From the hilltop Adrogans could see two or three marketplaces, but from their size and location he assumed they had sprung up over what had been a longhouse that had burned down. Stockyards dotted the settlements south, west, and east, with barns and warehouses nearby. To the north a “foreign quarter” had been created, but until the arrival of his troops, it had consisted of two inns and a single tavern, since visitors were rare and accommodations were not meant to encourage long stays.
That foreign quarter had expanded rather quickly in the last month. He and the Alcidese general, Turpus Caro, had stationed their troops in Guraskya, along with a fifth of the Svoin refugees. Other units had trekked further to the north and west, stationing refugees in villages and hamlets, small towns and clan centers. The highland clans, while normally having nothing but contempt for lowlanders, showed incredible compassion for the wretched people who sought sanctuary in their land. The clans had vied to house the people, and Adrogans’ early days in Guraskya had been spent listening to clan leaders explain all they had to offer.
In accord with their sizes and wealth, Adrogans had scattered his charges. The vast majority, a thousand of the sickest and most malnourished, had remained in Guraskya. The Tsuvo, Bravonyn, and Arzensk Clans shared the city and had been more than generous in dealing with the refugees. While they had not opened their longhouses to the foreign troops, they went to great pains to sort through genealogies to pair refugees with families that might share even a drop of blood, and he’d been assured that a lot of common links had been discovered in a very short time—much to everyone’s satisfaction.
Snow blanketed the city, but still people moved about. The troop staging areas, which ringed the hill on which he stood, showed the most activity. It might have seemed an illusion because the round tents housing troops fluttered and twitched in breezes, though the snow built up around the sides did help insulate those within. The troopers had plenty to do, however, drilling, organizing woodcutting expeditions, and scouting the various approaches the Aurolani might take to attack.
Adrogans stroked his chin with a mittened hand. On the plains before Svoin he had met with Nefrai-kesh, the sullanciri who had been Kenwick Norrington and who, in Chytrine’s name, commanded the Aurolani garrison in Svarskya. Chytrine’s general had promised Adrogans that he would not attack until spring, but the Jeranese leader knew better than to take the sullanciri at his word. If Nefrai-kesh needed an excuse to cover a treacherous attack, he could hide behind the fact that he’d been referring to a campaign against Svoin, not against Adrogans’ troops.
As a Gyrkyme might fly, less than a hundred miles separated Guraskya from the Okrans capital, so the threat of attack remained almost constant. While the approaches to the highlands were few and easily guarded, Okrans troops without the benefit of Chytrine’s magicks and dragonels had been victorious centuries before. Lack of an active threat from the highlands before this had saved them from any concerted Aurolani effort to conquer them, but Adrogans refused to repay the highlanders’ kindness by permitting an Aurolani invasion.
Ideas and strategies rolled through Adrogans’ mind, but two things distracted him from studying them too closely. The first was the slow filtering of people onto a training field down to his left, on the east side of the encampment. He counted a hundred and a half—a task made easy as they organized themselves into companies of thirty. A week previous, a quarter of that number had been on the field. The people, men and women alike, still had a skeletal thinness to them, but in their eyes he saw the lean hunger of human wolves.
He was not at all certain how many of the thousand who remained in Guraskya would train and join the Svoin Infantry. The people below were the strongest of his refugees and, in many ways, it surprised him that a legion and a half were able to take the field. While putting food in a man’s belly can make him content, there is no easy way to put fire in his soul. Those below were mostly bent on revenge, for the Aurolani rape of Svoin had cost everyone at least a relative, friend, or lover.
Fight they would, and fiercely. But Adrogans entertained no illusions about their efficacy, for even three months of training would not prepare them for the sheer savagery of warfare. They would have to be held back like a fierce dog on a short lead and then released at that single point where they could do the most damage. The enemy would destroy them—of that he had no doubt—but he suspected the Svoinyki cared less about living than inflicting death on their former tormentors.
The second thing that served to distract him huffed and puffed up the hill. The white of the snow contrasted sharply with the little man’s brown flesh. More oddly, the wizened creature wore only a loincloth and a threadbare cloak. His lack of clothing made it easy to see the various talismans hanging from piercings in his leathery flesh. His spare locks of grey hair floated on the breeze, adding to the jocularity of his lopsided grin.
Adrogans found himself unable to resist returning that grin. “Uncle, it must be momentous news that brings you all the way up here.”
Phfas broadened his smile to display yellowed teeth. “You will feel the change. Try.”
“I have not the time.”
The Zhusk shaman shook his head. “Until you do, all time is wasted.”
Adrogans drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes to concentrate. The Zhusk, a primitive people who lived on a plateau in southeast Okrannel, cared little for the gods of the modern era and instead allied themselves with the primal and elemental spirits of the world. The Zhusk, through arcane rituals, bound themselves to these yrun, as the spirits were called. The talismans that Phfas wore indicated his alliance with the yrun of the air, and that spirit often brought information or wispy hints of it, trading speed for weight of information.
Adrogans had grown up in Jerana not knowing he was a half-Zhusk bastard until Phfas had recognized it and had invited him to enter into the Zhusk community. Adrogans had based many of his anti-Aurolani operations in the Zhusk Plateau, with his adopted people supporting his efforts. He had not, however, undergone the rituals that bound him to yrun until the first battle on the plains of Svoin. While the battle raged, he underwent an agonizing ritual that bound several yrun to him.
Turning within, he found a calm place and shut out all sound and sensation. He ignored the wind and the sound of Phfas’ breathing. He closed his ears to the shouts of the training refugees, the barking of dogs and the lonely cry of a soaring hawk. He pushed past physical sensation, which allowed him to focus on his spirit and the yrun who were his companions.
Earth and air, water and fire were there, but their fast strength denied them the delicacy he needed. Others he swept his mind past until he came to his mistress, the single yrun to whom he was most tightly bound. She appeared as naught but a mere slip of a girl, with soft new-budded breasts, barely past the gangly stage that presaged her womanly beauty. She took form in luminous white, almost a ghost, save that as he drew closer her body hardened and ragged, tearing edges, as serrated as the teeth she flashed in her mirthless smile, defined her. Those edges glittered coldly, and he felt the nibbling of frostbite on his toes and face.
He pushed that sensation away. I will not be distracted.
She knew his thoughts and reached for him, her hands clawing sharply into his scalp. She drew him to her, crushing her body to his. Where she touched him, pain ignited in his piercings. Then she raised her face to his in a kiss that stung. She parted her lips and sucked his tongue into her needle-filled mouth.