Once A Hero (18 page)

"Personal energy? Anger, happiness?"

"No, physical strength and stamina." Gena felt a shiver run down her spine. "We do not allow emotions to become tied up in our magicks—speaking as an Elf now—except in very special ceremonies. Putting emotions into magick, using them to fuel magick, can lead to a loss of control that benefits no one. It could even kill the caster."

Gena shifted her shoulders to ease the uncomfortable feeling. "There are other factors involved in magick, of course. The Laws of Similarity, Contagion, and Holomorphism bend the laws of probability. For example, two things that look alike, or are similar, have a natural bond between them. Likewise, things that have been together are bonded, and an item that is but a piece of another item has a natural link to it."

"Hence the tales of witch women using a lock of hair or fingernail parings to fashion a love charm."

The Elf nodded. "Yes, those are the stories, and those things have a slight link, but not an important one. Hair and fingernails have no blood and no nerves, so their links to the body are very weak. A finger or an ear or a tooth would have a stronger bond to the person from which it came.

"That's a bit of a grisly example, but I understand it." Berengar smiled down at her. "Your skill at making the arcane transparent is impressive."

"But only possible with a receptive and intelligent listener as the audience."

Berengar laughed and spurred his horse forward as their ride took them out of the Aurdon valley. The outriders closed back up with the two of them, then they forded the Aurdon River and rode off toward the north and east. An hour later they stopped to water their horses in a tributary stream, then used that occasion to distribute the swords carried by the packhorse.

Armed and armored, they set off again at a gentle trot. Spirit found the gait comfortable and matched the pace set by Berengar's stallion with little trouble. They made good time, and the route they took seemed surprisingly well traveled, a fact Gena mentioned to Berengar.

"It is that. Logging teams created this road up into the mountains and down to the other side. Because the river curves far to the east, and farther yet east because of the way the floods three years ago moved its bed, using the mountain pass during the spring and summer makes the journey from Polston much quicker. The Haladin have been hitting caravans coming up through the mountains."

Their ride continued and brought them up into the foothills of the Central Mountains. The road carved a muddy brown track on through a high meadow, but halfway through the valley, the riders struck off southeast and slipped through grasses and into the dark precincts of a forest. As she rode toward it and the woods swallowed the first two riders, Gena strained for any sounds of ambush, but heard nothing.

The darker forest realm made her feel more comfortable than the trail and very much more than the city. She saw signs of a fire that must have swept through the area fifty or a hundred years earlier. For every fire-scarred giant still standing, she saw ten smaller, younger trees. Though most were evergreens, a few aspen and birch groves had carved out their own islands on the hillside. Dried orange pine needles carpeted the ground, but dark-green ferns and bushes sprouted up where sunlight pierced the verdant ceiling above.

The riders formed up in single file as they directed their horses onto a game trail. The young trees allowed for a fairly good field of vision, though the ravines and wrinkles in the landscape could have hidden dozens of Haladina. The guards kept a careful watch, with half of them resting their drawn swords across the pommel of their saddles. Their procession moved more quietly than Gena would have normally assumed Men could, and she knew, were these the ancient Cygestolian forests, the lot of them could have been taken by Elven Foresters before they realized they were under attack.

Her apprehension did not slacken as the troops crested a gentle rise and looked down on the campsite. The center of the small depression had been cleared of trees, which, in turn, had been used to make the crude lean-tos half dug into the hillside. A narrow footpath leading up and away on the opposite side of the depression suggested water could be found over in that direction, while another area on the north end of the gully looked to be where the Haladina picketed their horses. Down the center of the campsite ran a line of three firepits, bordered on all sides by logs or stones suitable for seating.

Berengar brought his horse back next to hers and leaned over. "As we thought, a campsite. From the smoke and ashes I would guess they heard Waldo and his men coming out here ahead of us and fled, probably off to the north."

The explanation made sense to Gena. If Waldo and his squad had followed the same trail, they would have entered the depression from the south, so heading out north would have made sense. "Do you think Waldo and his men have pursued them?"

Berengar nodded. "He's probably chased them halfway to Ispar by now." He pointed to the campsite. "Do you want to inspect it?"

"Please."

They rode on down into the bowl and dismounted. Gena crouched by one of the firepits and warmed her hands over the embers. "They must have left close to dawn, after banking the fire for the night. They made no attempt to extinguish the fires when they departed."

Berengar chuckled, hooking his thumbs in his swordbelt. "I have never known the Haladina to be fastidious or concerned with more than escape when pursued by Aurdon Rangers."

"You have a point there." Gena rose and crossed over to one of the lean-tos. Dark and damp, it smelled more of woodrot than Man-musk to her, but the worn blankets and scraps of cloth scattered around the enclosure suggested both human habitation and a quick departure. Everything looked appropriate, but still something did not feel quite right. She could not identify the incongruities, but they gnawed at her.

Her apprehension spiked when she turned back toward the firepits and saw the guards had spread themselves out through the camp. Dismounted, using their swords to stir ashes and poke lumps of leaves, they had abandoned their previous caution. Even Berengar seemed bored, his eyes unfocused as his mind drifted.

Across from her, where the footpath to water curved around a colossal pine, she saw the flash and heard the snap of a flashdrake's talon falling. As the puff of smoke curling up from the longgunne evaporated, she saw a swarthy Haladin face break into a fierce bejeweled grin. Even as she gestured in his direction and screamed a warning, keening Haladin war cries drowned her out, and a dozen of the Outland warriors broke through the brush to reclaim their camp from the count and his men.

It struck me, as I rode from Aurium in the company of the Lansorii Honorari, that a Haladin ambush was the least of my worries. In actuality I felt less in their company than in their custody. Had they been inclined to trust me, I'm certain they would have left me eating their dust for the whole of the journey. Because they did not, two lancers rode behind me, far enough back so they avoided my dust, but close enough to make me turn this way and that to keep track of them.

Aurium, being the size it was, was a mite small for supporting the Steel Pack for the time we would be away. While our fighting force numbered four hundred, grooms, armorers, quartermasters, and camp followers swelled the ranks to near double. Before I left, I struck a deal with Festus and Childeric that allowed my people to set up camp on the other side of the Aur River. The Steel Pack foraged for game, and all excess was sold to the merchants in exchange for grains and other staples. Aurium, in turn, paid for protection and advice on how to fortify the town against raiders, the net result of all this being suitable living conditions for my men and a slight profit for the merchants.

While Drogo gladly accepted promotion to acting commander in my absence, he tried to convince me that going with the Elves would be my death. He didn't trust them, and given history, I knew well his reasons. Part of me, deep down, shared his fear for my safety, but my friendship with Aarundel erased the past. The confrontation at the legislatorium made it clear he was not going to let the Elves sent to fetch him home give me trouble.

The journey itself would likely provide all the trouble any of us needed. The distance between Aurium and Cygestolia was near twelve hundred miles as the crow flies, but given that summer was slipping fast into the season of ice, not much was flying from the south up toward the north. More to the point, none of us had wings; as we were ground bound, the journey would take close to two months, and that only if we pushed the horses as hard as they would go.

The journey would also take us, albeit briefly, through Reithrese territory. While it struck me as unlikely that the Reithrese would actually attack an Elven troop; my presence might spur some ambitious Reithrese on to rash action. I was thinking, given the utter silence that greeted my presence as we rode off, that the honor guard would gladly give me over to any Reithrese we met. At the very least that would make me late for the wedding, so I was not looking forward to any confrontation that made my delivery to the enemy a viable solution.

Aarundel and I had decided during a late-night conversation that the permission for him to marry Marta had come because of the headway the Red Tiger was making in his war with the Reithrese. We both knew that the Consilliarii would love nothing better than having Men bleed the Reithrese while getting equally bled. Remaining neutral and watching both sides weaken each other meant that the Elves would not be challenged and not faced with the prospect of another crusade of the sort that spawned the Eldsaga.

Not that the Red Tiger's victory might not do just that, of course. Aarundel had pointed out a number of times that certain actions might invoke the wrath of the Elven nation, so the Red Tiger studiously avoided them. When Polston fell, for example, the Reithrese priests were allowed to deconsecrate their temples and withdraw from the city unmolested. Attention to Elven concerns meant that we waged a war which we kept civilized—no mean feat—and that, in turn, meant we remained in control and actually thought in terms of strategy and tactics before we hurled ourselves into battle. Even Sture avoided the elemental tactical mistakes that had cost his father his life and his realm.

The Consilliarii considered this shift in the way Men waged war to be the result of Aarundel's influence in our force. It is true that strategy and tactics were something that the longer-term Elven perspective made possible, but their introduction to our councils was not made by Aarundel alone. I had seen enough in watching the battles waged by and against Tashayul to see where victory had been snatched from the jaws of defeat by the Reithrese's superior planning. In doing so I realized that forethought, which brought with it an awareness of terrain, weather, supply, morale, and a host of other factors, could make a meagre force far more powerful than it had any right to be.

The Red Tiger himself came at tactics from an entirely different direction. Having been enslaved by the Reithrese, he saw their utter disregard for life, and human life especially. In losing friends to carelessness and cruelty, he saw no reason to win with blood what could be taken by stealth, surprise, and superior planning. While he saw the Reithrese nation as a giant scorpion preying on humanity, he knew the Reithrese army—filled out with Haladin warriors—was the scorpion's sting. Eliminating it or its ability to fight would force the scorpion to withdraw and win him the war more easily than anyone could imagine.

The Consilliarii's recalling of Aarundel was proof they could not imagine Men learning from past mistakes. By stripping us of his expertise, I assumed they thought we would collapse after having liberated Centisia. By withdrawing Aarundel they could claim to the Reithrese that they prevented the Red Tiger from overthrowing them. If we kept on winning, the lack of an Elf in our midst would free the Reithrese to use any means at their disposal to oppose and defeat us.

All of my thinking on this subject occurred in a vacuum. The Elves had decided to ignore me as best they could, but I'd probably not have discussed all this with them even under torture. Shijef might have offered interesting comments, but he opted to isolate me as well. He got along no better than I with the Elves, but he was used to a solitary existence and apparently had decided I should see what it felt like.

We had left Aurium early in the day and headed roughly northwest. We continued on for two hours, outstripping evidence of human habitation. The Elves and their mounts moved through the forest with a preternatural ability that included shadows' reluctance to surrender them to light. Even the slight clanking of their armor dulled in the forest, and as I looked around, I realized I could see only the two Elves directly in front of me. The rest had disappeared.

I knew the Elves meant to shock me and inspire fear in me. They succeeded, for I could easily imagine the terror of people in the Eldsaga when the Elven Legions materialized at the edge of a forest before riding down some tiny village. I also knew that Aarundel, up there at the head of the line, was allowing his compatriots' pranks because he would have been surprised if I showed fear. In his honor, and for the pride of Men everywhere, I relaxed in the saddle and started humming a little tune.

I resolved to smile as well because the day had dawned bright and even in the deep forest, the sun managed to warm the air. Slate-gray tree bark broke up the deep greens and bright rust of evergreen needles present and past. The trail on which we rode wound around, up and down, through various little hills and along streambeds. I was thinking it was a game trail because it tended to go around things instead of over them, but piles of mossless stones at certain points along the way told me Men had been using it recently.

Mud splashed up from our horses' hooves as we picked our way down a swampy streambed. Clouds of needle-flies rose up but ignored the Elves in favor of me. Slapping the little bloodsuckers distracted me enough that I missed the spot where the others had ridden up from the streambed. Blackstar, apparently likewise immune to the insects, plodded on and started up on the far side of the muddy track. I gave him his head, and though I saw nothing ahead of me, I assumed I was headed in the right direction.