The Seer King: Book One of the Seer King Trilogy (58 page)

I sat on Lucan seeing this nightmare, the worst defeat imaginable, and something broke within me.

There were other dominas with the cavalry far senior to me, and two generals. But no one did anything.

I knew I must.

“Trumpeter,” I shouted, “sound the advance!”

The horns blared, at first raggedly, surprised, but then strong, and the Seventeenth Ureyan Lancers, as they’d been taught, went down the hill at the walk to battle.

Shouts of surprise, possibly countermanding my orders, came from behind, around us, but I cared not. If other regiments joined us, well and good. But I could not see my country destroyed on this unknown ground by some dead fool’s mistakes.

Marán, my child, my own life, all were swept away.

I heard other trumpets, glanced behind me, and saw other regiments, shamed by our action, start forward. Then they were all moving, perhaps 10,000 men, against five times their number.

Thunder rolled then, and a man walked down the slope in front of us, toward the water, toward the ford.

It was the Seer Tenedos, in half-armor, but without his helmet.

His voice was the thunder, and the thunder was his voice. I could not make out his words as the spell rolled and crashed from the hills around us.

Raindrops pattered, and I saw the clouds had suddenly changed, now dark, threatening as his ringing words took effect.

Archers came from nowhere, and war-shafts arched over the Imru, landing among the oncoming Kallians, and then the storm broke, a roaring cataclysm, so no one could see more than a few yards ahead of him.

The rain lessened for a second, and I saw the Kallians, still hesitating at the ford’s far beginnings, seeing the Imru swirl up in flood, afraid to chance being stranded, and then the storm pulled a curtain across my view.

Men cannot, will not, fight when they cannot see, when their leaders cannot see beyond their horses’ ears, and so the battle was over.

I would be permitted to live the day, and not to have to make the sacrifice I’d offered Isa and Numantia.

Sanity came back, and I remembered Marán, and breathed a prayer of thanks to my wise monkey god Vachan and my own godling Tanis. But the field was littered with more than 45,000 Numantian casualties.

The rain-roar slowed, and I could see across the Imru again, see the Kallians pulling back.

Tenedos still stood where I’d seen him last, but now his arms were at his sides. He tottered then, and fell, and I kicked Lucan into a trot through the mire, desperately afraid the seer had been hit.

I dismounted and ran to him, where he lay facedown. I turned him over, and his eyes came open.

“Damastes,” he said. “Did the spell break them?”

“Yessir. They’re pulling back.”

“Good. Good. Took … took everything I had. You’ll have to … help me up.”

I lifted him, half-carried him to Lucan, and helped him into the saddle.

I led Lucan away, toward Tenedos’s tent, the sorcerer swaying in the saddle, barely able to stay mounted. Karjan rode out of the murk, and caught Tenedos, not letting him fall.

I suddenly realized it was late afternoon, and growing dark. Somehow the day had gone without the hours being noticed.

Now there was nothing but the driving storm, the cries and moans of dying men and horses, and the bitter taste of utter defeat.

T
HE
B
IRTH OF AN
A
RMY

When we reached Tenedos’s tent, a sobbing Rasenna helped me get the wizard inside. He told her to get a certain vial from a chest and shuddered the contents down.

I could see the mixture hit, see the gray pallor pass from his cheeks, see him straighten, see strength pour into his system.

“I shall pay for taking this,” he said. “Nothing is for free, and these herbs call up my innermost energy, leaving no reserves. But there is no choice.

“Damastes, collect as much of your regiment as you can. I want them as messengers. Go to all the dominas and higher you can find, or whoever’s left in charge of a formation, regardless of rank, and order them to report to the command tent as soon as possible.”

“That’ll take a while, sir, with the rain.”

“The spell should break within the hour,” he said, “and there’ll be a quarter-moon to guide your riders.”

“Can I tell them what the purpose of the meeting is?”

“Yes. Tell them General-Seer Laish Tenedos is taking command of the army, and will issue appropriate orders at this time. Failure to attend will be dealt with as disobedience of a direct order.”

I saluted and turned away.

“One more thing. Send a small party to the river, and try to find out what the Kallians are doing, if you would.”

I took approximate bearings, by guess and by Isa, where the Lancers might be, and started in that direction. So Tenedos was taking over the army, without orders or authority. But what of it? Someone must. As far as I knew then, there were no other generals on the field — General Hern still hadn’t been found. Also, I’d learned that in an emergency the man who appears calmest, who can issue sensible orders, is most likely the man to obey.

I found elements of Cheetah Troop in about half an hour, and they helped me grope my way to the rest of the regiment. As I finished passing along Tenedos’s orders, as Tenedos predicted, the storm cleared.

I found Legate Yonge, and, with five of the men of Sambar Troop, we rode cautiously down to the Imru, past the crawling bodies of the wounded, past the corpses, trying to ignore the pleas for help or even a merciful blade between the ribs.

I was waiting to be ambushed. Chardin Sher should have pushed pickets across the flood to keep in touch with our forces. But we encountered no one except Numantians. The moon was bright enough to see the far bank, and the raging waters of the storm-flushed Imru. All was quiet, and there was no sign of life nor of fires from an enemy camp.

Chardin Sher must have retreated, which in fact he had. Perhaps he’d not expected such a grand victory and frightened himself; perhaps he had made no plans beyond that day; or possibly he had no intent of taking the kingdom he so desired by the sword, but only by its threat, and now hoped the Rule of Ten would announce his majesty by proclamation. I do not know, but I do know better than to theorize about those who wish to sit a throne.

In fact, we found days later, when the river subsided and we were able to slip spies and small patrols across, that the Kallians had retreated all the way back to their own borders, where they began building strong defensive positions.

But that came later. The first task was to recover from the debacle of the battle.

Eventually the command tent was surrounded by exhausted, sometimes bleeding commanders. I was shocked — some formations were evidently led by legates and sergeants, since I saw many of those ranks shivering in the night.

Seer Tenedos mounted to the back of a wagon. His voice carried to us all, his magic drawing even more of his vital energy:

“I am General Tenedos,” he said. “I have taken command of this army. We were beaten today, beaten hard. But there is always tomorrow.

“We shall not be attacked again, not this night, nor in the next few days. The Kallians have withdrawn in triumph.

“They shall rue their arrogance, rue that they did not finish us to the man.

“I promise you bitter revenge shall be taken for this defeat. Numantia has just begun its battle.

“Here are my orders. Return to your formations. Wait until sunrise. Then look about you. There are wounded men, there are lost men, to help.

“There are a few who wish to shirk further duty. Tell them to return to their formations or face punishment.

“All those fancy wagons we brought, carrying our luxuries? They’ll carry our wounded.

“Strip them of the fripperies, and share those items among us all, a private having the same rights as the general who owned them before.

“There is to be no drunkenness, I warn you. If you cannot keep your men’s hands from the wine bottle, smash it in front of them. I order that any man found drunk be given twenty lashes across a wagon wheel. Any officer will be given twice that and reduced to the ranks. Now is the time to pull together, not fall apart.

“When we are assembled, as an army, not a rabble, we shall fall back on Entoto.

“There, we shall build a new, greater army, an army that will destroy Chardin Sher’s pretensions.

“And we shall build it this year, this season. I promise you, we shall be in the field once more, before the Time of Storms.”

That sent a shock through us all, that Time being only a third of a year away, and I knew it would take a year, possibly two, to rebuild our forces.

“Now, go back to your units. You are given license to punish doom-criers, deserters, and the lazy as harshly as your units’ policies permit. No one shall be judged for having obeyed my command to the fullest extent of the law.

“That is all. All of us shall leave this field … or none.”

There was no cheering; none of us had the energy, nor could we feel any cause to rejoice. But the steel in Tenedos’s words had struck common metal in most of us.

As bad as I dreamed the field would look, at dawn it was worse. But we’d gotten some momentum, and we were cleaning up and reforming. The hardest task for me was putting together a detail to kill the wounded, still-screaming horses, and I dreamed of a day when war could be fought with magically impervious mounts. Man might have a right to bring blood to his arguments, but he has none to slaughter the innocent beasts of the field in his disputes.

By morning of the next day we marched away from the blood-soaked Imru River. Behind us, a great funeral pyre sent flames and greasy smoke boiling to the gods, while black kites circled overhead, screaming disappointment at being denied their carrion reward.

• • •

The army swamped Entoto, taking over every public building for hospitals and quarters and sheltering healthy men among the population. Tenedos sent couriers to the river, to Cicognara, with a full report, and orders that the army needed all things immediately, from bandages to food to tents to replacements. He cobbled together a unit of signalers, and ordered them to build a heliograph line from Entoto to Cicognara, where it would tie into the main system that led downriver to Nicias.

The first to arrive from Nicias was what we needed least: The
Tauler
churned up to Cicognara and unloaded Barthou, speaker for the Rule of Ten; Scopas, the only surviving member of the Rule of Ten who’d been occasionally on Tenedos’s side; and a cadaverous-looking individual named Timgad, one of the new electees to the Rule of Ten. There was another man with them, a balding, pompous-looking sort wearing the sash of a general. He was named Indore, and was the Rule of Ten’s hand-picked successor to General Turbery. I knew him not, but asked around, and learned he had an enviable reputation for always having been at the correct spot, politically, at the correct time. His only field experience was on various staffs, where he’d made sure never to contradict his superior, fail to praise him for his genius, and try to take over his position as rapidly as possible. “Indore is his name and Indoors is where he made it,” was the bitter joke that went around.

The army, still wounded, still in shock, shuddered at what they knew was coming: The Rule of Ten would have some sort of plan, almost surely guaranteed to get us killed, and Indore would be the general to carry it out.

I was not present when the Rule of Ten representatives met with Tenedos, of course, nor was there any record made. But twice over the years Tenedos reminisced about the old days, and told me what had happened. Both times his accounts were precise, so I accept them as the truth, even if the tale is self-serving.

Barthou began by congratulating the seer on how brilliantly he’d served, helping the army retreat, although of course he suspected if General Turbery hadn’t gone down “on the field of valor,” he would have mounted a counterattack. Tenedos told me he refrained from asking “With what?” and listened, keeping a carefully polite, but blank, countenance.

Barthou had turned into a saber-rattler. Chardin Sher must be destroyed immediately. He didn’t see why the army couldn’t be reconstituted from surviving men, combining units to produce one single full-strength force. In fact, he was surprised that Seer Tenedos’s report had been so gloomy — why, riding from Cicognara to this headquarters, he’d been amazed at how hale and hearty the soldiers were.

“I would think we could march out against that traitor tomorrow.”

One half hour, and Barthou knew the army better than it knew itself.

Barthou went on to say the Rule of Ten had unanimously voted a tide to Tenedos, and wished that he would stay on to assist General Indore until he had “the reins fully in his hands.” Then, Barthou went on, no doubt there’d be other ways Tenedos could serve Numantia.

Barthou was about to slide into a smooth commending speech that was actually an eulogy for the wizard when Tenedos stood.

“Stop,” he said calmly. Barthou gaped, a man not used to being told to shut up.

“You say the Rule of Ten voted unanimously to appoint the good general. Is that true, Scopas?”

The fat man shifted uncomfortably. “Well, yes,” he said. “Not on the first ballot, but eventually.”

“I see.” He turned his attention to Barthou.

“Speaker, the answer is no.” Now the politician was completely stunned.

“N — no? No to what?”

“No to you, no to your lapdog general, no to the Rule of Ten. There are no witnesses to this conversation, but you may walk out of this tent, and ask any of the men your stupidity sent against Chardin Sher. Ask them if they will follow me … or if they wish to follow you, or whoever you name to caper at your command.”

“This is treason, sir!”

“Perhaps it is,” Tenedos said, his voice rising. “If so, it is more than overdue. Let me tell you what shall happen. All of you, including this sorry excuse for a leader, are going to leave this tent, smiling politely, and we are going to walk to a convocation of officers I called when I heard you were on the outskirts of the city.