The Vastness

by Hausladen, Blake;

  The threads of the priests’ souls began to join with mine once again as they began to sing. The blue light of healing magic reached out across the crowd and the priests’ searching threads of magic swelled and multiplied like creeping vines and entwined with every soul they touched. The songs closest to me flared as the searching threads met mine. Wounds by the hundred-thousand closed, and each healed soul brightened.

  In a slow growing circle, their magic healed the crowd.

  But the dying children did not stir. I stripped away my blindfold and stood to get a look at them. Their flesh was healed, but their mutilated bodies remained twisted and folded upon the ground.

  “More,” I shouted.

  One priest stopped singing—the same who had spoken up earlier. His own small wound had been healed and he had the courage to look me in the eyes.

  “Sing,” I said to him. “Heal them.”

  “My goddess, it is the wrong song. The words we know won’t heal them. We can sing a song that tries to heal a body all at once, but for strength enough to do it we must touch you and burn.”

  “Then sing the right words.”

  “I do not know the words. None of us do. Eyes, bone, teeth, brain, viscera, tongue, genitals. None of us know these words. We each know but three words. Heal, body, man. What you ask is impossible.”

  I reached my hands toward his face. “I don’t care what song you sing. They will be healed today.”

  “Wait, let me try. Let me try,” he wept and rocked forward and back. The rest leaned in, leered and drooled.

  The young priest sopped his eyes and searched my face as if reading a book. His lips began to move and a song of many colors stabbed violently from him. The priest next to him was struck in the face by a yellow light and he collapsed. Those around him reached their hands into his mouth despite his protests. They pulled free a collection of wooden teeth and the bits of metal and string that held them together.

  “Teeth,” one of them shouted. They dropped the man and packed themselves around the young priest.

  His hands and face glowed red and blue and everyone close was shrouded in a violent purple light. The sky darkened. Yellow thorns stabbed us all, and the color of his magic changed again and again with each word of his long verse. I took a step toward him and the rainbow of colors crept further across the plaza.

  I stepped close and reached my hands as close to his cheeks as I dared. His magic flared across the plaza and then all of the Warrens. The city screamed in fright as the shroud of colors gripped them and they gasped as the magic dug deep. The priests in the circle shouted out and collapsed at odd intervals, perhaps learning a word or two from his song. None joined him.

  I turned toward the children. They were sitting up. They were frail and had a winter’s complexion, but their bodies were whole. The crowd gathered them up into hugs, and loaves of bread and cups of water were hurried across.

  I stepped back from the priest. His magic failed and he collapsed like an untended puppet. The murmur of happy laughter filled the plaza.

  “You’ve made them very late to their work,” a strong voice said—the same who’d supplied the blindfold. I spun with angry words ready.

  It was Captain Benjam, and the teasing smile upon his face overwhelmed my annoyance. He was encased in steel and the thick horsehair crest of his Hemari helmet was the whitest thing I’d seen with my eyes open.

  I clapped once but managed a scowl. I said to him, “Why did it take you so long to come back?”

  “No healing magic like yours on Rahan’s side of the river. Twelve days of bandages and rest is nothing compared to a moment standing next to you,” he said and posed as if for a portrait. “Look, you even fixed my front tooth.”

  “You should have come sooner.”

  “Few outside the Warrens believe the stories of your magic,” he said and took hold of a man through the circle of freemen. It was Master Pickesh and he was the man I remembered—equal parts caring craftsman and overdressed snob. He brushed clean the bits of himself that had touched a freeman on the way through, but refrained from using the kerchief in his sleeve to do it.

  The priests, meanwhile, had gathered up their overcome companions and were headed back to the tithe tower. Several cast dark looks at the captain.

  “They hate you,” I said.

  “We did press them into service without pay,” Benjam said. “I’d hate me, too.”

  Master Pickesh frowned at him and found something else to talk about. “What a fantastic dress.”

  Dame Franni was close enough to overhear this, but not close enough for me to swat away her grin. “What brings you here today, Captain?” she asked.

  “Lord Rahan and the Sten have summoned us.”

  “May I accompany you?” I asked. “I would love to meet them.”

  “We are simple men, the captain and I. It is you they want to see. We are but your escorts.”

  Benjam winked at me and offered me his hand. He was wearing a thick glove of leather and mail. “Thick enough for a man without magic like me?”

  I took his hand and the girls of Yellow Row waved goodbye to the cheering crowd while the freemen organized themselves to move.

  I caught a glimpse of the children as we went. Each clutched at the people that held them, and a few of them wept uncontrollably.

  “How happy they are,” Franni said.

  They did not look like tears of joy to me.

  12

  General Evand Yentif

  The 14th of Autumn, 1196

  “Get me off this damn boat,” I said and earned approving grunts from the battered formation of Hemari upon the bloody square between the tall purple and black checkered towers. The boarding party had been thrown off, and the fires they set were out. I’d not lost a single man, thanks in part to the high bulwarks that had been installed along the rail, but in greater part to the healer my brother has assigned me. Meanwhile, the river thrashed with the wrath he had promised.

  Alsonvale did not like us.

  No man who’d worn the blue would approve of our service aboard ship. Marrow and the rest of our horses were in the hand of strangers, on their way to stables we’d not seen. Their proper care would be the first, second, and third thing on the minds of the men the moment the battle was over—if ever it would be over.

  My focus was drifting and I imagined the glare my wife Liv would aim at me for my quarrelsome mind. She had less sympathy for distraction and complaints than a sergeant.

  The deck lurched and several of my men lost their feet. The sudden cheers of the crew did not coincide with our panic. My sergeant vomited on a number of the guardsmen and several streams of profanity were aimed at the wretched river.

  I stepped out of formation and took a look over the high bulwark. We had smashed through another of Alsonvale’s galleys and our four tiers of long oars churned the remains of the ship and its crew. Off to the left, a pair of smaller boats flying Yarik’s blue and yellow pennants were going down, their sides smashed by the heavy bolts our ship could fire five at a time.

  I tried to be consoled, but the feeling sank as fast as the broken ships. In the days since Lord Rahan had taken the throne, our brother Yarik had consolidated the rest of the Kaaryon against us. All its noble families and its three gateway cities were his, Alsonbrey, Alsonelm, and Alsonvale. Our brother Barok and the provinces of the north and east were with us, but it would be spring before they could come to our aid. All we had at hand was a thousand loyal Hemari, a handful of healers, and the capital fleet. Rahan counted the freed slaves of the Warrens on our side as well, but none who wore the blue judged them fit for war or trust.

  That particular autumn day had started with sixty of our best war galleys rowing upriver of the western city of Alsonvale during the gloom of the early dawn—lanterns lit and Rahan’s checkered pennants flying. Every movement since had involved ships smashing one way and then another. A pair of our galleys caught fire during the first moments of the battle, and I’
d felt nothing but dread and uncertainty since. We started the day with fewer ships than Alsonvale and there was nothing different in how the two fleets were made.

  My sergeant tugged hard upon the back of my bluecoat. “Hoping to catch an arrow? We’ve exhausted our healer, in case you have forgotten.”

  The storms of arrows no longer filled the sky, but I relented. It was just as well. I had no eye for this battle. I grabbed the arm of a sailor as he rushed past.

  “Leave off,” he spat and stuck my hand away.

  We recognized each other as he turned. He apologized with a bow and a tap of his knuckles upon his boatswain’s cap. I lowered my sword and blood dripped from it onto the deck between us. He was the galley’s second in command, and he technically outranked me while aboard. He was also a much different kind of creature. He had spent all but the last few days of his life a slave. His freedom and his promotion to boatswain had been at specific decree by my brother—by our Lord Exaltier, Rahan Yentif.

  The boatswain shifted uncomfortably. Every Hemari and freemen above deck watched us.

  “How do we fare?” I asked.

  “It has been an expensive morning for Alsonvale. The day is ours.”

  “We cannot have taken the city already. None of my men have gone ashore.”

  “We didn’t come to take the city, just its ships and its stores. Admiral Sewin sent raiding parties ashore after splitting their fleet with our fire ships. We already have men aboard their barges. Their last loyal galley has gone down.”

  A slave wearing an admiral’s rank—I could not reconcile it. Sewin’s tactics caught my attention, though. Had he set fire to the lead ships on purpose? The river had been a vision of chaos ever since, but we taken control of the center of the river while their fleet split. Sewin had maintained a perfect view of the enemy and had stolen their ability to maneuver. We’d also started upstream.

  Sewin had smashed them.

  I tapped my forehead with my knuckle, and the boatswain resumed his dash toward the tall checkered castle at the rear end of the ship.

  I appreciated then too, the markings Sewin had recommended to Rahan for his colors. The Hemari and I argued for solid blue—the proper color for the rightful Yentif Exaltier. But as I searched between blue water and blue sky, the purple and black checkered pattern upon our towers could not be missed. Alsonvale’s blue and yellow was all but gone. Sewin’s had argued, correctly it seemed, for the tactical advantage over aesthetics.

  “Can’t trust them,” my sergeant said.

  The “them” could have been any of the ships, crews, or our admiral and his churlish officers. His hatred was as stark as the crow’s feet that etched his cheeks or the wild curls of his gray eyebrows. The Hemari of his generation had spent decades enslaving the unruly people of the provinces for my father. Rahan’s choice of allies was as unnatural to us as the deck of a war galley.

  My brother would have struck the sergeant for saying it and me for failing to correct him. I got a short speech ready, but had to grab onto him instead as the drums sounded again and the galley spun left with ever-startling speed. The west side of the city came into view, and we got a look at the pennants that remained above the city’s fortress. The river’s edge was a different story. Dozens of heavy barges loaded with the autumn harvest were making way, and flames rose from each looted warehouse and boatshed. Around us upon the water, only Rahan’s pennant could be seen. The galley to our left was one we’d taken, but the battle onboard was not entirely over. A few men in uniform held the small triangle of deck at the very front of the ship. The rest of its large crew had rebelled. One uniformed man after another was thrown overboard. The last, perhaps the ship’s captain, was hooked through the ribs and swayed upon a rope out over the side of the ship. He dangled there while the slaves danced above.

  My men took off their helmets.

  “Mark my words, Evand,” my sergeant said. “These vermin will be throwing all of us in the river if we don’t get a hold of them.”

  “Trust my brother,” I said.

  The old bluecoat shrugged. “We have nothing in common with Rahan, you and I.”

  He’d said it twice to me in private, and once in front of Liv. To do so in front of the men—it was too much, and he knew it. His apology was a grunt, and that was the most you’d get from a thirty-year man.

  The drums changed and we surged forward.

  “Headed home?” the sergeant asked. “Please let it be so.”

  The cheer that rose from the fleet answered his question.

  “The river is ours,” someone called, but my men would not celebrate anything to do with the water.

  I tried to be cheered by the victory but it was no more than a stay of execution. We might keep Alsonvale’s divisions pinned in the city with the threat of a landing in force, but the rest of the Kaaryon was in Yarik’s control. They would squeeze us down, lay siege to the Warrens and we would be finished.

  Rahan had the river, the Warrens, and nothing more. I was a general without an army or insignia.

  A fresh cheer rose aboard and our attention was drawn to the north side of the river. A large group of men and women were gathered along the shore, waving at us. Two galleys diverted toward them.

  “More escaped slaves,” Blathebed said and spat. “At the rate we are scoping them up, were going to run out of food, no matter how much we manage to steal. And there is no telling who could be amongst them.”

  “The day is for us,” I said in hopes of setting it all aside. “Let’s find a meal and a cot.”

  This earned a small cheer, and we left the crew to clean away the mess we’d made of the men of Alsonvale. I recall getting out of my armor, but I do not recall the taste of the food or the quality of the hammock I crawled into. The morning was a blur of seasickness. A stiff wind from the Bergion tried to shove the fleet into the north bank of the river, and it didn’t quit until we got into the shelter of the hills near Bessradi. It was early in the evening when we started between the mammoth square towers that guarded the river. Our men controlled both, so I did not fear the catapults above or the heavy chain that could be raised between the two.

  A roll of laughter drew questions, and one of the sailors pointed us at a barge that had gotten too close to the Rat River. The man-make waterway reached south from the Bessradi and along the Warren’s west wall. It was a tumble of rocks and rapids and like the rest of the river moats dug around the city’s walls, it was not something a boat or barge could survive. The barge’s rowers pulling hard to get them back on course while the rest of the fleet whistled and hollered. When they got clear a cheer rose.

  All the voices faded, though, as we reached the far side of the towers. Gone were the unending expanses of silent fields. Gone was the predictable shoreline of fishing villages and measured squares of hedgerow-ringed estates.

  My sergeant had nothing to say about it, though I dare say any poet would have demanded we weigh anchor. The capital’s alacrity for work and challenge was on full display. I lack the vocabulary of a mariner or balladeer, but any attempt to describe Bessradi that day would have been inadequate.

  The south side of the river moved like a colony of wrens or a swarm of ants. It could not be observed all at once or even over the course of a day. Every channel, pier, and wharf teamed with boats, men, and materials. One entire wharf, its half dozen piers, and the hundreds of barges along them moved nothing but white stone. Three more moved so much wheat that the usual stink of the river was replaced with the warm aromas of bread and brewing. Above it all, the smoke of a hundred thousand chimneys veiled the teaming maze of the Warrens, and each vigorous road and way looked like the swollen river after the first thaw. The north bank was a crypt in comparison; its shore picked clean, its streets and buildings as lifeless as bones that flies and rats ignored. The difference made the city’s qualities even more amazing to behold.

  As we were swept along, many of our plundered barges drifted south toward the grain wharfs and our ma
keshift foundries. I’d read Admiral Sewin’s report of it all, but few of the details had settled very deep. The practices of the mercantilists and the manufacturers did not interest me as much as those of quartermasters. My thoughts were upon the barges filled with weapons and provisions meant for the Hemari that garrisoned the Iron Arsenal. Every bluecoat aboard craning their necks in search of it towers and when they came into view we began to relax for the first time. The Arsenal marked the great confluence of the west and east branches of the Bessradi River, and it was also where we would bid farewell to the wretched ships that had been our prisons those four days.

  Indeed. All the excitement of the river view faded to dust, and all that was left was our hatred for all things to do with ropes or water. I began to pace while the men scratched at their unwashed bodies and the stubble upon their cheeks.

  We moved beneath the stone bridge that connected the Iron Arsenal to the Warrens, and its significance distracted me long enough that I stopped tearing the dried skin from my thumb. Talley Bridge and Tin Bridge were the only one that had survived Admiral Soma’s visit to Bessradi. The next functional bridge up the east branch of the river was in Alsonelm. To the west and south, not a single bridge had been spared.

  And as though feelings about the river and its boats needed further complication, a ship like none Bessradi had ever seen came into view at the confluence of the rivers. It was the Whittle and the fleet cheered her. She was a not a galley, but a ship of tall sails from Enhedu. It and its crew belonged to my brother Barok. The ship and its company of greencoats had made the trip up the Bessradi River to Alsonelm and back in three days, burning every arsenal and harbor along the way. The tall ship was almost as long as Sewin’s war galley and it stood three times its height out of the water. Its forecastle had been rebuilt since Soma used it like a match to burn Bessradi’s bridges, but its sides were uninjured and its lattice of ropes was pristine. It was due to venture south to the coast and all the way around to Enhedu, and though I would never admit it to any man who wore the blue, I was sad for her parting.