Michael Stackpole - When Dragons Rage

Fight they would, and fiercely. But Adrogans entertained no illusions about their efficacy, for even three months of training would not prepare them for the sheer savagery of warfare. They would have to be held back like a fierce dog on a short lead and then released at that single point where they could do the most damage. The enemy would destroy them—of that he had no doubt—but he suspected the Svoinyki cared less about living than inflicting death on their former tormentors.

The second thing that served to distract him huffed and puffed up the hill. The white of the snow contrasted sharply with the little man’s brown flesh. More oddly, the wizened creature wore only a loincloth and a threadbare cloak. His lack of clothing made it easy to see the various talismans hanging from piercings in his leathery flesh. His spare locks of grey hair floated on the breeze, adding to the jocularity of his lopsided grin.

Adrogans found himself unable to resist returning that grin. “Uncle, it must be momentous news that brings you all the way up here.”

Phfas broadened his smile to display yellowed teeth. “You will feel the change. Try.”

“I have not the time.”

The Zhusk shaman shook his head. “Until you do, all time is wasted.”

Adrogans drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes to concentrate. The Zhusk, a primitive people who lived on a plateau in southeast Okrannel, cared little for the gods of the modern era and instead allied themselves with the primal and elemental spirits of the world. The Zhusk, through arcane rituals, bound themselves to these yrun , as the spirits were called. The talismans that Phfas wore indicated his alliance with the yrun of the air, and that spirit often brought information or wispy hints of it, trading speed for weight of information.

Adrogans had grown up in Jerana not knowing he was a half-Zhusk bastard until Phfas had recognized it and had invited him to enter into the Zhusk community. Adrogans had based many of his anti-Aurolani operations in the Zhusk Plateau, with his adopted people supporting his efforts. He had not, however, undergone the rituals that bound him to yrun until the first battle on the plains of Svoin. While the battle raged, he underwent an agonizing ritual that bound several yrun to him.

Turning within, he found a calm place and shut out all sound and sensation. He ignored the wind and the sound of Phfas’ breathing. He closed his ears to the shouts of the training refugees, the barking of dogs and the lonely cry of a soaring hawk. He pushed past physical sensation, which allowed him to focus on his spirit and the yrun who were his companions.

Earth and air, water and fire were there, but their fast strength denied them the delicacy he needed. Others he swept his mind past until he came to his mistress, the single yrun to whom he was most tightly bound. She appeared as naught but a mere slip of a girl, with soft new-budded breasts, barely past the gangly stage that presaged her womanly beauty. She took form in luminous white, almost a ghost, save that as he drew closer her body hardened and ragged, tearing edges, as serrated as the teeth she flashed in her mirthless smile, defined her. Those edges glittered coldly, and he felt the nibbling of frostbite on his toes and face.

He pushed that sensation away. I will not be distracted .

She knew his thoughts and reached for him, her hands clawing sharply into his scalp. She drew him to her, crushing her body to his. Where she touched him, pain ignited in his piercings. Then she raised her face to his in a kiss that stung. She parted her lips and sucked his tongue into her needle-filled mouth.

A jolt ran through him but he fought past the pain. Beyond it, he got a sense of the whole of Okrannel. It was not as if he were a distant hawk, soaring, able to look down on the nation. That would have been very helpful, but his mistress—the yrun of pain—instead gave him a sense of being a layer of thunderheads covering the nation. Where lightning struck, there pain dwelt, and certain loci had more than their share.

Laughing, he pulled himself from her torturous embrace and flowed out into his own flesh again. His eyes flicked open, then he raised a hand to cover them as the light from the snow blinded him. “So he has moved troops south?”

“As you said.” Phfas nodded so emphatically his talismans shook and rattled. “Spring will come early.”

The white-haired general shook his head. “Not as quickly as you would like, Uncle.”

Adrogans detested any parallels between warfare and games—precisely because a game was an abstraction that in no way encompassed war’s frightful cost in lives. Still, a certain amount of playing at warfare had to be done. Each side needed to conceal their strength, while retaining the ability to strike at the enemy or counter his moves. A game of cat and mouse it could be, in which both sides hoped their cat would not run into a hundred-pound mouse with sharp teeth and a scorpion’s sting.

In the battle for Svoin, Adrogans had succeeded in concealing just such a sting. He’d hidden troops from the Aurolani scouts and from his own people, then brought them in at a crucial moment to strike at the Aurolani rear. The surprise shattered the Aurolani host. Princess Alexia had slain the sullanciri that led them, and his troops crushed the Aurolani. The victory, in which he had been aided by his yrun allies, had given him the time he needed to liberate Svoin.

Common wisdom concerning warfare indicated that nothing could happen during the winter. Snows made travel difficult, both because roads and passes would be impassable; and because the snow would cover any forage for man or beast. Even if an army were to venture into the field and survive the frostbite and desertions that would come from hardship, a single blizzard could swallow them whole. Worse yet, a storm or avalanche could wipe out a supply caravan, leaving the army to starve.

Adrogans could not take refuge in the common wisdom, however, because the Aurolani troops were bred in a boreal realm where the worst winter in the south would be considered a mild spring day. While gibberers, frost-claws, and vylaens might not have been the most mentally flexible of troops, they did come in large groups, were used to the cold, and had a casual disregard for their own lives. Nefrai-kesh, therefore, had the ability to move troops down from Svarskya, infiltrate them into the highlands, and cause trouble.

The Jeranese general had predicted Nefrai-kesh would do just that for two reasons. The first was to sow terror in the countryside and erode any confidence won during the victory at Svoin. Besides, the Aurolani seemed to revel in cruelty for the sake of cruelty. The sullanciri had the troops, he could make use of them, and therefore he would.

Second—and of greater strategic importance, as long as Nefrai-kesh was on the offensive—was that he forced Adrogans to react. With hamlets scattered all over the highlands, there was no way to protect everyone. Adrogans would have to field a force that could be kept traveling hither and yon, trying to catch up with raiders who could fade away like ghosts. The effort to stop the raiders would exhaust his people, destroy morale, and possibly even build up resentment among the highlanders for his inability to stop the attacks.

Nefrai-kesh was operating under two disadvantages, though, and Adrogans was certain the Aurolani leader would have acknowledged neither of them as significant. The first was that while he was still human, he had been a formidable military commander. Adrogans knew that Kenwick Norrington had not been his equal even at the best of times, but he did accept that Norrington had known a great deal about warfare. This meant that Norrington might well accept the common wisdom about winter warfare. He would expect Adrogans would retire for the winter, and this gave the Aurolani an advantage since his troops could fight in winter.