Of Limited Loyalty

Chapter Fifty-four

21 May 1768 Fort Plentiful, Plentiful Richlan, Mystria

Nathaniel upended a bucket of cold river water over his head. He smiled, relishing the chill as it splashed down over him. He stood naked with a number of the Shedashee, washing away blood and inspecting each other for overlooked wounds. Such had been the nature of the battle that those at the rampart had suffered mostly from bites and scratches-though some were down and feverish from the blood poison. Few enough of the Volunteers had died, at least physically. Encampments of those still in shock surrounded the fort, and half the surviving Volunteers had already slunk away east.

Nathaniel couldn’t really blame them. Most had been caught up in the idea of a glorious battle like Anvil Lake, and the idea of being able to return home a hero. They’d not thought much about fighting another man, and then they faced creatures from the nether reaches of Hell itself. Just the constant flapping of their wings battering a body was enough to drive men insane, not to mention the biting and clawing. Accompany that with the terrified screams of others, and it was a wonder everyone hadn’t gone east fast as they could.

As horrible as all that was, the destruction of the Fifth Northland Cavalry would haunt many nightmares. The cavalry arrived just in time to save the fort from the trolls. Men’s spirits rose as the weight of doom lifted from them. They cheered their saviors, these gallant men, riding with bare steel against the horned behemoths.

And then they got to watch as their saviors were churned into blood and mud and ivory bone chips. When Nathaniel had looked out over the area where the cavalry had disappeared, what shocked him was that he didn’t see bodies. He didn’t see limbs. The tattered scraps of uniforms and scarlet puddles hinted less at their source than scattered autumn leaves described a tree. There wasn’t anything he recognized out there as having been of men, horses, guns, swords, or tack.

A few of the riders had survived-mostly from the front few ranks of the charge. The trollish charge had sliced in behind the cavalry’s leading edge. The surviving members of the Fifth had turned to chase the trolls, but pursuit languished as their horses galloped through what had once been their friends. Only a handful made it to the river, where they stopped just shy of water running red with blood.

The Shedashee had fared somewhat better than the cavalry, having lost only a quarter of their number. Most of those had fallen to trolls. Kamiskwa had made the best of the opportunity and had slain two with his warclub. The rest of the Shedashee eyed him as if he were a god.

Nathaniel handed him the bucket. “I reckon I have a question or three.”

Kamiskwa dumped water over himself, then passed the bucket on and squeezed water out of his hair. “I would keep no secrets from you, my brother.”

“Which ain’t exactly saying you’ll tell me everything.” Nathaniel nodded, then knelt in the river and began to wash his clothes. “I reckon there’s limitations to your moving from one place to another as you did. Why hain’t I never seen that before?”

The Shedashee shook his head. “I had never seen it before. It was my father’s doing. I do not know that I could do it.”

“Fair enough.” Nathaniel grabbed a dollop of lye soap from a small trough and worked it into his loincloth. “Your father, I seen him kill a troll with a tomahawk. Thing done stuck in the troll’s skull, then it pushed itself into his brain. Msitazi said that I throw to hit, but he threw to kill. Now you cain’t tell me there weren’t no magick there, but that blade was steel and he weren’t touching it, so that is double reason it shouldn’t have worked.”

Kamiskwa appropriated some of the soap and began washing his own leggings. “There are magicks you could learn, Magehawk, but you think too much like a Mystrian to believe you can learn them.”

“How do you mean?”

Kamiskwa smiled. “You tell me you saw. You tell me there was magick. But you tell me it could not have worked. How do you know that?”

“Well now, it’s pretty well known…”

“By whom, my brother?” Kamiskwa arched an eyebrow above an amber eye. “It is well known that no man alive could shoot and kill a jeopard with a single shot at one hundred yards, but I have seen it done.”

“And I’ve done it.” Nathaniel frowned. Kamiskwa was right. Nathaniel had never challenged the conventional wisdom that said magick had to be at touch and that it could not work on steel. Even stories he’d heard about knights of old who had enchanted swords were taken to be, well, just stories. But if they was true… “So, now, am I to believe that you knew magick could work on steel and at range?”

“You’ve known it, too, my friend.” Kamiskwa glanced back toward the east. “All the times we have been in the woods and I know where we are, it means I have read what another man has anchored into a tree or rock. In the Antediluvian ruins, there was the writing, and the images on the walls in the Temple. You’ve known, but because you did not perceive, you refused to believe.”

“And you just didn’t think to explain all this to me?”

The Shedashee sighed. “You think like a Mystrian, Nathaniel. It is as my father said. You use magick to fire a gun with the intent of hitting your target. The ball hits, and does more, but your intent is just to hit. That is enough to do what you need done in most cases. Very few men are those who are willing to study and understand more than what is enough, especially if enough serves them well.”

Nathaniel dunked his loincloth and began rinsing it. “You’re saying that if you tried to explain, I’d have said one was as good as t’other?”

“You can be stubborn.”

“I reckon I can.” The Mystrian’s eyes tightened. “Now if I draw some things together here, I’d be thinking that your father done anchored magick in that tomahawk what was meant to kill that there troll.”

“Yes.”

“Does that guarantee it would work?”

“Do you hit with every shot?”

“Fair enough.” Nathaniel wrung out the loincloth, tossed it to the bank, and reached for his leggings. “I reckon it’s my intent to be learning more on this here matter, Kamiskwa, and I would be much obliged for your help.”

The warrior smiled. “Of course, my brother. Learn quickly. I fear that is the only way we’ll stay alive.”

Vlad winced sympathetically as Shedashee swarmed over Mugwump. At Msitazi’s direction, warriors twisted the broken wing and set it. The dragon’s tail thrashed, but hit no one. The Prince smiled ruefully, wishing he’d had a tail to thrash when they’d set his arm, which had then been splinted and hung in a sling. He’d also had his rib tightly bound, and found the treatment bothered him more than the injury.

The Prince withdrew toward the fort as Baker directed men in erecting the wurmrest tent over Mugwump. In addition to having broken a wing, the dragon appeared to have badly bruised his left hip and shoulder. The magickal blast which had knocked him down had blackened scales that had since crumbled into ash. The Prince had seen where the magick had hit. It appeared as if the energy had actually played along the stripes, since those scales had disappeared, leaving others intact.

Count von Metternin sat in a chair someone had fetched for him, his right leg stretched out and splinted straight. Vlad assumed he was in as much pain or more than the Prince, but the Kessian gave little sign of his discomfort. “How are you feeling, Highness?”

“I am well, as are you, I trust.” Vlad gave his friend a smile. “I have good news, news which I intended to share before fighting began but…”

“We were preempted.”

“Quite. You need to know that Princess Gisella is pregnant again.”

The small man clapped his hands. “That is wonderful news. Congratulations. You didn’t tell me earlier because you assumed I would insist you remain behind?”

“Yes.” Vlad glanced back toward Mugwump. “Part of me wishes I would have had and heeded that advice.”

“I never could have kept you away.” Von Metternin smiled. “I shall consider that a good omen. Likewise the fact that Mugwump appears no more hurt than those foolish enough to ride him.”

“I find myself less concerned over his injuries than the knowledge of dragons Msitazi is displaying. He knows more than Baker does, and Baker’s family has been wurmwrights to the Royal House for centuries.”

Von Metternin leaned forward, his hands resting atop a thick walking stick a Ranger had hacked into shape for him. “You may have the secret of it there, Highness. Baker is a wurmwright. Mugwump is a dragon. It could be that Msitazi does know more.”

“But how?”

“I think, my friend, if you are honest with yourself, the question you wish answered is not ‘how,’ but ‘why’ you have not been privy to this knowledge. You had signs of it. Msitazi knew when Mugwump would emerge from his molt. That he could show you how scales pointed him to that conclusion allowed you to avoid asking how he knew what the scales would indicate. It was a mystery forgotten when we saw the wings.” The seated man shrugged. “And now you feel betrayed, because of the dragon and because Msitazi revealed hidden things about magick.”

Vlad nodded. “It is true. I learn what I have learned and hid knowledge of it from the Church for fear of what they will do. And yet I fault the Shedashee for not revealing to us all they know about magick when their motivation clearly is the same as mine. I see the irony, but I feel that if I knew what they know, it would have been easier to prepare troops to face the Norghaest.”

“I will suggest two things.” The Kessian held up a finger. “It could well be that without the green powder training you’ve already offered, men would be unable to understand anything the Shedashee might be inclined to teach.”

“Good point. The second?”

Von Metternin looked out at the battlefield. “I do not think anything would have prepared men for this.”

“No.” Bodies were being dragged from the battlements and laid out up hill from the fort. The Shedashee had recovered their dead and moved them toward the west. By custom they would erect platforms and place the bodies on them, so carrion birds would devour them and carry them into the heavens. Later, relatives would collect and clean the bones, then carry them off to hidden caverns where they would be venerated. Plentiful’s leader, an older woman, had complained about allowing heathens to desecrate the valley, but Makepeace had cut her off and carried her away mid-rant.

Out on the battlefield nothing moved, save for ravens, crows, and other carrion birds. Vlad spotted a couple of eagles tugging some red fibers apart. The birds picked their way over muddy ground and seemed to have as much trouble finding edible bits as Vlad did recognizing the remains of men. Oddly enough, the birds avoided the troll carcasses, but at the ramparts, tore at the demon bodies with great delight.

Vlad leaned on the back of the Count’s chair. “On the parapet, before we saddled up, I had a vexing conversation with Msitazi. He said that I needed to learn, and that the Noragah did as well. When I asked for clarification, he said, ‘What you have yet to learn, they seek to remember.’ I can make little sense of that.”

Von Metternin pointed his stick toward the brown scar that marked the troll hole’s collapse. “When the trolls first came, they were packed together, much in the way that Lord Rivendell assaulted the fortress at Anvil Lake.”

“Yes, but the second time he spread them out.”

“Exactly. He learned from what he saw.” The Count’s brow furrowed. “What if that first assault was set up to show them how we fight, and that the first formation was in keeping with Rufus’ experience in mass battle-namely Anvil Lake. But the second time, when the trolls spread out, it was someone trying a more effective strategy against the weapons and tactics we used.”

“Do you think Rufus was that smart?”

“I only met the man on a couple of occasions, but his temperament seemed such that he would not have retreated that first time since his trolls could have carried the rampart. He would have wanted to show us all his superiority. Perhaps, and the annals of Church lore would support the idea, he is possessed by a demon which is acting through him. That Norghaest demon, then, is learning about us to know what sort of foe it faces.”

“So this was just a test?” Vlad shook his head. “All this to see how tough we are?”

“Yes, my friend, I fear it is so.” The Count sighed. “And what the Norghaest learned is that sweeping us from the land will be no trouble at all.”

Owen quickly got out of the way as Caleb stormed from the thaumagraph cabin. The young man, fury having reddened his face, didn’t acknowledge Owen. He figured Caleb likely didn’t even see him. Owen would have said something, but heard a sob from the cabin’s dimming interior.

He entered. Bethany sat at the thaumagraph table, elbows planted on it, hands covering her face.

“Is something wrong, Beth… Lieutenant Frost?”

She glanced at him, then hid her face again for a moment. She brushed away tears and turned toward him, her expression tense. “Don’t you start in on me, too, Captain Strake.”

“What?”

She stood and pointed a finger toward the door. “Caleb came in here to tell me how stupid I was to go out there. He said I could have been killed. And I know you said…” She leaned against the table. “You told me…”

Owen wanted nothing so badly as to gather her in his arms. He couldn’t, so he snarled and pounded a fist against the wall.

Bethany looked up, her eyes brimming. “Please don’t, Owen.”

“No, Bethany.” Owen held his hands up, forcing them open. He’d cleaned the blood off them, though his cuffs remained stained and his clothes still stank. “That wasn’t about you. I was, I will, go out there and give Caleb a piece of my mind.”

“No, let him go.” Her shoulders slumped. “He’d been proud of the idea of having me along until it dawned on him that I could end up as dead as anyone else. Now he wants me to go home. He says I can go with the wounded. I told him I wasn’t going. He got very angry.”

Owen lowered his hands. “That’s because he doesn’t want to lose you.”

“And now you’re here to tell me to go, too.”

“Huh?”

“Owen…” She took a step toward him, then stopped, her arms wrapping around her middle. “I can’t leave. I can’t abandon… everyone. But I would do it if you asked, so, please, don’t ask.”

Owen threw his head back and laughed.

Bethany glared at him. “Don’t you dare.”

He crossed the room to her. “Bethany, I don’t want you to go. I didn’t come here to ask you to leave.” He reached around to the small of his back and slid a knife in a beaded sheath from inside his belt. “I came to give you this. It’s a better knife for cutting. And Justice Bone, he found a couple pistols some people left behind. He figures you can have the lend of them until we get back to Temperance, then you can return them.”

She accepted the knife, holding it in her two hands, then looked up. A single tear rolled down her cheek. “You’re not angry with me?”

“I don’t really like you disobeying an order, or convincing Corporal Brown to disobey with you…”

“She didn’t. You ordered her to keep me safe, remember?”

“Right.” He smiled. “You saved my life. This is the second time, really, because I’d not have been here except for your nursing five years ago. I came to say thank you.”

Owen wanted to brush her tear away, and for half a heartbeat intended to, but he lost himself in watching tension drain from her face. Had she not looked down at the knife again, had she not smiled with childish delight, he would have drawn her to him and kissed her. But the knife’s distraction bought him enough time to recover himself,

He took a step back.

“You’re probably also going to want to get some leathers. They’ll be better for fighting than skirts. Corporal Brown can help you get outfitted.”

“What? Yes.” Bethany set the knife down. “Owen, you’re welcome. And thank you for the knife, the advice, and your friendship.”

He gave her a smile, then nodded. “You’re welcome.” He wanted to say more, but a discordant melody issued from the thaumagraph. “Sounds important, Lieutenant. I’ll leave you to your duty.”

Michael A. Stackpole

Of Limited Loyalty