He opened the door for me and I found a generous bundle of bread, wine, and sausage inside. “What is your name?” I asked.
“I need no reward. The driver will see you to your royal kin.”
“Very well, captain,” I replied and decided not to question why he wished to detangle himself from me. Perhaps his commission had expired, or he had been patrolling beyond its allowance. His offense, whatever it was, did not matter to me.
He closed the door, and the carriage started through the wide town. It occupied a shelf of stone that guarded a wide river delta and a vast valley of black rice fields renowned for their clockwork flooding each year. I saw no one working the patties, however, as we started up the winding course of the river.
It grew dark as the carriage trundled into the shadowed folds of the ancient valleys. A glow caught my eye as we moved past a spruce-ringed graveyard hidden in the shadows of ridge. A red light moved through the stones and took the shape of a woman. It lay down upon one of the graves and the grasses there smoldered while the ghost faded.
If I were still the Minister, I’d have personally interrogated every surviving member of the families that reposed there. I’d not seen such a vivid ghost since the days when Edonian Cern stone occupied the hillsides and the ghosts of druids came out to set fires and summon the ghosts of their kin. The woman was likely guilty of a well-known infanticide or had herself been famously murdered. Those who had been near the events would have been touched by the Shadow and would make great stock for thralls—perhaps even Hessier.
The carriage continued on and I gave it no more thought.
I spotted Cyaudi the next morning, but the driver did not make the turn into the city as I expected. He continued around until we were upon the tithe road that ran west through Havish on its way to Alsonbrey. I was certain the captain has set me up, but I did not care too much. Whatever the destination, I would kill those I found there and make my way somewhere else. I considered leaping from the carriage, but my curiosity got the better of me.
We reached the crest of a high ridge the next afternoon, and I was growing more and more confused by where he could be taking me when we encountered pikemen on the road. They let us pass after talking to the driver and as we rolled by, one of them smacked the side of the carriage with the flat of his pike blade.
“Cost you extra,” the driver said back at him, cheerfully—a joke I did not understand.
My confusion compounded. Was this ride to end at a private party or some event of the stuffed up Yudyith royalist that ruled Yudyith? I waited, but the trip did not find an end.
“We sleep here,” the driver said, but I could not manage it. I almost asked him about our destination. I spend the night trying to figure it out for myself, but dawn broke with nothing to show for my time but a full bladder.
The driver laughed loud and long as we crested another ridge, but no explanation of his humor followed. I heard the yelling of a crowd for a moment, but it faded before I could get a fix on the direction it came from.
“Where the hell?”
When the carriage stopped, it was surrounded by more pikemen. The driver said a few words to an officer, and the door opened with a chattering of an armored hand. The officer helped me down onto a field of trample yellow grass. The razor top of the ridge behind them reached diagonally across the road and a series of towers rose beyond it.
“You are in time, sir,” he said, and offered me a cloak to go over my weary seaman garb. “You will find him that way.”
He turned away from me then, which only made sense if they believed I was a Roto. I said nothing in return and made my way up.
It was then that I heard the drums and the crowd on the far side of the ridge. I walked the rest of the way up the road.
The smell of cooked meat and fresh fruit hit me the same moment as the screams of thousands. I thought I’d wondered upon a carnival until I created the ridge and saw the long lines of pikemen and circling horses below.
The scene made no sense. I pushed through the small crowd there and found myself at a small counter.
“Stick?” the man behind it asked.
“What?”
“You want a stick or not?”
Behind the man was an open fire pit layered with racks of grilling meat. Three boys worked to flip, cut, and skewer it. A fat line of people behind me waited with coins in hand. I’d cut the line. The vendor and the men behind me glanced at the carriage that had delivered me, and the cloak I wore.
“What’s below today?” I asked.
He made gestures as though he was going to act a major domo and sell me on the grandiose scene, but changed his mind as he searched my face. He leaned in instead like he had something illicit to sell.
“Today will be the last show. Their Arilas has come forward finally and a second from further up the coast, so they will not mount another attack after this. The good bet is on the Karesetti to break this last push, if you are going to put coin on the outcome.”
They were spectators. The Yud pennants upon each tower were those of families that made up each division of pikemen on the field below.
Two thousand horsemen were moving up the valley toward us and around me the crowds cheered and supped on spiced meat and sweet wine. Every vendor was taking bets.
Drums sounded anew—a great rumbling that vibrated my leg while horns shrieked discordant anthems from all the towers left and right. Pikemen moved down from each with teams of drummers wearing colors that matched each tower’s pennant. The people in line hurried down without their snacks and I followed them, ignoring the vendor’s call to take my bet.
The crowd began to chant, their voices snapping in unison with the drums. The thin columns of Yudyith pikemen bashed their weapons upon the backs of their shields to the same beat.
The horsemen came straight at them, and the Yud stabbed men from their horses to the beat of the drums. Groups of pikemen broke forward into the swirl of the Havishon horses and began to dance, their pikes flailing in every direction. The bait drew an angry charge and the pikemen lowered their long weapons to meet it. Bodies began to line the slope and the crowd cheered louder and louder as the small squares challenged the might of Havish.
The square to my left was overcome, and the Havishon poured over them. The crowd only cheered more as another group of three-hundred pikemen started down, dancing as though they were gods.
Everyone around me screamed, and I flinched. Then the people beneath the next tower to the east screamed as well, followed in sequence by the people below each until came back around.
It was “Yud” that they were screaming.
Yud, Yud, Yud. The chant made the ridge vibrate as it boomed from each section in sequence. Hands clapped. Feet stomped. Everyone was standing. A tingle of happy energy and voices rose as the invaders changed. The first ten dancing pikemen stopped as the horses came on. Their shields formed a wall and the rest of the pikes behind them came down as the horses ran upon them. It was a massacre.
Drums and voices. Yud, Yud, Yud, as they made fools of every horseman who come to try them.
The crowd screamed and cheered again, but I could not see why. Then they sat with a deflated sigh, and I found the reason for it. A single man had gone forward to challenge the commander of the Havishon, but he was wearing a spear through his neck. He fell, and the crowd began another chat as a fresh squares started down.
I managed to get a better sense of it all then, and almost laughed. The crowd alone outnumbered the Havishon three to one. The dancing was a ploy. Their discipline rivaled the Hemari, and any one of the well-armored companies was a match for the full brigade of Havishon horse. They were competing for the crowd’s amusement. The Yud were playing with the Havishon and had been doing it for many days. I’d never seen such a mad rush. Something was driving the Havishon on—something noble and useless if I had to guess.
The scene was growing old to my eyes when a group of Havishon broke through and charged up the hill. Bi
ts of color in the mix drew my full attention. Men from Aneth were there, and among them a man wearing a blue cap. He was upon and Akal-Tak, spear in hand.
The cheers rose and the forward edge of the crowd charged them with swords and cups of wine. The wave of death was a wash of darkness and along this sweat swirl the Yud cheered and danced. The hundred horsemen cut deep into the crowd but were swarmed by the thousands. Arilas Kiel was dragged from his horse, and his guts were tied around a pike and raised up for all to see.
The crowd cheered anew, but it was muted this time. The pennants upon the towers came down until only one remained—the family who’d done the best murder. The last of the Havishon were in full retreat. Pieces of the crowd began to withdraw, as if wanting to be the first down the road home.
The rest stayed and formed up beneath each tower.
How many times had the Yud gathered like this that season? Enough that men who butchered meat and cut fruit could rely upon a profit from making the trip up.
I chuckled at the Havishon. Their way of war had defeated the Hemari but they had not adapted to the sting they’d taken from the spears of the Yentif militia. Their horses could be seen coming across the wash of the valley for many days as they approached Yud and the pikemen were better at war in every way.
Those that remained gathered in tight groups. It was quiet for a moment as the bloody men swayed together in triumph. Then a song rose and all that heard it stopped and turned. The woman’s voice was accompanied by a slow horn, and her words pricked my ears.
“I wrote this song,” I said, and eyes studied me.
Their response to the affront of my foreignness waited while the song rose. Every mouth but mine moved in unison to the words, but only I knew their meaning.
Spilled blood, Spilled blood
Sway, sway, sway
Spilled blood, Spilled blood
Rise, rise, rise
Their pronunciation of the old language was a mangled mess, but there it was—a verse I’d written to urge the Shadow to enjoy a blood sacrifice.
“What have I done,” I said while the Shadow swirled up and painted their souls black.
“If you’re Roto, I’m a withered tit,” a man said and I turned. It was the meat vendor and he had a long knife and six pikemen at his back. Half the crowd looked on, and they were moving closer, not away.
I reached out across the soup of darkness, drank it in, and sang.
Men forget
The song silenced the vast crowd.
My ears rang and my teeth ached, but I stayed on my feet. They stumbled away from me, and I decided it was time to move on. I let the uniform cloak fall from my shoulders and started toward the road. The carriage was where I left it, but the road was thick with the traffic of people moving back toward the city. I walked past the carriage and disappeared into the crowd.
53
Dia Vesteal
Ghemma Setaj
“Finish up. Everyone is gathering outside,” Ghemma said.
I shoved in the last bit of the sausage, nodded my head, and submerged myself in the wide stone square of the priest’s private bath. The hot spring waters were more soothing than any I’d enjoyed in Enhedu or the Kaaryon.
I’d woken to the smell of the sizzling meat before the dawn, and Ghemma had me in the water before my first clear though. She’d massaged me while I ate, and recounted the many events since I collapsed asleep the previous evening.
The prelate’s mercenaries had looted the estate before we arrived and rode off with his first wife and all his horses. His second wife was found dead in a back room some time later, killed Ghemma suspected, trying to fight off the mercenaries. Two of the town’s priests had been found similarly stabbed to death not far from the armory, and several more were missing. I took it all as good news.
Ghemma had a warm towel ready for me, new clothes laid out, and I found my sealskin coat well cleaned. I’d never had anyone attend to me as masterfully, and as I began to carefully think my way through the many coming challenges, I recalled the countless perfect mornings I had given Barok. No wonder he had done so well.
I suspected how he was getting on without me.
It might have been possible for the chief prelate to be more upset at how that particular day was going, but only the two of us could hear him pounding on the door of the closet Ghemma had locked him in. The determined little thumps in the corner were music to my ears.
Ghemma had learned a great deal in the service of a man she despised. Fear didn’t explain how hard she worked.
“Do you know how many have decided to come with us?” I asked while I dressed.
“Too many, I think. There are not that many singers in Verd, and I’m not sure why you would want all of Harmond’s men.”
“They are abandoning the harvest?”
She shrugged. “Those with talent hope you will bless them as you did Harmond. The rest know that Master Aden is coming down from the Bunda-Hith. Half wish to please him, half wish to be as far away as possible. They all are taking advantage of you.”
“How many words do you know?” I asked.
“Just the three words of the healing song,” she said, and blushed crimson. She hid her embarrassment by hurrying to get Clea ready. She handed her to me with the care of a dame.
“You have had children of your own?”
“No,” she said, and her softer emotions were strangled by a bloom of rage that colored her cheeks. “His first and second wife each gave him sons. I helped raise them before he shipped them off to tutors in Korkorath. He’d bought a fourth wife from Dagoda to make more little brats for him, but she died in a fire. He’s been crawling on me twice as often since.”
“Had he gone impotent?” I asked.
She chuckled. “If only I was so lucky. His second wife added a dose of the women’s medicine to my soup the night of my wedding. She told me about it after and threatened to tell him I was barren if I didn’t see to her sons.”
She reached her hands through the pockets of my coat and undergarments and began to rub my back and sides. She found soreness I’d not know I had. Her kindness was designed to end the conversation, and I couldn’t rightly remember what I’d meant to ask next.
She tapped on the top of my belly and took hold of my arm. “You won’t make it far before the baby comes.”
“I have no choice.”
“Are all masters cruel?” she asked.
“It is best to be your own master,” I replied, and squeezed her hands in thanks.
She gave me a strange look, and I turned the topic. “Did you ever meet Burhn?”
She blushed at the questions and I asked, “You know him well?”
“He would lead a group of acolytes down the glacier after each hunt to trade their healing magic for gold and supplies. He would stay here and dine with my husband. They discussed much. It shook things up here when he fled. You knew him, too?”
She fancied him. I wanted to hear more about those dinner meetings, but Ghemma would not have been included in the discussions. Instead of telling her I’d tried to kill Burhn, I choose to be kind.
“He’s one of the bravest man I’ve ever known. He has gone his own way, and I wish him well.”
“He was a different from the rest, that’s for sure. He called himself Bermish, but he was born far away—Heneur, I’d heard him say once after too much wine. Best for all of us to be away, perhaps.”
“There are not many routes out of here. Perhaps we’ll meet him again on the way.”
She smiled to hear it and carried my pack for me as we moved out into the flower-choked garden that separated the estate from its stables. The crowd gathered there was large, mixed, and anxious to be moving. The flowers had been picked apart, and several of the stones along the edges of the manicured path had been kicked free. Harmond and one of the priests stood in the center of the gathering and were arguing at volume. The group noticed my arrival and both men started toward me.
“I do not lik
e problems,” I said to them.
“We disagree on the best route to Pashwarmuth,” Harmond said.
“Do we need to decide it now? I would prefer to be moving as soon as possible.”
“No,” the priest said. “We—”
“Yes, we do,” Harmond said. “We must decide it before we leave the city. The best route is west across the lakes. The only place to find boats enough is here in Verd.”
I turned to the priest. “And you would take the tithe road north?”
“Of course. The road is much faster.”
Harmond said, “If we were going to Korkorath, fine, but from there we need to move down the Lira River and across Goad Lake. It is a mean river during the spring thaw, and Korkorath will not have boats enough to take us. It is best to get boats here, from men we trust and portage across the lakes. It is a well-travelled route, safe, and faster than their meandering road.”
I’d hoped our course would take us straight north. From Korkorath, I could make it to Alsonbrey. From there the rest was a trip I’d made before through the back woods and field of the Kaaryon and Trace. It had felt like the right plan, but as the group stared at me, I could not help but imagine Hessier on horseback racing down the road after us.
“Burhn went west,” Ghemma whispered to me.
“Boats it is,” I said.
The priest was not pleased. “To Pashwarmuth? All of us, for the sake of the armor? What use is it? I wish to receive Aden’s blessing, as promised. I see no reason to portage worthless armor halfway across Berm and back on the say of a woman.”
“As you wish, sir,” I said. “It is best, I think, for you to stay here and explain to Aden why you and the prelate failed to deliver the armor he paid for. When the rest of us return with it, I look forward to seeing what has become of you.”
“Well, now, hold on a moment. I don’t think any of us want to anger Master Aden.”
When no one else had anything to say I led them out. Harmond had a line of wagons ready, and we rode west from the collection of estates and up a wide road toward the market that occupied the hill in the center of the town. I got a better sense of the place as the wagons carried us up the slow slope. The estates were built as far away from the slaughterhouses as possible. To the west the city hugged the bottom of the long lake the river fed. Docks crowded the river’s mouth, and each was thick with boats and rafts. Every space between the markets and docks was crammed with shacks that I guessed were only occupied during the harvest.
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