Of Limited Loyalty

Chapter Fifty-six

25 May 1768 Octagon Richlan, Mystria

Nathaniel hunkered down beside Kamiskwa, the two of them nestled on the lee side of a big granite outcropping. “I ain’t thinking that Rufus being right there in the middle of things is the onliest reason Prince Vlad ain’t going to be happy about this.”

Kamiskwa didn’t even nod in response. Immediately after the fight, they’d headed west and a bit north toward where Prince Vlad had predicted the Norghaest were making a magick reservoir. A half-dozen Rangers, including Justice Bone, had come with them. The Rangers remained a mile back, ready to help out if needed.

The weather had turned nasty, with storms blowing in from the northwest. They brought an unseasonable chill and dumped the sharp and icy snowflakes that heralded a long spate of winter weather. It felt like the proverbial cold day in Hell. Nathaniel wasn’t ready to bet on what would or wouldn’t happen, yet was willing to allow for things to be worse than the worst he could imagine.

He nudged Kamiskwa. “You ignoring me, or is you just froze?”

His brother turned to him with a smile. “Let me show you.” Kamiskwa scooped up a handful of new-fallen snow and made to rub it over Nathaniel’s face.

Nathaniel drew back. “Now, if this here is a way for you to wash my face with snow, I’m here to tell you I won’t be a-laughing.”

“I would teach you the magick, but it will take time.”

Nathaniel nodded. “Go ahead, then.”

Kamiskwa ran his hand across Nathaniel’s eyes. The snowflakes thinned to a single layer and locked together into a crystal lace. Light glinted from the angles, sparkling like rainbow jewels. Nathaniel glanced over and saw a fading blue glow from his friend’s hand. He was about to comment, but as he looked past him, what he saw stole his words away.

Up to that point all he had seen was Rufus in the bottom of the valley, roughly half a mile down a wooded hillside. Rufus, with the troll cavalry set up to the west, was pacing and gesticulating and acting pretty much the way Nathaniel expected a lunatic to act. He still wore his robe stripped down to the waist despite the cold. The chain scar and some new livid bruises showed up against his pale flesh. He definitely looked as if he was dying of a wasting disease, and Nathaniel’s only regret in all that was that it made him a smaller target.

All that shifted with the snowmask. First, ringing the valley, Nathaniel saw eight points at which blue-green energy flows fractured. Half of their flow poured in rainbow streams into the valley, filling it with a fog alive with vivid color, the iridescent hues of a dragonfly’s wings. The other bits traveled straightaway to more points, to join and split. From the southwest, on a direct line from the outpost, a larger energy river hit the Octagon, providing most of what was filling the basin.

As amazing as that was, it could not compare to the figures working within the energy. They appeared more substantial than the fog, yet still had a phantasmal sense about them. Rufus clearly saw them, because his words and gesticulations sent them off in various directions. They appeared to be the Norghaest of the early visions, the golden people, all young and carefree, mostly female. They flew through the fog, drawing strands of energy from the eight points of the pool itself. They established thick lines, then split them, stretching and thickening them again. They quickly framed buildings and towers, columns and porticos. The skeletal buildings they raised reminded Nathaniel of the outpost, and some of the Norghaest even bent to creating statues of tentacled creatures.

“I ain’t sure what I am seeing.”

Kamiskwa turned his back to the construction for a moment. “Obviously they are building a city-a colony. I think what they might be doing is laying it out and planning it. Then wherever they are, they will shape the pieces and, as my father did in moving us to Fort Plentiful, they will bring the city here.”

“That’s some powerful magick.”

“It is, to us. What if it’s not to them?” Kamiskwa watched again. “We would survey, then start cutting trees. You would quarry stone. We do what we do because we have the tools to do it. For them, using magick may be easier than using an ax or a hammer and chisel.”

He fell silent as one of the Norghaest, a woman, flew around and then up toward where they watched. Her long, dark hair floated gently behind her. She wore a gold loincloth and bracelets of gold, but nothing else to hide her lithe form, long legs, and soft breasts. Nathaniel thought her easily the most beautiful woman in Creation.

She landed at the hill crest, barely a dozen yards away. Rufus looked in her direction and shouted something at her. She dismissed him with a wave, then gathered power in both her hands. She brought them together, forming the energy into an indistinct ball. She patted the edges with the same sort of clumsy motions young children use when packing snow onto a snowman.

Yet at her touch, sharp details sprang out. With a few casual gestures she shaped the glowing energy into one of the squatting guardian figures from the Antediluvian ruins. It grew twelve feet tall and was nearly half that wide and deep. Its flesh rippled with scales and the muscles beneath twitched as if it were alive. Nathaniel would have sworn that the tentacles around its mouth writhed.

The woman caressed the statue’s large eyes, much in the same way that Kamiskwa had run his hand over Nathaniel’s face. In the wake of her gesture, the guardian’s eyes closed.

She sank to a crouch and moved quickly toward the two men, appearing as a ghost. As she drew close, light glinted from a simple gold circlet which had been hidden by her hair, and a slender gold chain onto which had been hung a large, dark pearl. She pulled the latter from around her neck, silently snapping the chain. She held it out clutched between forefinger and thumb, and the air around the pearl shimmered as if it was rippling water.

Kamiskwa reached out and plucked the pearl from her. Their fingers touched, just for a heartbeat. Kamiskwa gasped. He fell back and Nathaniel caught him as the woman rose into the air, then flew down into the valley once again.

Nathaniel dragged Kamiskwa down the hill and behind another snow-clad stone. “What was that?”

Kamiskwa shivered, staring at the pearl in his palm. “I do not know. I… this pearl, it is a puzzle and a key but, to what, I don’t know.” He pulled his medicine pouch from inside his clothes and slipped the pearl into it. “The sentinel statue, she’s blinded it. It won’t see us.”

“What about the other statues?”

“I don’t know.”

Nathaniel shook his head. “Why did she do that?”

“I don’t know?”

Nathaniel hauled Kamiskwa to his feet. “Who is she?”

“I don’t know.” The Shedashee shook his head. “She’s the woman I’ll make my wife, but beyond that, I don’t know.”

Wind howled outside the thaumagraph cabin. Prince Vlad nodded in Count von Metternin’s direction. “Thank you for the excellent summary of our situation.”

The plucky Kessian smiled, then painfully lowered himself into a chair. “You are most kind in letting me continue to serve you, Highness, despite my diminished capacity.”

“I cannot afford to be without your counsel.” The Prince glanced at Major Forest. “Your assessment?”

The tall, slender man from Fairlee had arrived the previous afternoon with his Ranger contingent. He leaned forward to study the map on the table before him. A hank of white hair curled down over his forehead. He swept it out of the way with his left hand, and tapped the map with the hook that replaced his right. “The Norghaest base being here would make me feel good, but the twenty miles of distance did not slow him down in hitting Fort Plentiful. Just from what I saw coming in, I doubt that if my battalion had been here, we would have made that much difference. He had the heavy troops and we did not.”

Forest glanced over at General Rathfield. “That’s not a slight on your men, General.” The Mystrian soldier ran his hook over the misshapen iron ball resting on the table. Owen had recovered it after the battle. The hook bumped over the knuckle and finger impressions stamped into the cannon ball. “Being able to do this to an iron ball makes Rufus far more dangerous than any enemy I’ve ever fought before.”

Rathfield pointed at Fort Plentiful on the map. “This is precisely why I oppose the suggested advance to the Stone House and striking at the Octagon. Here we can prepare for him. No offense intended, Highness, Count von Metternin, but the defenses you were able to throw up were barely adequate for turning a rabble. With professional soldiers here-and I include your men, Major Forest, since they are well disciplined-we can prepare defenses which will stop Rufus.”

Prince Vlad shook his head. “I disagree.”

“Highness, if you think we cannot prepare adequate defenses here, how will your forces fare when you push them forward to a place where you can prepare no defenses?”

Vlad sighed. His was a valid question, and one that the Prince had wrestled with, but for reasons he believed were entirely different than those that gave birth to Rathfield’s protest. Prince Vlad did not doubt Rathfield’s bravery or that of his men. In fact, he counted on it. But for them, this was an exercise in military science. The Fifth Northland Cavalry, devastated though they were, still could be counted upon as being some of the best troops in the world. Their charge, foolish though it might have seemed, required confidence and skill.

“Msitazi said to me that I had to learn just as the Norghaest did. I have thought long and hard on that. I wondered what the Norghaest were learning when they attacked. What did we reveal about ourselves?” Vlad stiffly held up his left hand and began ticking points off on his fingers. “We showed them that our most fearsome weapon was only partially effective against their troops. We showed them that our use of magick is as a whisper before their bellowing. We showed them that some of our people were ready to break and run. We showed them that we had one dragon, and Mugwump really wasn’t much of a threat-less so, now. In short, we proved that we are cowardly, unable to hurt them, and little more than an annoyance.”

Rathfield’s eyes narrowed. “And moving to Stone House and launching an attack will change that assessment in what way?”

“The reason the Norghaest came at us the way they did is because they based their strategy on Rufus’ knowledge of how we wage war. Rufus was present at Anvil Lake, but only after battle had been joined. His sense of how professionals wage war is distorted. Our inability to defend fits in perfectly with the contempt he has for authority. So, the Norghaest are working with that knowledge to determine how to reestablish themselves.”

“Highness, you make it sound as if you do not think Rufus is actually running things.” Rathfield crossed his arms. “Am I misreading you?”

“I have come to believe, General, that the golden tablets and working with them enabled a Norghaest sorcerer to possess Rufus Branch. I think the changes in him betoken two things. First, he’s being changed to be more like them, which enables them to more easily maintain control. Second, I believe he is wasting away because their use of him is consuming him. Rufus, if you will, has the bit in his mouth, but someone else has the reins and is riding him to death.

“Because of that belief, and because the Shedashee have indicated that the Norghaest create colonies before they emerge, I think whoever is riding Rufus is in a difficult situation.” Vlad shrugged. “I don’t have any of the troops I requested from Norisle because others determined I did not need them. I do not think it is unreasonable to imagine that Rufus’ rider is under similar constraints. The one thing I do know is that people in power dislike surprises, and by moving forward to the Stone House and actually attacking, we can surprise him. That might be enough for him or his controllers to withdraw.”

Rathfield studied the Prince in silence, then slowly nodded. “I shall have to survey Stone House myself. Woodlands with ravines and hills defeat our ability to charge, but that has proved less than efficacious against the Norghaest. What sort of a role do you imagine for us?”

Count von Metternin rubbed his hands together. “You will find, General, that your men’s talents will be quite appreciated.”

Vlad withdrew from the conversation and none of the military men noticed. In his consideration of what Msitazi had said, he’d drawn a second conclusion. What the fight had showed him was that both the Norghaest and Shedashee had a substantially different and more greatly nuanced sense of magick than he’d imagined existed. While he was incredibly proud of the thaumagraph, it was little more than a toy compared to what he’d seen on the battlefield. Msitazi’s ability to move troops great distances immediately changed the rules of warfare. Instead of troops having to charge or march through the enemy, they could just appear at his rear, capturing the commander.

The Norghaest’s ability to resurrect troops reminded him of du Malphias’ creation of the pasmortes. Prince Vlad and von Metternin had sat at the edge of the redoubt, looking out at Rathfield wandering over the fields where his troops had died. The Count turned and looked at him. “Do you wish now, my friend, that you knew the Laureate’s secret for creating pasmortes?” Von Metternin had asked. “Think of what could be done if we had the cream of the cavalry back.”

“Absolutely not.” Vlad had shaken his head. “It’s not that they would not be useful, or that their use might not prevent others from dying. That sort of powerful knowledge never remains in the hands of one man alone. Though you or I might use it responsibly, the same cannot be said for everyone else. I would rather that knowledge vanish from the world, than to have it become as common as some other magicks are today.”

Vlad still felt that way, but also realized that the only way to meet the Norghaest on an equal footing was to learn how to do what they could do. Or at least learn enough that I can stop them and make them think I know far more than I do. He shivered, realizing he was putting full responsibility for victory on himself. But then he realized that he was willing to do it not out of any desire for glory, but because Mystria was his home, and the Norghaest threatened it and his family.

To protect them he would do anything.

Which means I need to speak with Msitazi and get some answers.