My eye kept returning to those tentacles, however, as if they were a puzzle that might be solved, revealingwhat?
"Dragons are more complex than they seem, aren't they, Boss?"
"I was just thinking the same thing."
"Especially Morrolan."
"Yes."
"Did you notice what he didn't ask about?"
"Yes. He never asked about the weapon that was stolen."
"You're not as stupid as they say, Boss."
"Save it, Loiosh. Instead, tell me what it means."
"That he already knew about the theft. Which means when we were setting that trap, we weren't doing what we thought we were. Although what we were doing I couldn't guess."
"Yeah. Maybe. Or it might mean something else entirely."
"What else?"
I studied those tentacles againrandom patterns that, somehow, made a kind of sense.
"That he knew there was a particular weapon that would be stolen, which means the theft wasn't just a test or trial, but accomplished what it was supposed to, and there's more to that weapon than we'd thought there was. Which would make sense, of course. Or Kragar's idea: It didn't matter what was stolen; the idea was to annoy Morrolan enough to start a war, just because he wanted a war. In fact, we were probably wrong about everything and, no doubt, still are. Whenever we come to a conclusion, we should just assume we're wrong and go from there."
Loiosh was silent for a moment. Then he said, "I like the artist."
"So do I," I said. "Come on. Let's go home."
I turned my back on the wounded Dragon and walked out of Castle Black.
4Call to War
Sethra Lavode once gave me a brief history of battle-magic, but I don't remember a whole lot of it; it wasn't important at the time, and my acquaintance with her was new enough that I was thinking less about what she said than the fact that she was saying it. I do remember bits and pieces, however. Between what she said and what I subsequently learned from Morrolan and Aliera, I can give you a very rough overview. It goes something like this:
The earliest practical spells were reconnaissance and illusion; both very powerful, but easily countered. Later there were means developed of creating mass destruction, and all sorts of effort went into protecting one's army. Defense eventually outstripped offense to the point where a soldier could usually consider himself safe from any direct sorcerous attack as long as he wasn't carrying too much metal. It was somewhere in here that armor went by the board, except that some used (and still use) wooden armor, and wooden shields are still common, and warriors in the House of the Lyorn still wear copper or bronze vambraces to prove that they are fearless or stupidtwo conditions I've never been able to tell apart.
Various methods were created for allowing the foot soldier to carry pre-prepared offensive spells into battle, and these, too, got stronger and more sophisticated, until some big battle, the name and date of which I didn't pay much attention to, where some sorcerer found a means of making every one of the enemy's "flashstones" blow up in his handwhich added a whole new level of spell and counter-spell, and made the common foot soldier leery about having anything to do with sorcery.
Offensive spells, after that, got bigger, more powerful, more sophisticated again, and often involved sorcerers working together to send huge, powerful spells capable of wreaking havoc on an entire force, and so, again, countermeasures were developed until battle became more a test of the skills of sorcerers than of soldiers and generals. This reached its peak just before the Interregnum with a Dragonlord named Adron, about whom the less said the better.
The Interregnum threw all of that out, and war returned to the proper mayhem of soldiers slaughtering each other like gentlemen, and since the end of the Interregnum the sciences of mass destruction have slowly been building up again, with the difference that, sorcery being now so much more powerful, it is hard to find a soldier incapable of some sort of sorcerous attack, and almost impossible to find one incapable of defending himself against sorcery. But the concentration required to cast a spell, or to defend against one, is concentration that isn't being used to avoid the sharp thing someone is likely swinging at you. All of which means that, for the most part, sorcery is beside the point. At least for now. Check back again in twenty or two hundred or two thousand years and you're likely to find a different answer.
To put it another way: In the early days of the Empire, when sorcery was simple and weak, it had little effect on battle; now, in the latter days of the Empire, when sorcery is powerful and sophisticated, it has little effect on battle.
Except, of course, against Easterners, who are helpless against it.
This, at any rate, was how Sethra had explained it before I began my brief military career. In the battle, her words seemed more important and far less accurate; the enemy kept sending nasty spells at us, and sometimes they'd kill someone, and several times they almost killed me.
I hated that.
I would not have needed the lecture to understand what it all meant to the common foot soldier: It meant that, every once in a while one of your comrades would fall over, dead and twitching, with no visible sign of what had happened; that rather more frequently someone would go down, killed or wounded, after being hit by what looked like nothing more than a faint reddish light; and that, even while engaged in hand-to-hand fighting, you had to be aware that someone could be targeting you for something unhealthy.
At least, since the enemy was charging us, they couldn't throw javelins at us, and the spells became fewer as we clashed. The first few seconds after the lines meet is the most intense time of the battle; it is more intense, to the warrior, that is, than the inevitable crisis point where the battle is decided. The first few seconds are when you don't have to do any thinking; later the action gradually slows down, or seems to, until eventually you have time to let your fear catch up to you. As I said, I remember little of that first clash, but the thing I remember most is the sound of ten thousand steel swords thudding into ten thousand wooden shields, and the occasional clang and scrape of sword against spearhead. No, it wasn't really that many, it just sounded like it. Loiosh probably made some smart remarks. It is often a blessing to forget.
I remember noticing that Aelburr was somehow on his feet again, wounds notwithstanding, and swinging away with a will; and I caught a glimpse of Napper, being happy about the only time he ever was, which irony was lost on me because I'd grown used to it. It's amazing what you can grow used to with sufficient provocation, but irony, an old friend of mine, is just no good except at a distance. I wasn't catching any irony at the time, though now I can realize how ironic it is that, in spite of all my worry, and in spite of Kragar's comments, and in spite of Morrolan's hints, I almost certainly would have been done with the whole business when the messenger arrived with my payment the day after I made my report to Morrolan.
I would have been, if.
They showed up at my flat shortly after I returned from the office after speaking with Morrolan. I opened the door in answer to an imperious clap. There were three of them, all men, all Dragonlords, and two of them were armed. The third said, "Your name is Taltos." He pronounced it as if he'd seen it written but never heard it, from which I could draw conclusions that were, no doubt, useful for something.