“But you’re the damned spy and the damned courtier too. You keep track of everything that happens in the War College and the city at large. Think of something.”
Nicos did. He thought that if he called for help, the servants might respond quickly. And if they all attacked Aoth together, they might conceivably overwhelm him.
But when he took another look at the man on the other side of the low little table, the hopeful fantasy withered. At the moment the Thayan might not have his enchanted spear or his griffon either, but even so it was impossible to doubt that he could handle anything his unwilling host could throw at him.
Then a more useful thought occurred to Nicos. He sat up straighter, and Aoth said, “What?”
“The Church of Tchazzar,” Nicos said.
“What about it?”
“Tchazzar promised Halonya that a priesthood would form around her, and it did with remarkable speed. You’d think it would be mostly the same commoners who marched with her in the streets, seeking to rise along with her. But quite a few of them aren’t. Before the coronation she’d never even seen them before, and they seem at home in their new roles. Like educated men accustomed to ritual and protocol.”
“And Halonya doesn’t think it odd that these strangers came out of nowhere to attend her?”
“Halonya is a half-mad pauper moving through a dream of pomp and glory. Everything that’s happening seems miraculous, and so nothing seems peculiar. But here’s my point. At one time Tchazzar was widely regarded as Tiamat’s champion or even her avatar. So, if trained priests have come to officiate at his altar, who do you think they might be?”
“Wyrmkeepers,” said Aoth. “And there are wyrmkeepers all through this tangle. Gaedynn and Jhesrhi ran into them in Mourktar, and another tried to murder me in Soolabax.”
“If Cera Eurthos knew that, and if she made the same guess we just made, then that’s where she might have gone for answers.”
Oraxes had the urge to pace. Instead he and his fellow mages were expected to stand still and at least pretend to listen while Gaedynn Ulraes ran over their instructions-Oraxes refused to think of them as orders-another time.
The archer’s coppery hair was gray under the night sky, and he’d traded his usual bright, foppish attire for a black brigandine and clothes to match. “I know it will be difficult to cast a veil over so many,” he said. “But you only have to hide the skirmishers. We’re moving up in advance of the rest. And the dark should help.”
Meralaine-a diminutive, snub-nosed girl whose pixielike appearance belied a considerable talent for the sinister art of necromancy-nodded and said, “It will. And we’re good at concealment spells. The way Luthcheq treated us, we had to be.”
“When I give the word,” Gaedynn continued, “you’ll light up the enemy and keep them lit. The rest of us can kill them if we can see them.”
“Right,” said Meralaine. It seemed like she was trying to impress Gaedynn, maybe because she hoped to replace Oraxes as interim leader of the mages. Not, of course, that he cared one way or the other.
“As soon as you can,” Gaedynn said, “get behind men with shields and stay there. There’s no target so important that it’s worth one of our only four wizards taking unnecessary chances to strike at it.”
“We understand!” Oraxes snapped. “We understood the first time. You’d do better giving us a moment of peace to clear our heads.”
Gaedynn studied him for a moment, then grinned. “Don’t go out of your way to remind anybody, but I’ve never done this before either. Led a whole army, I mean.”
Oraxes sneered. “Then maybe Hasos should be in charge.”
“Maybe,” Gaedynn said, “but then the garrison would still be bottled up inside Soolabax when Alasklerbanbastos himself shows up to perch his bony arse atop the baron’s keep.”
“We trust you,” said Meralaine, sycophantic bitch that she was.
“Why wouldn’t you?” Gaedynn replied. “My talents are plain for all to see. As are yours. I realize that none of you has been in a full-scale battle before, and night fighting’s not the most comfortable way to begin. But keep your heads and you’ll do fine. Now go take your positions.”
Said positions were at intervals among the vanguard of bowmen, all members of Aoth and Gaedynn’s Brotherhood. Oraxes recited a rhyme, and for a moment the cool night air grew positively frigid. A blur rippled across his portion of the loose formation, and the darkness thickened around it.
He surveyed his work and felt a twinge of pride. He’d like to see Meralaine’s necromancy do better than that.
He somehow missed the signal that started his neighbors moving, and had to trot a couple of paces to catch up. As the archers advanced, he wished he could skulk as quietly as they did. He was an accomplished sneak thief, but that was on floors and cobbles. He couldn’t match the sellswords on grass and mud.
Gaedynn abruptly drew and released. Oraxes hadn’t realized there was anything to shoot at, nor did he see where the arrow flew. He supposed the lanky redhead had shot at a picket and killed him too, because they all kept slinking forward and nobody sounded an alarm.
The vague black mass that was the enemy camp and the east wall of Soolabax rising behind it swam out of the murk. Gaedynn raised his hand, and, up and down the formation, sergeants did the same. Everybody stopped advancing.
Gaedynn turned to Oraxes, smiled, and waved his hand at the foe like an elegant host inviting his guests into a feast.
Oraxes swallowed away a sudden dryness in his mouth. He tried to call the words of a spell to mind. For one horrible moment they wouldn’t come, but then he had them. He whispered the rhyme, building to a crescendo even so, and thrust out his left hand. A spark leaped from his fingertips and streaked over the ground.
Gaedynn had made it clear that above all, he wanted light. But the trouble with a simple enchantment of illumination was that a sorcerer on the other side could rather easily dispel it. It might be more difficult to extinguish the glow of a burning tent.
Besides, Oraxes had a yen to show those hardened professional warriors, those Brothers of the Griffon, that he was as dangerous as any of them. And certainly the most dangerous of the spellcasters they’d recruited in Luthcheq. Even if it was the first time he’d ever used magic in such a blatant, savage way.
The spark exploded into a blast that engulfed and ignited two tents. Silhouetted against the yellow blaze, bodies tumbled and flew to pieces. For a heartbeat the destruction amazed Oraxes, like he hadn’t had anything to do with it. Then he felt sick to his stomach.
But excited too.
Off to the right, another blast set fire to a different part of the camp. Less bloodthirsty, creative, or ambitious, the remaining mages contented themselves with conjuring pools of phosphorescence, one amber and one a sickly green.
“Shoot!” Gaedynn called, drawing and loosing. The skirmishers followed his example.
The arrows arced high and plummeted down. Men, orcs, and kobolds reeled and collapsed beneath the barrage.
Aoth Fezim had put together the force from a portion of his own company and various native Chessentan troops stationed along the border. By itself it was still smaller than the army besieging Soolabax. But the hope was that a surprise attack would more than compensate for the numerical disadvantage.
And it might. But it looked to Oraxes like the Great Bone Wyrm’s warriors wouldn’t remain stunned and disorganized for long. Already there were officers bellowing orders and goblins scrambling to grab their weapons and form up into squads.
Oraxes abruptly remembered that his part of the fight wasn’t over. In fact, it had scarcely begun. He threw darts of crimson light at something big. An ogre maybe, or some sort of tame troll. The creature staggered but didn’t fall down.
“What are you still doing here?” Gaedynn barked. Startled, Oraxes jerked around to find the archer right beside him. “I told you to get behind the shields!”