The Forgotten War (99 page)

But not threatening. Itheya sensed the girl’s fear; as long as she did not exacerbate those feelings then she felt conversation was possible.

Both her companions were close by, ready to fire. Waving them to stand down, Itheya stood up slowly, lowered her bow and stepped carefully towards the troubled girl.

‘May I ask politely what exactly a human woman is doing here, alone in these dangerous woods.’ She spoke slowly, clearly, doing everything she could to calm the fear she sensed in
this strange girl.

It did not work. She shot up in alarm, blue-grey eyes flecked with terror.

‘Stay back!’ she called. ‘I know not what you are but you can die as easily as all the others!’ She held her hand out, palm thrust towards the elf.

Itheya dropped her bow and raised both arms above her head.

‘You see – I mean you no harm. Notice I have two companions with me; we could have killed you before you noticed us. But I would much sooner we talked. May I come towards you a
little?’

The girl hesitated, unsure of herself. ‘Very well, but beware, I have enough magic to kill you.’

‘I can see that, but I want neither of us to die today.’

She approached Cheris, who slowly lowered her hand and looked with not a little wonder at the taller woman facing her. The distance between them was only a few feet. Despite herself, she had to
ask.

‘Are you ... an elf?’

Itheya laughed ‘Of course! My name is Itheya. These lands are new to me, though not so different to my home.’

‘Cheris,’ the girl replied. ‘My ... name is ... Cheris.’

Itheya came close to her, sniffing her slightly – much to the girl’s alarm. She raised a hand and put it close to her face then lowered it down to her belly then lower again. Her
expression changed to one of sad pity.

‘You poor child, what by the spirits has happened to you?’

Cheris looked into the elf’s strange eyes. She did not expect to see pain and compassion in them, so when that was exactly what she did see she had no prepared defence. As she feared she
would do, she broke down, her face a livid scarlet, tears flooding down her cheeks, her shoulders shaking.

‘There is nothing to fear, child. You are safe now.’ Without thinking Itheya embraced the poor tortured girl, letting her work out her tears, as they stained the leather of her
jerkin.

And that was how Morgan found them. He had received no signal from Itheya but sufficient time had elapsed for him to decide to investigate. The two other elves had returned to the horses so he
saw no reason to stay with them. He strode into the ditch, crunching wood and bracken beneath his feet.

Cheris started and pulled clear of Itheya.

‘Who are you?’ she rasped. ‘Do you work with Trask?’

‘Trask?’ Morgan questioned. ‘What about him?’

Cheris backed away ‘You do know him!’ she shouted, hysteria in her voice. ‘You bastard, you are not going to get what he took from me. I will kill you first!’

Morgan spoke again, as softly as he could. ‘Whoa, please, not so hasty. I do know Trask, yes, but I do not work with him. Rather, we dislike each other intensely. What do you know of
him?’

‘Morgan,’ Itheya said softly, ‘this lady is called Cheris. She has haraska, magic – a lot of it in fact. And she has been badly used, as only a man can use a woman.
Recently. And more than once.’ She looked at Cheris. ‘Come with us. We have people who can help with the pain.’

Morgan’s jaw set firmly at what she told him. He looked at Cheris, who was choking back sobs again. ‘Was it Trask?’

She nodded. They could tell she wanted to speak but no words could come. Both waited patiently, not wanting to hurry the girl. At last Cheris regained a measure of composure, her breathing was
still ragged but words came falteringly.

‘They tried ... to kill me ... once they had finished. Two other mages ... dead. Trask fights with ... with our army ... but ... but ... he is a ... .traitor.’

Morgan’s face looked hewn from stone. ‘Where is Trask now?’

‘Back with the ... army. Baron Felmere does ... not ... know.’

He looked at the ground, then to the heavens where the clouds were almost black. ‘Shit!’ he said softly. ‘Mytha’s bleeding stools!’

Itheya looked between the two humans. ‘I am not sure I understand. This Trask is not a man to trust, I take it?’

‘Yes, my Lady, this is bad news. When I left here to see you he had disappeared for a while; I had hoped he had gone for ever. The Gods, you see, love chaos and he is their instrument. A
renegade knight, I have fought both with him and against him. He has his own code of honour, far removed from most other people’s. He loves instilling fear in his enemies and taking what they
have for his own. Raping the enemy’s women is a favourite trick of his. I am sorry, Cheris, but you weren’t the first or the hundred and first, and you won’t be the last either. I
wonder which lord he fights with now?’

Cheris pinched her nose, trying to stop it running. ‘Fenchard,’ she said.

Morgan nodded his head slowly. ‘Of course. Why did I have to ask?’

Itheya continued to look puzzled. ‘He fights for you, for us then. Then why do what he did to this girl, why try to kill her?’

Morgan looked at the elf’s pale face, his world-weariness writ large in his dark eyes. ‘I think I have mentioned this before. Whereas you people argue constantly with each other and
deal with all your disagreements face to face and honestly, with humans saying one thing and doing another is an art. Men of power do it all the time – it is what power does, what it is.
Trask seeks to betray us somehow, probably for a large amount of gold, it being the thing he values above all others. I need to get to Baron Felmere before they fight the enemy again.’

Cheris had regained herself a little. ‘I, we, were due back at Grest with the army today. He was going to march against them on our return. I am supposed to be fighting for him.’

‘Then we have some little time. I take it Trask thinks you dead?’

Cheris nodded.

‘I congratulate you then. Most caught in his schemes do not survive the experience. My manners have deserted me also. Forgive me, Cheris, my name is Morgan, a soldier serving Baron Felmere
and Tanaren. You are in no shape to fight. I will tell him that when I see him. He can be a little overeager sometimes, but the two of us go back a long way. He will listen to reason and you will
be spared the next battle. In fact, it may be a good idea for you to return to your island and another mage sent, if that is what you wish.’

‘Thank you, Sir Morgan,’ Cheris said quietly, ‘but right now I do not know what I wish. I am having trouble thinking clearly.’

‘Of course you don’t!’ he said briskly. ‘Right now is not the time. Ride with us for now and make your decisions later, when we return you to the knights.’

‘If any are left,’ said Cheris wistfully. ‘Trask killed those that accompanied us.’

Itheya shook her head. ‘Your ways are strange to me. Traitors, that is
zavuyugon
in our tongue, are so rare in our history as to be almost unheard of. The punishments for ones such
as they are ... terrible.’

Morgan cast around him, looking for something. He strode forward, crouched low and stood up again, holding a low, flat stone covered in dried mud at one edge. He held it up to both women.

‘Do you know what this is?’

Itheya laughed, a short, sharp exclamation. Morgan looked at Cheris; even she was smiling slightly.

‘Are stones so rare this side of the mountains? Perhaps you use them as jewellery here.’ Itheya picked up her bow.

‘You are right, of course; it is a stone but, more importantly, it is a Tanaren stone. Now, it has not been always thus. Over the last ten years, by my calculation, it has been Tanarese
four times and Arshuman three, such are the amount of times this land has been passed back and forth between us. This does not count the other times where skirmishers or raiders have held this
ground for a day or two. Now, in order to get possession of such an important piece of rock, our opposing forces have met in two to three great battles a year, along with hundreds of smaller
conflicts involving under a hundred men or so. People have been skewered, burned, had their faces and limbs hacked off, been castrated and left to swing from a tree on innumerable occasions just
for this stone.

‘Sorry to tell you this, Cheris, but thousands of women have been raped and hundreds of bastards fathered owing loyalty to no one but themselves. I have seen children tied to poles,
covered in pitch and used as flaming torches in the early years, when terror could still shock. It has worked, too. I see myself as a reasonable man in most things, but I would kill an Arshuman
soldier in cold blood without a second thought, such are the things they have done to us. No one knows why we are fighting anymore – for honour, I suppose – yet I doubt there are a
dozen men in these lands who could tell you exactly what that word means. And now we have to ride with the speed of an arrow to Grest to warn Felmere not to commit an act of folly and trust a man
for whom all of this is as the meat and drink of the Gods. Without this war, Artorus only knows what he would be, a drunk in a forgotten tavern somewhere, I suppose, or a sellsword wielding his
blade in the far south. I can cope with his mercenary ways as long as it is a long way from here. Come, ladies, we have delayed long enough.’

He dropped the stone and headed back towards the horses. Itheya looked at Cheris and smiled. ‘Come, ride with me.’

Cheris thanked her and followed the elf in the same direction as Morgan. As she did so the first rumble of thunder sounded, followed shortly by scores of large heavy raindrops, filling the muddy
hoof prints on the path before washing them away completely.

The army was deployed; the line was set. Rank upon rank of pale grim men stood behind their shields, their spears held aloft, gazing through the rain at the approaching enemy.
Thunder rolled across the plain, turning the grass grey and ashen. Prior to this cloudburst, the opposing sets of light cavalry had been chasing each other over the open field, exchanging bow shot
and insults. It had been entertaining but totally inconclusive, and once the rain started they had withdrawn back to their comrades. Baron Felmere trotted up and down the line making sure the men
could see him; the rain was a good thing for him, for the enemy’s light cavalry would be slowed and the effectiveness of the archers reduced. He shouted this out to his soldiers time and time
again, hammering home that they had superiority in numbers and troop quality and that this was the time to grasp the nettle and send the yellow demons to the furnace. His job done, he returned to
the far left of the line where the knights were stationed.

‘Well, Reynard’ he said bluffly, ‘you know how bad my eyesight is. How is the enemy looking?’

‘They are nearly deployed; the jester in the golden armour is at their heart with their first unit collected around him. Take them out of it, though, and it looks like they have just three
units of regular troops. I am guessing, too, that many of them are newly enrolled. There are, however, a couple of blocks of mercenaries, the Vipers, the Mailed Hand, Menneken’s Spears, and
others. They are lining up to their right, opposite us; get among them early enough and they will break easily.’

Overhead there was a flash of lightning, the first Felmere had seen. Thunder followed shortly afterwards, intensifying the rain, making it even more difficult to see clearly.

‘Artorus’s eyes, damn this weather,’ muttered Felmere. ‘Still, let’s not give them time to catch their breath. Let’s get the advance sounded and get this done
with.’

The word went out and, shortly after, a blaring of trumpets jolted the troops into action. Following their drummers each unit started to march slowly, closing the gap on the enemy which
currently stood at about a mile. Felmere watched them. Lasgaart was on the far left, a mounted man among infantry, his sodden banner dripping on to his helm. Then came his own troops, the largest
group, a thousand war veterans under his captain, Mirik. After this the green of Vinoyen – Ulgar was there, his scarred face clothed in steel. Felmere heard his barked commands, as he got his
drummer to increase the marching speed. Then it was Haslan Falls, a large group again, expensively clad though mostly untested. Fenchard himself sat atop a white charger, a preening peacock of a
man undaunted by the drenching he was receiving. Felmere saw Trask at their head, by the banner; he seemed twice the size of the men around him. Finally, to their right, was Maynard with the lesser
barons, each represented by a banner. Light cavalry flanked to the left and right in the traditional formation with a thin line of archers to the fore; they would melt back through the ranks once
their job of disrupting and unsettling the enemy formation was done. When he was satisfied, Felmere nodded to both Reynard and Dominic, spurring the knights forward. They had noticed a low hill on
the plain a quarter of a mile away and he had decided to observe proceedings from there, so that they could better judge the time to send the knights in when their charge would be at its most
devastating.

The men were becoming subdued. Rain tended to do that. Summer was the true fighting season when a man could fight the enemy rather than the elements and wounds would bleed fast but heal quickly.
Despite Felmere’s best efforts, the news of the absence of the magical healer had spread among the men. That, together with the march to battle coming without any time for the customary
prayers and blessings, had caused much muted grumbling among the rank and file. The Baron let them moan; once battle was joined, no one would be thinking of such things.

He gained the hill and remained there with the knights, watching the infantry progress towards the enemy. The Arshumans had finished deploying and were waiting, stock still, for their foes to
come to them. Their king in his ridiculous armour had found his own high ground and looked down upon his charges as they unfurled their yellow banners defiantly against the storm. The mercenaries,
a mishmash of weapons and armour waiting under banners of simple cloth, stood slightly apart from the Arshuman troops. Lasgaart would engage them, Felmere thought, and he already had the mind to
send the Silver Lances crashing into their flank once they were engaged. If they broke their formation, it would compromise the Arshumans defence considerably, it would give his men some impetus,
maybe then they could roll across the Arshuman line, putting the untested troops under pressure. Hopefully, it would break their will and put them to flight. The battle would be won then; it would
just be a matter of time.