The Sacred Band: Book Three of the Acacia Trilogy

by David Anthony Durham

  Corinn almost collapsed. I got ill, bad ill. That sentence, next to that smile and beside that child was almost too much for her to stand. She sensed that Po felt her distress and wanted to return to her. She ordered him not to. Do you see the things I’ve done, Hanish? I tried to kill this child. I tried to kill this woman, and yet she smiles at me.

  “She has every reason to,” he said. “She lives. Her daughter does, too.”

  “She doesn’t have a name yet. I’ve not had time to think about it. But … she’s my little girl.”

  Gurta found her voice again. “I got mine out, too,” she said. “I was cursing him for coming, but I’m glad he was out and at the breast before them ones came and did all this. He’s got more sense than his father; I can tell that already.”

  Corinn reached in to see the infant’s face. She saw only an ear and a soft, lumpy curve of his head, but she peered in for a long time. She could smell the child, a scent that was sticky with his birthing but somehow lovely all the same. Mostly, though, she listened as Gurta continued her nervous rambling. She sounded more like a maid now than ever. The young woman had annoyed Corinn before. She could not imagine why anymore. Her voice was lovely, kind and warm. Without guile.

  Rialus was lucky to have had you.

  Touching her back again, Hanish said, “Tell her that so she can hear it. Find a way to talk to them, Corinn. Tell them the things you need to. Time is short.”

  Reluctantly, she drew back. She rummaged around in one of her saddlebags until she found writing utensils and sheaves of parchment. As the women stood awkwardly beside her, she wrote two notes. One she signed with her royal title and stamped with the Akaran seal, rolled, and tied tight with a strip of ribbon that any official of high rank would recognize. The other was a simpler missive.

  When she was finished both, she pressed the rolled document to Wren’s breast, indicating that she should hide it somewhere upon her person. The other she offered to them both to read. She had written:

  Take this document with you to Acacia. It’s an official pass of protection from me. If anyone troubles you, show it to them. Tell them they face my wrath if they harm you. Take it to Acacia, show it at the palace, and ask for my secretary, Rhrenna. Go there and be safe, under Akaran protection. From now and for as long as we can provide it.

  Gurta, forgive me for sending Rialus into such danger. I did not know what I was doing. I pray that he gets back to you, and that you live long and raise this child with love.

  Wren, I have committed crimes against you. I am too afraid to name them now, and I don’t ask you to forgive me. That’s too much to ask. But please go to Acacia with my blessing. Declare yourself the mother of Dariel’s daughter. If my brother makes it back to you, love him, wed him, be a part of my family.

  Go now. Hide yourselves again until I leave and the sorcerers follow me.

  When they had both clearly read the messages, they stood, nervous and unsure what to make of them. Gurta said, “You can’t fight them by yourself, Your Majesty. Don’t do that. Fly home and get others. Get everyone.”

  In answer, Corinn picked up the quill again. On the back of the missive, she wrote, I’m not alone. I was before, but I’m not anymore.

  “And need never be again,” Hanish said.

  Later, once the two women had departed and had time to return to their deep hiding place, Corinn opened The Song of Elenet. As ever, she heard the song waft up from the pages, winged notes that danced on the breeze, instantly intoxicating.

  Do you hear that?

  “Of course I do,” Hanish said. “I can understand why you like it so much.”

  Corinn bent forward, eyes closed, breathing the song in through her nose. The music caressed her face, searching the mottled flesh of her sealed mouth with gentle fingers. It wanted to heal her. She could feel it. The song itself—and whatever intelligence somehow lived in it—wished to rewrite the abomination that was the Santoth curse. It was wonderful to sense that sentient wish, but Corinn knew it could not be done. No matter how much of the song she could build within her head, it always had to be released through spoken breath, through open lips and with some resonance of the notes vibrating on her tongue. Even a whisper could do it, as when she whispered Barad’s eyes into stone.

  But I cannot whisper.

  “If I could whisper for you I would,” Hanish said.

  I know. And she knew he could not. If she had years to be his tutor, perhaps she could have found some way to teach him. He could have been the ghost sorcerer that walked beside her, unseen by any eyes but Barad’s. She would have spoken to him with her mind and the song would have danced unheard from his lips. But again there was the trap. She did not have those years. The serpent of her dilemma ate its tail. Her life was a closed ring, tightening each moment.

  What a couple we might have been together.

  “Corinn, what a couple we are together.”

  Corinn opened her eyes and looked down at the living words. She let them rise up into her eyes with their own power, just as they had done the very first time she looked upon them. That was all she needed to do.

  The response came quickly. A bellowing from the west. Followed by a roar from the north. And concussions of rage that passed, soundless, through the air from all around them. The Santoth sensed the touch of her eyes on The Song. Just having it alive within her head was enough. She knew they would hear it, just as she knew they were each of them turning toward her, drawn to it.

  Hanish said, “I think you’ve got their attention.”

  CHAPTER

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  It all went horribly wrong, and it was her fault. Mena knew it was. She should not have slept. How stupid of her to think she could sleep through a night while others risked their lives. At Perrin’s urging, she had left the task of receiving the incoming slave deserters to him. “Greet them in the morning, personally, with all the sincerity of feeling you want,” he had said, “but get some rest first.” He reasoned that Rialus Neptos had crossed back and forth three times. Surely these slaves—who were cunning if Fingel was anything to judge by—could manage it as well.

  Thinking this made it easier for Mena to acquiesce. Sleep she did, harder and longer than she intended. And dream she did as well: of being held tight by Perrin. He clung to her and sought to kiss her mouth. She would not let him. Instead, she placed her lips against his closed eyes. She felt the feather touches of his eyelashes, and there was something wonderful about the ripe curve of his eyeball. That, in her dream state, was permitted. Nothing else.

  When she woke to the flute notes that announced the predawn hour, Mena felt in the pit of her stomach that something had gone wrong. She should not have slept so deeply. She should not have dreamed the things she had. Melio’s eyes were the only ones she had kissed that way—and that was how it ever should be. The fact that she had slept and dreamed prompted her to kick off her blankets and dress hurriedly.

  Perrin collided with her as she came out of her tent. It was dark yet and windy. He was hooded and mittened. She knew him by his stature, though, and his shape.

  “What happened?”

  “We don’t know, Princess. I mean … nothing happened. They didn’t come. We even had lookouts posted out beyond the barricade. They saw nothing, until just now. Come and see.”

  Standing atop a sled with her officers, just behind the barricade of wooden spikes, sleds, and other supplies that served as their makeshift protective wall, Mena peered toward the Auldek camp. A barren, rocky expanse separated the two armies, but through a spyglass she could see the enemy’s stations steaming in the distance. Something was happening over there. Torches lit the area in front of their camp. In the crimson light Mena could make out shapes moving, structures being shifted, construction work, it seemed, but even through her spyglass she could not figure out what they were building.

  “Do you think the deserters were discovered?” Perrin asked.

  Mena inhaled, the night air so cold it froze th
e hair in her nostrils. “Perhaps, but there’s something more going on.”

  An hour later the light of dawn, as it finally began to creep in fits and starts across the frozen land’s contours, gave her a better idea of what. The structures they had built took on a familiar shape. Simple, solid, tall, and long necked, they reminded Mena of foulthings made of stout wooden beams. “Catapults.” She pulled the spyglass from her eye and offered it to Perrin. “They’ve erected catapults. Big ones.”

  “About time,” Gandrel said. To spite the cold, as he liked to put it, he stood with his hood thrown back, sniffing defiantly to keep his scarred nose from dripping. “I’ve found these Auldek a bit slow on the uptake, is what I mean. If you’d been on their side, Mena, you’d’ve finished us by now.”

  “Let’s hope they’re not thinking that way.” Mena took the spyglass back and lifted it.

  “But catapults?” Edell asked. He took off his gloves and tried to rub warmth into his cheeks. “We’re not exactly a fortress here. What are they going to …”

  Through the distorted, circular clarity of the spyglass’ view, Mena saw the arm of one of the catapults lever forward abruptly. It looked odd, the silent jerk of motion so far away. “They’ve shot,” she said. The object that surged up from it seemed to come apart as it rose. It broke into pieces that fanned out. She lost sight of them, pulled away the spyglass, and watched like the others, with her naked eyes.

  “What are those?” Perrin asked.

  Mena realized the answer just before they hit the hard earth. Something in the way each projectile somersaulted and contorted in the air, many limbed and limp as the dead … for they were the dead. Bodies. Naked bodies. They hit the ground about a hundred paces out, smacking down with sickening thuds. All that long arc of motion ended in an instant. Some of them split apart and sprayed red mist into the air. Most just landed. The sounds of the impacts followed one another in a quick, dull staccato.

  “The deserters were found out,” Edell said.

  “And this is their punishment?” Perrin asked. “Monsters. They’re monsters!” He whispered it first, and then he shouted it. As if in answer, a second rain of falling forms crashed down. Again the staccato of thuds.

  A scream yanked Mena around.

  Fingel. The woman stood a little distance away, with Rialus beside her. She dropped to her knees, pointing with one arm at the thing they had all already seen. She emitted a sound from somewhere in the tormented center of her. It carried a misleadingly rising tenor, as if she were about to scream or moan, but kept having the foundation of it pulled from under her.

  A third catapult hurled its grisly load, ten or so bodies.

  “Why are they doing this?” Perrin asked.

  The first catapult launched again.

  Rialus’s voice answered. “They’re sending us a message.”

  The second catapult snapped forward again.

  “What message?”

  Mena answered, “They would rather be without servants than be betrayed by them.”

  The Auldek kept it up throughout the day, building scattered piles of hundreds and hundreds of broken, exploded, naked bodies. A battlefield’s worth of carnage lofted through the air as a sickening gift. It was as Rialus said: a statement, not an attack.

  The attack came that night.

  Lookouts sounded the alarm when the Auldek were still out beyond the piles of corpses, riding in atop antoks. Mena—awake this time—jumped out of her cot fully clothed, snatching up the King’s Trust. Hearing the alarm horns, the Auldek responded as well. They discarded stealth. They spurred the beasts forward. As Mena reached the barricade, the antoks rushed toward them, bellowing. They plowed through the bodies. They sent the white bears that had come to feast on the frozen meat running, roaring their anger as they did so.

  Perceven shouted for archers to man the barricade. Perrin directed the foot soldiers into ranks. Bledas sprinted past, his sword drawn, rallying the confused and groggy. Mena connected with Elya, telling her to stay put, sheltered and hidden.

  When the attackers were just a few hundred yards out, the catapults, still in front of their encampment, lobbed balls of flaming pitch instead of bodies. The orbs hurtled upward like shooting stars, bent with the earth’s pull, and then plummeted. The catapults this time had been calibrated to send their missiles farther. The first one hit near enough to Mena that the impact knocked her from her feet. The impact area became an instant inferno.

  Fly, Elya, Mena thought, hoping the bombardment at least meant the fréketes had been held back. Get high and stay safe. Out loud, she shouted, “Ignore them. Ignore the fireballs. Distractions! You can’t run from them, so forget them. Look at what else comes!”

  Once into the crimson highlights of the fire’s glow, the antok riders pulled up their mounts. The beasts halted, churning the turf with their hooves, raking their heads about, impatient for the living blood on the other side of the barricade. The Auldek clinging to them began to leap off. They hit the frozen ground and came up, drawing their weapons. They proceeded forward, leaving the mounts fuming. In their arrogance, Mena realized, the Auldek wanted to do the killing themselves. As far as they were concerned, they did not need the monsters to do it for them.

  They were just as tall and fierce as ever, long limbed and fast. They wore dark body suits that covered them entirely, with hoods over their heads, but no obvious armor on them, none of the encumbering bulk of her own troops’ thick layers. The Auldek batted away the arrows that hit them as if they were troublesome insects. Even the arrows that struck them in the chest did not stick. Mena saw a heart shot knock an Auldek back. It caused a hitch in his step, but did little more than that. The arrow hung there until he ripped it away. It had not penetrated at all. It had just caught on his clothing.

  “Aim for their faces!” Mena yelled to the archers around her, and then stood on her toes and passed the order over to Perceven on one side and Bledas on the other. “Everyone, aim for their faces!”

  Another fireball exploded nearby, flinging out a molten wave of pitch. A man near her got splashed with the stuff, one arm so drenched that it liquefied while he was still on his feet. Other pitch balls landed with powerful whoomps, followed by the horrible splatter of flying liquid and the screams of the burning. They fell everywhere, igniting tents and supplies. The animals worked themselves into a grunting, squealing frenzy. The air, a moment ago ice pure and gelid, filled with the stench of burning pitch, flesh and hair and wood and fabric.

  The Auldek reached the Acacians’ barricade. The wall, put up and taken down hastily each time they moved their camp, was more a visual gesture than a true fortification. A delay and a nuisance, although for the Auldek it was barely even that. They leaped over it, chopped into it, shoved their way through it. Mena was right there in the front of her troops, yelling for them to attack them as the Auldek came through, while they were encumbered. She hacked at the arm of an Auldek whose feet were caught in a crosshatch of timbers. The man yowled, but the arm did not get sliced through, as she envisioned. She struck again, on his helmet, shoulder, slashing up in the hopes of reaching his face. None of the blows bit. She hacked down on his shoulder with enough force to sever it. In response he buckled beneath the blow for a moment, then surged upright, spouting what must have been Auldek curses.

  He was through—and others were through. Instant chaos, at a frantic level immediately different from just moments before. Her troops behind her surged forward. They became a squirming, struggling press of bodies into which the Auldek cut bloody paths. Mena got shoved away from the Auldek she had been fighting, and had to watch as he waded into the soldiers next to her. Slashing and shouting, the sound of metal striking metal, shouts of agony and rage and fear, guttural Auldek punching its way through their Acacian. For a time the battle was such utter confusion that Mena had no control over anything. She struck at any Auldek she neared, but she was too hemmed in. Her own soldiers pushed her into the jumble of the barricade so that she s
truggled even to stay upright. This burned away any trace of fear and left her red hot with anger.

  Seeing an opening, she dove for it. With the King’s Trust clenched in her sword hand, she scrambled on all fours beneath a lattice of wooden beams, along an overturned sled, and then over another into the clear. Outside the camp now, she ran along the barricade, trying to work out what they should do. The Auldek had all passed through already, which meant there were not so many of them. Only Auldek, and only a small group of them. She had the sickening thought that they must have drawn lots or something to win the privilege of this slaughter.

  Think, Mena!

  They had taken control of the moment, but was fight and die all that she could respond with? She would not accept that. She found a clearer section of the barricade, climbed on a wagon, and got a view. The Auldek rampaged through the camp. They did not stick to any formation, but ran where they pleased, swinging their massive swords and axes with a blurred rapidity that horrified her. They looked like dancers working through a practiced choreography, except that they were slicing off limbs and sending arcs of blood into the air with every move. Another sickening thought: that this might be the night the war ends for her and her army. Had they done enough? Had they delayed and hurt them enough for Corinn and Aliver to be able to defeat them?

  Think!

  She was just about to call Elya to her when she saw Perrin and another soldier fighting with an Auldek. The monster bore down on them, stepping through the bodies he had already cut down. He slashed and spun. He tossed his sword from one hand to the other and slashed and spun again.