The Seer King: Book One of the Seer King Trilogy (66 page)

It was terrible going, branches whipping across our faces, across the animals’ faces, men stumbling and going down in unseen cracks in the forest floor, horses shrilling and mules braying in anger and confusion, their owners clamping a hand over their muzzles, hoping the clamor of the distant skirmishing would mask our noise. Lance Karjan, just to my rear, proved surprisingly vocal as we pushed on, muttering a steady stream of obscenities, some of which I’d never heard.

It was dark in those trees, dank and freezing. But there was more than the cold to fear — it was as if this forest had never been traversed by man, and was the abode of old gods, gods who were nameless, who paid no fealty to Jacini, but to eldritch deities, demons perhaps, and we all felt chill menace about us.

There were almost 10,000 cavalrymen moving through this forest, with 5,000 dragoons to our rear. We moved in ten columns, each column sure his shit-brained leaders had picked the absolute roughest route.

Eventually the twilight darkened, and the day ended. We fed our horses from the feedbags tied to our saddles. In these long columns there weren’t any officers, any warrant; no one could traverse the line to see how his men were doing. I was just a horseman, no longer a general.

There was only one blessing: One of Tenedos’s wizards had developed a spell to keep liquids hot, and so each man had a clay container filled with soup to warm him. That is, if he hadn’t smashed it against a tree, as I had mine. Karjan offered me some of his, but I refused, and crouched against a tree, wrapped in my soaked blanket, and gnawed at some dried beef, allowing myself a bit of self-pity in the darkness, worrying about Marán, worrying about myself, worrying about the morrow and how I would do, if we ever broke out of this demon-haunted jungle. It was too cold and wet to sleep, and fairly soon it began raining once more.

But self-pity is a shallow vessel, at least for me, and I found myself gririning at my own misery. We were well and truly lost in this forest that went on forever, and we’d never be seen, but be doomed to wander until time ran out and the Wheel stopped, and Irisu wondered where several thousand of his subjects had gotten off to and looked for us.

Sometime in the night, it froze, and I guess I slept, because I opened my eyes to grayness and long knives of ice hanging from the tree branches around me.

Lucan was looking at me, wondering why I’d chosen to put him through this torture. I fed him once more, and gave him a treat of some brandy-soaked sugar I had in a twist of oiled paper, and we were ready to move on. Now the cavalry marched without the dragoons. They turned to the east, toward the Kallian forces, and, using the spell given them, started for the enemy flanks.

About an hour later, the bedlam of destruction smashed into my ears from the east, and I knew the main battle had begun.

An hour after that, the forest ended, and we were in open brushland once more. A few miles away, the plateau ended, and roads led down toward the Kallian capital. We formed our battle line and sat our horses, waiting.

Yonge’s skirmishers had harried the Kallian lines all night, never giving them any rest. Now all would depend on whether the dragoons had been able to reach their position in time.

At first light, a regiment of infantry and another of heavy cavalry had made a frontal assault on the lines. It was suicidal, and the two units were decimated. As the Kallians moved out of their positions, to mop up, the dragoons attacked through the forest from the western flank, smashing out of nowhere.

Mikael Yanthlus and Chardin Sher’s other sorcerers had sensed nothing, and so the astonished Kallians were sent reeling, rolling up their own lines as our Numantians drove against them. They tried to hold, but it was no use, and they fell back through the forest. But it wasn’t the orderly withdrawal as planned, but a staggering retreat.

The dragoons returned for their horses, then followed the Kallians, so there was a bit more than a half-mile gap between the two armies. This was exactly what Tenedos wanted, he told me later, for he wasn’t sure how discriminatory his grand spell would be.

I still shudder to think what it would have been like to be a Kallian, shaken by the dragoon assault from nowhere, trying to save himself, trying not to give in to his fear, when the forest itself attacked him.

Branches reached down, striking like clubs or whips, smashing men to the ground. Roots rose from the soil and tripped men, and then curled around them, strangling them, crushing their bones.

Some Kallians went mad — and perhaps they were the lucky ones — seeing their native earth rise against them. Trees tumbled, with never a warning crack, and fell on command groups. Brush pulled at men, holding them back, keeping them from fleeing, keeping them immobile, as their eyes shot up, hearing the snap of a widowmaker and seeing it tumble down.

Crows rose screaming as their familiar perches shook, and the creatures of the forest darted out of their winter burrows in panic as the forest moved about them, far more than the worst disturbance a storm could bring.

This was the first of the two Great Spells Tenedos launched in the Kallian War. It was impossible. No one could cast it, had ever heard of it being cast before, I learned. But it had been created, created by one man. Men whispered he’d sold himself to demons, but then shook their heads. No. Even that price wouldn’t give that much power. No one knew how he could do it, but he had, and so the fear and respect his name carried grew.

I knew not of what was going on, but I did feel a queasiness, a disturbance, but laid it to fatigue or perhaps a chill I’d gotten in the forest My attention was locked on the snow-touched treeline, and then men came out of the woods, shouting, thousands of them, only a few in any sort of formation. They kept turning to look back into the forest, expecting demons to pursue them, but instead, from their right flank, came the blast of bugles, and 10,000 cavalry men charged.

I’ve said the Kallians were brave men, and so they were. Commanders bellowed orders, and some men and units had the guts to form squares to repel our charge. We ignored them and smashed into the mass of the Kallian Army.

Our charge lost momentum, and now we were a sword-swinging body of horsemen, trying to beat our way through the rabble. A man lunged with a pike, and I brushed it aside with the flat of my blade and sliced his arm away. Another man aimed his bow, but Karjan was behind him, and he, too, went down. Then something came at me, and I ducked aside, barely recognizing it as a regimental standard on a spear. Lucan reared in fear, sending me falling back across his haunches to the ground.

I managed to tuck and fell across a body, rolling to my feet, sword still in hand. Three Kallians shouted glee, seeing a dismounted officer, and pushed toward me. I moved to the side, so they were in each others’ way, parried the first man’s thrust, cut his face open, and he lurched back, and I lunged under his arm, spitting the second. The third had his blade back for a slash, but I kicked him in the stomach, then drove my knee into his face as he bent double.

Karjan was beside me, hewing down at the Kallians, his horse as battle mad as he, lashing out with its hooves. I pulled myself up behind him, and we shoved our way out of the throng, seeing a welcome phalanx of Numantian horsemen ride toward us. Then I was safe, and we were on clear ground, and I shouted to turn, and attack once more.

The dragoons came out of the forest and attacked as we came back on the Kallians from the rear, between them and the safety of their capital. They hit the few resolute units on the field, standing off from their squares and using archers to break them and send their soldiers fleeing like the others, and the killing went on.

Then there was nothing but white flags and shouts for mercy, quarter, surrender.

Less than 25,000 Kallian escaped from the field that day. But among them were Chardin Sher and his master wizard, so the war was not over.

But we’d met the enemy on the field of their own choosing, fought them with our new tactics, and defeated them handily. We’d taken heavy casualties, but only among the heavy cavalry, Linerges’s infantry, and the skirmishers. The blood-price was acceptable.

Now the way was open to Polycittara.

We reformed on the far side of that dread forest and made ready to fight on.

• • •

The next morning, a letter finally reached me:

I’d no more than sealed my response to this, feeling the leaden weight I’d carried for too long fall away, and hoping the war was almost over, when my tent flap was torn open and Yonge stumbled in.

“Drink with me, Numantian,” he ordered, and plunked a nearly empty bottle of brandy down on my table.

I uncorked the bottle, and touched it to my lips, seeing that, as drunk as he was, he’d barely notice what I did. I was right He grabbed the bottle, drained it, and pulled another from a pocket inside his cloak.

“So, what do you think of our famous victory?” he slurred, his voice hard, angry.

“I’m sorry to hear of your losses,” I said.

“Sorry? Yes, Numantian, I guess you are.”

“Yonge,” I said, “why are you angry with me? I had nothing to do with what happened.”

Yonge glowered at me, then slowly nodded.

“No,” he agreed. “No, you didn’t Guess I’m angry at everybody, and nobody. Nobody but one.

“You know how many men got killed, whittled away, a man here, a man there, a squad here, a company there? Damn near half my skirmishers.

“They aren’t like other soldiers, you know. Takes time to train a man to
not
want to go blazing out with a sword, but take the measure as he’s taught, and tell it to others, and let them fight.

“Prob’ly takes longer than to build a cavalryman.”

He drank.

“Wonder why that bastard did it to me.”

“Tenedos?”

“He’s the only bastard I can think of. Told me what to do, and I did it. Did it without arguin', knowing what’d happen.

“Damn the bastard.”

“What would you have done?” I said, trying to be diplomatic. Yonge, in a mood like this, was looking for a fight, and I knew the Men of the Hills seldom used fists to settle their differences. Even drunk, I had no confidence I could defeat his knife. “He said he was using you as a feint, to cover the dragoons.”

“You believe that?”

“I do.”

Yonge stared at me very hard.

“You remember, a long time ago, I said I wanted to study honor from you?”

“I do. But I think you’re now a better one for me to study,” I said.

“Shit on that. I still think you tell the truth. You don’t think there was any better way to start the battle? You don’t think my men were thrown away?”

“Why would Tenedos want that?” I said. “He knows how valuable the skirmishers are. Hells, man, he created the force.”

“He did,” Yonge grudged. “I don’t know why we was sacrificed. But I feel we were.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” Yonge heaved a deep sigh. “Hells. Maybe I’m just drunk, and mournin'. Maybe that’s all.” He lifted the bottle, and, to my amazement, finished it.

“Guess I’m not thinkin’ straight,” he said, and stood. “Sorry to bother you. You’re a man of honor, like I said. An’ I trust you.”

His eyes slid closed, and he toppled. I caught him before he hit the ground, and eased him down. I called for Karjan, and we made a rough bed for the general with my cloak and a pillow. He muttered something about honor and blood, then began snoring. I little wanted to be inside his head in the morrow.

I tried to go to sleep, but the absurd thought stayed with me: Why
had
Tenedos chosen such a sacrificial way to begin the engagement? It was another answer I wouldn’t have for years.

• • •

Now Tenedos’s magic held Chardin Sher firm in its vision, and because of that many lives were saved, both Kallian and Numantian. If he had not been able to track him through sorcery, we might have decided Chardin Sher would retreat to the capital, gone after him, and mired ourselves in street butchery. Probably the Kallian assumed we would do just that, and give him some time to regroup, for he fled past Polycittara, and took refuge beyond.

The Numantian Army ignored the bait of Polycittara and marched after him. Two weeks after Dabormida we came on his final refuge.

It was a huge brown stone fortress, walls many yards thick, that occupied the entire top of a solitary peak that commanded the center of a fertile valley. It was the ultimate refuge, and I think all of us thought the same thing:

We would all die here, under these grim battlements, before we would destroy Chardin Sher.

T
HE
D
EMON FROM
B
ELOW

The nameless fortress had an evil reputation. It had been built centuries before by a meditative order, its battlements intended to give shelter to the priests and simples of the surrounding country men when raiders threatened. But as the centuries passed the order became fascinated with the dark arts, and it was said they were more feared than any brigands. All manner of evil was attributed to these priests, including human sacrifice to demons.