The Ragged Man (77 page)
Authors: Tom Lloyd
‘Not so fast you damn fool!’ the mage snarled.
Doranei bit back his instinctive response and slowed his pace until they were shuffling through the flattened grass towards a raised mound of indeterminate purpose. It was five feet high, and it was encircled by a staked ditch twenty yards out, and a full company of soldiers - fifty men - looking extremely bored.
On the mound itself stood two unmistakable figures: Endine and Cetarn, King Emin’s most trusted mages. Tomal Endine, a wiry, rat-like man, sat cross-legged before one of a dozen wooden posts. One hand was pressed against it and trails of white light danced around him. His colleague and friend Shile Cetarn lounged nearby, resting part of his considerable weight on an enormous wooden mallet. As they neared, Doranei was amused to see Endine moving away from the post, then falling backwards in shock as Cetarn wasted no time in taking an almighty swing with the mallet to pound it into the ground.
Doranei grinned, he could just imagine the mage’s furious squawks of outrage - and Cetarn shared his sense of humour; before he could take a second swing the white-eye-sized mage had dropped the mallet and doubled over, his roaring bellows of laughter reaching the plodding trio a hundred yards off.
‘Doranei, my favourite drunkard!’ Cetarn yelled once the trio were within shouting distance. ‘Come to swing a hammer for me?’
‘Reckon you need the exercise more than me,’ Doranei shouted back. ‘We’re here to test out your work.’
At that Endine began to cough, until Cetarn slapped him hard on the back, laughing again. ‘Not that; the boy’s a drunk, not mad!’
Doranei and Veil exchanged confused looks, but Cetarn didn’t bother to explain himself as he hauled Endine back onto his feet again. ‘It’s not finished,’ Cetarn continued, his round head flushed pinker than normal, ‘but it’s good enough for your need, and I can always nudge things along.’
‘I can manage perfectly well without your help, Shile,’ the blind mage said primly. ‘I mastered my art long before you were born, young man.’
‘Indeed you did, sir,’ Cetarn agreed, ‘but you will be scrying up to a hundred miles while the adepts of the Hidden Tower attempt to stymie your efforts. The help is yours, whether you like it or not.’
Mage Holtai’s face soured as though he’d just swallowed a bug. ‘If I need your assistance I will request it,’ he said firmly. ‘Until that becomes the case your power will only make my efforts all the more noticeable.’
He started to walk a little faster, and tugged impatiently at Doranei’s shoulder for him to keep up. As they reached the mound Doranei saw an iron chain half-buried in the earth, running north from one of the posts along the ground. Whatever magic they had planned, Doranei knew he didn’t want to be anywhere near the results.
He helped Mage Holtai up onto the mound and looked around from his elevated position. A hundred and fifty yards off, almost half a mile from Moorview Castle itself, was a complicated forward defence post that a thousand men were still working on. Three square towers surrounded by twelve-foot-deep ditches were to be the heart of their defences — though by no means the only line of defence. Two longer ditches were being dug on each flank, forming two sides of a triangle, with the removed earth being used for ramparts behind. Fire-blackened stakes were being hammered into both ramparts and ditches.
The moor was covered with smaller ditches and treacherous holes, as much a way to keep the waiting army busy as to hinder the Menin’s advance to battle wherever possible. The battle-hardened Menin heavy infantry needed to close and bring the fight to the Narkang forces. The king intended to make that a costly process.
Doranei looked down at the soldiers all around them. The core of the Narkang army was the Kingsguard, but that was only five legions; five thousand men. There were a similar number of mercenaries from the north and western isles, but the bulk of their troops had been hastily raised and were being drilled right now: advance and retreat, form line, form square, right turn, set spears . . . To Doranei’s experienced eye, it was all painfully slow.
Unlike the Farlan they had no system of martial obligation among the nobility, and many of the ennobled veterans from King Emin’s wars of conquest had died since then. They might have gathered fifty thousand troops, but they amounted to little more than conscripts and volunteers, from all walks of life. More were arriving daily. What they didn’t have was the command structure required. Just getting the new men armed and sorted into legions was proving taxing enough, for all the king’s advance preparations.
‘What’re all these, symbols of the Gods?’ Veil asked Cetarn, pointing at the wooden posts as the blind mage made himself comfortable on a rug at the centre of the mound. He peered at the nearest. ‘Yes, the whole Upper Circle, it looks.’
‘One aspect of our preparations,’ Cetarn declared, ‘harnessing the energies of the Land - but if you think I’m going to waste my valuable time giving you two dullards an explanation you could never fully fathom, you’re more fools than I thought!’
‘Shile,’ Holtai said, arranging his robe around him, ‘if you don’t mind?’
‘Of course, Master Holtai, my apologies.’ Cetarn grinned at the King’s Men, grabbed his mallet and retreated off the mound with Endine. When Doranei started to follow, the big mage motioned for them to stay where they were, a little behind Mage Holtai, looking down at the old man’s thinning pate while he settled himself again and began to mumble arcane words.
Mage Holtai sat rigid and upright, facing west, with his eyes closed, chanting in an unintelligible monotone for ten minutes or more. Twice the mage’s tone altered abruptly, moving up the scale as he craned his scrawny neck high, before dropping back down the register again.
The two other mages were watching intently as the old man gave a sudden exhalation and ended his chant. Doranei and Veil both advanced and knelt at his side, ready to listen.
‘I see a cavalry force, several legions strong,’ the mage said in a strained whisper, ‘engaging the enemy.’
‘Green scarves?’ Doranei asked, and received a nod in reply. General Daken’s troops were obviously still harrying the enemy.
‘Smoke in the distance,’ he went on, ‘another town burns. I see standards, the Fanged Skull, and more: many states. Ismess, Fortinn, two Ruby Towers. The mosaic flag of Tor Salan, even Chetse - some of the Ten Thousand.’
‘No Devoted?’ Veil asked.
It took him a long time to answer, but when he did it was just to croak ‘no’.
‘How many Chetse?’ Doranei tried.
‘Many flags, many legions.’
He scowled. The rumours were true then, the core of the Chetse Army had voluntarily joined Lord Styrax - what was left of it after the slaughter outside the gates of Thotel, anyway. Styrax wouldn’t have allowed the Menin troops to be outnumbered if he didn’t trust the loyalty of the Chetse.
‘What about cavalry?’ Veil asked.
‘Three legions, not Menin.’
Doranei thought for a moment. ‘Can you tell which town it is?’
‘A stone bridge crosses the river; upstream is a small fort on an outcrop.’
‘Terochay,’ the King’s Men said together before Doranei continued, ‘At the edge of the moor; sixty miles or so. Doubt any of the poor bastards even left the town after we’d stripped it of supplies.’
‘Gives us a week?’ Veil hazarded.
‘Thereabouts.’
‘Find the other armies,’ he urged the old man.
As the mage recommenced his chant, Doranei rose and continued to survey the moor. It would be a desperate fight, though he still didn’t see how Isak could hope to turn the tide. They had picked as good a place to fight as any army could hope for, providing Lord Styrax with the choice of a long route round the forest with dwindling supplies and a hostile force behind, or battle on ground of their choosing. If they were going to win, it wouldn’t be because of some broken-down white-eye.
Attacking defended ground was far from ideal, but Styrax wouldn’t shrink from the challenge. His shock troops were the finest in the Land, and they’d been getting a lot of practice this past year. Once he pierced the defensive line, chaos would ensue.
It didn’t take Mage Holtai long to find the other two army groups advancing on Tairen Moor. They were keeping within a day’s march of each other. Soon the mage was recounting details in his rasping voice for the King’s Men to commit to memory and report back, and all the time he was speaking, Doranei watched the clouds massing on the northern horizon, preparing to roll over the moor and unleash yet another ferocious storm.
His throat was becoming tight with anticipation. Time had almost run out for them, and for Doranei it couldn’t come too soon. The reports of destruction had been horrific: dozens of towns and Gods-knew how many villages razed to the ground. Few had escaped the wholesale slaughter in Aroth, and that city’s brutal destruction had set the pattern for the weeks that followed.
The dead numbered not their hundreds, but in tens of thousands. The eastern half of the country had been largely devastated, and though Doranei understood the need for a fighting retreat, he hated it as much as the rest of the army did.
But now King Emin had drawn a line. Win or lose, here they would make their stand in a week’s time. Here they would stand or fall, and the Kingdom of Narkang and the Three Cities would stand with them, or fall with them.
CHAPTER 34
Daken slipped off the plundered Menin half-helm and wiped the sweat from his bald head. The morning was well advanced and they had been working hard. He could feel his horse’s lungs beneath him, working like steady bellows. He ran a hand down its neck and patted the beast’s scarred shoulder. It bore a sheen of sweat, both from the exercise and the warm summer sun. By contrast the wind felt cool on his back and neck.
‘Your orders, General?’ asked the young nobleman beside him. Marshal Dassai, like his men, was filthy and tired, but they were also proud. They had fought bravely for weeks, following General Daken into the teeth of the enemy with a determination as savage as that of their white-eye commander.
‘Hold here,’ Daken said, ‘and send a company to scout each flank, watch fer surprises. An hour’s rest for the others.’
Dassai relayed the order with a smile on his blue-scarred face. Litania, Larat’s Trickster Aspect, had been having her fun with Daken’s officers. While they slept she had entered their dreams and marked each one differently, with long, elegant sweeps of blue, like stylised flower stems that ended in curious, drooping hooks of flowers.
Strangely, the days of violence had left the men inured to such trifles, and instead of undermining Daken, Litania had succeeded in binding the men to him with an unwavering loyalty.
Daken himself stayed in the saddle, peering out over the moor. There was little to interrupt the view from where they were: he could see the disturbance of the Menin Army in the distance: three distinct columns of marching men with supporting divisions of cavalry interspersed between them. On the right, two or three miles away, was the long granite tor the locals called the Moor Dragon. It was featureless, and largely useless, as it was near-impossible to scale.
‘They’re keeping tight,’ he commented at last.
Marshal Dassai nodded and passed him up a waterskin. ‘Their scryers tell the same story as ours, no doubt: half a day’s march to Moorview, and they could attack this evening if they wished.’ He rubbed his cropped hair, still finding it strange.
Dassai had inherited his title at nine winters, but he’d grown up the image of his father, a noted soldier. It had near broken his heart that he’d been powerless to help his people, even to flee. As they’d retreated through his own lands, he’d had to leave his twin sister the task of packing their valuables and escaping before the Menin arrived to raze their home. Now, his home almost certainly destroyed, the tenants who farmed his lands slaughtered or driven off, his sister missing, presumed dead, he had nothing. He was only a soldier, with no time for anything except the defeat of the Menin bastards.
‘The scryers are the only ones who’ll want to go now,’ Daken said darkly, watching the nearest enemy divisions with a malevolent eye. ‘Rest of ’em will want to rest.’
Dassai turned towards Moorview Castle, which nestled in an indentation in the forest, too distant for him to make out. The hill it stood on was as unimpressive as this nameless mound, and there was almost nothing in between except enough open flat ground that the two armies would get a good look at each other long before they clashed.
‘Let them come,’ Dassai replied fiercely. ‘I’ve no problem with the enemy being tired by the time they reach our defences.’
‘Makes my skin itch, is what it does,’ Daken muttered. ‘Don’t expect most o’ the king’s infantry’ll be much use, but I still don’t like jus’ sittin’ here waiting for ’em.’
‘What? We shouldn’t allow an undefeated general a choice in how he attacks?’ Dassai said with a wry smile. ‘You may have a point, but we don’t have much option there.’
‘That we don’t.’
Daken looked at the other two legions under his command. They had taken up position on the southwest flank of the hill, ready to continue back towards Moorview when the command came.
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