Hirad looked into the chasm of The Unknown’s eyes and wondered if they would ever be full again. But though his soul was empty, his mind was sharp, and his voice carried all of its old authority. While he had been gone, Hirad had missed that.
‘I agree. Why rush? Let’s rest up, make sure we’ve got our tactics straight and keep to our timetable. I don’t think we’re going to have too much spare time after this.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘Darrick is good but there are a lot of Wesmen in his way.’
Baron Blackthorne stood at the entrance to his most profitable mine, half a mile above his blazing town, and looked down on his fallen world. As night fell, the fires died down but the Wesmen encampments burned bright with lights and the noise of celebration.
He and Gresse had a handful fewer than two thousand men at their disposal. Most of them had horses, taken either from the courtyard or the many tithe farms over which he was Lord. Again, the Wesmen hadn’t given chase when he had retreated, demonstrating an awful confidence in their ability to secure victory at their leisure. It was a confidence Blackthorne found it hard not to share.
The death toll in the town had been high and the Baron had decided to send his untrained reservists, those that still lived, to safer areas where they could bolster the standing defences of key population centres: Korina, Gyernath, the College cities, even Baron Corin’s lands to the far north-east. Even the farms lay idle, their tenants packed on to wagons and ordered east to wherever would have them.
Blackthorne tapped his fist again and again on the rock by his head, his anger undimmed, his humiliation complete. But beneath it was a wash of pride. As he’d ordered the retreat, the horns, backed by flags, blaring out their message, he’d seen his men in the town redouble their efforts to keep the Wesmen back. Closing ranks, they’d grouped in a tight formation in the market crescent, drawing the Wesmen on and providing stout final resistance. Without their selfless action, Blackthorne wondered whether he would be standing where he was now or lying dead in his own blood.
He stared down at the lights blazing in the castle. Someone else would be sleeping in his bed tonight. An enemy. He seethed. Gresse came to his shoulder.
‘There was nothing you could do,’ he said. ‘At least this way we live to fight on.’
‘But for how long?’ Blackthorne’s voice was bitter. ‘We’ve got no defence against the Shamen magic.’
‘But at least we survived to warn Darrick and the Colleges. If mages can effectively shield walls, we can still win.’
‘But we leave our men open to magical attack,’ said Blackthorne. ‘We have no idea how many Shamen there are, and without the scale of magical offence we had been counting on, our soldiers can’t fight the odds. There are too many Wesmen. You heard the reports. Eighty-five thousand. Altogether, the east has barely half that number in soldiers worth the name. And the Wesmen are already on their way to Understone and, I expect, Gyernath. We had to hold them for three days to give The Raven a fair chance and we managed ten minutes.
‘If Understone Pass goes the same way, The Raven will have nothing to return to. It’ll already be too late.’
Gresse put a hand on Blackthorne’s shoulder. It was the Baron’s darkest hour and his assessment of their situation felt uncomfortably accurate. He had lost his home and his people were spreading over the country. Many would never return and he had not, could not, put up any fight. There was no real consolation, but Gresse tried anyway.
‘Even if the Wesmen are drinking wine from the KTA vaults in Korina, if the Wytch Lord magic is taken from them, we can rout them.’
Blackthorne turned to him, shaking his head. ‘Gresse, if the Wesmen take Korina there will be no one left to rout them. Gods, if they sack the College Cities we may as well sail south and leave them to it.’
Gresse let his head drop. Blackthorne was right. And if the Wesmen strength at Triverne Inlet was as strong as the one camped in and around Blackthorne, they would be at the gates of Julatsa in four days.
The afternoon and evening passed without incident for The Raven. Thraun and The Unknown spent much of the time watching the Temple and its approach. They saw no one, adding to Denser’s unease.
Before moving on to the Temple, The Raven ate in the fading light. The mood was sombre.
‘If our failure becomes inevitable, we must ensure that Dawnthief is destroyed before the Wytch Lords get it,’ said Denser.
‘How?’ asked Will.
‘Just melt the catalysts, or one of them,’ said Denser. ‘It’s simple.’
‘So we could take this spell out of the game right now,’ said Will.
‘If we wanted to throw away our only chance of beating the Wytch Lords, yes.’ Denser shrugged. ‘But there’s one thing I must make clear. If I am killed and it becomes obvious that none of us is going to live to return the catalysts to Xetesk, one or all of them must be destroyed. Because if the Wytch Lords get hold of it, there is no chance. Not even for the Wesmen.’
The Raven exchanged looks around the stove. Hirad helped himself to some more coffee from the iron pot on its hot plate.
‘All right then,’ said Jandyr. ‘Say we do what we have to do and the Wytch Lords are gone, what then?’
‘It won’t stop the Wesmen, that’s certain, although it will remove their total arrogance and belief in victory,’ replied Denser. ‘You have to understand that it now seems the Wesmen have been preparing for this for perhaps ten years. They are united, they are strong and they are determined. But what’s more important is that they know the east is fragmented. They’ll believe they can still take Balaia with or without the Wytch Lords. And if they retake the pass before our armies are ready, they might just do it.’
‘Aren’t you being a little overdramatic, Denser?’ Hirad was smiling. ‘Surely your mages can hold the pass indefinitely with that water spell of yours.’ Ilkar tutted. Denser shook his head and smiled at Erienne. ‘You know something, I really hate it when you mages get smug.’
‘Sorry, Hirad, you’re not to know,’ said Denser. ‘But to us, that statement is like us wondering why you can’t fight so well with one arm or something.’
‘So tell me,’ said Hirad.
‘You saw the spell and you saw the condition of the mages who walked away. Two didn’t.’ Denser sucked his lip. ‘What you don’t know is what went on before, or the long-term aftermath. Those mages spent two weeks in preparation, testing and resting. They were secluded from the rest of the College to maximise their concentration level. Now they’ve cast, they’ll be unable to perform any spell for the best part of three days, and as for the DimensionConnect, not for another two weeks. And that assumes that the dimension with which we want to connect is in alignment with ours.’
‘But the Wesmen don’t know that,’ said Hirad, worried more than he hoped he was showing that this spell was not available every couple of days at the least.
‘There will be enough Shamen able to make educated guesses about the spell once they’ve heard information about it,’ said Erienne.
‘And consider this,’ said Ilkar. ‘There’s probably only one spell written that is more powerful, and I don’t need to tell you its name. Any Shaman worth a damn will know we’ve originated a dimension spell and used it. That’ll tell them all they need about the likely effort required to cast it.’
The night was warm but Hirad felt a chill on his body. The powers they were dealing with, the power they’d already seen and the power they wanted to unleash. He couldn’t help but feel it was all spiralling out of control. And if they took the Death’s Eye Stone from the Wrethsires, it would make Denser the most powerful man in Balaia.
‘Something else has been bothering me.’ They all looked at Will. ‘Do you think the Wytch Lords know we’re here, this side of the pass?’
‘The Raven?’
‘Yes.’