Dread Empire - All Darkness Met Part 49

Dawn came. Still the fires raged. Forests, fields, Shinsan's camp. The dragons kept them burning.

A lone masked horseman waited near the empty camp. The bones of burned corpses lay heaped behind him. He bore a herald's pennon.

"Looks like plague got some," Ragnarson observed. "Who is he?"

"Ko Feng," Varthlokkur replied. Jeweled eyes tracked them coldly. "Easy. He won't try anything under the pennon."

"A message?" Ragnarson asked.

"Doubtlessly."

Feng said nothing. He dipped his pennon staff till it pointed at Bragi's heart.

Ragnarson removed the note. Feng rode stiffly into a narrow avenue through the flames.

"What is it, Father?" Ragnar asked.

"Personal message from Badalamen." Gaze distant, he tucked it inside his shirt.

Another meeting. A reckoning. An end. Softly, gentlemanly, dreadfully, Badalamen promised. Kings on the chessboard, Badalamen said. Played like p.a.w.ns. Endgame approaching."Beyond the fire...." Ragnarson murmured, looking southward. Then he turned and hurried toward the city.

An army had to march.

Even in retreating Badalamen had surprised him. He would get a week's lead from this....

It would be a bittersweet week, he thought, filled with impa.s.sioned good-byes.

His thing with Inger was getting serious.

THIRTY-FOUR: Road to Palmisano

"G.o.dd.a.m.nit, lemme alone!" Kildragon snarled. He pulled his blanket over his head.

The cold, thin fingers kept shaking him.

"Prataxis, I'm gonna cut you."

"Sir?"

Reskird surrendered, sat up. His head spun. His gut tried to empty itself again.

It had been a hard night. A lot of wine had gone down. He fumbled with his clothing.

"I said don't bother me for anything but the end of the world."

"It's not that." But it was earth-shaking.

"They are pulling out," Reskird whispered, awed. He hadn't believed Derel. The sun hadn't yet risen and already the besiegers were moving. Engines and siegeworks burned behind them. A rearguard awaited the inevitable reconnaissance-inforce.

"Got to be a trick," Kildragon muttered. That Shinsan should give up, and liberate him from the interminable political ha.s.sle of this walled h.e.l.l, seemed too good to be true.

A dragon glided lazily overhead. It was a reminder that Shinsan wasn't departing in defeat.

"Something happened up north," Prataxis reasoned.

"What was your first clue?"

There had been no communication with Itaskia since the fall of Portsmouth. Marco had, occasionally, tried to, and had failed to, penetrate the dragon screen. The Unborn, apparently, wasn't doing courier duty.

"We better get moving," Kildragon sighed. "Bragi will need us. Tell the Regents they can join us-if they'll stop fussing about money long enough to give the orders."

Kildragon had spent eons listening to complaints about the cost of defending the city.

Ragnarson sent a few companies across the Scarlotti. They met no resistance.

Light horse scouts followed.

"I don't understand him," he told Haaken. "Why didn't he try to stop us here?"

Badalamen served the Pracchia. And the Pracchia were divided. Receiving conflicting orders from the old man and Norath, Badalamen could do nothing adequately.

Each failure deepened the split between his masters.

The once invincible army of Shinsan now twitched and jerked like a beheaded man."Palmisano," Ragnarson mused, finger on a map. There was a fateful feel to the name. It sent chills down his spine.

The Pracchia closed ranks temporarily. Badalamen turned to fight.

Palmisano, in Cardine, lay close to the Scarlotti. The survivors of thirty legions waited there, an ebony blanket on a rolling countryside. Tens of thousands of steppe riders, Argonese, and Throyens guarded river-girdled flanks.

"We have to go to him this time," Ragnarson muttered. He had scouted the region.

The prospects didn't look favorable.

He didn't need Badalamen's letter to tell him this would be their last meeting. He didn't need the prophecies of Varthlokkur and his cohorts. He knew it in his bones. The winner-take-all was coming. This would be the gotterdammerumg for Bragi Ragnarson or the born general. One war chieftain wouldn't leave this stage....

He had little hope for himself. Just when he had found new reason to live. Each morning the armies stared at one another across the ruins of Palmisano. The captains, generals, and kings with Ragnarson howled at the delay. Badalamen's incoming occupation forces swelled his army. The snows in the Savernake Gap were melting.

Two quieter voices counseled delay. Varthlokkur and VisiG.o.dred had something up their sleeves.

News came that Reskird was approaching. His ragtag army had skirmished its way up from h.e.l.lin Daimiel, preventing several thousand foemen from rejoining Badalamen.

Ragnarson and Blackfang rode to meet their friend.

When they returned, next day, the sorcerers were abuzz.

VisiG.o.dred and Varthlokkur were ready.

Valther, Mist, Trebilc.o.c.k and Dantice had reappeared.

The council was a convention of Kings and Champions. Twenty-seven monarchs attended. Hawkwind, Lauder and Liakopulos attended. Harteobben and Blittschau, Moor and Berloy, Lo Pinto, Piek, Slaski, Tantamagora, Alacran, Krisco, Selenov.... The list of renowned fighters ran to a hundred names. The old companions, wizards' and Ragnarson's, were all there too. And his son, and Derel Prataxis with the inevitable writing box.

And near Iwa Skolovda's King Wieslaw, an esquire, unknown and untried, whose name had puzzled wizards for years.

Varthlokkur announced, "Valther and Mist have returned." He indicated Dantice and Trebilc.o.c.k. "Protected by these men, they visited the Place of the Thousand Iron Statues."

"n.o.body ever got out alive," Zindahjira protested. "I used to send adventurers there. They never came back. The Star Rider himself animated the killer statues."

"The Star Rider came and went at will," Varthlokkur replied.

"Armed with a Pole of Power."

"As were my friends." Varthlokkur smiled gently. "The Monitor of Escalon wasn't lying." He held up the Tear of Mimizan, so bright no one could gaze upon it. His fellows babbled questions.

"It was the supreme test. And now we know. We go into battle perfectly armed."

Ragnarson held his peace. Point, he thought. Do you know how to use it? No.

Point. The old man over there does.Getting him, too, had become an intense personal goal. The man had shaped his life too long. He wanted to settle up on the one-to-one.

"The Tervola who remain," Varthlokkur continued, "can be rendered Powerless. My friends accomplished that. They exceeded the Monitor. We control the thaumaturgic game.

But let them tell it."

Michael Trebilc.o.c.k did the talking. He didn't emblish. They had crossed Shara, the Black Forest, the Mountains of M'Hand, and had hurried to The Place of the Thousand Iron Statues. They had penetrated it, had learned to manipulate the Tear and living statues, had discovered secrets concerning the Star Rider's involvement in the past, then had reversed their course, reaching Itaskia soon after Ragnarson had begun pursuing Badalamen. Michael skipped dangers, ambushes, perils that would have become an epic on another's tongue. His stage fright compelled brevity. He communicated his belief that they now possessed the ultimate weapon.

Ragnarson shook his head. Softly, "Fools."

The crowd demanded action. They were tired of war. They weren't accustomed to prolonged, year-round campaigns, dragging ever on. The exiles were eager to return home and resume interrupted lives.

Varthlokkur, too, was eager. He had left Nepanthe in Ravelin.

"Not yet," he shouted. "Tomorrow, maybe. We have to plan, to check the augeries.

Those legions won't roll over."

Ragnarson nodded grimly. The Tear might disarm the Tervola. But soldiers had to be beaten by soldiers. What Power remained to Varthlokkur and the Unborn, through the Winterstorm, would be devoted to the creatures of Magden Norath.

Badalamen had anch.o.r.ed his flanks on a tributary of the Scarlotti and the great river itself, footing a triangle. He couldn't withdraw easily, but neither could he be attacked from behind. Refusing to initiate battle himself, he had repeatedly demonstra- ted his ability to concentrate superior force at any point Bragi attacked.

Ragnarson knew there would be no finesse in it. The terrain didn't permit that.

The armies would slaughter one another till one lost heart.

He and Badalamen were sure which would break. And that, with the pressures received from his masters, was why Badalamen had opted for this battle.

Why he had chosen the imperfect ground of Palmisano remained a mystery, though.

Ragnarson attacked at every point, his probes having revealed no weaknesses. His front ranks were the stolid pikemen of Iwa Skolovda, Dvar, and Prost Kamenets. Behind them were Itaskian bowmen who darkened the sky with their arrows. While the legions crouched beneath shields, suffering few casualties, otherwise unemployed westerners scuttled between pikemen to fill the trench preventing Ragnarson from using his knights.

Badalamen's men countered with javelins. It was an innovation. Shinsan seldom used missiles.

Here, there, Badalamen had integrated Argonese and Throyen arbalesters....

Ragnarson's men crossed the ditch several times, and were hurled back.

That was the first day. A draw. Casualties about even. Ultimate point to Badalamen. He was a day nearer the moment when the Savernake Gap opened.The witch-war was Varthlokkur's. His coven gathered over the Tear and round the Winterstorm, and taught the Tervola new fear.

The bent old man could have countered with his own Pole. He didn't. His situation wasn't so desperate that he was willing to reveal, undeniably, his true ident.i.ty.

The night was Shinsan's. Savan dalage in scores stalked the darkness, trying to reach the Inner Circle and Bragi's commanders. Captains and a wizard died....

Now Bragi knew why Badalamen had chosen Palmisano.

A half-ruined Empire-era fortress crowned a low hill beside the eastern camp.

Within it, after coming west, Magden Norath had established new laboratories. From it, now, poured horrors which ripped at the guts of the western army.

The second day was like the first. Men died. Ragnarson probed across both rivers, had both thrusts annihilated. His men filled more of Badalamen's ditch.

Again the night belonged to the savan dalage, though Varthlokkur and his circle concentrated on Norath's stronghold instead of the Tervola.

Marco predicted the Gap would be open in eleven days.

The third day Ragnarson sent up mangonels, trebuchets, and ballistae to knock holes in the legion ranks so Itaskian arrows could penetrate the shieldwalls. His sappers and porters finished filling the ditch.

That night the savan dalage remained quiet. Ragnarson should have been suspicious.

Next morning he stared across the filled ditch at lines of new cheveaux-de-frise.

There could be no cavalry charge into those.

The fringe battles picked up. The bent man threw in his surviving dragons.

Norath's creatures, excepting the light-shunning savan dalage, swarmed over the cheveaux and hurled themselves against the northern pikes.

"The tenor is changing," Bragi told Haaken. "Tempo's picking up."

Haaken's wild dark hair fluttered in the breeze. "Starting to realize the way the wind's blowing. Their day is over. Them spook-pushers are finally doing some good."

It looked that way. Once Norath's monsters disappeared, Varthlokkur could concentrate on Shinsan's army....

Ragnarson's heavy weapons bombarded the cheveaux with fire bombs. Behind the western lines, esquires and sergeants prepared the war-horses. Above, Radeachar and Marco swooped and weaved in a deadly dance with dragons. Bragi waved. "What?"