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sergeants were brutes with a deathless love of fighting, to whom the noise and
gut effort of war was the very sinew of life.
The cohorts seethed upslope like boiled vengeance. Dakar puffed flushed
cheeks until his beard bristled up like a blowfish. Beyond the passing malice
of a bar brawl, he had small love for risks that favored the chance of getting
maimed. At drinking or dice, or for charming paid wenches, he would have had
a fair contest against Keldmar s'Brydion.
On a field of battle, the odds made a fool's wager, unbalanced enough that the
Fatemaster's furies would laugh themselves stupid in prostration.
The ultimate bungle, the Mad Prophet thought. A crazed man's machinations had
ensconced him here with an armed band of clan scouts whose lives all relied on
his wits. His Fellowship master would have buried his face in his hands and
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groaned for their faith in the ridiculous.
A scuffle over rock, then a clipped password to a scout.
The last tribal archer scrambled in, breathless for respite. To the
Mad
Prophet, in passing, he threw the tired comment, "It's high time you came. We
can't stay them on this slope. No cranny a strayed sheep could hide in."
Dakar rolled him a grimace, then said to the clansman who lingered, prepared
to become the bearer of return messages, "Tell Arithon to allow me two hours."
"That's sundown," the scout said, his wolfish eyes on the immense force of
mercenaries who tackled the scarp in practiced order. "You've cut things
damned fine. If the advance isn't stemmed before nightfall, our people are
going to start dying."
No matter how skilled, shepherd archers could not use bows in the dark.
Once cornered in hand-to-hand battle, the s'Brydion mercenaries would hack
their small numbers to ribbons.
"Well, here's thanks in advance for your proud vote of confidence,"
Dakar said, morose and punch -drunk with fatigue.
He scrubbed sweaty palms upon his tunic and chafed, At the moment he felt good
for nothing beyond craving for pillows in a cathouse beside some sultry doxie.
The wistful heat of wishes could scarcely stir him to desire; not with hard
Vastmark shale chewing dents in his backside, and the withering sun limning
the hungry steel teeth of the s'Brydion war host.
No imagination was required to picture how Keldmar would rejoice to see one
plump, dishonest gem peddler impaled arse down on a pike.
Inspired to a wicked bent of afterthought, Dakar smothered down a chortle. To
the dubious scout who awaited, he said, "Take my message.
If you don't want to spoil your humorless thinking, don't for a second look
back."
The clansman went his way, dour and unmollified, while Dakar gazed with fresh
interest downslope.
The troops from Alestron could scarcely he pleased. Theirs was an honorless
assignment, to labor in sweating files to scale a face of stripped rock, then
engage a sneaking band of shepherds scarcely worth blisters to dispatch. Sun
baked and footsore from a punishing day in full war gear, pricked at each step
by whining, small tempests of hostile arrows, many of their number would be
inwardly longing to quit the field for missed comforts.
Others would be irksome and cantankerous, hot for a thumping bloody skirmish
with living foemen they could hack to twitching rags to relieve a lethal
measure of frustration.
Dakar bit his lip, his eyes half-closed in anticipation. The spells which
exacted the least effort were fashioned illusions, the inconvenient, tangled
little bindings designed to hook a man's thoughts and sow from them the
dreaming re-creation of whatever lust held his heart.
From the ground underfoot, the Mad Prophet selected a stub of shale to use as
a stylus. The runes he scribed like tiny seeds upon the air broke into motes,
a haze fine as spider's multiplied and strewed on the wind, a scarcely visible
dusting silk caught to a sheen of dimmed silver. The light sparked and of
energies that by their drawn nature would gravitate and form to the dictates
of human desires.
For effect, and by way of fair warning, the Mad Prophet laced his finished
work through the blank coils of the fogbanks which gathered
to descend and girdle the heights after sundown.
In typical fashion for all his maligned practice, some permission or small
cantrip skimmed awry. The spell assumed an unruly life of its own and
unreeled like blight to gnarl the peace of Ath's order.
Downslope, the men-at-arms under Alestron's banner marched squinting against
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the stabbing glare off scoured shale. Their feet were blistered, their backs
sore from the rub of gambeson and chain mail.
Thirsty and sweating, held to position by short-tempered commanders, their
cohorts of mercenaries plowed ahead in dogged competence. The first startled
shout from the skirmish line bristled them into close shield rings, ranked
fifty abreast and three deep down the rise.
Which snapping, precise discipline did them small good as an uncanny mist
fanned across the Mountainside before them.
It engulfed the rocks just ahead of their position, glutinously thick and
glimmering a sickly, pale green.
While men murmured and shrank and fingered talismans bought for small silver
from dealers in arcane charms and herbals, Keldmar took a brash step forward.
Just shy of the gesticulating vanguard he poised, hooked out his broadsword],
and sliced at the yielding green mass.
Nothing happened. He repeated the move, then added a whistling swing, yanked
off his left gauntlet, and skimmed bare fingers down the steel.
The metal proved neither hot nor cold to his touch.
"Sorcerer's illusion," he pronounced in contempt to the staff officers
attendant on his orders. "Foolish, to think we'd be cowed."
He hailed the veteran in charge of the advance scouts. "Send in your best
team for a look. If they find nothing and return, we press on as planned."
The wait passed in uneasy fidgeting. Men checked their weapons, tightened
straps on their helms, or shrugged to rub Pressure sores under the shoulders
of their mail. No sound creased the quiet beyond the distant whistle of a
wyvern; no movement beyond the heat waves rippling off day-warmed rock.
Twitching off the hunch that they were as sitting targets, captains reviewed
their divisions and watched Keldmar, who scratched his chin and with rankled
impatience eyed the mist that never moved.
The scouts returned, unscathed and puzzled. "My lord, we found nothing.
Just more queer fog and sharp boulders. The sun's out and clear just four
hundred yards higher up."
"Well then," said Keldmar, satisfied. He strode forward in bearish distaste,
first reduced to a hulking outline, then to a blurred
shadow within the bilious green mist.
"Step lively, soldiers!" shouted the captain by the standard bearer.
Too brave to abandon their lord to his own devices, the whole mass of the army
had no choice but to muster shrinking nerves and try to follow.
The mist had no scent, no texture beyond the expected clammy pall of heavy
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