The Steward and the Sorcerer, James Peart [novels to read in english .txt] 📗

smaller city, as Brinemore was then, and one less politically and economically motivated.  A hundred years before that there were the Punic Campaigns, back in a time when most of the Northern Earth’s city states held a more or less equal distribution of wealth and status and the real power lay with the Druids in Fein Mor.  They had numbered in the hundreds then.  Now there was only one and he had been styled by Longfellow as a threat to the state.  The Commander privately thought this an ugly business.  The Druids were not natural aggressors.  This one seemed to be fighting for his survival in the face of a blanket-wide ban on sorcery.  But, seeing as how Dechs was being paid to do his job and stood at least an outside chance of succeeding, he may as well do the thing right.  His task here was to prevent the Naveen King from coming close to any of his soldiers.  Should that happen, should he reach even one, he had been told the loyalty of all of his men would be compromised.  It had something to do with the nature of the sorcery Iridis possessed.  He understood little of it yet the instructions came from the Vice-Steward himself.  The Vice-Steward seemed more prepared for this conflict than Longfellow.  No matter, he would obey the command, yet in the meantime he would carry out the battle as he had planned as if other things stood equal.

He contemplated his strategy.  They could not fight this battle on the move.  There had been no time to set up ditches and channels to fall back into after an attack and retreat stratagem- there had been barely enough to establish the barricade in Cornerstone Pass.  Nor had they been able to build traps and snares or lay down trip lines.  The Trenholm, a vast stretch of land that was mostly woodland park bordered the citadel at one end of the old city and was completely exposed.  The enemy might try to run at them at some point along the edge of the woodland but it would have to go through the Pass in order to gain access to the citadel. They might of course try to punch a hole through the old city wall that protected the citadel but he did not think the Naveen King had the skills to do that.  The key lay in the Pass.  If they failed here, the citadel would be overrun.

“Commander,” Jens said, “they’re here.”

He looked out over the Trenholm and saw the approaching crowd.

There were thousands of them, perhaps as many as forty or fifty thousand, walking, not marching, in loose formation, garbed in civilian robes of varied colour and cloth.  Some of them carried weapons or implements that could be used as weapons- it was hard to see in the moonlight- brandishing them inexpertly as if they had not been trained in their use, holding them in grips that were odd and wrong.  As they approached and their faces were partly exposed from under the shadow of the near pervasive darkness, their eyes appeared flat and expressionless, as if they’d been cast in a mild trance.  In the thinly provided light of the moon they looked spectral, almost not there.

Dechs exchanged a look with his Sub-Commander.  He’d seen a similar expression on the red demon’s face, the air of someone held in thrall by something beyond his reach.  They were moments from engaging in combat and they did not shout or sing out.  No cheers of encouragement issued from their ranks. Apart from the creak and rattle of their clothing and weapons, and the impact of their boots on the soft earth, there was silence.  Not the silence borne of the kind of voiceless emotions you might expect but the stillness of alien regard, of cold expectation.  They approached the city wall like this and Dechs thought what Longfellow had said about them, that their lives were already over, was something he could now believe.

He turned to Jens, gesturing him to alert his men.  “Watch out for the Naveen King...and the Druid.”

The columns of men and women narrowed and thickened as they approached the Pass, their boots thudding on the forest earth as they cleared the trees of the Trenholm, lifting their weapons as one in apparent salute at their foe.  There was no rage evident on their features, no swell of anger among their ranks, as far as Dechs could see.  He was used to witnessing the kind of emotion that was absent here, the antagonism that fuelled a regular conflict.  He relied on it even, to give his men focus.  A practical sort, he saw the advantage to its absence now, a lack of resistance that would lend them the upper hand.  There was no need to explain this to his men, however.  They understood as he did.  Turning to them, he raised one arm, clenching his hand in a bracing gesture.

Down out of the Trenholm they strode, tracking the old city wall that led toward the Pass, descending the forested incline that sloped toward the wall.  As they reached flat ground, they massed together to form a concentrated pack and headed for the Pass.  Dechs could see the tools they carried now: some of them held actual weapons- pikes and broadswords (a number of them oversized and old, liberated perhaps from the museums and historical galleys), garden implements such as hatchets, forks and spades that had been welded down to a point and sharpened on whetstones and a few carried hand-fashioned bows and arrows, bearing them inexpertly yet with expressions that told him they had resolved to use them.  The moon shone on their deathly faces, illuminating them like waxworks, yet they were moving more quickly now, striding faster and faster, the expression of stillness betrayed by a sudden, lunging rush at the Exile Legionnaires.

Dechs brought his fist down and roared: “Legionnaires, do your duty!”

The Exiles shot rounds of arrows into the citizenry as