The Seer King: Book One of the Seer King Trilogy Read Online Free PDF

magical emissaries imploring me to hurry and save the emperor-to-be.
    Finally I saw no grand sorcerous figure standing in the ruins hurling thunderbolts as if he had become a manifestation of Saionji herself.
    What I saw was a desolate, desertlike valley, the ground dotted with scrub brush and, every now and then, a scraggling plot of worked ground that might have been called a farm. The Sulem River curled through this valley, and the road crossed it at a ford.
    Here was where the ambush had been sprung. Two elephants lay dead just on the other side of the ford, and there were Numantians crouched behind their corpses, using them for shelter. There were four carts, one on the far shore, one overturned in midstream, and two others on the bank closer to me. Two other elephants were kneeling beside those carts, their handlers trying to keep them calm.
    There were bodies of horses, oxen, and men scattered around the wreck of the caravan. But there were still Numantians alive, still fighting.
    I looked for the enemy, and finally saw some hillmen, well camouflaged in their sandy robes behind rocks on the far shore. Downstream, I saw another party of tribesmen wading the river, about to encircle Tenedos’s men.
    “Not bad, sir,” Troop Guide Bikaner said. “Th’ hillmen waited til th’ seer’s party was fordin', at th’ time of most confusion, when ever’body’s worried about the horses breakin’ free, and waterin’ th’ oxen, an’ then they hit ‘em hard. ‘Course, if I were handlin’ the ambush I would’ve hit ‘em short of th’ river, an’ let those that survived th’ first clash go mad smellin’ but never tastin’ water.” He looked on, and tsked. “I’m afeared those aren’t th’ finest hillmen I’ve seen. I see no sign they’ve got anything in th’ way of a reserve, either.”
    “Very good, Troop Guide, and I’m sure you have a grand future as a dacoit,” I said briskly. “One column detached, put Lance Major Wace in charge of that, to deal with those people crossing the river. The rest of us will take the main body at the charge. Straight down the road at the trot, at the walk across the river, which doesn’t look more than hock-high, then charge in arrow formation at the horn. Go through them … there,” I went on, pointing, “sweep back and mop them up. Pay no mind to the resident-general’s party — I don’t want them to slow us.”
    Troop Guide Bikaner made no response. I turned.
    “You’re sure those’re are all th’ orders you wish t’ give, sir?” he asked, face blank.
    I’ll wager I reddened, but I didn’t snap at him, so the madness of battle had not yet taken me. “What am I missing?”
    “Look close, sir. There’s magic on th’ field.”
    I gazed more closely, and now saw the haze floating around the ford, something that might have been taken for heat waves or even light dust. I’d seen it only once before, at a demonstration at the lycee. This “haze,” and I’m not describing it well, but that is the only word I know that fits, seemed centered around the corpse of the elephant closest to the enemy positions. Not far from it was a white horse, three or four spears stuck in its body.
    I heard shouts from below, saw the Numantians rise and volley arrows at their attackers. In their center was an unarmed man, who was waving his hands, making an incantation. I remembered Captain Mellet had said the resident-general was a seer, and rejoiced that Tenedos evidently still lived.
    Bikaner pointed to a hillock a bit removed from the fighting, to the east. I saw a man standing atop it, a man wearing long robes that marked him a wizard, and there was the same shimmer about his body I saw around the battleground.
    “There’s one of their wizards,” Bikaner said. He craned. “Another there, back of their lines along th’ river. An’ there’ll be a third.…” He twisted and looked upward and to our right. “There’s th’ bastard. I was wrong about th’ battle