Beyond the Bulwarks Page 3

  “How long has he been there?”

  “I have been here all along.” The wizard nodded to Perrenius. “You were right, my friend. There is only truth in him.”

  “Bastard.” Sweat prickled across Anzo’s forehead. “You’ve been in my mind?”

  Ossys offered him a brittle smile. “An Initiate of Thoth is trained in manners other than magic to sense truth. A lying man gives himself away, with his words, his body language.”

  “Fine. You’re a voyeur.” Anzo shook his head. “So are one of you geniuses planning on telling me why the hells I’m here?”

  Perrenius exchanged a look with Ossys and stepped past him to the wall map. He gestured to the region east of the broad Aurridian March, embraced between the Decian and Bulwark Mountains with a long river winding through its heart. “The Lydirian Valley—” Perrenius grinned over his shoulder at Anzo “—your old stomping grounds...”

  Anzo’s arms, aching from their grip about his cooled frame, fell to his sides. “Yeah, what about it?”

  “Reports have been arriving for some time about fighting east of the Bulwarks in the Barbaricum. We didn’t give them much credence, at first. The Vhurrian tribes are always sparring amongst themselves. But, six months ago, word arrived by courier through the Lothos Gap that the balance of power had undergone a dramatic shift.” Perrenius turned to Anzo. “You no doubt recall the Marovians?”

  “Of course, I do.” Anzo scratched at his tattoo instinctively. “They’re the Emperor’s favorite lackeys, bribed and domesticated to hold the east bank in favor of someone more demanding.”

  “Well, they aren’t holding anything anymore. They’ve been wiped out.”

  “What?” Anzo jolted back a half a step. “How? They were the major power amongst the western-settled Vhurrs.”

  “It was by no mere force of arms,” Ossys rumbled.

  Anzo spared the wizard a glance—all that he dared. “What’s he talking about?”

  Perrenius turned back to the map, rubbing his chin, for a moment looking more like the battle-hardened Legate he’d once been. “The migrations are starting again. Without the Marovians to keep them in check, others are spilling across the Lydirian, in dribs and drabs here, in whole tribes there. It’s sparking political upheaval in the Valley. Descendants of past migrations are beginning to cast aside the farmer’s toil in favor of their ancestors’ old barbarian ways, joining up with impromptu war bands, spreading brigandage.”

  “What’s worse is that the Legions along the river have been badly denuded—” Ossys began.

  “—in anticipation of having to make a play for Kharzul,” Anzo finished for him. He put a hand on Perrenius’ shoulder, the threads finally pulling together in his mind. “That’s the reason for my recall.”

  The Magister nodded wearily. “That’s the reason ten thousand Legionnaires are getting fat, waiting down at the docks for an order that will not now come.” He smiled bitterly. “Which was fortunate for us last night; they were invaluable in beating down the riots before they got out of hand.” He drew a palm across his brow and Anzo saw that it wasn’t just decades the old man had prematurely aged; it was centuries.

  “So why drag me all the way up here?” Anzo looked back and forth between the bureaucrat and the wizard. “Why not just send the Legions back?”

  “Arken—the Emperor—now fears they will be needed elsewhere.” Perrenius gave his head a bitter shake. “Disturbances echo from all corners, my boy. In the north, the Sea Wolves raid Cladenium’s shores and seperatists agitate in Ryndon. In the Southern Empire, our esteemed Co-Emperor, Galenius bleats that the Cerulian mob may overthrow him and it looks as though the Yrenerians are massing on his borders.” He half-smiled, care lines deepening about baggy eyes. “Like I said, a conspiracy in Kharzul no longer tops our list.”

  “You still haven’t told me why I’m here,” Anzo said, beginning to wonder if he really wanted the answer.

  Perrenius looked at Ossys.

  “There is more to this new Vhurrian migration than want of lands or an easier life,” the wizard said. “We have word of great chieftain east of the Bulwarks to whom all are rallying. We have a name, as well: Grondomagnus. He styles himself some sort of Witch-King and apparently has the backing of...other powers.”

  Anzo suppressed a shiver. “Do I even want to know what kind of powers?”

  “We don’t know.” The wizard’s mustache twitched. “The Eyes of Thoth are always watching into the Beyond for signs. But in the east, they find their Sight blotted out, as though by a blanket of darkness.”

  “How’s your Vhurrian?” Perrenius asked in a tone too light for the discussion.

  Anzo winced as the realization he’d dreaded coalesced into reality. “Forget it.”

  “Certainly you still retain some of your mother’s ancestral tongue?”

  “No. It’s dead to me.”

  “A lie,” Ossys said with a glimmer in his eyes.

  “Shut up.”

  “We need you to find out the reason for the Vhurrs’ movements.” Perrenius put his hand on Anzo’s arm. “We need to know if they can be stopped.”

  Anzo flinched away. “Find someone else.”

  “There is no one else.”

  “Why don’t you send Haurus? If you need a few choice throats cut that wretch is primed!”

  Perrenius blinked and the almost-familial warmth of before cooled from his eyes. “Perhaps I should bring Haurus back in here.”

  Anzo froze. “You wouldn’t...”

  “There once was a Severnus from the Lydirian Valley, if memory serves, wanted on charges of desertion from the Legions and, later, banditry at the head of a pack of vicious outlaws.” Perrenius folded meaty arms before him. “You wouldn’t happen to have heard of him your travels?”

  Anzo grimaced. “Bastard...”

  “This is the order of your Emperor, Anzo Severnus. You will do His bidding.”

  Anzo turned away, wanted to spit, wanted to scream. It would have been better to have been stomped into the dust by the mob. It would be better to throw his body from the open windows, right now. He should have known better than to come back. When his recall came, he should have just disappeared into the Kharzulan wilderness.

  “Perrenius, you promised me...”

  Silence. “I know.” Then Perrenius saying to Ossys, “Tell him the rest.”

  “What more?” Anzo roared, spinning back to the pair. “By the gods, isn’t my suicide enough for you?”

  Ossys paused, some kind of decision being made behind his decrepit face. “One of our Order will be going with you.”

  “Insane! The Vhurrs can smell magic on a person!”

  “She will take the proper precautions—”

  “She?!?!”

  “Enough!” Perrenius’ bellow shook the room. Gone from him was any pretense of pleasantry, his gaze aflame, the outburst having shaken loose his carefully-arranged hair. Coldly, he said, “You will carry out the Emperor’s Will.”

  Anzo tried to meet the man’s fury with his own but found himself eclipsed by the rage of a man who has watched everything he’s built threatened.

  “You will do this.” The bureaucrat’s voice quavered for an instant. “Please, Anzo...I need the old Weasel, one more time.”

  “Fine...” Anzo shook his head. “Fine...like I have a choice.” He jabbed a finger. “But this is the last time, Perrenius. You owe me that. If I come back from beyond those mountains, I am done.”

  The Magister Officiorium straightened his hair with a sharp swipe of his hand.

  “We shall see.”

  Chapter Two

  The Salient

  Anzo wasn’t surprised to find the Valley unchanged, even after ten years. It was one of things he had hated in his youth, the rains and monotony of planting in spring, the haze-wreathed drudgery of summer, the rains’ return in fall and the desperate flurry to harvest before howling winds brought snow and the endless, dark wait for the cycle to start over.


  Two weeks ride had brought him through the Lothos Gap to acquire river passage at the citadel of Hadron, just above the Middle Cataract, with the best documentation Perrenius’ staff could forge on wax tablets. The deception wasn’t really necessary, but the old spymaster’s habits saved time. Besides, barbarian and Imperial mixed somewhat freely in this region and there was no shortage of overly-curious ears. In Anzo and the wizard woman assigned to him they would only learn of a small merchant and his lady traveling to Dynium for trade on the Midnight Sea.

  Leaned against crates on the deck of a shallow-drafted barge, Anzo turned from watching the Lyrdirian River’s silt-heavy swirl to regard his new companion. The woman sat cross-legged near the gunwale, meditative, a hood thrown up over her head. He’d prevailed upon her the necessity of leaving her Thothan robes behind before leaving Aurid, but it was obvious they had a lot of work left to do.

  “Varya.”

  Her cowl turned to him. With the morning sun still at her back, shadows hid her face. He waved and she rose to join him. She settled again at his side with hands steepled together and half a foot between them. “Yes, Anzo Severnus?”

  He grimaced. I can’t even call it lousy field craft. She’s got no idea. “Look—” he put his arm over her shoulder and dragged her close to her obvious resistance “—we’re supposed to be together, you know? You don’t have to sell it, but don’t be so obvious.”

  “You told me it wouldn’t be that important, yet.” She didn’t quite squirm at their closeness, her thin-boned frame tight as wound chord.

  “I know I did. But it’s like taking on a character or...” He shrugged. “Look, you practice at your...your powers, right?”

  Now she did squirm. “It is more like exercise, honing a muscle to a task.”

  “Fine. It’s like that. You have to be comfortable in it to make people believe.” He nodded over his shoulder, at the Bulwarks lumbering by on the east side of the river. “When we’re over there, it’ll be the difference between life and death. The Vhurrs have no concept of a woman as a separate entity. A man and a woman travelling as equals will set off suspicions instantly. They must see us as a wanderer and his...”

  He trailed off as her face turned to his. Her slim jaw clenched, muscles bunching under skin faintly olive and tinged with the honey of a far away sun. “Chattel,” she finished for him. Light green eyes quivered.

  Anzo nodded. Uncomfortable before a gaze that held echoes of Ossys’ weird, wasted stare, he looked away. “It’s the job, lady.”

  “As Thoth wishes it.” She turned her face to the river and the green fields marching from its bank to the distant, bluish rise of the Decian Mountains in the west. “It’s pretty here, but cold somehow, not like Aurid.”

  Anzo shifted, pulling his arm from her and relieved for it. “You should see it in winter. The river doesn’t often freeze, but the wind blows the snow like daggers. Now, the summers, they can be horrible. This one seems to have been pretty mild, but when there are droughts, especially after a hot spring, everything browns and the river falls so low you can practically walk out to the center and wave to the Vhurrs.”

  “You speak as someone who knows.”

  Anzo half grinned. “I grew up here.” He gestured to the western bank, to a modest villa silhouetted against late summer’s haze, its white-washed walls and columns frowning down upon workers—indentured servants or, more likely, slaves—tending a vineyard. “My father had holdings north of the Upper Cataract.” He could practically see the old bastard’s face in these lands, scowling at the disgrace of his son. “It was the envy of some, I guess. He was a proud sort.”

  “Severnus is an old Aurridian name,” Varya said.

  “We were from an old family.”

  “Yet...Anzo—” She turned to him.

  “—is Vhurrian, yeah.” His grin tightened. “My mother named me, for her ancestors. Her grandparents crossed during the Great Incursions, eighty years ago. Her grandfather died in the fighting and his family—she—was sold into bondage. But she was smart, learned her letters, and a young cavalryman took a liking to her.”

  Calls passed among the barge’s crew. A sailor strolled to the bow and ran a long pole out into the river, checking the depth. The Lydirian bent ahead, curling eastward into what the Imperials had nicknamed the Salient. A lone tower jabbed skyward from a sandstone crag near the curve, a soldier prowling its battlements. A ditch backed by a palisade of sharpened logs formed a perimeter on three sides, the face of the crag a fourth. The sentinel offered the passing barge a lazy wave.

  A chain of such outposts lined the long angle of the Salient as they drifted on, interspersed with small forts of stone walls quarried from the blue-veined limestone of the Decians. The men of these posts kept endless vigil, nervous eyes ever-fixed to the east, across the Lydirian to the Bulwarks that held shadowy threat. Their lines ran from the northwest and southwest, converging at a heavily-fortified point.

  There lay Anzo and Varya’s destination, the Edge of the Aurridian World.

  ***

  The docks below the walls of Fort Terminus bustled with activity as Anzo led Varya down the barge’s loading ramp. Legionnaires seeking extra labor-pay and beefy men conscripted from the surrounding town of Estpont unloaded goods to the bellowed orders of a taskmaster. Muscles bulged under the weight of crates of hard biscuits, barrels of salted pork, and kegs of wine, these last handled most carefully and with smiles.

  Estpont marched in mismatched disarray from the hollow embracing the little harbor, modest, single-storey stone houses with thatched roofs clumped within a low wall that meandered down to the river banks, huts sprawled outside, the homes of transient workers, drawn to the town by Imperial coin and the security implied by the fort looming above.

  Terminus crouched behind its higher walls, toothy with battlements, ascent to a single gate on its western side permitted by a paved Legion road. Two of its walls formed an angle against the Lyrdirian’s easternmost bend, their chiseled blocks merging into a face of limestone that made an escalade against them virtual insanity.

  Anzo tromped down the pier to solid ground, Varya trailing behind with what he suspected was a murmured curse. His gaze passed over laborers, off-duty soldiers calling insults to comrades, and a Legion officer at a teardown desk scrawling notes onto wax pads as the barge captain groused about some difficulty or matter of pay. Anzo had been told to expect contact, someone warned of his coming.

  “It’s a long trip from Hadron.”

  Forcing down surprise, Anzo turned to the voice slowly. The phrase was correct but the man that stood nearby, leaning beside a fish-vendor’s kiosk, could not have been less of a surprise. A perfectly straight-toothed smile shined from a face the darkened mahogany of distant Kharzul, the man’s shaved scalp gleaming in the midday sunlight. He tossed a coin to the vendor and started towards them, gnawed nonchalantly at a strip of meat on a stick. His tunic was fresh and crimson, bordered with black—the colors of the Empire.

  “It’s no labor for a man seeking his destiny.” Anzo returned the code phrase with a smile and reached for the wax tablet in his leather vest.

  The man waved off the motion. “There’s no need, Master Severnus. I am Enu Mbawa and I’ve been told of your coming.”

  Anzo glanced at Varya. “We’re hungry and tired.”

  “I’ve no doubt.” Enu turned and gestured to a boy holding the reins of two horses. The lad approached with the mounts, heavily-muscled steeds with the well-cared-for harnesses of Legion animals. Enu tossed off another coin and mounted the first of the beasts. “Join me at my quarters?”

  “We’d be happy to.” Anzo threw his pack over the second horse’s back and leapt into its saddle. He turned and offered his hand to Varya. The Initiate’s eyes flared out from under her cowl for an instant before she accepted it. He swept her up recklessly, threw her across his lap, grinning at her huff of dismay.

  Enu waved and they followed him. The horses carried them through the low gate of
Estpont, into the nervous bustle of a town on the edge of nowhere. Children ran in the street, chased by calls. Vendors hawked their wares from shop fronts. A fight between Legionnaires and locals seemed to be winding up in front of a tavern—drew a hard stare from Enu that caught the soldiers’ attention enough to hasten their dispersal.

  “It’s a long way from Kharzul,” Anzo said to his new host.

  “I tell myself that every day.” With a click of his tongue, he slowed his mount’s gait to bring him effortlessly alongside. “The Ala Secundus Kharzulius makes about as much sense on this frontier as a bull in a dressmaker’s shop.” He shrugged. “The Empire gathers its cards for another game, but I tell you, I think the deck was damned poorly-shuffled this time.”

  Anzo offered him a thin smile, thought of Perrenius. “So, you’re a cavalryman. I thought I saw an outrider’s comfort in the saddle.”

  Enu’s toothy grin spread to his wrinkling scalp. “My father was a Decurion in the Scholae Kharzula. His father was a reprobate outlaw chief, robbing Imperial trade routes. The Empire has yet to make completely respectable men of us, but the Divine Aurus doesn’t seem to have stopped trying.”

  The threesome passed out of Estpont proper, winding through the smoky shack city of the suburbs and up onto the fort road, tracing the spine of a low ridge. A detachment of riders issued from Fort Terminus’ main gate and trotted down the path. Throaty calls and upraised palm salutes greeted the little party as they passed, Enu returning the gesture. He gave his horse a little heel and Anzo did likewise to keep up.

  Terminus’ gatehouse towered over as the group entered, sentries eyeing them with lazy half-attention. Within, the courtyard rambled with activity, recruits in the drab gray tunics of auxiliaries drilling under a Centurion’s harsh tutelage, clatter of an armory to one side, peat and hot-metal stink of a smithy to another, orders, curses, faint rattle of dice against a wall in one corner. Black-skinned kin of Enu’s north Kharzul heritage mingled with the lighter toned, hatchet-sharp features of Bedouin-descendents and the sun-burnt, blockier-jawed faces of Aurridian stock; a taste of the whole of the Empire here in these walls, it almost seemed.