The Silver Mage (49 page)

T
he dragon book and its attendant astral spirits, now safely stowed in Laz’s saddlebags, were traveling west-northwest in the company of Laz and Brel Avro’s dwarven axemen, heading to the dwarven city of Lin Serr across the desolate terrain of the Northlands plateau. Even though Faharn and Laz were mounted, and the axemen on foot, the two Gel da’Thae were hard-pressed to keep up with the relentless stamina of the dwarves.

Once they left the plains behind, their route wound through the foothills rising toward Lin Serr. The situation worsened as their horses wearied fast. By midafternoon on the third day Laz and Faharn dismounted to spare them their weight and jogged along, leading the horses, until Laz realized that he was panting for breath. Faharn had fallen some hundred yards behind.

“Hold!” Laz called out. “Avro Brel! Have mercy!”

At the warleader’s orders, the axemen stopped and formed a defensive circle around their carts and servants, who seemed as glad of the rest as Laz was. A sweating, blowing Faharn caught up with them just as Brel strolled back to chat with Laz.

“Huh!” Brel said, grinning. “I didn’t realize we had a pair of weaklings on our hands.”

“Kindly spare me the manly jests,” Laz said. “Consider our poor horses, who are here through no desire of their own.”

Laz’s horse tossed its head with a scatter of foam, as if to underscore the point.

“Oh, very well,” Brel said. “We’ll make an early camp and let the poor beasts rest.”

The army camped that night in a valley, little more than a shallow ravine, between two hills, where groundwater had collected into a slow-moving but potable stream. For the evening meal, Brel and Garin invited Laz and Faharn to share their campfire. As they chewed leathery cracker bread and scraped mold from chunks of cheese, Brel discussed the journey ahead.

“Won’t be long before we reach Lin Serr,” the warleader said. “But you need to get to Haen Marn, and that can be a cursed nuisance. The island never seems to stay put, like.”

“Nuisance, indeed. I hope we can find it.”

“You’ll need a bit of luck for that,” Garin put in.

“Oh, no doubt.” Laz agreed in order to be polite. Besides, how could he tell Garin that the island was easy enough to find for someone who could fly? “Once we reach your city, we’ll head off north. There’s a river we can follow for part of the way.”

Faharn had been listening, his head cocked a little to one side as he tried to puzzle out the Deverrian words. Laz turned to him and gave him the gist of their conversation in the Gel da’Thae language.

“Thank you.” Faharn answered in the same. “I must say that I’m looking forward to seeing Haen Marn. You’ve told me so much about it.”

Laz started to say some pleasantry, but the words refused to come. He felt as if he were choking on lumps of ice, stuck deep in his throat. The hair on his arms and the back of his neck bristled as he shivered and gasped for air. Faharn rose to his knees and turned toward him. Brel scrambled to his feet and hurried over.

“What’s this?” Garin got to his feet as well. “A seizure?”

Laz shook his head no, gulped hard, and felt the omen pass off. A trickle of sweat ran down his back, just as if he’d not been freezing a moment before.

“Danger,” Laz said. “Ye gods, please believe me! There’s danger ahead of us.”

“What?” Garin laughed, or tried to. What came out sounded more like a dog’s bark. “Nonsense! We’re nearly to Lin Serr, as the avro was saying—”

“Oh, hold your tongue!” Brel snarled. “The avro is now saying he’s going to post sentries on double watch. Ye gods, Garin! Didn’t you see enough dweomer last summer to recognize it when it’s right in front of you?”

Garin stared at him, his mouth slack, his eyes wide. With a snort, Brel hurried off, snapping orders in Dwarvish. Laz felt so drained that he might have fallen asleep right where he sat, but he shook himself and rose to a kneel.

“The Northlands were crawling with Horsekin raiding parties when last I rode through them,” Laz said to Garin. “And one of those messages you had me read said they were sending reinforcements to the Boars. For all we know, their line of march could cross ours.”

“So it might.” Garin spoke barely above a whisper. “My apologies.”

To spare the envoy the sight of him, Laz returned to the small tent that he and Faharn shared. In the light from the campfires around them, Faharn built a little fire of their own. Laz lit it by summoning a salamander, who obligingly caught the tinder, then settled down to bask in the flames.

“I was thinking of flying to take a look around,” Laz said, “but I’m not sure where I can find the privacy to transform. I doubt if the guards around the camp will let me past, much less let me get back again.”

“What?” Faharn grinned at him. “You don’t want to give everyone the surprise of their lives?”

“It might be amusing, seeing the looks on their faces when a huge raven flew up from the middle of their camp, but I think that’s an amusement we can forgo.”

“Why not just scry from the etheric?”

“A good point. Perhaps I will.” Yet the thought made Laz profoundly uneasy. While he couldn’t say why, the thought of attempting that particular bit of dweomer filled him with dread.

Another surprise did stir the camp, however, not long after. When he was setting the sentries, Brel had climbed out of the valley holding the camp. Off to the west he’d spotted a fire glow, some miles distant but unmistakable. As he watched, the glow had held steady, indicating not a wildfire but another camp.

“Way out here,” Laz remarked, “that means Horsekin.”

“Most likely,” Faharn said. “Just our luck! I don’t suppose it could be an innocent hunting party or suchlike.”

“Would the gods be so kind? I doubt it.”

Curiosity conquered the dread and drove Laz to find out just who was sitting around those fires off to the west. He posted Faharn as a guard, then went into their tent and lay down on his blankets. He decided that the only way to overcome his reluctance about scrying in the etheric double was to attempt it. He reminded himself that he had only a short distance to go and that no rivers or other running water intervened.

He crossed his arms over his chest and breathed deeply and slowly. Once he felt the trance take him over, he summoned his body of light, which he’d constructed as a simple man shape in the manner of most dweomermasters. What came to him, however, was a simulacrum of the raven, pale blue yet recognizable, and joined to his body by the silver cord. Laz banished it, broke the trance, and sat up. He was shaking, he realized, trembling like a man with palsy.

Faharn stuck his head into the tent. “Did you call me?” he said. “I thought I heard a yelp or something like one.”

“Did you? I wasn’t aware of making one.”

“Must have been someone else, then.”

Faharn withdrew. Laz got up and joined him at the campfire.

“I’m too tired to risk scrying tonight.” The statement was true enough, Laz decided. What else would have caused him to confuse his various magical forms in such an unexpected way? “The morrow will doubtless be soon enough.”

On the morrow, at the first light of dawn, Brel Avro sent a man up the hill whilst the rest of the camp packed up their gear. The scout came back with the report that indeed, he’d spotted a plume of smoke or perhaps dust rising close to the spot where Brel had seen fire the night past. Laz sought out Brel, who was discussing the situation with Garin.

“We’ve got two choices,” Brel said. “We can try to sneak around them, which won’t be easy. There’s about two hundred of us, and that means dust and noise. We’re too close to Lin Serr to just ignore the bastards, anyway. I don’t want them causing trouble for the city.”

“We’re not even sure that they’re Horsekin,” Garin said. “We certainly don’t know how many of them there are.”

“That’s true.” Brel looked straight at Laz. “I wonder if our loremaster here can find out.”

Laz had the quick and dishonorable impulse to say no, he couldn’t. The memory of the peculiar behavior of his body of light made his chest turn tight and cold. But—another memory kept troubling him, the sincere, grave look in Mara’s eyes when she’d warned him against walking an evil path.

“I probably can,” Laz said. “I’ll need some kind of private space to work in, somewhere invisible from the camp.”

“Among the trees?” Brel turned and pointed to the hillside. “I’ll take a couple of axemen, and we’ll stand guard for you.”

“Done, then,” Laz said. “I warn you, though. Don’t be surprised at what you might see or hear.”

They found a shrubby thicket of sorts about halfway up the hill, with a clearing just large enough to allow the raven access to the sky. The axemen took up places among the trees with their backs to him. Laz stripped and transformed, then considered the opening above him. He hopped back to the edge of the clearing, took a deep breath, and flew, as vertically as he could manage. With a squawk the raven just cleared the grasping branches of the trees and winged free into the morning.

Laz saw the plume of smoke immediately and headed straight west. About a mile away he found a camp full of Horsekin, a gloomy prediction come true. He circled it several times then flew back to the valley. When he reached the clearing, he heard the guards shouting below in Dwarvish, but he could understand the alarm and surprise in their voices well enough. They had seen him. He landed in the clearing far more easily than he’d flown out of it, then transformed back into man-shape.

Brel and Garin trotted into the clearing while Laz was still dressing.

“Well?” Brel said.

“Horsekin, indeed, about a hundred of them.” Laz finished lacing up his brigga, a slow process with his maimed hands, and took his shirt from the ground. “Some, of course, would be slaves and servants, but most were putting on armor and buckling on weapons, falcatas, I assume. I was too high to see things that small.”

Garin crossed his fingers in the sign of warding against witchcraft. Laz pulled his shirt over his head, then sat down beside his boots.

“I’ll help you with those.” Garin knelt down in front of him.

“My thanks. They are the one thing that I have real trouble with. I just can’t get a good grip on them to pull them up.”

Brel looked off into the distance and stroked his beard. “About of a hundred, eh?” he said eventually. “We can take them, then. How battle-ready were they?”

“Their horses were still on tether.”

“Good. That gives us a little time to fortify the camp. What’s the terrain like beyond the hill?”

“A flattish valley, a stream with thick underbrush along the banks.”

“That’ll do.” Brel strode off, shouting in Dwarvish—orders to his men, Laz assumed.

Once Garin had got Laz’s boots on, they walked back to the camp, where a few of the men were pulling the handcarts into a rough circle. The servants were striking the tents and tossing them into the middle of the circle along with packets of supplies and bedrolls. Laz spotted Faharn, helping haul carts. The fighting men were pulling on chain mail and readying their war axes.

“We’ll stay here,” Garin said.

“Good,” Laz said. “I used to have a little skill with a sword, not much, truly, but some. Now I can barely hold one.”

Brel left twenty-five axemen behind to guard the camp, then led the rest up the hill. Laz watched them as they reached the crest and went over, marching down out of sight one tight rank at a time. Faharn and the servants joined Laz and Garin inside the circle. The axemen left on guard disposed themselves around the perimeter.

Laz sat down in the shade of one of the carts and looked up at the sky, streaked with a few pale clouds, shimmering with heat haze. When he opened his sight and thought of the Mountain axemen, he saw them as clearly as if he flew above them from a height, marching grimly downhill to the flatter terrain near the stream. On the opposite bank the Horsekin riders had pulled up in a messy line made up of clusters and gaps rather than a true formation. Their horses tossed their heads and danced as the riders unsheathed their falcatas.

As the dwarven troop formed up into defensible squares, some half-a-dozen riders broke free of the Horsekin pack and trotted some distance to one side, maybe twenty yards, Laz estimated. They were holding some bulky thing.

“Archers!” Laz wrenched himself from his trance. “They’ve got archers.”

Garin swore aloud and began yelling at the guards in Dwarvish. Laz felt the danger around them so strongly that he could barely breathe. He had to struggle with his mind before it calmed enough for him to return to scrying.

What he saw, half-hidden in the swirling dust from the battle, appalled him. The Horsekin raiders had indeed brought archers with them—not many, but enough to torment the dwarven line. A swift volley of arrows forced the axemen to lift their shields and swing the heavy axes one-handed in feeble strokes. The horsemen would pull back, wait for the arrows to fall, then dart forward to strike with their falcatas. The front squares broke, and the survivors pulled back. Mountain dead lay scattered on the field, while only a few horses and riders had fallen.

Laz could see Brel Avro, trotting back and forth, shouting orders, he guessed, since Laz couldn’t hear sound from the battlefield. The dwarves began to fall back in orderly retreat. One of the archers grew too bold. He spurred his horse forward. A solid Mountain hand ax came flying out of the retreat and caught the fellow across his face. Laz could imagine the scream as the man toppled from the saddle and fell under the hooves of the Horsekin charge.

The lead horses reared and bucked, disrupting the Horsekin line. More hand axes flew, striking randomly. They wounded only a few Horsekin, but the half-trained cavalry began to break ranks and mill around. Laz was expecting the dwarves to use the brief respite to retreat further, but instead they suddenly threw their shields and charged straight for the enemy. Long axes swung hard. Horses reared and fell, their legs cut out from under them. Horsekin rolled from their saddles and died as the axes slashed down.