders' tactics were limited so far to frontal assaults with scaling ladders.

Pelapheron's defenders, of course, were not similarly constrained. Catapults dropped bushels of stones upon the heads of the attackers, ballistae thrummed as they launched their missiles, and porcupines lobbed dozens of crossbow bolts screaming through the air to shred armor and flesh alike. The pristine white snow went first a sickly pink, and then a rich red. The shrieks of the injured and the dying swarmed like flies.

Though the torn and mangled bodies seemed endless as the stars, Nathaniel Espa knew well that Valescienn had thrown only a probing force at him. When a single trumpet blast from Valescienn's heralds called for them to disengage, what had felt a full-fledged offensive left only a few hundred dead in its wake.

“Report,” Valescienn ordered, eyes never straying from the blood-soaked wall.

“No exact count yet, sir,” an armor-clad warrior replied, breath steaming like a dragon's in the frosty air. “Quick estimates would be that we've lost about two hundred and fifty, maybe up to three. Enemy casualties are lower, sir, probably about a hundred.”

“Excellent.” The general's scars writhed as he smiled. “If you were atop that wall, Captain, you'd certainly judge what just happened to be a probe for weak points, yes?”

“Absolutely, sir.”

“Good. Then they should believe that the next wave is a real attempt on the walls.” His smile grew cold. “Pass the ready order to Mithraem and the gnomes.”

“Yes, sir!” The soldier snapped off a quick salute, which rang sharply against his helm, and trudged rapidly back through the clinging powder.

It was a tactic Audriss had used often since his campaign began, and it never failed to bring swift victory. The Serpent's entire mortal army, if truth be told, was little more than a combination of diversion and cleanup crew. The highest walls and the most alert defenders were nigh useless against the shadow-clinging gnomes or Mithraem's Endless Legion.

Valescienn gave it another hour before ordering his herald to sound the charge. The Serpent's warriors leapt forward, voices raised in a cacophony of disparate battle cries, weapons held aloft, but it was a slow, faltering charge, as boots pulled against the weight of the rapacious snow. Arrows and stones fell in a deadly rain, and men once again collapsed with split breastplates and crushed helms. It certainly looked bad for the attacking force, but then, it was supposed to.

The screams from
within
the walls, when they finally reached Valescienn's ears, were a beauty to rival the greatest symphony. The sheets of arrows faltered as the defending archers found themselves facing a threat from behind. Valescienn had hoped that the Endless Legion could take down the bowmen with no warning; an archer with his wooden shafts was a far greater danger to Mithraem's people than warriors with their blades of steel. Still, he was more than confident in
their ability to do their job with minimal losses. With that distraction to ease their way, the first of his human soldiers reached the top of the wall, and the battle for Pelapheron began in earnest.