Authors: Miles Cameron
Random scrunched up his face. It was cold, there was snow coming, and this was not a place to camp. ‘Who here has built a bridge before?’ he asked.
None of them had.
Random nodded. ‘I have. Mag, all we need is three piers. I could mark them for you with flags. If you can put – I don’t know, a pile of rock, a pillar? – fifteen feet wide, flat on top – on each spot then the lads can cut wood on the slopes over there and we have a bridge by nightfall.’
Mag measured it by eye. ‘I’ll try one, and we’ll see.’
They made a miserable camp half a league back from the river, and built enormous fires, and ate dried food and drank hot water. Men heated rocks in the fire and put them at their feet to sleep. Men slept three under each blanket, in long rows like salt mackerel packed in crates. The army’s women found themselves in high demand – for warmth.
Mag had two piers in place, but they required so much more effort than any casting she’d ever worked that she needed a night’s rest to work on a third.
The sun rose, somewhere beyond the snow clouds. Her first pier had half-collapsed into the water. She hadn’t built the web of the working clearly enough in her mind, and there were voids and soft spots in her rock.
Random sat by the riverbank with Bad Tom when she came out, rubbing her eyes and cursing the tight lacing of her second and third kirtles and the new pains in her hips which kept her from a good night’s sleep. And the collapse of her pier. She was looking at it when she put her foot on an icy rock and down she went.
She was undamaged by the fall, but she rubbed her hip ruefully as the two knights helped her up. ‘I’ve gone about this all wrong,’ she said. ‘The answer is ice.’
‘Ice?’ Random asked.
‘The water wants to be ice already,’ Mag said. ‘All I have to do is stitch it together. I tried using one of Harmodius’s workings – and I’m far from mastering it. But this is my old milk bucket in winter. In reverse.’
She raised her hands. In her right hand was the silver bodkin from her sewing kit, and she waved it, and the river flowed upwards, stilled and then froze into the form of three uneven piers supported a roadbed of solid ice. It was more organic than regular. But it was there. The two nearer piers were even supported by her earlier work with stone.
‘I’ll hold it until we’re across. I’m sorry, Gerald. I should have thought of it yesterday.’
Random grinned.
Bad Tom grinned. ‘Now we fight!’ he said happily.
An hour later, the army was rolling across the bridge. Mag paled a little as the last three heavy wagons crossed, but the ice didn’t crack.
‘There they are,’ Gelfred said. It was entirely unnecessary, as Demetrius’s men did not have white wool cotes or horse blankets to hide them. They did have multiple horses, and they were moving fast along the valley floor below, raising a haze of fine snow as they went.
They had a baggage train with them – sixteen wagons and pack animals.
The Duke watched for as long as it took the sun to climb another finger, and then he belly-crawled back over the ridge and ran to his horse. A dozen Vardariotes were there, and Count Zac, and Ser Michael.
‘He’s a hot-head, yes?’ the Duke asked.
White-clad horsemen swept over the low ridge that the road was climbing and loosed arrows from carefully warmed bows into the front of the Despot’s fast-moving column. Three men went down, and their blood was like red smoke on the white snow.
An hour later, it happened again. This time six arrows went home. The enemy were all in white, with horse blankets and wool gowns that covered their weapons and armour. They were almost silent, and very hard to spot in the sunlight.
Demetrius took a nip of fortified wine and shook his head. The bright sun made it hard to see
anything
among the bare trees on the ridges. If he slowed down, he had no chance of winning the race to the crossings of the Meander. If he ignored these pin-pricks, he was going to lose men.
‘Sabres,’ he said aloud. ‘Listen, Hetaeroi. When they come again let them come in close, and then charge. Everyone at them. Take me a prisoner.’
His own Thrakians nodded soberly. The Eastern mercenaries grinned.
An hour passed, as if the enemy had heard his plan, and he grew angry. When he halted to let his men eat, a single bolt from a crossbow – launched from high above – killed a pack horse. All the men took cover at once, but there were no more bolts.
As they mounted after their hasty meal, silent arrows fell like sleet from the increasingly cloudy sky, and there was no enemy on which he could vent his rage.
He gritted his teeth and led his men forward, putting a vanguard party almost five hundred paces ahead and another as far behind the wagons.
Count Zac shook his head. ‘This is taking too long,’ he said. ‘Let’s just fall on him.’
The Duke grinned. ‘I’m enjoying myself, Zac. This is art. There’s no hurry – the wagon trains will roll today, and the army is at the Meander. All we have to do is keep Demetrius off the ford.’
‘Is waste,’ Zac said. ‘Waste of arrows. We have good ground and better horses.’
The Duke frowned. ‘But why lose anyone? You know as well as I that almost every wound in this weather is a kill.’
Zac shrugged. ‘But it’s boring?’
The sun was starting its long slide to a bitterly cold darkness when the valley narrowed. Demetrius could feel the ambush coming, and he loosened the long, curved blade under his left thigh. His Easterners had kept their bows under their saddle blankets for a league.
His vanguard vanished into a hollow, and then turned, with two empty saddles, and galloped in a spray of snow back towards him. Just as they’d been told.
The apparently victorious enemy took the bait and followed, whooping, losing shafts at the rapidly retreating vanguard.
Demetrius’s Easterners waited as the vanguard pounded back along the frozen road. The white-clad enemy came closer and closer to the column—
Demetrius winded his horn and the whole column exploded into motion – the Easterners swinging wide to the right and left, the Thrakian stradiotes galloping down the road. Captain Dariusz rode with his lord, watching the ridge to the south with obvious suspicion.
They pounded along the snow-covered road, but in fifty horse lengths it became obvious that the enemy were better mounted, and even in the cold, they fled over the snow faster than the Thrakian horses could catch them. And their arrows, loosed over the backs of their saddles, were deadly.
They pursued the enemy – Vardariotes, Demetrius was forced to conclude – over the next ridge. Then their horses were winded. So were the horses of the men they were pursuing, but Demetrius had played this game before. He had to ignore the insults shouted in three languages from the men he’d just chased. His three hundred men had failed to catch them.
A single man detached from the distant enemy raiders and trotted his horse across the open field towards the Despot and his men. The wind whipped at them and raised a fringe of blown snow, which burned men where it struck, and then the white-clad man was much closer. He had a red lance pennon and red horse furniture.
‘Demetrius!’ he called. ‘Come and break a lance with me!’
Ser Tyranos put a hand on his sleeve. ‘Do not!’ he said.
Demetrius looked for his scout Prokrustatore. The man nodded. ‘That’s their Captain,’ he shouted.
‘What a fool,’ Demetrius said. ‘Tyranos, go kill him. Vardek, Vugar – either side. Take any shot you are offered.’
Ser Tyranos saluted. He took a lance from a stradiote and rode slowly towards the distant white figure. The two Easterners began to trot their horses out to the front, right and left, fitting arrows to their bows.
The enemy knight did not wait for Tyranos’s arrival, but waved his lance – and charged.
His horse’s hooves threw up spurts of snow, and the sound of the horse’s hooves came, somewhat delayed, across the almost perfectly flat field. The wind had blown all but the frozen snow away, and the frozen ground was hard as rock, and the horse’s hooves seemed to ring like distant bells.
Ser Tyranos realised the immediacy of the threat, lowered his lance, and put his own spurs to his tired horse.
They came together so fast that Demetrius couldn’t see what happened. Except that the foreigner put Ser Tyranos and his horse down in the snow. And suddenly his figure seemed to blur – there was snow all around him, and a gust of wind struck the two Easterners and their first shafts were literally blown away.
The gust of wind raised a wall of blown snow that seemed as if it was full of ghostly figures.
‘Ware sorcery!’ Demetrius shouted. He had two decent practitioners, and the two men raised their shields, which glowed a ruddy hue in the setting sun. They were bright against the snow, and they sparkled.
Many of Demetrius’s troopers made the sign of the cross, although other men made a different sign, like a pair of horns.
The front of blown snow opened to reveal a dozen Vardariotes led by Count Zac – ten horse lengths away, at full gallop. A ripple of scarlet shafts ripped into the front of Demetrius’s force – and then they turned back into the arms of the convenient snow squall and vanished.
The sound of men’s laughter licked at Demetrius like fire at a dry log. They were mocking him. But his force was intact, and the dozen men and horses he’d just lost were a small price to pay for the fifteen leagues he’d made. He turned his horse, and the hermetically driven blowing snow fell again to earth to reveal Ser Tyranos being led away in the distance, a prisoner.
Demetrius ripped his golden bassinet off his head and threw it in the snow in disgust. ‘God damn it!’ he said. ‘Jesus
fucking
Christ! Change horses! Change horses! You – mage – what the fuck was that? Do I have to order you to do something about that?’
The two hermeticists stood silently by their horses. They both looked grey.
‘Well!’ he said, raising his sword.
‘We daren’t even try,’ whispered the nearest.
Demetrius snarled. He was enough in possession of himself to know that killing half of his military sorcery might was not going to win him any battles. He snorted, whirled his horse, and trotted back to the remounts where Dariusz and three of his scouts were watching their back trail.
‘What now?’ he shouted.
Dariusz merely pointed.
In the valley behind them, fifty mounted men were leading their pack animals away. In the road, the wagons were afire, and the draught animals were all dead.
Count Zac shook his head. ‘I agree – it is the very model of steppe fighting. But – it’s dull. Now we wait until his horses starve?’
The Duke shook his head. He had a certain smug satisfaction about him that won him no friends – on the other hand, the little victory had been fun and most of the men had a warm place to sleep and free wine, courtesy of the Despot. ‘No – now we get two hours’ sleep and ride back to the army. Demetrius is done. Without baggage, he must retreat. We bring in the furs, and he goes home with his tail between his legs. And our prisoner – well the things we just learned!’
Zac laughed. ‘You should let some of my girls have him, and you’ll see a man tell a story!’ he said.
The Duke shook his head. ‘No – that would be unsporting. He had the balls to face me, and I won’t see him tortured.’ The Duke smiled and leaned back. ‘Not exactly tortured,’ he said. ‘The fact that he clearly believes that’s what he has coming will, of course, be used against him.’
‘You like this too much,’ Zac said. ‘You think you are so smart.’
‘Have some more hot wine,’ said the Duke.
They rode back to the Meander, changing horses three times – all the horses were tired, and cold, and the temperature dropped off a precipice a little after moonrise. An enormous pack of coyotes shadowed them in the open ground just to the north, so that every man and woman in the little force could see what awaited a straggler – the coyotes were a byword for starving desperation, this time of year.
Men put on garment after garment – Count Zac displayed a marvellous kaftan of Vardariotes red, lined entirely in fox fur, with a hood.
The Duke hadn’t had his drugs in two days. It was a fact of his military life – he couldn’t be half-drunk and function as a commander, so he had to conserve his power and be prepared to contend with Harmodius. But the old magister had been polite, and fairly silent.
Around midnight, he spoke up.
Order a break, and we can warm the air. Air is easy. You are all but overflowing with
ops
. You used your powers very sparingly against Demetrius – that was well done. You are truly growing strong.
Is this a peace offering, Harmodius?
I have found another solution, Gabriel.
You have? How – you wouldn’t lie to me?
I’d rather not. For that reason, I will not tell you my solution, but I guarantee that it will do you no harm, and that it will help your cause.
How could I object to that?
There was a pause so long that the Duke began to fear that the old man was gone. Fear?
Listen to me, Gabriel. I’m a selfish bastard, and I don’t want to die – but there’s more at stake than that. When I leave you, try and remember that we’re allies. And as bona fides of my good intentions, you might take a look at your memory palace. I have – hmmm – ordered it.
Once, it would have been at the very limit of the Duke’s abilities to ride through the snow and watch the ground around him while holding a conversation in the immaterial and focusing his will in the
aether
but his powers were magnitudes greater, and he plunged
into his palace.
It had grown dark and shadowy the last few months, as he used more and more of the drugs to keep the old man at bay. Now it was clean and clear. And on the marble plinth in the centre of a rotunda the size of Hagia Sophia’s in Liviapolis stood a statue of a woman – almost certainly Prudentia. She smiled.
Only a simualcrum
, said Harmodius.
But when I am gone, I thought you might miss having something there. I had time on my hands. But I had access to many of your memories, and I made her as life-like as I dared.