The Legend of Asahiel: Book 02 - The Obsidian Key (40 page)

“Outlanders,” another muttered.

But Lancer was nodding approvingly, the shaved sides of his head reflecting the lamplight. And at the corner of Chamaar’s mouth, beneath the overhanging end of his iron-gray moustache, Torin thought that he detected a smile.

“When striking an armored opponent, you aim for the weakest link,” the general agreed, speaking again to all assembled. “We find and force the most likely seam. As our enemies surge ahead to flank us, we drive north until we hit the wall of the Bastion, displacing Lorre’s troops with our own. We then veer east along its southern face toward the city gate, cutting our swath among his reserve units and supply stores. If we can do so quickly, his strongest troops, positioned out front and to either side, will not have a chance to engage us until it is too late.”

Some of the men continued to express doubt as they studied the L-shaped path traced in the mud before them. It was a long shot, at best. At worst, suicide. So much depended on the speed and depth at which they were able to drive the initial wedge. If they were to stall, there in the middle of the enemy multitude, they would be hewn down from either side like stalks in a farmer’s field.

“Lorre knows we’re coming,” Jaik reminded them all, his voice deep and contemplative. “His scouts are probably watching us even now. How do we position ourselves to execute this strike without revealing too soon our exact intentions?”

“Carefully,” Chamaar admitted. “We’ll make it appear that we mean to drive straight for the city by folding the Central Wedge alongside that of the East. The West will serve as our fishhook, so that it appears we mean to hold them off on that flank. At the last moment, Gilden’s wedge will split off to lead the charge through the center. Bardik and the West will follow in order to help fill the gash. The true test will be in holding the thickness of our lines. We must not be severed. At the same time—Lancer, Bardik,” he said, looking at each of the wedge commanders in turn, “we cannot afford to waste time engaging fronts east and west, but must focus on driving north until we hit the Bastion. Is that understood?”

The pair nodded, their youthful faces anxious, yet solemn.

“North to the wall, then east to the gate,” the general reiterated. “Those pouring in from behind will prevent those in front from getting squeezed. Meanwhile, Jaik and I will keep the forward units on the eastern side engaged, so that they cannot double back to help with the rear. If all goes to plan, Lancer will complete his circle to meet back up with me, forming a ring around the eastern segment—from which we can choke the life while holding off the western counterassault.”

And if all
doesn’t
go to plan?
Torin wanted to ask. Instead, he watched the brows of those harboring doubts straighten with grim resolve, their thinking coming into line with that of their general.

“Torin,” Chamaar added suddenly. “I’d like your company to spearhead our assault alongside Lancer. From what Arn tells me, you’re just the man we need.”

In other words, Torin thought, his mercenary friend had told the prime commander of what had happened in their battle at sea against the
Raven’s Squall
—what always seemed to happen when he wielded the Sword against an enemy. How he had charged ahead, unstoppable, yet caught up in his own euphoria, mindless as to the strategy and limitations of those around him. Driven by emotion. A reckless fool.

Exactly what was needed here.

He didn’t trust himself to speak, and so nodded instead. After all, he wanted to be near the front, among the first to find Lorre when finally they forced their way into the city. Should another do so before him, he might not get a chance to obtain the answers he required.

The council disbanded soon after, with runners sent out to relay orders to the various regiments. There was no second-guessing, no study of the many pitfalls in the course laid out before them. They hadn’t come this far just to dither over their chances of success. These men trusted in their leaders, who in turn trusted their troops to execute their assignments. At this point, that mutual trust was all they had.

Torin only wished he could say the same. The general he did not doubt. Chamaar had shown too much confidence in him to be denied the same courtesy. But as he exited the command tent, he could not deny a deep and troubling concern about the others—those who continued to behave as if unaware that tomorrow’s dawn might be their last. In comparing this army to those of Partha, Kuuria, and even Krynwall, he could not imagine they had the discipline to pull off such a dangerous maneuver. Many were here only for the money, fighting not as a nation, but as individuals who—if successful—might go back to cheating and fighting one another before the week was out. More likely, he could expect them to collapse and flee at the first sign of turmoil, leaving him trapped in the middle of a hornet’s nest that
they
had stirred up.

“Troubled thoughts?”

Torin spun, surprised and delighted to see that Dyanne and Holly had followed him from the assembly. “Where’s Jaik?” he asked, casting about.

Holly smirked. “Why, did you need to speak with him?”

Torin felt himself redden. Though he tried, he could think of nothing more to say.

But Dyanne did not acknowledge his embarrassment. “It looks to be a good plan,” she assured him.

“They always do,” Torin grunted, “when scribbled in the dirt ahead of time.”

“You don’t believe it will work?”

No.
But what else was he to do? Sneak ahead in the dead of night and ask the armies encamped at the city doorstep to deliver him to their lord? Odds were, it would then be Lorre who wielded the Sword of Asahiel in battle on the morrow.

“At some point,” Dyanne allowed, “it becomes only natural to question those who would guide us.”

“Like you and Dynara?”

Dyanne considered him closely, maple eyes glinting. “If you truly disagree with the general’s plan, you should do so openly, here and now, rather than risk following a course you don’t believe in.”

Torin shook his head. “It’s not the plan I don’t believe in. It’s the ability of these mercenaries to carry it out.”

Dyanne glanced at Holly, who nodded. “If you hadn’t noticed, we spent a good deal of time today working our way among those we’re set to battle alongside. This general and his commanders, they’re dedicated men—if there is such a thing. And these fighters, though not quite soldiers, are wild and headstrong. They will not be easily repelled.”

Torin wondered how they could possibly have determined such a thing by simply passing from one conversation to the next; yet the bigger mystery was what she wanted out of this. A reassurance, it seemed, that he was up to the task. That when the time came, he would lay aside his doubts and do what he must. Hadn’t he always?

“You won’t see me back down,” he promised her.

“Good. Although, just to be sure, we’ll be at your side the entire time. If these rogues can’t see you to victory, we will.”

It was an absurd statement, outlandish in its boldness. And yet, Dyanne’s smile was so wondrous, the gleam in her eye so reassuring, that the worries were wiped clean from Torin’s mind, while a surge of confidence filled his chest.

A smile of his own warmed his face. But then a voice called his name, and Arn muscled past a cluster of rogues and into view.

“Lancer is looking for you,” the man said, with a polite nod to the pair of Nymphs. “He says we’ve much to discuss.”

Torin’s smile faded as Dyanne and Holly stepped aside and went their own way, the latter with one of her mischievous winks. His sense of assurance followed, like sand drawn out by a retreating wave, leaving the sharp edges of his buried doubts exposed once more. Only this time, he felt no foreboding, only a curious sense of resignation. No matter whose instincts proved out—his or Dyanne’s—they would suffer the consequences together. One way or another, they would have their answer on the morrow.

Resisting the urge to look to see where Dyanne was headed, he turned instead to follow Arn, glancing skyward in surprise as a drizzle of snowflakes began to fall.

T
HE SNOW FELL THROUGHOUT THE NIGHT.
By daybreak, the land was covered, and men awoke within their blankets and lean-tos beneath an icy crust. Torin emerged, clinging to the Sword for warmth, to gaze upon the world with fresh wonder.

“Going to be rough footing in this,” Moss grumbled.

Torin glanced back to find the big rogue huffing in the early dawn. “Moss,” he greeted, genuinely comforted to see the other’s face. It had not been a pleasant night. He put out his hand as if to catch a few of the windblown flakes. “I thought you said I’d never see it snow down here beneath the mountains.”

Moss shrugged. “Looks like I was wrong. Won’t be the last time I’m caught in a lie.”

Torin’s lips tightened with his amusement. Under better circumstances, he might have grinned.

“Where are the girls?” Moss asked.

“They were wise enough to accept the hospitality of Commander Jaik’s tent,” Torin muttered.

“The same offer wasn’t extended to you, eh?”

“Arn offered to make room. I figured I could set a better example by roughing it alongside the men of my unit.”

Moss came to a stop beside him. “I hear you’re going to be out front.”

Torin nodded, then turned back to look over the stirring encampment. “Come to say good-bye then, did you?”

“Thought maybe I could wrangle an embrace from those companions of yours.”

This time, Torin could not help but laugh and shake his head. “I suppose you’ll have to settle for one from me.”

“Won’t be necessary,” Moss said hurriedly.

“Are you sure? You might not get another chance.”

“I’ll make do,” the big man assured him.

“How about this, then?” Torin said, picking at the strings that held his coin purse and handing it over to the rogue.

“What’s this?”

“Your payment. For seeing me as far along as you did.”

Moss hefted the small sack. “There’s more in here than we agreed on.”

“If I survive this, you can pay back what you don’t deserve.”

The rogue gave a broad smile as he tucked the bag away. “If that’s the measure, then you’ve not paid me enough by half.”

Torin laughed again and clasped the big man’s hand. “Farewell, Gavrin. Good luck to you, whatever happens today.”

“If you get the chance, spit in old Lorre’s face for me, would you?”

Torin nodded, endured a hearty clap on his shoulder, then watched the other flash a final grin and swagger on his way.

Though sorely tempted to seek out his Nymph companions, Torin turned his mind instead toward the preparations of his company, meeting with each of his platoon commanders to gauge their readiness. Most, it seemed, were prepped and eager for the day’s fighting to begin.
Fools all,
Torin thought.

A light breakfast was consumed, cold and quick, after which Torin was summoned to a final briefing with the army’s principal commanders. The reports brought in by Moss, Hargenfeld, and the other scouts had done nothing to change the day’s strategy. They would go forward as planned.

En route back to his regiment, he finally caught brief sight of Dyanne and Holly. He might have asked how comfortably they had slept, but did not get a chance. Just as well, he decided, since he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

And then they were off, the entire force, one unit after the other. They left their tents and food stores and other nonessential supplies behind, carrying with them only what they would need in battle. A horse would have been nice, Torin thought, as he waded through snowdrifts that in some areas came clear to his knee. Marching at the head of his company, at the left hand of Lancer and the Central Wedge, he and those alongside were to forge the trail that others would follow. Of the mounts they had, most were toward the rear, hauling wagons of siege tools and carts for bearing off the wounded. The rest had been assigned to the runners and lookouts. In any case, as long as he was relegated to wishing for things he couldn’t have, he could do much better than a mere steed.

A stinging wind lashed their faces, blowing from the northwest and bearing with it the scents of salt and sea. They were nearing the ocean, Torin realized, that of Yawacor’s western shore, opposite the coast on which he had landed and farthest from his own home. Snowfall continued to blanket the region—even the beaches, the outriders reported. Something not seen in nearly twenty years. A good omen, the men whispered, though Torin couldn’t see how.

It wasn’t long before the smell of the ocean was followed by its sound—a deep, restless roar that underscored the wailing wind and seemed to Torin to resonate within him. He looked for the source, but caught only occasional glimpses through the fog and trees as the army proceeded north along a craggy shoreline. Limestone cliffs held it at bay, and even atop those bluffs, he could not see over their westward rise.

But as the land began to slope downward, and the line of trees tacked eastward, Torin’s view to the west opened up, revealing a mist-shrouded vista
of rocky beaches and churning waves, wheeling gulls and diving herons. A palette washed of color and detail, but which laid claim to the horizon and beyond. In gazing out over that expanse, Torin lost himself in its boundlessness, and before he knew it, he had reached his goal: the city of Neak-Thur.

The scene appeared suddenly before him, on the other side of a small ascent. Nearly a mile distant, at the eastern edge of a snowswept coastal plain, lay that which they had come to reclaim. Neak-Thur had been described as a sprawling assortment of streets and buildings, erected in a northerly line upon the west-facing slopes of a series of foothills belonging to the Dragontail Mountains. A meandering curtain wall was said to hug the city on its seaward side, snaking over and around ridgelines and hollows. Toward the north end he would find the Bastion, a battlement that extended from the city’s outer wall and shot due westward, running the full half-mile trek to the reefs of the sea. It was this that made Neak-Thur the gateway between lands north and south, for the Bastion was an impassable tollway, like a giant arm reaching out to forbid progress. Its ramparts were heavily fortified, and it was pierced by only a single gateway. Unless by ship or grant of permission from the Council of Rogues, no one ventured farther north or south than Neak-Thur.

Until now.

While Torin recognized easily enough the city’s layout as it had been mapped out for him, his attention was drawn more to those who now inhabited it. Through increasingly thick curtains of windblown snow, he peered down not upon a formation of towers and walls, but upon a dark mass of enemy soldiers perhaps twenty thousand strong. The earth was alive with them, like a hill swarming with ants. Torin could not discern which were human, but given their superior numbers and entrenched position it did not seem to matter. Whether stationed upon the hillside walls and rooftops of the city proper, or carpeting the southern plain with their backs to the Bastion, the armies of Lord Lorre had infested the Southland’s only defensive fortress, and, from Torin’s view, would not be relinquishing it anytime soon.

But if any he traveled with were daunted by the sight, they did nothing to show it. Looking from side to side, Torin heard nary a complaint as men shifted from their marching lines and into battle formation. Personal judgments aside, he admired their courage. Though they be cutthroats and vagabonds, there was an undeniable spirit that drove them. In that moment, Torin felt a part of something much larger than himself, and he welcomed the sensation.

He glanced up to find Lancer pacing the front lines. When he reached Torin’s position, the commander of the Central Wedge stopped, regarding the outlander with a devious yet congenial smile clinging to his young face.

“Nervous?” Lancer asked him.

Strangely, he was not. Despite their untenable position, he was more curious than afraid. “I’ve seen battle before,” he reminded the other.

“But never quite like this,” Lancer promised, before grinning fiercely and heading on down the line.

While his troops continued their final preparations, and those far below
rustled about as if doing the same, Torin revisited in his mind the strategy they would use. The initial feint on the eastern edge was crucial in hiding their true intent. Once the Central Wedge broke free of the main force, its charge would have to be fast and relentless. Chamaar and Jaik would keep the eastern edge of the south front occupied while the other battalions stretched after to widen the central breach. Most importantly, they could not allow the ring they formed to be broken.

The demands were hefty; the odds mounted against them. But success was conceivable if they executed properly and with unwavering savagery.

He could see now why Chamaar was not greatly concerned by the defenses of the city’s curtain wall, which was not nearly as well equipped as the Bastion. It made sense, Torin supposed. The only anticipated threat of significant strength was that posed by Lorre’s Northland armies. As he had seen for himself, the reefs and cliffs warding the western shoreline discouraged a sea landing. Ferrying troops to a southern location would require time and cost easily avoided by a more direct approach. The city had been constructed with that in mind, the bulk of its defenses given over to the Bastion. The bad news was that Lorre’s armies had already proven strong enough to overcome that obstacle. The good news—if there was any—was that their liberation force would not be required to do the same.

And yet, if the first phase of their plan worked and they were able to scatter the larger force set down as battlefield fodder, they would still have to storm the city. From what Torin could see, that would be no simple task. For the outer wall, which looked to have been reconstructed several times to accommodate the city’s haphazard expansion, was breached by only a single gate on its western side. This south-facing portal was set in a curving corridor formed by an exterior branch that ran alongside the curtain wall, so that one’s approach to the city began with a westward march into this forbidding passageway, looped north through the gate, then continued to loop east and into the city. Not only were the battlements on either side of this corridor well defensed, but its walls formed a vicious bottleneck.

The rogue to his left nudged him with an elbow. “It ain’t too late to run and hide, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Torin glanced up at the man, a beefy brute with a sly smile and a mouthful of crooked teeth. “I was just wondering how long it took Lorre to ram the city gate.”

“He didn’t,” came the smooth female response.

Torin whirled to find Dyanne and Holly striding toward him, with Dyanne speaking as though she had been at his side the entire time.

“Commander Jaik says that he used ropes and scaling ladders to swarm the walls, and a team of giants to force the gate from within.”

Torin managed to hide his smile. He had begun to wonder if the girls had changed their minds about joining him. “And are we to do the same?”

“One thing at a time,” Dyanne said, taking up a position to his left. Holly did likewise, shoving aside the leering rogue that had addressed Torin a moment before.

“Are you sure you want to go through with this?” he asked them.

“Are you?” Holly piped.

Torin smirked, and questioned them no more.

As their army stood there, jostling with a final inspection of blades and buckles, Torin closed his eyes. The wind intensified, whistling in shrill tones that overlaid the lamenting groans of an implacable sea. The air was singing, a mournful symphony that seemed to warn of destruction.

Then came the drums.

They began slowly, a soft, steady pulse buried beneath nature’s tune. For just a moment, Torin thought he might be imagining them. But he could feel them as well, shuddering through the earth—individual beats that struck upon his heart before ebbing slowly, as if to sap him of strength after pounding him into submission.

Lancer came marching back then, wheeling into place at the head of his wedge. That put him on Torin’s right, so that they stood shoulder to shoulder.

“Bastards think they can intimidate us,” the commander said, grimacing with excitement.

Torin nodded. The sinister cadence echoed ominously on the wind. But to a reckless band such as this, the dreadful beat was merely fuel for their madness. A passion began to build within Torin as he tightened his grip on the hilt of the Sword. If death awaited him, then death he would greet, snarling and fighting, raving with the dauntless savagery of a man possessed.

“Tell me, why do they call you Lancer?”

The warrior did not look at him, his busy eyes darting across the battlefield as if memorizing every drop and rise. “Folks will tell you that a few years back, when I was only nineteen, I slew a giant with a single throw of a spear.”

Torin considered the man, whose bulbous arms and rippled torso bulged beneath the seams of a black leather tunic. “Is it true?”

“No,” the commander admitted. Finishing his survey, he glanced over, snow clinging to the sun-bleached tuft atop his otherwise shaven head. “I was seventeen.”

The call to ready arms echoed down the lines. Most had already done so. Torin himself waited.
Not yet.

The pace of the drums quickened—a piercing rhythm of three staccato beats pounded home by a longer, more menacing one. Torin felt it like a flurry of war hammers, a pummeling assault that left just enough time to draw breath before the next series was driven home. Shields and weapons rattled to the rhythm. Heels tamped the earth in time. Nerves throbbed with anticipation, screaming for release.

A frightful roar resounded from the east. Torin turned to find a horse and rider barreling along the front lines from that direction, waving a pennant and hollering a bestial cry. Behind him, Chamaar and his troops had begun the charge, shouting as they streamed down along the plain, an avalanche beginning its descent.

The signal rider swept past Torin’s position, and the dam broke. Lancer led, bellowing a cry taken up by the thousands who followed. Torin jogged alongside, gritting his teeth. He did not look for Dyanne and Holly; he could feel them there beside him, their fire as radiant as that which burned at his fingertips. The Sword remained sheathed, his hand clenching its leather-wrapped hilt. Its strength coursed through him, billowing in waves.