Gold Throne in Shadow (30 page)

“See who blinks first.” Gregor grinned wolfishly. “They'll send out another scouting party. It will either be backed up by their principals, or it won't. If it is, then us riding out there alone will be fatal. If it's not, then us taking a platoon out there will give away all our secrets.”

“They saw me heal. They must know I am a priest.”

“Good point,” Gregor said. “They know they won't be able to wear us down with repeated low-scale attacks. So I predict their next move will be to deploy their real ranks, in a contest of strength.”

Gregor turned out to be right, in a way no one could have expected.

“My lord Curate, wake up.” Torme's voice was graver than usual. But the tone of his voice was less important than the fact that he had used Christopher's full title.

It had to be bad news.

He rolled out of bed and washed his face in the bowl Torme had brought him.

“What time is it?” It was still dark out.

“Dawn is but a few minutes away, Brother.”

They had woken him early. He hated that, and they knew it.

It had to be really bad news.

Torme led him out of his cabin and up on the south wall, where Gregor and Karl stood looking out over the plain.

Gregor didn't crack any jokes.

It was still dark, and Christopher's night vision hadn't adapted from the light-stones in the fort. He couldn't see anything.

“What am I looking at?”

“Another call for a miracle,” Karl said.

The rising sun tinged the gloom a lighter shade. Christopher could sense movement, hear growls and the distant clatter of metal.

“D'Kan is over there, trying to avoid the torchlight. He might have a better estimate.” Karl pointed down the wall.

The sunrise promised to render all estimates moot in only a few moments. It also promised to reveal a terrifyingly large crowd of monsters. Christopher was beginning to hate sunrises.

D'Kan came over and joined them. The Ranger seemed unfocused and disoriented. Christopher finally recognized the symptoms as fear, an emotion he had not seen on D'Kan's face before.

“There are at least five hundred ulvenmen out there,” D'Kan reported, “not counting a smaller but indeterminate number that have flanked us in the swamp. We are surrounded, cut off, and severely outnumbered.”

Gregor whistled through his teeth. “Five regiments of ulvenmen would make even the good Captain of Carrhill knock his knees. And that's with a wizard at his back. If you really are protected by some secret entity, Christopher, now would be the time to call upon it.”

“It's just us and the men,” Christopher said. “But this time we have a stone fort, not a wooden one. I'm not worried yet.”

D'Kan looked at him as if he had lost his senses, but Gregor's face was restored to the grin that normally lay there. “You are a cool one, priest. I'd think you mad if I hadn't seen what you did to those dinosaurs.”

“I did see, and I still think you are mad,” D'Kan said. “One of us can probably escape with your flight spell and carry warning to the town.”

Christopher had a cage of pigeons for that duty. He had to use a minor spell on them to get them to fly to the right place, though. “Let me pray and I'll send a message. But I don't think they will come out here to rescue us. At least, not in less than a week.”

“Speaking of magic,” Karl said, “what can we expect from the ulvenmen?”

D'Kan shook his head dismissively. “Normally, very little. They rely on strength more than craft.”

That was excellent news. No amount of strength could make up for guns.

“But,” D'Kan continued, “you saw the hawk deflect my arrow. That is magic. So I can only tell you to expect anything.”

Reflexively, they all looked at the brightening sky.

“I'm no woodsman,” Gregor said, “but I'm pretty sure that a dozen hawks hanging over our heads is unnatural.”

“Put our best sniper on it,” Christopher said. “One rifle won't give anything away. They'll just think it's magic.” Then he went back to his cabin to prepare what little real magic they had.

An hour later he stood at the pigeon cote, with a pinch of biscuit in his hand. One of the pigeons finally decided it was better than scratching in the straw at the bottom of their crate and came over to peck half-heartedly at the offering.

“A pox on picky birds,” Christopher muttered, and then said something rather different in Celestial. Now the bird tamely let him tie a scrap of paper around its leg. The message was short and sour: “
500 ulvenmen. Send help.
” There didn't seem to be anything else to say.

A half-dozen rifle shots had cleared the sky of hawks. Their best shot turned out to be Gregor. The blue knight had taken his lessons from Karl in earnest, and his tael-enhanced accuracy gave him an edge over the ordinary men. He'd only killed one hawk, but after that the rest had retreated out of sight.

Christopher threw open the lid of the crate and chased all the pigeons into the air. Watching the dozen birds flutter up, he felt the burden of responsibility settle on his shoulders. If he felt this bad about dispatching a dozen pigeons as decoys, knowing most of them would die to the hawks, how would he feel about sending men to their deaths to save others?

As long as they were in the fort, trapped in a siege, he might not have to make a hard decision like that.

Karl came to give him an update.

“No change. As best we can tell, they are sleeping. On the bright side, all of them are in merely hide armor. They are poorly equipped, and that usually means poorly disciplined as well. Even D'Kan is beginning to think we have a chance.”

Christopher would have asked why they hadn't attacked yet, except he already knew the answer. As usual, they were waiting for the cover of darkness. Just once, Christopher wanted to fight monsters that weren't bigger, meaner, and able to see in the dark.

“Then I'm going back to bed,” he told Karl.

He woke with a start, not knowing how much time had passed. Groggy and stiff, he forced himself to do a dozen deep knee bends and a few lunges with his sword before he went out of the cabin.

It was late afternoon, and the fort was quiet. Karl wanted the men sleeping, and to facilitate that he had ordered complete silence. Even Torme whispered when talking to Christopher, asking his advice on what magic he should prepare.

“The weapon blessing,” Christopher told him, “as many as you can. And remember it works on cannons as well as swords.” The spell had already saved his army once. Ordinary guns weren't much use against creatures that could only be harmed by magic.

Royal wanted to go for a ride, pushing at Christopher's shoulder with his huge head. Apparently the warhorse had enjoyed yesterday's excursion. The coming siege would not be fun, however. The inside of his fortress was the size of a football field, but it was cluttered with buildings and supplies. Hardly enough room for the big horse to break into a gallop before he had to slow down.

Gregor was as impatient as the warhorse, although he didn't nudge Christopher with his head. He just twiddled his thumbs.

“Nervous?” Christopher asked, before realizing that was not a very complimentary question.

“Bored,” Gregor answered. “When are you going to let me start shooting ulvenmen? The cheeky bastards are sleeping less than three hundred feet from the walls.”

That was about the limit of effective range for a recurve bow. Even if you could hit something that far out, the shaft would have lost so much energy it wouldn't do much damage. D'Kan's long bow and the heavy crossbows that were popular back in the civilized world had twice that range, so either the ulvenmen had forgotten how humans fought, or their bird-spies had told them there were no bows in the fort.

Christopher's rifles had a killing range of a thousand feet. But the ulvenmen had no way of knowing that yet. He wasn't going to let them know, until it was too late.

“How are the troops holding up?” he asked, trying to pretend he had not just questioned Gregor's courage.

“Better than our stalwart Ranger,” Gregor said, but he wasn't smiling. “Honestly, I would think them enspelled if I did not know otherwise. Even high-rank lords would look at that ocean of fangs and quake. But your boys seem to think you'll pull a dragon out of your pocket and kill everything. They're more concerned with whose turn it is to cook dinner than they are with the coming battle. If it is possible for an army to be overconfident, yours wins the prize.”

“Is it?” Christopher asked. “Is it possible for an army to be overconfident?”

“An over-tempered blade may hold a fine edge, but in the face of setbacks it can shatter where a less keen blade would only be notched.”

Remembering the battle against the goblins, Christopher shook his head.

“They won't break and run. We don't have anywhere to run to, anyway.”

“I noticed that,” Gregor said. “Most high-ranks leave themselves an escape route, in case something unexpected happens. That's how they live long enough to become high-rank. Did you at least prepare your flight spell?”

“No,” Christopher admitted. He'd chosen different spells, intended to counter the effects of enemy magic.

Gregor sighed. “Don't tell D'Kan. He is under the illusion that after everything falls apart, you will cut a finger from his body before you flee, and he will at least have a second chance at life. Truly, Christopher, you mystify me. You chose actions that increase the morale of your unranked at the expense of the morale of your ranks.”

“Don't they have as much right to life as we do?”

“You could fit a lot of fingers into one sack.”

Christopher hadn't thought of that. He felt his face flush.

“I wasn't serious. You couldn't possibly afford to revive everyone. Nor do you have need to apologize. Both D'Kan and I understood our place when we joined you. You have treated us like ordinary men at every turn. We cannot expect different now.”

“I'm sorry,” Christopher said, because he was. He knew he had taken advantage of both men, accepting their service without paying the usual price.

“I confess,” Gregor said with surprise in his voice, “that I find it refreshing.”

The two men stood together for a moment, sharing a feeling that had no place in the iron hierarchy of rank and privilege. Indeed, it might never have been felt before in this world. Gregor was discomfited by its strangeness at last and went off to find Disa, saying that he'd best mend his fences with her before the battle.

“I don't want her remembering our theological arguments when she's deciding where to put her last healing spell,” he said. His smile showed he was not serious. She would do what was right.

They all would.

13

A SHOCKING EXPERIENCE

T
he night passed fitfully, but peacefully. Even though the sky was heavily overcast, screening out the starlight and leaving the world in deep darkness, the enemy did not attack. D'Kan suggested it was too dark. Their foes were not magical, only flesh and blood, and they needed some light to aim their bows by.