Dark Crusade (13 page)

A dark mass of humanity rolled across the northern horizon. The Sataki horde had come to Sandotneri.

Neither occurrence was unexpected. There was, however, something else that Kane had not been prepared for.

Orted Ak-Ceddi rode at the head of his Dark Crusade.

This turn of events did not please Kane. Kane had assumed that the Prophet would remain comfortable and secure in Ceddi, dreaming of the rich plunder his minions would faithfully haul back to his fortress--and more to the point, leave the direction of the Sword of Sataki to Kane.

His presence was ominous. And yet, the evening began quite well for Kane, as such evenings have a way of beginning.

From the shade of his pavilion, Kane leaned back in his chair and dispassionately awaited the approach of the envoys. He had both feet propped upon his campaign table, so that he sighted their anxious faces between his booted toes. The envoys were scared and stiffly formal. Kane wore leather cavalry trousers and a sleeveless aketon he normally wore under his armor, and was drunk enough not to care. Compared to the gallant finery of the Sandotneri envoys, Kane looked like an apish thug. The sardonic intelligence in his eyes left no doubt as to who was master of the situation.

"The siege is at a stalemate," began their leader. "You haven't enough troops to storm our walls. We lack sufficient cavalry to break your siege. Nothing can be gained by us through enduring your bombardment, nor by you through continuing a pointless siege, and thus risking exhausted provisions and attack from our allies."

Kane cut into his speech. "Before you bore me further, I should tell you that my vedettes have already informed me of the approach of a new body of the Prophet's foot soldiers. Since they number past a hundred thousand, you doubtless have observed their advance from Sandotneri's towers. And since that doubtless has provoked this conference, let's have no more nonsense about a stalemate."

"These new 'foot soldiers' are Sataki rabble," sneered the envoy. "I shouldn't have to tell you that Sandotneri's walls are well defended."

"Thank you, I know Sandotneri's defenses quite well," Kane said evenly. "And I know my siege engines can breach those walls whenever I command it. You, of course, have never had the misfortune to witness what the Sataki rabble can do to an enemy city once they're within its walls, although I'm certain you've heard countless lurid and grisly tales. I assure you anything you will have heard can be only euphemistic hints as to what you may expect to see before tomorrow's sunset."

The language was overladen with gutturals and always made Kane thirsty. He emptied his goblet with a flourish.

"You bore me," he said expansively. "This siege bores me. I feel inclined to be generous in my terms. Who is empowered to accept them in Sandotneri's behalf?"

The leader of the delegation glanced toward his colleagues, who looked away helplessly. "Until a new king is crowned, Esketra acts as regent, and General Ridaze is her military governor."

Kane nodded, offering them a wolfish smile. "Well then, have Esketra and General Ridaze come to me this evening, and we'll sign a treaty of surrender."

"What terms?" demanded the envoy.

"My terms," Kane told him. "Don't distress yourselves--I'm inclined to offer the standard terms of honorable surrender. I'll discuss them with your superiors."

He added, cutting off their protests, "If I don't hear from you by nightfall, by tomorrow the Satakis will hold festival in Sandotneri's streets. You won't like their terms at all."

His mood much improved, Kane watched their agitated departure. In a surge of proprietary concern, Kane ordered the barrage to cease, then called for a clerk to draw up articles of surrender as he dictated them. The procedure was nothing out of the ordinary. With the almost continuous state of warfare in the southern kingdoms, the rituals attendant upon victory and defeat had been almost formulized by convention. With the ease of long experience, Kane dealt with cessation of hostilities, surrender of armaments, payment of reparations, secession of territories, recognition of suzerainty, and other such matters as fast as his clerk could copy.

It was a tidy document, not unfair under the circumstances, and Kane was rather pleased with it. They could either sign it or not, and with the Sataki horde converging upon the beleaguered city, he expected they would sign it readily enough. It pleased Kane to have the matter thus neatly concluded without recourse to the Prophet's rabble.

Kane read over the document once the ink was dry, decided the work should serve as a very model for such documents, told his clerk to draw it up in triplicate, and called for his steward to bring a new bottle. By this time the cavalry escort he had detached to fetch the Sataki assault troops was riding into camp--a dark mass of tired men, women and children straggling miles to the rear. As before, the Sataki army was a numberless mass of humanity--driven by zeal and by fear.

Kane ignored the Prophet's horde, until his returning officers reported to him that Orted Ak-Ceddi rode with them. Kane looked toward the slowly advancing sea of bodies that crawled out of the deepening gloom--sensing a vague premonition.

The approach of a large party under flag of truce from Sandotneri cut short his speculation. Even in the distance, Kane recognized Esketra's tall figure riding side-saddle on a fine cream gelding. He smiled and got up to put on his best brocaded houppelande. Awaiting the delegation, Kane dispatched a messenger to Orted to inform him of the city's imminent surrender. He would conclude this matter quickly, and then discover what had drawn the Prophet out of the safety of his lair.

It was not a cordial reunion, but then Kane had not been on friendly terms with any of them even when he was general of Sandotneri's army. Esketra was manifestly terrified and chose to hide her fear beneath a shaky mask of hauteur. Ridaze was pallid with restrained fury--the corrosive fury of a man who has achieved the pinnacle of his ambitions for no purpose save to be humiliated before a hated rival. The others of their escort seemed to be surreptitiously pondering whether Kane wore mail beneath his houppelande.

Kane dispensed with icy formalities. "I think this is straightforward enough," he told them, proffering the articles of surrender.

The envoy Kane had dealt with previously examined the document, reading it aloud to Esketra and her general. Stone faces, pressed lips, angry eyes--condemned prisoners listening as the judge proclaims their sentence.

"Impossible!" growled Ridaze.

Kane raised an eyebrow. "Nonsense. Basically the same terms we offered Bavostni four years ago. It only pinches when it's your neck that's in the noose."

The twilight was deepening. Kane gestured toward the darker sea of bodies that was even now encircling the city walls. They couldn't see their faces in the distance, but they could hear the dread Sataki war chants that roared from uncounted thousands of throats.

"If you think I demand too costly tribute, imagine for yourselves what all those grubby hands will find to grasp when they loot Sandotneri on the morrow. So long as you adhere to these terms, I guarantee you your lives and safety. Once the mob breaks through, I won't even guarantee you a clean death."

They hesitated, but Kane knew it was only a last minute denial of the inevitable. They knew they must accept his terms, else neither Esketra nor Ridaze would have ridden into Kane's camp.

"You will note," Kane pointed out, "that the treaty acknowledges Esketra as Owrinos' heir and Ridaze as her chief minister--subject, of course, to the sovereignty of Ingoldi."

"Puppet rule!" spat Esketra.

'That has an ugly sound," purred Kane. "Think of yourself as a titular monarch. There are worse ways to dangle from a string than as a puppet."

"For the welfare of Sandotneri, I suggest we sign," spoke Ridaze stoutly. Their present position was untenable, and Kane's terms did guarantee their nominal rule. Later the situation might change, and a treaty was only a scrap of parchment.

Kane watched their reluctant signatures, then signed his own name with a flourish and stamped the document with the sigil of Sataki. A fine piece of work, he reflected, and neatly concluded.

"It's grown dark," Kane observed. "I think some refreshment to honor the occasion. I've directed my steward to set out a cold dinner for us. We can wait within my pavilion while your envoys proclaim the signing of our treaty to the city."

"I do not care to accept any further hospitalities from you," Esketra told him coldly.

"I'm sorry--did you think that was an invitation?" The menace cut through Kane's urbanity. "It wasn't. You two are my guests until I've seen how well the citizens of Sandotneri honor our new treaty. I hope your envoys will be persuasive."

With icy grace they retired into Kane's pavilion, where a light supper was being laid. Kane gave certain orders to his men, dispatched a second messenger to the Prophet to inform him of the formal surrender, then joined his unwilling guests.

It bothered Kane that he did not share the exultant spirits of his chief officers, as they gathered about to celebrate the surrender. An outsider might have mistaken Kane for one of the defeated parties, for his distracted and brooding aspect as the evening wore on. Kane was not in doubt as to the source of his unease: Orted Ak-Ceddi. What was the Prophet doing here? And why had he not yet communicated with Kane?

To this point all of Kane's cunningly laid plans had worked to perfection--the signed treaty making Kane virtual master of Sandotneri was the successful fulfillment of but the first phase in his grand design. There was reason for jubilation, but Orted's unexpected presence here only reminded Kane that the Prophet was still an unknown factor.

Kane had gone to pains to discover all he could of Orted Ak-Ceddi. He knew that for all his pose as a popular hero and champion of the downtrodden, Orted the bandit chieftain had been a ruthless outlaw who left a wake of murder and rapine wherever his band passed through. Precisely what hold Orted had on the obscure cult of Sataki--or vice versa--was an enigma to Kane. Basically Kane saw Orted as a cunning opportunist who had seized the role of Prophet of Sataki as a guise to cloak his mass-scale depredations under the pretense of religious crusade. Mass power through mass hysteria--the rank and file proud to die for the glory of the holy cause; the elite content to reap the power and the wealth paid for with the blood of the faithful.

It was a familiar story. Kane saw nothing in Orted that would indicate the bandit-turned-prophet was anything beyond the characteristic pattern. Orted was crafty and rapacious; no question. Orted had a good command of guerilla tactics and mob violence, but lacked any competency with regard to waging a full-scale war against a disciplined foe; that was where Kane came in, Orted thought enough of his own well-being to let his minions do the work and run the risks, while be stayed home in luxury and security, and contemplated the fruits of their labors; this last was why Kane had interceded. Why then was Orted here? Had Kane misjudged him? It would bring matters to a head too soon, if Orted chose to take an active command of the Sword of Sataki.

Perhaps, Kane mused, the Prophet had deemed the situation well in hand, determined he could safely come to witness the triumph of his new army. But that would indicate a grandstand play, full of pomp and bombast. Orted had come unannounced. An inner voice whispered to Kane that he had somewhere made an error. The eldritch chanting of the Sataki horde seemed to underscore his gnawing doubt. Despite his earlier resolve to taper off, Kane found himself drinking toast for toast with his officers.

Hoofbeats again approached the pavilion. Curb chains jangled, and Kane waited expectantly--sensing a new tension from the sentries without. Then deeper blobs of blackness crowded the shadow beneath the awning outside. Followed by several of his priests, Orted Ak-Ceddi strolled through the doorway of the pavilion.

The Prophet had taken time to wash off the dust of travel before joining them, and he made an impressive entrance. His brown mane hung in precise perfumed coils, and his leonine features were languid beneath a cushion of dissipation. He wore tight leather trousers and blousesleeved shirt of black silk, with the gold sigil of Sataki dangling beneath the open throat. Orted favored them with a smile of sardonic amusement, and for an instant his eyes locked with Kane's.

They made an eerie study in contrasts, these two men who led the Dark Crusade. Orted, lean-hipped and broadshouldered, pantherish in movement and strength. For all the months of debauchery there remained steel beneath the soft veneer of fat and the perfumed foppery. Behind him stood his black-robed priests, faces half-hidden beneath their cowls. Kane, barrel-chested and massive of limb, ogreish in strength and cat-quick for all his size. There was demonic intelligence in his coarse-featured face, and despite his apparent relaxed posture, Kane exuded menace. Behind Kane ranged his major officers--hard faces wary, casually shifting goblets so that swordhands were free.

Between them, Esketra and Ridaze, sensing the sudden tension--their aloof faces drawn with uncertainty.

Orted's black eyes hold the gaze of Kane's blue eyes. Eyes dark with cosmic evil: eyes that blazed with azure murder-lust. The secret touch of an elder god: the Mark of Kane. Orted broke the gaze, and broke the tableau.

"Orted Ak-Ceddi, Prophet of Sataki," Kane made needless introduction. "Esketra of Sandotneri and General Ridaze. I trust my aides have informed you that we have just formalized the treaty of surrender.

Kane gestured toward the document displayed on the map table. Orted's eyes glanced upon it casually, then darted back to rest upon Esketra, Esketra gave him a haughty smile, but her eyes were coolly speculative.

"Yes, General Kane. They informed me." Orted held out his hand, and a priest brought him the document. Carelessly the Prophet read through it. "Yes, everything seems in order."

It was a good effect, although Kane knew the former bandit was illiterate. Orted returned the parchment to the priest.