by Dave Duncan
Polion shrieked. He leaped in the air and took off like a greyhound, waving his spear and yelling with glee.
Gwin and Niad fell into each other's arms.
#
Gwin stood by her coach. The Karpana filled the landscape like ants, pouring forward and dividing into the four columns Tibal had predicted. Feet and hooves and drums and war cries blended into a single deep rumble like the sea. Bugles were sounding on the hillock where the coalition banners waved. In a few minutes the carnage would start. The grass of Gehmain would flourish.
Niad had gone off to the dressing stations to wait for the first wounded. Tibal had an arm around Gwin again, holding her very tight. She made to pull free and was surprised by his strength.
"Let go!"
He released her. He could not refuse her.
She watched ripples of movement on the hillock as the Nurzians prepared to resist the onrushing tide of Karpana. The first blood would flow there.
"You do forgive me, you know," Tibal said at her ear. "I often wondered about that. My diaries are full of that question: How can she ever forgive me when I let her husband go to his death? I never foresaw what I did that day, and of course I don't remember it now, but it is written that I did try in the end. I was too late—I know that too. I think that must be how you manage to forgive me: I did try."
She said nothing. A bugle sounded down in the valley. The ground trembled under Karpana feet.
Tibal spoke again. "I am sure that Bulion Tharn was a fine man, although I do not remember him myself. I am sure he loved you dearly, but he did have commitments, other causes—his family, his role as patriarch. To love a Poulscath requires everything a man possesses, body and soul. I am yours, your armor, your lap dog, your shield, your shadow, your slave.
From now till death I have no life of my own except as an extension of you, and I would not have it otherwise."
She turned on him then. "Tibal Frainith! My husband is barely buried. Two husbands in less than a year—you think I'm desperate for a third? Are you proposing or just propositioning? What sort of woman do you think I am?"
He seemed unworried by her outburst. "A fortunate one, in that you have used up all your bad luck early in life, and the fates have little but joy left in store for you. No night lasts for ever, Gwin. Poul rises again. Iviel heals flesh but Shool heals souls. If you do not want me around, you have only to order me to leave. Or tell me to go kill myself, if my line really narks you, although that would seem a little petty."
She caught herself almost smiling and turned away quickly in case he saw. She likely would remarry some day. She was not a solitary person, and Bullion's son would need a father. But now was much too soon to be thinking such thoughts.
"I can wait," Tibal said. "I have waited all my life. Do you want me to tell you the night it happens? The place? The color of the bed curtains? The wine I use to break down your resistance?"
A smoke of arrows rose from the defenders on the knoll. The van of the Karpana column disintegrated. Moments later came a strange sound, the crack of innumerable bowstrings loosed simultaneously. Then a rising surge of noise that could only be men's voices on a vast scale.
"Why should I lie to you? You can't trust other men, but you can trust a Shoolscath. When I say I will make you happy, I know exactly what I'm talking about. We have a long life together, Nien, and I'll always love you. So many happy memories that I don't know where to start... Your birthday when the Ogoalscaths make it rain blossoms, and the triumph after Hanfold, the voyage to the Crystal Isles, the children, the day Deathleader Polion comes to claim his bride..."
The first wave of Karpana had fallen back, leaving the slopes littered with dead men and horses.
"Fates, Tibal! This is not the time to talk of such things!"
"It is the perfect time. This is the end of an epoch and the dawn of another. You see all those men down there? They are the Cursed, Nien, not we! They are cursed by a war they did not seek. We are blessed and will be more greatly blessed." He hesitated. "Do you remember the day we first met?"
"Yes."
"Did I really make a fool of myself? I mean, a real lovesick-kid sort of fool?"
"No. Not at all. I sensed you were... odd, I suppose. Not as other men, but you didn't seem foolish at all." And her Voice had said, It has begun.
He sighed, as if relieved. "It's out now. I can tell you now. I couldn't before, obviously. You will marry me, Nien—eventually."
"Was that why my husband had to die?"
Ropy muscles moved on his face. "No. Your husband had to die because you are a Poulscath and nothing must stand in the way of your destiny. Only you can save Kuolia."
"I don't believe it." She turned back to watch the war.
The nearest column had started up the slope below her. If Tibal was wrong about the trees being full of Jaulscaths, or if the Jaulscaths panicked themselves instead of the Karpana, then all Tibal's predictions were empty air.
He was doing all right so far, though. On the far side, the Karpana left wing was in obvious trouble. The cavalry had encountered swamp and the infantry seemed to be breaking formation. In the center, the invaders had begun a second assault on the hillock. The sound rising from the valley was the sound of surf—screams, cheers, swords, bowstrings, all blended into one gigantic, steady roar.
"Horrible! I hate it!"
"Get used to it, " Tibal said, "because this will not be the last, nor the worst. In some ways this is almost the best."
"Why, though? Why me?"
"Because the fates decreed. Because you are the Renewer."
She turned to him in amazement. "What? Me? There was never a female emperor! The Zarda would never—"
"I did not say you would be empress. I said you are the Renewer. You bring about the second empire, Gwin. Haven't you realized that yet?" He smiled comfortingly, smiled as much as any sane man could smile in the face of the tragedy unfolding below them.
"Not me? Then who? Don't tell me I do all this to make Frenzkion Zorg emperor of Kuolia!"
"Zorg dies next year at Acher—but you aren't involved in that one. You're off elsewhere, doing other things."
"Then..."
She looked away. "War! I don't want it!"
"We can only take what the fates send, Nien."
"Why me? I don't even know what I'm doing here!"
"You are giving them inspiration. Not much now, but after Acher—"
"And what do I get out of this?" she yelled. "What's my inspiration?"
"The next emperor, of course."
He put his arm around her and hugged her tight. This time she did not resist.
THE YEAR ONE
Historians have generally been in agreement as to the date of the founding of the second empire. The illustrious Gurmil Psarith maintained that the Battle of Gehmain in 101 should be considered the effective moment, but later workers have universally ignored his views, attributing them to a craving for academic notoriety. Although Gehmain was a notable success for the fledgling coalition that would ultimately form the nucleus of the new world order, whatever was born that day was a sickly infant, which barely survived the crushing disaster of Acher in the spring of 102.
Perversely, it was the magnitude of that defeat, combined with the atrocities of the wasting of Da Lam, that roused the western kingdoms to send support to their eastern brethren. Early in 103, the rejuvenated coalition struck a major, although not decisive, blow against the Karpana at Hanfold. It took the genius of Gwin Frainith to provide a rallying point for the cumbersome alliance when, on the eve of that battle, she raised her infant son before the assembled armies and proclaimed him emperor. In after years his reign was legally reckoned from that day and, for lack of a better marker, history has accepted it as the birth date of the Zarda empire.
At first the boy was only a figurehead that no one took seriously, although the convenient fiction of his descent from Pantholion was widely believed by the masses. When the victories began to mount, th
e empire gradually assumed an existence of its own. As the petty kingdoms toppled, Frainith sent in her agents to establish imperial rule in their stead.
The token regime established its credibility with the Karpana treaty in 110, the submission of the N'sam Confederacy in 113, and the fall of Podmansha in 115. After that, although its progress was not without setbacks, the empire steadily extended its boundaries through warfare and diplomacy. The last serious threat to its existence, the Western Assembly, was crushed in 120.
By then, of course, Emperor Bulion Tharn was emerging from his mother's shadow and leading his armies in person.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1995 by D.J. Duncan
Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media
ISBN 978-1-4976-0627-2
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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