CHAPTER FIVE

Sakkuth, Isembaard

I n the end it took Maximilian and his party a mere six days to get to Sakkuth, and that accomplished only with effort, physical as well as magical. For the first two days they traveled relatively unhindered, but then, having crossed the River Lhyl, they entered the territory just to the west of Sakkuth.

It was here that Isaiah’s army gathered, together with the settlers from the northwest of the Tyranny.

Maximilian, Serge, and Doyle stood together on a small hillock at dawn on the day they encountered the gathering army, hidden by a small stand of trees and some of Maximilian’s ability to meld with the shadows, and stared eastward.

“That is not an army,” Doyle said softly. “That is a nation.”

“An ocean,” said Serge, “gathering for a storm.”

“When did you two become so poetical?” Maximilian said, but any humor in his voice was overwhelmed by the shock of the sight before him.

Thousands, no…hundreds of thousands…of men gathered in encampments spreading as far as the eye could see. The original rumor of a million men, Maximilian decided, was wrong. There were far more, particularly when the numbers were engorged by settlers.

“The north will fall within weeks,” said Serge. “Days.”

“Thank you for your revised estimate,” Maximilian said, then he paused. “Shit! I cannot believe this!”

Serge and Doyle looked at Maximilian with some surprise—the man rarely swore.

“Can we get around them?” Serge said.

“We have no time,” Maximilian said. “Getting ‘around’ them will take weeks, and weeks we don’t have.”

“Through them, then?” Doyle said, his voice soft.

“That is our only option,” Maximilian said. “Venetia, Ravenna, and I have some skill in the arts of disguise…we will need all of that and then some luck, but we shall have to manage it.”

“You don’t want to announce yourself to the nearest senior officer and demand to be taken to Isaiah in the style of a king?” Serge said.

Maximilian gave a soft laugh, and indicated his grubby clothing, far the worse for the wear and tear of his journey through the mountains and northern Isembaard.

“Who would believe this?” he said. “No. We do this secretively, and we do it as fast as possible. Come.”

Manage it they did, but only at the cost of exhaustion for Maximilian, Venetia, and Ravenna, as well as the drain of nervous energy on the rest of the party. StarDrifter and Salome also battled continuing fatigue from the development of their wings—now large, twin raised ridges hunching out almost four handbreadths from either side of their spines.

They managed it only with the aid of the Weeper. When one or more among Maximilian, Venetia, or Ravenna began to flag while moving the group quietly through the ranks of the army, then the Weeper began to hum, and bolstered not only the concealing shadowy cloak that the two marsh witches and Maximilian had constructed, but its constructors’ strength as well.

The days spent creeping through the ranks of what everyone had come to refer to as the gathering storm drained emotional energy as well as physical and magical.

Everyone was appalled at the enormity of what Isaiah would throw at the north. No one had ever seen anything like it, nor heard of it.

At night, when they crouched in whatever shelter they could find, relying on the Weeper by that stage of the day to conceal them, they talked in low tones about what they had passed through.

“StarDrifter,” Serge asked one night, “did you ever see the like during the wars you witnessed in Tencendor?”

StarDrifter took some time to answer that, dredging up the memories of the wars with considerable reluctance. “No,” he said eventually. “I saw seething Skraeling armies—and to think that such are gathering again, to bolster Isaiah’s forces!—but nothing like this. No one in Tencendor could have managed such sheer numbers of soldiers.” He shook his head slightly. “It is inconceivable.”

“Salome?” Maximilian said. “Did Coroleas ever raise such a force?”

Salome gave a cynical laugh. “No, Maximilian. Coroleans practice war by stealth. The single, highly paid assassin, with a dagger in a crowd of frivolity. A drugged glass of wine. Or drugs administered by other means.” She sent a single dark glance at StarDrifter. “But not armies. No. Never. We were far too indolent.”

“I wish BroadWing and his companions were with us still,” Maximilian said, “if only so I could use their wings to report this nightmare. I am sure my fellow princes are still engaged in a futile struggle with each other. Not looking south.”

“Or north toward the Skraeling homelands,” Doyle muttered. He turned to his friend and fellow former assassin. “What do you think of the Isembaardians’ weapons, my friend?”

Serge thought a few minutes, every eye in the group on him.

“They’re not intending much close hand-to-hand fighting,” he said. “Spears and arrows predominate. I imagine Isaiah plans to send a storm of metal raining down upon the forces opposing him, decimating them within an hour at most. Then, if needed, Isaiah could send in a few swordsmen to finish off those still left alive.”

“If they could get through the bristling crop of spears and arrows littering the corpses on the ground,”

said Venetia. “Why do you men do this? Why propagate such vile death?”

“It is not us,” Maximilian said sharply. “All I want is my bride and child returned to me.”

“I apologize, Maxel,” Venetia said. “The question was rhetorical only, and born of my fright and fatigue more than anything.” She looked at her daughter. “Methinks you should have remained with the Lord of Dreams, Ravenna. I am sure that this”—she gestured vaguely at the encampment of soldiers not fifty paces distant—“was not something to which you wanted to return.”

“I returned because I was needed, Venetia,” Ravenna said, but she looked at Maximilian rather than her mother as she replied.

A day later they arrived in Sakkuth.

Here they did not need to use magical disguise as much, for the city was bustling with people, come to aid the gathering forces. Merchants, traders and craftsmen, prostitutes, cooks, tailors—countless differing skills and hopes paraded on the streets every twenty paces. StarDrifter and Salome did, however, need to keep cloaks hunched over their backs to disguise their growing wings. Fortunately Sakkuth was in the midst of an unnaturally cold snap—even in winter the city rarely slipped below the balmy—and thus the cloaks caused no comment on the streets.

By some miracle of comradeship, Venetia found them two small rooms in the basement of a bakery. The baker’s wife was a covert witch-woman whom Venetia had met previously in the borderlands of the Land of Dreams. They recognized each other instantly, and the baker’s wife just as instantly intuited their need for shelter and rest. Her husband was not so enthusiastic about a band of strangers occupying two of his bakery’s storerooms until Serge took out a bag of coin and casually moved it from hand to hand; then he grudgingly agreed.

“And so it has come to this,” Maximilian said, sitting on a sack of grain and idly swinging one leg back and forth. “A king, a talon, two witch-women, two assassins, and…what would you call yourself, Salome?”

“The single sane member of this group.”

Maximilian smiled. “And the single sane one among us, hidden in the basement of a bakery, in a strange land, surrounded by the largest army creation has ever seen, looking for a woman and a child. What do you think our chances of success are?”

“Fairly high,” said the baker’s wife, who had just entered the room, “for the streets are abuzz with the news that the tyrant himself is now entering the city. There are stairs inside the bakery to the roof. You should have a good view there.”

Maximilian’s humor had vanished, and his face was now tight with emotion.

“To the roof, then,” he said.