A Plague of Swords

by Miles Cameron

  The second day, they lost all trace, even hermetical, of their quarry.

  “He must be going north,” Tessen said, and Looks-at-Clouds agreed. But they became ever quieter as the day wore on, and Aneas made them keep a cold camp.

  Aneas had begun to wonder if Turkos had lost his way, or if all his messages had failed. He was so tired that every choice seemed the wrong choice. Twice, crossing low ground entangled with alder and pits of black mud, he considered ordering them to turn around. Admitting failure.

  He owed his brother nothing. Or so he told himself.

  * * *

  On the third day, they came to a deep gorge, with a rocky stream running at the base.

  “Woodhull Creek,” Lewen said. “Or perhaps Little Woodhull.” He nodded, as if satisfied.

  The Outwallers dropped their packs and one lit his pipe and handed it around. Mingan dropped his pack on a log and came forward, dropped to one knee, and looked out over the valley of the Woodhull. “We must cross it to go north,” he said.

  The rest of them slumped to the ground. Most didn’t even take their packs off; they just sat.

  Irene dropped her pack with Mingan’s and walked forward, massaging her hips. She wondered if this was how old age would feel.

  But the valley of the Woodhull was beautiful in the August sun. A hummingbird came out of the brush below them and visited an ancient rosebush.

  “People lived here,” Irene said. Now that she saw the rosebush, she realized she was looking at an entire farmyard; there was the old foundation, and there, an apple tree with the fruit, not quite ripe, hanging down. Two Outwallers and Cynthia were plucking the unripe fruit and putting it in their packs.

  Aneas raised his head, and Irene had the impression he’d fallen asleep sitting on the ground.

  “Yes. Not so many generations ago,” Aneas said. “Perhaps two hundred years ago.”

  “What happened?” Irene asked.

  He just looked at her. Then he bent his head and took his axe from his belt. On the back of the axe was a small pipe bowl, and he reached in his belt purse and took out a case made of tortoiseshell. Inside was a bare dusting of tobacco. He tapped the shell until he gathered the tobacco, and tenderly nursed it into the bowl.

  “War,” he said, without looking up. “My ancestors. And yours. And Orley’s.” He shrugged. “My mother used to tell us that the Wild was gradually taking Alba back from mankind. Myself, I wonder if we aren’t just defeating ourselves.”

  “You could let Orley go,” she said.

  “I should,” he said. “I’m out of tobacco.” He looked out over the Woodhull. “I hate to lose.”

  “So do I,” Irene said. “But Orley did not keep me, and I am grateful for that.”

  Aneas smiled at her. “At best, we broke even there,” he said.

  Irene thought of the thing in her head and considered wallowing in pity, but instead she shook her head, mostly at herself.

  “My feud with Orley is personal,” Aneas said. “I admit it. I acknowledge that he didn’t personally kill my mother or my father; that compared to the likes of the Great Dragon or Thorn, he was merely a foot soldier in an evil service. And I’m wise enough to see that his hate for the Muriens is the product of hundreds of years of atrocity and counteratrocity. The very wars that returned all this beautiful land to the beaver and the moose and the bogglin.” He took out his tinderbox. “But he did kill my...” He paused. “Friend,” he said weakly.

  She was fascinated by the assurance with which he found things on his body, took them out, used them, and returned them. Tobacco, tinderbox, stele, flint, knife...And by his weakness. Friend. She had never had a lover, but she knew how people valued them.

  He was paying her no attention. “But when Wart, a Jack, and Krek, a bogglin, and Tessen all agree that Orley has to be defeated...” He paused, and his hands moved quickly, the flint snapping against the curved stele in his left hand until sparks fell on his char cloth. “The one thing that Gabriel has right is that we have to do this together, or not at all,” he said.

  “I want to learn to do that,” Irene said.

  He dropped the fragment of burning cloth into the top of his pipe and inhaled.

  He sat back, put himself against a gnarled tree, and smoked.

  Irene stood watching the valley below. Mingan continued to kneel a few paces to her left, and when she turned her head, he flashed her a smile.

  “May I try your pipe?” she asked.

  Aneas raised an eyebrow. Then he handed it to her, wiping the stem. “I guess you’ve earned it,” he said, and she couldn’t tell whether he was jesting.

  She drew in a little smoke. All the Outwallers smoked; most of the rangers. No one in Liviapolis had ever smoked, except one master at the academy.

  She tried to trickle the smoke out of her nose. It was bitter, somehow, and yet sweet, and she gave a short cough at the end of her efforts. The axe in her hand was the one she’d been using to cut boughs, what seemed like a year ago: razor sharp. A contrast to the pipe on the back. The steel was beautiful, with a grain like wood.

  She handed the pipe back, wiping the stem as he had.

  He took it and drew in more smoke.

  “Why would we turn back?” she asked.

  “We are about to run out of most of our supplies,” he said. “Tobacco, wax, sugar, flour for biscuits. Dozens of other things. Most of us have fewer than a dozen good shafts left for our bows. You, Polly, and Joan are in rags, and have to share blankets, and really, Polly and Joan have no business out here.”

  She felt as if her eyes were especially wide open. Was that the tobacco?

  Polly and Joan have no business here. But I do.

  “Aneas,” she began, and paused.

  He looked at her.

  It was perhaps the longest time their eyes had met since she awoke next to Looks-at-Clouds.

  “Orley put something in my head. You know that?” she asked. She hated that her voice caught.

  He exhaled smoke. “I know,” he said. His voice held sadness, pity...

  “Everyone knows?” she asked.

  Aneas nodded. “They have to.”

  She reached for the pipe, and he gave it to her. She took a deeper pull on it, and thought, inconsequentially, about running...running on exhausted legs. Looking back, for Joan. The thought made her smile. She breathed out. “Do you think...” She looked back at him. “Do you think that actions count more than thoughts?”

  “I’d like to think so,” he said. His smile was bitter.

  “I wanted to leave those women. I actually thought to use them as...decoys.” She handed him the axe. “But I didn’t.”

  Aneas smiled. He put the pipe in his mouth. Then he looked up and waggled the stem at Mingan, who came and took it gratefully and puffed away greedily, eyes on the horizon. Irene noted that he kept his weight low, and didn’t stand erect, as she had done, on the cliff edge.

  There is so much to learn.

  She smiled at Mingan. He openly admired her, and she enjoyed his admiration. There was something clean and simple about his attentions. And he was relentlessly dignified. And he spoke Archaic.

  He grinned—just for a moment—and then handed her the pipe and slipped away.

  “I think we should keep going,” Irene said.

  Aneas looked at her a moment as if he’d never seen her before.

  “I have commanded a city under siege,” she said. She shrugged. “These people love you, and if you say go, they’ll go.”

  “They are exhausted,” he said.

  She smiled. “I feel better today than I have in a week,” she said. “I have Tessen’s perfectly good spare wrap skirt. Ricard Lantorn made a joke this morning. If it were my decision, I’d at least give it another day.”

  Aneas looked at her, raised an eyebrow, opened his mouth, and then thought better of whatever he was going to say. He could be a very awkward boy at times, and this was one of them. He was at a loss for words, and he showed it. Ga
briel would not have shown this confusion.

  But then Aneas rose and tapped his pipe axe against a tree. He did so until the dregs of the ash and tobacco fell out, and then his moccasined foot crushed the dying ember. He thrust the axe back into his sash.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  * * *

  On the fourth day since Irene’s escape, they turned back east, hunted, took a deer, made a fire, and ate him. Looks-at-Clouds cast about in the aethereal for Orley.

  S/he took Irene.

  You know where we are? S/he asked.

  The princess looked around. I know, and yet I know I have no gift for this.

  Looks-at-Clouds in the aethereal was a hermaphrodite; naked and beautiful.

  You think so, but then, so many things you think are untrue.

  I was tested.

  Not the way Orley tested you. You are made of very strong steel indeed. Let me see your dark egg. Ahh. A terrible thing.

  She reached deep into Irene, which was, itself, terrifying.

  Blessed Tar, Looks-at-Clouds said. This is an abomination.

  Irene didn’t want to breathe or move.

  But...the hermaphrodite seemed to laugh. But...let’s see.

  There was an infinite pause.

  And there he is, s/he said, and they were back in the real.

  “Did you remove it?” Irene asked.

  Looks-at-Clouds shrugged. “No, I cannot,” s/he said precisely. “But I followed a thread to its maker, and it is a thing of Ash. I need another kind of working to defeat it. Someone...gifted. Differently.” S/he frowned. “I used it to find Orley.”

  “What is it?” Irene asked. She had thought that the fear was over.

  Looks-at-Clouds looked away. “It is a trap. An egg. And when it hatches, what emerges will consume you.”

  Irene felt her knees fail her. The bacsa’s strong arms held her up.

  “Can it be removed?” Irene asked.

  Looks-at-Clouds took a breath. “Perhaps,” s/he said.

  “Oh God. I should go away.” Irene found it difficult to breathe.

  Looks-at-Clouds squeezed her and wrapped long arms more tightly around her waist. “No, my sweet. Until we heal you, we will hold you very close.”

  “And if...” Irene could say it. It was inside her.

  Looks-at-Clouds sighed. “Then Aneas or I will kill what emerges.” S/he smiled. Her face was very close. “He did not kill you, and you escaped. Live. If the worst happens”—s/he smiled, and his/her Irkish teeth showed—“it will be quick.”

  Irene shivered.

  * * *

  On the fifth day after the escape, the wyverns came.

  There were four of them, and Lewen spotted them a great ways off, so that they hid in a dense clump of old pines. But the wyverns were not fooled and landed in the meadow hard by.

  Only when the old female began to call Aneas by name was he convinced. Still, there were fourteen bows bent and fourteen arrows on bows as Aneas went out of the trees to meet the old wyvern.

  But the clear sound of his laugh carried. He talked to the wyverns for several exchanges.

  “Come out!” he called.

  He came trotting back, quivering like an eager terrier.

  “Make camp. There is a great deal of news. And we are back in touch with the army. Tall Pine made it to the inn. They will bring us more supplies, and there is a war party coming by canoe up the Black River.” He nodded. “Damn!” he said. He grinned like the boy he often was. He was clearly pleased.

  The wyverns were terrifying. Even when they smiled, or ate blueberries.

  “And the Long Dam Clan bears are coming up from Lissen Carak,” Aneas said, pounding one fist into the other. “Ah, it wasn’t for nothing. Count your days, Kevin Orley.” He dropped to one knee in the sun and drew his sword. “By God and Saint George, I will have you,” he swore. “Or I will die in the attempt.”

  The largest wyvern dropped a bag of flour on the ground and gave a screech.

  Aneas got to his feet, looking a little self-conscious after his oath, and his glance caught Irene’s. He smiled.

  She smiled back.

  “You were right,” he said. “I won’t forget.”

  Part V

  Arles

  The day after the captain’s wedding, the company slept in.

  Most of the officers knew the schedule. The men and women slept, but there were boats being loaded along half the wharves of the city, and across the narrow lagoon to the north, a huge herd of horses was assembled.

  The city was busy. There were arrests: the sudden intrusion of soldiers into houses, and in one case, a foreigner was killed in an inn.

  No boats were allowed to leave Venike, nor had been so allowed since the three great round ships landed.

  And in the darkness before the dawn on the company’s fourth day in Venike, they rose, put on their less spectacular uniforms, and formed in small squares. Corporals and knights with darkened lanterns read from slips of parchment and led men to boats, and they filed aboard with hardly a curse.

  By the time the sun was rising, the emperor’s entire force had landed on the mainland to the north.

  The Venikans were efficient. The horses were waiting, already picketed by lance; a warhorse and a riding horse for every knight and squire, and good riding horses for every archer and page. The company carried the tack of long-dead horses, steeds and sometimes friends, across the muddy beach and up the duty path to the horse lines, and there Bad Tom and Sauce assigned them to their mounts.

  And they tacked up.

  Etrusca had been stripped of horseflesh for them. The Duke of Venike had emptied his coffers to buy remounts. Horses had been imported huge distances so that archers could complain about the colour of their new horses.

  The duchess, it appeared, was coming along to protect her investment. She rode up with Jules Kronmir and a hundred of her own rangers. They wore green like the royal foresters.

  “Where’s the emperor?” she asked.

  Bad Tom laughed. “Still abed, I’ll guess.”

  Kronmir nodded. “He will join us at Berona,” he said. He handed message scrolls to Michael and Tom and Sauce, and the duchess.

  She smiled her brilliant smile. “They deserve a honeymoon,” she said.

  The army marched as soon as it was mounted. Kaitlin and Francis Atcourt had almost no work to do on the baggage, because the Venikan officers were used to war, and they had collected everything on Sukey’s lists and they were moving it by water.

  To Ser Michael, it was like learning to make war all over again. He rode by Sauce in a constant state of amazement.

  “Why did they want us to help?” he asked. “I’ve never seen aught like this. They know more about war than...”

  “This” was a baggage train of barges, eighty barges long. Every barge carried two long, high-wheeled military wagons, themselves fully loaded. Michael could see the gonnes from the ships being loaded by heavy cranes driven by winches, the winches worked by teams of mules and one giant crane powered by oxen.

  The proveditores, the officers in charge of provisions, were meticulous. They had tablets, and while the men were landed to find their horses, the Venikan officers were moving along the barges with tally sticks. Checking the loads.

  “What’s the plan, Michael?” Sauce asked. They were riding over the dusty plain. Even the trees were different. The trees in Etrusca seemed to either rise like drop spindles or have odd, blobby tops. The occasional stand of oaks reminded her of home.

  “You know the plan,” Michael said.

  “I know His Nibs says we’re riding north until we make contact and joining hands with the locals and the Ifriquy’ans if they are in time. And Du Corse. And then there’s a great battle.” She looked behind them. “It’s a bloody daft plan and I don’t believe a word of it.”

  Michael laughed. “Well, for that matter, neither do I and neither does Tom.”

  “Is he making it up as he goes, while he tomcats with
his blondie?” Sauce asked.

  Michael, whose pavilion often lay close by Sauce’s, was surprised at her tone. “Do we begrudge him a little...fun?” Michael asked.

  Sauce looked away. “We’re a long way from home, Michael. I don’t think his head is on this. I think he learned somewhat he didn’t much like, back at Dar.” She shrugged, her breastplate flashing in the brilliant Etruscan sun.

  Michael looked out over the plains of Mitla and returned her shrug. “It’s a fine place to make war,” he said.

  “If only we had people to fight, and not monsters,” Sauce said. “What’s he playing at?”

  “Be careful what you wish for,” Jules Kronmir said from Sauce’s left side. When he rode away, she turned on Michael.

  “I can’t like that bastard,” she said.

  Michael didn’t know and didn’t care. He waved at Kaitlin, who was riding like a noblewoman born to the saddle now.

  Sauce followed his eye and frowned. “Tom and I are the only ones taking this war seriously,” she said.

  But the army camped near Vadova, and everything about the camp made Sauce happy. The latrines were already dug, and the food all but cooked itself.

  Bad Tom found her standing by a cook fire where three of Sukey’s girls, now Kaitlin’s girls, were busy cutting cabbage.

  “Look at this, Tom,” Sauce said. She held up a large ham.

  “Tar’s tits. I could use that as a club,” he said.

  She drew a baselard from her belt and cut him a slice, and as he chewed, a glorious smile came to his large-nosed face. “Like bacon!” he said. “That’s a pleasure and no mistake.”

  She cut him a piece off an enormous wheel of cheese. He ate it and again beamed with pleasure.

  “Now that’s a fine cheese. Hard, salty...” He grinned and cut another wedge.

  “That there is military rations. Made special, just to feed armies. The cheese will keep for weeks. So’ll the ham.” She looked around. “These people know more about making war than anyone I’ve ever met.”