'The official line is that you're outlaws and General Darrick is a condemned man wanted for his execution. But it doesn't add up. We are told not to harm any of you but to bring you back to Lystern alive and well. And the Dordovans have been told the same thing.' Izack smiled. 'Heryst and Vuldaroq may dislike each other but we fight side by side. We're friends, mostly, and we talk.' The smile faded. 'But everyone here knows there's more to it. Unknown, every mage here felt the casting. The elves rejoiced, Lysternans and Dordovans were troubled. And everyone knows the timing of the casting and your escape from Lystern. It's too coincidental.' Izack looked square at Erienne. 'People have drawn their own conclusions. That's why you have to be so careful.'
'And what about you?' asked Erienne, meeting his gaze.
'The General believes in you so I believe in you too.'
Erienne said nothing but raised her eyebrows a fraction in acknowledgement. Denser put a hand on her knee and she returned her gaze to the fire.
'So tell me, have the TaiGethen completed their scouting?' asked The Unknown.
'Yes,' said Izack. 'But I think they're still worried about how to get into the college itself.'
'That's where we come in,' said Denser. 'Or more particularly, where I come in.'
'You're planning on going in with them?'
'Think we're safer out here among our allies, Izack?' said Hirad.
'Surely in the elven camps-' he began.
'We've business to attend to,' said The Unknown. 'And we're not sitting out here hiding our faces and watching the action.'
'I take your point,' said Izack.
'One more thing, Commander,' said The Unknown. 'Just how would this front hold up if the elves were to leave it?'
'Simple. It wouldn't.' Izack shrugged.
'You do know that once we've finished inside Xetesk, the elves won't stay here,' said The Unknown.
'I am well aware of their reasons for joining our fight thus far,' said Izack shortly.
'Then you have to be ready for them to leave - mostly to march north to Julatsa to help raise the Heart.'
'Then the siege of Xetesk will collapse. They can rout us from the east gate at will, and every other front will be compromised as a result.' Izack sighed heavily. 'They know why we're fighting this war. They will benefit from our victory. Gods, I've fought so hard to establish what we have and lost so many doing it. Don't leave us defenceless. You'll be handing the victory to Xetesk.'
'Want to know what I think?'
'About war, Darrick, absolutely everything,' said The Unknown.
Rebraal and an exhausted-looking elven woman who had to be Dila'heth, walked into the camp. The Unknown pointed them at Denser and Erienne and, after brief introductions, the four engaged in fervent conversation.
'The moment we retrieve the elven writings, as we must, keeping us at bay will become unimportant to them. Surely they are doing nothing more than keeping us from the walls because they are researching what they have learned from the Al-Drechar and those same writings,' said Darrick.
'Well, I like to think our forces are keeping them from surging north to destroy Julatsa, which I take to be their first goal,' said Izack.
'Let me ask you something, Izack,' said Darrick, now every inch the general of the armies. The position in which he so excelled. 'What is the purpose of your engaging the Xeteskians in this combat? '
'To probe for that weak point. To try and make the breakthrough. Turn the battle in our favour.'
'Wrong. That is the Dordovan command holding sway over you, if that is what you really believe.'
Hirad leaned forward, rapt despite his tiredness.
Izack stared at the floor. 'We have to beat them,' he said. 'Time is short. I've always known the elves would leave one day.'
'In a siege you're just wearing them down,' said Darrick. 'Bit by bit. Otherwise, why engage them at all? Why risk your own men? What you have to believe is that they will crack under the pressure, living in the prison you have created for them. This siege is being fought just as much in the mind as it is on the battlefield.
'Now your defeat the other day was damaging. It allows Xetesk to rest because you can't afford to fight them on this front. If he's clever, Dystran will be making sure his generals are rotating duty on all fronts now.
'His men are fresh out there in front of you, aren't they?'
Izack nodded, mute, sucking in his top lip.
'You won't break them,' said Darrick. 'That isn't where we will beat Xetesk. Whatever Vuldaroq and Heryst believe, we can't win here.'
'So what the hell am I doing!' Izack bit down on his temper. 'General?'
'You're showing them we won't be beaten and you have bought us and the elves the time we need. You've weakened them, make no mistake. And when we get out of Xetesk with the writings, having done whatever damage we can to their research, they are going to come after us. And not just because of a few ancient texts.'
'How so?' asked Hirad.
'There is more they will want. The power of the One, which they surely crave will be lost unless they break the siege. And if the Al-Arynaar succeed and raise the Heart of Julatsa and we can protect it while it strengthens, they will be on the brink of losing the war.' Darrick raised his eyebrows.
'And what makes you so sure they can break the siege?' asked The Unknown.
'They're keeping plenty in reserve, I can feel it,' Darrick said. 'They have made no move to break out because they don't need to. Not yet. But mark my words, they will be mobilising for a move north soon. If they start to push at all four gates you'll know it's imminent because they'll be striving to occupy every enemy they can. What we can do by getting in and out of Xetesk is force their hand. We don't want them ready, believe me.'
'So what do we do?' asked Izack. 'How do we stop them?'
'Now's the time to be fighting harder than you ever have at every gate. Every one of them that dies or is forced to fight until exhaustion is a victory. I know we'll suffer losses too but we'll have the psychological edge. And when they try to break through the north gate as they will, we need to have enough men and mages in reserve to chase them. Don't forget, we can't abandon the siege or we'll be just inviting more Xeteskian warriors to chase up to Julatsa. We cannot allow them to know we are reinforcing the north gate lines. We must make them fight to keep their city even while they run to attack Julatsa and reclaim the writings and, if they're lucky, Erienne, when they guess her identity.'
'But that's the trick, though, isn't it?' said Izack wearily. 'How do we manage our resources to manufacture a meaningful reserve? How can we take most of our men from the fight east, south and west and still keep the pressure up on Xetesk?'
Darrick smiled. 'Well, that's why I'm here, talking to you now.'
'Good,' said The Unknown. 'Then I suggest we leave you two to it. We're going in tomorrow night so work to that timescale. I'm sure Auum will agree we should wait no longer. Meanwhile . . .' He stood up, his eyes on Thraun who had remained completely still, staring into the shadows beyond the fire. 'Thraun, come and talk to me. I want to know what's wrong.'
The shapechanger fixed him with a sullen look.
'Now.' The Unknown's tone brooked no dissension.
Hirad watched The Unknown put an arm round Thraun's tense shoulders and firmly but gently guide him from the fire. Deciding to get himself some soup, Hirad brushed himself down and ambled over to the cook pots. He caught Denser's troubled gaze.
'How bad?' he asked, stirring the thick broth. 'Want some of this?'
Denser shook his head. 'Very bad. Very bad indeed.'
'How long have we got?'
Denser half shrugged and glanced at Rebraal who was translating for Dila'heth.
'That's the problem,' he said. 'We can't know. They've had one instance of mana-flow failure and the focus around the Heart isn't complete. They say it's like a shadow, leaching colour from the Julatsan mana spectrum. One day, soon probably, that shadow will deepen enough to stop the Heart beating and even now it's spreading out, weakening every casting they make. Put it this way, the longer we delay, the harder it will be to reverse. It's terrifying.'
'Is it?'
'Yes, Hirad, it is. To a mage, losing contact with the mana spectrum is the worst thing that could possibly happen. It would be like a living death. Like living in a Cold Room the rest of your life. How can I make you understand? I don't know . . . for you the closest thing would be like losing the use of your sword arm. It would be hanging there, you'd know it was there but you just couldn't use it. Send you mad, wouldn't it?'
Hirad nodded. 'Well, let's not spend too much time in Xetesk, eh?'
'I'm with you there.'
The Unknown Warrior didn't take Thraun far. Just beyond the firelight and into the trees. He'd looked anxious; perhaps the woodland, such as it was, would calm him.
'Thraun?' The Unknown stopped and turned the shapechanger to face him. 'What's bothering you? Even for you, this is quiet and withdrawn. We need you with us all the way inside Xetesk. It's going to be tough in there.'
'We can touch our enemies,' said Thraun, leaving The Unknown momentarily at a loss.
'No, Thraun,' he replied. 'These aren't our enemies. They still want what we want but with regard to us they're misguided.'
'He will betray us,' said Thraun, nodding his head toward the camp.
'Izack? You've got that wrong. He's as loyal to Darrick as we are to each other. He's-'
Thraun gripped The Unknown's arm hard.
'He won't mean to,' he said, and The Unknown could see him struggling for the words that just refused to come. His green eyes, yellow-tinged, shone with moisture in the dim flicker of the fire to their right and his face was pinched, angry. He swallowed. 'He won't mean to, but he isn't Darrick.'
'What? Thraun, please. Try to explain what you mean.'
But the shapechanger was looking away towards Xetesk, sniffing the air, tasting its quality.
'I see what the wolf sees,' he said.
The Unknown started. It was the first direct allusion to Thraun's acceptance of his other self that he'd uttered in years. Somewhere inside his mind, another wall had fallen.
'You've lost me,' he said.
'The air is not good here,' Thraun continued, turning back to The Unknown. 'I will fight with you. I am Raven. But wolves do not hunt where they will find no prey, only rotten meat. Do you see any other wolves here?'
Chapter 11.
Dystran, Lord of the Mount of Xetesk, heard the distant roar of men and the impact of spells. He smelled the faint tang of smoke on the wind through his open windows and knew it was morning. But there was a different quality to it this morning. He dressed hurriedly, ignored the breakfast tray that had been left on his side dresser while he slept and headed down the stairs of his tower, which sat in the centre of a ring of six similar towers.
He snapped his fingers at his personal guards on the way to the stables and waited impatiently while their horses were pulled from stalls and saddled. He knew he could have asked for opinion but he didn't want it. Too much in this war was going on without him seeing it first-hand. At least the delay gave him time to issue a few orders, the only words he was going to utter until he stood on the ramparts above the east gate.
'Bring Chandyr to me at the gate. Bring him quickly. I don't care if he's lying in a pool of his own blood, I want to talk to him. Second, I want an assessment of Julatsa's strength in my briefing chambers when I come back and a man of substance to discuss it with me. Third, I want to know to the hour when we will have a dimensional alignment that will enable us to cast DimensionConnect or something similarly destructive.
'Now, clear me a path to the walls, I'm a busy man.'
One of his guards ran back towards the tower circle to pass on Dystran's instructions. Two others mounted up and led off at a gallop towards the east gate of the college and out into the streets. The remaining three rode around Dystran as he put heels to flanks and cantered away into his city.
He'd not ridden out for too long. It was so easy to feel that the war was going largely according to plan when safe in the cocoon of the college. When those gates closed, shutting out reality was simple, but in the streets, his people were not at ease. Businesses were dying, people were slowly but surely going hungry as his rationing measures bit harder. It was the middle of spring and at a time when the farms that supplied food to Xetesk should be green and yellow with burgeoning crops, most lay idle and overgrown or, worse, supplied his enemies.
Dystran needed his people to understand that they'd come too far to turn back now, to surrender to the old order that would remove Xetesk's power. Remove him. He needed them behind him, believing in the greater glory of Xetesk. For the first days of the siege, support had been so solid. His attempts to engage every citizen in the effort, make them feel involved in a struggle for their survival, had appeared to work. From stretcher teams to water carriers, soup-kitchen cooks to weapon sharpeners, everyone had been designated a task. The sense of togetherness had been extraordinary.
How quickly that support was waning. Barely forty days into the battle and they were losing faith. The eyes turned to him were scared, angry or both. He could understand the fear. None of them was allowed to witness the fighting unless directed for support duty and that meant, for most, that all they had was what they could hear, and the rumours that came back day by day. Most were exaggerated, some verged on being lies. Yet there was little Dystran could realistically do. In the absence of obvious signs of victory, minds naturally turned the other way and doom was easier to share over a few drinks.
It had been such a hard path to walk. Trying to keep his people believing in him but not letting them know why they had to suffer the torment of war outside their walls. War they couldn't see but that could engulf them, should the tide turn against them.
How could Dystran tell them that all they had to do was wait a few more days? If he did, his enemies would know too and that he could not afford.
'Just hold on,' he whispered as he passed faces turned to him in desperation. 'Just hold on.'
He rode through the military positions behind the east gates, positions mirrored at all four portals into the city. Waved through guard posts and directed down cleared channels, he made towards the great closed gate itself. Seventy feet high, iron-bound doors in frames of stone, sweeping a hundred and more feet into the sky to meet at the apex of the grand east gate tower. The spired tower boasted three ornate arches from which his generals would be directing the battle half a mile away on open ground, safe above multiple oil runs and reinforced ramparts.
Either side of the gate tower, the dun-coloured city walls ran away, a mile and more, studded with archer turrets and guard posts, quiet now with so much of his force concentrated around the main battle sites. But the walls themselves were surely deterrent enough. Founded deep in the earth and with internal buttressing, the walls sloped very slightly outwards as they rose some seventy feet tall, as high as the gates. They had never been breached and it gave Dystran great comfort to imagine the sheer size of any force that could genuinely threaten the sanctity of the city.
But, like any walled settlement, the gates were the weak points.
He dismounted, the noise assaulting his ears as he did so. Of hundreds of feet rushing everywhere in pursuit of orders; voices raised to bellow new instructions; forges hammering out new weapons, horseshoes, and repairing battered armour. The temperature had to be twenty degrees higher than in the college. To his left, steam covered the entrance to a kitchen and behind it, Dystran knew his men lay dying, dragged from the field every day.
But many more lay ready, fit and waiting for the order to advance. That day was close but not even his generals knew how close. Only Dystran and Ranyl knew. Any card he retained he had to guard with care.
Dystran double-stepped up the spiral stairways that curved around the gate turrets, his feeling of unease growing. He ran along the first rampart tier and up the central stairways into the tower proper. Reaching the central arch, he found Chandyr already there . . . and saw for himself the sacrifice being made in the name of Xetesk and its Lord of the Mount. He leaned on the uncomfortable but beautifully carved balustrade and stared out at the battle, what little he could see of it.
The recent dry weather had dried the topsoil and a cloud of dust hung over the scene of battle, thickened by smoke from fires and spell impact. Dystran could just about make out the opposing fighting lines in the fog. The Xeteskian line, some five hundred yards wide, was laid in a disciplined curve held firm by Protectors at ten points.
The huge masked warriors led the defence, provided communication along the entire fighting line at the speed of thought and fed confidence into his men. Dystran could imagine the Soul Tank, deep in the catacombs of the college, boiling with activity. Even though they fought individually, the Protectors operated with one mind, those close to brothers engaged in combat directing attention towards threat and opportunity. It made them the awesome force they were. So difficult to break down, so damaging to enemy morale.
Behind the front line, reserves stood waiting, shouting encouragement, pulling away the injured and plugging gaps in the line. Further behind, mages stood or sat in knots, with guards in close attendance. Some directed offensive spells across the lines into enemy support, others maintained the shield lattices against spell and missile attack.
Completing the picture were his archers and cavalry, both mobile, both with their own mage defence, and deployed tactically. The archers kept enemy mages busy with spell defence, the cavalry were in three loose groups, left, right and centre, positioned to counter surges by enemy swordsmen and cavalry, or take advantage of any weakness in the enemy line.
Dystran watched as the centre of the enemy line pushed hard, dragging men into the swell of battle. Steel glinted through the smoke and dust. The roar of voices increased. From behind the enemy warriors, spells arced into the sky. FlameOrbs, green- or yellow-tinged and trailing steam, the superheated mana balls rose and fell into the mage and archer lines behind. Deep blue shields repulsed, sheeting light over their charges. The power of the enemy spells dissipated into the ground, kicking up spats of dirt.
And behind the barrage came the arrows and, with a flash of weapons and thunder of hooves, the cavalry. They forged in heavy on the left flank. It was a thrilling sight. Dystran winced as the Xeteskian cavalry surged forward to meet them between the two main lines.
The opposing forces met, breaking into small groups with individual battles fought out in the mass of men and horses. And, riding across the back of the attack, came the Lysternan commander, plugging a weakness with an individual charge of breathtaking ability, weaving through a gap Dystran didn't even see from his distance and striking a Xeteskian cavalryman from his mount.
He could have been Darrick. In fact, the whole attack could have been masterminded by the former general, so classically was it executed.
The Xeteskian mages and archers responded. The air thickened with arrows. DeathHail hammered onto metal, ground and shield. HotRain fizzed into existence, each drop trailing smoke. HellFire thrashed from the clear skies, its brief roar eclipsing every other sound. The Lysternan shielding flashed green, repelling what it could. Choking smoke billowed afresh into the air. At the periphery of the lattice, a SpellShield failed, telltale black spots rippling as HellFire hit it with too much force to be contained. With a clap like thunder, the Xeteskian spell drove through. Beneath it, the knot of archers had no chance whatsoever.