Michael Stackpole - Chartomancy

One night, when I woke in my tent, deep in a forest, I found him crouched in a corner, a ghostly presence that sent a chill through me. “What is it, Urardsa?”

The quartet of small eyes closed. “Your life is a tangled skein. I cannot find a clean line.”

“Should I be disturbed by this, or is it enough that you are?”

The Gloon smiled, then crawled closer. “Strands tangle, but yours are merging. Your future mirrors your past.”

“Those who forget their journeys are forever doomed to tread the same path.” I threw my blanket off and came up into a sitting position. “I know I have fought battles like this before. Perhaps even here, in Faeut.”

“You have been here before, many times.”

“Not just as Moraven Tolo. I have his memories, and they have been useful.” I wiped sleep sand from my eyes. “I am tempted to ask you if what you see is strong.”

The Gloon shook his head. “You will not ask. I will not tell.”

I smiled. “Battle is a place where possibilities shift too quickly for me to believe your predictions regardless.”

The Gloon laughed, not an altogether happy sound. “But you have told your people that a battle is won before the first arrow flies.”

“And it is. So it shall be tomorrow.”

What I had learned from the village helped greatly in planning the first significant fight. The vhangxi had been under slightly better control than at the graveyard, and the kwajiin made up more of the force pursuing us. Even so, the vhangxi tore the village apart. Many fell prey to our traps, and the kwajiin dispatched the most seriously wounded. The blue-skins did get ill from the water, though not as grievously as a man would have. Even when the village began to burn, they were not prone to panic and withdrew in good order.

In the troops themselves, we only noticed one flaw. The units seemed made up of clan groups, which did not mix and even seemed hostile to each other. The commander of the troops coming after us fought under a banner of a bloody skull, and all other troops chafed under being subordinate to his kinsmen.

We set our trap carefully to utilize all we had learned. We picked a point where a wooden bridge on the Imperial Road had been washed away and, in two days, cleared enough trees from a hillside track to make it appear as if woodsmen had created a road paralleling the gorge. It went east up and over two small hills, then through a ravine that angled back to the southeast. At the far end, the land dropped away into a deep cut that led down into the gorge roughly a thousand yards east of where the bridge had stood.

The thick forest, save where some discreet clearing had been done, allowed for a hundred feet of visibility. A sodden carpet of leaves and needles hid the ground, and the troops entering that southeast ravine might as well have been boxed up in a large coffin.

The kwajiin vanguard advanced under the bloody skull banner, and when they reached the gap in the road, they had no problem in deciding to head up the hill onto our track. They had already outstripped the rest of their force and posted two men on the road to inform the others. Ten minutes separated the vanguard from its main body-though when they twisted back into that ravine, the only thing that separated them from the bulk of their force was a steep wooded ridgeline paralleling the gorge.

The sun had reached its zenith by the time the vanguard started off on the detour. Once the last of them passed over the first hill, two archers killed the men they’d left behind, then we dragged the bodies into the gorge and let them float down among bridge debris. When the main body reached the bridge, the direction the vanguard had taken seemed obvious and, after some deliberation, they set off in pursuit.

The head of the vanguard stopped when the trail ended, and four blue-skins headed down into the ravine. Halfway down they fell into tiger traps, impaling themselves on sharpened sticks in six-foot-deep holes. To their credit they did not scream in pain, but they did implore others to help them. Those who did advance found themselves under attack by a handful of archers.

Then, from atop the ridgeline behind them, a full volley of arrows struck the vanguard. The kwajiin bolted up the sides of the ravine and a number of them encountered staked pits. Most of these were simply post holes with a single stake in the bottom and several pointing downward. The single stake punched through even the thickest boot, and the others prevented the warrior from pulling his foot free.

Kwajiin archers shot back in both directions, but had no real targets. They advanced as best they could, squeezing through on a serpentine path that took them up the ridge. They crested it and started down the other side. Suddenly arrows shot up at them from below. They shot back and charged downhill.

Their own rear guard, who had likewise been shot at by Deshiel’s men on the ridge, fought fiercely. The kwajiin archers shot at each other and while they did not kill many of their own, the fight left the vanguard among their own rear guard, exhausted and without an enemy in sight.

And by that time Deshiel’s men had withdrawn further southeast, then north, crossing the gorge over a narrow, makeshift bridge created by two felled trees.

The hardest work we had done in preparing lay not in creating the road but in creating the surprises along it. The kwajiin walked four abreast, and on my signal, ropes were pulled that released stake-studded logs. They swung down out of the trees and swept the road at waist height. The luckiest men were knocked from the road to tumble down into the gorge. Others were impaled, while the least lucky got stuck on the log and pulped against trees.

The wounded did scream now, and the blue-skins’ composure broke. Two of my best archers-one who might one day become a Mystic-shot the kwajiin leader. Their arrows might have killed him, save he moved so swiftly-preternaturally so-that he took them in his right arm and flank instead of breastbone and stomach. His wounding made the others cautious, and the only people we shot after that were those seeking to help wounded comrades.

Well before darkness fell, my entire force had melted away and was miles ahead of the kwajiin.

That evening I assembled my leaders, this time including the Virine nobles who had brought troops but who I had not allowed to lead them. I praised the leaders for their troops’ performance-citing cases of bravery which had been communicated to me. I singled Deshiel out for special praise, since he had deployed his people between two enemy forces and had withdrawn them with no more harm than a sprained ankle.

Lord Pathan Golti-a small, sallow man who, though a good archer, hadn’t the temperament needed to be in Deshiel’s force-stood up to protest what had happened. “You have let them get away. We could have feathered the lot and avenged Kelewan.”

I watched him for a moment, and I’m certain many thought my hand would stray to one of my swords. “Would that have gotten Kelewan back? Would that raise your Prince or your nation again? Would that raise all the dead?”

“Of course not, but it is a matter of national pride.”

I spat at his feet. “National pride is the province of those who have a nation, my lord. You do not.”

The man looked stricken. “You have no right to speak to me thus.”

“If you wish to resolve this as a matter of honor, Lord Golti, draw a circle.” I pointed outside the circle of firelight and back in the direction of the battle. “The troops we faced today are but a fraction of those the kwajiin have in Erumvirine. For all we know, they’ve likewise invaded Nalenyr and the Five Princes. We do not fight for what is lost because we are not strong enough to regain it. We fight to prevent more from being lost-and this we might well be able to do.”