4
Vürdmeister Neph Dada hacked a deep, rasping, unhealthy cough. He cleared his throat noisily and spat the results into his hand. Then he tilted his hand and watched the phlegm drip to the dirt before turning his eyes to the other Vürdmeisters around his low fire. Aside from the young Borsini, who blinked incessantly, they gave no sign that he disgusted them. A man didn’t survive long enough to become a Vürdmeister on magical strength alone.
Glowing faintly, figures were laid out in military formations on the ground. “This is only an estimation of the armies’ positions,” Neph said. “Logan Gyre’s forces are in red, roughly fourteen hundred men, west of the Dark Hunter’s Wood, in Cenarian lands. Maybe two hundred Ceurans pretending to be Khalidoran are the blue, right at the edge of the Wood. Further south, in white, are five thousand of our beloved enemies the Lae’knaught. We Khalidorans haven’t fought the Lae’knaught directly since you were all still at the tit, so let me remind you that though they hate all magic, we are what they were created to destroy. Five thousand of them is more than enough to complete the job the Cenarians began at the Battle of Pavvil’s Grove, so we must tread carefully.”
In quick detaan il, Neph outlined what he knew of the deployment of all the forces, inventing details where it seemed appropriate, and always speaking over the Vürdmeisters’ heads, as if expecting them to understand intricacies of generalship that they had never learned. Whenever a Godking died, the massacres began. First the heirs turned on each other. Then the survivors rallied meisters and Vürdmeisters around them and began anew until only one Ursuul remained. If no one established dominance quickly, the bloodletting would spread to the meisters. Neph didn’t intend for that to happen.
So as soon as he was certain that Godking Garoth Ursuul was dead, Neph had found Tenser Ursuul, one of the Godking’s heirs, and convinced the boy to carry Khali. Tenser thought carrying the goddess would mean power. It would—for Neph. For Tenser, it meant catatonia and insanity. Then Neph had sent a simple message to Vürdmeisters at every corner of the Khalidoran empire: “Help me bring Khali home.”
By answering a religious call, every Vürdmeister who didn’t want to throw away his life backing some vicious Ursuul child had a legitimate escape. And if Neph tamed these first Vürdmeisters who’d arrived from their postings in nearby lands, when Vürdmeisters arrived from the rest of the empire, they too would fall in line. If there was one thing Godkings were good at, it was inculcating submission.
“The Dark Hunter’s Wood is between us,” Neph motioned to encompass the Vürdmeisters, himself, and Khali’s bodyguard, a bare fifty men in all, “and all these armies. I personally have seen over a hundred men—meisters and not—ordered into the Wood. None has emerged. Ever. If this were merely a matter of Khali’s security, I would not bring this to your attention.” Neph coughed again, his lungs afire, but the coughing was calculated, too. Those who wouldn’t bend the knee to a young man might be content to bide their time serving a failing old one. He spat. “The Ceurans have the sword of power, Curoch. Right there,” Neph gestured to where his phlegm had fallen, at the very edge of the Dark Hunter’s Wood.
“Has the sword taken the form of Ceur’caelestos, the Ceurans’ Blade of Heaven?” Vürdmeister Borsini asked. He was the young blinking one with a grotesquely large nose and big ears to match. He was staring into the distance. Neph didn’t like it. Had Borsini been eavesdropping when the scout reported?
Borsini’s vir, the measure of the goddess’s favor and his magical power, filled his arms like a hundred thorny black rose stems. Only Neph’s vir filled more of his skin, undulating like living tattoos in Lodricari whorls, blackening him from forehead to fingernails. But despite his intelligence and power, Borsini was only in the eleventh shu’ra. Neph, Tarus, Orad, and Raalst were all twelfth shu’ra, the highest rank anyone aside from the Godking could attain.
“Curoch takes any shape it pleases,” Neph said. “The point is, if Curoch goes into the Hunter’s Wood, it will never come out. We have a slim chance to seize a prize we’ve sought for ages.”
“But there are three armies here,” Vürdmeister Tarus pointed out. “All outnumber us, and each would happily kill us.”
“Attempting to claim the sword will most likely end in death, but may I remind you,” Neph said, “if we don’t try, we will answer for it. Therefore, I will go. I am old. I have few years remaining to me, so my death will cost the empire less.” Of course, if he had Curoch in hand, magnifying his magical power a hundredfold, everything would change, and all of them knew it.
Vürdmeister Tarus was the first to object. “Who’s put you in charge—”
“Khali has,” young Borsini interrupted before Neph could. Dammit! “Khali has sent me a vision,” he said. “That’s why I asked what the Ceurans call the sword. Khali told me that I am to fetch Ceur’caelestos. I am the youngest of us, the most dispensable, and the fastest. Vürdmeister Dada, she said she will speak to you this morning. You are to await her word by the prince’s bedside. Alone.”
The boy was a genius. Borsini wanted a chance at the sword, and he was buying off Neph in front of all of them. Neph would stay with Khali and the catatonic prince and when he emerged, it would be with “a word from the goddess.” In truth, Neph hadn’t wanted to go after the sword at all. But the only way he was certain the others would make him stay was if he’d tried to go. Borsini’s eyes met Neph’s. His look said, “If I get the sword, you serve me. Understood?”
“Blessed be her name,” Neph said. The others echoed. They didn’t fully understand what had just happened. They would, in time. Neph said, “You should take my horse; it’s faster than yours.” And he had woven a small cantrip into its mane. When the sun rose—at about the time a rider would get to the south side of the wood—the cantrip would begin pulsing with magic that would draw the Dark Hunter. Borsini wouldn’t live to see noon.
“Thank you, but I’m an awkward hand at new horses. I’ll take my own,” Borsini said, his voice carefully neutral. His enormous ears wiggled, and he tugged at his enormous nose nervously. He suspected a trap and knew he’d avoided it, but he wanted Neph to think it was luck.
Neph blinked as if disappointed and then shrugged as if to cover and say it didn’t matter.
It didn’t. He’d tied that cantrip into the mane of every horse in the camp.