Chapter Twenty The Pass of Cartuom
The first part of the ruse worked: as night fell, it became clear that the Prince of Oxen had veered from his original course and was moving after the decoy force.
“It looks like you were right,” Captain Autmaran said, the man in the red cape, when he checked in with the Prince the hour of sunset. “That tracking spell is leading him right to you.”
“A good plan so far,” Tomaz rumbled in agreement. The Captain spurred his horse forward once more to join the leading ashandel and eshendai at the head of the column.
“Oh, a great plan,” the Prince responded with quiet sarcasm, “let’s just stay together and lure the Prince of Oxen, only the most ruthless, terrifying, and unmerciful of my brothers and sisters straight toward us. A great plan. A superb plan.”
There was a slight movement ahead of him, and, even though he couldn’t see more than her silhouette in the falling darkness, the Prince was fairly certain Leah had just rolled her eyes at him.
“How far until the ambush site?” Lorna asked.
“A few more miles,” Leah and Davydd responded together.
“So soon?” Lorna and Tomaz responded.
“Yes,” said Davydd and Leah.
“Good,” said Lorna and Tomaz.
“Stop that,” said the Prince.
“What?” asked all four together.
The Prince threw his hands up in the air in exasperation, his nerves on edge. After a few moments of silence, he asked the question that had been burning in his mind since Vale.
“What exactly is Aemon’s Stand?”
The four exchanged glances, and the Prince saw Leah’s shoulders tighten.
“I’m on your side now, remember?” the Prince said. “It might help me to know the secret, since we’re supposed to meet there anyway if we survive this stupid, stupid ambush plan.”
The plan, which had seemed good in concept when Elder Crane had rattled it off in Vale, now seemed terribly foolhardy.
With only some fifteen hundred troops, they planned to divert and hold off Ramael and his whole army?
The Prince had told them all how foolish the plan was, but none of them believed him.
“Stop saying the plan is stupid,“ Leah said. “The plan will work, all we are supposed to do is buy the others time, and we’ve already bought them at least a few more hours by leading the army away from Vale. If we’re lucky, the ambush will force the Prince of Oxen to slow down and it will take him days to track us to the Stand, and by then we’ll have gathered—”
“Ramael won’t be slowed by an ambush!” the Prince exclaimed with a healthy note of disdain in his voice. All of them looked at him, surprised by the outburst.
“Ramael is the Prince of Oxen! He doesn’t care about the lives of his men, he doesn’t care about morale, he doesn’t care!
He’s a man completely concerned with domination, control, and single-minded annihilation.
You need to understand this! No matter how effective this ambush is, it will stall him only as long as it takes him to force his army back into motion.
He will not slow down. He will not pause.
By now he’s past the illusions, so he can use his scouts to track us.
We can buy the main army a day at most, unless we try to lead him back toward the mountains, and even in that case he is smart enough to figure out that we’re a decoy force.
He’ll turn around and burn the countryside until you march out to face him.
He’s past the Pass, he’s past the enchantments, he knows he’s in the right place, and with a huge army!
From what it feels like, he must have at least a hundred thousand, if not more, following him—that’s the entire southern Imperial army. You need to be ready for that!”
A brief silence followed this outburst.
“Well, that brightened up my day,” Tomaz rumbled.
“This plan is still out best chance,” Leah insisted. “And the Stand has never been conquered.”
“So it’s a fortress?” the Prince asked.
“Yes,” Davydd said at the same time Leah said “no.”
“It’s a fortress built around a city that contains all of the history of the Kindred,” Lorna said in compromise.
“History of the Kindred?”
“All of the original accounts of the Founders,” Tomaz said, “including Aemon himself. It has documents dating back to the early years of our nation, when we fought against the Empire in earnest. It has information about the first Spellblades and about the time when the enchantments were placed around the nation to make it impregnable to outsiders.”
“And the time when the Empress herself led an army to the Stand and was defeated,” Leah said. The others nodded in seeming reverence.
“You said that before,” the Prince broke in. “What do you mean? I have never heard of the Empress leading any attack here, and certainly never of her being defeated.”
“It is considered the greatest battle the Kindred have ever fought,” said Tomaz.
“It was decades after Aemon fled the Empire and came here to establish a new nation, not one that imitated the old ways of the land across the sea. The Empress came, leading an army. The sky was blackened by her very presence, just like the sky is around Lucien. But the Kindred stood strong in the newly raised castle, and around Aemon, the newly crowned Prince of the Veil.”
A shock went through the Prince.
“Prince of the Veil?” he asked, forcing his voice to come out even.
“Yes,” Leah said. “When a crisis occurs, the Council of Elders are called to elect a single Prince of the Veil that will remain in power until the crisis is over. Aemon was the first.”
The Prince felt like he’d just been hit with a mace upside the head. It couldn’t be. The Prince of the Veil? But that was….
“The Empress attacked,” Davydd picked up, eyes gleaming even in the gathering dark, “and broke through the defenses of the Stand. But Aemon, carrying the first valerium sword, met the Tyrant in open battle, and drove her from the field. Her forces were crushed—well, they fell back, but I like the way ‘crushed’ sounds—and as she turned to tuck tail and run, she lifted a hand to the black clouds in the sky, cried out a single word, and a bolt of lightning sliced down and pierced Aemon straight through the heart. Shadow-cursed, cowardly bitch.”
The Prince felt a flare of anger at the young man’s blasphemy, before he remembered all that had happened. It was difficult to undo a lifetime of training, responding to any slight against the Empress as a grave insult.
“In their outrage,” Tomaz said, gently overriding Davydd’s somewhat overly enthused retelling, “the Kindred followed the Empress’ army for days, pushing them back to the Pass of Roarke, but eventually they could pursue them no more and they were forced to set guards at the Pass and wait in defense.
Aemon was buried where he had been struck down, and a temple was raised over him.
His sword, fallen from his hand, could not be touched.
Those who tried were hurtled backward by an unseen force.
But the fortress had stood, and so had the Kindred. It was renamed Aemon’s Stand.”
Silence fell, and the Prince was swept up in his own musings as to what this meant about the history of the Empire. Could there be other histories that had been tampered with? Prophecies even? The Prince of the Veil.…
Not too much later they reached the ambush site, just as the sun had well and truly set, leaving them in darkness aside from torches that had been lit up and down the column of soldiers.
A mist had descended along with the darkness, covering everything with a fine layer of dew and drastically reducing visibility.
A mountain, almost sheer, seemed to leap out at them.
There was a single path that led up to the top, twisting through several precipitous switchbacks before reaching the top.
The side facing them had been completely cleared of trees, and it was relatively easy to see to summit, upon which was located what looked like a castle.
“Reinforcements?” the Prince asked hopefully. The castle had torchlight situated on the battlements and looked to be heavily manned.
“It’s an illusion,” Davydd drawled at him. “Meant to make little princelings like you wet themselves at the idea of a fully armed castle on top of an impregnable hill.”
“Long ago deserted,” Leah explained, “which makes it perfect for us. From this side it looks almost new, but the rest of it is a ruin and has been for some time. It’s impossible to keep it manned and maintained.
But the Army of Roarke will think that it’s an actual castle and have to bring most of their force to bear before attacking, which gives us the perfect opportunity to hit them hard and fast in the night while they prepare. ”
“It’s not going to be that simple,” the Prince tried to explain, but he was cut off.
“The same strategy has worked many times before,” Davydd said.
“I don’t doubt it, which is why Ramael will probably come up with something—”
“The Ox Lord isn’t the smartest sheep in the pen,” Lorna said.
“Yes,” the Prince responded testily, “but I know him, and I don’t think he’ll fall for it!”
He said this louder than he had intended, and a few soldiers riding nearby looked at him askance. The Prince cleared his throat and continued, cheeks warm.
“What I’m saying is he will know we’re at the top because of the tracking spell, and anyone with half of the military training I have would know this is the perfect spot for an ambush.
Ramael isn’t known for his intelligence, but he is one of the Children.
He’s had over a hundred years of battlefield experience, with all the resources of the Guardians and their vast knowledge of war. ”
Davydd rolled his eyes as if to say, “what would you know?” and rode on ahead of them. Lorna followed.