A Hero's justice

Chapter 7

Forty horsemen galloped up to the summit of a low hill, the highest point for leagues. Dawn was not long past, and pallid strips of fog still clung to the low places. At the riders’ backs, the silver stream of the Dalti River gleamed. Golden sunlight fell about the horsemen, promising heat later in the day. Lord Breyhard removed his helmet, already sweating. His slightly paunchy frame and prematurely graying hair made him look older than his thirty years. Standing in the stirrups, he craned his neck in as wide an arc as his armor would permit. “Where are the damned lizards?” he growled. Fifty hordes were poised behind him on the rich flatlands of the Dalti’s floodplain, ready to sweep forward at his command. Three days ago they’d crossed the river after a brisk fight. Since then, no sign of the bakali army had been found. Another fifty-eight thousand warriors waited on the opposite shore. They were to cross the river and take the enemy in the flank-once the enemy was discovered.

“Send word to General Crumont,” Breyhard ordered his nearest aide. Crumont commanded the fifty-eight hordes on the other shore. “Tell him to head south to Traveler’s Cove, and begin his crossing at once. He will establish a bridgehead and remain there until I summon him.”

The aide saluted with his dagger and put spurs to his horse. Another warrior moved forward to take his place. Breyhard addressed him.

“Vintox, lead the Red Hawk and Solin Star hordes on a sweep of the countryside north and east of here. The enemy must be there. Find them.”

Breyhard had reasoned, not poorly, that the bakali would withdraw to rougher, more wooded ground. If imperial horsemen could catch the slower-moving enemy foot soldiers in the open, the bakali would find themselves at a disadvantage. He was certain the bakali had retreated to the pine hills northeast of the river bottoms.

Vintox departed, and another warrior guided his horse forward to his general’s side, but Breyhard looked around. He wanted someone else.

“Where’s Casselron? Where’s the wizard?”

A man in late middle age, his blond hair pulled back in a rough queue, rode slowly through the press of burly warriors. Casselron the White Robe, looking saddle-sore and wan, hoarsely hailed his commander.

“Find the enemy,” Breyhard snapped.

The wizard rubbed his chin. Spending so much time in the saddle did not allow him to keep to his usual standards of grooming. He grimaced at the feel of his unshaven face, and at the situation in which he found himself. A wearer of the esteemed White Robe should not be traveling in the company of such ignorant warriors, required to perform spells like a market fair entertainer, but this was his mistress Winath’s notion of how to please the emperor.

Casselron pulled his attention back to the matter at hand.

“As you command, my lord, but-” Breyhard’s eyes narrowed, and Casselron made his voice as deferential as possible. “General, I remind you that divination has consistently failed to locate the bakali since their entry into Ergothian territory.”

Like most Riders, Breyhard had a distrust of magic and those who wielded it, no matter which creed they followed. “So, your skills are inferior to the lizard-men’s,” he scoffed. “I’ve said it all along.”

Casselron flushed but wouldn’t be baited into an argument. It would be pointless. He promised to do his utmost and departed. Like its rider, his horse was unaccustomed to the rugged life of a warrior. At a shambling trot, the animal carried the wizard a few paces away to open ground.

At home, in the Tower of High Sorcery, Casselron would have employed a full invocation before a polished pan of sacred oil, calling upon Manthus, Corij, and Draco Paladin to reveal the enemy to his eyes. Here, on a damp hilltop leagues from any city, he was forced to improvise.

He turned his back on the troop of anxious, yet arrogant warriors surrounding Lord Breyhard. From a leather sheath on his saddle, he drew his staff. The wooden stave was some two paces in length, topped by a golden dragon’s claw. The claw gripped an opaque white disk slightly larger than Casselron’s palm. Lips moving silently, Casselron gazed into the white disk.

His vision pierced the milky surface. Distance melted away and flowed past his probing gaze. Leagues flashed by-north, east, and south. He saw farms, emptied and abandoned, roads clogged with overturned carts, fields devoid of activity. Unlike the rampaging nomads, the bakali didn’t slaughter and loot indiscriminately, but their advance across Ergoth had driven common folk from hearth and home into the walled cities, where they waited for the emperor’s hordes to subdue the invaders, making it safe for them to return home again.

But Casselron saw no lizard-men. The farther he looked, the fewer signs he saw of the bakali’s passage. They must be close.

Something touched the wizard’s consciousness as he roamed over field and farm. It was a fleeting sensation, as though a shadow had crossed the sunlight of his vision.

Casselron was one of the best scryers in Daltigoth-he’d been chosen to accompany Lord Breyhard for that reason-and this delicate contact alerted him at once. The bakali were provided with magic of their own! It cloaked their movements and befuddled every attempt by Ergothian mages to use their powers against the invaders. Such protection did not require an army of powerful sorcerers. One dedicated practitioner, if skillful enough, could block all prying eyes.

This was Casselron’s theory, at any rate: a single adept mage was assisting the bakali. The mage could be a rogue wizard with an axe to grind against the empire, like Mandes, or a forester shaman of unusual skill, a heathen priest, even a Silvanesti. The gods alone knew what mischief elves were capable of.

Abruptly, Casselron found himself face to face and mind to mind with the other. The confrontation happened so suddenly it had to be a deliberate revelation.

“You!” Casselron cried, utterly astonished. Gray eyes, curly, sand-colored hair-he knew this face!

A sharp blow to his chest ended Casselron’s vision. He looked down. An arrow protruded from his chest. That wasn’t right-

Lord Breyhard saw the White Robe topple slowly from his saddle. Breyhard fumed. Weakling! The fool had fainted before providing any useful information!

A hail of arrows showed Breyhard he was wrong. Horses reared as missiles struck home. Warriors fell to the ground, arrows in faces or shoulders. Someone shouted, “Ambush! Ambush!”

As the shafts fell around him, Breyhard called for his own bowmen. “Get those spawn of snakes!” he roared.

A contingent of Seascapers from the far west rode forward, short bows ready. The arrows had come from a copse of trees atop a nearby low hill. The gray-green bakali were hard to spot among the leafy branches, but a few Seascaper arrows found their targets. With shrill cries, injured lizard-men plummeted from their perches.

“If any of those live, I want them!” Breyhard ordered.

Warriors around him drew sabers and spurred forward to sweep up the fallen. They hadn’t ridden ten steps before noise erupted behind them. From the hilltop, Breyhard could see a melee breaking out on the floodplain. Fully armed bakali had sprung up out of nowhere among the idle troops.

The general bellowed, “Cornet, sound formation!”

The boy put his brass horn to his lips. An arrow in the back knocked him forward over his saddle, but the young Ergothian bravely managed to sound the horn, relaying his commander’s order, before he succumbed.

The bakali had buried themselves in the soft black loam of the river bottoms. Apparently, they could go without air for an amazing length of time. So utterly still had they lain, the Ergothians had rode right over them, ignorant of the danger beneath their feet.

More lizard-men were appearing every moment. Brawny, scaly, stained with dirt, they uttered high-pitched screeches as they raised high their axes and swords. They cut at the legs of the Ergothians’ horses, and when the riders were thrown down, three or four lizard-men would fall upon them and hack them to bits. Blood and soil mixed to make a dark and fearful clay.

The Ergothians tried to sort themselves into the usual fighting formation, but the enemy was among them, all around them, shrieking, slashing. Breyhard could not rally his confused, frantic men. He allowed himself another moment to curse the vile beasts he faced, then drew his saber.

It was not the sort of battle the Ergothians were accustomed to. There were no lines, no maneuvering, no great, sweeping charges. Fifty thousand Ergothians, more or less stationary on horseback, had been surprised by at least an equal number of bakali. A vast, formless brawl ensued as both sides fought to the death. Swords clashed, spears thrust, blood flowed. Men and horses screamed as they perished, and bakali keened their strange, shrill cries. Unhorsed soldiers, filthy from the same black earth that had hidden the bakali, continued to fight on foot. In the awful confusion, sometimes man fought man and lizard slew lizard. It was every warrior for himself.

Gradually, Ergothians gathered on the strand, pushed to the edge of the river by the great mass of lizard-men. Rafts and boats, used by Breyhard’s army to cross the Dalti earlier, had been tethered to the rickety piers of Eagle’s Ford. Masses of camp followers and other noncombatants attached to the army had been crowding aboard the boats. Such was their terror and confusion, nearly three-quarters of them still remained, fighting frantically to board the vessels.

Breyhard, bleeding from five wounds, sent word that the remaining watercraft were to be cut loose. His lieutenants blanched at the order, but the general was insistent that there be no retreat. Breyhard had realized that if the bakali defeated his men and captured their boats, they would be able to cross the Dalti in strength today-and the only other imperial force with a hope of stopping them, General Crumont’s, was busy crossing the river to the south, as Breyhard had ordered. The whole of western Ergoth would find itself wide open to the invaders.

The boats, freed of their moorings, slowly spun away, heading downstream. Empty boats collided with those carrying terrified camp followers, most of which were barely half full.

Breyhard turned his bloody, mud-stained face back to the battle.

“Let’s kill some lizards,” he said to his lieutenants, managing a savage grin. “I never could stand the smell of them!”

He urged his wounded war-horse into the fray. Shoulder to shoulder, his retinue followed their commander.

Valaran closed the mirror-box. The battle was over. The leather case beside her yielded a sheet of foolscap, which she lay on the reading table before her. She dipped a stylus in ink, then, choosing her words with great care, put pen to paper:

Your Majesty, she wrote. Lord Breyhard is lost, with half his army. Many bakali have likewise been slain. The Dalti crossings are unguarded.

She stopped there, offering only the bare facts, not advice.

After sanding the short note, she folded it and sealed the edges with wax. One strike on a small gong summoned a waiting servant. She was an elderly woman, whose crimson livery hung loosely on her gaunt frame.

Valaran commanded her to take the note to the emperor, warning her to pass it to one of his minions and not to give it to him herself.

“Do you understand?” Valaran asked.

Blue eyes, yellowing with age, regarded the empress without any change of expression. The old woman nodded. She had served in the palace for decades and did indeed understand. Whoever gave this note to the emperor risked a beating-if not death.

Alone again, Valaran unrolled a map of central Ergoth. Eagle’s Ford was slightly less than twenty leagues from the capital. If General Crumont extricated himself quickly, his fifty-eight hordes would suffice to defend the city, but he would not have enough men to attack the bakali. The initiative would pass to the invaders.

Grim but satisfied, she allowed the map to curl shut.

“Grasp every circumstance, make use of friend and foe alike,” she whispered. The little-known saying of her ancestor Pakin Zan had become the maxim by which she lived her life.

Valaran’s desire to be rid of her cruel husband had increased tenfold with the birth of her son. Dalar had arrived a full year after Tol was exiled, but Ackal V had made the first few months of her pregnancy hellish, until he was absolutely convinced the child she carried was his own.

Valaran loved her son, though she’d never craved children as some women did, but Dalar also provided her with the means to attain the end she wanted. As a woman, she could never gain the support of the warlords for herself, but they would support her son, the rightful heir to the throne.

The arrival of the bakali had been a gift from the gods. She had resolved to use lizard-men, nomad barbarians, and any other opportunity that presented itself to discredit her husband and display his utter unfitness to rule. By grasping every circumstance, making use of friend and foe alike, she would be rid of Ackal V. Dalar would become emperor, and Valaran empress-regent.

Egrin and Kiya departed on their missions. The Dom-shu woman was not happy leaving Tol with “one and half elves,” as she put it. Tol did not share her fears. Zala lived by her word, the same as Tol. She would stand by the pact they had made. As for Tylocost, Tol’s command over him was based in part on his old victory, and in part on the Silvanesti’s own notion of honor.

“Trust their honor?” Kiya had said sarcastically, when he explained. “Not too much to ask!”

She rode off north, and Egrin headed east. Tol asked Corij to watch over both of his friends.

The makeshift camp outside the still-smoking rubble of Juramona grew and grew. Five days after Tol’s arrival, it held a thousand people, mostly former residents of the town. By the time the sun set on his eighth day there, almost four thousand had gathered. Fully half of this total were able-bodied men-farmers, craftsmen, shopkeepers, and the like.

One night, standing by a leaping bonfire, Tol addressed them. “Men of Ergoth! I stand here as one of you-landless, destitute, an exile in my own country. I have come back to fight the enemies who burned your homes and laid waste to your lands. If you will have me, I shall lead you.”

A few shouts of support rose from the crowd, but the response was hardly enthusiastic. One fellow cried, “We’re not warriors!”

“Anyone who takes up a sword or spear can fight! I was not born to arms, but I learned the art, and I can instruct you. Will you not fight to expel the invaders? Will you not take back your own country?”

This time the answering cries were more definite. Tol asked if anyone had fighting experience. Ten-score out of two thousand came forward. Most were former foot guards in the service of Marshal Baroth, Egrin’s replacement as Marshal of the Eastern Hundred. Baroth, a young crony of the emperor’s, had left Juramona to ride with Relfas’s army and had never been seen again. When the nomads attacked, the foot guards had defended the High House, but couldn’t hold out against the spreading flames from the burning city. The men had drifted back to the shattered town when they heard an imperial banner was raised. Tol was deeply glad to have them. His new army would require captains.

One man stepped forward. Completely bald, between thirty and forty years of age, he had the carriage of one who’d once borne arms. He said his name was Wilfik, and he’d been a foot soldier of the Juramona garrison.

“How can we fight the nomads?” he asked loudly. “We’ve no horses, and even if we did, we’re not Riders.”

“Soldiers on foot can stand up to horsemen,” Tol said. “I’ll show you how.”

A rag-clad townsman with burns on his hands and face said, “What if we don’t want to fight?”

“No one will abuse you for choosing not to fight. But mark this: any man who takes up arms for his country will never be anyone’s servant again. If we take back this land-” He grinned. “When we take back this land, it will be ours, and no one will be able to wrest it from us again!”

His meaning was clear. Since the warlords had failed to protect the Eastern Hundred, they would have no claim over it once the nomads were expelled. It was a revolutionary notion, and sent a thrill through the assembly. No more raiding nomads-and no haughty imperial overlords either!

“Juramona for all!” someone shouted, and “Free land! Free men!” cried another. More of the group joined in, and soon these shouts echoed through the makeshift camp.

After the assembly broke up, Tol talked with the men who’d claimed to have soldiering experience. He named each man a captain in the new corps, and chose Wilfik to command them. The bald former foot soldier seemed steady and sturdy, his no-nonsense manner just right for leading others.

Everyone knew Kiya and Egrin had ridden off to find help. Wilfik asked what support they might expect. Tol’s reply was blunt.

“I expect none. So should you.”

Dismay colored every face. Tol planted fists on hips and said, “Have no illusions, men! The imperial hordes have always fought to win battles, not to survive them. We won’t make that mistake. In a fight for our lives, we will outlast our foes. Nomads fight for glory and plunder; if they don’t get it fairly quick, I doubt they’ll stay around for a long war. It’s whose men are left standing that matters!” He clapped the nearest man on the shoulder. “If help arrives, we’ll rejoice! But don’t count on it.”

The men dispersed, leaving Tol with only one companion. Tylocost squatted nearby, in the shadows beyond the fading bonfire, idly toying with a stout stick. It was a most undignified posture for a former Silvanesti general. In the uncertain light, with his ungainly features, the elf resembled an enormous insect.

“So, General, what did you think of my address?” Tol asked him.

“I think we shall all end in nameless graves soon.”

Tol’s lips twitched with amusement. The Silvanesti’s pessimism was curiously refreshing. “I’ve faced worse odds, you know.”

Tylocost rose to his feet in one smooth motion. Such graceful movements reminded Tol his charge was no ordinary fellow. Whatever his looks and high-handed manner suggested, Tylocost was a mature Silvanesti elf, with all the intelligence and subtlety that implied.

“It’s not the nomads I fear, nor even the bakali,” Tylocost said. “You just declared war on the empire, and that, my fortunate foe, is a losing proposition.”

Tol grinned widely. “Perhaps. Can I count on your support?”

“To the death.”

“Good. I intend to give you a command of your own.”

For once the elf had no quick comeback. He stared at his conqueror, then recovered his accustomed poise.

Inclining his head graciously, he said, “Thank you, my lord. I will do my best.”

And someone will suffer for it, Tol thought. He hoped it would be the enemy, and not himself.

As Tol retired to his lean-to, Tylocost went for a walk along the fringes of the camp. Hands clasped behind his back, eyes on the trampled grass in front of him, his thoughts were far away.

He’d circumnavigated a quarter of the sprawling camp when he suddenly stopped and pointed the stick he still carried toward the outer darkness.

“Half-breed, why do you shadow me?”

Zala emerged from the night. “You heard me?” she said, impressed.

“You’re only half-stealthy.”

She grimaced. “You never speak to me without flinging mud on my ancestry!”

“The mud is already there. Answer my question.”

Biting back the retort that sprang to her lips, Zala settled on simple truth: “You’re a goodly distance from your bedroll. You might be thinking of running away, to betray us to the nomads.”

His eyes widened. “Twenty years I’ve lived as Lord Tolandruth’s paroled prisoner. I could have escaped any time I wanted, but I pledged to honor my surrender until he released me, and I shall.”

“Silvanesti have no allegiance but to their own kind!” she snapped.

The silence held for a moment, then Tylocost shrugged and tucked the stick under his arm like a cane, turning away and resuming his walk. She fell in step beside him, and they proceeded in silence for a while, circling the sleeping camp from south to north. Cookfires dying to dull embers dotted the scene. Dark mounds of sleeping humans, covered in salvaged blankets, lay in irregular ranks on the dewy ground. Everywhere was the smell of smoke, sweat, and desperation. Zala’s pity for the survivors was obvious. If Tylocost felt anything, he did not show it.

“What do you know of my homeland?” he asked, his low voice just audible over the sound of their footsteps.

“Very little,” she admitted. “My mother was Silvanesti, but she never returned home after she married my father.”

“Foreigners cannot imagine the glory of the Speaker’s realm. Silvanesti worship, above all things, beauty. They have, by art and artifice, made Silvanost the single most beautiful place in all the world.” Zala had heard the same from those few fortunate enough to have seen the capital of the elves. “Imagine how I was regarded in such a place.”

Her footsteps faltered only slightly before she recovered. Zala could indeed imagine. The unsightly gardener must have stood out like a boil on the face of a beautiful girl.

“My paternal ancestors were noble in the extreme. They stood at the right hand of Silvanos himself. My grandfather slew a dragon-the black dragon Tasak’labak’kanak, in the First Dragon War. He rode his war griffin Skyraker up to the monster’s very jaws and drove a silver spear through its eye and into its brain. My father, if he still lives, is high counsel to the Speaker of the Stars.”

“You don’t know whether your father lives?” she asked, and he shook his head. She thought of her own father, the frail, kindly scholar whose life depended on her success. When he died, wherever she was, she would know it.

Tylocost continued. “One day, as the great Silvanos held court in the Tower of the Stars, a comely lady caught my father’s eye. Her name was Iyajaida, an exotic word meaning ‘moth-wing.’ No one knew her. It was said she’d come from the northland. In spite of her unknown lineage, my father pursued and won her, besting several other rivals. Not long after, I was born.”

Tylocost abruptly stopped walking. For an instant Zala thought he’d seen a danger, nomads lurking in the night perhaps, but he only stared straight ahead and said, “The day I was born my mother vanished, never to be seen in Silvanost again. People said she took one look at me and fled in shame.”

In spite of his even tone, Zala knew he was baring soul-deep wounds to her. As diplomatically as she could, she asked him why he was telling her these things.

“Because you will understand,” he replied. “Comely though you are, you’re a half-breed, and despised by elves and most humans, too. I am a full-blood Silvanesti from a fine and noble line, yet all my life I’ve been persecuted for my ugliness. The first time I ever felt wanted was when the Tarsans hired me to lead their army. But the first person who ever showed me true respect was that damned peasant, Tolandruth.”

Males were very strange, Zala decided. Tolandruth, so imposing with his muscles, piercing eyes, and great victories, seemed an overgrown boy, burning with notions of justice and honor. This elf, more arrogant than a cartload of emperors but one of the shrewdest people Zala had ever met, was consumed with loneliness and shame. She began to understand the empress’s devotion to Tol, and Tol’s trust in his former foe.

When Zala returned to the here and now, Tylocost had slipped away. The stick he’d carried stood where he’d been, its end thrust into the sod.