The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1) (83 page)

Androssan looked at him thoughtfully.  That was very interesting, for several reasons.  Glad as he was to hear of the probability of peaceful camp coexistence…he now had a new worry.  What was he going to do when the whole right wing folded in front of a dragon assault?  In fact, what was he going to do about a dragon assault, period?

It took all day for the thousands of Aerach refugees to file cheerfully over the bridge, even though there were three more in usage upstream and another downstream, all day that Androssan had to stare out over the bleak coming battlefield to the south.  Secretly, he wished with all his heart that he’d been able to accompany Rach Kyr.  Inactivity was a torture matched only by lack of intel, and to be able to be out there, out front, to know when and where and how many the Enemy were…he’d give up a whole week of Aerach beauties for that. 

Kyr scanned the empty plains south of the Daroe with an eye so used to the activity that it was literally an unconscious act.  Every Rach did it without thinking, everywhere, regardless of what they were doing.  And here, there was none of the fierce glare off the Sheel, a luxury they usually only had during the few cloudy weeks of the rainy season.

His busy mind raced here and there, aware of every move, every jangling bit, every hoof thud of the quiet men around him.  The air was heavy in the Empire, rank now with the smell of mud, and his nostrils flared in the attempt to get beyond the clogging scent.  The wind was at their back
and would carry news of their presence straight to the Tarq, but it couldn’t be helped.  It wasn’t like they weren’t expecting the Rach to be ahead of them somewhere, anyway. 

He was planning strategies, weighing the leaders and men of the Realms behind him, considering the Tarq ahead of them.  Raemon was dead, was he?  Weakened at least?  Out of the picture, Traive and Banion had thought.  He doubted that would change the Enemy
’s fighting style much…but it certainly might change the outcome of battle.  All of those that fought them knew of that odd, disassociated look that some of the Tarq carried in their blank, brilliant eyes.  And he was not the only one who thought it numbed them from the instinctive self-protection of a normal warrior.  Sometimes they didn’t even try and defend themselves, and if that was gone…

How wide a front would they adopt?  Kinn was right—their numbers were going to be immense, but it would be better for the morale of the North if they didn
’t stretch from horizon to horizon.  That was another reason the Aerach front line needed to lie just forward of the North’s.  Not only would it prevent the Tarq from having a chance to regroup, which they would if they destroyed the Rach at the Ramparts, but it would give the unseasoned Imperials a chance to get used to the idea of what they were about to face.  Those few moments of shocked inaction could be deadly to the first line.

Kinn…his mind lingered briefly on that unprecedented visit.  A Dra had not been in the Ramparts since Keiryn and Kormaine parted the Band and the one Became Outcast forever.  It made Kai unique among the Drae of history, bold and unconventional and fearless of the past, to send him, and Kyr grinned in savage approval.  These were not the times for simpering, timid men.

But…the arrival of the Dra, in the deep of night, brought back that other memory, too…that visit that had changed a hundred things.

He had awoken suddenly,
from instinct and with the wariness of men who never sleep deeply for fear they will never awake.  There had been no sound, only the ghostly image, outlined by the moonlight glimmering through his open window.  Her long hair had blown slightly in the night breeze, her Aerach shift outlining with breathless beauty the figure of a woman.

He had known it was no mortal woman, though, as soon as she
’d spoken.

“
Thy path is girt with great adversity, Rach,” she’d said, and his breath had caught in his throat.  He’d slipped instantly out of bed, the coolness of the flagstones seeping through his leathers as he knelt.

“Sword,” he breathed reverently.

“Rise,” she’d said, the hint of a frown in the rich voice.  “There is only One to whom thou shouldst kneel.  I am but a woman.”

“Nay, Sword, you do not come to me as a woman, but as a messenger of His.  To that I bend my knee.” But he had dared to look up at her, and in the ghostly light saw that it was
she
, the only Rach amongst all the Swords, the Tendress herself.

“Then hearken closely, for much is asked of thee.”

“Anything, to my very people, is yours,” he’d said, still stunned at the magnitude of the honor being paid him.

“It is to thy people that thou must cling,” she
’d said soberly, obscurely.

Confused, he
’d answered slowly, “Surely you do not doubt my allegiance to my people?  I would never leave them.”

“Heard and witnessed,” she
’d said gravely.  “Thou must be with the force of the Wings in the long days to come, for thy heart is their heart, thy blood their own, and nothing must sway thee from thy place at their head.”

He
’d lain awake in consternation for hours after she’d gone, the room full of her mystical scent and the silver rays of the watching moon.  Did she doubt his courage, his resolve, his devotion to his people?  Was she sent to strengthen him?  What lay ahead that was such a trial?  That would warrant such a visit as had not occurred in generations beyond telling?  A Sword of Light!

And then, he
’d barely gotten to sleep when he was being woken with the dreadful, gut-wrenching news that she’d been taken.  That his heart had been torn from him—not heading back to safety in her icy Empire, as he knew she eventually must, but snatched by the foul hands of the Tarq.

And he, he was trapped.  Trapped by an oath as binding as honor, imprisoned behind the sandstone bars of the Hilt while the fairest, finest, most precious thing in the world to him was submitted to the fetid filth of Raemon
’s scourge. 

Suddenly, his tortu
rous memories were brushed aside, mind instantly back in the present.  His hand snapped up and he felt the rush of air as his standard dipped in such quick response to his command that it looked as if both had happened simultaneously.  There was a whoosh of sound and air as fifty cyclones softly hit the dirt in unison, the men pulling the horses down beside them, then nothing.  There was no sound.  Far overhead the faint outline of an eagle could be seen soaring on the hunt, but otherwise the world seemed emptied of motion.

Kyr set off on his belly for the nearest rise of ground several yards away, hearing the faint scurrying of his
’Tip close behind him.  They arranged themselves behind the mound, Kyr reaching back for the looking glass tube.  Kurim’s eyes were so alight with suppressed excitement that Kyr grinned at him and ruffled the short-cropped black hair.  He knew just how the boy felt; how Il loved them, that they should be alive at such a time as this!

His eye had caught the dark blur of movement f
ar out on the horizon, arrested more by the wrongness of its being there than any recognition of its source.  Now, with the glass, he confirmed by sight what his instincts had already told him.  It was fairly effortless; they weren’t making labored efforts at secrecy—would have been a waste of time anyway with nothing but broad, windswept plains to hide that massive swarm of men in.  He would have preferred a good couple hours’ worth of observation, but that pleasure would have to wait.  In a scant few minutes, he was running, crouched, back to the men and horses, signaling them up as he ran.  He sprang on Inferno as the horse was half risen, so that it looked like they rose together from the muddy ground.  The men parted behind him and he sent the stallion down through the utterly silent ranks, urging him into a ground-eating canter that would halve their return time to a day or so. 

Still, he sent bright-eyed Kurim on ahead.  The Northerners would need all the time they could get.  The Tarq had not been far behind them, he brooded as he rode, the thundering of hooves in the muting mud sounding out a thudding rhythm to his thoughts.  Barely in time had they left the Ramparts; everything seemed to have happened barely in time…a wondrous coincidence if you believed in nothing but chance. 

Androssan was waiting anxiously for them, middle of the night or not.  It was down-pouring with Imperial single-mindedness out, so the General reluctantly gathered everyone in the command tent.  He’d much rather have met them in the open.  On the other side of the bridge.  Sheelfire, half way to the Ramparts, if the truth was told.  For the hundredth time he mastered the urge to stand and pace, the tension rising unbearably as minutes ticked by.  The tent smelled overpoweringly of Merranic—body odor and wet fur, with overtones of sheep from the Ram Captain and the odd, wild smell of the Cyrrhideans.  The Rach, despite being right off the hot griddle of the Sheel and savages to boot, were meticulously clean.  The frigid Daroe was filled daily with their splashing, half-naked brown bodies.

Androssan
’s eyes drifted over the Shagreens, wondering what it was that made them seem so fierce.  Their eyes?  That intense, athletic energy?  That fellow in the corner even had a spotted panther skin over his shoulders—which didn’t do much to dispel the air of barbarism that clung to them.

As his eyes pored calculatingly over them, the muttering of military brain-storming in the background, they rose abruptly to their feet.  The tent went quiet in surprise, wondering what they were up to; some of them had been mid-sentence in conversation.  Then over the drumming rain, they all heard it—shouts and the pounding of hooves over the Terring.
It was only moments before the tent flap was thrown open.  Waylan may have tried to make an announcement, but it was drowned out by a thunderous cry of:

“RACH KYR!”

Eight Shagreens sank instantly to a knee as Kyr strode in, filthy and soaked and with his eyes flashing like black gold in his mud-spattered face.  The rest of them started violently, the Councilmen grabbing their tables—or chests—and the Merranics rumbling something approving. 

“They come,” Kyr said, eyes blazing.  “Probably four, five days at the most on our tail.”  The tent was breathless, every eye glued to that young face.  There were no greetings, no niceties, no comments on the weather. 

“I think it best,” he continued, without a pause to let that horrible announcement sink in, “if the Wings fly about a half day out to meet them.  It will give us more maneuvering room than if we stay backed up against the river, the ground is less treacherous, and it allows the river to serve as another, separate defense.”

Nobody said a word.  Androssan, though he mentally sketched out military tactics in the face of oncoming danger for a living, would still have liked just a moment to absorb some of this.  “We have not spoken of when to destroy the bridges …” he said instead. 

For a long moment Kyr looked gravely at him, until Androssan began to feel an edgy wariness creep across his shoulders. 

  “We need to move our front line out by a league or so,” the Rach finally said.  Surprised murmurings circled round the tent, both at the distance and the sudden change of plans.  “We do not want this force to get a foothold on any land north of the Daroe.” 

“That’s a better plan anyway!” Alaunus said staunchly.  Merranics were aghast at the idea of sitting and waiting for the Enemy to come to them, far preferring a nice, thundering charge to make their intentions clear.  Their voices drowned out the others in the tent as several people began arguing the wisdom of this and the drain on logistical support it would entail.  Thoughtfully, Kyr’s eye settled on the loudest, hairiest section of the chaos. 

“How much of that powder is there?” he asked, and the discussion quieted.

Alaunus half-turned his bulk, “Steelmists?” he muttered gruffly.

The Jarl Banion said promptly, “Enough for every bridge in the Empire.  There
’s more than enough for any bridge we want blown, from the Silver Hills to the Dragonspine.”

“Get powder and teams dedicated solely to that task for every one of those bridges, just in case,” Kyr said, and anxious surprise crawled around the tent like a living, insidious force.
  Every
bridge?  That was over two hundred leagues of land, from the Eastern Outcropping of the Bitterns to the western bluffs at Cornton.

“What did you see?” Kane asked quietly.  Silence fell, rich with trepidation.

“I will show you,” he said. 

They left on disgruntled horses within the hour, the rain mixing with snow in the shivery light before dawn, and the muddy ridges of the road crackling with ice under the horses
’ hooves.  It was only a select few of them, it being a testimony to Kyr’s charisma that he not only talked the Councilmen out of coming, but convinced them of the need to get to the safety of Eldoreth as quickly as possible.  All the Merranics of the warcouncil were there, Cyrrh’s Lord Regent and the Foxlord,  Dra Kai, Captain Toriah of the Ram, Androssan…and Lt. Waylan.  He had been the only other Imperial Kyr had allowed; a point he’d insisted on so firmly that it riled up both irritation and uneasiness in Androssan’s gullet.  Imperial Generals did not go trotting around the Empire without aides (much as he’d secretly desired it a couple times), and, what—did the Rach think them so soft-bellied that they’d faint in fear at the sight of their Enemy?

Androssan was not in a good humor as they set out.  It was a long ride to the eastern edge of the battlefield, where the Silver Hills rose from their odd, pale beauty into a formidable and conveniently defensible mountain.  The side facing south, even more redoubtable, was almost sheer, with an enormous overhang that looked from a distance like it was ready to drop off at any moment.  It was in sight for quite a while until they crossed over the last bridge, ingeniously hinged so Merranic ships could pass upstream.  Then they were climbing into the foothills and beside him, Waylan was in a state of barely appropriate delight.  When Androssan had objected to having not a single Imperial to accompany him, Kyr had relented only when the lieutenant had quietly offered his services.  They
’d stared at each for a minute, Kyr’s white teeth gleaming in a grin out of his dirty brown face.