Chartomancy

Chapter Twenty-one

6th day, Month of the Dragon, Year of the Rat

9th Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court

163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty

737th year since the Cataclysm

Princes’ Road East, Erumvirine

When the Soth Gloon and the one-armed boy first sought to join the caravan of refugees my warriors were shadowing, voices had been raised against them. Their addition did bring the group’s number to twenty-seven, which should have been seen as auspicious. But those who feared the Gloon said that he should not be counted and that the boy wasn’t even half a man. Urardsa made hopeful pronouncements, and he even sounded sincere-though I was not certain if he believed what he was saying or if he was trying to command me to make it come true.

Moraven had known Pavynti Syolsar before, but her new name, Ranai Ameryne, suited her much better. Her time at Serrian Istor had given her a direction and purpose, and Dunos’ presence had reinforced it. He had remembered her, and she distantly recalled him. She had set about training him to be a swordsman, though a long knife was all he could wield at the moment. Despite that, he’d done much damage in the skirmishes we’d fought, and was able to creep about silently enough to be vrilridin.

Swordsmanship’s loss would be a gain to the art of assassins.

The other person I’d rescued from the hill had immediately prostrated himself before me when he learned who I was. He’d called himself Deshiel Tolo and told others he was a cousin of mine. He begged forgiveness and I granted it-he was a very skilled swordsman and welcome to the name. When not on his belly, he stood as tall as I did, though he was lighter. His long black hair and grey eyes contributed to our similarity, and it was easy enough to believe we could be mistaken as cousins or brothers. The crest he wore, the leopard hunting, and his penchant for the southern dialect, marked him as someone from the Five Princes.

Given his skill with a sword and our needs, I forgave him.

The knot of refugees did find themselves very lucky. Though they made as much haste as they could, the Princes’ Road was not meant for speed. Most commercial traffic passed up the river because the road twisted a scenic path between the capital and the coast. The Virine Princes traveled to the coast on it each year before the monsoon season, so they had beautified it. In places they had hills created, streambeds shifted, and even forests planted for shade. It had been an ambitious project, which had killed many of the peasantry in its making, and now was killing more.

As fast as the refugees tried to travel, they could not outpace the enemy. This suited us well, for we used them as bait. The enemy would send out scouts to locate stragglers-though they attacked them more out of hunger than any apparent desire to halt word of their advance.

Along the Princes’ Road, their scouts disappeared.

The three of us were not alone, and before the fight at the Singing Creek, we actually outnumbered the refugees. My scouts gathered the hale and hearty regardless of their combat experience. I did not bother to learn their names, which saved me the bother of forgetting them when they died, but a couple of our number were worth the effort.

As dusk fell on the sixth day I knew the balance of things had begun to shift. Four people fleeing east joined the group, numbering them at thirty-one. Try as I might, I could not manipulate numbers to discover any sign of good fortune. Then came the first reports from my scouts that a group of the vhangxi approached. They appeared more numerous than the other scouting cadres and in better order, leading me to believe they had become more intelligent or cautious. I wanted to believe the latter, but any commander who bases plans on his enemy’s stupidity is himself a fool.

We watched and waited in a grove of flame-leafed trees as our party made camp. The refugees who had joined them had reported no sign of the enemy to the west, and our bait took that as a good sign. So instead of taking up defensive positions, they all gathered to gossip and exchange news.

If we could not hold back the vhangxi, they would all be slaughtered. And as much as I detested their foolishness, I still needed them. I briefed Deshiel and Ranai, then took command of a dozen men who, prior to our meeting, had only threshed grain and gigged toads. The two of them took their squads out into the darkness, and we waited as we had so many nights before.

This night, though, we did do one thing that we had not done before. In the past, I would block the road as a highwayman might by felling a tree across it. The vhangxi would stop to move it. While they were thus engaged, we would fall upon them from the front and both sides of the road, slaughtering them mercilessly.

This time we set up a bit differently. My group hid on the north side of the road just past a thicket of thorned-berry bushes. Ranai positioned her people, including the handful of archers we had, twenty yards down on the south side. Deshiel set up further to the east and back, ready to circle around north to cut the road behind the scouts. Since Ranai’s people would launch the attack and thus be most vulnerable, we had sharpened stakes and driven them into the ground before her position, in the hopes that rampaging vhangxi would impale themselves as they attacked.

The enemy crept up the road, taking great care as they went. In the past, they had jostled each other like boys at play, but now they came with flat eyes wide, watching the forest. With such huge eyes I assumed they could see well at night, but how well I could not guess. In the past it had not mattered much and, as we would engage them closely, I didn’t think it would matter to us, either.

Ranai let a half dozen get past her position, then black arrows sped from darkness and scythed through the vhangxi. Four went down, stuck through their chests. A half dozen sprang off the road toward Ranai’s position, but an equal number leaped the other way. Attacking an ambushing force head-on was the only way to defeat it, but the vhangxi had never done that before. Moreover, their action suggested they had analyzed our tactics and, anticipating a trap, planned a counter.

More arrows flew, dropping another pair of vhangxi. Those who had been following loped forward. Some cut into the woods almost immediately, but others came past the point of ambush, then drove in, looking to encircle Ranai’s force. This revealed tactical thinking on a level unseen before. They knew what we did and had figured out how to counter it.

Which meant it was time to do something else.

Without even bothering to draw my swords, I broke from cover and sprinted down the road. A heartbeat later-or a half-dozen, given how their hearts were pounding-my troopers followed me. They came as quiet as death and when I pointed south, they poured into the woods and hit the vhangxi in the flank.

Further east, from the darkness, someone shouted a command, and more of the hulking beasts came running.

I had no time to consider what I had heard. The enemy who had gone north now emerged from the woods to attack south-only to find me in their way. My first draw-cut opened a vhangxi from hip to shoulder. His guts gushed out in a wet rush, and he collapsed atop the steaming heap. Drawing my second sword, I bisected a skull before spinning away from slashing claws which, with one circular cut, I amputated at the wrist.

A quick thrust finished that one, then crosscut slashes beheaded the next. Dropping to a knee, I allowed a leaper to pass above me. His claws raked through air while my right blade raked through his stomach. He landed hard, bounced and rolled, entangling himself in his entrails.

Coming up, I stepped back. Claws passed within an inch of my face, but concerned me no more than the touch of a spring breeze. The missed blow twisted the creature, exposing his back to me. I whipped the sword in my left hand up and snapped it flat against his body. The tip bent, spending its energy against a vertebra just below the juncture of neck and shoulders. Without breaking the skin or even loosening a single scale, the blade shattered that bone, severing his spinal cord.

The vhangxi collapsed, only able to open and close his mouth as he struggled for breath that would not come.

From the south came the sounds of battle. Vhangxi grunted as they struck or were struck, and only the abrupt cessation of the sound differentiated between circumstances. Men screamed, all of them differently. From the quality of those screams, I could tell who would live or die. My mind tallied the sounds and I knew we were giving better than we got, but that this ambush was the last we’d be doing for a long while.

Then a man rode up the road. At least he looked like a man, and wore a man’s armor. He reined back as he saw me standing amidst the slaughter. I read no fear on his face and this I welcomed.

The vhangxi, having no discernible facial expressions, had been unsatisfactory foes.

The armored rider looked at me and spoke. He addressed me in a dialect I’d not heard in a long time. Moraven had never heard it. By the time he had come to be in Phoyn Jatan’s care, such formal and precise language, as well as the special dialect in which it was delivered, had long since passed from vogue. Those who had used it the most had died, and it had died with them.

I stood there, my swords dripping, then bowed my head. Though my mouth had difficulty with the words, I answered him in kind and stepped back down the road to a clear spot. With the tip of my right blade I scribed a circle. Its diameter was the road’s width. When I reached the point where I had started it, I spun on my heel, presenting him my back. Then I marched to the opposite side, resheathed my blades, and turned to face him.

He’d removed his helmet, then doffed his breastplate and gauntlets. He did not bother to remove the armored skirts or mail and greaves on his legs-the rules of the formal duel he offered precluded slashing legs. His robe and overshirt bore the crest of a bear’s paw, which would have marked him as a simple citizen of Erumvirine.

A blind man could have seen he was neither. Sharpened ears poked up through his black hair. His flesh had a blue tint to it, which made him very dark in the night. His amber eyes, however, glowed like those of a cat. I assumed he could see as well as one in the darkness, and likely had reflexes to match. Though he did not seem hurried in anything he did, he was ready to strike.

He bowed in my direction, holding it for a respectful time, but hardly as long as I was due. I returned the bow and held it for as long as befitted a peasant new-come to the sword. Though he covered his reaction well, his eyes tightened enough to tell me I’d drawn first blood.

Sounds of fighting in the woods tapered off. More important, I still caught tingles of jaedun. The strongest came from Ranai, and some came from Deshiel. The weakest came from Grieka-but mastering the wasp-flail had ever been difficult. I even caught a hint of Luric Dosh and the havoc he wrought with a spear, scribing his own circle with the blood of vhangxi.

My foe drew his sword and struck the first Crane guard. With his forward leg lifted and that foot planted against his right knee, his left arm drawn up and his sword high but back, it looked dramatic, but was seldom practical in actual combat. While it countered the Tiger and Wolf forms well, he’d not paid attention. I might wear the black tiger hunting, but I’d killed his troops as an Eagle. He should have adopted a Snake form to face me, but my slight had stung him and he wished to show he understood some of the more complex forms.

I understood them as well, so I stood there and waited. I did admire how he maintained his balance. His arms did not tremble or otherwise betray fatigue. He didn’t sway at all. He waited, knowing he had chosen a form that invited an attack. Given my arrogance, he clearly expected one and, had I had any way to measure his skill, I might have obliged him. With him being an unknown quantity, the only invitation I would accept was the one to join him in the circle.

I don’t know how long we waited, but my people slew the last of the vhangxi in the interim. A storyteller would have measured the duration in days. Some of my companions, and all of his, measured it in lifetimes. All sounds of battle ceased and my companions-half the number they had been earlier-stopped well outside the circle. Some watched and others-those wiser-drew their own circles for protection and peered through the lenses of amulets meant to ward off magic.

My foe, still without exhibiting any fatigue, slowly extended his left leg and lowered himself into a crouch on the right. His sword remained high, but came down to point toward me. His left arm curled down, forearm parallel to his waist as he finally adopted Cobra third position-though those watching likely identified the form as Scorpion.

I drew my right leg up, touching my foot to my left knee. My sword I held high in my left hand, higher than he had. My right arm mirrored his left. I allowed myself a smirk and curled my ring and little fingers in-hardly the perfect Crane form he had displayed. I mocked him and he knew it; and I did it while daring to invite an attack.

He did nothing to conceal his consternation. If he waited as I had, he was just aping me. If he attacked, he would be less patient, more impetuous, less mature. Less worthy. Then again, if he killed me, none of that would matter.

He attacked.

As he came in, I read how he expected the exchange to go. He would lunge at my throat, and my sword would come down in a parry. I would bat his blade aside, but he would flip his wrist and use the momentum I imparted to slash me from nipple to hip on the right.

He came in, extending his blade, lunging. His right leg pushed off, his left bent. His blade’s point, without a quiver to it, flew at my throat. His eyes watched the target and also watched my blade, waiting for it to fall, waiting for the first contact. At that vibration, he would flip his wrist and open me. His slash would also hit my right arm, slashing tendon and muscle, perhaps even breaking bone. I would be sorely wounded and the duel’s outcome would be decided.

But in his planning and anticipation, he had not found the path to victory. He did not really thrust at my throat, he thrust toward it, knowing his blade would never find it. He had planned for my counter, and when it did not come-though he struck with the swiftness of a Cobra-he had no true target.

As he attacked, I lunged forward. My right leg slid down and planted itself just past his left heel. I leaned to the right and his blade shot over my left shoulder. My sword, held high, never even began to fall.

As we came face-to-face, I read his fear.

And he read my triumph.

My right hand closed on the hilt of my other sword and I drew it in an instant. The razored edge slashed up beneath his skirts and sank deep into the junction of thigh and groin. I drew it up in a long cut and it came free with a hot splash of femoral blood.

He began to fall backward slowly.

A heartbeat for me, forever for him.

He did try to flip his wrist and cut my throat as he toppled, but my robe’s collar blunted his feeble strike. I watched shock and betrayal blossom on his face as he fell, and knew it would melt into a mask of disdain.

My other sword whipped down and his head rolled away to spare me his opinion.

Ranai, standing closest to me, dropped to a knee. Her expression and the tone of her voice betrayed confusion and mild offense. “What have we just witnessed, Master?”

“An enemy who believes that by mirroring our forms, using our blades and ancient formulae, they are worthy of respect and honor.” I pointed a sword to the east. “Has anything they have done so far been honorable?”

She shook her head. “No, Master.”

“No matter how they appear, that is their nature. Do not forget it. Do not be lured in.” I kicked the sword from my foe’s lifeless hand. “They are not what they pretend to be, and we cannot be what they assume us to be. As Taichun once taught, one must know his foe to defeat him. This is true. We have one path to victory.”

She looked up. “Learn as much about them as possible?”

“No, Ranai.” I wiped my blades on the dead man’s robe, then slid them home again. “We will make ourselves unknowable, then they can never win.”