Lilith: A Snake in the Grass

Chapter Twenty-One The Battle of Zeis Keep

A prince does not fight commoners. His own battle is reserved for those of equal or superior rank. As a result, my initial job in all this was to stand and watch. Only after the armies had done their worst and the battle decided would I myself face the challenge of entering the Castle through the front door and walking down that forbidden central hallway. Oddly, I would have preferred to have participated in the battle, since this was the sort of thing I’d devoted my life to. As much as it might shock some of the soft elements of the civilized worlds, I enjoyed it. But I’d graduated now, beyond being the lone assassin, beyond the foot soldier and cavalry. Now those others, the soldiers and fighters, sallied forth in my name.

We walked, Ti and I, down the cloud-covered path where, a short tune ago that somehow seemed a lifetime, I had borne her still body past the guards and out of Zeis Keep. We were returning, under our own power and of our own free will, dressed as Master and Supervisor in the same color and design material, indicating we were a wedded pair.

Just after emerging from the clouds on the down-slope, the whole of Zeis Keep was illuminated in the dawn-lit sky. It was the same impressive, fairy-tale-like place I remembered.

I heard Ti give a sharp intake of breath. “It’s beautiful!” she gasped, then looked over at me, apparently concerned that she was sounding too childlike. Finally she decided that she didn’t care. “I was born down there,” she said, pointing to the area of our old village. “There was a lot of bad there, but I’m part of it and it’s part of me. Can you understand?”

I nodded, although there was no place that could claim my own soul as Zeis claimed hers. I was the product of an alien society of strange forms and structures made by computer design and formed and shaped by plastic. Still, I had a reaction as close to hers as I could come, and one that was totally alien to my old nature and lifelong philosophy. I pulled her against my side and hugged her. “This can all be ours-,” I breathed, wondering as I said it whether in that moment I had ceased to be what I had been and joined the race of Lilith.

We sat on a high ledge and relaxed. Ti was holding a woven basket made of some straw like material, and she now pulled out its contents—a gourd pot, two smaller gourds, a flint, some of Father Bronz’s quar leaves, which would burn hot but slow, and some of his tea. Runoff from the mountains caused small waterfalls all along, so water was no problem. Also in the basket were some of the small pastries and a cheese like substance made from some insects in a manner I didn’t ever want to know.

I had to chuckle. It seemed absurd to have a picnic while watching a battle.

An advance guard of witches had “swept” the trails prior to sunrise, so we weren’t due for any unpleasant surprises-—not, at least, until the battle started. We could see the whole area, from the swamps to the Castle, a perfect vantage point. Still, everything seemed very tiny and far away. I wished we were closer.

Ti rummaged in her basket and came up with two collapsing wooden tubes. I stared at them in wonder, then turned them over in my hands. They were small telescopes, actually monoculars.

“Where did these come from?” I asked her won-deringly.

She gave me a satisfied smirk. “I made friends with a supervisor from Lakk, the Lady Tona’s besil pilot. When I spotted one on his belt, I asked about ’em, and got two. Thought we might need ’em.”

I was impressed. I had the bad habit of continually underestimating Ti and mentally kicking myself for it later. I’d actually tried to get her to stay behind, but that proved impossible. I was beginning to think she deliberately cultivated that childlike vulnerability so that she’d have an edge on everybody else, Warden power or not.

I put one to my right eye and studied the field. “Things should be popping any moment now,” I said tensely.

“Things are popping already,” she responded. “Look down there, near Artur’s fort. See?”

I trained my monocular on the spot, wishing I had something with better focusing and a stronger glass. “I don’t see—wait! Yes, I do too!”

They were there, already lined up in a neat formation, the great hopping wuks, their huge bulks almost invisible at this distance against the green of the valley. Behind them a formidable array of foot soldiers stood in perfect military formation.

I shifted my glass to the besil pens cut in the mountain above the stockade and saw signs of frantic movement. They would come shooting out of’ there, I knew, at some signal from the ground. Idly I wondered where Artur would be.

Next I looked at the Castle. The great door was shut, I could see, and red flags were flying from the pointed towers. I thought I could see figures on those towers, but it was pretty far to be sure. What was certain was that no pawns were in the fields or anywhere to be seen. They had been withdrawn to the base of the mountains, as far from battle as possible, to await the outcome.

I studied the trail heads next, down on the valley floor below. During the night the witches had infiltrated and now they stood, linked in a line rather than a circle, facing inward, at each point.

There was no way to carry out any movements of this sort without your enemy knowing about it, so nobody had made much of a secret of their movements. The witches had dispatched the guard and stood in such a way that they might reinforce each other if necessary, but though Artur could probably wipe out any coven of thirteen with his forces, this would be an open invitation for the coming Lakk forces to overrun his rear. Artur, I decided, would take his chances with the divided witches until he met and defeated the Lakks. The way his forces were now moving, I was sure he intended to meet the invader as close to the swamps as possible, fighting in the air over the dank and treacherous terrain and forcing the Lakks to land on solid ground piecemeal. There they could be mopped up in small batches before they could regroup into a major fighting force.

What we’d seen in front of the stockade had merely been the reserves, a bit more than half his force that could be thrown in where needed or committed against individual groups of witches if need be. It was really good military thinking, and I could see at a glance why Artur was held in such respect and why Zeis was considered unassailable by Lakk.

But there were only seven roads into the Keep, and each was blocked by thirteen witches. That left seventy-eight witches, and those seventy-eight were a tremendous amplified and coalesced Warden force. Zeis was the model of what you’d want to defend in a military sense, but its strength lay in the impossibility of establishing a beachhead against it. If a large enough force could be landed on solid ground, it would be the defenders who would be rolled back into a trap, totally surrounded by mountains.

“There go the besilsl” Ti shouted excitedly. I didn’t need the monocular to see the great dark shapes now out of their mountain stable lair. The riders were braced in special combat saddles that also supported long, pointed wooden lances. I looked out over the fog-shrouded swamp, seeing nothing for a moment Then, out of the murky grayness, a long, slow line of besils appeared. Unlike Artur’s besils, whose underbellies were dyed a reddish color, these were yellow underneath, the color of Lakk.

They came in slow and low, cautious until they had a full field of vision. Inside the valley, despite some wisps of ground fog, the eternal clouds had retreated past the thousand-meter mark, plenty of room for an aerial duel.

The Zeis besils neared the swamp, then stopped, their great wings beating so fast to keep them in place they were totally invisible. I never understood how anything that big flew, anyway.

The attacking formation split now, one-third going left, another third right, while the center column pushed, ahead, accelerating suddenly and with great speed. Hundreds of black, swift shapes weaved in and out, parrying and thrusting, lances attempting to score a hit either at the underbelly of the enemy besils or at the riders atop them. It was a battle in three dimensions at crazy angles and speeds and with sudden whiplike motions.

While the vanguard of Zeis besils were occupied, the swamp itself seemed-to come alive, eerie shapes moving to and fro in the fog. Emerging now were the great twelve-legged, hairy snarks, raised for fur and used in stews by the people of Lilith. These creatures of that swamp like terrain were somehow able to avoid sinking into the muck and mire by shifting their centers of gravity at will. Herbivores, they were totally harmless to people, but they made effective troop carriers when a swamp was to be the battleground, and Lakk Keep had bred them for just that purpose.

The great, hopping, green wuks leaped into action from the Zeis side, aiming at going so high and landing so exactly that they would come down right on top of the fragile snarks, spilling them and their contents into the swamp, ft should have worked, had the snarks contained combat soldiers, but this time was different.

The snarks stopped suddenly, as if wailing for certain death, but the proud and lordly wuks were the ones that seemed to reel in mid-hop as if struck by gunfire and topple over, out of control, to the ground below.

The snarks contained not soldiers but chemically enhanced witches, all concentrated on the center snark, where the leader was knocking wuks out of the air with a gesture. Seeing what was happening, Artur quickly shifted. Realizing from the pattern in which his wuks were falling that a central and single power was picking them off, he committed a section of his reserves to fan out across the entire basin, to keep a great distance from one another and to fan out over a wide enough front to divide the witches’ fire. Their concentrated power had only one metaphorical barrel, and it couldn’t point everywhere at once.

Besils, too, were screeching and falling all over the place, unable to help either side in the battle below but keeping the other from also doing so. It was bloody carnage all around, and Artur’s plan was working to an extent. A wuk struck one of the witch-laden snarks, pulling up incredibly at the last minute so that it hit with its powerful bind legs out. The great spider like creature collapsed as if made of thin sticks, dragging its complement of passengers into the muddy quagmire—and diminishing Sumiko O’Higgins’ power by a small amount. From where we were, it was impossible to see how many were on any given snark, but considering the number of the beasts it had to be four or five at least. The whole scene was stunning, an eerie ballet of death and destruction as it might have been centuries ago on mother Earth.

The wuk maneuver had weakened the witch force, but most of them had made solid land and were quickly descending and assembling into their groups. Some would not have their full complement, but since all worked with, through, and at the direction of Sumiko O’Higgins, however many managed to land would have impressive force indeed.

Suddenly the grass blazed in front of the landing witches, a huge wall of fire across the entire field, blinding everyone for a moment.

Warden power was being used against Warden power now, I knew.

After a moment’s panic, the witches regrouped. Then, incredibly, a whirlwind of dirt like a great, gigantic plow shot up along the fire line, damping the fire, although small patches continued to burn. The witches advanced now, in a broad semicircle. I didn’t know exactly how many there were, but it was fifty or more, I was sure. Sumiko had bragged that she could level the Castle with less.

Now fire was turned against the defenders. A terribly thin, bright wall of flame shot out from beyond the firebreak they’d just created, then started moving, widening out in an ever-increasing semicircle, pushing ground forces back and revealing large, dark holes that were obviously pits to trap invaders who -advanced that far.

I frowned and turned my tiny telescope on the reserves, still sitting in front of the stockade. “He’s going to lose,” I muttered, more to myself than to Ti, “unless he sends those reserves in fast. They’ve got their beachhead. Why don’t they move?”

Ti didn’t answer, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off the unfolding spectacle.

I turned again to the. swamp, where hordes of snarks were now appearing, landing troops of Lakk behind the witches’ screen. I looked again to the reserves, still poised but unmoving, and shook my head.

“They can’t be this incompetent,” I told myself. “Why the hell doesn’t he move before the beachhead is totally established?”

I heard Ti gasp. “The besils have stopped fighting!” she cried. “Look!”

I turned my gaze in that direction and saw that it was true. The survivors of the initial encounter, perhaps forty or so out of an initial hundred or more, had disengaged, but neither side was retreating.

“They—they’re regrouping together!” I rasped, amazed. “What the hell… ?”

I heard the sound of a tremendous explosion below, its roar echoing back and forth across the mountains, its very existence so jarring that I was forced to look for it. An explosion? Here?

I looked at a great puff of smoke near the front of the witch line, then saw soldiers behind the witches wading into them and attacking them! Suddenly the reserves moved, the explosion an apparent cue. The reserve besils flew out of their mountainside nests and the wuks and ground troops started deploying—but not toward the invaders.

“Look, they’re going after the witch groups guarding the trails!” I yelled, mouth agape. Still, I forced my attention back to the beachhead, only to see the unmistakable signs of slaughter. A wall of fire now trapped the witches between their own defensive wall and the attackers, formed and started to close in on them.

Disorganized and confused, the witches dropped their own firebreak and started forward into Zeis proper, on the run. Now the besils, both yellow and red-colored, started moving in on them, dividing them. Bright flashes told me that Warden power was being used on them, killing them as they ran, as they tried to comprehend what was happening.

Below, the reserves were taking something of a beating from the power of the covens, but it wasn’t a hundred and sixty-nine witches to forty besils now, as it had been back in the witch village. It was more like twenty besils plus a dozen wuks and running, well-armed ground troops against thirteen witches in each case. It was costly to take them out, but even though they took half the attackers with them, the witches went down—went down and were mercilessly hacked to death.

I put down the monocular and looked at Ti for a moment. She seemed to sense it and turned to look at me, the stricken and confused look on her face mirroring, I’m sure, my own.

“The Lakks attacked the witches,” she said wonderingly. “The two sides joined up. Cal, what’s going on here? Have we been taken for suckers?”

I shook my head dully. “No, honey. Well, yes, I guess we have. It’s kind of crushing, though, finally to understand all this. Damn!” I smacked my fist in my other hand. “I don’t know why I didn’t figure it out from the start—at least from a few days ago, when I had all the pieces.”

“But they were fightin’ for us, weren’t they? They were gonna get us Zeis Keep!”

I shook my head slowly and sadly and squeezed her hand. “Baby, I doubt if anybody down there gives a damn about us one way or the other. I doubt if they have since the decision was made to fight.” I let her go and smacked my fist in my left hand again. “Pawns!” I muttered. “God damn it! All this way, all this far —and still pawns!”

She looked at me uncomprehendingly. “Wha…?”

I sighed and got up. “Come on. Let’s take a nice long walk down to the Castle. Don’t worry. Nobody’s going to stop us or probably even notice our existence.”

With Ti still confused, we started on down.