Authors: Mark Acres
Shulana focused her mind with a great effort of will, and her consciousness flowed slowly back into the receptacle of her elven body. She rose and inhaled deeply, savoring the scents of the few trees. Then she strode to the edge of the copse and gazed through the spring haze at the walls of Clairton. It was time to return to the human world. She felt refreshed, renewed, and grateful to have her tasks more clearly understood. Sadly, they were not tasks she could perform herself. Under the terms of the Covenant, an elf dared not steal from, nor bear arms against any human. To accomplish her purposes, she needed the cooperation of a human. In short, she needed Bagsby. It was time to get her human moving. Once her tasks were accomplished, she would slay the human, in secret violation of the Covenant, and all would once again be well with the world.
Three savage kicks to his ribs from a mailed boot snapped George the miller’s son out of his deep slumber. A final kick to the side of the face ripped a strip of skin off his cheek and brought him to full consciousness.
“I said get up, you whoreson! Get up and get to your place in the ranks. We’re finally moving out.”
George sprang to his feet, careful to keep his head bowed in respect. “Ready, sire! Forgive me, sire!” he cried.
But the angry knight had already whirled and stomped away, his mailed footsteps splashing in the inch or more of water that covered the soggy ground. He kicked and cursed at two more sleeping men as he made his way to the bush where his heavy war-horse, its finely worked bards covered with thick, dripping woolen blankets, was loosely tied.
“Kiss me, sire,” George muttered, spitting a wad of phlegm, blood, spittle, and a chip of tooth into the pouring rain. The water burned as it splattered against the open wound on his cheek, and his side felt like a dagger was probing it every time he drew breath.
All around, scores of men cursed, laughed, spit, gathered their gear, and tromped and splashed around in the thick mud the heavy rain had created beneath their feet. All but one had ignored the brutal interaction between the knight and George; if they thought about it at all, they were simply grateful it was George who got the boot this time and not them.
“There’s what you get, George, for ignorin’ the wake up,” his companion Frederick said, pounding him on the back. “Hey, you lost a bit of tooth that time!”
“That great bastard. I ‘ope he gets captured and the ransom breaks his family,” George sputtered. He wiped his filthy, muddy hand across his face in a vain attempt to keep the cold rain out of his eyes and away from his throbbing cheek.
“Lot of good that would do us,” Frederick offered. “Our lord gets captured and his family goes broke. Who’d be paying then for our supplies? Besides, it could be a lot worse.”
“How’s that?” George grumbled, looking about in the predawn darkness for his helmet, sword, long spear, and boots.
“Why, we could be in that poor bastard Dunsford’s army!” Frederick roared with laughter at his own joke.
George, despite his foul mood, also laughed aloud. Rumor was that today they would attack Dunsford’s army, and before nightfall, George believed, he would more than vent his anger on the hapless wretches who fought for the doomed count.
“You’re right about that!” George allowed. “I wouldn’t want to be one of them wretches. Wait’ll we wade into ‘em. I always likes to catch someone right in the eye with my spear, then step up with the sword. You know, like we’ve done in practice. They’ll drop like wheat before the scythe.”
“Come on, then. There’s our company forming up, I think,” Frederick said, pointing through the rain to a barely visible throng gathering near the muddy riverbank. “Can’t see the standard, though.”
“No matter,” George replied, cheerful again at the thought of the action to come. “If we don’t get in the right place, someone with ‘sir’ in front of his name’ll kick us in the ass and set us right.”
A mile away, Culdus sat on a powerful, white steed and watched as the last companies of the Fourth Legion’s men-at-arms tramped across the badly swaying wooden bridge completed just the day before. The commander of the legion, also mounted on a war-horse, sat silently beside the kings appointed commander, thankful that his men showed no hesitation about using the bridge, which the swollen river threatened to wash away at any instant. The crossing of the Rigel at Shallowford had been carefully planned. As usual, Culdus thought, the careful plans were becoming worthless with their first confrontation with reality.
“My Lord General, that is the last of my legion.” Count Otto, the legion commander, had to shout to make himself heard above the sound of the accursed rain.
“Only a full watch late,” Culdus grumped. “May the gods curse the devil who sent this rain. It began while the bridge was still being built, and it hasn’t slackened for over twelve hours. I doubt that bridge will last for the crossing of the Fifth.” Culdus extended his mailed fist and pointed to the river, which now extended a good twelve feet beyond the bridge. The tops of shrubs could be seen poking above the surface of the swirling brown water. “Look how badly the river is already over its banks.”
“Aye, Lord General,” Count Otto replied. “I’d best cross myself unless I want to swim. What orders? If the bridge collapses, our first four legions will be isolated on the far side.”
Water poured off Culdus’s mustache as he pondered his reply. “Continue your march according to plan,” he answered at length. “If you encounter Dunsford, the First Legion alone with its six thousand should be enough to crush any force he’s raised. Tell Count Pomeran the honor of first blood shall be his should that occasion arise. The other three legions are to continue their march and try to make up the time lost here.”
“As you order, Lord General,” Otto responded.
Culdus leaned forward in his saddle, bringing his face close to Otto’s ear so he could be heard in a normal voice. “It’s that damnable Valdaimon. He’s responsible for this delay. I wouldn’t doubt that he conjured this rain to slow us down.”
Otto raised an eyebrow, indicating both curiosity and agreement, but said nothing. He felt privileged to receive Culdus’s confidence and afraid to speak lest he say the wrong thing and Culdus fail to say more.
“He tried yesterday afternoon, you know, to delay the attack,” Culdus continued. “Something about not wanting the convoy carrying that damned treasure from Parona to be in Argolia when the war began. He’s scried something in his spying ball that’s scared him, though he dare not let the king know it.”
“What could scare the greatest wizard in all the earth?” Otto queried, shaking his head vigorously to clear the water from the crest of his helmet, from where it poured into his face. “If the things he conjures don’t scare him...”
“I don’t know,” Culdus said honestly. “But I know this. The king would brook no delay. Valdaimon earned some disfavor by counseling him to wait.” Culdus stared into Otto’s eyes. The man is a warrior, Culdus thought. His loyalty will be to his fellow warriors. And whatever has scared Valdaimon won’t scare him. “That works only to our advantage,” the lord general continued. “Ultimate power in this kingdom belongs to the sword, not some disgusting thing that may not even be human anymore. The more he hurts his position with the king, the better for the nobles and the army.”
“Aye. I wager there’s nothing the old wizard has seen that can’t be killed with a sword of some sort,” Otto said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Don’t worry, Lord General. Your legions will fight, whatever it is they meet. I’ll see to that.” Otto dug his spurs into the sides of his mount. The great war-horse leapt forward into the still nearly blinding downpour.
Culdus watched Count Otto ride away with a combination of concern and amusement. True, if the enemy had strong forces across the river, he could catch four legions piecemeal. But Culdus trusted his experience and his instincts. Both told him that Dunsford could not possibly have gathered a force of more than four thousand of all social ranks. The four legions already across the river numbered almost six times that many men.
“Good man, Count Otto,” Culdus answered, nodding his head. “Good man.” Culdus turned his own horse and rode downstream to the head of the waiting columns of the Fifth Legion. There he spotted a man-at-arms with a large, red horsehair plume rising from the crest of his helmet. This identified him as a non-noble leader, a “leader of a score” in the new military system Culdus had created for Ruprecht’s army. The nobles had long resisted this innovation; they furnished the foot soldiers, armed them, and paid them from their own purses. In any traditional army the foot soldiers would have marched along behind their mounted lords, providing service on the march and protection in battle. But Culdus had changed all that. Now the foot soldiers were formed into “battles,” “hundreds,” and “scores” of their own, with non-nobles appointed as leaders of these groups. The men-at-arms responded well to the innovation; the nobles had cursed, protested, and resisted. But Culdus had the king’s confidence—and the king’s power—to enforce his will on the clamorous barons.
“Leader of a score!” Culdus shouted at the man.
The leader looked up, spat, smiled, and hefted high his great eighteen-foot spear with an eager war cry in response. Culdus was pleased to see that the rain had not dampened the spirit of this man. A high level of performance and discipline from these men was a critical element in Culdus’s revolutionary military system.
“Tell your leader of a hundred to take his hundred, strip them of weapons, and get them into the river. The bridge must be reinforced against the flood!” Culdus roared.
“Aye, Lord Culdus! It shall be done!”
Valdaimon stared through the door of the thatched hut at the downpour outside. He could hear the roaring of the flooding river less than a hundred yards away. His yellow skin wrinkled even more as his face drew up in a kind of malicious grin. He had conjured well, he thought. This should delay Culdus for a least a day, maybe two.
He turned from the doorway of the hut, which he had taken as his temporary quarters for the start of the army’s march, and slowly made his way back to the crude table in the middle of the hut’s single room. A fire roared in the hearth against the back wall, and a large black kettle hung over the fire, its contents bubbling. Thick, almost greasy steam rose from the kettle, filling the hut with a slightly nauseating odor. But Valdaimon paid no heed to his kettle; his small green eyes and his mind were focused on the large crystal ball set at the center of the small wooden table. Three times he slowly walked around the table, staring at the ball, muttering curses containing names known to less than a score of the world’s elves and to even fewer humans. A fat, shabby, dusty black crow perched on the back on the room’s only chair; it stood motionless, watching the old wizard’s progress around the table. At length the old man stopped, leaned forward on his great staff, and stared silently into the ball.
“Curse him!” The shout leapt from between Valdaimon’s thin dry lips, and the old mage raised both arms, shaking clenched fists toward the heavens. “Curse him!” he repeated, and then a third time, “Curse him!”
The crow gave a loud, angry cry, spread its wings, and took to the air, flying through the open doorway into the rain-filled air. Valdaimon could hear its angry cawing for more than a full minute until the bird was several miles away.
The old wizard slowly stooped over, one hand placed on his pain-filled back, and retrieved the great staff he had dropped. Then he collapsed in the chair, hung his head, sighed, and mused.
It was Bagsby—there could be no doubt. He had scried him first during the meeting with the king and Culdus. He had watched the little man off and on now for two days. There was no question it was Bagsby. Who else could kill two of Nebuchar’s hired assassins after letting them have the first shots? Who else could have gulled the nobility of Argolia into treating him like a visiting minor god? Who else could pose a threat to the most secret and most important element in Valdaimon’s plan, a plan that had been brewing in his mind for centuries, a plan whose fulfillment was finally at hand; a plan that was now endangered by the existence of a petty thief!
Valdaimon’s body quivered with rage. It was intolerable that this upstart, this rootless being with no ancestry, no heritage, no greatness of mind or spirit, this... mortal should threaten the undoing of all that Valdaimon had worked toward.
At first, the wizard had not been certain. He dared to hope his scrying had merely wandered into a random room to show him a random human, who happened to look something like the pudgy little thief. Valdaimon remembered his jest to the king about a thief’s dream; at the time it had been merely a jest. But even in that offhand humorous remark the deep recesses of Valdaimon’s mind had found the truth and spit it up. Conscious memory came a few hours later, as he continued to scry through the night to determine the meaning of that first seemingly random vision.
Valdaimon closed his eyes and summoned again the hated face of Bagsby to his mind. What a mistake he had made, letting that whelp live some quarter of a century ago. “I should have killed you then,” he muttered, focusing his mind more sharply on the hated face and on his memory of an event from years gone by.
It had been in Laga, a small city near the eastern border of Heilesheim, where the sand sea of the Great Eastern Desert begins and the reaches of civilization end. In Laga, barbarian desert tribesmen mingled in the streets with stout Heilesheimers who derived their living by trading grain, fine cloth, and baubles to the desert men in exchange for meat on the hoof, captured weapons, information about the relations of desert tribes and the contacts of merchants of other regions with them, and gold, silver, and gems from lands unknown. Merchants from all over Heilesheim sent traders to Laga to barter with the swarthy desert men within their black, flowing robes. The streets of Laga were narrow, winding, crowded alleys lined with the cloth-covered booths of Heilesheim merchants, traders, and farmers. They were also filled with thieves, sons of the poverty of a great trading city who prey on Heilesheimers and desert men alike.