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

So it went that day, and halfway through the next. The road wound on and on, never offering any respite. Sometimes the storm clouds blew away, but all they showed us was gray, wet rock, snow, and ice. Tenedos’s spell seemed to be working — we had no more encounters with the hill tribes.

None of us looked like soldiers. We were unshaven, with dark circles under our eyes. We’d tied rags around our heads and pulled our helmets down over them, and those of us who had the shabby sheepskin coats we’d used to disguise ourselves as Kaiti wore them over our armor and thanked Irisu for their warmth. I’d given mine to one of the civilians on the second day of the march, and secretly hoped he might fall dead and I’d stumble on his corpse and recover my coat.

I noted a cruel irony. Someone who was weak, unable to walk, would be moved to one of the wagons. But riding produced no warmth, and the storm cut through the rugs and blankets. At each halt there’d be frozen corpses to lift off the wagons, but there’d always be new riders trying for a place to sit.

One wagon was set aside for the dead, and they would be cremated at our noon halt. We had forty soldiers and about seventy civilians as casualties of one sort or another, more than half of them dead.

There was no time, no energy, to bury them, but we could not just abandon the bodies or we might as well be beasts. Tenedos produced a spell. The corpses were piled, words said, and they burned without smoke, without smell, without any more of a flame save a low blue one that looked like the one produced when brandy is ignited.

We had been traveling now for — and it took some thought — eight, no, nine days, and I knew my hoped-for pace of ten miles a day was a joke. But all we could do was push on, push on.

About an hour after the midday meal of the tenth, Tenedos sent down the column for me. I’d been walking with Captain Mellet, and we’d been trying to think if there were some unnecessary baggage aboard the wagons to dump, so even more could ride.

Allori had been riding Lucan, and listening to our conversation intently. Without being bid, she slipped out of the saddle and I mounted, and sent Lucan at a slow trot to the head of the train, just as it was stumbling to a halt.

“It seems the spell is working better, if a little differently than I thought,” Tenedos said without preamble. “My little friend appeared a few moments ago, and said that there were enemies ahead, waiting. He’d not been able to blind them with the sorcerous snow, but owed me the duty of a warning.

“Your department now, Legate.”

I felt my lips form in a tight, humorless smile.

I turned to Lance Karjan.

“Ride back, Lance, and ask Troop Guide Bikaner if he’d care for an outing. Also tell Captain Mellet I’d like a dozen volunteers.”

Karjan nodded, turned to his horse, then stopped.

“Sir,” he said, and his eyes were pleading. “Can I — ”

I was about to say no, but Tenedos spoke first.

“Take him if he wishes. I’ll fend for myself.”

I wanted a total of twenty-five volunteers, split between the infantry and cavalry. I could have had 250 if I’d wanted. Among them were Yonge and his hillmen. I chose him and two of his fellows.

I knew approximately where we were on the map, which I’d looked at as little as possible to avoid the heartbreak of seeing how slowly we were progressing toward safety.

I could imagine just where the hillmen would be waiting. It was a very good place indeed, where a small valley belled between two narrow draws. They would wait until we were in the valley, then attack from their hiding places, at the same time sealing both the front and rear exits, and cut us to ribbons at their leisure.

But I saw, even though the map was vague in its details, where I thought the Men of the Hills might well lay themselves open, especially remembering how they’d not bothered to guard their rear in the ambush at the ford.

I assembled my twenty-five volunteers and issued orders. We’d carry swords, knives, bows and arrows, no more, plus ropes. We tied off in five groups of five men and scrambled up the side of the pass. It was a hard climb, moving from boulder to boulder, never sure of our footing, slipping often. I nearly fell half a dozen times, and was pulled to safety by Karjan. I returned the favor four times myself before we reached the ridgeline, perhaps 400 feet above the roadway.

The map was now useless, but I had a feel for the terrain. I closed my eyes so there was no storm, and I was looking down on that tiny valley as if it were a clear summer day. The ridgeline ran almost due north, following the invisible road far below.

We moved along it, just on the far side, so even if there’d been a momentary break we wouldn’t be spotted. It was hellish hard, the rocky mountain steeply slanted, sometimes almost vertical.

It took us four hours before we reached the point I wished — or, rather, where I imagined the point to be. We should have been just at the far northern end of that little valley. I gave the last orders and signals.

Now to find a way down — and the only one was little better than a cliff. As commander, I should have gone first, but pride was secondary to logic I chose Yonge to go first. He unroped, and then tied off on a fresh line, looked over the edge, winced, and checked his knots once more. “Tell me again about those Ureyan women, sir.”

Before I could say anything he was gone. At the end of his rope another hillman tied a line onto it and went down, then one of my lances, an experienced man from the eastern mountains, named Varvaro. He’d barely gone three feet when the rope went slack, then was pulled twice, the agreed signal that Yonge had reached safe ground.

We went over the edge after him, and found ourselves on a tiny plateau. It was hardly what I’d call safe ground, since it slanted off at about forty-five degrees. But a small spring bubbled out, still unfrozen, that had carved a ravine that, to my eyes, looked like a highway leading to the road below.

We rolled socks over our boots, so there’d be no clatter as we descended. It didn’t make our footing any easier, but we managed to reach level ground without falling or raising an alarm. We were just where I’d hoped to descend — at the far northern end of the valley. Weapons ready, we started forward.

We smelled burning wood and heard the crackle of the fire before we saw anything. Then we saw, dimly through the snow, the hillmen who were one of the ambush’s “corks,” sealing the valley’s northern end. There were sixteen of them.

We went out on line. I waited, then yelped as much like a jackal as I knew how, which was not very, and we rushed them.

We were on them before they had time to cry out, and then it was too late. They scrabbled for their weapons, but our steel was searing into their bodies. In a few moments, the last was down. Without bidding, some of my men went from body to body, making sure all were dead. We needed no betrayal from
our
rear, and mercy had died somewhere along the cruel track from Sayana.

Following the road, we went across the valley to the south. We crept from cover to cover, thoroughly scouting each ravine, each draw, before we passed it.

We came on the rest of the ambushers in one of them, as we’d expected. The hillman, and their horses, had found shelter from the raging winds in a canyon cleft. It was only about fifteen feet deep, but gave excellent cover. Vastly experienced at lying in wait, they knew better than to man exposed positions until they must, and their scouts posted to the south would not have given the warning of the column’s arrival. Obviously Tenedos’s spell was working, since their
jask,
if any were with them, hadn’t sensed us.

We crept out on the rock above them. When we were ready, our bows strung and arrows nocked, we stood as one and fired down into them. There were a few screams, and even pleas for mercy, that went unheard. When the last man was down, the snow splashed with blood, we went into the cleft with our swords. We’d carefully avoided shooting their horses, for they’d be needed.

When we moved on, they were the only living things left in that draw.

They’d posted three scouts at the southern end of the valley. We surprised and slew two of them — the last fled into the growing darkness before we could stop him.

Yonge swore. “It would’ve been a mighty tale,” he said, “if we’d killed every last man.
That
would be a legend that would live long in the hills.”

“It’ll live longer now there’s someone t’do th’ tellin',” Karjan pointed out, and Yonge grinned agreement.

We were blood-covered and exhausted, but felt no fatigue, trotting through the pass back to our fellows. The word went down the column and I heard some low cheers. We weren’t always helpless victims.

We hastened back through the draw, stopped at the cleft long enough to secure the horses and loot the bodies of their coats, then went on, forcing ourselves to move beyond that second narrow place, out of the valley.

Finally, just before full dark, the pass opened once more, and we found a place to circle our wagons.

I sat huddled against a wagon wheel, Lucan tethered beside me, using a stone to touch up where my dagger’s edge had been nicked on the bones of one of the men I’d killed that day. I smelled bad, worse than before, but I was almost warm, wrapped in a stinking sheepskin cloak I’d taken from one of the corpses.

It had even stopped snowing as hard as it had been. I looked up and saw the little girl Allori. She held a cup out to me. I took it and drank the hot tea it held, and felt the warmth spread. She sat beside me.

“I have been thinking, Damastes.”

“Oh?”

“You said we are partners.”

“And so we are.”

“Well, if we are partners, and if I want to open an inn, doesn’t that mean you’d help me?”

“Well, that’s an idea,” I said. “But I’m a soldier, so I’d have to spend a lot of time away.”

“That’s all right. My mother …” and the girl’s voice caught for a moment, then she recovered, “always said a man shouldn’t be allowed in the kitchen too much or he’d start thinking he was better than he was.”

“Your mother was probably right.”

“Maybe Jacoba would help, too. I know she likes you. Do you like her?”

“I … well, yes. I do.”

“Do you like her more than you like me?”

I chose my words carefully.

“I like you both … but in different kinds of ways.”

“Oh. When I’m older, would you like us both the same way?”

I didn’t answer
that
one at all. Instead, I changed the subject.

“Allori, do you know if you have any relatives you can live with until you get old enough to open our inn?”

“I don’t think so.” Her voice became wistful. “I don’t know where I’ll go.”

“I do,” I said. “I know of a place where there’s no cold at all.”

“Not ever?”

“Not ever. It’s warm, and everything’s green, and there’s all kinds of animals to play with.” I talked on, telling her about my parents’ estates. If she had no one, they could take her in — there were more than enough women who’d delight in the little girl. Allori listened intently, her eyes wide. When I ran out of nice things to say about Cimabue, we sat in silence for a minute.

“Maybe I could have my own kitten,” she said. “I had one, back … back there. But it ran away.”

“You can have ten kittens if you want,” I promised.

“That would be nice.” She got up, then quickly bent over and kissed me on the cheek. “Phew,” she said. “You smell awful!” She laughed and was gone in the darkness.

We crept on for two more days without attack. But men, and women, still died from the cold as the storm came back, seemingly doubling its fury. We went on, dully, forcing ourselves, because there was nothing else to do.

Then, less than a clay’s journey from the end of Sulem Pass, Tenedos came to me.

“The spell’s been broken,” he said. “I can’t
feel
it out there anymore.”

“Thak?”

“I don’t know. I was afraid to cast any runes, for fear, if it is him, he’d sense us and know just where we are.”

I decided when we halted next, about two hours from now, we would reform into proper formation before moving on. If our magical shield had been ripped away, even if we lost half a day, the lost time would be worthwhile, since we were no more than a shambling herd of walking wounded.

But we were not given the chance.

They hit us an hour later. We were about halfway across another of Sulem Pass’s occasional valleys when the attack came. It was only by the grace of Isa that we had a bare moment’s warning when one group who couldn’t stand the suspense broke cover and, screaming, ran toward us.

The hillmen never attacked in an army, we’d been told, because they were too independent, with no minor chieftain willing to give up his small authority for any reason, even the finest of loot. But as with everything else in the Border States, this law was only sometimes a truth, because now the Men of the Hills came at us in close-ranked battalions.

All we had was a few moments to get the civilians to the far side of the road and down.

From somewhere I felt energy surge, and tore away that stinking robe and the headcover that made me look like a beldam, and shouted for my Lancers to turn to.

Other officers and warrants found hidden strength, and the sorry remnants of a company of the Khurram Light Infantry and Cheetah Troop, Seventeenth Ureyan Lancers, formed what would be our last battle line.

“Wait for them,” Bikaner was bellowing from the rear. “Let them get close or I’ll have th’ hide of anyone wastin’ a shaft.”

The first wave of screaming tribesmen rose before us, and bows thwacked and arrows buried themselves in their targets. The hillman hesitated, took a second volley, and fell back.

Another wave charged through their ranks, and they were hit by our arrows, but had too much momentum.

We cast our bows aside, and they were on us, and the world was a whirling mass of blood and steel. I cut a hillman’s legs from under him, parried a slash at my head and impaled the man who’d made it, spun, brushing a spear-thrust away with an arm, feeling another spear clang against my armor, slashed at that man without knowing if I hit him, then felt a searing bum as a blade cut into my upper thigh.