Authors: Julian May
* * *
Attack Force Commander Tasatawnn and his principal aide Omawnn studied the looming human fortress on the opposite bank of the Dennech River. It was about half a league away. Its numerous heavy guns and missile catapults were trained on the water, ready to rain tarnblaze on any Salka who were detected swimming to the attack. The cover-spell that hid the amphibian host from distant windsearchers was quite ineffective at close range, so the defenders of Dennech-Cuva knew well enough that the enemy was out there, waiting.
The humans were also waiting - for the Salka to make the first move.
The citadel was fairly new, dating to the time sixteen years ago when Somarus had assumed the. throne of Didion after Salka raiders killed his older brother Honigalus and his family. At the time, Azarick Cuva was naught but an outlawed robber-baron, the close crony of a disreputable prince who
was little better than a brigand himself. Somarus rewarded Azarick with a generous amount of treasure and a 'paper' dukedom - a vast tract of the sparsely settled west country that was only nominally loyal to the Crown. The true rulers of the region were the ruthless corsairs of the coast; but Azarick was told by the king that the fiefdom was his if he could keep it.
The newly minted duke assembled an army of ferocious misfits as land-hungry as himself and built a fortress that was huge, unlovely, and impregnable. Using it as a base, Azarick terrorized the pirates into ceding him dominion of the hinterlands, while they retained control of the shore.
Field Commander Tasatawnn knew nothing of Dennech-Cuva citadel's history, only that
it was one of the largest fortifications he had ever seen, rivaling the Salka race's own lamented stronghold in the Dawntide Isles, which had been blown to rubble by the cannons of the Sovereign Navy some years earlier. Bringing the place down would not be easy, even with the Destroyer.
'Respected leader,' the aide Omawnn pointed out, 'this is a formidable target indeed - perhaps too formidable. If you command your Great Stone to
annihilate it, the occult energies required could well cost you your life, or demand a pain-price that would leave you a helpless invalid.'
'It's certainly a lot more of a challenge that I thought it would be,' the commander grumbled. 'However, if I spare myself by using Destroyer's lesser demolition command -the one Kalawnn employed to topple the sea-stack at the mouth of the bay channel - I might break through the walls, but leave enough of the fort's weaponry intact to kill thousands of our troops. Tarnblaze bombs are hellish things. No sorcery can deflect or quench them. Now I understand why our strategic advisers at first wanted us to bypass the citadel.'
'We could still do that, respected one. It's perhaps the wisest course.'
'But it would greatly slow our advance, Omawnn. Our force would have to move throngh the dense surrounding forest rather than easily through the water.' Tasatawnn's burning carbuncle eyes flared with audacity and his mouth split in a defiant grin, showing teeth like diamond carving knives. He clasped the paradoxically delicate wand that hung on a chain about his neck and erected his head-crest.
'Bespeak my field officers,' he enjoined Omawnn. 'Let all our intrepid warriors assume positions of safety, then prepare to fall upon the town and raze it to the ground after the fortress is reduced.'
The aide nodded. After an interval: 'I have obeyed. And . . . if you should become disabled?'
'You know what to do. Now take cover.'
As the staff officer retreated behind nearby shore boulders, Tasatawnn enveloped the slender sigil completely with the digits of his right tentacle and visualized the target. Then in a loud voice he intoned the spell of annihilation.
'SKRESS TUSA ROWD SHEN!'
Omawnn cringed in stupefaction as a monstrous green ball of light obliterated the edifice across the river. A split second later came a sound louder than any thunder and a tornadic blast of wind. He fell shrieking with pain onto the stony riverbank, thinking, 'He's killed both of us!'
But he was alive. A pressure wave rolled across the water, washed over him with soothing coolness, then receded. Faintly, his mind heard the ecstatic shouts of thousands of Salka.
'Respected leader?' Omawnn called. His ears registered no sound. He was completely deaf. Weak as a newborn seal pup, he squirmed toward the unmoving body of his commander.
Tasatawnn's saucerlike eyes were glazed and lifeless. His
flesh felt strangely icy to the touch. The sturdy golden chain of Destroyer had snapped in his death-convulsion, flinging the brittle rod onto the rocks and breaking it in half. The fragments were milky-grey, possessed of no internal radiance whatsoever.
Numb with the terrible knowledge of what had just happened, Omawnn screwed up his courage before bespeaking the Eminent Kalawnn. Out on the river, the waters swarmed with triumphant invaders who swept ashore into the doomed town, praising the name of Tasatawnn to the highest Sky.
* * *
Vra-Erol Wintersett, Chief Windsearcher of the Cathran Army, Deveron Austrey, and a handful of other powerful Cathran alchymists who had been capable of overseeing the disaster at Dennech-Cuva, stared in wordless shock at one another.
'Tell me!' Conrig raged. 'Tell me what happened, damn you!'
So they did.
There were some twenty men gathered with the Sovereign in the disused frontier post at the top of Frost Pass. The building had been officially abandoned years earlier at a time when Tarn and Didion disputed the border along the White Rime Range. Travelers still used it occasionally as a storm refuge, but every stick of furniture, every floorboard and wood partition, and every piece of interior framing had long since been burnt for fuel. Only thick stone walls standing on bedrock remained, enclosing a windowless chamber the size of a ballroom. It had an iron door and a timber roof weighted with rocks against the mountain gales. A few blocks of hewn granite served as seats and sleeping platforms, and others at the room's far end made hitching posts for the horses. The place was dreary, dark, and as cold as the lowest of the Ten Hells.
The magickers of Cathra had conjured fire in the crum bling hearth and a row of dancing flames along the mantel for illumination. Conrig sat on a rough stone bench, wrapped in furs and sipping hot buttered malt laced with honey. His generals crowded closely around him, as if willing their own vitality to strengthen their debilitated Sovereign. They listened in silence as each scrier in turn submitted his disheartening vision of the destruction of the citadel at Dennech-Cuva.
Vra-Erol discussed the death of the impetuous Salka commander who had become visible to the mind's eye after he perished. Others of the Corps of Alchymists concurred that the citadel had certainly been consumed by the sorcery of a Destroyer. The Great Stone itself, like all sigils, was unscryable whether dead or alive; but Erol had deduced what must have happened.
Deveron, being last to speak, pointed out a phenomenon that had eluded the others, who had been too engrossed in the sigil's amazing performance to take note of any side-effect.
'At the moment of the explosion of green light, there was indeed a disruption of the closely woven spell of couverture that has thus far hidden the Salka host from our oversight. I discerned two great streams of invaders. Their principal route of advance is up the Dennech River, as we suspected. The second force is moving up the smaller Shadow River, somewhat to the south.'
'How many?' the Lord Constable asked.
'The Dennech host includes at least thirty thousand monsters,' the intelligencer said. 'Another twenty thousand invading via the Shadow will approach the small settlement of Tweenwater tomorrow night. The fort there is little more than a den of bandits that won't delay the Salka for an instant. Above Tweenwater, the river provides a direct route
to Lake of Shadows . . . and ultimately to the lower Wold Road. The Dennech River route followed by the larger force snakes through uninhabited moorlands and bogs. Its head waters rise near the
upper
Wold Road, approximately fifty leagues south of Castle Direwold. The Salka may intend to follow its entire length, so as to cut the highway in two places. Or, perhaps less likely, they might cut overland after reaching a great bend in the river and attack Lake of Shadows from the northwest.'
Norval Vanguard inquired, 'How fast are they capable of moving up freshwater streams?'
'Very fast,' said Brother Erol. 'When they invaded the Green Morass, it took them less than a sennight to move from the sea to Beacon Lake. The distance from Dennech-Cuva to either of their presumed objectives on the Wold Road is much less.'
'Saving a miracle,' Ramscrest observed, 'there'll be naught to oppose them other than that poor devil Valardus at Lake of Shadows. Our troops and animals will be spent by the time we retrace our steps to Castle Direwold. They'll be obliged to rest. Then it's at least two days' hard ride for warriors with remounts to reach the lake and reinforce the Didionites. Our slower riders, foot soldiers, heavy ordnance, and supplies will take a couple of days longer. More if it rains or snows.'
'Not good enough,' said Duke Norval, who had been consulting a small map. 'The distance from Tweenwater to the western end of the lake is only eighty leagues or so. Unless they run into serious trouble, the Southern Wing of the Salka force is almost certain to reach the lake ahead of us. We won't roust them out of deep water easily, even with tarnblaze. They'll be able to strike, then fall back into the lake to recuperate over and over again.'
Duke Nettos Intrepid, the only Lord of the Southern Shore
in the group, had been peering over Norval's shoulder at the map. He gave a gruesome chuckle. 'And if the northern mob of monsters come all the way up the Dennech headwaters to the Wold Road, they'll be in a position to wriggle right up the arses of our rear echelons! Unless we want our marchers to be caught in a pincer-trap, we've no choice but to send a goodly part of our army into the heath, to meet the Dennech Salka head-on.'
'But that's the larger enemy force,' Deveron reminded him, 'and the region is a forbidding wilderness - less accessible to heavy cavalry than one might suppose from looking at a map.'
'I've heard that section of the Great Wold is friggin' track less,' warned a one-eyed general named Chokar Bogshaw, 'a maze of tangled brush and thickets and quagmires. It's impossible for wagons or wheeled war-engines, and deadly dangerous even for our mountain-bred horses, who can move cross-country far easier than the pampered padnags of the Southern Shore.'
'Pampered padnags?'
howled Nettos Intrepid.
'Silence!' Conrig shouted. He had risen from his bench and stood in front of the leaping magical flames, which had a peculiar bluish cast. 'You've all forgotten one factor crucial to our battle-planning: my sigils.'
The dank chamber went silent except for the snuffling and stamping of tethered horses and the constant low rumble of the unending column of countermarching troops passing outside. The Lord Constable finally asked the question. 'What do you propose doing with the stones, my liege?'
'I'm not sure, Wanstan,' the Sovereign admitted. 'You may not all be aware of it, but these three so-called Great Stones can be effective at some distance from the conjurer - who is myself, of course. The tactical implications are exciting.'
A softspoken younger general named Pasacor Kimbolton
cleared his throat. 'I'm obliged to point out, sire, that you have as yet had no experience wielding the moonstones. The - er - effective range of the sigils surely cannot be infinite.'
'And there's the accumulating pain-debt,' Deveron said.
Conrig ignored him. ‘I know for certain that Weathermaker is capable of exercising its power virtually anywhere around our island. Both Beynor and Ullanoth demonstrated it. I'm willing to wager my life that the Destroyer sigil will operate in a similar manner. And perhaps Ice-Master as well.'
No one seemed eager to comment on that.
The king said, 'At this time, you can see that I'm not at my best. I'm saddlesore like everyone else, my healing injuries still hurt like the devil. . . and I'm also paying the price for using Weathermaker last night to keep snow from dumping on us whilst we crossed the mountains today.'
Exclamations of astonished and mildly obscene admiration greeted the last point, which Conrig had kept secret from most of them.
'The sigils do work, my lords. At a cost I'm willing to accept. Now, this is what I intend to do. I must sleep here for a few hours and regain my strength. My sons and the Royal Intelligencer will attend me. The rest of you continue down to the wold. By all means confer amongst yourselves and consider what strategic options are open to us.'
There were murmurs of sympathy and concern as the king subsided onto his bench again and drew his furs around him.
The Lord Constable provided a tactful deflection from Conrig's evident discomfiture. 'My lords, very soon we must convene a new council of war that includes the Tarnians, the other Cathran generals, and perhaps even Valardus and his battle-leaders. Two important matters must be researched as quickly as possible. I hope our Brother Alchymists can
work on them as they ride down the mountainside, saving precious time.'
'Be assured we'll do our utmost,' said Vra-Odos.
'My first question,' the constable said, 'is this: Is it possible that denizens of Castle Direwold or retired outlaws of that town would know of secret paths through the Dennech head waters heath? Remember, in the old days the region at the foot of Frost Pass was prime brigand country.'
'And Baron Jordus Direwold was in league with most of 'em!' someone said.
When the laughter subdsided, Wanstantil Cloudfell continued. ‘I also request that our alchymists undertake urgent windspoken consultations with the scholars at Zeth Abbey and Donorvale College of Shamans. We
must
find a way to puncture the Salka cover-spell - perhaps by an effort of conjoined talent. We can't fight the slippery whoresons if you magickers can't scry their troop movements.'