The 1st Chronicles of Thomas Covenant #2: The Illearth War (36 page)

He spent most of the night reviewing every facet of his battle plan, trying to assure himself that he had not made any mistakes.

The next morning, he felt full of urgency, and he found that whenever he forgot himself he began to hurry Mehryl’s pace. So he turned to Mhoram and asked the Lord to talk to him, distract him.

In response, the Lord slowly dropped into a musing, half-singing tone, and began to tell Troy about the

various legended or potent parts of the Land which lay between them and Doom’s Retreat. In particular, he narrated some of the old tales about the One Forest, the mighty wood which had covered the Land in an age that -was ancient before Berek Halfhand’s time, with its Forestals and its fierce foes, the Ravers. During the centuries when the trees were still awake, he said, the Forestals had cherished their consciousness and guided their defenses against turiya, moksha, and samadhi. But now, if the old tales spoke truly, no active remnant or vestige of the One Forest and the Forestals remained in the Land, except the grim woods of Garroting Deep and Caerroil Wildwood. And none who entered Garroting Deep, for good or ill, ever returned.

This dark forest lay near the line of the Warward’s march, beyond the Last Hills.

Then Troy talked for a while about himself and his reactions to the Land. He felt close to Mhoram, and this enabled him to discuss the way High Lord Elena personified his sense of the Land. Gradually, he relaxed, regained his ability to say to himself, It doesn’t matter who summoned me. I am who I am. I’m going to do it.

So he was not just surprised when he and Mhoram caught up with the struggling march of the warriors by midafternoon. He was shocked.

The Warward was almost half a day’s march behind schedule.

The warriors met him with a halting cheer that stumbled into silence as they realized that the High Lord was not with him. But Troy ignored them. Riding straight up to First Haft Amorine, he barked, “You’re slow! Speed up the beat! At this rate, we’re going to be exactly one and a half days too late!”

The welcome on Amorine’s face fell into chagrin, and she whirled away at once toward the drummers. With a wide, sighing groan of pain, the warriors stepped up their pace, hurried to the demand of the drums until they were half running. Then Warmark Troy rode up and down beside their ranks like a flail, enforcing the new rhythm with his angry presence.

When he found one Eoward lagging slightly, he shouted into the young drummer’s face, “By God! I’m not going to lose this war because of you!” He clapped his beat by the shamed Warhaft’s ear until the drummer copied it exactly.

Only after his dismay had subsided did he observe what nine days of hard marching had done to the Warward. Then he wished that he could recant his harshness.

The warriors were suffering severely. Almost all of them limped in some way, pushed themselves unevenly against the nagging pain of cuts and torn muscles and bone bruises.

Many were so tired that they had stopped sweating, and the overheated flush of their faces was caked with dust, giving them a yellow and demented look. More than a few bled at the shoulders from sores worn by the friction of their pack straps. Despite their doggedness, they marched raggedly, as if they could hardly remember the ranked order which had been trained into them ninety leagues ago at Revelstone.

And they were behind schedule. They were still one hundred eighty leagues away from Doom’s Retreat.

By the time they lurched and gasped their way into camp for the night, Troy was almost frantic for some way to save them. He sensed that bare determination would not be enough.

As soon as the accompanying Hirebrands and Gravelingases had started their campfires, Lord Mhoram went to do what he could for the Warward. He moved from Eoward to Eoward, helping the cooks. In each stewpot, his blue fire worked some effect on 4 the food, enhanced it, increased its health and vitality. And when the meal was done, he walked through all the Warward, spreading the balm of his presence talking to the warriors, helping them with their bruises ‘ and bandages, jesting with any who could

.muster the

strength to laugh.

While the Lord did this, Troy met with his officers, the Hafts and Warhafts. After he had explained High Lord Elena’s absence, he turned to the problem of the march.

Painfully, he reviewed the circumstances which made this ordeal so imperative, so irretrievably

necessary. Then he addressed himself to specific details. He organized a rotation schedule for the leather water jugs, so that they would be passed continuously through the ranks for the sake of the overheated warriors. He made arrangements for the packs of the men and women with bleeding shoulders to be carried by the horses. He ordered all the mounted officers except the drummers to ride double, so that the most exhausted warriors could rest on horseback; and he told these officers to gather aliantha for the marchers as they rode. He assigned all scouting and water duties to the Bloodguard, thus freeing more horses to help the warriors. Then he sent the Hafts and Warhafts back to their commands.

When they were gone, First Haft Amorine came over to speak with him. Her blunt, dour face was charged with some grim statement, and he forestalled her quickly.

“No, Amorine,” he said, “I am not going to put someone else in your place.”_ She tried to protest, and he hurried on more gently, “I know I’ve made it sound as if I blame you because we’re behind schedule. But that’s just because I really blame myself. You’re the only one for this job. The Warward respects you-just as it respects Quaan. The warriors trust your experience and honesty.” Glumly, he concluded, “After all this, I’m not so sure how they feel about me.”

At once, her self-doubt vanished. “You are the Warmark. Who has dared to question you?” Her tone implied that anyone who wanted to challenge him would have to deal with her first.

Her loyalty touched him. He was not entirely sure that he deserved it. But he intended to deserve it. Swallowing down his emotion, he replied, “No one is going to question me as long as we keep up the pace. And we are going to keep it up.” To himself, he added, I promised Quaan. “We’re going to gain back the time we’ve lost-and we’re going to do it here, in the Center Plains. The terrain gets worse south of the Black River.”

The First Haft nodded as if she believed him.

After she had left him, he went to his blankets, and

spent the night battering the private darkness of his brain in search of some alternative to his dilemma. But he could conceive nothing to eliminate the need for this forced march. When he slept, he dreamed of warriors shambling into the south as if it were an open grave.

The next morning, when the ranks of the Warward stirred, tensed weakly, lumbered into motion like a long dark groan across the Plains, Warmark Hile Troy marched with them. Eschewing his Ranyhyn, he started the beat of the drums, verified it, and moved to it himself. As he marched, he worked his way up and down among the Eoward, visiting every Eoman, encouraging every Warhaft by name, surprising the warriors out of their numb fatigue with his presence and concern-striving in spite of his own untrained physical condition to set an example that would be of some help to his army. At the end of one day in the ranks, he was so weary that he barely reached the small camp he shared with Lord Mhoram and First Haft Amorine before he mumbled something about dying and pitched into sleep. But the next day he hauled himself up and repeated his performance, hiding his pain behind the commiseration which he carried in one way or another to the warriors of the Warward.

He marched with his army for four days across the Center Plains. After each day at his cruel pace, he felt that he had passed his limit-that the whole forced march was impossible, and he must give it up. But each night Lord Mhoram helped cook the army’s food, and then went among the warriors, sharing his courage with them. And twice during those four days the Warward came upon Bloodguard tending large caches of food-supplies prepared by the villagers of the Center Plains. Fresh and abundant food had a surprising efficacy; it restored the fortitude of warriors who no longer believed in their ability to drive themselves forward. At the end of his fourth day on foot-the thirteenth day of the march-Troy finally allowed himself to think that the condition of the Warward had stabilized.

He had walked more than forty leagues.

Fearing to do anything which might damage his army’s fragile balance, he planned to continue his own march. Both Mhoram and Amorine urged him to stop-they were concerned about his exhaustion, about his bleeding feet and unsteady gait-but he shrugged their arguments aside. In his heart, he was ashamed to ride when his warriors were suffering afoot.

But the next morning he tasted a worse shame. When the light of dawn woke him, he struggled out of his blankets to find Amorine standing before him. In a grim voice, she reported that the Warward had been attacked during the night.

Sometime after midnight, the Bloodguard scouts had reported that the tethered horses were being stalked by a pack of kresh. At once, the alarm spread throughout the camp, but only the mounted Hafts and Warhafts had been able to answer it swiftly. With the Bloodguard, they rushed to the defense of the horses.

They found themselves confronting a huge pack of the great yellow wolves-at least ten-score kresh. The Bloodguard on their Ranyhyn met the first brunt of the attack, but they were outnumbered ten to one. And the officers behind them were on foot. The scent of the kresh had panicked the horses, so that they could not be mounted, or herded out of danger. One Ranyhyn, five horses, and nearly a dozen Hafts and Warhafts were slain before Amorine and Lord Mhoram were able to mobilize their defense effectively enough to drive back the wolves.

And before the kresh were repelled, a score or more of them broke past the officers and charged into a part of the camp where some of the warriors, stunned by exhaustion, were still asleep. Ten of those men and women lay dead or maimed in their blankets after the Bloodguard and Mhoram had destroyed the wolves.

Hearing this, Troy became livid. Brandishing his fists in anger and frustration, he demanded, “Why didn’t you wake me?”

Without meeting his gaze, the First Haft said, “I spoke to you, shook you, shouted in your ear. But I could not rouse you. The need was urgent, so I went to meet it.”

After that, Troy did no more marching. He did not intend to be betrayed by his weakness again. Astride Mehryl, he rode with Ruel along the track of the kresh; and when he had assured himself that the wolves were not part of a concerted army, he returned to take his place at the head of the Warward. From time to time, he cantered around his army as if he were prepared to defend it single-handed.

The kresh attacked again that night, and again the next night. But both times, Warmark Troy was ready for them. Though he was blind in the darkness, unable to fight, he studied the terrain and chose his campsites carefully before dusk. He made provision for the protection of the horses, planned his defenses. Then he set ambushes of Bloodguard, archers, fire. Many kresh were killed, but his Warward suffered no more losses.

After that third assault, the wolves left him alone. But then he had other things to worry about. During the morning of the march’s sixteenth day, a wall of black clouds moved out of the east toward the warriors. Before noon, gusts of wind reached them, ruffling their hair, riling the tall grass of the Plains. The wind stiffened as the outer edges of the storm drew nearer. Soon rain began to flick at them out of the darkening sky.

The intense blackness of the clouds promised a murderous downpour. It effectively blinded Troy. All the Hirebrands and Gravelingases lit their fires, to provide light to hold the Warward together against the force of the torrents. But the main body of the storm did not come that far west; it seemed to focus its center on a point somewhere in the eastern distance, and when it had taken its position it remained stationary.

The warriors marched through the outskirts of the grim weather. The ragged and tormented rain which lashed at them out of the infernal depths of the storm did not harm them much, but their spirits suffered nevertheless. They all felt the ill force which drove the blast. They did not need Troy to tell them that it was almost certainly directed at Hiltmark Quaan’s command.

By the time the storm had dissipated itself late the next day, Troy had lost nearly one Eoman. Somewhere in the darkness and the fear of what assailed Quaan, almost a score of the least hardy warriors lost their courage; amid all the slipping and struggling of the Warward, they simply lay down in the mud and died.

But they were only eighteen. Close to sixteen thousand men and women survived the storm and marched on. And for the sake of the living, Warmark Troy steeled his heart against the dead. Riding Mehryl as if there were no limit to his courage, he led his army southward, southward, and did not let his crippling pace waver.

Then, three days later-the day after the full of the moon-the Warward had to swim the Black River.

This river formed the boundary between the Center and South Plains. It flowed northeast out of the Westron Mountains, and joined the Mithil many scores of leagues in the direction of Andelain. Old legends said that when the Black River burst out from under the great cliff of Rivenrock, the eastward face of Melenkurion Skyweir, its water was as red as pure heart’s-blood. But from Rivenrock the Black poured into the center of Garroting Deep. Before it passed through the Last Hills into the Plains, it crossed the foot of Gallows Howe, the ancient execution mound of the Forestals. The water which the Warward had to cross was reddish-black, as if it were thick with a strange silt. In all the history of the Land, the Black River between the Last Hills and the Mithil had never tolerated a bridge or ford; it simply washed away every effort to make a way across it.

The warriors had no choice but to swim.

As they climbed the south bank, they looked drained, as if some essential stamina or commitment had been sucked from their bones by the current’s dark hunger.