Blood Requiem

by Christopher Husberg

  “We need to ride south. Now,” she said.

  Astrid narrowed her eyes at Cinzia. “What just happened, Cinzia?”

  “Trust me, Astrid. If we want to catch Knot, we need to leave immediately.”

  “You’re going to need to tell me sooner or later.”

  “Please, Astrid. If we want to save Knot—”

  “All right, all right,” Astrid said. Cinzia was a grown woman. She knew what she was doing.

  And Canta rising, Astrid bloody wanted to find Knot.

  Eward rode up beside them. “You are going after Knot?” he asked.

  “We are,” Cinzia said.

  Apparently we’re not keeping it much of a secret.

  “I will come with you,” Eward said.

  Immediately Cinzia shook her head. “We need you here, Eward. With Knot and Astrid gone, you and the Prelates are the last line of defense for the Odenites.”

  “I’ll only take a few of my Prelates,” Eward said, “and I’ll leave the rest with Jane. Horas can lead them while I am gone; he is capable.”

  Cinzia looked down at Astrid, lips pursed.

  Astrid shrugged. “The Black Matron will have Sons with her, and probably a Goddessguard or two. Might be good to have extra swords to handle them.” Astrid had taken the Black Matron’s nightsbane, but that had been four months ago. She could have procured more. Even if she hadn’t, the Black Matron had made it abundantly clear that she did not need nightsbane to handle Astrid.

  “Very well,” Cinzia said. “Come with us. Bring half a dozen of your best soldiers.”

  “We don’t need to run this by Jane, first?” Astrid asked.

  “No,” Cinzia said. “We don’t.”

  Astrid smiled. That’s my girl.

  It was time to settle things with the Black Matron once and for all.

  35

  Canaian Fields, central Khale

  WINTER SHIVERED DESPITE THE late summer heat, wiping sweat from her brow.

  “These are the Canaian Fields?” she asked. She stood with Urstadt, Selldor, Ghian, Rorie, and Nardo in the flatlands. Not far to the west, a small river ran southwards. To the north and to the east, the outlines of the Eastmaw and Undritch Mountains, respectively, jutted above the horizon.

  “Aye, Commander,” Rorie said. The Canaian Fields were just more plains, really, extending from the Eastmaw Mountains southward, where they eventually met with Canai’s lake, one of three huge lakes in Central Khale. Both the lake and the fields took their name from King Canai Mazen—the King Who Gave Up His Crown one hundred and seventy-two years ago. The act had abolished the monarchy that had ruled Khale for millennia, establishing the Parliament, and emancipated the tiellan race from slavery.

  They had all agreed it seemed an ideal place to pitch the battle.

  “Don’t we want to position ourselves somewhere where it ain’t so flat?” Nardo asked. The chieftain had become Winter’s main liaison with the Cracked Spear. “The Khalic force is three times the size of our own. Don’t we want the high ground?”

  “Don’t you want to shut your Goddess-damned mouth?” Winter snapped. “Last I checked, you haven’t won two battles, outnumbered, against the Khalic army.” Canta’s bloody bones. Nardo was supposed to be a chieftain.

  Winter felt Urstadt’s hand on her shoulder, and she took a deep breath.

  “We have our strategy,” Winter said, keeping her voice even only with great effort. “We will move forward with it as long as it proves successful.”

  “Commander, you are still sick,” Selldor said. “We should get you back to a fire.”

  Winter waved her hand angrily at her lieutenant. “I don’t need a fire, it’s warm enough as it is.” She was conscious of the fact that she shivered as she said it. She wasn’t sick, though. She had felt this way once before, in the dungeons of Izet, after overdosing on Knot’s frost crystals. For the first few months of her imprisonment, Daval had not given her frost, and this was what her body had done to her. She had not cared so much then, because she’d had nothing to live for at the time.

  But now Winter’s faltira was gone, and tomorrow she was going to fight a battle larger than any she could possibly imagine. The stakes were just a bit higher this time.

  The sweating, the chills, the vomiting, were all part of this process. She suspected her withdrawal from frost might have something to do with her irritability, too, but that didn’t matter. She had taken two of her crystals, spaced out over the past week and a half, when the symptoms had become too much for her, when her defenses had completely crumbled. Now, she had one left, and she prayed with every ounce of her strength to any god or goddess that would listen that she’d be able to abstain from taking it before the battle.

  “I’m fine,” Winter said, but she wasn’t. A rest next to a fire might not help her much, but it would help her more than wandering around this Goddess-damned field.

  * * *

  The woman shivers in her cot, vomiting intermittently. She has given her last faltira crystal to Urstadt for safekeeping; she does not trust herself with it tonight.

  Tomorrow, when the battle begins, she will be able to take the frost crystal. Tomorrow, she will feel better. But tonight, she is alone with her nightmares.

  Instead of facing them, the woman turns to the Void.

  In the Void, while her pain is still present, she at least finds herself removed from it, like an echo, or a memory. It is still there, and it will return in full force whenever she leaves the Void, but for now, it is in the background. It is part of her, but in the Void, at least, it is not her. When she returns to the Sfaera, she will become the pain, the pain will be her, and there will be no separation between the two.

  But, for now, the woman drifts.

  She drifts, and she hears voices, although she cannot decide whether they are real or not. She thinks she hears Kali, and for a moment she is happy; she has not spoken to Kali since Izet, but despite how much she distrusts the woman, she realizes she would appreciate the contact. She hears other voices, too, but the one that cuts through them all is a deep, rumbling bass wreathed in crackling fire. Is Azael truly here, with her? Or is she imagining it in her fevered state? She may not be in the Void at all. All of this, the blinking star-lights around her, the voices, the distance from the pain, might not be real, might all simply be the product of her fevered, writhing, pathetic state.

  Without frost, I am nothing. With it, I can do anything.

  She remembers the visions she had in Izet, when Azael threatened her. The Void stars expanding and contracting. Knot and Astrid. A great battle, around a rihnemin. Panic cracks inside her; should she have found a rihnemin around which to stage the battle with the Khalic army? Or was that a different battle altogether? She remembers the other visions, too. A stone giant, falling on flowers. A pillar of light defending a city from Daemons. Other things, some she knows to be true and real, and others she knows are not.

  I wish I understood the nature of these visions, because if I did, I might be able to do something about them.

  She sees something new, now. A different world? It is the Sfaera, but it is not. She lives there, but she does not. Knot and Winter have a child in this world, but they do not.

  None of this makes any sense.

  She sees another battle, this time without a rihnemin—has her vision changed, or is this something different? She sees herself, in the middle of this battle, and takes faltira at the beginning, before the armies engage. She seeks out the enemy psimancers through the Void, and kills all of them. Seven psimancers.

  And then the battle begins, and the Khalic Legion pushes her army back…

  The woman blinks, her form drifting in the Void, and then blinks again, and she comes crashing back down to her form on her cot in her tent, shivering.

  * * *

  Winter leaned over her cot, grabbing the pot that had been placed there, and vomited until she felt she had nothing left inside of her.

  36

  “TH
EY’VE PUT THEIR WEAKEST in the middle, on the front lines,” Razzo said.

  Kyfer glowered at the tiellan force in position ahead of him, but said nothing.

  “Our heavy infantry will crush them,” Razzo added. The fifteen thousand soldiers Carrieri had sent had joined Kyfer’s Steel Regiment a few days ago, and together they had advanced to the tiellan position on the Canaian Fields. More than twenty thousand legionaries in total.

  Kyfer thought the tiellans’ choice of battlefield shameless. The Canaian Fields, for Canta’s sake. He snorted to himself. A human may have freed the tiellans years ago, but a human would end them now.

  “Our infantry may crush theirs,” Kyfer said, “but their cavalry outnumbers ours.” The tiellans fielded over five thousand riders; their cavalry, in fact, was the majority of their force. Their infantry did not exceed four thousand. “In the previous battles they’ve relied on their riders to make quick work of our cavalry, and then turned on our footmen.” Kyfer had underestimated the tiellans severely at the battle of the Setso. He would not do so again.

  “It’d be a fool’s errand to repeat what happened on the Setso,” Razzo said.

  “Would it?” Kyfer asked, raising an eyebrow. “It worked quite well the first time.”

  “It did,” Razzo admitted, glaring at the tiellans assembled across the field. “But it will not work again.”

  Kyfer didn’t respond. The Khalic Legion had assembled more than double the number of tiellan fighters on the field, but that was no comfort to him. The way the tiellans had routed the Steel Regiment on the Setso still stung.

  “Goddess, look at them,” Razzo muttered. “I’ve never seen a force so disorganized. No sense of unity whatsoever.”

  Kyfer glanced sideways at Razzo. His second was acting much more brash than usual. Kyfer hated to admit it when a defeat humbled him, but he at least was willing to do so. The battle of the Setso seemed to have had the opposite effect on Razzo, if anything.

  But Razzo was not wrong. The tiellan force wore armor taken from the Cinestean City Watch, the Steel Regiment, and the Legion forces they’d defeated in battle. Tiellans were slightly smaller than humans, which explained the piecemeal appearance. The Rangers must have pilfered whatever random pieces actually fit them. The brown dusted leather of the tiellan clans was also visible. Contrasted with the Legion, completely uniform from the plate mail of their heavy cavalry down to the tabards and chainmail of their light infantry, the difference was clear.

  “Let’s not criticize an enemy that has already bested us in battle,” Kyfer said. As much as he wanted to, he knew it was less than useless. Carrieri, he imagined, would say something about never criticizing an enemy at all. The man didn’t have a bone of humor in his body.

  “Of course, General,” Razzo said. “But I feel the Goddess strengthening us today. I think they will break after one charge. We will annihilate them with the main body of our heavy infantry, and the tiellan threat will be gone.”

  The Khalic infantry, both heavy and light, had formed in a massive block, hundreds of men deep. A battering ram with which they would crush the relatively thin ranks of the tiellan forces ahead of them.

  And yet, despite all their advantages, Kyfer felt an overwhelming sense of unease.

  He looked over his shoulder. Behind him were the seven remaining psimancers under Kyfer’s command—two full cotirs, and one more acumen.

  “You will wait for the tiellan psimancer to reveal herself,” Kyfer said to them, “and then you will stop her. At any cost.” He was reiterating earlier orders, but they bore repeating. One more lesson he’d learned from the Setso. He could not risk his psimancers tiring themselves out while contributing to the offensive only to then reveal their positions, opening them up to the tiellan woman’s power.

  “Of course, General.”

  For battles, Kyfer preferred to have only telenics—their utility was unrivaled. While an acumen could cause a significant amount of damage as well, they did not have the widespread psychological effect of a telenic lobbing massive stones and whatever else they could find at the enemy. And most voyants were less than useless—the Nazaniin kept the only one with any power locked away in the Heart of the Void. Kyfer had yet to meet a single voyant who could predict an enemy’s troop movements, or tell him accurately the outcome of a battle.

  On the front line, tiellan and human troops alike taunted one another, even engaging in small skirmishes before pulling back to their respective forces. Such was the nature of a battle of this size.

  “Form up the charge,” Kyfer finally said. “Time to destroy this threat once and for all.”

  Razzo grinned. “As you say, General.”

  He rode his horse a few paces forward, and shouted out over the Khalic Legion. “Sound the charge!”

  Dozens of horns groaned over the fields, and the Khalic infantry rumbled forward to the steady beat of marching drums.

  The battle had begun.

  * * *

  “Ready!” Winter shouted, her Rangers raising shields and weapons around her. Urstadt braced herself on one side of her, while Gord and Eranda stood on the other. Winter hated that this was the first battle for both of the tiellans from Pranna, and that they were fighting with her at the center of their line. At least here, she could try to protect them, but there were no guarantees in a battle.

  “Ready?” Winter asked, looking from Gord to Eranda. Her head pounded, but she tried not to let it show, especially not to these two. And, soon, she would find relief. Her remaining frost crystal was practically burning a hole in the palm of one hand.

  “Aye,” Gord said, eyeing the human force. Anger radiated from him, and he clashed his spear and shield together.

  Eranda nodded, but said nothing, and Winter’s heart went out to the woman. She was surely too nervous to speak. Winter could relate. If she didn’t have to speak before every battle, she certainly wouldn’t.

  The Khalic soldiers surged forward, and Winter lifted a shaking hand to her mouth. She placed the faltira lightly on her tongue, and the crystal immediately began to dissolve.

  Finally, finally, Winter was complete. She was whole. Fire burned through her, chilled her skin. She recalled, just for a moment, the first time she had taken faltira, the immense, ineffable pleasure that had coursed through her. It was not so much pleasure she felt anymore, as it was simply the absence of pain.

  Then, Winter becomes the woman, and the woman zones in on a group of Khalic officers on horseback towards the back of the massive Khalic Legion block, sending her consciousness into them, and the first she finds is…

  Razzo Vaile, who wonders whether the Grand Marshal knows Kyfer’s secret, and whether Kyfer himself…

  The woman passes to the next, knowing she must move quickly, but the next is Kyfer, and the one after that…

  I need to wait until the telenic shows herself, Genio Hule thinks to himself, but he itches to access his own tendra. He feels naked in a battle without them.

  The woman smiles. She has found her prey.

  * * *

  Kyfer glared at the tiellan forces, satisfaction filling him as he watched the great hammer of Khalic infantry smash into the meager line of tiellans.

  “She’s here—”

  Kyfer turned to look at the psimancers riding behind him. Three of them—the three acumens—were on the verge of panic, eyes wide.

  “She can sense us,” Ila said, her voice quavering. “She… she’s an acumen.”

  Kyfer glared at her, his voice hard. “I thought you told me she was a telenic.”

  “We thought she was a telenic,” another psimancer said quickly. “We had no evidence to suspect otherwise—”

  A series of thuds silenced him. One by one, the psimancers toppled from their horses, long, thin metal shafts embedded in skulls, faces, and necks.

  The psimancers were all dead.

  “Shit,” Razzo said.

  Immediately, Kyfer slid from his horse.

  “Get down, you fool,�
�� Kyfer hissed at Razzo. “If she could kill the psimancers that easily, she can kill us as well.”

  Razzo immediately dismounted, rushing forward with Kyfer. Their aides and lieutenants followed suit.

  “We make our way to the left cavalry flank,” Kyfer said. “We’ll mount up again there, and hope she doesn’t notice. If she does, nothing can save us.”

  He looked up, but saw the infantry had already begun to push the tiellan forces back. They did not need psimancers. They would overwhelm this woman, whoever she was, with sheer numbers, and make sure she paid the price for her betrayal.

  * * *

  Urstadt rammed her glaive into a Khalic man’s chest just as he was about to attack the Ranger next to her.

  In the distance, a few dozen Khalic soldiers flew into the air. If Winter was already focusing on the infantry, that meant she had found the enemy psimancers with little problem.

  Urstadt fought, but she slowly gave ground, per Winter’s instructions, and the rest of the front line gave ground with her. They had placed their greenest Rangers in the center line, and informed them at the last moment of their intention to give ground to the Khalic infantry.

  “Let them think they are pushing us back,” Winter had told them, “but do not fear. Urstadt, Selldor, and I will all fight among you. You will not be forgotten. You are not fodder to be lost; the center line will be the most important part of this battle, but in order for our plan to work, you need to slowly give ground.”

  In reality, there was no chance the Khalic infantry would not push them back, but by ordering the Rangers to do it anyway, she had given them the illusion of control. And, if the rest of Winter’s plan succeeded—as insane as it sounded—then they might actually stand a chance of winning, even though Winter’s only remaining faltira crystal would surely run out soon. When Urstadt had learned that Mazille had stolen Winter’s faltira supply, she’d been half worried Winter would run off after them on her own to get it back. Thankfully, she’d had the presence of mind to stay—a decision which actually made Urstadt proud.