Shih-ka'i looked away from the open cadaver. "I thought you might find something of the sort. Take a good look at the blood."
"Lord?"
"See if the blood is dead or alive. Then make a guess at how long it's been dead." He turned to leave. He had to get out before his gorge rose and betrayed his dignity.
Tasi-feng stood in the doorway. "You've discovered something, Lord?"
"I think they were dead before they attacked. They have the look. It's been a long time since I've seen their like. I imagine it was before you were born. The Demon Prince experimented with reanimated soldiers. He shelved the idea. Control was too cumbersome."
Tasi-feng could not keep his horror hidden behind his mask. He took a moment to control himself. "The new portals are open, Lord Ssu-ma. Our support is standing by. We're still trying to contact Lord Kuo's party. He's reconnoitering the Matayangan border. The parties you sent to establish a blocking position are ahead of the enemy and trying to locate a suitable site."
"Very well. I'm returning to my quarters. Call me when they open their portal."
He had to get away for a few minutes, to conquer the animal in him. He hadn't realized there would be so much difference between the training and battle fields. Once in his quarters he seated himself on a small carpet. He used the basic tool given every child legionnaire. He went through the Soldier's Ritual, the calming mantra-prayers with which soldiers began and ended their days. He regained himself.
Lord Kuo was right, he thought. There is something here. Maybe something bigger than Wen-chin suspected.
Pan ku came in. "Oh. Excuse me, Lord."
"I've just finished, Pan ku. Have you taken the pulse of the legion?"
"They're bored, Lord. They resent being stuck on a dead frontier. Today seems to have perked them up."
"No serious problems?"
"No. This is an old legion. A good one. Well trained and disciplined, with conscientious centurions and decurions. It'll do what you ask of it."
"Good. Good, Thank you, Pan ku."
"Is there anything I can do for you, Lord?"
"Don your battle gear. We're going into the desert."
Shih-ka'i flashed through the portal an hour later. He found that his hunters had chosen a good position in which to wait. After surveying their dispositions, he prepared a number of magicks. "Just in case," he told Pan ku.
The soldier nodded. He was familiar with his master's obsession with being prepared.
Two dust clouds came closer and closer. Hsu Shen was doing a perfect job of pushing without pushing too hard. Shih-ka'i took a look off the back side of the low hill where he waited. Dust clouds were converging on a point several miles eastward. "Setting an ambush of his own," he murmured.
Pan ku came round the hill. "Lord, they just had word from Lord Lun-yu. Two of those bodies jumped up and tried to kill him."
"Uhm? I should have warned him. He's all right?"
"Yes, Lord."
"Good."
Their quarry moved into the pocket. Shih-ka'i counted twenty-five. Someone said, "I thought they were supposed to be carrying their dead?"
Shih-ka'i did not tell the man that the dead were walking again. That none of the attackers had been alive. He gave the signal.
His men revealed themselves. The party below halted. They were badly outnumbered, and Hsu Shen was right behind them.
Shih-ka'i stared. Hsu Shen had been right. Three were legionnaires.
The group formed a turtle, ready to fight. Shih-ka'i's men closed in. The surrounded men dropped.
Shih-ka'i felt something electric stir the air. "Down!" he bellowed. "Everybody on the ground!" He whipped his mind into his bag of prepared tricks.
What looked like a great black boot sole blotted out the sky. Its heel descended swiftly. For an instant Shih-ka'i pictured himself as a bug about to be crushed.
He loosed a spell.
The air whined with the sound of a thousand giant whetstones scraping steel, then the cracking of a million tiny whips. He looked up. The boot had vanished.
"Get down there and carve those people up before they come alive again!" he thundered.
He did not wait to see if his orders were carried out. He closed his eyes and reentered the realm of spell. He seized one, pictured himself hurling a spear. He painted a big bull's-eye on the map from the fortress wall.
Thunder rolled across the cloudless wasteland. A flash extinguished the sun. Shih-ka'i opened his eyes. A thousand dust devils danced across the barrens like frenzied, drugged dancers, often colliding and collapsing. A few minutes later he heard a remote rumble. He smiled into his mask. "That'll make you keep your head down."
He waited for several minutes, his Tervola-senses extended. Nothing came. His enemy seemed cowed.
For the moment, he thought. Only for the moment.
He joined his men. "We'd do better to burn the bodies," he told Hsu Shen. "But there seems to be a shortage of wood."
The Tervola nodded, untouched by Shih-ka'i's dry humor. He was a man nearly Shih-ka'i's age, one of the old guard banished by Lord Kuo. He too remembered the Demon Prince's experiments. The dead could keep rising and rising, and could recruit their foes to their own cause. They could not be permitted to win battles. They would become stronger with each victory.
"Send those three back to the fortress," Shih-ka'i said, indicating the dead legionnaires. "We'll have that necromancer of Lun-yu's call up their shades."
His neck hairs prickled. He opened up, feeling for some new threat. There was none. He nodded to himself. Something was watching.
He went up the hill and looked to the east. Somewhere out there. In all that nothing. He studied the dust raised by retreating foemen, projecting their lines of march.
There? That heat haze hidden hump on the horizon? He oriented himself by the map. Yes. The hump would be smack in the middle of the suspect area.
"You should have kept your head down, friend," he murmured. "Now we see you. Now we're coming for a closer look."
A wind rose. It was hard and hot and dry. The dust it carried gnawed like sandpaper. Lord Ssu-ma Shih-ka'i ignored it. He stood on that hill like a sturdy little statue, immobile and unmovable. Behind his mask his eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
3 Year 1016 afe
Gathering of the Mighty
T HE WOMAN FOLLOWED her husband through a corridor in Castle Krief, the Royal Palace in Vorgreberg, the capital of Kavelin, one of the Lesser Kingdoms. Her steps were plodding, rolling. An unkind person would have called her walk a waddle. She was very pregnant. And very distracted. She caught herself falling behind, hurried to catch up. Her husband paused, a slight frown crinkling his brow. "Nepanthe, what's the matter?"
"What? Oh, nothing."
"Nothing? I don't believe it. You've been brooding since we got here. You've been dragging around puckered up like a mouth full of crabapple." He raised her chin, peered into downcast brown eyes. "Come on."
Nepanthe was in her forties. A lot of hard years lay behind her, yet her long raven hair showed only traces of grey. Her figure wasn't the wisp it had been at nineteen, but neither had lumpiness conquered all. Her face did not record all the tragedies that had dogged her life. Only her eyes betrayed the melancholy caged within.
Those eyes were old, sad windows, aged by sorrow and pain the way glass is purpled by the endless assault of the sun. They said they would never sparkle again. They would believe in no good fortune, for luck and happiness were but pitfalls and taunts cast in one's face by a malign fate. She had lost her zest for life. She was marking time, waiting for the big sleep, and knew it would be an age arriving. Her husband, the arch-sorcerer Varthlokkur, had learned to hold Death at bay. He was over four centuries old. "Come on," he said in his gentle, coaxing voice. "What is it?"