The Serpentwar Saga: The Complete 4-Book Collection

The officer had been totally baffled and simply waved them past the checkpoint.

Now they were at the crest of a rise overlooking the river valley below, where the Vedra emptied into the Blue Sea. Erik squinted at the scene below.

Maharta was a city of white stone and plaster, bright in the summer sun, now reduced to grey by weeks of falling ash. It spread across two main islands, while several suburbs had arisen on smaller islands in the delta. The main city was surrounded by a high wall on the northwest, north, and northeast, while the remaining sections were flanked by river, harbor, or sea. Several estuaries and inlets provided a variety of anchorages in the deep channel of the river as well as along the coast. Sprinkled across numerous islands were villages, and on the western shore of the river, a large suburb with its own wall.

Nakor peered at the distant city. ‘Things move close to a finish.’

‘How can you tell?’ asked Erik.

Nakor shrugged. ‘See the garrison on this side?’

Erik shook his head. ‘No. There’s too much smoke.’

Nakor pointed. ‘Look, there, at the river and sea, where they join in the delta. There were many bridges there – you can see blackened foundations where they were burned – and some villages on the smaller islands, but there, on this shore, there’s a good-sized town, with its own wall.’

Erik squinted against the smoke and fading sunlight and saw a spot of light grey against the darker water. Studying it, he thought it might be a walled town, but he couldn’t be certain. ‘I think I see it.’

‘That is the western precinct of Maharta. It is still holding.’

Erik said, ‘Your eyes must be as sharp as the Captain’s.’

‘Maybe, but I think it’s that I know what to look for.’

‘What are we going to do?’ asked Erik.

‘I don’t know,’ said Nakor. ‘I think Calis knows, but then, maybe he doesn’t. I do know that we need to be over there.’ He pointed at the far side of the river.

Erik looked at the massive host marshaled along the riverbank and said, ‘That seems to be everyone’s problem, Nakor.’

‘What?’

‘Being over there.’ Erik pointed northward and said. ‘They say there are bridges being built ten miles north of here. If so, why is everyone marshaled down here near the coast? They can’t be thinking of swimming across, can they?’

‘Difficult swim,’ Nakor admitted. ‘Doubt that’s what they’re going to do. But I expect they have a plan.’

‘A plan,’ Erik said, shaking his head dubiously as he remembered what Greylock had told him about battle plans and the realities of war. He sighed. ‘All we have to do is go through this army, cross the river, and get the defenders to open the gate for us.’

‘There’s always a way,’ said the little man with a grin.

Erik again shook his head in uncertainty as the order to move down into the waiting host was given, and suddenly he felt very much like a mouse invading a cat’s lair.

If the outlying fringes of the host were confused, the heart of the army was strictly under control. Calis noticed several heavily manned checkpoints and veered away from them, and twice had to improvise explanations for provost officers riding patrol. He claimed to be confused about which campsite he needed to locate, and said he was among those who were going to be first across.

Both times the officers assumed that no one would be lying to be the first across the river, so in both cases they merely waved Calis along. But as they skirted around the central position of the army, they got some sense of how things lay.

A large hill was central to the host, with the Queen’s pavilion atop it. Around that tent were the officers’ tents and rank upon rank of Saaur guard, with Pantathian combat troops arrayed behind them. Then came a series of tents used by Pantathian priests. The air was so thick with their magic it reeked, claimed Nakor. Then the bulk of the army radiated outward like spokes of a wheel.

De Loungville said, ‘It’s a pity there’s not another army lurking about in the grass nearby. These lads are so bound to conquer there’s nothing remotely defensive about this place.’

Erik knew little of warcraft, but after months of working hard to create defensible encampments, even he could see this: there were major flaws in the disposition of this army. ‘They must be planning on launching the attack soon,’ he observed.

‘Why do you say that?’ asked Calis.

‘Greylock, what’s that word you told me, for supply?’

‘Logistics.’

‘That’s the one. The logistics are all wrong. Look at where they’ve got their horses. Each company has them picketed nearby, but there’s no easy way to get water to them from the river. This is going to be a mess in a day or two.’

Calis nodded, but said nothing, as he looked around.

De Loungville said, ‘You’re right. This host can’t stay here another week without a major blowup. Either men are going to get sick, start fighting, or run out of food and have to eat their horses. They can’t stay here much longer.’

Calis said, ‘There,’ as he pointed.

Erik looked to see a narrow peninsula of sandy ground, near the river’s edge, sheltered by tall grasses. They rode down a long incline, through some rocky gullies carved out by rain, and down to a sandy stretch, then back up a small rise, and at last reached the indicated area.

Erik jumped from his horse and knelt near the water’s edge. He cupped some in his hand and found it brackish and salty. ‘They can’t drink this.’

‘I know,’ said Calis. ‘Form a team and haul water down from upriver to give the horses something to drink.’ Looking around as the sun began to set, he said, ‘We’re not staying here very long.’

Camp was quickly made and Erik saw to it that the eighteen remaining men from Nahoot’s company were always under surveillance. They were not certain exactly what had happened to Dawar and the other man, but they knew it had been fatal and it was clear they didn’t wish to meet a similar fate. De Loungville had remarked there might be another agent among them, but if there was, Erik was forced to concede he was far more clever at disguising his nature, for not one of those men tried anything suspicious. Still, Erik billeted them closest to the river, with his own men and the horses on one side of them and the river on the other.

Roo came and found Erik as he was checking to see the horses were fit. ‘Captain wants you over there.’ He pointed to where Calis stood with de Loungville, Nakor, Greylock, and Hatonis.

Reaching the mound on which they stood, Erik heard Nakor saying, ‘… three times. I think there is something strange here.’

Calis said. ‘That’s a well-defended position –’

‘No,’ interrupted Nakor. ‘Look closely. The walls are good, yes, but there is no way to bring in reinforcements, yet the man said they were facing fresh soldiers every time they assaulted the walls. Three times in one day.’

De Loungville said, ‘Camp gossip.’

‘Maybe,’ said Nakor. ‘Maybe not. If true, then there is a way from that place’ – he pointed toward the small western precinct of the city on this side of the river – ‘to over there.’ He then pointed to the distant lights of Maharta. ‘It might be why they tried so hard to take it last week. If not for a way in, why not leave it and let them starve?’

De Loungville scratched his chin. ‘Maybe they don’t want trouble at their back.’

‘Bah!’ said Nakor. ‘Does this army look like it’s worried about trouble? This army is trouble. Trouble soon if they don’t get across that river. Soon there’ll be no food. Bad …’ He turned to Erik. ‘What was that word?’

‘Logistics.’

‘Bad logistics. Baggage train all strung out from here up to Lanada. Men pissing into the river upstream, and soon men downriver get belly flux and bad runs. Horse dung everywhere up to your knees. Men don’t get food, men fight. It’s simple. They take this precinct’ – he made a diving motion – ‘and take tunnel under river, then up into city.’

‘There was that tunnel under the Serpent River before,’ conceded Calis.

Hatonis said, ‘But there’s lots of bedrock under the City of the Serpent River. Our clans dug those tunnels over a period of two hundred years because of the storms of summer, the monsoons. You can’t safely cross the bridges when the seas are high and the wind is that strong.’

‘They get big storms here in Maharta?’ asked Nakor.