The Red Sea (36 page)

Dante glanced across the platforms. So far, their own losses had been extremely light. But other than his unfettered assault on the Tauren following the death of their nethermancer, the enemy hadn't lost more than a few dozen men.

"Killing Vordon might crack them," he said. "But it might not. They'll still outnumber us many times over. I'm not sure I see them retreating."

"If they're that much stronger than us, then the only way we can win is by rolling the dice. They're playing too conservatively to exploit. By the time they push us out of the valley, I don't think we'll have reduced their numbers sufficiently for the candlefruit scheme to be a death blow."

Dante swore. "I've been thinking the same thing. Take your shot. But if anything goes wrong, you run away like your feet are on fire."

Blays grinned, loosening his swords in their sheaths. As the trail-cutters advanced below them, the Tauren archers intensified their fire. The Kandeans began crossing to the next plateaus. Blays tucked himself into the growth on the middle of the island. And disappeared. Dante pulled himself along the ropes to the next island, sticking to its southern side to keep close to the action.

A few Tauren shock troops were the first to cross to the vacated platform. They made a fast search, securing it, then beckoned to Vordon, who waited behind. Vordon lashed himself to the ropes and pulled himself along beneath them. Once he was a quarter of the way across, a gangly nethermancer Dante had seen earlier followed after him.

Dante's eyes skipped between the two climbers. Would Blays have the sense to take out Vordon, then light out for safety? Or would he try to take out two birds with one stone? If so—

Halfway along the ropes, Vordon came to a stop. Dante was hundreds of feet away. Much too far to make out the specifics of what the man was doing. What he wasn't doing, however, was clear: moving onto the platform.

Dante cupped his hands to his mouth. In Mallish, he yelled, "Blays! Blays, he
knows
!"

With no trees above Vordon, he hung in broad daylight. And there was no mistaking the flock of darkness forming around his hands.

At the far end of the plateau, a figure shimmered into being. Blays swung his sword at the ropes with all his might, severing them. Vordon and the long-limbed nethermancer dropped into the canyon below. The shadows sizzled from Vordon's hands: not toward Blays, but at the upcoming ground.

Tauren soldiers charged toward Blays, firing arrows. He blinked away. Dante lobbed nether at the soldiers' backs, but only two bolts made it through the defenses of the two sorcerers watching from the platform where Vordon had fallen. With no idea where Blays had gone to, Dante could only watch helplessly as Vordon's two Harvesters grew vines to replace the cut rope. Tauren soldiers stormed across, slashing swords and spears through every square inch of grass and brush.

At the edge where Blays had disappeared, one of the Tauren shouted. Others clustered there. A great cheer went up from their people. The crowd parted. A man strode forward, sunlight glinting from his steely helmet.

"Is that all you have?" Vordon yelled. "This snake of yours, he's dead. And now I come for you."

He followed this with a brutal assault of shadows, occupying every whit of Dante's attention. As Vordon's troops moved onto the other platforms, the Kandeans withdrew once again. Dante held position as long as he could. With arrows and nether flashing past him, he turned and ran for the ropes. Halfway across, he paused, seized by the sudden urge to let go and let the fall take care of the rest. He'd see Blays again soon enough in the Mists.

But nearly two hundred Kandeans were watching him, yelling for him to cross over. Back home, tens of thousands awaited his return to Narashtovik. There were many times in life, especially one as turbid as his, when it would be easier to let go. For all his loss, though, and all his pain, he couldn't. Too many people needed him. To keep them safe. To carve out a small slice of the world and make it better.

And he needed revenge.

Fast as he could, he swung along the rope, drawing himself to the other side and dropping to the ground amidst the defenders. As he took a long breath, Blays walked out from the trees. He was scratched up and grimier than ever, but wholly intact.

Dante laughed out loud. "Lyle's balls, he said you were dead!"

Blays shrugged. "You know all these people are liars. I had to do a bit of running and a lot of climbing, but strenuous though it was, I wouldn't claim it was a fate on par with death."

"Did you see how Vordon survived?"

"Grew a giant mattress of grass beneath him. Looked like he might have broken a leg in the fall, but he appeared to have dealt with that."

"What about the gangly man?"

Blays chuckled. "Our tall friend made a very long splatter."

"So at least some good came of your little adventure. No sense in trying it again. Vordon's wise to your tricks."

"That's about the only area he's wise. I mean, have you seen his hat?"

The battle quieted to a steady pattern. Each time the Kandeans retreated from a platform, Tauren archers claimed it, allowing them to cover the termite-like advance of the troops down on the ground. As these closed on a Kandean plateau, the archers there were able to pick off a few of the enemy, but not nearly enough to make a difference in the overall numbers.

By early afternoon, the Kandeans had been pushed halfway across the valley. They might have kept on in this way all day, slowly whittling down the Tauren, but they were having increasingly large difficulties removing their own wounded from the scene. Their stock of arrows wasn't getting any larger, either. They hastened the retreat, falling back two or three platforms at once, offering token resistance, then moving back again. In less than two hours, they stood on the last plateaus clustered along the northern cliffs.

There, Niles found Dante. "The warriors are getting tired. I don't think there's much sense in trying to hold this position."

"Agreed. We should save our strength for our stand on the cliffs. Let's go get dug in as fast as we can."

Niles bellowed the orders. Kandeans streamed across the ropes, found their footing, and shuffled off toward the ramparts. The warriors moved sluggishly, sweating freely. Dante regretted not having grown a few shade trees along the fortifications, but it was far too late for that now.

Besides, they wouldn't be out in the direct sun for long. The plan was to "break" after the briefest of encounters—to spring the trap.

Archers lined up along the raised arm of land. Spearmen planted themselves in front, supported by skirmishers equipped with a variety of clubs, swords, hatchets, and slings. Over in the valley, the Tauren seized the closest platforms. The trail-cutters angled toward the eastern edge of the cliffs, where their ascent would be out of range of the fortified archers. Reaching the base of the cliffs took the enemy a good half hour, allowing the Kandeans some much-needed rest.

While this was going on, Dante tracked down Winden. She was as dirty and sweaty as everyone else, but showed no major wounds.

"How are you doing?" he said. "Got any arrows left in the quiver? Nether-wise, I mean. Not real ones."

She tipped her head from side to side. "Less than I'd like. The shaden, I can use one more, maybe two. Any more, and I'll be burned."

"Don't be afraid to use almost all of it. Save a bit for some final emergency, sure. But if we can't break them here, I don't think we ever will."

"I've never seen anything like this. So many dead. And it's only begun, hasn't it?"

"I'm afraid so." He put a hand on her shoulder. "If it's any comfort, we're doing this so your children never have to face something like this themselves."

"Do you think so? The years are cruel to memory. They erode it like the Currents of Spearpoint. The new generation forgets. And fights new wars of their own."

He withdrew to the ramparts to discuss final tactics with Niles. The first of the Tauren scaled the cliffs to the left, hastily digging in, supported by the archers on the plateaus behind them.

"If I were them," Niles said, "I'd wait to blow the horns until my whole army was up here. They do that, and we'll have to be as precise as the stars. Too many of them get past the candlefruit, and we won't be able to resist them."

"But if we let in too few, we might not kill enough to drive back the rest." Dante sighed, swabbing sweat from his face. "I suppose we'll have to play it by ear."

"Play it by ear?" Niles laughed. "Is that how you conduct all your wars?"

"Eventually, yes. If you have a problem with that, feel free to go find your own war."

"Is something the matter? Normally when you say something like that to me, it's spoken like an insult. That, though? That sounded like a joke."

Dante chuckled. "I must be tired."

The Tauren piled onto the bluff, showing no sign of haste. They seemed to think—quite rightly—that the pace of the battle was now theirs, and there was no sense mounting a charge before they were damn good and ready.

Blays jogged up, eyeing the growing number of enemy soldiers. "Think we ought to do something about that?"

"What, the army?" Dante said. "What do you want to do,
fight
them?"

"How many of them do you think we're going to be able to take out with this little trick? Two hundred? Three? That still leaves a thousand of them. Who, by nature of the fact they'll have just been outwitted, will be apt to be considerably more disciplined during the next engagement."

"Probably."

"So we need them to come for us before their whole army's up here. That way, if everything goes well for us, we can run over to the cliffs and smash up whatever they've got
there
. Before they've got enough men up top to hold us off."

"Optimistic," Dante said. "But the only way to do this is to keep putting ourselves in position to succeed. So how do we coax them over here now?"

"Stage an argument. Make it look like most of us are storming off, with the rest remaining to make a suicidal stand."

"What's to stop them from waiting anyway?"

"Nothing," Blays said. "Except they've just spent the last five hours cutting their way across a miserable valley while getting their noses bloodied at every turn. At this point, they'll be starving for blood."

"Or they might want to seize the moment before we think better and regroup. Well, there's no harm in trying."

"Excellent. I'll start: your ego is of troubling size, and you don't bathe enough."

Dante folded his arms. "You're too impulsive. And prone to running your mouth. As proven by your readiness to launch into this without letting the others know the plan."

They spoke with Niles and Winden, who jogged off to spread the word to their people. After the argument peaked, Winden and Niles would storm off with a hundred and fifty of the warriors, leaving two score with Dante and Blays—only to return to the field once the Tauren were committed.

This settled, Dante and Niles went at each other, shouting back and forth in Taurish. Blays and Winden joined in, their tone raising by the second. Their warriors exchanged uneasy glances. It wasn't long before their shouting match was drawing attention from the soldiers on the fringe of the Tauren.

After an appropriately apocalyptic exchange of curses and insults, Niles spat at Dante's feet, then turned his back and walked away. Winden followed. So did a trickle of warriors, then a flood. Dante gave a sloppy speech about the virtues of bravery, loyalty, making a stand, and so forth. A few dozen troops stayed put or returned from the exodus, establishing a defensive formation on the rampart.

At the cliffs, the Tauren stirred, pulling together a mixed force of archers, swordsmen, and spearmen. Vordon moved among them. Within five minutes, he'd assembled a troop of some three hundred. More than enough to squash the paltry resistance Dante headed.

They moved through the thinly-wooded ground between the cliffs and the rampart. Some of the Kandeans looked terrified—faces tight, eyes wide—but the number coming for them was perfect. Many of the Tauren would be hurt or killed by the candlefruit. The rest would be thrown into disarray. If Blays could dash through the shadows to Vordon, and cut him down early in the engagement, Dante, Winden, and Blays could carve through the rank and file. In one stroke, the Tauren would lose a quarter of their force, along with their leader.

At the cliff's edge, more warriors climbed up from the ravines. Vordon's vanguard was spread into ten loose rows. The first ranks crossed into the field of candlefruit. They marched on, oblivious to what lay within the grass.

"Something's off here," Blays said. "He's not sending off any scouts. Or trying to flank us. Either our steel-worshipping friend is very confident in his coming victory, or we're missing something."

"Find it fast. As soon as the third-to-last row is into the fruit, I'm lighting the fires."

The front ranks were now within bow range, but the Kandeans held their fire, as if waiting to make the most of their shots. Behind the rampart, a harsh crackle filled the air. Dante whirled. At the rear of their lines, a thick line of brown and green matter burst from the earth, congealing into a dense hedge six feet tall. Before he knew what was happening, the harvesting was complete. His force was enclosed on the rear. And cut off from all aid.

Nether winged from the oncoming Tauren, streaking toward a Kandean archer. Dante's mind raced. They were separated from their main force. The exact thing they'd meant to do to the Tauren, over a hundred of whom were now through the strip of concealed candlefruit. He needed to open a path through the hedge that hemmed them in, but more importantly, he had to stop any more of the enemy from being able to reach them.

Which meant lighting the fruit sooner than he'd intended. Even if, by some miracle, they survived this encounter, it wouldn't be enough to break the Tauren. But that objective was now lost. Pursuing it would mean the death of them all.

Ignoring the incoming nether, even as it spun the archer from his feet in a spray of blood, Dante delved into the candlefruit running across the middle of the oncoming Tauren. And set it aflame.

With a great whump, white light flared across the line. Some of the oily fruit were so ripe they burst, setting aflame those beside them. Tauren screamed. Those caught within the fires rushed about in panic, slapping at their clothes, some driven so mad by their pain they did nothing but run aimlessly, as if they could outdistance the oil-fueled flames clinging to their skins.

The two groups were now caught in an arena of death: ringed on one side by fire, and on the other by a wall of wood. Dante turned, meaning to blast a hole through the hedge, but bolts of nether streamed directly toward him. He had no choice but to stand and counter the attacks. He stood within a haze of shadows, dark blots arcing through the sky like the inverse of the sparks soaring from the fires.

A small group of Kandeans rushed the growth, hacking at it with machetes and axes. But the Tauren were already charging, swords and spears lifted as they yelled a wordless rallying cry. Blays lifted his swords and rushed them. The Kandeans jolted forward, more than a few looking shocked to find themselves moving toward an enemy who, despite the anarchy of the back rows, still outnumbered them at least two-fold.

Blays met the first of the Tauren, cutting him down without slowing. He spun deeper into the ranks, holding off three at a time as the Kandeans caught up and engaged. Erratic arrows hissed back and forth. Dante exhausted the nether within one shell and tapped into the next. His nerves were starting to waver. On neutral ground, he might have been able to batter Vordon down, but he'd already spent much of his strength while the Tauren leader had largely let his sorcerers do his fighting for him.

If Blays were to shadowalk, he might be able to behead Vordon while the man engaged with Dante. But the outnumbered Kandeans were barely holding the line. If Blays left them, they'd collapse in seconds. And Dante would die as well.

The field stank of the greasy smoke enfolding it. Within the pall, it was increasingly difficult to make out Vordon's strikes. Dante knocked aside a flurry of three. The fourth lagged behind. He didn't spot it until it was an instant away. He swung a clumsy bludgeon of shadows against it, deflecting and blunting it, but a splinter drove through. It struck him in the ribs with the bite of frozen iron.

He gasped, staggering back. A rock turned under his foot and he sat down hard. Ahead, Blays dropped back a step, swords slapping away a forest of spears.

A cheer went up behind him. Dante risked a glance at the hedge. There, Winden sprinted through a hole gouged in the growth, followed by a column of her warriors.

"Regroup!" Dante called. He found his feet, parrying another volley of Vordon's strikes.

Blays led a disciplined retreat up the slopes of the rampart. The Tauren, outnumbered for the first time in the battle, hesitated. The attacks on Dante ceased. Aided by Winden's nether, the Kandeans smashed into the waiting Tauren, obliterating the front line in seconds.

Niles ran to Dante, eyes dropping to the blood seeping through his torn shirt. "We have to get out of here. Their reserves are circling us already."

Dante peered into the smoke, but he could see no trace of Vordon. Corpses and the injured were strewn across the field. "Get our wounded out of here. We'll be right on your heels."

Niles ran off, accompanied by a growing knot of warriors. Some joined Blays in the assault while the others gathered up any of their fallen who weren't obviously dead and hauled them through the portal in the hedge. Dante used the reprieve to draw the darkness into his wound and stanch the bleeding. The remaining Tauren trapped inside the fires were wavering, on the edge of a rout, but if the Kandeans stayed any longer, they'd wind up routed in return. Dante called to Winden and Blays. They led their people in an orderly withdrawal. The Tauren didn't so much as pretend to give chase.

Dante filed up with the others and jogged through the cleft in the wall of growth. Seeing them coming, Niles ordered his people to retreat to the north. Dante moved up beside Niles.

The man glanced at him, soot-streaked and haggard. "What happened back there?"

"Their Harvesters must have circled around," Dante said. "Sprung their own trap on us. It's a small miracle any of us made it out."

"Too many of us didn't."

Dante regarded the mass of troops moving along the trail to the north. They'd managed to stave off total disaster, but they'd lost at least fifteen on the spot, with an equal number of freshly wounded. Such casualties would mean nothing to the Tauren. But it represented nearly a fifth of the Kandeans.

"What's the plan?" Dante said.

Niles sighed lengthily. "Get away before the Tauren give chase. After that…" He shook his head.

"We're down a quarter of our people. We gave much better than we got with the candlefruit, but we didn't take down half as many as I was hoping for. Vordon's still out there, too."

"We can't risk another battle today. Our troops have exhausted themselves and most of theirs haven't yet taken the field." Niles ran a hand down his face, smudging the sweat and ash. "It's over, isn't it? That was our best chance. The only thing left is to go to Kandak, gather our people, and flee into the woods."

"We fought hard. Made them pay in blood for every foot of ground they took. You should be proud."

"I am. But sometimes pride isn't enough."

They trudged on. Blays and a few of the less-exhausted warriors prowled the forest to their rear, wary of the Tauren. The enemy still had to maneuver the remainder of their army up onto the bluff, at which point they'd spend some time regrouping, but the Kandeans wouldn't have much of a head start.

Especially the way they were slogging along. Many of their wounded had to be carried. Others limped heavily.

Less than ten minutes into the retreat, Blays jogged up next to him. "This is no good. At this pace, they'll be on us by nightfall."

"I was just thinking the same thing. Niles!" Dante waved the man over. "Gather all the wounded. Everyone who's not going to be able to march for the rest of the day."

The other man narrowed his eyes. "We're not going to leave them."

"I have no intention of doing that. Now quit being an asshole and do as I say."

Niles tipped back his head, but moved off without another word, bringing together all those hurt the worst, from gut wounds to broken legs to split scalps that wouldn't quit bleeding.

"Keep the column moving," Dante said. "We'll catch up once we're fit to do so."

Niles adopted an appropriately sheepish look and led the march on its way. While Blays and his scouts roved to the south, Dante performed hasty triage, starting with those with leg wounds. He moved on to the pair of scalp wounds, saving for last those with deep injuries to the guts.

The shadows came more and more slowly. He pushed through it, fueled by a mounting anger at the resentful nether. Not all those he patched up arose from unconsciousness. In that case, he directed two or three of the healed to take up the sleeping man or woman and carry them to Niles. At last, he saw to the final casualty, then lay back in the shaded grass.

Someone was shaking his shoulder. He jarred awake, punching at the air.

Blays bent like a reed, ducking the blow. "It pains me to criticize anyone taking the time for a nap. But in this case, it's probably not wise to do so less than a mile distant from the army of a thousand foes."

With Blays' help, Dante got to his feet. They moved to rejoin the column. Dante didn't have the strength to do more than walk. The shadows kept their distance. If he forced them to come, even if he used the shaden, he'd burn himself. He might not wake for days, if ever. That meant he had to walk on until his legs gave out, too. If they faced the Tauren again that day, none of them would come out of it alive.

Some of their people still couldn't wake up, let alone walk on their own power, but these were now far fewer. Few enough to be borne along by those who still had some strength left. The sun dwindled. They rested briefly, then moved on, continuing by the moonlight shining through the canopy before making camp in the jungle.

They ate, drew up a scouting schedule, and slept. A warrior nudged Dante awake well before dawn. Every piece of him ached, from the arches of his feet to the brain in his skull. The nether had returned to him, however. He soothed his pains. As the camp stirred, he visited the injured he hadn't been able to treat the day before.

Groggily, they got on the move. At rougher spots in the trail, Dante delved into the nether and tore up the ground behind them. Shortly after first light, Blays loped in and reported the Tauren were on the move. The Kandeans had a comfortable three-mile lead on them. Driven by the need to return home and get their civilians to safety, the warriors continued to push themselves as hard as they could.

That afternoon, they passed by the mountain temple where they'd first met Niles. Beside the rope bridge, which would have taken their people an hour to cross, Winden and Dante harvested a platform of trees across the gap overlooking the sea.

Blays shot them both a look. "We couldn't have done this the
first
time we came here?"

Winden shrugged. "We've never wanted it to be easy to reach Kandak. Now you know why."

Once the last warrior was across, they knocked down the growth and chopped through the rope bridge. It wouldn't slow the Tauren any longer than it had stalled them, but every minute mattered.

"So," Blays said once they were back on their way. "What's our plan?"

"We've done all we can," Dante said. "The
Sword of the South
should be back tomorrow. Unless you intend to make this your new home, I say we go."

He expected an argument, but Blays merely nodded. "Do you think things would have been better if we'd never come here?"

"Sooner or later, the Tauren would have pushed to take the island. At least we gave these people one last chance to stave them off."

"I think the Kandeans would have mounted a defense of their own. If they'd had a few more months or years to prepare, maybe they would have pulled it off."

"Maybe someday I'll learn to tell the future. Until then, all we can do is what we've done: make each choice the best we can. And hope, in time, that takes us where we want to be."

He believed this, yet the words seemed to fall away into a space as meaningless as the ocean in the Mists. Defeat stole everything. Within a few more days, it would steal the Plagued Islands, too.

* * *

With the day growing short, they entered the upper bounds of Kandak. Townsfolk trickled out to meet them, but one look at the warriors' faces told them everything they needed to know. Men and women dispersed to their houses, packing whatever they could carry. There was no sign of the
Sword of the South
. Dante intended to hike north that night, find a beach sheltered enough for longboats to navigate the Currents, and stay there until they spotted the ship.

They'd hardly been in town twenty minutes when fearful shouts went up from the beach. Dante and Blays ran for them, joined by a hodgepodge of warriors. A small armada of canoes sailed into the quiet waters of the bay. Niles barked to his people, ordering them into defensive positions in the homes along the shore. One of the canoes broke formation, paddling in. Niles, Dante, Winden, and Blays jogged to the surf to meet it.

The woman in the bow wore a leafy green cape curled around her shoulders. The Harvester from the Boat-Growers.

Dante summoned the nether to his hands. "What's this? Come to stab us in the back to impress your Tauren masters?"

"Our people, we're here in peace," the woman said. "May I step onto your land?"

Niles glanced at Winden, then nodded. "Why are you here?"

The Harvester waded ashore. She gazed south, eyes hard. "The Tauren. They've lied to us. We do all they say, and still they keep our children hostage. If you wish, our boats will take you out of here."

"To where?"

"North. South. Anywhere that will give you more time."

Winden and Niles gave each other a long look. Eventually, she nodded. He turned back to the Harvester. "Aye, we'd welcome that. But we'll have to leave tonight. The Tauren will be standing here by tomorrow morning."

"Before we go," Winden said. "We have to destroy the Star Tree. I won't leave it for Vordon."

As Winden spoke, the face of the Boat-Growers' leader underwent a transformation as dramatic as anything Dante had ever seen on a stage.

"My ears," the Harvester said. "They heard you say 'Star Tree.'"

"Would that mean something to you?"

"They are the miracle of the Dresh. Proof of Kaval's favor. But they haven't grown here in hundreds of years. Not since the wars and betrayals caused Kaval to turn away."

Dante raised an eyebrow. "What do they mean to you? Do you know what they're capable of?"

The woman looked at him like she'd caught him vigorously pissing on an idol. "They connect us to Kaval. With them, we no longer have to fear his judgment in death. There is nothing more sacred." Her expression darkened. "Which is why you rixen could never grow one."