Kerl’s subordinates, two lieutenants and the more than able Captain Prelan, who was one of the tallest felines I had ever seen, gave their reports and then left the tent. Kerl and I were alone in front of the maps and plans.
“There is also fear, my Queen.”
“Of what?”
“That if you are killed in battle, there will be nothing to fight for.”
My reply was too hasty: “That is foolish.”
“Is it? I speak as Counselor, now. I told you we would have to speak of these things again. You have no relatives. There is no direct line to the throne behind you. If you were to die, our own forces would turn on themselves, clan fighting clan for the right to succeed. It would doom the rebellion, and establish Frane’s claim to the throne, which she hasn’t been able to do.”
I could feel myself growing hot with anger. Pride was fighting reason, and the battle was all the worse because I suddenly knew he was right.
“Then – I will stay behind.”
A visible flood of relief went through him. “Thank you, my Queen. You have made the right decision.”
“It is not an easy one, Counselor.”
For the first time in a week I saw a tiny smile come to his lips, though an ironic one. “None of them will be, my Queen.” The smile vanished. “There is another question that has come up in counsel with my staff. It is an old one, and I feel bound to bring it up to you.”
“Yes?”
He hesitated. “It concerns the succession of which I spoke.”
I suddenly knew why he was having such a difficult time.
“You speak of my having another litter.”
He would not speak, staring at the ground, but only nodded.
“To do that, I would need to wed.”
“Yes, my Queen. For the good of our people.”
“This is...something I must think about. You are a good Counselor, Kerl.”
When he had left I added to myself, “Too good.”
General Xarr returned from the east as few days later. I immediately summoned him.
He knelt before me with his head down, and would not meet my eyes.
“The last time I saw you, general,” I said, “you were drunk.”
“I wish I was dead at this moment, my Queen.”
“Get up, and let me embrace you.”
He did so, and when I gently pushed him away I was startled to see tears on his ugly face from his one good eye.
“I haven’t had a drink of red wine or anything else since that day!”
I studied his scarred face, his empty eye socket, his missing ear. “You are a good man, Xarr.”
“I am a man filled with shame! I vowed to die for you, and on that day, because I was drunk, I slept through it all! The battle, your disappearance, all of it! Later I begged Kerl to let me go after you, but you were nowhere to be found!”
“Thank you, general. I will need your help in the coming days.”
His tears had dried, and he knelt before me again, and bowed his head.
“I will never leave your side again until my body is cold and stiff!”
The campaign began two weeks later. Word went out to the west by courier and, when possible, by radio machine. A few days later, word came back that full scale revolt against the F’rar had begun. Our own forces mobilized at the fortress stronghold. Well camouflaged, it was a veritable castle carved halfway up the face of mount Cassini. It was to be my place of safety, from which I would view the battle. The very thought of it made me grit my teeth, but it was well appointed, and its war room was spacious and up-to-date. General Xarr would stay behind also, with a small contingent of reserves.
Kerl rode out on a fine autumn morning, with Piesha beside him. Her battle dress was magnificent, red beaten armor made by her people, ornamented with the colored flowers and filigreed birds of their region in the far north. It was strong yet looked delicate. Once again I had to stifle pangs of jealousy, though I did try to have her removed from battle for Kerl’s sake. The gesture was a useless one – bordering, I was informed, on insult. The Sarn clan had always fought, man and betrothed, side by side, and it would always be so.
The gates of the stronghold were thrown wide as the army left at first light. The rose-colored sun glinted off of hundreds of armored helmets and hundreds of steeds.
Kerl and Piesha turned to salute me. And then they were gone, winding down the switchbacks to the wide plain below where the first battle would take place. From the fortress tower, I could make out the F’rar army arranged in standard line.
Even before the tail of Kerl’s army was out of sight, the F’rar were attacked on their flanks by the bands Kerl had assembled to the east and west. The sounds of battle, muffled and far away, filtered up to me. I was joined by Jamie, but I sent him away. I wanted to be alone. I was dressed in my finest robes, red and cream, with a beaten gold crown on my head. If they wanted a figurehead I would be one, and stand tall for them to see while they fought, while some of them died.
Kerl’s army reappeared, gaining the plain below, spreading out as they did so. They were more ragtag than I realized, their weapons almost meager – some rifles, one cannon, a line of archers with many foot soldiers carrying spears, swords and knives.
I imagined I heard the call to charge, though I knew it was too far away to reach me.
The battle line advanced. Kerl’s single cannon fired off once, then again, crashing into the F’rar line, which had unwisely split in the middle to cover the flanking attack.
Kerl’s men went straight for the break, which then closed up in a pall of smoke and the faraway popping of rifles.
The smoke grew higher and wider, covering the battlefield from end to end.
It was then that I saw, streaming down from the hills to the far west and east, a horde of white bodies on foot whose unearthly screams I could hear even from this distance.
“Baldies...” I whispered in disbelief.
The white horde disappeared into the fog of the battlefield.
The dust climbed into the air and held there like a fog.
I heard shouts around me, cries of sudden alarm.
I realized that it was not the smoke of battle at all I was witnessing, but the pall of a massive dust storm engulfing the entire field of battle.
It rolled higher, blotting out the rising sun, the sky, rolling up the mountainside like a red tide toward us.
I listened for sounds from the battlefield, but there was nothing now but the deadening sound of roaring wind. Now the first pellets of sand and dust hit me. I was thrown to my knees on the parapet as they became a flood.
Hands were under my arms, helping me to my feet.
“You must come inside!” a voice called, close to my ear.
The swirling dust was so thick now I could barely see the face – it one of my many attendants, a young girl named Beth whose husband was a foot soldier.
“I want to stay here for them, Beth!”
“You must come inside, my lady!” she insisted. She began to drag me away.
Now I could not see my own self. The howling wind reached at me, trying to tear me away from the helping hands and out over the wall.
I fell to my knees and began to crawl toward the safety of the tower, Beth supporting me.
We made it safely inside, and with some effort Beth closed the heavy wooden door behind us.
Out of the howling wind and tearing dust, I rested on the stairs and contemplated the frightened visage of the girl who had assisted me.
“They are all gone!” Beth sobbed.
Breathing heavily, I put my paw on her arm. “No. But the battle is uncertain now. All we can do is wait.”
“All gone!” she repeated in horror.
I heard the wild whistle of the wind at the door behind me, the pounding hiss of building sand, and had to wonder if she was right.
Eighteen
The storm lasted for two days. It continued to intensify through the first day, until the wo
rld outside disappeared completely.
At first we hoped for stragglers to make their way back to the fortress, but I feared this was a false hope. At the dawn of the second day, hopes rose when the howling wind suddenly slackened. But this was only momentary, and when it resumed it was with even greater fury.
After spending time with Jamie and Xarr and other of my advisors, who had no advice to give and only gloom to offer, I retired to the kitchen with the cooks and two of my maidservants. Beth had become close to me in the hours since the battle, and I was able to give her some comfort. Feeling useless, I availed myself of the task. The other maidservant was her steadfast friend, Masie. I found that I enjoyed their company, especially in the kitchen, which was in the bowels of the fortress, and away from the beating howl of the wind.
“I heard tales about these here dust monsoons,” Brenda, our fat cook, was saying. Though I was a Queen, she held her own court in this place. She waved her spatula like a waggling finger. “Heard tell of men bein’ stripped to the bones after so long as an hour in the middle of it.” She nodded her head sagely.
I briefly considered telling them of my own experience with a dust storm, but thought it best to be quiet.
Beth burst into tears.
“There, there, darlin’,” Bertie, her skinny husband said. “Don’t you listen to ol’ Brenda. She’s just talkin’ tales she is.”
“The thing I find strange,” said Masie, who was educated and wise, older than Beth and less high-strung, “is how quickly it came on. Not natural like.”
“Almost as if it was deliberate,” I added, unable to merely listen any longer.
There was instant quiet in the room.
“I told all of you already, to treat me as if I’m just another servant,” I said.
“Pardon me for saying it, my lady, but you ain’t!” Brenda replied.
After a moment’s hesitation, Massie broke out in laughter, and the others followed, Bertie’s own “Haw, haw!” a few decibels above the rest.
It was the first laughter I had heard in two days, and I joined it. Even Beth smiled momentarily, before beginning to fret again.
“I’m so worried...”
“I have to say,” I interjected, “that I much prefer the company of this room to a war room of melancholy advisers–”
At that moment Jamie appeared in the doorway, looking haggard and even older then he had before the battle.
“Pardon me, my Queen, but a survivor has made it to the front gates.”
I arose, and Beth gave a gasp. “Is it–”
Jamie glanced at her and said, “It’s Captain Prelan.”
“Is the storm over?” I asked.
Jamie shook his head.
“Then how did he make it back?”
Jamie continued to shake his head. “I have no idea. He’s blind, and dying. You should see him.”
I followed Jamie out of the kitchen, listening to the whispered chatter of my new friends behind me, and Beth’s wail.
Captain Prelan’s face was stripped naked and bloody, one of his eye sockets scoured clean and empty. The other was bandaged.
He lay on a table gasping, calling in a rasping voice for water. When water was given to him he dribbled a few drops into his mouth and cried, “Dry! Dry!”
“Sit him up,” I said, gently.
I drew close, and took his bloodied paw in my own. “Captain Prelan, it is Queen Haydn. Can you hear me?”
He stiffened into a form of attention. “Yes!”
“Sit back, captain. Can you tell us how you got here?”
“Crawled for... hours. Water!”
Once again he took a few drops, and cried, “So dry!”
The doctor, who was supporting the captain’s head, looked at me and said in a low voice, “His lungs and stomach are coated with dust.”
I nodded, and squeezed the captain’s paw. “Do you remember anything of the battle, Captain Prelan?”
“Filthy...Baldies...fighting aside the F’rar...” Again he asked for water. “The F’rar had dust masks. They knew...” Again, water, and now his voice was weakening. “Kerl tried to ride through the storm but...it followed us like a flood...”
“The storm followed you?”
He nodded slightly, and then clutched my paw tightly. “As if it was being directed. Had to come back...Kerl sent me...the F’rar know about the fortress...”
“They know we are here?”
He nodded again, tried to speak, but only a croaking rasp came out. “Water, please...”
I looked at Jamie and the other military advisors and said, “Come with me.”
“Newton of the Science Guild informed me that a feline named Talon has been providing the F’rar with technology. He was an atmospherics and ballistics expert, and a traitor. They may have developed a method to produce local dust storms. Who knows what else they have developed.
“I think we can have every reason to believe that when the dust settles the F’rar army will be standing at our gates.”
“We cannot be there to meet them, your majesty!” General Xarr interjected. “We have only my reserves, and not enough of them! And only the old and very young beyond that!”
“I have no intention of fighting them now. But I also have no intention of being here for them to slaughter. Here is what we will do...”
When the storm began to lift the next evening we were ready. The previous twelve hours had been hectic ones, but everyone from my old general down to the kitchen staff performed magnificently.
The first part of the climb was the hardest, with choking dust still swirling. But with everyone properly masking their faces with the primitive but effective wet cloth that the Mighty had taught me, we came through intact. The mountain passes behind the fortress were numerous, and easy to follow. Before long we had climbed out of reach of the dust storm. The glorious light of faint Phobos overhead filtered the night like a friendly lantern. I looked down and saw a blanket of haze looking like a pink cloud covering most of the mountain and our fortress below us. As I watched it seemed to recede a bit.
“Talon is letting up on the storm,” I said.
Beside me, Jamie nodded.
We continued to climb.
The plan was not audacious. I doubted the F’rar would follow our ragtag remains into the scattered heights of the mountain, and I was right. With our army split into hundreds of pockets it would take them weeks if not months to root us out. As I hoped, they did not bother to try.
After twenty-four hours, and a few not-bad meals made from local roots which Brenda, who had insisted on accompanying me, turned into delicacies, I thought it safe enough to descend to one of the many promontories which dotted the mountainside. From there I could survey our former home and the battlefield beyond it. Scouts had been here from the beginning, reporting on the retreat of the dust storm and its wake. I was not surprised by what I saw through one of their spy glasses.
The fortress was pink with dust which had drifted like dirty snow up its sides. It was free of F’rar interlopers now, who had poured through the gates at one point and then, mere hours later, retreated. They had joined their main force on the battlefield, which had then moved off to the east.
The Baldies were nowhere to be seen.
I surveyed the battlefield and saw no movement, and no sign of the great army that had left our fortress. It was a plain of drifted, silent dust, like the surface of another planet.
“I want scouts to make sure the F’rar army is gone for good. Tomorrow we will go down there.”
“Yes, my lady,” General Xarr answered.
That night the sweet mountain roots that Brenda cooked tasted bitter in my mouth.
There was not a breeze to stir the red dust the next morning. Only a small contingent came with me, since we had not many horses and without their steady strong legs it would be almost impossible to get through the stuff, which was knee deep in places.
It was silent now, but I could hear the silent screams of
the dead in my ears. Here and there, like monuments of defiance, an arm bearing a sword, or the legs of a fallen mount, poked through the surface like a bizarre sculpture. There were many mounds, where bodies lay entirely covered. In one spot a dead soldier sat, his chest to the top of his helmet exposed, his open mouth filled with dust. Below the surface he had been pierced with a F’rar sword.
“We’ll never find them all,” Xarr commented.
“We won’t even try.”
I rode on through this petrified field of death, my heart growing heavier. I had hoped that by some miracle some had survived, that Kerl had been successful in his inherently good choice to attempt to ride completely through the artificial storm and out the other side. My mare stumbled on a buried body and I urged her forward, around the fallen soldier. My eyes were on the far side of the valley, where the red dust eventually thinned up a far hill. If only Kerl and some of his men had made it that far.
But there was nothing but this field of ghosts and swirling dust.
Xarr rode up to join me, his mount kicking red drifts aside. “What do you wish?” he asked.
I hardened my voice. “How many do we have in reserve?”
He looked surprised at my question. “Perhaps three hundred, if that many.”
“And if all the able bodies are conscripted, as well as ill and infirm fit enough to fight?”
“To fight? Do you mean to pursue the F’rar army?”
I ignored his question. “Did you notice their air power capacity?”
“They had no airships.”
“Which means they relied on Talon’s machine.”
“My lady, even if we could pursue and catch the F’rar, the Baldies–”
I dismounted, my boots sinking into the silky ground covering. Nearby was the extended dead arm of one of our soldiers. I reached down into powder covering it and pulled up something long and white, a different arm whose long claws lay locked around my soldier’s own.
“The F’rar lured the Baldies here and killed them too. They were not given masks. They were not allies, but victims.”
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