Dark Forge Read online

  “We will have to fight,” Val al-Dun said.

  “Yes,” it said.

  And later, he asked, with the boldness of desperation, “How will we cross the river?”

  “The Disciple will provide,” the Agha said.

  “Exalted One, we lack the numbers to seize the bridge.”

  Even if we could break in one of the gates.

  “You are wise in your many fears. Nonetheless, all will be accomplished.”

  Fuck, Val al-Dun thought.

  Two hours later, the column had halted at the riverside. They had brushed aside a patrol—local militia, or suchlike. Hussan had dealt with them, and a dozen ravens were gorging on the result.

  Val al-Dun dismounted, and took the time to empty the sand and grit out of his riding boots. He used river water to rinse his spare turban-cloth, to wash his face and hands.

  Then he felt something change. It was not something he saw, or heard, exactly, but he became aware of the presence, the change. He turned, dropping his towel, to see Kati prostrate on her face, and all the rest of his troopers dropping, and he threw himself on the ground.

  The light from the open door of the palanquin was blinding. He’d felt the light as well as seen it. He lay on the packed mud of the riverbank and covered his eyes.

  The light grew.

  He tried to pray to the Lady. He’d always liked the Lady, and the Thunderer, although he wasn’t sure what he believed.

  The light emanating from the Disciple was so bright that it penetrated his eyelids, like a bright dawn fills the room of a man with a hangover. He forced himself to remain perfectly still. At a remove, he heard the mortal sound of shoes or sandals slapping on the packed mud.

  He tried to pray.

  Ah, my child, said the Voice. You have done well, and you have nothing to fear. You have brought us to the banks of the Black River. Be calm, my child.

  The feet clapped on the ground, and stopped.

  There was a pulse, as if all the world flashed into the void for one brief instant and then reasserted itself.

  Hurry, mortals. This will not last for eternity. The voice in his head was not his own.

  The light was gone. In its place was a flat, featureless bridge. It was not apparent what material formed the bridge; the surface was matt, and in the dark appeared to be the same colour as the surrounding mud banks. The bridge had no visible supports and was not arched.

  Val al-Dun sprang to his feet.

  “On your feet!” he called. His first attempt came out as a hiss; his throat was tight with fear. “On your feet!” he roared.

  Hussan had his horse by the bridle, and he had a hand on Kati’s elbow, and behind them, Mikal had his camel moving. Men and women were dusting the dirt from their garments and groaning as they flung themselves into their saddles.

  Hussan approached him. “Are you all right?” he asked. “It… talked to you.”

  Val al-Dun blinked. “Still hungry, thirsty, tired, and frustrated,” he muttered. “So I reckon I’m fine.”

  “There’s soldiers behind us. Draivash says there’re sixty, maybe eighty of them.”

  As if to punctuate Hussan’s statement, there was a scattering of shots off to the north.

  “Take all of Draivash’s kin and all your own,” Val al-Dun said. “Keep them off the bridge until we’re well out, and then come yourselves. Don’t die here. No one is going to accomplish much chasing us over this bridge.”

  He walked over to the palanquin, which was now dark and silent.

  “Exalted One,” he called out.

  Three of the scarlet people stood silently. The fourth whirled.

  “Speak, Khan,” it said.

  Val al-Dun had never been addressed as “Khan” and he was taken aback. Nevertheless, he bowed his head.

  “Will we return from the far bank by this wonderful bridge?” he asked. “Should I hold the bridgehead?”

  He stood, head bowed, for so long that he began to wonder if he’d been heard.

  “We will not return,” it said.

  Perfect, Val al-Dun thought. We are dog meat. One-way trip. I knew it.

  The palanquin began to move, and the four Agha went with it. The bridge that the Disciple had made was just wide enough for the four camels, and yet the Agha walked swiftly, as if unaware that their feet were as close to the edge as the width of a boy’s belt.

  The rest of the Tufenchis were arrayed, and they crossed in order: Val al-Dun’s kin, the Safians, in the lead. They were hard-pressed to keep up with the palanquin, which moved so quickly that the column began to spread out, and Val al-Dun cursed. He had enough water in his mouth to curse, now.

  The crossing was as strange as every other part of the journey. The river was flat and the surface moved swiftly in the moonlight, and the low bridge passed a mere handspan above the surface of the water, so that looking at the water could be disorienting. The bridge itself did not vibrate or make noise, or sway.

  A third of the way across, Val al-Dun heard a burst of firing behind him. He halted and listened, and then watched. He could see figures on horseback hurrying towards him. He waited.

  Then a scream, and another. And then the sound of hooves pounding.

  Suddenly the air itself seemed to pulse with Ruhani. The flickers of light were like pulses of summer lightning, and the whole structure on which they stood seemed to vibrate like the skin of a drumhead struck by one of Mikal’s sticks.

  Val al-Dun turned his horse and began to organise a rearguard out of a handful of Zand tribesmen he had. But the precaution was unnecessary; Hussan was with him before he’d ordered the Zand to dismount.

  Hussan was all but whimpering with pain, and he was a tough man. Val al-Dun got his spare turban from his saddlebag and tied Hussan’s right arm, shattered by a musket ball, tightly against his chest after examining it.

  “More than a hundred,” Hussan said.

  Draivash shook his head. “Some kind of maguv. We lost people when they…” The bandit lacked words. “They used sorcery against us!”

  “They broke off a piece of this bridge,” Hussan muttered.

  “Sweet Lady,” Val al-Dun muttered.

  “They’ll kill you for that,” Hussan said.

  “Boss, we need to get our arses back to robbing caravans,” Draivash spat.

  Even as he spoke, Draivash was loading the long jezzail slung across his back.

  “Keep moving,” Val al-Dun said.

  “I can drop a few,” Draivash said.

  Val al-Dun shook his head. “All we have is speed. See to your cousin.”

  He pushed forward along the column, avoiding falling into the water or pushing others, moving carefully, obscurely happy to see the small form of Kati still alive. Now he was a different kind of leader; he slapped backs and teased, prodded, mocked, joked. Among the Safians, he was with family—distant cousins and his brother’s strait-laced sons. It was impossible to be the “father of fear” to his own; they needed to be cajoled and flattered.

  He went to the small woman, Kati.

  “Your cousins say you can work the foreign sorcery,” he said.

  She shrugged, her eyes bright under her veils. “It is forbidden.”

  “Nonetheless,” he said.

  I need some help here, girl.

  She made a motion with her head, mostly lost in the darkness and the veils, but he took it to mean that she was aware.

  “If my poor skills can help family, I will do what can be done,” she said cautiously.

  Val al-Dun nodded. “Good,” he snapped.

  He left her and went to the front, kept them moving, trying not to look out at the inky water that flowed so unnaturally under the unnatural bridge. He tried not to wonder what would happen if a floating tree struck the construction, and he tried not to imagine what some Masran Magos had done to the whole construct.

  And then the whole bridge moved again—this time a sudden shock. Twenty Tufenchis fell in and drowned. His brother’s second s
on fell so close that he leant from his horse, but the man was gone in a gulp and a swirl. Choked screams told of other drownings. One young man was saved when his brother grabbed his hair and held him until other arms dragged him back onto the bridge.

  “Hang on!” Val al-Dun roared.

  He dismounted and received a painful kick from Thera, who was terrified, her ears laid back like a cat’s.

  “What in all the hells?” asked Namud, his sister’s eldest. Many Safians worshipped the old stone gods, and their endless hells. Not openly. Never openly.

  “Lie down,” Val al-Dun called. “Get your animals down!”

  He could feel the bridge move. Back behind them, there was a ripple of white fire and a pulse of power. Even he felt it, and he was renowned among his acquaintances for his lack of attunement to the immaterial.

  The bridge tilted, and then righted itself. More screams.

  Val al-Dun gritted his teeth. He was on his knees, his arms around the neck of his mare.

  He made himself raise his head.

  The bridge was moving fast. He could only gauge by the lamplights of the distant city and the passing of the moon across the sky, but the whole bridge appeared to be moving across the surface of the river, as if it was held at one end and the current was…

  Like a real bridge, he thought.

  He’d once seen the pontoon bridge across the summertime Effrathes give way at one end, with catastrophic results.

  “We’re going to hit hard!” he yelled. “Hold on to your mount!”

  Again, your fears make you wise. Again, the voice in his head was not his own.

  They struck. The non-material surface was neither slick nor rough, and the shock of the strike knocked people and animals flat. Men and women went into the water, but this was shallow, muddy water, and fewer were lost, although once the first horses went in, the kuramax struck, their pointed, reptilian heads and savage rows of teeth gleaming in the light of two moons.

  The first one hit like an explosion of flesh, and it was so fast that a small horse and its rider vanished in the froth of mud and blood in the moonlight.

  There was more than one kuramax.

  The horror of it hit his tired Tufenchis and they panicked. Riders went off the wrong side of the bridge; a few leapt their weary mounts onto the slippery mud of the far bank. Further up the remnant of the bridge, most of the Zand and the Tarkars and the Ugrs made it onto a stone breakwater. But at the end where the Safians were, there were reptilian monsters in the mud and the actual bank was ten long paces away.

  Val al-Dun kept his wits together. He pushed men and women off to the left, where the magikal bridge rested on stone. He screamed, and used the flat of his sword.

  So he had his sword in his hand when the kuramax came for him. He saw the snout a moment before it opened, and the eyes. His cut severed the last five fingers of its reaching mouth, taking away the cruel incisors and leaving it gushing blood. The great jaws snapped shut on empty air, and Thera pounded a panicked hind-hoof into the thing as it darted away.

  Even in moonlight, it left a slick of its oily, alien blood on the surface as it dived away. The water around them was churning. Men and animals were dying. The smell of the rotten river mud churned up by the ambush was like the vomit of a god of death.

  Val al-Dun looked to his right and saw the palanquin, still facing the mudflats.

  He ran to the nearest white camel. There stood the inscrutable figure of an Agha, its usually pristine robes spattered with mud.

  “This way!” he screamed at it.

  Yes. Go with him.

  “Why don’t you help us?” he screamed.

  He could no longer control himself. The darkness was full of monsters now; there was fighting on the bank above them.

  We must save ourselves for the contest.

  And yet…

  Suddenly one of the Agha detached itself from the palanquin. From its robes it produced two swords of white fire, and it leapt into the water.

  The palanquin turned and made its way towards the stone embankment, a hundred paces distant.

  Light now illuminated the carnage under the water—the light of the Agha’s two swords. Where it was, colour was: brown like river mud and sudden starts of scarlet, robes and blood flowing freely in the dark water.

  It was so fast that Val al-Dun had trouble following the action. But he pushed his kin up onto the stone, still warm from a day in the sun, and glanced back to see the Agha climbing out of the water, the scarlet robes of billowing silk now stretched across it like wet kelp. It had taken wounds. It moved, not with unnatural grace, but like an old, old person forced to climb steps.

  That was all in one glance. Because at the top of the stone embankment, Hussan was dead, and chaos reigned.

  The night was lit by a volley—a single pulse of fire—and another half a dozen of his Tufenchis were corpses. Val al-Dun couldn’t even see the Masran enemy; but he was out of options. There was only one possible answer.

  “Brothers and sisters!” he called. “On me! At them!”

  He looked for Mikal, and the old man was there—mounted, alive, sticks poised.

  “Charge!” Val al-Dun barked, putting all his fear and anger into that one word.

  Bam-bam. Bam-bam. Bam-bam. Bam-bam.

  The noise was like thunder.

  Perhaps forty of his people were mounted and ready. Dozens more had lost their mounts, and when they charged, they were an undisciplined, desperate mob.

  The invisible Masrans greeted them with a disciplined volley. The crash of fire betrayed them, close, under some sort of baraka cloak that hid them.

  Women fell. Men screamed. Horses thrashed, but the one explosion of musketry was not enough to stop their desperation. They crashed into the Masrans, and it was hand to hand with mere men—shaven-headed men in black kilts who stood in four neat ranks and fought silently and with great determination.

  Val al-Dun found himself deep in the Masran ranks, facing a rank of men with long spears all reaching for Thera. He leant so far back in his saddle that his back touched her rump. His katir flicked up to twitch one spear aside and he was under them. He took a blow to the head from a shaft, and another to his right arm, and his sword was gone in the darkness. Thera was his weapon, and she turned, her jaws and hooves savage, and the men of Masr—soldier-priests, as he later learnt—stood and died.

  A pulse of red fire lit the night. It fell on a shield of white, and on some of the Tufenchis, who burned like screaming torches. The shield rose from the palanquin on the dark stone behind them, and the surviving Safians learned to stay within its white net. And the palanquin unloosed its own storm of white fire on the soldier-priests. Finally another Agha came forward into the chaos of fire and shadow and produced two swords of fire.

  It threw itself into the fight.

  The soldier-priests did not break and run, and neither did the Tufenchis, but the katir and buckler were better weapons in the darkness than the matchlock butt and the spear, and the men of Masr died.

  They died hard, and they focused their attacks on the Agha, who, covered in mud and gore, waded into their ranks. In the end, the soldier-priests died, but they took the Agha with them. It lay still, sightless eyes open as in life, limbless in the moonlight.

  Val al-Dun was covered in small wounds, but when he dismounted, Thera was untouched. He kissed her, and closed his eyes.

  We must keep moving. Dawn is close.

  He was close to refusal. But after all, why had he come at all?

  Because I was never offered a choice. Serve or die, he thought.

  He gathered his survivors. There were a hundred of his own dead mixed in with the Masran soldiers, their combined fluids making the gravel both slick and sticky, and another forty dead in muddy water. Two Aghas were dead, if dead was the correct word. The one that had attacked the monsters in the water was floating in the reeds at the very edge of the moving water, scarlet robes now black. The limbless one lay where it had been hac
ked to pieces by the Masrans.

  We must go now, my Khan. Dawn is close.

  Val al-Dun looked at the corpses of his friends and family, and he couldn’t allow himself to think that this was for nothing. He couldn’t let that thought go deep. Instead he found the Magos, or maybe he was the chief priest. His skin was mostly burnt off, and his charred skull seemed to wear an evil smile, as if mocking his endeavours, but what had attracted Val al-Dun was the ring with four big keys on the man’s belt. They were still warm, but they weren’t melted. He took them, and the black obsidian dagger the man wore.

  “On me!” he called, his voice rough.

  They followed him, even Kati, without complaint. Or comment. They had reached the point where there was nothing but the shared sense of fatigue and despair.

  After less than half a parasang, the river path became a stone walkway above an embankment down to the river. On the landward side, a stone wall towered above them, perhaps as high as two tall men. At the corner was a tower, perhaps three storeys high. Beyond the tower, the stone walkway continued along the riverside to a vanishing point.

  Someone in the tower had a carabin. He fired at long range, and hit a horse.

  Something was swelling in Val al-Dun. Perhaps it was the thought that Thera might die here. Somehow, that was worse than his own death. She was a servant, a loyal servant, and deserved better than this.

  He touched his heels to the horse and leant forward, and she responded with all her usual heart. She burst forward, before the sniper could shoot again.

  Behind him, half a dozen of his people dismounted. They took their long jezzails and began pelting the tower.

  He stayed low and let Thera work her muscular magik. They flew along the smooth stone of the riverside road until her iron-shod hooves struck sparks that showed in the darkness.

  Thera passed the tower and her hooves clacked away along the stone road. The stone was a dark basalt, veined in white—featureless, well jointed, without any apparent mortar.

  Val al-Dun was no longer in the saddle. It was a bandit trick; he’d never done a running dismount in the dark, onto stone. Both of his booted feet hurt, but he was there, in the shadow of the tower’s doorway. His horse clattered away into the night, and he wished her well.