by P. M. Biswas
Tam snorted. That wasn’t all Kay was appreciating.
Kay’s usual guards flanked the hunting party as they all rode out of the fortress that barricaded the palace proper. The massive chains clunked loudly as the drawbridge was lowered, and the bolt-studded wood creaked beneath them as they rode out over the moat.
Just hours earlier, at dawn, Borik had led a squad of scouts out across this very drawbridge. They were a motley crew of elite soldiers, men and women of various ages, although most were in their thirties and above. They were accomplished trackers, land-readers and navigators, not just spear-wielders. Borik had cherry-picked them for their noncombat abilities, since scouting rarely led to conflict.
That might begin to change.
For twenty years the Great War had held sway over the human world, pitting every nation there was against the evil King Danis of Norvald. Danis devoured kingdom after kingdom in a military campaign that seemed to have no end, much like his bloodthirstiness. The nation of Khatir had capitulated to him, as had the nation of Xinbao. Tam’s own nation of Astaris struggled to maintain its freedom in the face of Danis’s brutality and had allied with the neighboring kingdom of Axenborg to keep Danis at bay. Axenborg lay between Norvald and Astaris and provided a buffer between the two nations. Astaris’s alliance with Axenborg was essential to Astaris’s survival.
The Astarian army routinely dispatched scouts to its border with Axenborg to ensure that Danis hadn’t strayed too close. Those sent on scouting missions tended to be users of long-range weapons, designed to bring down a foe at a distance before that foe breached the border. The archery and spear units were therefore the units traditionally deployed as scouts, whereas the sword and ax units remained within the fort to fight off any impending incursions—incursions that they would, hopefully, be notified of in advance by the scouts.
And so it went. The war with Norvald continued unabated, and Astaris’s alliance with Axenborg kept Norvald’s forces from infiltrating the Astarian border. Emeraude had ordered a portion of the Astarian army to be stationed at Axenborg indefinitely, to block Danis from making further ingress into Axenborg and to deter him from crossing the boundary of Astaris.
However, after nigh on two decades of relentless assault by Danis, Axenborg’s defenses had begun to crumble—and, if what Emeraude had said was the truth, they might collapse at any moment. Months ago Axenborg had issued a letter to Astaris that they were on the brink of being invaded, and Emeraude had taken preemptive action by moving her state capital from the magnificent city of Vesalis to the fortress at the border of Astaris. From that fortress scouts were sent out every single day to different stretches of the border, to ensure that had Axenborg succumbed to Danis, Astaris would not follow.
That too marked Emeraude’s uniqueness among monarchs. Most monarchs of warring countries kept far away from any susceptible border, ensconced safely in their palaces with their civilians as their shields.
But not Emeraude. In moving her capital to the border, Emeraude had placed herself and her army between Danis and the majority of her kingdom. The border fort at Lyton was the most insecure location in Astaris, and Emeraude had voluntarily relocated there.
When Emeraude’s ministers and courtiers—nervous about exposing themselves—had attempted to convince her that as a ruler she should seek to outlive her citizens, she had replied that no ruler worth their salt would do so. She had also released from service any minister that chose not to go with her to the new capital at Lyton.
The royal court at Lyton was, as a result, a mere shade of what the original court had been, lacking in splendor and color. Yet Tam was fond of it; it was proof that she served a worthy queen. A queen she would gladly die for, as Tam’s parents had once gladly died for their king.
Tam calculated how many miles Borik’s troop would’ve traveled in the five hours since dawn. Marching on foot and weighed down by armor as they were, they wouldn’t have made it more than a hundred and forty furlongs out from the fortress.
But Tam had neither shield nor armor. If she parted from Kay and rode Maple as swiftly as she could, then Tam would be able to catch up to the scouts within ninety minutes.
Maple would hate her for it, though.
Oh well. It wasn’t like Tam had to woo Maple for a lifelong partnership. Maple would go back to the huntsman’s stables after this impromptu romp. Tam would be formally reprimanded by the queen… and then formally attached to Borik’s spear-wielders.
Heh.
“Stop snickering to yourself,” Kay whispered to her. “It’s creepy.”
“I’m creepy? I’m not the one ogling Caradoc like a hound ogling a side of ham.”
“Shh!” Kay said, and when Caradoc turned back from the front of the party after overhearing his name, Kay gave him a wobbly little wave. “Sorry, we… we were just… mentioning you. In idle conversation.”
“Just like you think about him when you’ve got idle hands,” Tam muttered under her breath and then sniggered when Kay attempted to jab at her with his bootheel.
“There!” Caradoc yelled. “A deer!”
The yell frightened away the deer, but that was Caradoc’s intention—he had to initiate a chase for the pleasure of the spoiled prince. Caradoc likely expected Kay to slay the deer after the other riders had cornered it and rendered it easy prey, but Tam knew that Kay, idealist that he was, would pardon it just before it was slain. And by then Tam would have escaped.
The deer would live. Tam would officially join the army. Kay would enjoy an interlude with the object of his infatuation. They would all go home happy.
As the chase began, Tam stealthily separated herself from the main group under the pretense of pursuing the hart. It darted between the trees, a flick of an ear visible here and a hoof dislodging dirt there, conveniently diverting the other hunters from what Tam was doing.
When Kay all but careened into a tree—on purpose, since despite being a bookworm, he wasn’t that clumsy a rider—Caradoc and the guards were momentarily distracted by the sheer panic of possibly losing their prince.
Taking advantage of the distraction Kay had so generously fabricated for her, Tam whirled around and urged Maple into a breakneck pace.
They headed southwest.
To the border.
To action.
As Tam broke free of the cover of Lyton Forest, the mottled shadows cast upon her by the treetops receded. Tam could see the fortress dissipating into a foggy hulk behind her, shrouded by the morning mist.
Tam whooped in delight.
She was free.
Tam’s braid streamed behind her as she rode, whipped back and forth by the wind. Maple’s flanks frothed and shone with sweat, but to her credit, the mare did not flag in spite of her age. It was as if she’d caught Tam’s wildness of spirit, and as the ground raced beneath them—loose pebbles and trampled grass and kicked-up dirt—Tam bent almost flat over Maple’s neck and urged her on and on and on.
TAM HAD to slow down when the footprints left by the scouts became fresh enough to indicate that she would soon be within hearing distance of them. She eased off on Maple’s reins, slowing them down to a trot and then to a halt.
“Stay here,” Tam said to Maple, untying the waterskin strapped to the saddle and pouring it into a shallow depression in the ground so that the exhausted horse could drink. “I have to go by myself from here or they’ll hear me coming.” Tam patted Maple awkwardly. “Uh. See you later?”
Maple regarded her flatly, as if to say, I’d be fine not seeing you ever again, thanks.
Tam scratched Maple between the ears in apology for pushing her so hard, and slunk off behind the crest of the hill. She squinted into the now bright noonday sun. From this vantage point, the scouts were as tiny as ants, far ahead of her and moving steadily across the landscape. They were marching in the valley leading to the border, which would allow Tam to trail them from above. She’d remain unnoticed as long as she stayed behind the hills above the valley. It would requi
re Tam to clamber over the rocks as lightly as a mountain goat, careful not to displace a mini-landslide of stones and inadvertently announce herself. But given how nimble Tam was after years of spear training, she was confident she could pull it off.
And she did. As she crept up to them, Tam began to make out the individuals in the squad—there was Borik’s bulk in the lead, with Maryada’s trademark double-ended spear resting horizontally across her broad shoulders, and Dale’s ginger hair catching the sunlight like a beacon.
These were all people known to her and dear to her, members of the spear unit that had trained her and kept her out of trouble.
Tam was in trouble now, though. And she was loving it.
Unfortunately, no bandits showed up to add some excitement to Tam’s lonely tracking. Just before she got bored, she glimpsed a flash of purple converging on them from the other side of the border. From Axenborg.
Immediately Tam snapped to alertness, her spear clutched in her right hand as she crouched behind an outcropping of hilltop shrubs. Borik, the tallest of the squad, likewise saw the intruders and barked out a command—only just audible to Tam from her hiding place—that his scouts raise their spears.
Tam raised her spear too.
The army of Axenborg wore purple livery, so this was most likely a scouting group sent out by Korbyn, king of Axenborg, just as Borik and his unit had been sent out by Emeraude. If that were the case, the two squads would only exchange pleasantries across the border before going back to their bases. It might even be an opportunity to obtain the most up-to-date intelligence from Axenborg’s own war with Danis before the next messenger from Axenborg arrived at Emeraude’s fort at the turn of the month. If the messenger arrived at all. Emeraude had said that recently, Axenborg’s messengers had disappeared.
Borik must’ve been thinking similarly, because he approached the border—marked as it was by ribboned posts entrenched a hundred paces apart—with his squad’s spears still raised in caution.
Once the two squads were near enough to look at each other, Borik instantly relaxed, ostensibly recognizing the leader of the Axenborg scouts.
“Bathisda!” he called out to a burly woman who bore Axenborg’s purple coat of arms on her cuirass. “Haven’t seen you since our victory at Morrighain! How fare your children?”
But Bathisda did not answer Borik’s question. Instead, she drew her sword… and charged across the border.
There was a moment of fractured, splintered shock—in which Borik and his squad shouted in alarm—and then there was a ringing clash of weapons as Axenborg’s scouts rushed in to meet them, shattering an alliance that had preceded the Great War itself.
Tam was immobilized by fear, not only at the horror that was unfolding before her eyes, but at what this boded for Astaris. If Axenborg was no longer allied with Astaris against the otherwise unstoppable King Danis, Astaris would be destroyed. It was only a matter of time. Astaris and its people would be butchered, just as Danis had butchered all the nations he’d conquered.
Tears sprang to Tam’s eyes—tears of rage and betrayal—and when she saw Dale go down in a spray of blood, Tam finally unfroze and barreled down the hillside to join her comrades, screaming in fury.
She sprinted to the base of the hill and used the leverage of her speedy descent to catapult herself into the air, spear angled downward to plunge into the throat of the nearest Axenborg scout.
Scouts? No, they were traitors. And traitors would pay.
Tam’s stomach heaved with bile when her oft-sharpened spear made contact and sank, like butter, into the flesh of her victim. But she didn’t have the luxury to slink off to a corner and vomit, like so many soldiers did after making their first kill. Tam could only stagger back in disbelief when the soldier she had just slain… got back up.
She’d killed him, hadn’t she? The gaping hole in his throat wasn’t burbling up blood anymore. He was standing upright, and his eyes—
Gods help her, but his eyes were a pupilless, fiery red. An unnatural red, glowing like a hellhound’s and flickering like twin embers. There was an utter lack of humanity to the man’s features, a blank, fixed, vacant expressionlessness that could only be the emptiness of death.
It was as though the body she had slain was animated not by life but by something else, some unholy animus that could only be wizardry. For if there was one fact Tam was sure of, despite this being her maiden battle, it was that dead men did not get up and walk. That was the whole point of battles, even—that those with the most dead lost and those with the most survivors won. Simple arithmetic.
It wasn’t simple anymore. And what was even more horrifying was the likelihood that this was related to the rumor of Danis being immortal. Had Danis begun using his necromancy on others? Was he behind this devilry?
But those were questions Tam could not ponder. Not now. Not when every second counted.
Tam thrust her spear upward and underarm, driving it into the soldier repeatedly. He only lurched at each jab, plodding onward as if insensible to whatever Tam did to him. Desperation curdled in Tam’s belly as her breaths came thin and fast. Distantly, she was aware of bodies rising around her, those that Borik and his scouts had killed rising again and again. The foe was beginning to outnumber them purely by virtue of being able to get back up. Only those undead that were hacked to pieces stayed down.
They’d have to be hacked to pieces, then.
As Tam’s compatriots reached the same conclusion, the skirmish became even more brutal. Heads were severed from torsos to forestall their reanimation. Maryada mowed down an entire column of the fiends, but it wasn’t enough. What should have been a fleeting skirmish stretched on and on, like an agonizingly long death.
Perhaps that was what this was—death, come to claim Tam as she had offered herself up to be claimed. She had no armor, as she wasn’t an enlisted soldier and wasn’t issued any by the armory. She had no shield. She had ridden into this battle without any forethought, armed only with a practice spear, because she had seen her brothers and sisters dying and it could not be borne.
“Tamsin!” bellowed Borik, spotting her from across the melee and doing his best to fight his way through to her. To protect her. Gods, he shouldn’t—he shouldn’t have to spare her any attention. It would endanger him. It would get him killed. What a fool Tam had been to think she’d be of help—
But self-hatred had no place here. Only urgency did. Safeguarding herself against her undead opponent left Tam’s back vulnerable to attack, and that was where she was struck. A deep gash bit into her ribs, slashing outward from her spine, and it didn’t even feel like a cut—what it felt like was a jarring impact, followed by an unbearable heat eating into her, as if a living flame was searing her from within. She cried out and stumbled, and that led to her being stabbed again.
Blood oozed out of her thigh as her a sword sliced her hamstring open. She dropped to her knees, unable to support herself on her injured leg. Still she twirled her spear around her, faster and faster, creating a blur of motion to keep her attackers from closing in on her and finishing her off. It was a hopeless effort, doomed to futility, and the realization sunk in that her end was upon her. The realization was somehow an ancient one, as if the foreknowledge of her death had been with her all her life and was only surfacing now, like a lost memory.
Despair yawned open within her, an abysmal maw, a pit of endless darkness on whose edge she teetered. She had once believed that peace would suffuse her in her final moments—the hard-won peace that belonged to those who perished in battle, to those who died nobly.
But there was no peace here. There was no nobility. Tam was frantic, mad with the need to survive, sweat and blood trickling down to her eyelashes and obscuring her sight. There was nothing heroic about this. This was pointless. Stupid and pointless, that she should die within the borders of her own country, failing to defend it, failing—
The speed at which Tam was twirling her spear started to slow as she weakened. The stren
gth bled from her, the soil around her staining red. Soon the Axenborg traitors would slaughter her like a pig, or worse, leave her to bleed to death, hearing her comrades die around her, surrounded by their gurgling moans and the dark, inexorable descent of crows circling overhead.
Bloodshed isn’t as adventurous as you imagine it is, Borik had said to her. How right he’d been.
The carnage spun around Tam like a fever dream, a nightmare that became increasingly jumbled as her vision dimmed. Another blow landed on her head, and more blood welled out of her scalp like wax, a hot, viscous dribble down her face. With what remained of her mind, Tam uttered a slurred, broken plea to Astar to spare her life this day.
It wasn’t Astar who answered.
It was Maple.
There was a thundering beat gathering momentum, a reverberation that shook the very earth beneath Tam. She looked up, incredulous, as her enemies were trampled beneath the hooves of a horse that descended on them like an avenging angel. The horse’s familiar chestnut coat was streaked with a rusty crimson, and its eyes were a molten, wrathful gold.
Tam grabbed on to the saddle with a trembling hand, but her grip was too slick with blood for her to find purchase. Just as she was about to give up and slump back into the mud, a hand twice the width of hers settled upon hers and helped her up.
It was Borik.
Oh gods, it was Borik. Borik had found her.
Tam sobbed, childishly grateful, as if Borik’s proximity would shelter her from harm. Borik wasn’t angry with her, like she’d expected him to be. Instead, he looked haggard and hollowed out, as if he was already grieving for her. It brought Tam back to herself, to how badly wounded she was, and pain lanced through her with an intensity that it hadn’t before. It was crippling.
Tam gasped, doubling over. Borik hoisted her up onto the saddle and quickly bound her to Maple with the reins’ leather straps. The mare hadn’t, by some miracle, trampled Borik. It was as if Maple had discerned that Borik was an ally and was waiting for him to secure Tam to her.