The History of the Runestaff Read online

"I am not sure. Six months, almost certainly - perhaps a year - perhaps two. But then again, it could be a matter of hours. I cannot deceive you, Dorian Hawkmoon, but I can give you extra hope. There is a sorcerer in the East who could remove the Black Jewel from your head. He is opposed to the Dark Empire and might help you if you could ever find him."

  "What is his name?"

  "Malagigi of Hamadan."

  "Of Persia, then, this sorcerer?"

  "Aye," nodded Count Brass. "So far away as to be almost out of your reach."

  Hawkmoon sighed and sat up. "Well, then, I must hope your sorcery lasts long enough to sustain me for just a little while. I will leave your lands, Count Brass, and go to Valence to join the army there. It gathers against Granbretan and cannot win, but at least I will take a few of the King-Emperor's dogs with me, by way of vengeance for all they did to me."

  Count Brass smiled wryly. "I give you back your life and you immediately decide to sacrifice it. I would suggest that you think for a while before you take any action of any kind.

  How do you feel, my lord Duke?"

  Dorian Hawkmoon swung his legs off the bench and stretched again. "Awake," he said, "a new man ..." He frowned.

  "Aye - a new man . . ." he murmured thoughtfully. "And I agree with you, Count Brass. Vengeance can wait until a subtler scheme presents itself."

  "In saving you," Count Brass said almost sadly, "I took away your youth. You will never know it again."

  Chapter Six - THE BATTLE OF THE KAMARG

  "THEY SPREAD neither to east nor west," said Bowgentle one morning some two months later, "but carve their way directly south. There is no doubt, Count Brass, that they realize the truth and plan revenge upon you."

  "Perhaps their vengeance is directed at me," Hawkmoon said from where he sat in a deep armchair on one side of the fire. "If I were to go to meet them, they might be satisfied.

  No doubt they think of me as a traitor."

  Count Brass shook his head. "If I know Baron Meliadus, he wants the blood of all of us now. He and his wolves lead the armies. They will not stop until they reach our bound-aries."

  Von Villach turned from the window where he had been looking out over the town. "Let them come. We will blow them away as the mistral blows the leaves from the trees."

  "Let us hope so," said Bowgentle doubtfully. "They have massed their forces. For the first time they seem to have ignored their usual tactics."

  "Aye, the fools," muttered Count Brass. "I admired them for the way they spread out in a widening semi-circle. That way they could always strengthen their rear before advancing.

  Now they have unconquered territory on both flanks and enemy armies capable of closing off their rear. If we beat them, they'll have a hard time retreating. Baron Meliadus's vendetta against us robs him of his good sense."

  "But if they win," Hawkmoon said softly, "they will have built a road from ocean to ocean, and their conquering will be the easier for that."

  "Possibly that is how Meliadus justifies his action," Bowgentle agreed. "I fear he could be right in anticipating such an outcome."

  "Nonsense!" von Villach grumbled. "Our towers will resist Granbretan."

  "They were designed to withstand an attack from land,"

  Bowgentle pointed out. "We did not reckon for the aerial navies of the Dark Empire."

  "We have our own army of the air," Count Brass said.

  "The flamingoes are not made of metal," Bowgentle replied.

  Hawkmoon rose. He still wore the black leather doublet and breeches given him by Meliadus. The leather creaked as he moved. "Within a few weeks at most, the Dark Empire will be at our door," he said. "What preparations must be made?"

  Bowgentle tapped the large map he had rolled under his arm. "First, we should study this."

  Count Brass pointed. "Spread it on yonder table."

  As Bowgentle spread the map, using wine cups to keep the edges down, Count Brass, von Villach, and Hawkmoon gathered round. The map showed the Kamarg and the land surrounding it for some hundred miles.

  "They are more or less following the river along its eastern bank," Count Brass said, indicating the Rhone. "From what the messenger said, they should be here" - his finger touched the foothills of the Cevennes - "within a week. We must send out scouts and make sure we know their movements from moment to moment. Then, when they reach our borders, we must have our main force grouped at exactly the right position."

  "They might send in their ornithopters ahead," Hawkmoon said. "What then?"

  "We'll have our own air scouts circling and be able to anticipate them," von Villach growled. "And the towers will be able to deal with them if the air riders cannot."

  "Your actual forces are small," Hawkmoon put in, "so you will be depending heavily on these towers, fighting an almost entirely defensive action."

  "That is all we shall need to do," Count Brass told him.

  "We shall wait at our own borders, with ranks of infantry filling in the spaces between the towers, using heliographers and other signalers to direct the towers to where their power will be most needed."

  "We seek only to stop their attack on us," Bowgentle said with a hint of sarcasm. "We have no intention of doing more than withstand them."

  Count Brass glanced at him and frowned. "Just so, Bowgentle. We should be fools to press an attack - our few against their many. Our only hope of survival is to depend on the towers and show the King-Emperor and his minions that the Kamarg can resist anything he cares to try - whether open battle or long siege - attack from land, sea, or air. To expend men on warfare beyond our borders would be senseless."

  "And what say you, friend Hawkmoon?" Bowgentle asked.

  "You have had experience of battle with the Dark Empire."

  Hawkmoon paused, consulting the map. "I see the sense of Count Brass's tactics. I have learned to my cost that any formal battle with Granbretan is out of the question. But it occurs to me that we could weigh the odds further to our advantage if we could pick our own battleground. Where are the defenses strongest?"

  Von Villach pointed to an area southeast of the Rhone.

  "Here, where the towers are thickest and there is high ground where our men could group. At the same time, the ground over which the enemy would have to come is marshy in this season and would cause them some difficulty." He shrugged.

  "But what point is there in such wishful discussion? They will pick the point of attack, not we."

  "Unless they could be driven there," Hawkmoon said.

  "What would drive them? A storm of knives?" Count Brass smiled.

  "1 would," Hawkmoon told him. "With the aid of a couple of hundred mounted warriors - never engaging them in open battle, but constantly nibbling at their flanks, we could guide them, with luck, to that spot as your dogs drive your bulls.

  At the same time, we should have them always in sight and be able to send messages to you so that you would know at all times exactly where they were."

  Count Brass rubbed at his mustaches and looked at Hawkmoon with some respect. "A tactician after my own heart. Perhaps I'm becoming overcautious, after all, in my old age. If I were younger, I might have conceived a similar scheme. It could work, young Hawkmoon, with a great deal of luck."

  Von Villach cleared his throat. "Aye - luck and endurance.

  D'you realize what you're taking on, lad? There'd be scant time for sleeping, you'd have to be on your guard at all hours.

  It's a grueling task you're considering. Would you be man enough for it? And could the soldiers you take stand it? Then there's the flying machines to consider. . . ."

  "We'd only need to keep watch for their scouts," Hawkmoon said, "for we'd strike and run before they could get their main force into the air. Your men know the terrain - know where to hide."

  Bowgentle pursed his lips. "There's another consideration.

  The reason they're following the river is to be near their water-carried supplies. They're using the river to carry provisions, spare moun
ts, war engines, ornithopters - which is why they move so rapidly. How could they be induced to part company with their barges?"

  Hawkmoon thought for a moment, then grinned. "Not too difficult a question to answer. Listen. . . ."

  Next day, Dorian Hawkmoon went riding across the wild marshland, the lady Yisselda at his side. They had spent much time together since his recovery, and he was deeply attached to her, though he seemed to show her little attention. Content enough to be near him, she was yet sometimes piqued that he made no demonstration of affection. She did not know that he wanted nothing more than to do so but he felt a responsibility toward her that made him control his natural desire to court her. For he knew that at any moment of the night or day he might become in the space of a few minutes a mindless, sham-bling creature bereft of his humanity. He lived constantly in the knowledge that the Black Jewel's power could burst the bonds Count Brass had cast around it and that shortly afterward the Lords of Granbretan would give the jewel its full life and it would eat his mind.

  So he did not tell her that he loved her and that this love had first stirred his inner mind from its slumber and that because he saw this, Count Brass had spared his life. And she was, for her part, too shy to tell him of her love.

  They rode together over the marshes, feeling the wind in their faces, tugging at their cloaks, galloping faster than was wise through the winding, hidden causeways through the lagoons and swamps, disturbing quail and duck, sending them squawking into the skies, coming upon herds of wild horses and stampeding them, alarming the white bulls and their wives, galloping to the long, lonely beaches where the cold surf spread, splashing through the spray, beneath the shadows of the watchful guard towers, laughing up at the lowering clouds, horses' hooves beating on the sand, and at length bringing their steeds to a halt to stare out to sea and shout above the song of the mistral.

  "You leave tomorrow, Bowgentle tells me," she called, and the wind dropped for a moment and all was suddenly still.

  "Aye. Tomorrow." He turned his sad face to her, then quickly turned away again. "Tomorrow. It will not be long before I return."

  "Do not be killed, Dorian."

  He laughed reassuringly. "It's not my fate, I think, to be killed by Granbretan. If it were - I'd be dead several times over."

  She began to reply, but then the wind came roaring in again, catching her hair and curling it about her face. He leaned over to disentangle it, feeling her soft skin and wishing with all his heart that he could hold her face cupped in his hands and touch her lips with his. She reached up to grasp his wrist and keep his hand where it was, but he withdrew it gently, wheeled his horse, and began to ride inland, toward Castle Brass.

  The clouds streamed across the sky, above the flattened reeds and the rippling water of the lagoons. A little rain fell, but hardly enough to dampen their shoulders. They rode back slowly, both lost in their own thoughts.

  Clad in chain mail from throat to feet, a steel helm with nasals to protect head and face, a long, tapering broadsword at his side, a shield without insignia, Dorian Hawkmoon raised his hand to bring his men to a halt. The men bristled with weapons - bows, slings, some flame-lances, throwing axes, spears - anything that could be hurled from a distance.

  They were slung across their backs, over their pommels, tied to the sides of their horses, carried in their hands and at their belts. Hawkmoon dismounted and followed his outrider toward the crest of the hill, bending low and moving cautiously.

  Reaching the top, he lay on his belly and looked down into the valley where the river wound. It was his first sight of the full might of Granbretan.

  It was like a vast legion out of hell, moving slowly southward, battalion upon battalion of marching infantry, squadron after squadron of cavalry, every man masked so that it seemed that the entire animal kingdom marched against the Kamarg. Tall banners sprouted from this throng, and metal standards swayed on long poles. There was the banner of Asrovak Mikosevaar, with its grinning, sword-wielding corpse on whose shoulder a vulture perched; beneath it were stitched the words DEATH TO LIFE! The tiny figure swaggering in his saddle close to this standard must be Asrovak Mikosevaar himself. Next to Baron Meliadus, he was the most ruthless of all the Warlords of Granbretan. Nearby was the cat standard of Duke Vendel, Grand Constable of that Order, the fly banner of Lord Jarak Nankenseen, and a hundred other similar flags of a hundred other Orders. Even the mantis banner was there, though the Grand Constable was absent - he was the King-Emperor Huon. But in the forefront rode the wolf-masked figure of Meliadus, carrying his own standard, the snarling figure of a rampant wolf, even his horse caparisoned all in armor with fancifully wrought chamfron resembling the head of a gigantic wolf.

  The ground shook, even at this distance, as the army moved on, and through the air came the jingle and clatter of its arms, the stench of sweat and of animals.

  Hawkmoon did not look for long at the army proper. He concentrated on the river beyond, noting the vast numbers of heavily laden barges that lay side by side, so thick that they almost hid the water. He smiled and whispered to the scout at his side, "It suits our plan, you see? All their watercraft bunched together. Come, we must circle their army and get a good distance behind it."

  They ran back down the hill. Hawkmoon climbed into his saddle and waved for his men to move on. Following him, they rode at speed, knowing there was little time to spare.

  They rode for the best part of that day until the army of Granbretan was merely a cloud of dust to the south and the river was free of the Dark Empire's ships. Here the Rhone narrowed and became shallow, running through an artificial watercourse of ancient stone, with a low stone bridge spanning it. The ground on one side was flat, and on the other it sloped gently down to form a valley.

  Wading through this part of the river as evening came, Hawkmoon looked carefully at the stone banks, looked up at the bridge, and tested the nature of the river bed itself while water rushed around his legs, chilling them as it crept between the links of his mail stockings. The watercourse was in poor repair. It had been built before the Tragic Millennium and hardly repaired since. It had been used to divert the river for some reason. Now Hawkmoon intended to put it to a new use.

  On the bank, waiting for his signal, were grouped his flame-lancers, holding their long, unwieldy weapons carefully.

  Hawkmoon climbed back to the bank and began pointing out certain spots on the bridge and the banks. The flame-lancers saluted and began to move in the directions he had indicated, raising their weapons. Hawkmoon stretched his arm toward the west, where the ground fell away, and called to them. They nodded.

  As the sky darkened, red flame began to roar from the tapering snouts of the weapons, cut its way into stone, turned water into boiling steam, until all was heat and tumbling chaos.

  Through the night, the flame-lances did their work; then suddenly there was a great groan and the bridge collapsed into the river in a great cloud of spray, sending scalding water in all directions. Now the flame-lancers turned their attention to the western bank, carving out blocks that tumbled down into the dammed river, which was beginning to spread out around the bridge that blocked it.

  By morning, water rushed down a new course into the valley, and only a small stream flowed along the original bed.

  Tired but satisfied, Hawkmoon and his men grinned at one another and mounted their horses, turning away in the direction whence they had come. They had struck their first blow against Granbretan. And it was an effective blow.

  Hawkmoon and his soldiers rested in the hills for a few hours and then went to look at the Dark Empire's army again.

  Hawkmoon smiled as he lay beneath the cover of a bush and looked down into the valley at the scene of confusion there.

  The river was now a morass of dark mud, and in it, like so many stranded whales, lay the battle barges of Granbretan, some with prows jutting high and sterns buried deep in the stuff of the riverbed, some on their sides, some bow-first in the mud, some upside-down, war en
gines scattered, livestock in panic, provisions ruined. And wading among all this the soldiers attempted to haul the mud-encrusted cargoes to land, free horses from their entangling ropes and straps, and rescue sheep, pigs, and cows that struggled wildly in the morass.

  There was a great noise of bellowing animals and shouting men. The uniform ranks that Hawkmoon had seen earlier were now broken. On the banks, proud cavalrymen were being forced to use their horses like dray animals to haul barges closer to firm ground. Elsewhere, camps had been erected as Meliadus had realized the impossibility of moving on until the cargoes were rescued. Although guards had been posted around the camps, their attention was on the river and not on the hills where Hawkmoon and his men waited.

  It was coming close to dark, and since the ornithopters could not fly at night, Baron Meliadus would not know the exact reason for the river's sudden drying up until the next day. Then, Hawkmoon reasoned, he would dispatch engineers upriver to try to put right the damage; but Hawkmoon was prepared for this.

  Now it was time to ready his men. He crept back down to the depression in the hillside where his soldiers were bivou-acked and began to confer with his captains. He had a particular objective in view, one he hoped might help demoralize the warriors of Granbretan.

  Nightfall, and by the light of brands the men in the valley continued their work, manhandling the heavy war engines to the bank, dragging cases of provisions up the steep sides of the riverbed. Meliadus, whose impatience to reach the Kamarg allowed his men no rest, rode among the weary, sweating soldiers urging them on. Behind him, each great circle of tents surrounded the particular standard of its Order, but few of the tents were fully occupied since most of the forces were still at work.

  No one saw the approaching shapes of the mounted warriors whose horses walked softly down from the hills, each man swathed in a dark cloak.

  Hawkmoon drew Ms horse to a halt, and his right hand went to his left side, where the fine sword Meliadus had given him was scabbarded. He swept the sword out, raised it for a moment, then pointed it forward. It was the signal to charge.