Wartorn: Resurrection

'Since the time of the Upheavals,' Honnis said, trampling her words heedlessly, 'what has been the prevalent attitude toward wizards?'

It was a broad question, yet it was still answerable. 'Practitioners of magic have been feared by most cultures.'

'Why?' Honnis asked.

'They were made to blame for the Upheavals.

They...'

Honnis's gaze fairly drilled into her now. She halted. His bald head moved slightly in a significant nod. 'Yes,' he said, voice gone breathy and weak once more. 'It was the misuse of magic that caused the Great Upheavals. Magicians were shunned because they were to blame. Those mighty empires were no wiser, in the end, than Matokin and his followers.'

She needed to sit. She groped behind herself, found the stool, spilled a pile of pages off of it, and sat. She could say nothing. Shock gripped her.

'There is something else I wish to say.'

Praulth blinked. Some moments had passed. Honnis was watching her, barely able to lift his head. She moved the stool nearer, though she didn't take his hand.

'I cannot be proud of you,' he said, measuring out the words. 'I don't have the right. Actually no one can properly take pride in another's accomplishments. It's a sickening practice. But—your work has been exceptional. You do not know how gifted you are. I labored over each and every field report I received from Cultat's scouts. Yes, I recognized Dardas's patterns. But I could not—not with nearly the degree of accuracy you have demonstrated— predict his movements. You know Dardas.' That fragile smile came once more. 'Your tactic—using the Battle of Torran Flats ... brilliant.'

Praulth felt tears threaten her eyes a second time. Whatever Honnis had done, it was for a greater good. For the alliance Cultat was hoping to build. For the defeat of the Felk.

'Thank you, Master Honnis,' she said.

'It's Dardas. You know that.'

'Of course, Master Honnis.'

'No ... Praulth. It is Dardas.'

She stared.

'Let me,' he said, 'tell you about resurrection magic ...'

THE BATTLE OF Torran Flats. Brilliant? Perhaps. To Praulth it seemed the obvious tactic. She had simply approached the problem logically. She knew Dardas's style. She could predict his movements. How to engage him in the field was merely a matter of analysis and deduction.

How to engage Dardas. Not Weisel. No, Weisel was no imitator after all.

Incredible ... this war of magic. How historically significant it all was.

Torran Flats was the site of one of Dardas's greatest victories some two hundred and fifty years ago. An army had stood against his forces. The leader was a rival Northland warlord who had some knowledge of battle tactics. He had arrayed his troops to draw Dardas's warriors into a trap. It was a fairly cunning ambush, relying on flanking units that remained out of sight until the crucial moment.

Dardas of course didn't take the bait. He outflanked the flankers and cut a butchering swath through

the enemy army, the remains of which he absorbed into his own forces.

Praulth's counsel to Cultat was to reconstruct this very same battle scenario. Cultat should array his forces (whatever forces he could or had managed to raise) to duplicate the placement of that ancient warlord's troops. Weisel— Dardas—would recognize the 'trap' and enact the same outflanking maneuver.

It was an artifice, of course. The Felk, when they moved to outflank, would be spread out, separated. There was unavoidable vulnerability there. A decisive forward thrust at the right time and place could not be successfully defended against. The Felk could be slashed in two.

Praulth knew this. She had previously studied the Battle of Torran Flats. She had debated it exhaustively with other war studies students. She had reenacted it, on paper. Dardas was a dazzling war commander, likely the best that history had to offer. But he wasn't infallible—particularly when his enemy was armed with such intimate knowledge of his strategies and techniques.

She found the door to their chamber unlocked, Xink still awake inside.

'I told you,' she said, hearing how inert her voice sounded, 'I like that door locked, always.'

'Sorry.'

She removed her robe. Leaving the faculty compound, she had seen first light in the sky. The coming day would be overcast.

'How is Master Honnis?' Xink asked.

She dropped herself onto the bed. 'He died. Come to bed with me.'

He stood hesitantly from the chair where he was sitting. This time it was Praulth who didn't meet his eyes. She merely waited to feel the comfort of his body. She needed that solace now. Her role in the Felk war was done.

RADSTAC (4)

THE BANDITS HAD fast horses that had the memories of secret trails through the scrub and woods. Here and there they crossed a road, empty, the merchant caravans that were the bandits' prey long gone. The summer, Radstac had learned, had been a poor one for this professional band The short, heavily muscled bandit chief Anzal opined that this buggering Felk war had ruined business for her and her kind, perhaps permanently.

It was possible, Radstac mused. This was no simple Isthmus tussle between feuding city-states. If the Felk remade this entire land in their image, they would have no more enemies. All would be Felk. And so the Isthmus would no longer be a reliable source of petty wars in which she could fight.

A mercenary needed wars. And she needed her mansid

She peeled one away from its wax paper and bit off half She was, inevitably, building up a tolerance to the painstakingly cultivated narcotic. Fortunately the batch that Deo had procured for her was particularly potent. The fearsome ache that sang through her teeth now was evidence enough of that.

She had not dismounted her horse to take her dose. It was done in the saddle, her black mount and those of the twelve bandits keeping up a pounding pace through the wilderness.

Deo rode at her side. He made no complaints about the punishing speed at which they were moving. Barely a meal break in the day, scarcely two watches of sleep in the night. Northward. To the Felk. As fast as possible.

For Radstac this was decidedly different from being loosed on a battlefield to hack at some arbitrary enemy. A new role. Bodyguard. Escort. Protector. It was truly a shame, then, that her charge was

doomed.

She neatly ducked the gnarled elbow of a branch as the trail suddenly narrowed. The bandits rode both ahead and behind.

'How far from Trael are we, do you suppose?' the Petgrad noble grunted, obviously feeling the soreness and cramped muscles of their prolonged riding.

'Are we going there after all?' Radstac asked drolly.

'No.'

Simple, toneless. Yet she heard the regret there, the finality. The mansid was rapidly sharpening her perceptions. Deo was still waiting for an answer.

She said, 'I believe we are passing or past the city already.' The bandits, by her calculations, had been taking their group just east of Trael.

'Another day or two, in that case, until we reach the Felk.'

Then what? But Radstac left the retort unsaid. She hadn't been hired to dissuade this man from his goal. His scheme to infiltrate the vast mass of the Felk army and murder its commander,