Reap The East Wind

11 Year 1016 afe

The Stone Beast Speaks

E THRIAN AND SAHMANAN stood atop a hill. The broad expanse of the Tusghus rolled away below them. Ethrian squeezed a dagger so hard his knuckles whitened. "Damn!" He hurled the blade at the ground. It skittered into the brush. He could not find it again.

"What's the matter?"

"We're winning the battles and losing the war," he snarled. "They're eating us up. How do we get across this? There're as many of them as there are of us. There isn't anybody left for me to recruit."

"Take them alive. You did that with some of the natives."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"They won't let me. Their armor has spells that stop me."

The earth shook. A column of fire rose a few hundred yards behind them. Trees smouldered.

Ethrian muttered, "Another three hundred men gone. Why do they clump up? I can't keep them spread out unless I think about it every minute."

"They still have memories. They don't like what they've become. They huddle because it comforts them. Reach across the river. Find people who aren't soldiers."

"I've tried. There aren't any. They've emptied the whole damned countryside."

Fighting broke out south of the hill. The uproar approached, then drifted away.

The enemy no longer needed his transfers to shuttle his legions. He was using them tactically, launching small surprise attacks. Ethrian hadn't the skill to detect portals left hidden on this side of the river.

"We can't sit here forever," Sahmanan complained. "We have to break loose and start recruiting."

Ethrian's hatred flared. It had grown geometrically since his assumption of the beast's power. He marveled at himself. Sometimes he thought he had become quite mad.

Maybe the stone beast did beat me, he thought. I'm becoming the beast, hungry for destruction, hungry for human fear, impatient when I'm balked.

The beast hadn't surrendered everything. It had given him nothing but its power over the dead. Its Word it had retained. Ethrian now coveted that.

Sahmanan suggested, "We could use flyers to drop men in the woods behind them. Pick off soldiers one at a time. Send them back to their units... "

"They can tell the difference. Nor could we move enough men quickly enough. We've got to try something new. Anything in your bag of tricks?"

"Nothing I haven't already used. I have to keep my head down anyway. They're getting me figured. I won't survive another battle like the one at their fort."

"Go get the Great One, then."

"What?"

"Get the Great One. Go pry him out of his rockpile." He looked across the river. What would the Word do to those earthworks?

He grinned as wicked a grin as any a madman ever produced.

Darkness wears a thousand masks, evil a thousand shapes.

He did not think himself changed. Outwardly, he resembled every youth his age. But the dark rot was spreading within. The cancer had grown from the seed planted by the Pracchia and fertilized by the stone beast.

They called him Deliverer, those whom he drove to their deaths again and again and again. He was on the brink of becoming the thing they proclaimed. Deliverer of Darkness. Messiah of Evil. Prince of the Left Hand Trail.

But no, he would protest. I'm just Ethrian, requiting evils done me and mine.

Sahmanan sensed the cancer. She understood its depth. A mistress of wickedness herself, she was appalled by its potential. She knew his ancestry. His grandfather was the wizard who had destroyed Ilkazar. His mother was a woman of the Power. The same blood had run in his father's veins. He might become the greatest disciple darkness had known.

"Go get the Great One," he told her.

She looked round with furtive glances, as if expecting the beast to be peeping from the brush. "Don't ask me to return to slavery."

Ethrian studied the river's far bank. "Do we have a choice? We're dead if we stand still."

"Take a different path. Send the dead over till they're destroyed. Go with me somewhere. We can start over. Let the Great One rot. Let him slide back to the hell where Nahaman and I found him." Her passion amazed them both. She meant what she said. Like her sister, she had rebelled.

"So. You're turning on me." Ethrian's words were as chill as the corridors of time. "I thought it would be the Great One who betrayed me."

"Ethrian... "

"Get him. Or we fight amongst ourselves."

Sahmanan looked past him. Dead soldiers were coming out of the woods. He meant it.

"You idiot!" She flung herself forward. Her impetus smashed him against a prehistoric granite monolith. He kicked her...

She sang a spell.

The world went white. Heat blistered Ethrian's skin. He felt a big vacant place in his mind. Hundreds of soldiers had ceased to exist... He bellowed in rage. He had come close to killing himself.

The boulder and Sahmanan's spell shielded them. He cursed, said, "One of us was thinking. Thank you." Then, "I'm blind!"

"Your sight will return. Ethrian, don't let hatred control you like that."

After a time, "Sahmanan?"

"Yes?"

He said, "All right. It won't happen again. I'm sorry. You still have to bring the Great One."

She sighed. "All right. When the ground cools and we can leave the protection of the spell."

Ethrian stood on the hill alone. A scimitar of moon rose behind him. He leaned on a spear, staring at the fires on the distant shore. Soon now, Lord Ssu-ma, he thought. I'll break your will, you stubborn pig. I'll carve the heart out of your empire. I'll make it my own. I'll find my father's murderer...

But first he had to use the stone beast without falling under its control. And Sahmanan. What of her? How strange she had been this afternoon. What was that natter about escaping slavery?

She didn't add up. She sang too many conflicting songs.

The air behind him whispered to the approach of vast wings. The sound waxed. Soon it filled the night. A swarm of shafts streaked across the water. The sky burned behind Ethrian. A dozen shadows of him reached toward the river. He raised one hand, thought, This is me, Shinsan: A clawed shadow reaching for your heart.

The shafts dropped dragons and riders, though these were not the shafts of the desert battles. These hadn't a tenth of the power of those. They had a homemade feel, as though his enemies had exhausted the real thing and were making do with what they could concoct themselves.

He smiled. "The thing you fear pursues you. The thing you dread is upon you. Your time has come."

A dragon smacked down behind him. Sahmanan called a question. He did not turn.

She was beside him in a moment. He felt the immense presence of the Great One. "I brought him, Ethrian."

"And what does he think?"

He didn't have to ask. He felt the beast's joy, its eagerness, its lust for a chance to embarrass an enemy it hated because it refused to bend or be conquered, or even to fear.

The stone beast wanted to be taken seriously. These Lords of the Dread Empire no longer did so. They knew the situation as well as did Ethrian. They now perceived the Deliverer and his godling as fading nuisances they would eliminate within days.

Ethrian had drifted across the river and had seen the confidence there. They knew they would break him this time. They were abiding his attack, expecting him to destroy himself.

The stone beast said, "You did well to summon me, Deliverer. You had no other hope. Together, now, we will crush them. But I ask you, how do you plan to cross the river?"

Ethrian had given that no thought. He was worried about smashing his enemies, not about getting to them. He did not have a single boat. His troops hadn't built rafts or pontoons. The legions had destroyed all local craft during their retreat.

He cursed himself for being a fool. "Not much of a general, are you, Deliverer?" The stone beast's sarcasm stung. His own accusation had come home to roost.

"What would you suggest, Great One?" He tried for sarcasm himself. He glanced to the east, where the sun was about to rise.

"Sahmanan. I'll feed you strength. Freeze the river."

Ethrian gaped. "Freeze it?"

The beast laughed. And the youth shivered, knowing he had best take care.

Sahmanan performed some lengthy, darkness-hidden ritual. After a time, she said, "Aid me, Great One."

Ethrian felt the cold grow. It taunted his burned skin. It rolled down the hill. The woods became so chill that branches snapped. He closed his eyes, drifted out of his body.

There were scums of ice on the river already. The cold swept toward the nether shore. Over there they had begun to respond, ere ever the chill reached them. Their fires grew higher. Their drums hammered rhythms of warning.

Frost formed. The air grew misty. Snowflakes trickled down. Shinsan's soldiers calmly manned their earthworks.

If I had soldiers like these... Being the best would avail them not. A man's skill meant nothing once he heard the stone beast's Word. Ethrian knew. He had seen Sahmanan's visions of the war with Nahaman.

His spirits rose. Soon he would stand on the western shore, its master. The legion dead would rise around him, ready to move on... In a flash of whimsy he flung himself westward, through the wild forests, hunting the place they would try stopping him next.

It was a venerable city, an interesting city. It would delight him. He looked forward to taking it. He loved cities.

Refugees swarmed outside this one.

Here were the hordes that had escaped him earlier. He harangued them with a silent scream: I'm coming for you! There's nowhere you can run!

His anger faded. He was too far from his flesh to sustain an emotion long. He looked within himself, and was disturbed by what he saw. He was too attached to this idea of being Deliverer.

He sped back to the river and battle that would be Shinsan's last hurrah.

Dawn had come to the Tusghus. There was ice enough for men to cross. Sahmanan was spreading it up and down the stream, providing a broader avenue for attack.

Ethrian passed among his enemies, and grew nervous as he did so. They were not afraid. Their wizard-captains had convened no panicky conferences. They had their first and second and third lines set, their pyres ready to burn, their portals ready to evacuate their dead. Their commander was taking breakfast with his legion commanders, indifferent to events on the river.

Fear me, damn you! the youth raged. But, of course, they could not hear him. And that was just as well. They might have mocked him in their arrogance.

He thought, You'll see. When the stone beast speaks, you'll see. Then you'll show a righteous fear.

He returned to his body. He found Sahmanan now seated on the earth, eyes closed, face pruny with concentration. A black box, ten by six by five inches, lay in her lap. "That's a god?" It seemed bigger in the woman's visions.

The sun was several diameters above the horizon when her eyes clicked open and she said, "It's done."

Ethrian started his forces moving to the river's edge. They would strike when the beast Spoke.

It whispered in his mind, "I can't speak without a mouth, Deliverer. Lend me yours."

Again Ethrian chastized himself for lack of foresight. And not in respect to traps. "Use Sahmanan."

"Impossible. She's no more corporeal than I."

"You could have fooled me." He summoned a soldier.

The beast said, "I can't use the dead."

"Then we're wasting our time." How stupid did the beast think he was? "Sahmanan, let the river melt."

"I forbid it."

The woman hesitated.

Ethrian knew the instant she chose her ancient master.

"Lend me your mouth, Deliverer."

"No."

The beast's rage hammered him. He endured it more easily than he endured his own.

"Don't fight," Sahmanan pleaded. "Ethrian, call an animal out of the forest. Anything large will do."

He reached out, found a she-bear immediately. He brought her shambling to the hilltop, trailed by baffled cubs.

"Send her to the river," the beast snapped. His rage continued unabated.

Ethrian drove the bear, and followed himself. Sahmanan brought the box. Deep inside him the youth felt the Great One probing, trying to insinuate a tentacle or two, trying to take over. There would be a showdown. He or this dark godlet would bend the knee...

The beast's anger boiled. It fumed and smouldered and spread. Ethrian felt it touch the baffled she-bear as she started across the ice. Her cubs skittered and whimpered behind her. She ignored their snuffling and whining.

Ethrian smiled. What were they thinking over there? All this great sorcery, the freezing of the river in summer, so a bear and her cubs could cross?

Maybe they wouldn't connect her. They might think her just a poor creature wandering on the ice...

They weren't deceived. Ethrian felt the shaft barrage screaming down the sky. He felt the beast's rage crest, then explode. The bear's mouth opened, then Spoke.

The youth reeled as the Great One shifted his attack, trying to take him by surprise.

The Word rolled across the ice. It fell on the might of Shinsan.

Ethrian's universe went dark.

He wakened to find Sahmanan leaning over him. "Are you all right?" she demanded.

He searched his mind. "Yes." He was surprised. "How long was I out? Where's the Great One?"

"Twenty minutes. I took him back uphill. He's still out. He didn't expect you to hit back."

"You left him?"

"We don't need him now, do we?"

He examined her closely. She meant it. "Then take him back to the desert."

"All right." She donned a conspiratorial smile. "He won't be happy about it."

"Do I care?" He faced the far bank of the river. They were stirring over there! He left his body, fluttered over, flew back. Distracted, the stone beast had done only half a job. "I'm wasting time," he muttered.

The army of the dead marched onto the ice. It was a pathetic assemblage of stiff-legged men, slipping and falling and rising to try again. The ice had developed a water film. The beast's strength had gone out of Sahmanan.

Will it last? Ethrian wondered. Faster! Faster!

Groggy legionnaires were at work over there. Six unconscious men into every portal every minute... They were escaping! "Faster!" he shrieked.

The first clash of arms echoed across the ice.

The least stunned of his foes responded to his attack. They rekindled their fires and remanned their breastworks. And the ice kept melting.

It was the shortest and most profitable of his battles. It lasted only an hour. He gained eight thousand recruits. The legions fell back, almost in disorder.

His gains barely replaced his losses. The ice broke up too fast. Some of his creatures were caught on floes that swifted away on the flood. They fell into the water. Fish got some. Others became entangled in the roots of trees growing along the banks. Or they raced on toward the distant sea, ever farther from his control.

The Tervola blasted away as they withdrew. They salvaged the bulk of their army. He tried to pursue them, but each mile they covered lessened his control of his warriors.

It wasn't till the last redoubt had fallen that he flew over to join his army.

Sahmanan returned from the desert. "He's back in his temple. I can feel his rage and fear from here."

"He shouldn't have tried to trick me. Look here. We've won. They can't stop us now. There aren't any more big barriers."

"What happens when you destroy them? Go on till the only people left are the dead you command?"

He looked at her, and sensed a touch of loathing, of incipient hatred. "Let me be, woman. I have only one goal. The eradication of Shinsan. We'll worry about what's next when that's done."

"I thought you'd say that."

"What do you mean? Never mind. Let's go. We have an appointment at a city west of here. If we move fast they won't have time to prepare. And we can catch up with the refugees."

Sahmanan shook her head dolefully, led him to their dragons.

For two days Ethrian patrolled the remote flanks of his host, seeking recruits. His efforts were hardly worthwhile. Only the very old, lame, and weak had stayed behind.

He recruited them. He took anything that would move.

The third morning after the Tusghus crossing Ethrian departed a wood and found himself facing Northern Army across a small plain. "I don't believe it. Where do they get the nerve? After what we did at the river."

Sahmanan laughed. "You said they were the best. You said they don't frighten. You said they wouldn't have time to prepare that city. What else could you expect?"

"I don't know."

This time the enemy came to him. They cut their way through the recruits. They slashed deep into his better soldiers, whose efficiency suffered from continued decay. They went after legion dead incorporated into his army. They brought with them portals mounted on wagons. The fighting continued till it seemed both armies must be destroyed. Then the legions withdrew.

Ethrian wept in rage.

They had taken back their dead. They had robbed him of the seed of a new host. They had left him with fewer than twenty thousand bodies able to hobble or crawl.

He reviewed them in the dawn. They were gaunt, stinking, horrible things all, clad in rags, with limbs lost, chunks torn from their flesh, missing ears or noses or eyes. Maggots crawled in their flesh. "Looks like the earth opened up and a battlefield yielded its ancient dead."

"And you want to go on?" Sahmanan demanded.

"I intend to destroy them. I'll find a way."

"They bought another day. They'll be another day ready."

"So be it." He marched westward, leading his shambling, dragging parody of an army. "It doesn't matter," he said. "Destiny rides with me. I know. I hear its voice. I was chosen. I was anointed. I am the Deliverer."

Sahmanan stared at him, aghast. The madness had enslaved him. "I don't want to die," she whispered. "Not for your nightmare or the Great One's."

Next day they came to the city called Lioantung.

Ethrian had made a spirit-visit by night. He had seen the panic-stricken mobs streaming westward, leaving the city to the army. He had had an inspiration for his attack.

It would take time, but time he had. He had been into the minds of those legionnaires who had served him briefly. He now knew that stubborn pig of a Lord Ssu-ma would get no help. Shinsan had bigger troubles on another frontier.

He was in a gay mood as he surveyed the city walls.