The Bloodstained God (Book 2) (49 page)

Narak was surprised to see her. The wind was still stubbornly in the north and the Seth Yarra, so his wolves showed him, were still camped, though he believed from what he saw that they would move at dawn the next day.
He had been standing there for hours, waiting for a change. There was nothing else that mattered to him. Yet here was Pascha, suddenly emerging from a flock of sparrows that blew across the open tops.

“Narak, we must speak.” It was the first thing she said, but he was distracted, listening to the chanting mages, trying to discern the tiniest shift in the wind.

“You have not lost my reserve?” he asked.

“No. We won easily,” she replied, clearly resenting the question.

“Good. Then wait a while. I think I sense a shift in the wind.”

“This is urgent, Narak. The matter I bring to you is most urgent.”

“Not as urgent as the wind.” But he turned his eyes from the north and looked at her. “What is this about?” he asked.

She glanced at the mages. They seemed quite absorbed in their chanting, but she did not want them to overhear. “In private,” she said.

Narak looked north again, raised his head as though scenting the wind, looking for a hint of salt sea where there was only ice and pine. “The tent,” he said.

They went to the tent and ducked inside. It was large enough, and smoky with the fire that burned in the centre, but it was hardly luxurious. There were a few blankets on the floor, a jug of water and sacks of various foodstuffs. Narak took a seat on the floor and picked at a strip of dried meat.

“Now speak,” he said.

“Skal wants to take Telas Alt,” she said.

“Your numbers?”

“Three thousand of the Seventh Friend, two thousand Telans, and there may be more rallying to Hestia’s flag.”

Narak smiled. “Poor Terresh,” he said.

“What?”

“Even the king does not know that he is not the king.”

“The matter, Narak. What of Telas Alt?”

“I can see why Hestia would want this, but why does Skal want Telas Alt?”

Pascha explained his reasoning, concluding with his image of the city besieged, the hammer and the anvil.

“It is clever,” Narak acknowledged. “The plan is sound, if a little risky, but I have already called the army north. If Skal marches on Telas Alt he will do so unsupported. Will he wait?”

“I have told him to wait on your decision.”

“Then we will wait,” Narak said. “We will wait for the wind. If the wind favours us I may yet send the army to support Skal’s attack, and we can finally undo all that Telan treachery has lost us.”

“How long must we wait?”

“Two days, perhaps three. In that time we will have won or lost.”

They went outside again. It was cold with the wind in the north, but Narak did not feel it. He scented the wind again and found only snow and ice with a dressing of pine, a pure north wind. There was still time, though. There had to be time.

He waited. The mages chanted and somewhere below them in the great forest Captain Henn’s men waited. Fate itself waited for the wind.

She had been gone two days and there was no word. Skal did not understand the delay
, and he was worried. Passerina had promised to return the day following her departure, but she had not. Time rolled on and any news that he had concerning Seth Yarra movements became steadily more out of date. The world was becoming less certain by the hour.

What he had seen as a clear opportunity to destroy the enemy once and for all was gradually fading. In another two days it would have passed. By that time the Seth Yarra force marching from the north would be in a position to intercept their dash for Telas Alt, and the last thing Skal wanted was to face a superior force in the field when so much was at stake. He could lose everything. He knew they would not fight shy of a battle. It was not the Seth Yarra way.

So they had two days.

The decision was his. He knew that. Hestia and Terresh were ready to march at a moment’s notice. Telas Alt was their capital city and they longed to take it back.

Another hundred men had drifted in to join their force and more, he knew, were on the way, not that a couple of hundred made a difference.

He also knew that the sooner they left the greater their chance of success would be.

It was different from battle. In battle you made decisions on the spur of the moment, and right or wrong you did your best. Here he sat and pondered. One hour he was sure that they should march without delay, and the next he was equally certain that they should hold back. Who could guess what Narak’s plans might be?

Over time his vacillation tended towards the side of action. Doing nothing had never been a favoured path with Skal. He always wanted to be doing, going forwards towards a goal. He had been told that it was a weakness in his strategic thinking, but it was an instinct he had always trusted.

He reasoned that he could retreat if called upon to do so, but that to lose the opportunity by waiting would be negligent. If he left the next day he would still have a window of time in which he could retreat, and he preserved the opportunity for one more day.

He called a council of war with Hestia, Terresh and Tragil. They met in the same tent they had met two days earlier, and sat in the same seats. Skal didn’t know any other way of saying what he had to say, so he plunged straight in. Passerina had failed to return, the opportunity was slipping away, and if they did not act within two days it would be gone altogether. He laid it out before them as clearly as it stood in his own mind.

“If we leave tomorrow we still have the opportunity to withdraw for the first day of our journey,” he finished. “We can return to the safely of Fal Verdan.”

“You will not,” Tragil said. “Once you march you are committed.”

Terresh nodded. Hestia spoke. “There is no safety for us here anyway,” she said. “We will not retreat behind a Berashi wall. Once we start for Telas Alt we will not turn back.”

“Even if Passerina desires it?”

She glanced at the king. “Even then,” she said.

“And will you abandon them and come running back?” Tragil asked.

Skal looked at him for a moment without speaking, He was aware that Hestia and Terresh were watching him, waiting for his words. “I will not,” he said. It was true. Everything in him said that he must not abandon an ally, and how different was that inner voice from the bitter whining that had counselled him to sabotage Quinnial’s happiness, to belittle those around him. Had he changed so much? That old Skal would not have hesitated to abandon the Telans to preserve his own advantage. After all, what was really in it for him if he disobeyed Passerina and risked the lives of the men of his regiment? Disgrace, perhaps. But also Glory, he thought.

Hestia smiled at him. “You should have been a Telan,” she said.

Skal didn’t like that very much. “Are you suggesting that honour is the sole preserve of Telans?” he demanded.

“Not in the least,” Hestia smiled back. “Just that our people have a history of – how can I say this? – independent thought.”

“You mean they do not obey orders? Well that is fair enough.”

Hestia laughed at that, but Terresh did not. It seemed that the king did not appreciate the maverick nature of his subjects.

“So we march to regain Telas Alt?” he asked.

“In the morning,” Skal said. “If Passerina has not come, we will march.”

The decision was made. A small part of Skal hoped that the sparrow would come, and that she would either bless or forbid the venture. He knew that he would be happier with her bow alongside them and her gifts at their disposal, but a greater part of him hungered for adventure, to be out in the land doing great deeds, driving the enemy from the six kingdoms, winning glory and renown.

For a moment he thought of Latter Fetch, of Sara who now lived there, of Tilian Henn, his one time servant who now rode under the Wolf’s orders and wore the rank of captain. It was true what the sages said. Death and promotion are both swift in war, and one often leads to the other.

The wind changed on the third day.
Pascha had long since moved herself down to Cain Arbak’s camp with the first regiment of the Seventh Friend all around her. There was less wind, it was warmer, and the company was considerably more talkative. She had rapidly tired of chanting mages and a silent, obsessed Narak.

Down in the camp there were many people that she knew, old companions from the first battle of Fal Verdan, the wolves, as they styled themselves. She also found that she liked Sheyani, Cain’s Durander princess, though now only in blood. She and Cain were now part of Wolfguard, though they had never been there. Pascha found herself trying to describe the place, but anything she said made it seem dark and forbidding, when she found it anything but.

The previous night she had dined with Cain, Sheyani and a major whose name would not stick in her memory for some reason. She was forced to address the man as ‘major’, time after time rather than repeatedly asking his name.

It had been a good meal, though wine had been somewhat in short supply. Cain was keenly aware that the Seth Yarra army was only a couple of days march away, and he had spent the day inspecting his defences in painstaking detail. He declined to cloud his mind with drink. Her initial dislike for the man, because he was the one who had ended Perlaine’s life, had mellowed into an unspoken admiration. He was dedicated. Not only was he dedicated to his tasks as a commander, which was evident in his attention to detail, his constant sounding of the men under his command and the effort he put into ensuring their wellbeing, but he was also dedicated to Sheyani. He always listened to her, asked her advice, explained his own thoughts to her, and was glad to have her by his side whatever he was about.

Sheyani in her turn seemed to be learning her husband’s trade. Listening to her discussing some point of defence with Cain was an education in itself. Pascha had never been a student of war, but now she was learning quickly.

The one thing that struck her most was the colonel’s dedication to victory. He was single minded in his pursuit of it. It seemed that there was nothing he would not consider if it gave him some advantage, and in a small way she felt sympathy for his enemy. Yet Cain was a compassionate commander. Even if the bulk of that compassion was spent on his own men a portion of it was reserved for the enemy. She heard him tell his men more than once that their goal was victory, and not the destruction of Seth Yarra. Where killing was necessary it must be done, and done quickly and well, but when victory was achieved the killing stops.

The morning came quickly for Pascha. She was half asleep in her tent, aware of the slightest hint of light outside, the first pale of dawn, when she was summoned to wakefulness by someone slapping on the tent canvas outside.

“Deus!” a voice shouted. “The wind!” She did not recognise the voice, and by the time she stepped out of the tent the man had gone. The wind, though, was pushing down the pass, flapping tents and making the fires roar, driving up from the Great Forest full of the smells of earth and trees.

A west wind.

In a moment she was up on top of the pass where Narak and the mages had set their camp, and Narak was smiling. One of the mages, she did not know them by name, was speaking to him and looking pleased with himself.

“… and the wind will hold?” Narak asked. “You are sure?”

“For a week at the least,” the mage replied. “I think that we can hold it for ten days, or even twelve.”

Narak saw her.

“Now we will see,” he said.

“Are you sure about this?” she asked. “You cannot want to do it.”

“Think of the alternative,” he said. “I must. I must”

He closed his eyes, and she could see that he was speaking to the wolves. She had never been able to see it before, but now it was like ripples in the Sirash, and like arrows flying outwards, arrows of thought. The sight fascinated her. She was changing so much, seeing so much that she had never seen, and yet she was afraid to speak of it. When would it end?

*              *              *              *

Tilian Henn crouched with his back to a tree. Yesterday he and Deran had killed seven men. It had been easy, really. They had sat in trees, hidden among leaves, each covering the other’s position and picking the Seth Yarra patrol off one by one. It had almost seemed like a game, but the reality of it had struck home when they descended from hiding and hid the bloodied bodies in a ditch, covering them with a golden carpet of leaves.

The wolf that was with them watched all this with no apparent interest. It had not helped or hindered them in dealing with the patrol, but instead had retreated to a place where it could not be seen. Now that the work was done it reappeared and watched them.

“I didn’t know wolves were so lazy,” Deran remarked. “Isn’t it supposed to be on our side?”

“And if he’s listening?”

“To us?” Deran laughed. He was right. Why would Narak be listening to them?  They were just two warm bodies in a tide of war that was flooding across the land. Armies were marching, battles were being fought or prepared for, hundreds of people were dying. Who would want to listen to Henn and Deran?

They kicked a few more leave over the bodies and when Tilian looked back he couldn’t have said where they lay – just another vanished Seth Yarra patrol in Narak’s sacred, haunted forest. That’s what the Seth Yarra must think at any rate.

They moved back to their position carefully, slipping one at a time from tree to tree, listening for any sound that might indicate an enemy. The wolf followed at a distance.

They’d been here for a week now, living and hiding among the trees. Deran was a forester from Latter Fetch, and together they had made a comfortable nest twenty feet up in an old pine, an elder statesman of the forest. The two of them could not have joined hands about its trunk, but Deran had taught him how to climb it, and they had used branches cut with their swords to build a platform that was concealed to the casual eye. The sweep of the branches kept the morning dew off them and Deran even suggested that a fire would be scattered sufficiently by the great branches above them to be unseen, but Tilian would not allow it. The smell of a fire alone could be enough to draw trouble to them.

They had heard the patrol before they saw it. The men talked loudly to each other as they walked, as though to banish the ghosts that they feared, but Tilian and Deran had slipped away, one behind and one in front of them. They had taken turns shooting, and neither of them had missed.

Now the forest was quiet again. Birds called from the tree tops, and eddies of breeze stirred the topmost leaves on the ground. There were few pines here. Mostly the trees were out in glorious leaf.

Mixed forest is what Deran called it.

Tilian sat opposite the forester, twenty feet away. There was almost no approach that one or the other of them could not see. He reached down to scratch his leg and froze at a warning hiss from Deran. He looked up and almost jumped out of his skin. The wolf was standing two feet from him, staring into his face. It had come around the back with greater stealth than he had thought possible. Its yellow eyes met his.

Seen this close it looked big, but not that big, yet Tilian found its calm, almost human gaze disturbing. This wasn’t a wild animal. It was part of Narak.

The wolf barked three times. It was a peculiar sound to hear from a wolf, so like a domestic dog that it seemed wrong. Tilian shivered. It was the signal. It could be nothing else. He looked across the clearing at Deran.

“The signal, yes?”

“It must be,” Deran said.

The forester turned and ran back to the old pine. It was only a hundred paces away, and he covered the ground in seconds, caution thrown to the winds. A few moments more and he had scrambled up into the tree and Tilian couldn’t see him. He busied himself in preparation.

Deran came back down the tree with a pack over his shoulder and another in his hand. He ran to where Tilian crouched by a pile of dead branches and leaves. They had built a bank, almost a wall of debris, dry and stacked and interlocked like a wicker mound, stretching around two trees, but it was not intended as a defence.

Deran opened the packs and handed Tilian a jar, took one for himself. They broke the wax seals and carefully poured the contents over their stick and leaf wall. They repeated this with another two jars. When it was done they threw the jars away and Tilian crouched close to the pile and made fire on a slab of dry bark with a small amount of dry tinder he had been saving, nursing a flame into life and feeding it until it became hungry, devouring leaves and twigs as quickly as he could toss them in. He and lifted the bark up and placed it carefully on the wall, being sure not to touch the parts wet with oil. He stepped back and watched the fire begin to spread, crawling up and sideways.

“Done,” he said.

The oil caught with a sudden violent rush of air and burning, and Tilian felt the pulse through the air as it drew breath.

“They’ll see that at the pass,” Deran said. The flames were taller than the two men now, leaping up and licking at the trees around which they had been set. Tilian backed away.

“They will soon,” he agreed.

Deran looked around. He didn’t look to happy about being so close to it.

“Which way is east?” he asked.

“Follow the wolf.”

Sure enough the wolf was already twenty paces off, looking back at them. They picked up their packs, lighter now, and followed it. The creature moved slowly, at what Tilian thought of as a fast walk, and behind them the fire began to climb the tree, to spread out along the ground.

That was it. Their duty was done. All up and down the line of the Seth Yarra march his men would be doing the same thing, fires would be bursting out, catching the west wind and eating the great forest, rushing inexorably towards the Dragon’s back, towards the Seth Yarra soldiers.

It was a terrible thing to do, Tilian thought, and for the enemy it would be a terrible way to die, a cruel death full of pain and fear. He did not regret it, though. He had seen what Seth Yarra had done at Henfray, where they had slaughtered hundreds, women and children too, without mercy. For Tilian this was a balancing of accounts, a cruelty for a cruelty, the justice of war.

They walked steadily away from the fire, the west wind singing in the tree tops above their heads and the distant roar of the flames building and blending with the wind’s song.