The sentry slapped at his cheek, as if at an insect. But when his fingers felt the dart and his mind registered what it must be, he screamed! Screaming on and on, regularly, like a woman at a birthing, he dropped his spear and ran a few strides toward the distant firelight. All at once, he stopped screaming and fell, his limbs jerking and twitching.
But Benee had not been idle. As soon as the spear was dropped, he ran forward at a crouch and scooped it up; still at a crouching run, he reached the lip of the bank and was over it before the sentry fell. He took time to disassemble his blowpipe and fit the sections back into their cylinder, then slung it and loped down to his boat. Before he pushed off, he gently placed the spear in the boat. Tonight, Benee had become a full man, and this spear was proof of the fact.
So, along the fringes of that narrow land, the swampers and the mountain bands took regular toll of Zastros’ troops, never many at one time. But the constant threat of ambush began to retard an already snail-slow, advance, as the exposed flanks unconsciously drew closer to the center.
So Zastros had two columns of light infantry sent into a particularly troublesome stretch of fenland and no officer or man of them was ever seen again. The harrassment never even slowed. The next unit was a full tahgmah of Zastros’ picked men. Two long weeks later, a bare two hundred of that thousand staggered or crawled out of the fens, and most of those survivors were useless as soldiers, what with strange fevers and festered wounds and addled wits.
And the march route was officially narrowed again, keeping a couple of miles between the eastern flank and the edges of the fens. And Zastros raged and swore at these additional delays. And his young queen, Lilyuhn, whom some named “Witch,” listened to his tirades in heavy-lidded, expressionless silence.
Captain Portos rode back from the High King’s camp in a towering rage. His quite reasonable request that his battered, now understrength, unit be replaced on the hazardous left flank had been coolly denied. As if that were not enough, his personal courage had been questioned for having the temerity to make such a request, and then the High King had refused him his right to meet the questioner at swordpoints.
How quickly, he pondered, did kings forget. When the High King—then Thohooks Zastros, with only a distant claim to the throne—first had raised the banner of rebellion, Komees Portos had enlisted and armed and mounted a squadron of light horses and taken up the rebel cause. Most of that first squadron had been recruited of his own city and lands. Then, oh, then, Zastros had warmly embraced him, spoken to and of him as “brother,” sworn undying gratitude and rich rewards for such aid.
Portos had watched most of that first squadron extirpated at the Battle of Ahrbahkootchee, and he had fled with Zastros across the dread border into the Great Southern Swamp, within which, somewhere, lay the Witch Kingdom. What with fevers and quicksands and horrible, deadly animals, he had had but a bare score left, when Zastros sent word to him and the other living officers. And Portos and his score, all with high prices on their heads, had returned to the ancestral lands and secretly raised and armed and mounted another squadron.
Then came first the horrifying word that King Rahndos and seven other claimants to the throne had, all in one day, deliberately slain themselves! Thoheeks Fahrkos, who had no more right to the throne than Zastros, had been crowned. Then had the kingdom been well and truly split asunder as a host of pretenders’ warbands marched north and south and east and west, fighting each other as often as they fought Fahrkos. Cities were besieged or felled by storm, villages were burned; noble and peasant alike fled to mountain and forest and swamp, as fire and rapine and slaughter stalked the land in clanking armor.
Portos and most of Zastros’ other captains defended their lands as best they could, stoutly held their cities, and awaited word from the Witch Kingdom, where dwelt their lord.
They waited for three long years, while the once-mighty, once-wealthy Southern Kingdom dissolved around them into a hodgepodge myriad of small, ever-warring statelets. Fahrkos ruled his capital and controlled a few miles of land around it, but a large proportion of his predecessor’s fine army had left with many of his most powerful lords, when they departed to cast their hats into the much-crowded ring. The strong central government that had made the Southern Kingdom what it had been and extended its borders over the years had collapsed into anarchy and chaos; from the western savannas to the eastern saltfens, from the Iron Mountains to the Great Southern Swamp, might made right and the status of men was determined not by their pedigree, but by the strength of their swordarm and the size of their warband.
At last the long-deferred summons came and Portos led his squadron to the rendezvous, leaving defense of his lands and city in the hands of his two younger brothers. By the time Zastros and his Witch Kingdom bride, the Lady Lilyuhn, arrived, there were fifteen thousand armed men to greet them … and a full tenth of that force was Portos’ squadron.
Portos and all the rest had expected an immediate, lightning drive on the ill-defended capital, but Zastros marched them west, bearing north, through the very heart of the savannas onto the shores of the King of Rivers; and men marveled at the size of his force—the largest seen under one banner since the breakup of King Fahrkos’ inherited army—and noble and peasant alike came from fen and from forest to take their oaths to so obviously powerful a leader … only such a one as he could put things right again.
Then it was north and east for the more than doubled army, and petty claimants—who might have had a bare chance against equally unworthy opposition—saw the death of glorious pipedreams and swore their allegiances to Zastros and added their warbands to his, so that, by the time he camped below the walls of Seetheerospolis, the fifty thousand men under his banner left the Eeyeh-geestan of the Iron Mountains no choice but to throw their far from inconsiderable forces and resources into Zastros’ lap. And the massive army marched due south, again bypassing the capital, then east to the fringes of the saltfens.
Only when he had almost seven times his beginning strength did he turn toward the capital and King Fahrkos, whom he considered a traitor, since Fahrkos had been one of his supporters in his first rebellion. As Zastros’ van came within the crown lands, the pitiful remnant of that mighty force that had trampled his aspirations into the gory mud of Ahrbahkootchee only five years agone threw down their battered arms, hailed him savior of the realm, and begged leave to serve him.
King Fahrkos, even his advisors and bodyguard having deserted to Zastros, slew his wife, his daughters, and his young son, then fired the wing that had housed his loved family, and fell on his sword. Only the prompt arrival of Zastros’ huge army prevented the entire palace complex from burning.
So the victorious Zastros was crowned High King of all Ehleenoee, a new title, never before claimed by any other. But to the faithful Portos, the price of victory had been steep. Soon after his squadron’s departure, his city had been stormed, sacked, and razed by some bannerless warband; only the citadel had successfully resisted, but both his brothers had died in the defense. And what with disease and accident and the occasional skirmish, no troop of his squadron could, on Coronation Day, muster more than fifty men.
But when Zastros announced his intention of taking advantage of the war betwixt Karaleenos and Kehnooryos Ehlahs to reunite all the Ehleenoee under his rule, ever-faithful Portos did what he felt he must: he sold his ancestral lands and what was left of his city for what little he could get—and that was little enough; considering the condition of the kingdom, more than he’d expected, really—and he re-armed, re-equipped, and recruited replacements to flesh out the shrunken squadron.
Since then, his men had been first to set hoof upon the soil of Karaleenos, had been first to die from hostile action, had ridden nowhere other than van or scout or extended flank. In five weeks he had lost nearly six hundred irreplaceable men and almost as many horses, all by enemy action or disease. Also, being stationed where they were, his troops were at the very tail of the supply lines; therefore, they wanted for everything. His loyal officers and sergeants drove themselves and their troops relentlessly, but it seemed that each order from Zastros’ pavilion was more stupidly impossible than the last. And Portos could feel it in his bones; there would be a mutiny—and soon!—if something were not done to raise the morale of his battered squadron.