“I know that much.” Rynert was not merely bluffing to save a little face, he knew all about the merciless rules of high sorcery, and about the warping pressures they put on mind and body—which was why the most powerful wizards were never shrivelled ancients but men who might well pass for warriors.
“Also,” Gemmel put in silkily, “cu Ruruc wouldn’t want to defeat you by any other means than combat if it can be managed. He’ll get more Alban allies that way.”
By the expression on Rynert’s face this also was something he had not considered. “There are
kailinin
whom I asked to join the hosting, both at Erdhaven and since; men who made excuses though they promised support later…”
“Watch them, Lord King.”
“Oh, I will… Damn it, wizard, will you stop meddling in affairs of state!”
“I beg pardon.”
The apology did not sound especially sincere, but Rynert was in no mood to press for more. “Then what is it you wish me to do, Lord General Gemmel?” he asked, only half jesting with the title. “Run away? Because we’re less than a day from Dunrath.”
“No. Not run, anyway.” Gemmel stopped perforce as cavalry clattered past the king’s pavilion, drowning his words for a few seconds.
Rynert got to his feet and looked out through the tent’s door-flap. “Dawn patrol,” he observed absently. “Riding point for the column. We’ll be moving soon.” Picking up his leather leggings he began to buckle them on himself, deciding in view of Gemmel’s conversation not to summon any servants until he had to do so. “Well, man, carry on.”
“As I said, don’t run—but don’t meet cu Ruruc head-on either. Skirmish. Duck and weave and sidestep. You know now that a set-piece battle is out of the question, so break your troops into small formations, units of two hundred at most, and disperse them. Your purpose should be to keep the enemy busy—because you can’t destroy him. And the busier you keep Kalarr, the better chance Aldric and I will have of slipping unnoticed into Dunrath.”
Rynert grunted; it might have been an opinion, or just the effort of tightening a buckle behind his knee. Then he straightened up and gazed at the enchanter. “What’s to stop cu Ruruc dealing with each small unit one at a time?” he asked purely as a matter of form, since it was fairly certain Gemmel would already have an answer.
He had, of course. “Two things: first, I’m going to destroy the spies which have been keeping us under constant surveillance, and second, I’ll lay a fog over the army before the spies can be replaced. That way—to be quite brutal about it—you’ll lose two hundred men at most in any one engagement.”
“It is brutal. But also good sense. When will you deal with the spies?”
Gemmel twirled the Dragonwand in a spear-fighter’s flourish which made King Rynert smile a little. “Your host is preparing to break camp, so they’ll be watching. Now seems as good a time as any.”
Rynert shrugged into his plate-and-meshmail sleeves and followed the enchanter outside, tightening their lacings as he went. The king could not have said whether he worked at the armour with the intention of making it comfortable, or merely because he had no desire to seem interested in the practice of magic, despite being in fact interested to the point of fascination. Gemmel was muttering something under his breath and Rynert moved a little closer in order to answer him—then realised with a slight start that the old man was actually addressing the Dragonwand.
“
Abath arhan
, Ykraith,” he murmured. “
Acchuad eiya ilearath dua’hr
.” There was a deep, melodious thrumming sound, like an echo of the bass register on a zither, and a translucent shimmer enveloped the crystal in the carven firedrake’s mouth. Rynert felt its pressure just as he would have felt the heat from an uncovered brazier, and was conscious of a great stillness settling over the camp. All that moved were the crows which spiralled lazily high above. Gemmel favoured them with a poisonous smile and raised the Dragonwand above his head; everyone who saw him do so instinctively ducked. The enchanter’s smile grew more cheerful. “There’s nothing to worry about,” he called.
Then he spoke a single harsh phrase which unleashed the spellstave’s leashed-in force. It lit the cold blue sky with a blizzard of orange sparks, which burst in a great expanding hemisphere from the Dragonwand’s crystal tip and lashed with blinding speed across the camp, piercing each changeling-crow as if on a thousand red-hot skewers. The birds spewed smoke and singeing feathers, then tumbled from the sky to leave it cleaner than it was.
“Nothing at all,” Gemmel corrected primly, “unless you are a crow!”
Kalarr cu Ruruc stared at his magic mirror, drumming armoured fingers on the black ebony of his table’s top. The obsidian glass obdurately refused to show him anything but his own darkened reflection. He strode across the chamber floor and back again, noisy in his carapace of scarlet-lacquered steel. There was still no image in the volcanic scry-glass even when he touched it and let some of his own inner power flow through its substance. Finally he swore viciously and smashed the thing to fragments with a single blow of his clenched fist.
Duergar looked round with a jerk at the sound of shattering. “That won’t help,” he said reprovingly. The window behind him showed greyness and the drifting skeins of fog which had grown thicker in the past half-hour. “Not even your flying eye could see through that murk.”
“I know that well enough!” cu Ruruc snarled. “But it should at least show me what it cannot see through. Something’s wrong with it. Something’s hurt it.”
“Then make another,” said the necromancer simply.
“I have already told you that I can’t,” Kalarr grated through clenched teeth, leaning forward pugnaciously with his fists on the table. “There is a limit to that kind of shaping-spell. It’s a penalty for the thing’s usefulness.”
“Usefulness?” Duergar laughed nastily. “What use have we made of it? Now my changelings—”
“Yes, your changelings! When did one of them last report, eh? Not since just after dawn, and now it’s almost noon.”
“Can’t you dispell the mist?” Duergar asked, sidestepping further argument on the spy subject. Kalarr straightened with a gusty exhalation of breath.
“No I can’t! As I’ve already told you!”
“You didn’t,” Duergar insisted, seemingly determined to annoy. Kalarr refused to react, merely smiling like a shark at his companion.
“All right, perhaps I didn’t,” he conceded. “I’ve more to do than remember every word spoken. But clearing away that spell-born fog is beyond my powers at present. You know what the attempt would do to me. Unless that’s what you want, of course… ?”
“I could try to summon up a witch-wind,” suggested Duergar evasively.
“No. Put all your power into keeping the
traugarin
strong. They must not die until I’ve finished with them— and with the Albans.”
Kalarr picked up a helmet and left the chamber, clattering down the spiral stairs with Duergar at his -heels.
There were none of the usual guards, either living or
traugur
undead; cu Ruruc had stripped Dunrath of men so that this time there would be no doubt of the outcome of the battle. He intended nothing less than the obliteration of King Rynert’s host. Striding down the corridor, he reached the donjon’s double doors and flung them open with a crash.
The noise was echoed by the stamp of feet as the army outside slammed to attention. Soldiers choked the courtyard, overflowing through its gates in rank upon rank until they were lost to sight in the swirling mist. Vermeil banners hung above them, marked with cu Ru-ruc’s winged-viper crest, rippling sluggishly in the cold grey air.
There was a burst of cheering from his cavalry, human mercenaries since
traugarin
made useless horsemen, but heavy silence from the rest of his army even when he swung gracefully into his horse’s saddle and raised one hand in salute. Kalarr grinned unpleasantly and passed the thin chains of the flail he carried as a baton through his fingers. “That’s what I miss about commanding corpses,” he remarked drily to Duergar. “The affection troops have for their general. These seem—”
“Lifeless?” the necromancer suggested.
“Ha…” Kalarr’s gaze swept the courtyard and settled on Baiart, who had appeared at the foot of the stairs and now leaned heavily against the stone balustrade with a winecup in one hand and a brandy-bottle in the other. Baiart Talvalin was very drunk, and consequently very bold. “Hail to the mighty general,” he slurred, and then looked pointedly from Kalarr to Duergar and back again. “Who… else… do you plan to kill today?”
The Drusalan necromancer’s head jerked round to stare at him, then much more slowly turned to face Kalarr. That sorcerer’s features remained expressionless while he lowered his helmet into place and laced its war-mask snugly. It was probably all the unrelieved red armour which made his cheeks seem flushed with rage, because he was smiling most benevolently as he walked his big roan charger across to Baiart and stroked the drunk man’s face almost caressingly with the flail’s dangling chains. Baiart flinched and shivered at the contact.
“You, perhaps,” cu Ruruc purred. His commander’s crest nodded above him as he leaned closer and laid the flail-haft along Baiart’s nose, between his eyes. “If you’re very, very lucky…”
Gemmel leaned his weight on the Dragonwand and released a long breath which smoked away from his mouth into the fog he had created. Though the air was win-tery, he was bathed in sweat from the concentrated effort it had required. “That should hold for long enough,” he decided aloud. “I’ve done everything I can.”
“Such as what?” Aldric was sitting in Lyard’s saddle some distance away; both were in full lamellar battle armour and the young man was additionally equipped with shield and slender lance. Though the effect was probably unconscious, Gemmel felt that his foster-son was far more dangerous than any of the just-completed spells. Menace hung about him like the fog.
“I’ve screened the army against death from a distance— Kalarr probably cannot cast such spells yet, but it’s best to be cautious where that one is concerned. And I made sure that this fog won’t lift until I do it myself, barring accidents of course.”
“Accidents… ?” Aldric echoed warily, leading the wizard’s mount across to him.
“Unforeseen eventualities, then,” Gemmel expanded unhelpfully. He slapped the Dragonwand as a man might slap the neck of a favourite horse. “I should be drained of strength,” he said thoughtfully, “but thanks to this I’m not even tired.” He wiped one hand across his forehead and grimaced at the streaks of moisture gleaming on his palm. “Well, not very.”
The old enchanter took a box from his belt-pouch and flicked back the lid, turning the mist briefly blue as the radiance of the Echainon spellstone spilled from its confinement. Then it dimmed, as if the stone itself understood the need for secrecy, and everything returned once more to muted shades of grey. Gemmel smiled thinly and set it into the place where Aldric had long expected the stone to go: the vacant eyesocket of Ykraith’s dragon-head. Though he did no more than push it firmly home, the spellstone locked there as securely as if it had been set by a master jeweller.
“That should stop cu Ruruc causing any trouble,” Gemmel muttered. A trumpet yelped and he was forced to leap aside as a small troop of horsemen came thundering out of the fog, pennons fluttering in the wind of their speed. Then he laughed. “Of course, he may have more than our whereabouts to concern—”
“
Altrou
, mount up! Move it!” Aldric’s yell was not in the tone of voice which suffered questions and Gemmel obeyed instinctively, vaulting into his saddle more nimbly than seemed reasonable in a man of his years. He had barely slid the Dragonwand into a scabbard meant for javelins when four of the riders came back.
Aldric met them head-on, transfixing the nearest with his lance so that man and weapon tumbled to the ground together. A sword shrieked on his helmet as he rode through the others, bludgeoning one of them off his horse with the iron-rimmed shield as he passed.
Lyard wheeled under the pressures of heel and rein as Isileth Widowmaker came hissing hungrily from her scabbard. Gemmel was lost somewhere in the fog and Aldric hoped the old man was all right—then, as another horseman came boring in with a flanged mace in one hand, he stopped worrying about other people and became totally concerned with himself.
The mace-head boomed against his shield, driving it back against his body, and then rose to swing downwards at his head. Widowmaker licked out, sank half her length into the exposed armpit and wrenched free with a sucking noise. The mace flew out of sight and its owner sagged forward, coughing a fan of blood across his horse’s neck before sliding from the saddle.
Aldric grunted thickly as a blow across his armoured shoulders drove the breath out of his lungs. He lurched, recovered, warded off another stroke with his hastily-uplifted shield and kicked Lyard into motion, cursing the stupidity which had allowed this man to close. Then the mace—another mace, dammit!—smashed against the plates of his left bicep and that whole arm went numb and useless, the shield slipping from limp fingers.
Aldric said something savage—against himself for not keeping the shield-strap round his neck—and met the man in a brief, vicious hacking match where his skill at
taiken-ulleth
gave him all the advantages. It ended abruptly as Widowmaker sheared away both the mace and the hand which held it, then opened the rider’s unprotected throat with an adroit backhanded sweep.
The Alban wheeled his mount again just as the man whom he had clubbed down with his shield came lunging with a shortsword towards Lyard’s head. That was a mistake; with an outraged squeal the stallion reared and slashed out with one steelshod hoof, smearing the attacker’s features into oozing scarlet pulp. Aldric gentled the stamping, snorting Andarran courser, trying hard to get his breath and at the same time restore feeling to his bruised left arm. Gemmel walked his own horse closer, looking not too carefully at the carnage—nor very hard at Aldric either, for the moment. The old man had never watched a
kailin’s
training put to use before, and even from the vague and hazy images which he had seen through drifting fog, he was sure he had no inclination to see it done again.