The Seer King: Book One of the Seer King Trilogy (3 page)

“I won’t order you, Warrant. But your ass — and the behinds of all the other lances — are in the same bucket mine is. I think I’ll need all the help I can get, even if it’s the most dreadful sort of false augury.”

“Very well, sir. You asked, sir. I don’t have any idea of what th’ crooked die’ll be, nor when it’ll be rolled, but there’s an old army sayin’ that when th’ floor of th’ crapper’s about to give way,y’ send in the man y’ least care if he stinks of shit t’jump up an’ down an’ test it.”

Troop Guide Bikaner’s proverb didn’t surprise me — I’d already figured something was nearly guaranteed to turn sour, and the regiment wished to have the most sacrificeable lamb to offer the tiger. I thanked him for giving me something to think about, but made no other comment. His morale was easily twice as important as any of the men’s, and needed no further lessening. It was my burden. As my father had said, over and over again, “If you want to wear the cloak of command, know it’s of the heaviest cloth, with weights hidden in the fabric, and can be worn by only one man.”

We reached Renan and went directly to the holding barracks, where my orders said the infantry company would be waiting. It was — 125 men, of the Khurram Light Infantry. Troop Guide Bikaner said he’d heard they were considered not the best, but far from the worst soldiery. They’d be a bit of a problem at first, he added, since they had no experience fighting the Men of the Hills. “But they’ll learn quick,” he added. “Or else there’ll be more bones on th’ peaks.”

They were properly officered, led by a Captain Mellet, who impressed me as a stolid, dependable sort, not fast in the attack, but equally slow to give way. He envinced no surprise that the orders put me, his junior, in charge of the expedition, but expressed hope that I wouldn’t give orders to any of the foot soldiers except through him. I reassured him that I may have been young, but I knew my military courtesy, and wished to know where our new superior, the new governor general of the Border States, was staying, so I could report.

“He’s already traveling,” the captain said.

“What?”

“He received special orders night before last. Heliograph orders, in code, all the way from Nicias, saying he must get to Sayana immediately. The orders came directly from the Rule of Ten, and went on to say they’d had reliable reports from the court seers that trouble was building in the capital, and Numantia had to have an envoy on the spot at once. He set out yesterday before first light, and said for us to join him on the road, after the cavalry joined up.”

I was completely astonished.

“Captain, you’re saying the governor general set out for the Border States with
no
escort? He’s going by way of Sulem Pass, isn’t he?”

“Yessir. It didn’t seem right to either of us, but he said his orders were most exact. He also told me the Rule of Ten said there’d been a safe passage established through the pass with the tribesmen. He’s also a seer, you know, so he thought he might be able to sense any threats before they could be mounted.”

“Isa naked with a damned sword,” I swore. “The Rule of Ten imagines the hillmen will keep their word?” Even a novice like myself knew better than that. Especially transiting Sulem Pass. Most especially for a dignitary who’d no doubt be laden with presents for whoever was the current achim in the Border States’ capital of Sayana. “How many in his party? And is he traveling fast?”

“About twenty. He’s got four elephants and their keepers, six outriders, and four wagons heavy-loaded with gear. Eight outriders, two men to each wagon. The beasts’ll ensure he’s not moving much faster than a man marches.”

This was preposterous. Worse, it was insane. I had a momentary flash of what Troop Guide Bikaner had said, but put that thought aside.

“Captain, how fast can your men be ready to move?”

“Two … three hours.”

“Make it two. I want your command at the gates by then. We’ve got to get to this damned resident-general before the fool gets himself massacred, which’ll happen ten feet inside Sulem Pass unless the Men of the Hills are utter fools.”

A look of alarm slowly crossed Captain Mellet’s face, and he rose, knocking over his chair, and cried for his legates. I started for the door, then turned back.

“Captain, what’s our esteemed and suicidal superior’s name?”

“Tenedos. Laish Tenedos.”

• • •

It was closer to three hours before we set off. My father, and my better instructors at the lycee, had said that patience can be an officer’s biggest virtue, and so it was this day. I wanted to shout at the soldiers as they trudged down the winding road that climbed toward the hills to speed up. I wanted to order our bullocks prodded into a stumbling trot. By the armor of Isa, I wanted all of us to be mounted and at the gallop.

But I kept silent, gnawing on my tongue as if it were prime beef, and we plodded on.

If I thought our carts moved slowly, they were racing chariots compared to the infantry’s wagons. The KLI seemed to travel with every possession they’d been born with, including several women on the carts who would have fit into Mehul’s whorehouse district called Rotten Row without rousing the slightest comment.

We made camp that night without sighting Resident-General Tenedos’s party.

At first light, I told a detail of five men to ride up the road, and if they encountered the diplomat, to ask him to please hold until his escort arrived. I also bade them turn back no later than midafternoon — we were close to the mountains, and the Men of the Hills defined that border most loosely and were likely to have ambush parties out.

At dusk we set up for the second night, and as we lit our fires the detail returned. The party must have been moving faster than Captain Mellet had thought, because they’d seen no one. But the resident-general was on the road, or anyway it was someone with elephants, since they found droppings. “Either that,” someone in the rear ranks muttered, “or th’ damned arm-waver’s taken wi’ th’ worst case a th’ shits since Ma told me about corks.” I ostentatiously didn’t hear the comment, but noted the man, and when time came for a detail to help our cooks clean up after dinner, that lance found himself working.

The mountains were very close now, and we’d reach them on the morrow. Something the patrol had said had worried me even more: They’d encountered no travelers at all coming north. If no one was on the road from the Border States, no merchant, wanderer, or beggar, trouble did indeed threaten.

At daybreak I sent another patrol forward, but this time with ten men, since we were close to hostile territory.

The foothills were bare, and stony, and we kept sharp eyes out to our flanks. Several times scouts reported movement, but we never saw horse nor rider.

“They’re out there,” Lance-Major Wace said grimly. “But th’ only time you see one of them is when they want you to.”

The patrol rode back well before dark, and said they’d reached the mouth of Sulem Pass without encountering the resident-general.

We were too late.

• • •

We made camp and I set a rotating guard of one-quarter of the men. Now we must be ready for battle at any moment. We only unpacked vital necessities, and fed and watered the unhappy bullocks in their harness.

Two hours before first light we broke camp and when the sky grayed we moved out. I asked Captain Mellet to put out his soldiers on either side of the road, and kept response elements of my cavalry ready in case they were hit. We moved in open order as well, to present a less juicy target.

Just at dawn, we entered Sulem Pass.

The pass, as most know, is the most direct route between the kingdoms of Numantia and Maisir, with the Border State of Kait between. In times of peace it is a prime trading route.

But the Men of the Hills seldom allow that. To them, a trader is nothing more than a personal sutler, who provides all manner of goods and gold as soon as the hillman waves a sword in his face.

Sulem Pass twists for about twenty leagues, until it opens onto the plains that lead to the city of Sayana. Bare ridges climb 600 to 1,000 feet above the floor of the pass. The pass begins in a narrow ravine, then, about halfway through, opens onto a plateau where the Sulem River turns and rushes down a canyon, to the south. From there until the comparative flatlands of Kait, it’s more hospitable, the river coursing beside the track.

Twenty leagues — only two days’ ride, but no one, not even the hillmen, have ever ridden it in that time. Each twist, each zigzag, each rock may, and most likely does, harbor an ambush.

The pass mouth on the Ureyan side is the narrowest, with the mountains close to a few hundred feet of each other, and the face on either side is unclimbable rock.

We moved slowly through this gut. I had horsemen out in front, and, just back of them, the men Captain Mellet said were his fleetest of foot. If they saw any sign of trouble, they were to double back to the column, giving the alarm.

I sent them out in pairs, with orders that no man was to abandon his mate under any circumstances. The Men of the Hills prize bravery above all, and the bravest can endure any pain without crying out. A captive, wounded or no, will be tortured to death, and if he dies without screaming he will be well spoken of around the hillmen’s fires. But that seldom happens, for the tribesmen are most skilled at their recreation.

My cavalrymen, being experienced, had their own rules: Never leave a comrade unless he is dead, and if you must, kill him yourself. Some of the men carried small daggers in sheaths around their necks, intended for themselves if no one else could grant the last mercy.

A quarter-mile inside the pass, the way broadened, and our progress was even slower. This sounds illogical, but the more open ground was perfect for a trap.

There was an immutable policy regulating how soldiers were to travel through Sulem Pass: First send foot soldiers to take and hold the closest hilltops. Then the road-bound unit moves even with these pickets. A second group takes the next hilltops, while waiting for the first to descend safely. This was the most likely time of ambush — when a soldier thought he wouldn’t be attacked, and all that was necessary was to slip back down the hill and march on.

It was then that the sandy rock would become a ululating group of warriors, ten, perhaps twenty, who’d rush the pickets, daggers flashing, and before anyone could move there’d be naked bodies strewn on the rock, the Men of the Hills retreating with their loot and, if Isa was not good, a captive or two for later amusement.

I’d been taught there were seldom big victories when Numantians fought the Men of the Hills — perhaps one or two bodies would be found, more likely only bloodstains and silence, and once again the column would move on.

We went into Sulem Pass at no more than a half-mile an hour, if that. I was angry, angry at these strange orders that had sent a foolish diplomat to certain death, and at the snails I commanded, but mostly at my own inability to think of a plan, any plan.

Again the pass narrowed, and I saw, perched high above, the ruins of a stone fort Numantia had carved out two centuries earlier, when our country had a king, instead of being governed by the Rule of Ten, and before we’d allowed the Kaiti, with the implicit support of the Maisir, to negotiate us all the way back to the flatlands.

These days Kait was as the Men of the Hills preferred it — anarchie, where every man had an enemy and every tribe a desperate feud. The achim on the throne in Sayana was barely more than a figurehead and, being himself a brigand, someone who used the royal advantage for his clan’s private wars.

The pass widened, and there was a small village, and the legend on my map said
They pretend to be allies of any traveler, but turn not your back. Let one of them drink water, taste fruit, before you buy.

I saw only half a dozen old men, a few babes, and no women at all. The last was unsurprising — the Men of the Hills prize their women as possessions to be kept hidden, for fear a bolder or stronger man will steal them. But that there were no men, leaning insolently on spear or sheathed saber, was alarming.

Troop Guide Bikaner told me this most likely meant the men were araiding. “That’ll be th’ happiest explanation, though,” he said.

As we went deeper into the pass, crawling along, I saw, on the highest crag above me, a bit of movement that might have been someone watching. Then came a mirror-flash, as someone signaled our presence to others, deeper in the pass.

A mile or so farther on, we came on another human presence. Bodies, half-rotten, were scattered in a draw that led up from the trail. They were black, dead more than a few days, and decaying.

One of my men dismounted, and ran to the corpses. As he did, kites fluttered up, skrawking at their meal being disturbed. He reported they were hillmen, and all were naked, stripped bare. He’d seen an arrow shaft protruding from one’s ribs, and knew by the markings it came from a hillman’s bow.

“I reckoned,” Troop Guide Bikaner said, “back there if th’ village men were out just raidin', that was the best that could be. This” — and his hands swept across the tiny battleground — “means worse. Feudin’ at least. Just as likely buildin’ themselves up for war.”

“Against whom?” I asked.

“Anybody,” Bikaner said. “Mebbe th’ folks in Sayana that they despise for bein’ weaklings who give up on th’ hills. Mayhap south, into Maisir.

“But most likely north. Into Urey. Been a few years since they struck at us, an’ th’ thought of how rich it’s got since they raided’s got to be makin’ ‘em lick their lips, thinkin’ of th’ sweets t’ be had.”

He was most likely right — I’d heard in the Lancers’ mess it had been almost five years since there’d been a good plague or a better war, which was when promotions fell like leaves in a windstorm. It would make a grand preamble for such a war if the Men of the Hills could parade a high-ranking Numantian head on a lance.

Captain Mellet’s sergeants were shouting, and I saw pickets running down from the latest hill they’d outposted, and other warrants were calling for their squad to be ready to mount the next ridge and we were ready for our next round of leap-the-frog.