Arcanum Part 12

Gerhard seemed caught between rage and terror. It left him looking impotent.

"Leave," he said, waving the point of his sword at the tent opening. "I need to think."

So she got up and slipped back outside. The night was cold, but the men were still singing.

14.

They struck camp at dawn, and far from needing to be roused from an indolent lie-in, Nikoleta found herself ready long before soldiers came to dismantle her tent. She washed in water that wasn't even as cold as that used in the novices' house. Breakfast was the remains of supper she'd squirrelled away.

She found herself enjoying being outside the city's confines more than she'd thought she would. Before, sleeping rough and splashing meltwater on her face were signs of failure. Now, after years of having every aspect of her life regulated and every shortcoming picked apart, she felt liberated all over again.

And the thought that when she got back to Juvavum, she'd march right up to the White Tower and dare the inhabitants to do their worst had kept her warm all night.

She hung on to one of the blankets and stayed wrapped in it while she watched the men uproot the stakes they'd hammered into the ground, then slowly collapse the poles that held the canvas upright. All across the camp, the grey forms of men in the half-light busied themselves with storing everything away on the wagons, feeding and resaddling the horses, spending one last moment by the still-smoking fires.

Those were tasks she knew little about, and when her tent was folded and carried away, she followed to watch the men lean into the wooden cart and stow it neatly with the others. The wagon's wheels, propped up with a steersman's stick, rotated slowly, waiting for solid ground to bite against.

Afterwards, she wandered where her feet took her, soldiers and servants and wagon drivers falling silent and respectful as she stopped momentarily to watch them work, then murmuring softly to each other as she walked on. At one point, she found herself next to the two bonfires the men had lit the previous evening, and she frowned at the long iron rake being used to scatter the red embers across the scorched grass.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"We always do this," said the man with the rake. "Grub the fire out."

"But why?"

The man, with more than a hint of grey at his temples, hooked a half-burnt log and rolled it to the side of the fire. As he did so, fresh little tongues of flame crept up its blackened sides. "Mistress, I suppose it's just down to good manners. If we were in a hurry, I dare say we wouldn't bother. But when are we ever in a hurry?"

She could feel the heat on her face from the exposed ground at the centre. Of course fire fascinated her. She'd spent her adult life learning how to control it, use it, create it but never tame it. It was wild, like she was.

"Leave the other fire alone," she said.

"Mistress?"

"Just do it." She walked through the embers to the far side, kicking up sparks as she walked. She could have done it barefoot, but she'd already put her boots back on. From the other side of the fire, she looked over her shoulder. "Understand?"

"Mistress." The man looked down at the ground and wouldn't look up again.

She sat down a distance away while the rest of the camp was cleared. Yes, the soldier's captain questioned why both fires hadn't been raked flat, and the man in charge of the task pointed over to her and shrugged his shoulders. She didn't acknowledge the attention, only waited until everything was ready.

Doubt had no part in a sorcerer's mind. Doubt was for lesser creatures. It was for those who weren't supremely confident in their abilities and hadn't practised until their noses bled through the sheer effort of concentration.

Nikoleta's life had been forged in a hotter furnace than most: she knew that success and failure were sometimes out of her hands. What she had to do was to mould the world around her until it bent to her will.

She walked back through the line of ready wagons, files of spears and rows of mounted earls.

"My lord?" she said to Gerhard.

Back in his armour, the Prince of Carinthia looked down at her from his horse. "Mistress Agana, you've interfered with the orderly striking of camp."

She nodded, looking back at the thin column of smoke still rising from the remaining fire. "I wanted to make a deposit of sorts. Of trust."

Gerhard frowned under his helmet.

"Send the wagons on. We'll catch them up soon enough." She dismissed the servant holding the bridle of her horse, and put her foot in the stirrup.

Still frowning, Gerhard ordered the wagons down the via, and as the last one rolled away over the next rise, he rested his arms on his pommel.

The earls, the men, all were restless, concerned. Nervous. Nikoleta dropped her reins and nudged her horse around, using her knees alone. The fire was what? A stadia away?

Far enough for safety, and still close enough for effect. She could feel it, hot and energetic, like a wasps' nest ripe for kicking.

The heart of the fire flashed, and suddenly there were burning missiles rising into the dawn sky. The highest rose almost vertically, trailing sooty flame, while those on a lower trajectory buried and bounced across the soft earth and the hard road. The sound was like a thunderclap that rolled on.

Some of the burning wood started to land uncomfortably close, and the soldiers began to shuffle backwards until Reinhardt growled for them to hold. Some of the horses bucked and shied, whinnying their fear, and their riders struggled to stay on.

When it was over, it seemed like half the hillside was covered in smoking debris, and ash like snowflakes began to fall.

Satisfied, Nikoleta took up her reins again. Gerhard seemed frozen. His son gaped. The Italian sword-master pushed his silly hat back on his head and contrived to look both impressed and unsurprised simultaneously.

"Father?" said Felix. "Did you see that?"

It was excusable for a twelve-year-old.

"Yes, I saw it," said Gerhard, brushing his epaulettes. "It was very loud, too."

"How can we lose?" Felix grinned to himself.

Allegretti turned his horse in a slow circle. "Perhaps you should concern yourself, young man, on detailing every possible way we can lose, and determining a strategy for combating them, rather than counting victory a certainty."

"Oh, signore," said Felix, but he was looking at the sorcerer. As she rode past, she slipped him a sly wink while everyone else was looking at the sky.

Eventually, Gerhard caught up with her. She glanced around to see the soldiers marching along with considerably more spring in their step than they'd formed up with first thing that morning.

"Does that answer any of your questions, my lord?"

"You could, if you wanted, kill us all and take the palatinate." He stared straight ahead. "If you're right, there's no one who could stop you. Not now."

"Perhaps," she said, "but what would I do with it then? I've no interest in it and even less idea of how things work off of Goat Mountain. I'd have to resurrect you and all your advisers to show me how it was done."

"You can do that?"

"No. It was a joke." The corner of her mouth creased into a smile. "Even if I could bring you back, you'd be a mindless slave. Besides, I've no desire to turn you out of your throne."

Gerhard rode on in silence for a moment. "The boy..."

"The boy's a boy with wise masters. He'll become a man who's been taught well. At the moment, he's too young to be scared of war, or even of me. He'll learn that, too."

"The princes of Carinthia have been in alliance with the Order for nearly a thousand years. What happens next? Where will Felix's hexmasters come from?" The prince looked pensive. "I didn't sleep much last night. If at all. These things, going around in my head, all the time. Everything we do relies on the simple effect of magic. Without it? We descend to barbarism and worse. Tell me the Order's impotence is temporary."

"The Order's impotence is temporary," she said.

"But you don't believe that, do you?"

"I've no evidence one way or the other. Define temporary: is it a week, a month, or a year? Or a decade?"

"This brings me no comfort."

"I'm not here for that. I'm here because you called."

"Everyone must think that nothing's changed. The hexmasters are still in their tower, the prince is still in the fortress. All as it has always has been."

"But you can't keep them fooled forever. When the barges stop coming, the millstones stop grinding, the carts stop rolling they're going to know."

The prince turned a strange shade of red. "They will not."

"My lord, the sun comes up every morning and sets every evening. If it didn't, just once, the whole world would know and there'd be nothing you could do about it. People talk. No law you pass can change that."

"They'll do as they're told." Gerhard was adamant. "No one, inside or outside Carinthia must know."

Nikoleta wondered how he was going to manage that. As far as the people of Juvavum were concerned, only one hexmaster had met the prince's summons. Wasn't that worth gossiping over? She'd heard a story once of a Danish king who'd given a simple but elegant demonstration of the limits of his authority by having his throne carried to the edge of a turning tide.

She wasn't in charge. She had no wish to be in charge and no idea what she would do if she was. Yet even she could tell that the prince's plan was unworkable. And not because he was stupid, but because accepting the truth was simply too much for him to bear. Gerhard was to be pitied, and she found that she did indeed pity him.

"As you wish, my lord." She eased off on the reins, and let him pull ahead. Several of his earls overtook her too, and she found herself at the back of the column of horse with Signore Allegretti.

"Good day, Mistress," said the tutor.

She raised her eyebrows, and he looked to the left and the right.

"My apologies. I had assumed that someone wishing to be on their own would not choose to ride next to me. Should I remove myself from your presence before you remove me more permanently?"

"Where's the boy?"

"With," he said, craning his neck, "his father. He can only learn so much from me: defending himself, mainly, not defending the palatinate."

She looked at him sharply, but he seemed not to notice.

"And, to be honest, he is already a good swordsman. I can still beat him, but my reach is longer and my fire burns brighter. Felix sees everything as a game. Even this. Even what you did. When he learns otherwise, he will outgrow my poor company."

"I'm sure you'll do whatever's best for the boy."

"Felix will have my best intentions, no matter what. However, this adventure seems singularly badly advised."

"And you say that for a reason, or because you have an ache in your left elbow?"

"Mistress, as impressive as your demonstration was, I would still like to know where your colleagues are."

"I..."

"One of the fundamental dicta of any fight, whether it is a brawl between two drunks or a clash of two empires, is to bring everything you have to bear on your opponent's weakest point. What we have is them ..." he pointed behind him and ahead of him "and you."

"Your prince believes it to be sufficient." She looked again at Allegretti. Her experience of men, mundane or otherwise, hadn't been good.

"My employer," said the Italian, "believes a great many things, and believes that his subjects should believe a great many more. I am neither a prince nor one of his subjects."

"All the same..."

"I would be happier if there were two of you. Happier still if there were three. It is a shame my happiness is not the prince's concern."

Nikoleta wondered if she should lie, but she'd had little practice in deceit since childhood. Mind, she'd been really very good then, even though it got her into as much trouble as it saved her from. Lying to a hexmaster, however, wasn't such a smart thing to do.

"The prince is satisfied," she repeated.

"Are you, Mistress?" He angled his head in an attitude of contemplation. "I do not know the complexities of your craft no one does but I have seen a Sicilian conjurer brought down by sheer weight of numbers and literally torn limb from limb. He was on his own, too."

"I'm not on my own."

"I think you are always on your own, no matter how many of you there are. But I phrase myself badly. German is neither of our first languages, yes?" Allegretti made a deprecating gesture with one of his hands. "You are our most valuable asset. So the prince must concentrate on protecting you, while you win the battle. Not on winning the battle itself."

"The white robe." She looked down at herself, at the way she glowed in the morning light; she was clearly distinguishable from all the others, even the earls in their battle colours.

"Now," said Allegretti, "a group of figures in white robes, throwing elemental forces around as if they were a company of bandieratori, very impressive, very scary, very one-sided. One figure in a white robe, surrounded by nervous armed men? I may be the only man here who has ever experienced warfare in the flesh, so why not ask me where I would tell my archers to fire, where I would concentrate my strongest swordsmen?"

The sick feeling in her stomach didn't go away. Neither did the Italian.

"You would concentrate on me. Even as I was killing your men."

"No one expects you to sit passively while all these big, strong soldiers stand around you. They will hold their positions, even when they know that the further they stand from you, the less likely they will be to die. They are all brave, stout-hearted Carinthians, raised on the mountains and in the forests, and they have known nothing but peace for centuries. Who could possibly compare them with these blaggard Teutons, who are fed a continual diet of war and misery, and who have finally summoned enough sense to drag themselves out of the marshes of their birthlands and ride out to conquer more suitable lands?"

Allegretti finally shut up, and Nikoleta found herself mumbling, "I'll find something else to wear."

15.

Chapter end