He suddenly sensed motion on his left. He pivoted just in time to see Medrash cut at his head.
Aoth noticed that the faces around the crackling, smoky campfire all had one thing in common. They reflected a grinding weariness. Most of them looked worried too. But, included in the council of war simply because they were mages, Oraxes and Meralaine were surreptitiously trading smiles as they sat side by side on the ground.
Aoth supposed they were too ignorant to be scared. Or maybe youthful infatuation trumped mundane concerns. He wondered with a touch of wistfulness if he’d ever suffered from that particular delirium. Maybe not. His temperament had always been phlegmatic and pragmatic. Certainly, with a hundred years behind him, he was in no danger of experiencing it now.
Although Cera had showed him he could still like a woman well enough to do something reckless to help her. He smiled and hoped she was keeping out of trouble in Soolabax.
Then Tchazzar came striding up to the fire with a crimson cloak billowing out behind him and Jhesrhi in tow. Everyone rose to bow or salute as quickly as stiff, aching limbs would allow.
The war hero sat down on the campstool reserved for his use. He flicked a hand as though brushing away a gnat. “Sit. Report. You first, Captain.”
“I’ll let Shala and Hasos speak to the condition of the troops, Majesty. I spent most of the day with the scouts.”
“And?”
“Threskel has more companies in the field, essentially a whole other army we haven’t fought yet. They’re maneuvering to keep us from retreating to Soolabax and to keep reinforcements from reaching us.”
“How is that possible?” Shala asked, the firelight gleaming on the bits of steel trim on her masculine garments. “Threskel is a poor country. Even if Alasklerbanbastos spent every coin in his hoard, how can he field so many troops?”
“I can speculate,” said Aoth. “Ships supposedly in the service of High Imaskar have been raiding the Chessentan coast and Chessentan shipping for a while.”
Tchazzar gave a brusque nod. “The ships with dragonborn for crew.”
Aoth hesitated. Did Tchazzar truly not remember they had reason to doubt those particular pirates were actually Tymantherans? “That’s what the survivors claimed. At any rate, there was nothing to indicate the raiders were in league with Threskel. But it’s possible they’ve formed an alliance, and the pirate fleet landed troops to help Alasklerbanbastos fight us.”
“It would have been nice,” said Hasos, his head wrapped in bloody bandages, “if the great sellsword captain had noticed the existence of such an alliance before now.”
Aoth glowered, partly because he too had been privately wondering if he should somehow have predicted what was coming. “My lord, I remind you that I’m not one of His Majesty’s envoys or spies. I’m just a war leader. Now, if you want to cast blame because no one spotted the new troops before they reached their present positions … well, maybe there you have a point. But it’s hard to look everywhere at once, and we were busy keeping track of the three dragons and their minions.”
“Besides,” Gaedynn said, “this is your country, milord-give or take-and what useful intelligence have your own scouts ever gathered about anything? Perhaps you should pry their eyes open before you criticize the way my fellows do their jobs.”
Hasos sucked in a breath, no doubt for an angry retort, but Shala spoke first. “Captain, a moment ago you said, ‘ships supposedly in the service of High Imaskar.’ What did you mean by that?”
Grateful to her for interrupting the budding quarrel, Aoth said, “Ever since we learned the truth-well, part of it-about the Green Hand murders and the violence in Soolabax, we’ve known Chessenta has enemies who are using misdirection against us. And none of us scouts saw any Imaskari today. Even though, with that marbling in their skins and those black clothes they like, they’d be hard to miss.”
“Maybe they hired mercenaries and stayed home themselves,” Hasos said.
Aoth shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Whoever they are,” Tchazzar said, “they mean to kill us if they can. What is the state of the army?”
“One man in nine is either dead or unfit to fight,” Shala said. “The rest are exhausted. Even after scavenging what we could from the battlefield, we’re short on arrows. I recommend we not fight again if we can possibly avoid it. If we fall back toward the Sky Riders-”
Tchazzar’s glare was enough to cut her off. “We will not go any closer to the Sky Riders,” he growled.
Shala met his gaze for what seemed like a long time, then finally bowed her head. “As you command, Majesty.”
“Exactly,” said the living god, “as I command. Now, let’s talk about why we’re in this fix.”
With that, silence fell, broken only by the popping and snapping of the fire and the drone of the camp as a whole. Aoth was astonished-to say nothing of wary-that Tchazzar would redirect the discussion in such a way, and he imagined everyone else was too. He wondered if any good could possibly come of giving an honest response.
He was still wondering when Gaedynn spoke up.
“Since you ask, Majesty, I would have to say-with all respect-that even with the complication of Jaxanaedegor and the ghosts, the plan could still have worked. If you’d acted when the rest of us expected it.”
Tchazzar was as handsome a man as Aoth had ever seen, yet he contrived to smile a smile as ugly as the stained leer on a lich’s withered skull. “So it’s all my fault, is it? Do you all agree?” He rose. “Does each and every one of you agree?”
Khouryn jumped back, and the sword stroke fell short. He kept backpedaling as he snatched for the urgrosh strapped to his back.
As he did, he glimpsed another Medrash trading cuts with Balasar. Or at any rate one version of Balasar. A second one slashed right, left, and right again at the Medrash and Khouryn who were trying to flank him.
Obviously the guardians of Nala’s shrine could adopt the appearances of those they fought. Khouryn wished that Aoth and his truesight were there.
The false Medrash’s sword whirled in a backhand cut at his throat. He parried with his spiked axe, and steel clashed on steel. But at the same moment he felt something slice across his thigh.
He didn’t think the attack had cut deeply. His leather breeches had spared him the worst of it. But a sudden grogginess took hold of him. His eyelids drooped, and the urgrosh felt heavy in his hands. Insane as it was in the middle of a fight for his life, he had the feeling he was in danger of pitching over fast asleep.
He attacked furiously, recklessly, and his foe gave ground. With each swing he bellowed a war cry. The frantic onslaught woke him up, but also left him vulnerable to a sudden stop thrust. He managed to jerk to a halt with the false Medrash’s point a finger-length from his chest.
Another invisible attack slashed across his knee. Once again lethargy tried to smother him, and he bellowed it-or the worst of it-away. Perhaps to achieve the same end, Medrash and Balasar were shouting too, and the clamor echoed through the crypt.
Khouryn doubted he could endure too many more doses of sleep venom or too many more slices across the leg before one crippled him. But he had figured out his opponent’s favorite combination-cut high with the sword to draw a parry, then immediately slash low with whatever it was that did that.
Khouryn sidestepped the next sword stroke and simultaneously chopped with the urgrosh. Though he couldn’t see his target, battle sense guided his hands, and he felt his weapon bite.
The false Medrash gave a shrill hiss unlike any sound that Khouryn had ever heard emerge from the mouth of a genuine dragonborn. The mask of illusion fell away, revealing a reptilian creature skinny as a snake, its body mottled with an intricate pattern of black and purple scales. Covered in spines, the severed tip of its long tail twitched and coiled on the floor.