Dancer's Lament: Path to Ascendancy Book 1 (34 page)

He screamed at the awful rushing potency of it even as there came, muted, the answering shrill screams of horses, the crashing of huge bodies slamming into the dirt as the animals fell and tumbled. The cries of the troopers could hardly be heard above the impacts of the bodies, while above all came the bellowing roar of flames. He fell without sensation, his consciousness, his very awareness, frayed to threads by the astounding energies coursing across his mind.

‘You broke ’em!’ Buell yelled, triumphant.

Someone bellowed ‘Rush ’em now!’ and then the wagon jerked and bounced as it hit a hole or a rock and he felt himself flying upended. He hardly felt the jolting blow that was his uncontrolled tumble among the tall razor-sharp grasses.

Noise roused him. That and the stink of thick smoke. Muted and blurred, as if through a tunnel. The clash of sword-strokes, the yells, curses and desperate panting of melee. He blinked, found he was sitting up, his once fine clothes torn and dirt-smeared, one arm useless across his lap. He was leaning up against the bed of an overturned wagon, surrounded by a mix of Hengan soldiers and scouts. Buell stood next to him, an arrow nocked, scanning the field.

The lieutenant appeared, sword bared, his brown Hengan surcoat slashed, blood smearing a mailed sleeve. ‘Guard the mage!’ he shouted and turned, readying. Buell loosed his arrow while the soldiers surged forward to meet an equal charge of Kanese, now dismounted, swinging slim sabres. Beyond the melee smoke churned over a prairie fire where shapes lay blackened.

The fighting surged back and forth; Buell nocked another arrow. A female scout now stood over Silk, deadly twinned gutting knives out, obviously ready to defend him against the Kanese troopers.

Utter madness! Groggy, Silk struggled to rise. Buell pressed him down with a hand on his shoulder. ‘You rest now, sir. Done for most, you did. Didn’t think ya had it in ya. Havin’ some trouble with the last of ’em, though,’ and he grinned then spat aside the entire wedge of sodden leaves from his mouth, and raised his short bow.

The Kanese were clearly the better swordsmen as they overpowered one Hengan soldier after another. Venaralan went down, slashed across the face. The remaining few scouts and Hengan troopers charged. The last crossbows fired; a few thrown knives found their targets. The two forces, lines no longer, met in individual and group duels, hacking and thrusting, seeking to push the other back as they shuffled and danced, raising clouds of dust and tumbling among the tall stands of stiff grass. Thick white smoke blew in banners over all, obscuring half Silk’s vision. Yet it appeared to him to be a close thing – and tragically unnecessary.

He struggled to rise once more. ‘No!’ he shouted. ‘Yield! We yield!’ But he was so very weak, his voice a hoarse croak.

A Kanese lancer broke through, rushing for Silk. Buell stood motionless, arrow tracking, as the man’s leap brought him within arm’s length. Buell’s shot took him in the chest even as the man’s sabre sliced down through shoulder and neck. Buell fell, his hot blood splashing across Silk’s front as he collapsed across his legs. The lancer fell as well, tumbling backwards; at such close range the arrow had penetrated his mail shirt.

The last of the defending Hengan soldiers fell in a gurgle of pain, clutching at his stomach; five Kanese now remained. These mercilessly slashed through the lightly armoured scouts – even those who now threw down their weapons and called for quarter. Two lancers closed on Silk. ‘Yield!’ Silk called, uselessly. The last scout, the girl, caught the first sabre cut on one short knife, and going to her knees slashed upwards through a high leather boot and leather trousers, and up under the hanging mail shirt, perhaps even to the groin, gutting the man, who sank in a waterfall of dark blood.

The second lancer took the girl’s scalp off in one swing, then raised the bloodied blade over Silk who peered up unblinking, thinking
What a useless way to die
. . .

Something struck the lancer and he peered down, surprised; the wet triangular head of a crossbow bolt jutted from his chest. He fell to his knees before Silk, then toppled. Astonished, Silk grasped hold of the wagon’s planking to pull himself erect. He peered about the field and saw it was strewn with fallen corpses, horses and men, all smoking. Beyond, a line of wildfire topped a distant hill sending a white band of smoke high into the clear blue sky.

More mounted troops now surrounded him. But these did not display the flowing verdant green of Itko Kan; they wore the deep red tabards of the Crimson Guard. One approached, a woman, her long flowing coat of scaled armour enamelled the same blood red. She held a crossbow negligently in one hand as she came. ‘City mage Silk, I presume?’ she offered, amusement on her wide, olive-hued features.

Silk ignored her; he peered about, watching stunned as those Hengan scouts and soldiers who could stand – a mere pitiful handful – began to labour to their feet, clutching their wounds.

‘My command . . .’ he breathed, horrified.

‘Congratulations,’ the woman said. ‘You won.’ And she hiked up the heavy weapon to rest it over her shoulder.

His appalled gaze swung to the callous mercenary. ‘You stood by . . .’ he breathed, almost choking, ‘while my men and women . . .’

‘We thought you had them after your display, mage.’ She prodded a fallen lancer with a boot. ‘But these Kan Elites fight like devils. And they wanted your wagons bad.’ She squatted next to a scout, pulled off a glove, and pressed a hand to his neck. ‘This one lives.’ She raised her chin, shouting: ‘Luthan!’

‘Kinda busy!’ a man yelled.

Cursing, the woman tucked her gloves up her sleeve and set to yanking the belt from the man’s waist. Silk staggered to stand over her. ‘You step in now? So late? After all this slaughter? You watched . . .’ He couldn’t continue. Horror and outrage choked him. Acid bile strove to push up past his dry throat and his heart hammered as if he were in the grip of some sort of terror. His gaze shied away from the slashed corpses, the exposed viscera – it was all so different up close.

‘We are not in the employ of the Protectress of Heng,’ the woman calmly informed him as she tied the belt in a tourniquet high on the man’s wounded leg.

‘Yet you act now? So late?’

‘Aye,’ the woman answered with her first hint of temper. She moved on to another wounded Hengan. ‘And be thankful we did. Else you’d be dead.’

Silk studied the field and his slaughtered command. ‘I wish I was,’ he murmured aloud, realizing that this was in fact true. These men and women had held little regard or respect for him, yet they died to protect him. That sacrifice was a burden he couldn’t even begin to face.

The woman was studying him with a new expression – if not quite compassion, then perhaps understanding. ‘We thought you’d hold,’ she offered by way of explanation.

Silk sensed that this was all he could expect from her, or any other of these hard-hearted mercenaries. ‘What is your name?’

‘Auralas.’

He eyed her more closely, her olive skin, dark brown eyes and mane of long black hair, at present plaited and tucked down under her mail coat. ‘You look Kanese yourself.’

She straightened. ‘I am.’

He was taken aback. ‘Yet you shoot down your own king’s Elites?’

Standing so close, he realized that he was looking up at the woman, and that the breadth of her shoulders far exceeded his own. ‘He’s not my king,’ she answered with something like disgust. Turning away, she called loudly: ‘Load the wounded! Let’s get these wagons moving.’

Silk stumbled after the officer as she moved about the battlefield, calling orders to the troop of Crimson Guard, checking dressings, and, oddly, casting quick worried glances to the horizon. He held his aching head with one hand, biting back groans; he was still mentally bludgeoned after reaching out beyond the limits of his Warren. He feared that he’d never again be able to muster the determination to risk raising Thyr – had he permanently damaged his mind?

Speaking very slowly, blinking back tears from the hammering in his skull, he managed, ‘These wagons are the property of the Protectress of Li Heng. They are not prizes of battle. You’ll not interfere in our journey to the city.’

‘You haven’t the personnel to make it,’ she answered, rather brutally.

He still held his head, grimacing in pain, his other arm numb and useless. ‘Then . . . we’ll come back for the rest.’

‘We’ll escort you,’ she said, moving on. ‘Fingers!’ she called, pointing to a youth lounging atop one wagon. ‘Watch the perimeter!’

The youth, skinny, pale, and freckled, his hair a wild shock of sandy brown, rolled his eyes and offered a mocking salute. Silk watched the lad, puzzled – this was a mercenary? He was suddenly aware of an active Warren. A mage?

Auralas had moved on; he tottered after her. She was now overseeing the stripping of all the corpses, Hengan and Kan alike, and he was suddenly outraged. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Your gear will be piled on the wagons,’ she answered, without even turning to acknowledge him. ‘Plus half the Kanese armour and weapons.’ She cast him a quick humourless smile. ‘You will have need of it, yes?’ She straightened and shouted to the youth: ‘Anything?’

‘Nothing yet,’ Fingers drawled.

Silk was still blinking. He felt as if he were moving through a dense fog. ‘More lancers?’ he asked.

Her answer was a grim ‘No’. She whistled then, piercingly, and raised an arm, signing something. ‘Let’s get moving!’ Silk stood motionless, at a loss. What was going on? It was all happening too quickly.

Auralas pointed him to a wagon – the one holding the lad, Fingers. As it passed he stumbled to it and climbed aboard. Over the barrels and sacks of provisions lay several of his surviving Hengans, their wounds staunched with rough field dressings. Four Crimson Guard sat in the bed also, crossbows cocked and readied, scanning the surrounding plains. The bench bounced and rocked beneath him, bringing dark spots to his vision and blasts of agony that threatened to crack open his skull.

‘Who is out there?’ he asked the lad. ‘Seti raiders?’

This youth cast him a contemptuous glance. ‘No. And you a Hengan. Hood’s mercy, man. All this spilt blood?
Him
. The beastie.’

Silk’s gaze snapped to the horizon and he immediately winced in the stabbing slanting sunlight. ‘I thought you lot were hunting him anyway.’

‘We are. But it takes all of us to hold him off.’

Silk straightened, peering about, then stood in the rocking vehicle. ‘This is not the way to Heng. We’re going west. Why?’

‘Someone wants to talk to you first,’ Fingers said, sounding exhausted by the effort of explaining.

‘Who?’

The lad cast him another look, studying him through half-closed eyes, as if he’d just said something incalculably stupid. ‘Orders from our glorious leader. He would like a word.’

Silk sat heavily. Oh. Courian D’Avore, whom some named the Red Duke, commander of the Crimson Guard –
he
was here? What could he want with . . . although, given what had just happened, Silk could guess why the man might want a word.

He sat back, broken arm across his lap, and despite his best efforts to remain awake the exhaustion and mental strain pulled upon him and he faded, his eyelids falling, his wrung-out and overwhelmed mind seeking the oblivion of rest.

*

Silk blinked to awareness and stared into the darkness of night. At first he panicked, believing that he was now blind, for he remembered only a dazzling shaft of brilliant light. A light like liquid fire; a fire that seared as it pierced him and he smelled the terrible stomach-turning stink of burned flesh, heard the hiss . . . Then a soft amber glow bloomed in the dark and he saw that he lay in a tent, a clay lamp stuttering on a nearby side table. He raised a hand and rubbed his eyes, groaning.

A chair creaked in the dark and someone said, ‘You are with us again, I see.’ The speaker moved the lamp closer and Silk blinked upwards at a Dal Hon male, his kinked hair going to grey at the temples, his eyes a mesmerizing black and his gaze sharp, though a welcoming smile softened his expression at the moment. ‘I am Cal-Brinn. And you, I understand, are the city mage Silk. We are honoured to host you.’

Silk cleared his throat and attempted to assemble his jumbled thoughts. Cal-Brinn, a mage of the Crimson Guard. And not just any mage, one of the premier adepts of Rashan, the Warren of Night. There could be no misunderstanding why he was here at his bedside. Not after the display earlier. Barely trusting himself to speak, Silk nodded and swung his feet over the side of the cot. He carefully raised himself to a sitting position, hands at his head as if to keep it from falling off. A memory came and he examined his right arm: healed. He flexed the arm and nodded once more to Cal-Brinn. ‘Thank you for the healing – and for seeing to my wounded,’ and his voice took on an edge, ‘even if you arrived belatedly.’

The mage lowered his gaze. ‘I am sorry. But we were . . . constrained.’

‘Constrained,’ Silk echoed, and left it at that – he had no wish to hang about debating: he had to get the wagons back to Heng. He rubbed his forehead, fully expecting to find great cracks in it, and drew a steadying breath. ‘Auralas promised that you would escort us back to the city.’

Cal-Brinn nodded. ‘Yes. We will honour that. But first the duke would like a word. If you would.’

Silk did not want to face the notoriously fierce and blunt Courian D’Avore, but knew that it would be both boorish and stupid of him to decline, given that he and his command were not only in the Guard’s debt but also at their mercy. So he gestured to the tent’s front. ‘Very well – let’s get this over with.’

Cal-Brinn’s tight smile told Silk that the man was fully aware of the calculation that went into his assent. He held out a beige stoneware mug. ‘Tea?’ he offered. ‘I find it very restorative, especially after particularly trying magery . . .?’

Rising, Silk accepted the mug, but declined to pursue the other invitation. Cal-Brinn rose also and led the way, pushing aside the heavy canvas tent flap. Silk saw that the man was fully armed and armoured, wearing an ankle-length mail coat, complete with hood, now thrown back, and a longsword sheathed on either hip. Over the mail coat he wore the requisite blood-red tabard of the Crimson Guard. Silk followed, feeling even more dishevelled and worn in the presence of the mage mercenary’s martial habit.