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Authors: Steven Brust

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At the far edge was a large pavilion tent, and it was to there my nameless escort directed me. I clapped and heard Sethra’s voice telling me to enter. I did and was directed to a chair between Morrolan and Aliera—not a terribly comfortable position, by the way—with Sethra and the Necromancer sitting across from me. I had obviously interrupted some sort of discussion: Aliera had a look as if she were about to froth and spit; Sethra’s brow was furrowed; and Morrolan kept making glances at his cousin as if she were an unidentified creature that had appeared in his soup. The Necromancer seemed only barely present; I wondered where her thoughts were while suspecting I was glad not to know.
“Well, Vlad,” said Morrolan after I was sitting and drinking bad wine. “How are you enjoying the life of a soldier?”
I shrugged. “Loiosh likes it more than I do.”
“I’ve heard,” said Morrolan, “that he has been adopted by your company as mascot.”
“Yeah. He’s insufferably smug about it.”
“Hey now, Boss. That’s not fair.”
“Truth isn’t, Loiosh.”
Sethra said, “You’ve done some good work, I am told.”
“Sure,” I said. “For what it’s worth.”
“I think it was worth something,” said Morrolan.
“Maybe,” I said. “I don’t know. I don’t have enough of an
idea of how our little company fits in with everything else that’s been happening.”
“You saved some lives in your company,” said Morrolan.
“Okay,” I said. “But none of those battles were decisive.”
“The next one will be,” said Sethra.
I digested that. “You’re ready, then?”
“I hope so,” said Sethra. “But, more important, Fornia is. He has to make a stand somewhere, and this location has symbolic importance. He won’t be able to pass it up.”
“Symbolic importance,” I repeated.
Sethra gave me a half smile. “Don’t start,” she said. “It also has a great deal of strategic importance; as far as he can tell, we’re backed up against the mountain, and—”
“As far as he can tell?”
“We have lines of retreat, Vlad. Northward. Let me worry about that part of it.”
“Sorry.”
“In any case, this will be a good place for him to win a battle. He’ll fight here. He has to. From here, I can push straight into the heart of his realm. Besides, if he can hold us for a few days, he has another division coming up.”
“He does?”
“He sent his third division all the way around the other side of Chengri to cut me off from my base of supplies.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“Well, if we’re stuck here for three or four days it won’t be good. You’ll start getting hungry. But I don’t plan on being stuck that long; I plan on pushing through him while I have the advantage of numbers. He knows that. He’ll fight here.”
“I believe you,” I said. “What exactly do you want of me?”
“What we want,” said Morrolan, “or, rather, what I want, is exactly what you said you wouldn’t do, way back when this all started. I want you to get that sword from Fornia.”
“Funny about that,” I said. “I’d just been thinking the same thing.”
“I still don’t like it,” said Aliera, evidently continuing a discussion I’d missed the beginning of. “If we’re going to do that, why not go all the way? Hire a thief and just be done with it.”
“For one thing,” said Sethra, “we don’t know any thieves.”
“Vlad can put us in touch with one.”
“And for another,” said Morrolan, “that wouldn’t accomplish what I want. I don’t just want the sword. I have a perfectly good sword.” Here he touched the hilt of Blackwand. “I want it taken from him.”
“You want him humiliated,” said Aliera.
“Call it defeated,” said Morrolan. “And defeated at every level. Both militarily and by losing the very item that caused the war.”
“If you defeat him,” I said, just to be argumentative, “won’t he have to give it up?”
“Military defeat,” said Sethra, “is not an all-or-nothing proposition. I believe we can hand his army a major defeat. That doesn’t mean he’ll be powerless, and it doesn’t mean he can be compelled to surrender all of his forces. To do that would require a far greater campaign than this one, more costly in every way, riskier, and with the danger of Imperial intervention.”
“We’ve been talking it over for some time,” said Morrolan.
“And we cannot leave him in possession of the artifact, so we must take it. Once we’ve taken it, we cannot leave him unbloodied, or he’ll try to take it back. So we have to get it from him and, at the same time, bloody his nose.”
“And you want me to do the getting.”
“If you’d like.”
“I’d like. How do you suggest I go about it? I suspect sneaking into his tent at night is going to be trickier than the other stuff I’ve been doing, and, really, I’m not a thief by profession or training.”
“No,” said Morrolan. “And that wouldn’t do what we want anyway. We need it removed from him during the battle.”
“Excuse me? Why?”
“Because I don’t know anyway to get it after the battle. He isn’t going to leave himself vulnerable; he’ll retreat, probably return home, and at that point we
would
have to hire a thief to get it.”
“That may not be a bad idea,” I said.
“I don’t employ thieves,” said Morrolan.
“Didn’t you just ask me to steal something?”
“To remove it from him in the middle of a battle, yes. We do not countenance assassination either, but making targets of senior officers while in combat is not only proper but recommended.”
“Too nice a distinction for me, Morrolan. I’m just a hardworking Jhereg. But what about before the battle?”
“If you do that, there won’t be a battle, Vlad. He’ll pull back, re-form, and launch his own campaign to get it back from me, maybe years from now.”
I shook my head. “How am I supposed to go after the thing while we’re fighting? How will I even find him, much less the whole question of getting to him.”
Sethra spoke up. “For one thing, we’re going to position your company in such a way that you’ll be as close as possible to his command center.”
I wondered how Virt would feel if she knew how her general was deciding on the order of battle. I resolved not to tell her.
I said, “I still don’t see how I’m supposed to get out of a pitched battle, all the way to their command post, find Fornia, and extract the weapon from him.”
Aliera said, “I don’t either. I think the whole idea is idiotic.”
“As for getting the weapon from him,” said Morrolan. “As I said a moment ago, making targets of senior officers is an accepted tactic.”
“Oh. So now you want me to kill him?”
“If necessary.”
I shook my head. “If I’d wanted to kill him, Morrolan, I would simply have done so. Days ago. It isn’t clear to me—”
“You won’t be alone,” he put in.
“I won’t?”
“If you require assistance, we can supply you with as many subordinates as you wish.”
“That,” I said, “may make a difference.”
“Boss, are you nuts?”
“Some people think so, Loiosh.”
“
Add me to the list. You can’t—”
“
Maybe I can, Loiosh.
” Aloud I said, “How much time do I have to think it over?”
“I don’t know,” said Sethra. “Fornia is bringing up troops all the time. Of course, so are we, and faster. Right now, delay works in our favor, so I would expect them to begin the attack soon.”
“What does ‘soon’ mean?”
“Probably tomorrow morning.”
“Yeah, that’s soon.”
“Tell me your decision through Captain Cropper,” said Morrolan. “Just give him the message to give to me, don’t reach me psychically; I want this going through proper channels.”
“Why, for the love of the Gods?”
“Because that’s how it’s done.”
“All right,” I said. I stood up. “Have a good council.”
“Do you need a guide back?” said Morrolan.
“No, thanks.”
I left the tent. It had become dark and cold; I should have brought a cloak. Loiosh guided me back, and I was glad to find the fire; it felt like home.
“Well,” said Virt. “Did you see her?”
“Sethra? Yes.”
“And?”
“There will most likely be a battle tomorrow. A big one.”
“Did you get another mission?” said Napper.
“An interesting question,” I said. “I’m not certain.”
“Well, if you need anyone—”
“Noted. Thanks.”
Virt said, “Battle tomorrow, hm?”
“So it seems.”
“We don’t have any bulwarks built up.”
“Yes.”
“So either we’re spearheading an attack or we’re bait.”
“Or both,” I said. “I suspect both.”
Virt shook her head. Aelburr sat there stirring the fire and not talking.
Virt said, “So, what’s she like?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never met any other vampires to compare her to. Excuse me, I’m going to take a walk.”
“Don’t go too far,” said Virt. “We’re in imminent, and up for picket duty in half an hour.”
“Half an hour,” I repeated. “I’ll be there.”
I stayed within the pickets and walked around the perimeter of the camp. I tried to focus on the decision I had to make, but the fact is I’ve never been good at just thinking about things, so I didn’t get anywhere except around in a circle; my thoughts kept drifting over my recent experiences: fights, and marches, and sitting around fires. I didn’t come to any conclusions about those, either, and then half an hour was up and I returned to our tent, where I collected Aelburr, Napper, and my heavy cloak, and we went off to picket duty, where we were not allowed to speak, which pleased me.
Picket duty passed without incident, and I passed the time without reaching any conclusions. Then I went to bed and got a few hours of sleep. The next day we were woken up appallingly early, even for the army, and ordered to move our camp a hundred yards closer to the Wall and a little north to the top of a small hill. Virt said, “The other option, of course, was that there was no point in having us erect defenses for a position we weren’t expected to hold.”
She seemed much cheered by the idea until Aelburr said, “Then why aren’t we putting up defenses here?”
“Maybe we’ll move again,” she said, straining her eyes to the
north, where we could make out plenty of activity but couldn’t identify it yet.
Virt pointed to the hollow to our left and said, “Two spear phalanxes.”
“Which means?”
“It means we aren’t defending a flank. That’s good, if you value a long life.”
“Then I’m glad.”
“On the other hand, if we’re attacking, we may be sent against their flank.”
So we finally got breakfast. I chewed a couple of biscuits, washed them down with water, and followed the company colors until I found the Captain, staring at the enemy through a telescope and talking to Crown. He looked at me when I approached and said, “Yes?”
“Morrolan asked me a question last night. He said I was to give you the answer to relay back to him.”
He stared down at me and scowled, evidently not entirely pleased with being a messenger for a Jhereg. “Very well,” he said. “What is it?”
“Tell him I said yes.”
The Captain opened his mouth, closed it, nodded abruptly, turned to Crown, and said, “See to it the Lord Morrolan gets the message.”
“Yes, sir,” said Crown. He saluted and set off to find a messenger. The Captain returned his attention to the enemy. Just because I felt like it, I saluted before returning to my squadron.
UPS AND DOWNS
I kept thinking that I could put it all together if I were smarter. Whatever Fornia was up to should have been subject to deduction, but I couldn’t figure it out. Of course, I was aware that figuring it out might not turn out to be useful; just because you know what someone is doing doesn’t necessarily mean you can stop him. That was Sethra’s attitude; her approach to this battle was straightforward, and fundamentally without deception, and it seemed to be working—at least to judge by the fact that a press of Morrolan’s troops, including himself and Aliera, were pushing their way toward Fornia’s command position.
On the other hand, the Eastern mercenaries, though retreating, had not yet broken. Nothing was yet decided, except that a large number of people had died here, and more were going to.
As I studied Fornia’s face, I saw him concentrate briefly, and an instant later a mass of cavalry appeared in a long row over the lip of the hill behind us, about a hundred yards distant.
I watched, suddenly and temporarily oblivious to my own situation. The column rode down the hill, in no apparent hurry. I tried to estimate their numbers, but I’m not very good at that. At least several hundred, though, maybe a thousand, and as they drew closer I saw they carried spears.
As they came closer they spread out into a single line, and I couldn’t help but admire the way they went about it; neat and precise, they formed up to charge into Morrolan’s forces. I risked
a glance at Morrolan, and saw him, now a bit back from the fighting, talking to someone and pointing at them.
“Watch closely,” said Fornia. “Now it gets interesting.”
I kept watching, and saw, behind the cavalry, a mass of infantry reach the top of the hill and begin marching down.
In military terms, Fornia had “committed his reserves.” In my terms, things were going to get even uglier. I’d have done something if there had been anything to do. I admit I even gave another thought to trying to take Fornia down, but his personal guard had failed to be distracted by the battle; they were still watching me.
The decisive moment was approaching; not the best time for me to be indecisive.
Fornia said, “Are you prepared to hear my terms, then?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t have the authority to accept them.”
He chuckled. “That doesn’t make you the ideal negotiator, then.”
“The negotiator will be arriving shortly, if you’d lower your teleport blocks—”
He laughed. “Don’t count on that, Jhereg.”
“It isn’t a trick,” I said.
“Oh, I believe that. It’s much too crude to be a trick. But I have no intention of opening myself up to accidents. If your negotiator wants to show up, he can do it the hard way.”
I was trying to formulate a response when Daymar appeared, either blasting through the teleport block or coming in around it; I don’t know enough about either sorcery or psychics to tell you how he did it. But there he was, floating, cross-legged, about six inches off the ground.
“All right,” I told Fornia. “The hard way, then.”
There was an instant where I wasn’t certain if they were going to strike us both down, but they were well trained, and they waited for the order. The order didn’t come.
I suddenly felt Daymar’s presence in my mind. It was shocking,
and not entirely pleasant. For one thing, I’m not used to people I hardly know being able to communicate with me psychically; for another, well, imagine being gently picked up by a relative stranger who you can tell could crush your body with one hand if he wanted to. Sure, I said gently, but he’s still a stranger, and he could still crush you. As I said, I did not terribly care for the sensation.
“What do you want?”
he asked in a sort of psychic whisper—as if he were being very careful not to burn my brain out.
I said,
“That fellow, him. That’s Fornia.”
“Well?”
“I want to know what he’s up to.”
“Certainly,”
he said, as if I’d asked him to pass me the tray of sweetmeats. Just how good was he, I wondered. I mean, his mind was strong, and he’d clearly trained it, but was he good enough to pull the information I wanted out of Fornia’s mind? Well, he’d pulled information out of Kragar’s mind.
Thinking of Kragar makes me, in retrospect, realize just how far away from my own world I was. He had picked exactly the wrong moment to get in touch with me, and then I never heard back from him until I thought of it, days later, when we were positioned to make a charge or await one in front of the Wall. I had suddenly thought of it, then, and gotten in touch with him.
“Kragar? It’s me.”
“Howdy, Vlad. How’s the army life?”
“You should know.”
“I tried to warn you.”
“For the most part I hate it,”
I told him,
“but then people try to kill me and I really hate it.”
“It wasn’t the trying to kill me part I didn’t like, it was all the rest of it.”
“I can sympathize with that. What was it you wanted?”
“A guy wants to open up a new game in our territory.”
“A guy? What guy?”
“Don’t know him. Jhereg, seems small time. He’s willing to give us our usual cut, and he’s willing to provide his own protection, but I didn’t know if that would be too many games for the area.”
“That was a while ago; what did you do?”
“I told him to go ahead”
“And?”
“Seems all right so far.”
“Okay. Good. Anything else?”
“No, everything’s quiet.”
“Wish I could say the same.”
“Oh?”
“Building up to a big battle here.”
“
I assume you’re staying out of the battles.”
“
Not exactly
.”
“
What? You’re fighting? In the line?”
“
I haven’t always been able to avoid it.”
“
Do something conspicuous and you might make corporal.
”
“
Let Loiosh make the wisecracks, Kragar. He’s better at them
.”
“
Sure, Vlad. Anything else?
”
“
No, I’ll talk to you later.
”
I stared out at the place where the enemy gathered. It suddenly occurred to me that if Kragar had done something conspicuous no one would have noticed. That might explain some things that I’d never ask him about. As good an explanation as any.
I found Napper was watching me. I guess I don’t always hide it well when I’m communicating with someone psychically.
“If your lips didn’t move, Boss, it would—”
“Shut up, Loiosh.”
“Well?” said Napper. “We got something to do?”
I shook my head and went back to watching the enemy gather across the field. There were now banners on most of the other hills, including the ones Virt had said we should have taken when we got here.
Someone came walking down the line passing out biscuits
and cheese. I had several of the biscuits, ate the cheese, and drank some water. I turned back to Napper to ask him why he was so damned eager to get killed when there came the rattle of the juice-drum again, another call I didn’t recognize. I knew, however, that I wasn’ going to like it, because Napper broke into a grin.
“What’s that one?” I said.
“‘Time to Be Alive,’” he said. “It means to form up for a charge.”
“‘Time to Be Alive,’” I repeated. “Is that someone’s idea of irony?”
He didn’t answer.
Rascha came along and placed us where she wanted us—elbow to elbow, hardly room to move. I realized that this was the first time I would be taking part in a charge; everything I’d done up to that point involved standing there and keeping the enemy from overrunning us; from our success, I was not encouraged about being on the other side. Napper was on my left, Aelburr on my right.
The Captain came out in front of our line, riding a dark-colored horse that seemed much too small for him; his feet didn’t reach the ground, but it seemed like they could if he just stretched a little. The effect was vaguely comical. He spoke in a loud voice that carried easily, though he didn’t seem to be shouting.
“We will,” he announced, “be attacking light infantry, very much like ourselves. They have no bulwarks nor ditches, and they number significantly fewer than ourselves; however, we will, as you see, be attacking uphill. We will go at a brisk march, charging the last hundred yards. We will take the hill and hold it until relieved.” No one commented on the fact that yesterday we could have taken the hill by walking up it and planting our colors.
He continued, “I will expect you to maintain formation until we meet their line. We will have additional support from the sorcerers
corps, especially defensive. If we keep our lines dressed and strike quickly, I do not anticipate any difficulty. That is all. Attend to your squad leaders.”
He rode off to the far end of the line, drawing his sword as he did so. It seemed like a functional sword; maybe he’d use it. I hadn’t recalled seeing him in any of the action hitherto. But I might not have noticed.
Crown took a position in the middle, just ahead of us. He, too, was holding his sword. I realized my pulse had quickened. I said to Virt, “Do they have javelins?”
“Probably,” she said. “Almost certainly.” Then, “Do javelins worry you?”
“Not at all,” I said. “I’m looking forward to trying to catch one in my teeth.”
“That’s what we need: fighting spirit.”
I assumed she was being ironic, but I couldn’t tell for certain. Crown gave a signal, and the colors moved out. The rest of us followed.
“War,” Sethra Lavode once explained to me, “consists of missed opportunities alternating with narrow escapes, and it usually ends when someone, somewhere, fails to commit a timely error.” If I’d had that discussion with her before the Wall of Baritt’s Tomb, it might have done me some good. Or, I don’t know, maybe some harm; in any case, I wouldn’t have been as surprised by what happened.
We went forward, straight into an unmoving mass of warriors. They stood shoulder to shoulder about halfway up the hill. The hill, by the way, had a long and gentle slope, deceptively gentle. It looked like it might be possible to run up it without being winded well before you reached the enemy position. This turned out not to be the case. I was already breathing heavily before we broke into a run, and so were Virt and Aelburr. We kept getting closer, and I kept wondering how I was supposed to fight in this condition. And at the same time I was both dreading and longing for the signal to charge.
And then they launched their javelins at us.
When we had thrown, it had seemed as if we had launched a single, vast, sheet of metal at the enemy. Now I was on the other side, and it seemed just like that. Then, I had wondered how the enemy kept coming at us; I still wondered. Now, after it is all over, I still wonder.
But I kept moving.
Then Crown waved his sword, and the colors surged forward, and I heard Rascha’s voice, somewhere to my left: “Charge!” I couldn’t go any faster up the hill, but everyone around me was able to, so I did too, and the effort distracted me from noticing what effect, if any, the javelins had had on our forces. Then they launched a second barrage, and this time I noticed: Virt stumbled and went down, and I remember thinking that I wished it were possible to stop and help her, and I still don’t know why it wasn’t, but I kept running. There was a horrid yelling, and I realized that I was making some of the noise myself.
There was a third barrage of javelins, which did some damage, to judge by the screams around me, and then a fourth, during which one went screaming past my ear and made Loiosh yelp psychically, and then we met the enemy.
The noise is what I remember most about that first instant, a screeching, groaning thunder that filled my skull and became something greater than noise, that went beyond the pain from my ears. It encompassed the battle like a shroud, and everything that happened was twisted and dulled by the din—out of which it was impossible to isolate what was causing any of it; it was just one unending roar. And through it, I kept trying to go forward, and I couldn’t.
Now look, I think I’m more than a match for just about any of the swordsmen you care to name. For one thing, I’m good with a blade, but more important than that, I fight in a way they aren’t used to: We Easterners have our own ways of fighting that I can use to take advantage of the fact that I’m smaller and
quicker than they are. This mostly involves staying out of the way of those big monster blades they use, not giving them a good target, and never putting myself into a position of setting my strength directly against theirs.

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