Where the Ogogehians were, the miasma stank more of anger than of hate, a spreading subterranean rage at Nekaz Kole for getting them into this morass. They were mercenaries and death was a built-in risk, but a dead man’s wages were of no use to him. Because Nekaz Kole had been a prudent, capable and occasionally brilliant commander who’d bought them loot and glory with a minimum of casualties, they’d followed him with confidence, making scurrilous but affectionate jokes about his appetites and idiosyncrasies. He’d gone from success to success until he was a serious threat to the power back home of the older generals, but now he was losing men and reputation equally. If he went down here, he was dead, no matter how long he lived. Five hundred defeating five thousand. He knew only too well the sneers and contempt, the stink of failure that would follow him the rest of his days, corroding all he touched.
Nekaz Kole sat his rambut above the catapults still hurling vuurvis at the massive gates, lobbing some high so it splashed into the openway between the inner and outer gates. An easy victory, Floarin said. Lean on them a little and they’ll cave. Easy money. He leaned forward, patted his rambut’s neck, looked down the slope at his disaffected army. The Norim had echoed her words. An easy victory. Just the wall. Once you take that, it’s over. They can’t have more than five hundred or so meien, only women, some of them too old to be worth much. He discounted their assurances and listened to their numbers and succumbed to temptation. Even then he knew it was probably a mistake; experience had taught him long ago that luck’s fair face concealed a poisoned barb; it had also taught him that his employers were generally ignorant and always concealed something no matter how forthright they seemed. Not for the first time he wondered what it was the Nor weren’t telling him. He seldom asked for reasons when the covenants were signed, only for what result his employer desired. The reasons they hired him meant nothing to him and he’d early grown weary of listening to them justify themselves. The rhetoric bubbling out from Floarin and scarcely less abundantly from the Nor around her had been so familiar and so boring he hadn’t bothered to listen, but spent the time planning the best ways of spending that gold, daydreaming instead of picking through the rubbish for clues to the barb that had to be there, luck’s unlovely face. He shook off vain regrets; he’d signed the thing, there was no escaping from that; breaking the covenants would sink him more thoroughly than this miserably botched campaign. He scowled at the gates. The vuurvis was eating slowly into them, held back a little by those triply cursed witches, but only a little. He glanced at the gray blur that marked the position of the sun. Dawn would see the gates so weakened that a few stones lobbed at them would shatter them. Have to wait till the vuurvis burned out. It wasn’t going to be neat or fancy, just pushing enough men through the gap to roll over that puny force inside. By tomorrow afternoon he was going to be in the Biserica’s Heart. He thought briefly about what was going to happen to the women and girls when the Biserica fell, but shrugged off vague regrets; his men needed something to take the edge off their anger. He straightened his back and contemplated the mountains stretching beyond the east end of the wall. The last of the Sleykynin were somewhere in those and in the mountains on the west side of the valley, circling round to come on the Biserica from the rear-if they hadn’t decided the whole operation was a loss and abandoned it. They were better at saving their skins than manning assaults, couldn’t be beat if you wanted an enemy cut down, but in a head-on clash they were too undisciplined, too inclined to fight as individuals rather than melding into an effective team. Probably he could count on their fanatical hatred of the meien to bring them into the valley, but he wasn’t going to depend on them. Any distraction they provided would be a help, though Hag only knew what Hern and Yael-mri were hoarding to use against him if he got past the wall-when he got past the wall. He watched the gates burning and smiled. There was no stopping him now. One way or another he was in.
He heard screes of alarm from the traxim and looked up. Immense glass dragons undulated above the valley. One of them coiled about a trax and began squeezing. The trax vanished like a punctured soap bubble. The remaining traxim fled. Kole ground his teeth together, raging at the chance that had robbed him of his ability to see what the defenders were doing. He glanced at the Nor beside him, his face carefully masked to hide the flare of loathing he felt for the sorcerers who’d sucked him into this debacle with their promises of powerful aid and who’d proved so feeble since. He forced himself to relax. “What are those? What do they mean?”
The Nor was staring at them and for a moment he didn’t answer. When he did, he spoke slowly, searching for words to explain what he didn’t understand. “They’re… other. Magic, but nothing She… or we… no one can command them. Third force. Do what they want where. Won’t touch us, we can’t touch them. She called, they came. I don’t know why.” He cleared his throat. “Won’t hurt, can’t help. Us or the Biserica.”
Nekaz Kole scowled at the dragons, suppressing anger and scorn. He couldn’t afford to offend the Nor now that the last stage of the battle was being set, but he swore to steer wide of magic and religion the rest of his days. He dropped his eyes from the enigma that still bothered him and watched the flames biting deeper into the stubborn wood of the gates, feeling a small glow of satisfaction. Not long now.
17
Julia leaned against the cold, pitted stone of the tower wall, picking idly at the knot in the rag tied about her arm, working it loose. Any heat from the sun couldn’t reach her through the gusty wind that smelled of ash and ice. The overflow of Serroi’s power had healed everyone they shoved into the tower, had healed the scratch on her arm and the hole the vuurvis had etched into her thigh. The rooms behind her were empty now, the healed were clustering about the tables set up near the rutted road where excited girls were serving bowls of a rich, meaty soup, loaves of fresh-baked bread and cups of hot spiced cha. Now and then a gust of wind brought the aromas to her, reminding her that she was hungry, but she didn’t move away from the wall. She was fit and whole again, even the cold she’d been starting had dried up with her wounds, but she was tired, a weariness of the will as much as of the body. She knew food and hot cha would chase much of that malaise away, temporarily at least, but she hadn’t enough desire left in her to shift her feet.
She pulled the rag off her arm and looked at the skin. No scar but a paler patch not yet tanned to match the rest. A lot of those patches scattered about her hide since she’d come here. Not the sort of thing you expected to happen to a sedentary middle-aged writer from a post-industrial society. Smiling a little, she looked down at Rane.
The ex-meie was sitting with her back against the wall, knees drawn up, arms draped over them, staring out into nothing. She looked as tired, as dead, as Julia felt. Rane yawned, then sighed. A gust of wind lifted dust, dead leaves, other debris and slapped the load against her. She got to her feet, brushed at the folds of tunic and trousers, looked up, caught at Julia’s arm. “Look.”
Lone sinuous shapes undulated over the valley, dragons of flexing glass, scales delicately etched on the transparent bodies, pastel colors flowing in waves along the serpentine forms, a silent song in color. No two of the dragonsongs were alike but each complemented the others like chords in a chorale. They drifted eerily into the wind, not with it, creatures not quite of this world. Julia’s heart hurt with their extravagant beauty and their strangeness, a strangeness that brought suddenly home to her the realization that she stood on alien soil, something she’d almost forgotten because of the familiar feel of the dirt and weeds under her feet, the familiar look of the mountains around her, the human faces of the people here. She watched the dragons sing and felt a new homesickness for her own land and people, felt like an exile for the first time since she’d jumped through Magic Man’s Mirror. She wondered what was happening back home and whether she’d run out on her responsibilities by coming here. Maybe Tom Prioc was right, maybe they owed their country the effort to redeem it. But as she continued to watch the dragons, she felt her regrets leaving her. I’ve half my life left. No use looking back.