With one casual swipe of her razor-sharp bronze axe, Mogon swept her head off her body so that her inlaid beak bit into the leaf mould almost between Harmodius’s feet. Mogon subsumed her, ripping her essence from her body.
All the red crests flinched.
Mogon turned away. “That is done,” she said. Behind her, the red crests were picking up their weapons and slinking away into the bog.
Mogon made a sign. “Here is seed that has borne a fine fruit,” she said, and waved to the Outwallers who had trapped the wardens. “My Sossag.”
Nita Qwan stepped forward and bent his knee to the great duchess, whose axe still slowly dripped gore.
“I declare you and yours free of my holds forever, owing none but the duty of hearth and home and hospitality,” Mogon intoned. “This is a great deed you have done.”
Ta-se-ho spoke up boldly. “We’ll take our reward in food, Duchess. Ten days we’ve lain cold and followed this band over every lake and mountain.”
Mogon reached to her belt. “Here-eat mine own.” She flung him a deerskin pouch of marvellous work, porcupine quill and gold beads together. Then she turned, and one of her people flung her great cloak of feathers-heron, and bluejay, and eagle-over her shoulders and she motioned to Harmodius.
“Today, we have won a petty victory. Now we see what we see.”
And when they had joined the Faery Knight, his long lance of crystal all besmattered with gore, Harmodius asked, “Where is the enemy? Will we pursue?”
The Faery Knight frowned. “Mogon let a few of her own people live. The ressst,” he said, “are dinner.” Harmodius flinched, and the Faery Knight showed his fangs.
“Thisss isss the Wild,” he said. “The losssersss don’t walk away. They’re food.”
Chapter Sixteen
North of Dorling-Ser Hartmut
The army of the Wild came out of the woods behind the Ings of the Wolf like dark water pooling in low ground, and saw the Emperor’s army drawn up on the high ground opposite them, above the Inn itself, covering their camp.
Ser Hartmut gathered a dozen of his best lances and Ser Kevin and rode out along the edge of the long grass to reconnoitre. Minutes later, they retreated into the shadows of the woods with two men and six horses dead, and the screams of the Emperor’s Vardariotes pursued them like laughter.
Ser Hartmut had a brief conference with Thorn and then filled the grass with boglins and other creatures as they came up. The Vardariotes and their psiloi conceded the ground slowly at first, but when one end of the psiloi line was over-run by boglins and eaten, the whole line gave way and the lower fields were quickly cleared.
Ser Hartmut’s sailors and Guerlain Capot’s brigans began to dig a fortified camp on the first good rise, as close to the Emperor’s lines as they dared.
Ser Louis came up, red in the face from a hard pursuit against the elusive Vardariotes. He’d lost no men, but caught no easterners.
“Your face would curdle milk, cousin,” he said, as his squire took his great helm.
“The Emperor beat us here, for all that our dark allies promised us his horses would be dead and his men forced to walk,” Ser Hartmut said. While he was talking a pair of his brigans dragged a Morean-swarthy, middle-aged, a tough man with a long beard-in. His hands were bound, and his legs ran with blood.
“Got him off the bugs,” one man said. “Milord. That is, we killed the bugs and took him, because you said you wanted prisoners.”
Ser Hartmut nodded. He snapped his fingers, and Cree-ah, his latest squire, a Huran boy, came at a run.
“Pay them-a silver soldus each.” He nodded.
Cree-ah bowed, reached into his master’s purse and paid both men. He was a northern Huran, and he seemed to feel it was a great honour to serve the famous knight.
Ser Hartmut looked at the bleeding Morean. “Tell me about your army,” he said.
The man frowned.
“Find someone who speaks Archaic, have him question the man, and if that’s not enough, torture him. Threaten to give him back to the boglins.” Ser Hartmut laughed grimly. “That ought to be enough threat for any man.”
He was brought a cup of water and he sat on his stool and watched the imperial army at the top of the ridge. “He beat us here,” he said, to no one in particular. “But now he’s waiting. Can he be fool enough to fight?”
There was a rapid displacement of air, and then Thorn was there.
Ser Hartmut made a moue of distaste. “Did you hear me, and come?”
Thorn grunted. “No. I cannot hear you from a mile away. Not yet. I came for my own reasons. Tell me what you propose.”
Hartmut looked around. “Where is your master?”
Thorn grunted again. “Close. We are on the ground that is claimed by one of his peers. He is very tense.”
Ser Hartmut pointed up the hill, where men were digging rapidly, deepening the ditch in front of ramparts already eight feet of packed earth and logs high.
“It will not get any better. Unless we wait here for the siege train, in which case this is our whole summer.” Hartmut shrugged.
“I am, if needs be, a siege train,” Thorn said. He gestured with his staff and spoke some slow, old, dark word.
Nothing happened.
Ser Hartmut raised an eyebrow. “Be that as it may,” he said, “we may as well attack before they are reinforced. Right now we have heavy odds-four or five to one, at least.”
“My skywatchers tell me that there is another force behind them on the road-all afoot. My master killed their horses.” He bent slightly at the waist. “We could send your humans further east, moving quickly-cut off this force and destroy it.”
Ser Hartmut shook his head. “No. Send something else. These are soldiers, Lord Sorcerer. If you leave them alone, they’ll get you, one way or another. They are cunning and they have thousands of years of experience behind them. I am your only tool against them-your boglins won’t even take up time dying.”
“So you insist,” Thorn said.
“I do. And so much for your vaunted siege train.” Ser Hartmut finished his water and rose.
He was knocked flat by the concussion, and suddenly the world seemed to swim before his eyes.
Men boiled out of the enemy camp like bees from an overturned apiary, and smoke rose, and dust so thick that they could see nothing.
As the dust began to clear, it was obvious that the enemy had formed all his cavalry at the head of his camp and the infantry was busy-on something. There was fire.
“A small token of my efficacy,” Thorn said. “Five hundred weight of rock hurled farther than a man can ride in fifty days.” He shrugged.
“You threw a huge rock into their camp?” Ser Hartmut asked. “Well-look at them now. All formed for an attack. They know their business. Never fought imperials, but one hears things.” He nodded. He motioned to his own men, and Capot appeared in an old arming jacket, smoking a Huran pipe.
“Double the guard. And keep a double watch at all times, with cranequins spanned and ready. Are my orders clear?” Ser Hartmut was warming to the situation. A dire challenge.
He looked up the hill again. “Tomorrow, I’d like to try their works,” he said.
“With your soldiers?” Thorn asked.
“With your bugs,” Ser Hartmut said.
In the morning, Ser Hartmut marshalled the northern army as best he could, in three thick lines that covered the first slope of the green grass of the hills. The first line, according to his notions, was composed of fodder-boglins and sprites and the little rat-like things with enormous teeth that seemed like lightning-fast dogs. In the second line he put all the men except his knights-willing or unwilling-the Huran and the tame Sossag and the other Outwallers who had come for loot, for fame, or for fear. In the third line, he placed all of Orley’s warband, and the great black stone trolls. His own lances were nowhere to be seen.