Wartorn Obliteration

PRAULTH (1)

There came a winking impression of speed and danger, a quick whisk of wind across her nose. Then a hard chunk sounded from the tree trunk on her left, just off the road, and a single leaf, brittle but still a spectral green in the autumn climate, detached itself from an overhanging limb and twirled to the ground.

Praulth, her reaction delayed and exaggerated and unproductive, seized her horse's reins violently and yanked with all her muscle. This succeeded only in causing the animal to make a frightened noise and rear, which consequently dumped Praulth off the saddle and onto the road.

Around her was a suddenly terrifying confusion of hooves. These were Xink and Merse's horses. Both men were still in their saddles. Praulth put her hand to her nose, quite certain she'd been struck there, by whatever that thing had been, whatever projectile...

She looked to the left and saw the arrow embedded in the tree. Her hand came away from her nose unbloodied. The feathers on that arrow must have brushed her. It had been that close.

Xink was hastily swinging down from his mount. "Praulth, are you hurt? Are you—are..." His normally handsome face was a rictus of concern as he knelt over her.

She nearly shoved him away as he helped her sit upright. She gathered what breath she'd had knocked out of her by the fall.

"Tend the horses, you two!" Merse called angrily, reaching over to grab up the loose reins of Praulth's mount. Xink's horse was shuffling about skittishly.

Now Praulth did give Xink a shove. "Get the beast before he tramples me to death." She was more confident on horseback now than when they'd left the University at Febretree, bound for Petgrad, but she was never going to be an accomplished rider. Merse had set the punishing pace. It was urgent they get where they were going.

As Xink wrangled his horse to a standstill, Praulth realized for the first time the true peril of this situation. That arrow! It had nearly taken her nose off, yes. But who had fired it? Was their party being... being waylaid?

She scrambled to her feet, heart pounding. Merse was still atop his horse. He now had a knife in hand. He would surely laugh at her for her slow reflexes—if they had occasion later to reflect back on this incident. Merse was the Petgradite messenger who had fetched her from the University.

This stretch of road was abutted on either side by dense foliage. But the arrow was sticking in that tree on this side; so it had to have come from that side of the roadway. Praulth peered into the woods. The day was early—Merse had barely permitted a watch of sleep—and there was a maze of shadows amongst those trees.

"Do you see anything?" she asked.

"By the madness of the gods," Merse hissed, "quiet." He too was studying the woodland, eyes narrow in his aging leathery face.

Praulth took her horse's reins from him but didn't climb back onto the saddle. She patted the creature's sides, and it quieted. She listened, intensely aware now of every sound that emerged from the surrounding trees.

Perhaps later she would laugh, too. Her expertise was military history, the study of the strategies of the grandest wars, but that did not include knowledge of something so base and coarse as banditry.

"Are we in danger?" Xink asked. This time Praulth hissed for silence.

She heard movement. Her heart beat even harder. There were deliberate footsteps approaching, leaves crunching. She peered deeper into the thicket.

She saw movement. A shape appeared beneath the interlocking branches, amidst the complex shadows.

"Come, then!" Merse cried out. "You won't have an easy time of it." He slashed the knife through the air.

The figure paused. At the same instant another arrow sprang from the woods, faster than the eye could completely follow. This one whipped past Merse's cheek and struck the same tree as before, a mere handsbreadth above the first arrow.

"Godsdamnit, Frog! Stop showing off!"

A female voice. She emerged into view, walking as steadily as before. She was short and extremely muscular.

"Keep the blade in hand or put it away," she said. "Makes no difference. Obviously you won't get to use it." She had halted just beyond the trees, at the roadside.

Praulth gazed at her. She looked... rugged. Someone who spent her time outdoors, on the move.

"You sound confident of that," Merse said, voice stony, betraying no fear. Praulth wasn't sure she would even be able to form words at the moment. But she made certain her face didn't reflect that fear. She was a personage of importance, and her dignity mattered, even now.

"I've got cause to be," the bandit said. "My archer could put shafts in both your eyes before you got off your saddle." She held up a hand, shook her head. Her tone softened. "But—but that's how we used to do things. The truth is, we're no longer in that business. We only want one thing."

Praulth held her horse's reins in a fist. She held herself still, very still. She didn't glance behind her, at Xink, didn't seek comfort there. What did their party have that these bandits could want? What was of value?

The answer was manifest. They must want her. Someone somehow had set this band after her, to capture her, to—

"This isn't our territory," the bandit woman said. "We're looking for the city of Petgrad. Where is it?"

Atop his horse Merse cocked his head, as if wondering if this were a joke. Finally his mouth twisted, just slightly, and he said, "Petgrad's along this road."

The bandit shook her head again. "We don't take roads. It's a bad habit. Just point it from here."

Merse appeared to orient himself, looking up at the early sun, nodding, muttering a few barely audible words. At last he lifted the knife and pointed. It was off at an angle from the road.

"Our thanks," the bandit was saying, already turning away, disappearing back into the trees.

Eventually, when all had been silent for several moments, Merse returned the knife to his coat and looked down at Praulth.

"Back on your horses, you two. That's going to count as our morning rest stop."

Praulth struggled and scrabbled back up into the saddle, silently glad she hadn't said anything aloud.

When they were moving once more, she glanced back over her shoulder and saw someone tall emerge from the woods to retrieve the arrows from the tree.

She understood, halfway up, the true and implicit meaning of this summoning. Cultat wanted to see her, yes. That was understandable. But their meeting was to take place on his ground. It was the fact that the premier's "ground" was so very high in the sky that gave the occasion its unspoken significance.

Praulth, on arriving in the huge bustling city of Petgrad, had been awestruck by many things. The scope of the place was amazing, the number of inhabitants, the very noise of it all. Really, it was a frontal assault on her rural sensibilities. But dwarfing all else, literally and mentally, were Petgrad's mighty towers.

They were improbable, fanciful, magnificent, dominating. They reared into the sky higher than anything Praulth had ever seen in her life. They were level atop level atop level of stone construction materials that somehow didn't fall over when the wind blew. They were spires as a child might imagine them to be, impossibly grand; but these had been made real. In the city's heart they rose like trees in an ancient woods, where the eldest timbers rose regally above the younger.

Praulth now squelched her earlier fancy with much darker thoughts. It even annoyed her that she had resorted to similes about trees, knowing that it no doubt related back to her girlhood spent in the timber town of Dral Blidst. Her family had thrived in that particular industry, the same family that had drubbed her with their scorn and ignorance until she had fled to the University at Febretree, there to embrace her true calling of a life in academics.

"Can I lend you a hand?" Xink asked as she sagged against the wall of the apparently endless stairwell in which they had been trapped for what felt like days.

"And what do you intend?" she returned tartly. "Throw me over a shoulder and carry me the rest of the way up?"

Something flickered across Xink's face. "Is that what you want?" He might have asked it sharply, sarcastically, but he didn't. Instead, it was meek, submissive. He didn't have the will to defy her. Or perhaps his feelings for her were so genuine that he couldn't bring himself to speak a harsh word to her.

At the moment, either way, Praulth didn't care.

This climb was murderous, and it was supposed to be so. That was the great revelation she was having, halfway up this monstrous tower, this insane architectural feat, which was a monument better observed than experienced, she judged.

But as drained as she now was, as heavy as her legs felt, she was also determined. Cultat wanted to see her. That was fine. She was ready to prove herself at any time.

Merse, when he'd arrived at Febretree, had told her she was needed in Petgrad. Her talents at predicting the movements of the Felk invaders, as led by the commander they called Weisel, were crucial to the alliance that Cultat meant to build. Praulth understood the history of warfare as perhaps no one else alive did... no one, now that her mentor Master Honnis was dead. She comprehended tactics; she grasped battle strategies that belonged to conflicts hundredwinters old. She had identified the swift and sure hand of Dardas the Conqueror in the movements ordered by General Weisel. She had thought him a brilliant imitator, one shrewd enough to have studied and absorbed the skills of the Northland's most successful war commander.

But Honnis had corrected her assumptions. Imitator? No. Weisel was Dardas. It was almost impossible to accept. Equally impossible was the explanation for it, a thing Honnis had called resurrection magic. Dardas had been reborn somehow within the body of a Felk noble named Weisel.

Praulth believed it, though. She believed all of it. Master Honnis had been an irascible creature of vast knowledge. He had also been possessed of magical abilities that she had known nothing of until the University's war studies head was lying on his very deathbed.

Cultat had called her to Petgrad, and she had come, inviting Xink along with her. Now that she was here and settled into her new quarters, Cultat was summoning her to his royal presence. Again she was acquiescing. The premier had charged her with devising a battle scheme to resist the seemingly implacable Felk advance. She had proposed a reenactment of an ancient engagement, the Battle of Torran Flats, one of Dardas's many celebrated victories some two hundred and fifty years ago. Her version of it, of course, had Dardas/Weisel falling into a cunningly constructed trap. That plan could still work.

She was sagging against the wall again. Her legs were like iron, inhumanly heavy. She was spent. This wasn't possible, this stupid climb to the absurd top of this ridiculous tower. It was simply beyond her endurance to keep going like this, to ascend to heights that humans patently were not meant to reach. Was the air up here... scarcer? It certainly felt like it. Her lungs were laboring painfully. Her heart was working faster than normal. She felt as if both her knees were about to give way. She closed her eyes, rested her head against the cool stone wall. Cultat was just going to have to see her some other time...

"Beauty?"

A line creased between her closed eyes as she felt a new sharp surge of annoyance. "Beauty" had been Xink's affectionate name for her early on in their relationship, before things had turned so disastrous, before she'd learned that the handsome sixth phase University Attache was just Honnis's tool. The war studies head had put Xink deliberately on to her, and like a blithe virginal fool she had fallen hopelessly in love with him. It had all been devised to keep her singularly focused on analyzing the Felk advancements. It had worked. She had neglected her normal studies at Febretree, and Xink had filled her innocent heart with love and her nights with untold sexual ecstasy.

Oddly enough, despite seeing her lover in this new, much less flattering light, she did still feel love for him. And he professed to have legitimately fallen in love with her.

"Don't call me that," she muttered.

"Praulth," Xink said, with some insistence, "we're here."

She opened her eyes. The two of them had been searched for weapons by a contingent of guards at the foot of this tower, then passed on to the stairwell, and told simply to climb until there was nowhere else to go. No guards had accompanied them on their ascent into these implausible upper reaches.

Without her noticing, the endless stairs had finally played out. They had reached a broad landing, the floor a dark red stone polished to a high gleam. Another contingent of guards was here, their uniforms lustrous, their bearing formal. Praulth pushed herself off the wall with some effort as one approached.

"You may come this way," he said.

"Oh, may we?" she grumbled. Sarcasm was still new to her, but she found herself employing it more and more often. Before, she had been timid in all things that didn't relate directly to her studies. Now she was becoming assertive, testing out the trappings of aggressive behavior, as a young girl would try on her first adult frock.

They entered a chamber, and whatever scornful retort Praulth might have made when their escort told them to wait died on her tongue. The room was barely furnished, though it had an elegance lent it by a few tastefully placed fixtures. What drew Praulth's total attention, however, was the wall composed entirely of glass, which looked out over the immense vista of the city.

It wasn't that Petgrad was magnificently large and sophisticated. It was that; but after two days here she was already acclimating. What pulled her toward the glass was the fantastic height of this vantage. She had understood, intellectually, that climbing to the top of this tower, all the way up to where it was capped by a metal cupola, would take her far into the heavens, virtually up among the clouds. But to see it, to look out from this summit, it was... it was...

She was still walking toward the glass, the view broadening and deepening with every step. It was approaching sunset, and lights were appearing among the array of buildings below. It all looked so small! Up here she felt enormous, aloof. It was intoxicating.

Too much so. Before she had reached the glass wall, hearing Xink trying to get her attention again and ignoring him, Praulth's limp legs finally did give out. As she dropped toward the floor, it felt as though she were falling into the incredible panorama before her, falling from this vast height, falling toward the streets of Petgrad, waiting far far below.

A frightened cry was just tearing from her throat as a strong hand caught her, stopped her, drew her gently back onto her wobbly feet, and held her there until she could stand without aid.

"There, Thinker Praulth. You're not the first to swoon at the sight."

She blinked rapidly. The vertigo was passing. How strange. The view had seemed to physically pull her.

"I'm all right, Premier," she said. This wasn't how she'd wanted to present herself before Petgrad's ruler. It was the second time she was meeting the formidable royal personage, the first having taken place at a secret gathering at the University, the same night she'd learned such terrible secrets about Honnis and Xink.

"Once you get used to it, though, it's really quite soothing," Cultat said. He let go of her, and she tottered a few steps back.

Petgrad's premier was as fearsome as she remembered, hair a thick red and gold, a greying beard of the same colors dressing a craggy face, where harsh blue eyes burned. He was tall, broad of shoulder, perhaps fifty years old or more.

Praulth had been made to climb the arduous outrageous height of this tower to see him, and what did she do when she was finally here? She fell to her knees. Obviously the climb had symbolic value. It made one a supplicant before one ever arrived. It drained one of physical energy. On every slogging riser of this upward journey Praulth had promised herself she wouldn't let the trick work. She was no longer the unassertive University student. She, by dint of her value as an expert war strategist, was someone to be reckoned with. Cultat would have to learn that.

"It's a pleasure to see you again. Your quarters, they're comfortable, I hope?"

"I... yes, Premier."

"Good. You have my heartfelt appreciation for agreeing to come to Petgrad on such short notice."

"It's, uh, my honor."

A smile touched his worn, weary but ferociously alive features. This was no doddering elder. This was a vital leader of a great state, the largest the southern half of the Isthmus had to boast.

And with those few rumbling words and a supporting hand he had disarmed her completely, robbing her of the necessary heat of her self-righteousness.

"I've gathered a conference," Cultat said. "It's been very loud, very contentious, and so far has accomplished very little beyond the fact that we've all come together in a single room, without anyone seizing anyone else's throat. These are representatives and consuls from the states and lands unconquered as yet by the Felk. My hope... our only hope... is to turn this alliance from an admirable notion into a functional reality. We are ready now, Praulth, for you."

He was gesturing toward a set of doors. The wood, Praulth noted, was blood-oak. She was hesitant.

"Your messenger," she said. "The one who came to Febretree. Merse. He said your neighboring states were all agreeing to the alliance, ready to pool resources and manpower against the Felk."

"See the ease with which the words are said? Yes. It's a sensible plan. It's the only chance the free lands have against the Felk. But details kill sensible plans. Niggling and old grudges cloud otherwise rational minds. We states, we cities and townships and peoples, we've had our strifes in the past. Waged little wars against each other's borders. Spoken unforgivable insults. All that must be set aside, but it takes great effort, even in the face of so overwhelming a threat as the butchering Felk and their diabolical wizards. Since your arrival you've received all the current field intelligence regarding the Felk?"

"Of course, Premier."

"That's fine. Your aide can wait here. Come in now, won't you, and show these squabblers the excellence of your abilities."

Her hesitancy had been a simple case of stage fright. Her academic life hadn't prepared her to face a roomful of people who were hanging on and judging her every word. Her years at the University had been ones of private efforts and solitary studies, of judgments rendered by individual instructors. One could pass an entire lune at Febretree, if one tried, without having direct spoken contact with anyone.

But the maps spread over the large table were so irresistible, so familiar. She had seen them before, renderings delivered to her by Master Honnis. These were a comprehensive history of the Felk war, so far. And history was most certainly what this was. However this war was resolved, it would alter the future of the Isthmus for hundredwinters and more.

She didn't now entertain these grand thoughts. Her mind was occupied with the meat of it all, with the movements and maneuvers of the Felk army, with the tactics that belonged only to Dardas the Butcher and no one else. She orally reenacted the war for the assembled notables and envoys. The early Felk conquests of Callah and Windal. The brutal slaughter of U'delph, which was preceded by the Felk's first wholesale use of Far Movement magic in the field. Then the surrender of Sook, followed by the army's southward move toward the city-state of Trael.

Praulth illuminated it all, the military designs, the logic of warfare, the peculiar marks of Dardas's brilliant strategies. She answered questions when they were put to her. She didn't hesitate now. She felt no misgivings, no self-doubts. She was equal to this task. Xink was waiting outside, but she didn't need him for this.

Finally someone, a figure in much finery who, if Praulth recalled correctly, was from Ompellus Prime, said, "Impressive. Now, will you deign to tell us why the Felk have halted cold only a day or two from Trael? It seems to me they might be considering a new course, toward, say, the city of Grat. Or, worse, my own state."

"You would rather the Felk monsters crushed us? What a miserable, selfish creature—"

"Don't pretend to parts you can't play. By the sanity of the gods, how often have you kindhearted ones of Grat wished for our downfall? How often have you poisoned our crops? How—"

"As a response to the abduction of our beloved Jade Priestess!"

"She wanted to leave, fool! She had found love with our prince."

"If it's crop poisoning, I'd like it explained how the river that irrigates our fields turns black twice a lune with filth dumped in it by you people upriver in Hassilc."

"It's not your river when it flows through our lands."

"Fiend!"

"Imbecile!"

By now the exchange had five or six participants. It was quite a vehement display. Praulth felt she understood now the genuine reason for holding this conference here atop this tower. It was so no one could easily storm out of the room, not unless he or she meant to make that entire long and steep descent.

Cultat rose from his seat, an expression of put-upon disgust on his face. He drew a short—and presumably decorative—sword from his belt and banged its bejeweled pommel three times on the tabletop, hard enough to leave an indentation.

"This is precisely what I mean," he said, addressing no one in particular in his robust voice. "Something intelligent is said, and the price we pay are ten useless outbursts. Silence... please. Now, Praulth, our esteemed delegate from Ompellus Prime raises a good point. Our intelligence informs us that the Felk remain encamped a short distance from Trael. They've been stalled thus several days now. Why would they do this?"

"Yes, girl, why?"

"Oh, do tell us."

These last were sarcastic mutterings from among the nearly twenty members assembled. Praulth found she didn't like their offhand scorn. They didn't appreciate her. Her analytical abilities were a marvel. No one else could have predicted the Felk movements so far in this war so accurately. Honnis himself had said so.

The field intelligence to which Cultat referred was thanks to a secret elite unit of Petgradite wizards, a small force literally bred for their abilities to use the Far Speak magic. Honnis had relayed their war news to her at the University. Merse himself belonged to the family of gifted nobles.

This inner chamber appeared to be a formal dining hall converted for the occasion into this conference site. Lushly woven tapestries adorned the walls. Each one appeared to display multiple pictures or abstract motifs among its fabulously intricate threads, depending on at what distance one stood to view it.

Praulth hadn't taken a seat at the table. She'd stood, ignoring her tired legs, indicating this map and that, lecturing this body on the war's history, revealing its secrets. Now she straightened, folded her hands, and asked coolly, "Why is there no representative from Trael here?"

Cultat's blue eyes flickered away, came back to her. "That diplomatic mission failed," he said bluntly.

Praulth knew that meant a member of the premier's family had been lost. Cultat had used his own kin to deliver the initial proposals for an alliance.

Her eyes swept the assembly. Finally she said, "I don't know why the Felk have halted their advance."

Someone laughed, a short unkind burst, and the chamber erupted in protest. What good was this girl, then? What sort of military expert was Cultat trying to foist on them? Praulth stood and weathered it stoically, while anger bloomed hotter inside her. She would explain in detail to these fools her scheme to use the Battle of Torran Flats against the Felk general.

While this was happening an attendant entered, went quietly to Cultat's side, and spoke urgent words to the premier. Praulth, ignoring the assembly's ignorant barbs—how much they sounded like her family just now—for the moment, watched surprise spread across Cultat's craggy face. The attendant presented a sheet of paper.

Once more Cultat brought the hubbub to an end by banging his pommel on the table.

"I may have an answer as to why we've no delegate from Trael here at this table," Cultat said. "A small party has just arrived in the city bearing this." He held aloft the paper, a densely printed document of some sort. "It's a government promissory note, for an extraordinary amount of money, which I have no intention of honoring during this crisis, and it is signed by my nephew. Why is this of interest? Because the little band that presented this—bandits, I believe—tell a tale of my nephew abandoning his mission to Trael in order to pursue a goal of his own choosing. He meant to infiltrate the Felk horde and assassinate its leader. Now, if he succeeded in this grand ambition, might that not explain why the Felk army has remained immobile these past several days?"

Cultat smiled, proud, even smug. Once again the room came shrilly alive with overlapping voices.

Praulth's first thoughts were to wonder if those were the same bandits they had met on the road, those who had seemed intent on taking the slower clandestine woodland trails to Petgrad. But these thoughts were deliberate and momentary distractions.

She felt a cold and heavy sinking in her chest. It took her a moment to identify the feeling as disappointment. Dardas... assassinated? It couldn't be. It was too haphazard, too unworthy of the great Northland war commander. That some minor relative of the premier had snuck into that camp and murdered the host body of Weisel, killing the brilliant military mind that lived within... it was almost offensive. She couldn't absorb it.

After all, she wanted to be the one who defeated Dardas.