Battle Magic (39 page)

Souda whistled sharply. This time she sent two of her soldiers after the stranger. They soon returned. They had lost him.

One of the tribesmen spotted the next watcher; Parahan’s scouts reported a third. By nightfall a total of six watchers had been seen. None had been caught.

“Theirs or ours, do you think?” Briar heard Parahan ask Captain Lango.

The Gyongxin man was grim. “Yanjingyi armor, Yanjingyi spies.”

All the commanders put the soldiers to digging a broad ditch around their camp that night. Rosethorn sprinkled a few seeds at the bottom of the ditch, just in case. They would take the place of abatises if the enemy attacked. A word from Rosethorn or Briar and the seeds would send thorny branches shooting up to surprise anyone who tried to cross the ditch. The only side of their camp not so defended was on a wide pond.

The creation of a tighter camp seemed to make the soldiers feel more like one army. When Briar volunteered for guard duty, he found himself trading nods of greeting with tribesmen, temple warriors, and Realms soldiers who had the same duty. One tribesman even offered Briar a chew of betel nut, though Briar politely
turned him down. He thought orange teeth might ruin his appeal for girls at home in Emelan.

Staring at the stars, he realized that the constellation called the Herdsman was starting to rise over the horizon. He picked out the ancient hero’s head and earring, his shoulders, his belt, and the one visible arm with its sling, ready to drive a rock straight between the eyes of the Lion of Shaihun. It was one of Evvy’s favorite stories. On their road east, she had insisted on pointing out the Herdsman every night she could see it.

Briar’s eyes filled as he looked at it. He wiped them on his sleeve.

I’m not going to get all weepy every time I see a shepherd with a sling, he told himself. That’s not fair to Evvy. And this country has herders with slings everywhere I look.

Then he frowned. It was hard to shoot a seed ball from a crossbow. The archer drew the string until the head of the bolt almost touched the stock, leaving scant room to tie the ball. A seed ball was too light to go far on its own, but a sling could throw a seed ball if the ball were weighted somehow.

Briar looked at the earth under his feet. There were stones in it. He picked one up and tossed it in his hand.

Rosethorn took his place when the guard changed, sending him off to bed. Once he pulled his blankets up around him, Briar slept without dreams.

He woke in the morning to a normal camp. No one had tested the sentries. While Jimut grumbled about it as he brought tea for Briar and Rosethorn, Briar was just as happy. He prized his sleep.

He helped Rosethorn to do up the laces on her cuirass and greaves; she returned the favor. Both of them settled their carry-bags full of seed balls over their chests.

Briar nearly collided with Jimut when he walked out of the tent. His aide was bringing the dumplings called
momos
for their breakfast. “Do you know anyone who is good with a sling?” Briar asked him. “Someone who can put a rock close to a reasonable target.”

Jimut shrugged. “I can,” he replied, offering
momos
to Rosethorn as he emerged from the tent. “I helped my father and uncles with the herds before I decided to be a soldier. When I hunt for the company I save arrows with my sling.”

“Would you start carrying one with you?” Briar asked. “I’d like to be able to work at more of a distance.”

Jimut frowned, and then bowed. “Of course.”

“I think I would like a slinger, too,” Rosethorn said. She ruffled Briar’s short hair, which was starting to grow out. “Clever Briar.”

Briar pulled a tuft of hair out to see how long it was. “I need this cut.” He was strict about keeping it an inch long. That way it never curled and it dried fast.

“Just don’t let the emperor’s barbers do it,” Parahan said cheerfully. “They could make a mistake and take your whole head.” He turned his beak of a nose into the wind from the east. “I smell battle coming. It’s about time.”

“Savage,” Rosethorn told him.

“We are civilized about wars in Kombanpur,” Parahan replied. “We study long and hard for them so we do not dishonor
our enemies by giving them a bad fight.” His dark face went a shade darker. “And we do not kill their little girls.”

“I wish every warrior was as tidy about it as you,” Rosethorn said.

“I wish some little girls I know were here to help fight,” Briar said. “They’d give these muck-snufflers a lesson they’d never forget.” He saw some likely looking stones and bent stiffly to pick them up. It was hard to do in armor.

“We use what we have,” Rosethorn told him. “It will be enough.”

After breakfast the small army set forth once again. Souda had placed their three companies in the middle of the march. “If we’re attacked, I want regular soldiers in the middle,” she explained to Rosethorn and Briar as they rode along. “We worked out that the temple soldiers will bring the supply animals up with us and guard them in the event of a fight. The tribes will ride into the enemy flanks. If we hold here at the middle, we might just make a battle plan of it.”

Rosethorn nodded. “If we have to fight, it’s a good plan,” she replied.

“But I have seen you fight,” Parahan commented with surprise. “You did not hang back.”

“I am like most who take up a religious life in our wicked world,” Rosethorn said. As she and Briar rode, they used their magic to open the seed balls and drop thumb-sized stones into them. Another touch of magic wove the cotton together once more. “I will not surrender to evil, or allow anyone in my charge to be harmed by evil, and violence that kills the helpless and destroys the beauties of the world is evil. But I am also a healer. It
can be depressing to have to repair what you took apart that morning.”

“There are religious orders that live in isolation and refuse to commit any violence,” Souda remarked.

“I hope they are mages who can defend or hide themselves, then,” Rosethorn replied. “I and mine, we live in the real world.”

Everyone ate midday in the saddle. Not long after that a cloud of dust rolled toward them across the flatlands from the east. The tribal shamans began a heavy, droning chant like that Briar had heard in the temples and in the canyon behind Garmashing. It was a song with a buzz under it, much like the sound of the great horns. As the shamans chanted they pounded small drums or banged little gongs. Goose bumps prickled all over Briar: They were raising Gyongxin magic.

He passed a cloth seed ball to Jimut, who already had his sling in hand. Rosethorn’s slinger balanced his cloth ball in his hand, noticing the weight. He raised his brows, then settled it into his sling.

Whatever the other mages had put in motion, it seemed to be working. The dust cloud was breaking up and drifting skyward. As it thinned, it revealed several companies of imperial horsemen.

“Archers!” cried Parahan, Souda, and Lango at the same time.

“Wait,” Briar murmured to Jimut. He heard a change in the chanting of the shamans. Lango’s mage had also begun something of his own.

Briar shifted his attention to the grasses that grew ahead of the enemy horses’ hooves. Under the earth’s surface, he followed his power into their roots.

He didn’t hear the commanders giving the archers the order to shoot. In the part of him that stayed with his body he noticed that Jimut and Rosethorn’s slinger released their balls of weighted seed at the same time. Seed and arrows soared high, then fell among the enemy soldiers even as the Yanjingyi archers shot. The Gyongxin tribes and temple warriors on the right and left attacked, charging under most of the Yanjingyi volley of arrows. Those were aimed for the commanders and mages on the road.

Parahan, Souda, and Lango barked the order for the archers to prepare to shoot again. Briar urged his body to hand a second thorn ball to his slinger, as Rosethorn was doing, and returned to his work on the grasses ahead.

He heard shrieking war cries: The tribal and temple warriors were colliding with Yanjingyi horsemen on the right and the left. The center of the Yanjingyi line began to charge, bellowing in return.

Lango and the twins yelled the order to shoot; the archers obeyed, aiming at the heart of the charging line. Riders and horses went down. Jimut and Rosethorn’s slinger released their seed balls to strike the enemy soldiers who still galloped on.

They were falling even before the balls hit the ground and exploded. Growing ferociously, the grasses enveloped the horses’ hooves. The animals went down, throwing their riders. In the heart of the army, warriors screamed as thorny vines shot through and around them. Horses reared, trying to shake the grip of the tough grasses. They dropped under the hooves of those horses galloping up behind them.

Some of the thorns and grass went gray. Some burst into flame, burning the soldiers in their grasp. Briar fumbled as he
passed another ball to Jimut, his fingers going numb. A strange green veil was falling over his eyes; his throat had gone too tight to breathe. He clawed at it, gasping.

Suddenly air rushed into his throat. He inhaled several times, filling his poor lungs, then looked for the cause of his sudden cure. Jimut was holding an oblong disk in front of his face. “Are you all right?” the man asked.

“Better, thanks. What
is
that?” Briar wanted to know.

Jimut turned the disk around for a moment, then turned it back so the polished side faced the enemy. It was a metal mirror. It had reflected the enemy’s spell back to them.

Briar checked Rosethorn. A temple mage with her face tattooed all over with interesting patterns had ridden her horse next to Rosethorn. She wrote signs on the air between her and Briar’s teacher. As she worked, Rosethorn sat with her hands palm up in her lap, peacefully gazing at the battle before them. Vines were growing rapidly, twining around enemy warriors and yanking them from the saddle to be trampled in the fighting. Whatever the temple mage was doing, she held the Yanjingyi mages off Rosethorn, it was plain.

Briar let Rosethorn work with the vines. There was a cluster of stillness in the spot where the Yanjingyi soldiers had waited before their charge. He would wager that was where the mages and perhaps the commanders watched the fighting. He closed his eyes and poured his magical self through the grass roots between him and that stillness. The grasses lent him their strength as he ran from root to root.

The Yanjingyi mages’ power shone like a beacon even underground, guiding him to them. Below them in the earth, Briar
drew on the vast network of plants that stretched out around him and carefully reached up with his power. There were the above-ground grasses that grew around the horses’ hooves. Out of habit they tried to eat a mouthful or two, but these were the finest products of the army’s stables. The plants of the Gyongxin plain were a little too tough for their liking. Sensing Briar’s presence in the grass, they huffed and stamped, only to be slapped by the soldiers who held their reins. Neither the generals nor the mages wanted to be disturbed by restless animals.

Briar stretched himself above the grasses, searching for the beads wrapped around the mages’ throats and wrists. He could not tell if the general was also a mage, as General Hengkai had been. He could only sense the wooden beads. In his magical vision they hung in midair, shaping three necks and three pairs of arms. He gripped his power for just a moment, then flooded the beads with it.

The willow beads shattered, breaking the strands around the mages’ necks and arms. The oak beads sent roots shooting into the ground. The grasses told him that the horses had gone frantic at the sudden appearance of fast-growing trees. They reared and flailed at everything around them. The mages were thrown to the ground. At Briar’s command the grasses seized the mages, weaving around their throats. Strangling would teach them to kill little girls!

His rage fed strength to the grasses. They grew and tightened like rope.

That’s it! Briar told the grasses. Don’t give way for an instant!

Rosethorn was calling him. He refused to go. He wasn’t going to leave just when he was paying the Yanjingyi beasts back.