Weasel touched the hilt of his knife and grinned. The Barbarian’s fingers whitened as he clutched the hilt of his sword.
“Do it quietly,” added the Sergeant, with particular emphasis.
“You don’t need to tell us that, Sergeant,” said Weasel with his throat-slitter’s grin. “We knows what we are about, we do.”
“Wizard said don’t get too close,” said Gunther.
“When was the last time you heard of wards set so far from a camp,” said Weasel.
“Always a first time,” said the Sergeant. “Carefully does it.”
Weasel and the Barbarian nodded and vanished over the ridge top.
After sundown, squads began to filter through the ruins, taking up position for the attack. Since his night sight was better than most men’s, Rik had the job of moving from position to position to make sure everyone was in place, and all the ways out of the trap were closed. Most of the Foragers were in small groups, one man watching while the others dozed. Being Foragers they were well used to sleeping anywhere, but it took real talent to do so with the wind cutting through you, and the prospect of violence in the air.
Finally he made it to where Weasel and the Barbarian lurked on the furthest side, towards the waterfall. There were spots of blood on their ragged green tunics. They had encountered a few hill-men in the ruins on their scouting foray. Leon and Pigeon and the Sergeant were with them. Rik gave the password as he approached since there was no sense in getting his throat cut by nervous men. Weasel has always been too good with that damn knife.
“Where’s this bloody mine then?” asked Weasel of no one in particular. “I think we should make that little bastard Vosh show us where it is? Might be gold there.”
“He said it was haunted,” said Pigeon. Weasel said nothing, nor did the others. The thought of what might wait in a haunted mine frightened them all. It was difficult to avoid dark thoughts in the doom-haunted ruins of old Achenar.
No lights showed. No one did anything to give their positions away. They waited for the attack to begin.
Lieutenant Sardec watched as the wizard continued his chant and drew his wand through the air, pointing to the five points of the astrological compass and invoking the names of entities that were not good to hear.
When would something happen? It had been almost an hour now since the ritual had begun, and each minute that passed increased the chance of something going wrong down below, of one of the Foragers doing something more than usually stupid, of one of the men being spotted. The wizard just kept to the ritual, moving with no sign of feeling any pressure to hurry.
Sardec envied Severin his gift. In his House, power had always flowed through the female side of the line. Even in these sadly diminished days, his family had still produced several sorcerers of note. At least if he were a sorcerer he would get some respect. No one respected a junior officer of a mere thirty years. Even his fellow Exalted still treated him as little more than a child.
He supposed to most of his kin he was a mere stripling. Most Terrarchs regarded anyone who had seen less than a hundred winters as dreadfully immature. It takes a century to educate a Terrarch was an old saying.
There were times when he suspected that was just another of the games his people played. With age came status, and with status came power. Those who held power did their best to hang onto it, and to remind those who were below them in the pecking order what their true place in it was.
And his place, despite his family connections and his immaculate blood-line, was at the very bottom of the heap. And he would stay there for a very long time, unless he did something to distinguish himself, as his father had seven hundred years ago when he had saved the life of Lord High Commander Azaar at the Ford of Three Wands during the final stages of the Conquest.
He just wished he were not so conspicuous. Few true-blooded children were born to the Exalted at the best of times, and these were not the best of times. The Terrarchs had always been a slow breeding race unlike the accursed humans. In recent centuries, for reasons no one could quite understand, there had been more of those abominable miscegenations like that insolent half-breed in his own unit…
Smoke started to drift upwards from the flask. It was a brownish red. At first it looked like glittering motes of dust, and then these lost their sparkle and congealed into something thicker and ruddier. The redness took form, becoming strips thin as paper and roughly the shape of great bodiless bats. They writhed around each other and flowed around the inside of the magic circle, like lions confined within a cage.
Slowly the shadows took on greater substance, as if borrowing weight and mass from somewhere, becoming less translucent, and more energetic.
“Crimson Shadows,” Corporal Toby muttered. There was something like awe in his voice. Sardec shivered. He had heard his father’s tales of seeing these things unleashed. His mouth went dry. A strange exaltation filled him. He was witnessing something extraordinary, seeing one of the most ancient weapons of his people actually used. These were a direct manifestation of the sorcery that had chained humanity and sealed Terrarch supremacy for almost a thousand years.
The shadows swelled, billowing like sails as Severin’s chant lent them more substance. They drew strength from it and from him. The words droned on and on, and the shadows swirled ever higher like smoke drifting up a chimney. The scraps of matter split and split again, becoming thinner, more elongated and they soared higher and higher, like kites. A swarm of the Crimson Shadows swirled within a great invisible tube.
A crackling buzz filled the air. It sounded almost like a voice. Master Severin responded to it in an alien language which seemed somehow familiar. Sardec could sense another presence, something alien, inimical and hungry; a presence constrained by the circles and the will of the sorcerer. He knew that had the wizard not been there, the thing would be reaching for him and his men even now, and there would be very little they could do to stop it.
The great wyrms lashed their tails nervously and it took all the efforts of their mahouts to keep them calm. Sardec had his sword out. The old runes shimmered along the surface, evidence of eddy currents of magic.
His skin crawled as he listened to that great buzzing voice. It echoed deep within his bones. He could almost make sense of its words, although he knew that would not be a good thing for his soul. Even the least devout of the Foragers were making elder signs over their breasts now. Some muttered prayers to the Saints and Prophets to intercede with the Light on their behalf.
Finally, just when he thought he could take no more of it, the parlay ended. Severin and the Master of the Crimson Shadows had come to some agreement. The mage gestured and the vast invisible cage hemming the Shadows in receded into the ground. From the top, like a plume of smoke dispersing in a sudden wind, the Shadows drifted towards the valley, becoming ever more numerous as they writhed and split and flapped across the darkening sky.
They encountered some resistance as they neared the lake. Wards of some sort, he guessed. They swarmed against an invisible barrier which it seemed they could not cross. Sardec held his breath. There were certain sorceries that could rebound on their casters if they were baulked. Master Severin chanted another spell, and the invisible barrier collapsed, a weak dam giving way before an irresistible tide. The Shadows flowed forward once more and descended on the ruined mansion and its inhabitants in a flood. The walls were obscured.
With his far-better than human night sight Rik watched the cloud of Shadows descend on the mansion. He could see the scraps of crimson flow around individuals, wrapping them like a shroud. Chilling, terrified screams rang out. One man leapt from the roof, arms windmilling as he sought a cleaner death. His fall seemed somehow slower than normal, as if gravity’s pull were not quite as intense as usual.