Soldiers Live (30 page)

The Taglian Territories:

Inside the Middle Army
This is going to be tricky,” Soulcatcher reminded staff officers compelled to
take her genius on trust. Her previous demonstration, during the Kiaulune wars,

had come before their time.

The enemy trumpets sounded the ready. His drums began to rumble.

Soulcatcher said, “Once they sound the advance they’ll be too busy to spy on
us.”

The advance sounded.

“I want the word spread on the second line that the collapse of the first line
is part of my plan. Tell them it’s a deliberate ruse. I don’t want anybody
running because the first line does. Tell them that anybody who does run is
guaranteed worm food. Then tell the third line the same thing about the first
and second lines. I want them to believe I’m luring the enemy in where I can use
sorcery to destroy them. And I want the reserves backed off to the edge of the
wood. Right away.”

“But that means . . . ”

“Forget the camp. If we don’t win this fight the camp won’t matter. I want the
reserves spread out along the edge of the woods so they can collect up men who
run away and get them organized. But before they do that I want them in here to
move my guests back to the north bank of the creek.”

Blank looks stared her way.

Anger began to creep into her voice. Anger they knew to be the sort that soon
saw corpses arriving on the cemetery ground outside camp. When Soulcatcher was
angry enough she would not let the Gunni burn, and thus purify, the bodies of
those she had slain. “Form them at the edge of the woods! Ready to kill any
cowards!” Then in a calm, almost beatific voice she added, “If the soldiers fail
to rally and throw back the enemy their generals won’t long survive defeat.”

Soulcatcher had very strong feelings about how this engagement should proceed.

“In fact, the wise general will make plans not to outlive his standard bearer.

His passing will be much less painful that way.”

She had been preparing for days. But she was compelled to fight with flawed
weapons. The most rigid control had to be exercised.

“Get busy!” She stepped past the officers, left the tent, climbed up a reviewing
stand that would let her see the action. As she took her place there the enemy,

with the precision of a drill team, collided with her forward deployment.

The slaughter was slighter than she had anticipated. The enemy seemed content to
shatter opposing formations. They did not pursue. They halted, removed wounded,

dressed their ranks and repaired their equipment. And took their time doing it.

Which pleased the Protector. That meant more time for the beaten companies to
collect themselves at the edge of the wood.

Soulcatcher glanced back as men carried her prisoners’ cages out of her tent.

Goblin, his eyes regenerated already, offered her a little mocking salute. The
girl looked straight at her and smiled.

One more time and she would throw the brat to the soldiers for a few hours. That
would take the sass out of her.

The soldiers managing the removal seemed calm enough, despite the terrified
fugitives beginning to enter the camp.

Soulcatcher was irritated at herself for having overlooked the chance that the
fugitives might not flee all the way to the woods. She should have had the
palisade demolished.

No matter. Only a few would take refuge here.

She gave orders to seal the gates.

The enemy resumed his advance.

The second line gave a better account of itself but the outcome was identical.

The troops broke without doing much real damage to the foe.

This time none of the fleeing soldiers got into the camp.

Once again the enemy stopped to handle his wounded and dress his lines and
repair his armor. The cavalry screening the enemy flanks were having trouble
holding back. Soulcatcher guessed that discipline would crack once the third
Taglian line fell apart.

Those idiots had better be ready back at the wood.

Soulcatcher left her vantage as the enemy sounded the advance again. “Very
businesslike, this new Captain. But how well does she think on her feet?”

Very businesslike, Soulcatcher’s personal removal to the wood, where she growled
new orders at her officers before she retired to the big tent she had had
prepared, as a pretended forest getaway and as a place where she could meet
messengers from the allies who were trying to butcher her now. Goblin and the
Daughter of Night had been deposited there.

Both prisoners seemed amused by her arrival. As though they had shared some
particularly hysterical joke, entirely at her expense, just a moment before she
appeared.

Soulcatcher paid them no attention. She was much more concerned about how
troubled her sister would have grown because of the absence of sorcery on the
battlefield. If no one became too suspicious for another fifteen minutes . . .

The Taglian Territories:

Fire on the Middle Ground
Behind the brilliant fog of light masking Widowmaker I climbed down off my
horse, then clambered onto the Voroshk flying post I would share with my former
understudy, Murgen. The post had Magadan’s name painted on it in his native
script. Over on the left, Lifetaker, too, was preparing to soar with that noted
devotee of high flying, Willow Swan. All of the flying logs were ready to go up,

each surrounded by an absurd wicker and bamboo framework carrying numerous
makeshift attachments.

Somewhere back where I could not see them, Tobo and Howler were getting ready to
take up a flying carpet creaking under the weight of warlike unpleasantries. The
screaming wizard was still muttering under his breath because he had been forced
to reveal his flying secrets to Tobo.

A huge volume of raw nastiness would be taken aloft, to be launched either when
Soulcatcher betrayed her location or our attack began to bog down.

The latter did not happen. The evaporation of the Taglian front line was a
daydream come true. The second line lasted only a little while longer. The third
line, evidently comprised of the best and most motivated of the Protector’s
troops, was more stubborn. Having spent too much time too close to Soulcatcher
myself, I could imagine why the third force might have had a little extra
motivation. Soulcatcher was not a thoughtful, forgiving commander.

Give her her due, though. She would not expect love or forgiveness from anyone
superior to her, either. In the world where she had come of age that had been
the norm. That world, of the Domination, had demanded ruthlessness and cruelty.

It had forgiven neither kindness nor compassion.

The third line’s stubbornness failed to withstand the precision and confidence
of our men. Fainthearts began to slip away and run toward that distant treeline,

where somebody appeared to be rallying survivors.

The rout had only just begun when a dome of cardinal light popped into existence
in an instant, straight ahead. It faded in seconds. I was making a clumsy effort
to gain altitude when a second dome of light, this time carmine, appeared and
faded to my left.

There were a half dozen more flashes, each in the family of reds, before I felt
confident that I was high enough and dared to divert attention from the post’s
controls long enough to see what Murgen had been babbling about throughout our
climb.

The sorcery in progress appeared to have turned the earth a uniform black. Upon
that surface something kept painting red flowers that spread from a pinpoint in
an eye’s blink, almost black at the center but fading to flame yellow as the
circle ended its expansion at perhaps twelve yards in diameter. From on high
nothing but the sudden red chrysanthemums, blooming randomly, were readily
visible. The earth looked like some bleak gameboard upon which a garden of
deathflowers continue to blossom and gradually fade.

Whatever was happening, it was passive. Not coming to us. The sorcery had been
in place already and was being tripped by our advancing soldiers. Who were not
getting off lightly.

Soulcatcher did not make herself evident anywhere.

Way off to my left Lady and Willow vanished behind smoke as all the bamboo
fireball launchers attached to their post sprayed the Taglian camp. Dozens of
fires broke out down there but the red circles kept blooming amongst our
soldiers.

I pushed my post forward half a mile. I told Murgen, “Saturate the wood. She’s
in there somewhere. Where the hell are my crows? They’re never around when I
need them.” They had disappeared during my climb to altitude. Maybe they did not
like getting too far from the surface of the earth.

There was no sign of the Unknown Shadows anywhere. But I did not expect to see
signs. Tobo had sent most of the hidden folk away last night, for their own
safety.

You notice strange things in times of stress. I remarked the absence of crows
around the battlefield. A rather bizarre lacking which I had not witnessed
before, ever. But vultures had begun to circle above the wood.

Murgen shouted something about the enemy taking heart from our misfortune. I
said, “Put the fireballs along the tree-line, then.” Which was really my task
since I had to point the Voroshk post where I wanted the fireballs to go.

Child Shukrat, better schooled in the use of the post, swept in from the east,

low, laying her fire down upon the Taglian line. She wasted hardly a fireball.

Our ground advance halted. Sleepy did not withdraw but neither was she willing
to face any more killing sorcery.

I would not see how bad that had been until I was back on the ground. Which was
soon enough because once we exhausted our fireball supply there was nothing more
Murgen and I could do from above.

I had no trouble imagining Soulcatcher over there in those woods laughing her
leathers off at how she had hurt us.

The Taglians launched one uncoordinated, inept counterattack which turned
disastrous when they began to run away again. Soulcatcher’s sorceries did not
distinguish between friend and foe, only between directions of travel.

We grounded well to the rear. I remounted my horse and went forward.

Soulcatcher’s sorcery had been terrible. The site where each flower of light had
bloomed remained defined as a red so dark it verged on black. The black itself
was fading from around the circles, trampled grass gradually becoming visible
like winter wheat sprouting. But weirder crops appeared within the circles.

Men, sunken into the earth, some only ankle deep, some up to their hips and
more. Frozen in the advance, still in their lines. All suits of armor no longer
tenanted by even a ghost of life.

Somebody had tried opening several suits. Inside there was nothing but charred
flesh and bone. A quick calculation suggested we might have lost four or five
hundred men to this horror, which had taken place almost faster than it can be
told.

“There’s something wrong here,” I said. “Soulcatcher has stopped.”

“What?” Murgen asked. He was probing a deadly circle. He discovered that it was
cool now and the visible surface was no thicker than a fingernail. “What’s
that?” Later, when we collected the dead, we learned that they had not sunk into
the earth. The apparently sunken portion was not there when we dug out around
them. Possibly they had melted.

“Soulcatcher stopped playing with us. She had to be controlling those circles
somehow. Otherwise they would’ve killed her own soldiers the first time they
retreated. But that isn’t working anymore. What’s changed? What’s happened?”

Suddenly, the vultures above the wood all spiralled down rapidly, as though
planning to attack something.

I said, “Let’s see what Sleepy is up to.”

Sleepy was sending scouts to explore the limits of the danger. So far no death
flower had bloomed on our far flanks.

The vultures stopped their descent just above the treetops but continued to look
more like raptors than carrion birds. One suffered an impulse to descend a
little farther.

A golden-brown urine-colored strand darted up like a gigantic toad’s tongue. A
splatter of light surrounded the bird. It seemed to become a black cutout of a
vulture. The cutout shattered into a hundred fragments. Those fluttered down
like falling leaves.

The remaining vultures chose to take their business elsewhere.

Nobody but me seemed to notice what was happening.

Where were my damned ravens? I could send them to see what was happening while
keeping my own sweet ass high and dry. What was the point of taking on a mythic
character if I did not get to do mythic kinds of things?

Moments later Tobo and Howler were above the woods, dropping prosaic firebombs
on the Taglian forces.

Lady joined us before Sleepy’s scouts had found out if we could safely slide
around the ends of the killing zone. She had a map she presented to the Captain.

One glimpse told me my sweetie had not wasted her time aloft. She had charted
the deadly circles. And a pattern was apparent. The positions of those not yet
tripped were evident. Unless Soulcatcher had been aware of our airborne
capacity. Then the death circles would be there solely to herd us into something
far more gruesome and cruel.

Sleepy summoned her battalion commanders immediately.

Midway Between:

The Unanticipated
Soulcatcher’s soldiers fought stubbornly for a while, along the edge of the
wood, but had been too badly mauled already to last long under determined attack
by our professional bloodletters.

Most of the Taglians had no desire to see their wives and children lose their
husbands and fathers. Sleepy gave orders to let anyone who abandoned his weapons
go.

Any Taglian economy inherited by the Prahbrindrah Drah would be better off if it
was not crippled by a great slaughter of the empire’s young men. It was only now
recovering from the horrible losses suffered during the Shadowmaster and
Kiaulune wars.

“It wasn’t anywhere nearly as eloquent a victory as I’d hoped. But I’ll take
it,” Sleepy said. “Despite our casualties. This war may have been won today.”

That earned her a lot of bewildered or disbelieving looks. Soulcatcher was still
out there, in a really foul temper now. More unpleasant surprises could be
expected.

“But if we keep after her she’ll be distracted when she reaches Taglios.”

Mogaba’s plans were a longshot. I said so. “And whatever sweet nothings his
conscience whispered to him a couple months back, he’ll be a whole lot more
worried about saving Mogaba’s skin once he has old enemies pounding on his door
for real.”

Sleepy started to say something about Aridatha Singh but thought better of it.

A carmine flash appeared on the killing ground. Using Lady’s chart Tobo had
triggered a booby trap by bombarding it from the Howler’s flying carpet.

Sleepy told Runmust Singh, “After Tobo’s done I want you to march some prisoners
back and forth through there. I don’t want any of those things left active. Some
kid might wander in there and get himself killed.” Like the countryside was
swarming with stupid children.

I said, “I’d be more pleased if we could grab a few of those things for our own
use. If Mogaba had something like that he might stand a chance of killing
Soulcatcher.”

Lady ruined the fun. “She’d smell it out. She created those things. There’ll be
safeguards so they can’t be thrown back at her.”

A whole lot of shouting started in the woods. Tobo and Shukrat darted that way,

in case the soldiers needed help. Moments later Howler’s carpet streaked back
our way.

Tobo did not bother to dismount. He just announced, “They’ve found the Daughter
of Night. She’s in a cage. Soulcatcher ran off and left her.”

Lady and I exchanged looks. That seemed completely unlikely. Unless the girl was
bait in a truly deadly trap. Which might be. Soulcatcher had sown the field of
death that had consumed our soldiers without the Unknown Shadows noticing her
doing it.