Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) (29 page)

Colonel Pewter leapt from the indents of his landing and made to finish the rest of them, but he saw that they were now in full retreat, the two halves of what remained of their force peeling off on either side and riding for all their worth back toward the capital.

The colonel nodded as he watched them run. “I think their Queen will talk to us now,” he said. “But just to be sure, let’s wait for the other companies. I suspect our hopes for dialogue alone have passed.”

“Which companies, sir?” asked the Major. “How long do you want to wait, since we’ve got them on the run?”

“All of them, Major. If ten thousand mechs aren’t enough to convince her to call off the assault on Earth, we’re probably still going to need them to tear that city down. I have a feeling busting into that place isn’t going to be as easy as we’d hoped. Not by a long shot.”

Chapter 24

A
ltin led Orli by the hand as they crossed the busy parade ground upon which the Queen’s army was forming. They had to dodge the charge of horsemen loping across the field toward the formations of cavalry gathering, and they had to stop and step back to avoid being trampled by sprinting units of infantry making their way to the teleportation platforms, the rattle of their weapons and armor announcing their approach, but only as they were already very near given the general din of the preparations everywhere. Tens of thousands of men and women had already formed into companies, whole regiments, each assembled on the broad tile-work squares around which transmuters and teleporters stood. The transmuters would call up walls of dark solidity, formed from the material of the platform itself, and from it build a box around the warriors, closing them in and making them ready for the teleporters, who would then send those troops by the thousands straight to the orc fortifications that Captain Andru and his team of scouts had found. When it came to moving troops, the War Queen’s army had no equivalent.

“Total commitment,” is what the Lord Chamberlain had told Altin when he and Orli had arrived at the Palace. “She’s going to send it all in at once and catch them by surprise.”

From the looks of the frenzy in the staging grounds, when she said “total” she meant
total
. He thought it was pretty risky to commit like that, but he’d also heard that there were over a hundred thousand orcs. It was probably best if the fight didn’t take place here, so he understood the Queen’s gamble on that front.

As he approached Her Majesty, who was astride a monstrous warhorse of nearly nineteen hands, he could see in the illusion hanging in the air before her that similar scenes were taking place in the garrisons across Kurr, reserve units gathering from all reaches of the kingdom, and all to be committed to a single swift and decisive fight. As he scanned the images that shifted in sequence across the illusion, he could not help but wonder if, even with all that going on around the continent, she could come up with a force as large as a hundred thousand strong.

“That’s enough,” she snapped at the illusionist who’d conjured the report for her. “Make sure General Cavendore is ready at Calico Castle, and tell him to send word if Sir Altin ever reappears.”

“Sir Altin has reappeared, Your Majesty,” said Altin, having come within hearing range.

She turned in her saddle, the leather creaking beneath the weight of her golden plate armor, and regarded him with a level gaze. “I am not accustomed to having my subjects simply exit my presence without so much as a ‘by your leave,’ Sir Altin,” she said, referring to his hasty departure upon learning of the Hostiles in orbit above planet Earth. “I will not tolerate such things, is that clear?”

“Yes, Your Majesty. I was thoughtless, my mind only on extracting Orli from certain death.”

“Then it seems that you have done so.” She glanced to Orli and then back to Altin. “I’ll be frank: I no longer have any idea where that woman stands in the scheme of things.”

“She stands upon my heart, its conqueror, My Queen. But if you worry for where her loyalties lie, I assure you, she is a creature of Prosperion now.” He turned to Orli and, by the go-ahead motion of his head, prompted her to speak.

“Your Majesty, you once promised that I would be your subject one day. You promised all the flowers I could pick. I hope that you will still grant me that, if not today, then eventually.”

Altin nodded and smiled approvingly. He knew Orli’s heart was not filled with that kind of servility, but he also knew where her loyalties were. Orli was doing what needed to be done, saying what needed to be said. Demanding the Queen apologize or demanding that she trust her, neither would be a winning strategy.

“We shall see about that. Right now, I have larger knots in my bowstring.” Her face turned stark then. “Sir Altin, what is the condition on planet Earth?”

“I didn’t stay long enough to find out, Majesty, but based on what I saw from orbit, they are horribly outnumbered. I don’t know how they will defeat the Hostile forces without our aid.”

“Yes, she got the jump on them, to be sure. But there’s little for it just now.”

“They’re not Blue Fire’s armies, Your Majesty,” Orli interjected then. “She spoke to me while I was on planet Earth.”

“My dear, while I confess that you are something of an enigma to me, one thing I know for certain is that your judgment on that subject has been compromised beyond measure.”

“It’s not compromised at all. I spoke to her. She said it’s another being just like her, another living world, a male. Like her mate was. It’s not Blue Fire.”

“I believe that might be right,” Altin said. “I went to Blue Fire and confronted her directly. She insists it is not her behind the attacks on Earth. At first I didn’t believe, and if I’m being honest, I still am only partly convinced, but I think Blue Fire may be telling the truth. It really doesn’t seem like she’s making it up.” He couldn’t tell Her Majesty that Blue Fire had helped him save Orli, and that this was his evidence for trusting her—that and Orli’s impassioned pleas on Blue Fire’s behalf, a case made earlier this morning as they were getting her some clothing and preparing to come and see the Queen.

“You are a good man, Sir Altin, but love blinds you. You need only look above the skies of Earth to have all the proof you need.”

“That’s not quite true,” came a voice off to Altin’s right. They all turned to see High Priestess Maul approaching along with her assistant, the priestess Altin recognized as Klovis. The two came dressed for war, each in rust-colored robes, the Maul wearing an iron cuirass over hers. She carried a long-handled war hammer with familiar ease, while the young priestess beside her used her spear casually, as if it were a walking stick. “I believe Sir Altin is correct.”

“Let me guess,” said the Queen. “You’ve had a drift in the hkalamate pool, and in the grip of that black gas, Blue Fire has promised you, in the same way she has Sir Altin and Miss Pewter, that she’s really not as bad as she seems.”

“Something like that, Your Majesty, but I have also spent two days in divinations following that conversation, and we have not gotten one drop of dreaming to suggest she is telling us anything but the truth. All divinations point to something red. There is a quality to redness that appears to be the center of it all.”

“Ocelot told me to find the red world,” Altin said suddenly upon hearing that. “I’d almost completely forgotten. She said Orli would know what that meant.”

Orli blinked in surprise at him. This was the first mention that he’d made of any red world, although admittedly, they’d only had two waking hours together since he’d pulled her out of the death chamber back on Earth, and most of those hours had been rather emotional.

Seeing her bewilderment, Altin repeated everything he could recall from what Ocelot had told him, concluding by saying, “She told me that Orli would know how to find the red world, or that she could figure it out. She said we must find it or everyone will die.”

“Ocelot is a witch,” said the Maul. “She is a primitive and completely removed from civilized events. Her magic has no context in modern politics alone, much less the wherewithal to fathom the nature of alien worlds. She doesn’t even know there are such things. She is a spirits worshiper, barely more than an animal.”

“She is a Z,” said Altin. “And she showed me exactly where Orli was, which you would not, or could not, do. And she appears to know more about the red issue than you as well.”

The High Priestess ignored that and turned to Orli instead. “What do you know of a red world?”

“I don’t know anything about a red world,” Orli answered honestly. “The only red world I know is Mars, which is a small planet near Earth. But there’s nothing there but mining colonies and a few oddball cultist enclaves. There are definitely no Hostiles—I mean, no Blue Fire-like creatures there.” It occurred to her that the Maul might be offended by the pejorative note that she’d struck when mentioning the cults, and she looked to the High Priestess to see if she had been offended in some way.

“Are you sure there are no other red worlds somewhere else?” the Maul pressed on, impervious to the Earth woman’s blasphemy. “Something you saw on your way from Earth to Prosperion? That is a long journey, during which you must have seen many worlds.”

“No,” Orli admitted. “Space travel doesn’t really work like that. But there are probably millions of them. Billions of them. But I don’t know of any in particular. Only Mars.”

“Think harder,” demanded the Maul.

“It doesn’t matter how hard I think. I don’t know of any other red worlds. And besides, it might not even be a
world
she’s speaking of. Blue Fire is named for a sun, just as her husband was, so it might be a red star you are looking for. There are millions of those too. And that’s not even the worst part of it.” She paused to look at Altin, who nodded, encouraging her to continue. “Blue Fire and her mate were named for the sun of the other, the sun that gave birth to the one they loved, not their own sun. So even if I did know of a red sun, would we be looking for
it
or for the planet orbiting another sun that loves the planet revolving around it? That’s the problem. Are we looking for a red planet, a red star, a planet around a red star, or a planet around another star, which may or may not be red but that loves a planet in orbit around a red star somewhere else? Do you see what I’m saying? It doesn’t matter how hard I think. How can I possibly know?”

Queen Karroll wrinkled up her face at all of that, and it was clear she thought it all gobbledygook, but the High Priestess never lost a step.

“You see,” said the Maul. “Wild magic to lead us wildly astray.”

“Perhaps,” said Altin, “or else it is Z-class magic leading us simply and straight to the point that we refuse to see.”

“And what point is that, Sir Altin?” The Queen pointed with a golden gauntlet at Orli. “Miss Pewter has just said she knows of only one world, and it is without life. The rest is long-winded nonsense.”

“If Orli knows of only one red world, then perhaps that is the only red world we need worry about. We all know perfectly well that divination is all about working with what you already understand. So, perhaps that is what Ocelot is trying to do, get us to work with what we already have between us.”

The Maul nodded. At least on that she and Ocelot would agree.

Movement in the sky turned the Queen’s attention upward in time to watch a gryphon and its rider come swooping down. The majestic creature landed on a ledge built into the west wall for it, its leonine paws making no sound as they touched down. Its rider, a man in leather armor, threw down his lance as soon as his mount landed, then he leapt off to stand beside the beast, clearly impatient for the gryphon handler to come and take the reins.

At first the gryphon snapped at the handler, its sharp eagle’s beak darting toward the woman, who dodged with practiced ease and, with a few utterances, calmed the beast enough to be allowed hold of its bridle. The rider wasted not one moment more and sprinted down the stairs, where he was accosted by an officer, only briefly, and shortly after, the two of them came sprinting toward the Queen.

“Your Majesty,” said the rider, his voice rapid, his breathing fast. “The Earthmen have begun landing a force at Little Earth, and they’ve sent a contingent in advance, moving southwest of the city. Lord Forland’s patrol was near and has moved to intercept.”

The Queen groaned. “Forland has had that command for less than a week.” She rolled her eyes skyward, silently cursing the gods and fate. “How many Earthmen?”

“At least two hundred approaching the city, Your Majesty, in golems of some kind, ogres made of steel. And I have no good count for how many of them are at Little Earth.”

The Queen was silent for a time, chewing on the inside of her lip, then she tilted her head and lanced Orli with her gaze. “Why is it, Miss Pewter, that wherever you go, hosts of invaders follow immediately in your wake?”

Orli could only blink back in bewilderment, wide-eyed and as surprised as everyone else by the news they’d just received.

Chapter 25

G
romf snuck down during the dark heart of the night to the dark heart of the mountain, far below the great fortification Warlord had built for the All Clans. He picked his way down the winding ledges and squeezed through the narrow places until at last he was at the pool where God spoke. He did not know how to get the hideous figure of God to appear in the water as Kazuk-Hal-Mandik had, but he hoped that God would know that Gromf was there. God was a god, after all. Did it not make sense that he would know such things?