by Matthew Ward
“I hate arguing with Thrakkians,” muttered Drenn.
“You hate being wrong,” said Anliss.
“And Thrakkians love hopeless battles.”
Anliss offered an unfriendly smile. “There are no hopeless battles, only warriors who have lost heart.”
Drenn leapt to her feet. “Why, you . . .!”
Josiri cleared his throat, interrupting her exclamation before things worsened. “Fifteen years ago I promised to finish what my mother could not. To free the Southshires from the Republic’s yoke.” He spoke not to the Vagabond Council, but to the crowd above. “I’ve spent those fifteen years preparing myself for this day – helping all of you prepare—”
“And we’re grateful,” Crovan interrupted. “Truly, your mother would be proud. Five years ago, I wouldn’t have believed we’d even sit around the same fire, let alone have the numbers to challenge the northwealders. But that’s just it. We’ve the numbers to challenge the northwealders, but no more.”
“Then what?” demanded Revekah. “We hide, and hope everything works out? I’m old, I’m tired and I’m sick of living on the run!”
“So we should throw our lives away because you’re dreaming of a goose-down bed?” snapped Drenn. “I don’t think so.”
“Your duke calls you to war! Piss on the idea of duty all you want, but Josiri is the Phoenix’s son.” She stabbed a finger at each of the Vagabond Council in turn, and emphasised every second or third word with an angry flourish. “You owe him fealty! Every last one of you!”
“Not me.” A grin cracked beneath Armund’s plaited beard. “But I’ll fight. Give me an axe and firm ground, and I’ll fight.”
At his side, Anliss murmured her agreement. Josiri nodded his thanks, and fought to keep worry from his face. Rank had bought the twins a seat in the circle; rank, and their trading contacts in Thrakkia. But they spoke only for themselves. By contrast, Crovan spoke with the authority of several hundred swords.
“Josiri,” said the Wolf King. “The oaths I swore and the fealty I owe are to the Republic. But I turned my back on that when I saw the Southshires’ suffering for myself. Duty isn’t enough. Men must think for themselves. They must deal with the world before them, not one laid down by a distant council, or a dead mother’s wish . . .”
Revekah scowled but held her tongue.
“I know you understand this in your heart,” Crovan went on. “Ask yourself what your mother would want. Katya Trelan valued the lives of her people above all things.”
Onlookers rumbled approval. Josiri’s gut twisted. The gathering was slipping away from him. It would have been easier if the Wolf King had been wrong, or self-aggrandising. But for all his front, that wasn’t Drakos Crovan’s way. They wanted the same thing, only one of them wasn’t prepared to meet the cost.
“And what value is a life lived under Hadari rule?” demanded Josiri. “Or one lost in the exodus scows, or worked to exhaustion in the Outer Isles? Without freedom, life is nothing. That is what my mother believed, more than anything. And I will die in its pursuit, if that is the price to be paid.”
Murmuring broke out in the crowd, this time almost friendly of Josiri’s words. Revekah shot him a look of sly approval. Gavamor nodded.
Crovan sighed. “Josiri, the Hadari have promised us that freedom.”
The onlookers fell silent. Revekah’s surprise was a mirror to Josiri’s own, and for that of many others. So Crovan hadn’t stopped dreaming of an alliance with the Empire.
“You’ve spoken with the shadowthorns?” snarled Revekah. “You treacherous piece of . . .”
Crovan held up a hand. “Captain Halvor, please. I was approached by Kai Saran’s daughter. She offered generous terms. Prince Kai merely needs a victory to cement his claim to the throne. One victory against the northwealders. Then he’ll leave us to govern ourselves.”
Anliss spat. “Princes are all promises ’till they get what they want.”
Josiri kept his eyes on Crovan. “Have you accepted?”
“Josiri, please. I don’t want to . . .”
“Answer the damn question,” snapped Revekah.
Crovan shrugged. “Yes.”
And with that word, the work of Josiri’s adult life blazed bright and fell away into ash. “Revekah called it true. You are a traitor.”
Crovan stepped onto the remains of the robed statue at the circle’s heart and spoke with a deep, earnest conviction that might even have been genuine. “I’m a man trying to save lives, not throw them away out of soured pride.”
A cloud passed over the moon and lent Crovan’s fire-lit expression a hunger that hadn’t been there before. A sudden shudder raised goose-flesh on Josiri’s skin.
“Walk away, Josiri. For the good of everyone.” There was reason in the words, but none in his tone.
“I can’t do that.”
“Then perhaps tell us why you’re wearing a ward-brooch, and how you came by it?”
Josiri put a hand to his chest and realised too late how guilty the action looked. Crovan knew Branghall was not the cage it appeared, as did Korsov and one or two others. But to everyone else . . .
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You and I both know that.”
“Do we?”
Framed by billowing soot and shafts of moon-shadow, Crovan seemed taller and grander than before – a handsome, dark-eyed presence more foreboding than flesh and blood.
“How about the fact that Viktor Akadra walks the Southshires? Or that your sister is his constant companion? How dare you speak to me of duty when you’ve made a deal with the Council!”
“I’ve made no deals!” shouted Josiri. “Akadra killed my mother, for pity’s sake!”
Crovan stepped down from the statue. “I think you’re prepared to sacrifice us all for your sister. Why else be so insistent we hurl ourselves at the Hadari? It’s the swiftest way of granting the northwealders their peace!”
For the first time, Jesver Merrik looked up from the fire. “Raven’s Eyes . . .”
The crowd’s murmurs blossomed to a guttural, animal rumble. The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on Josiri. He’d fled Branghall thinking to use Akadra’s gift of freedom against him, but now . . . ? He was accused of the one thing he’d resisted his whole life. And no one would believe him. Even Revekah watched him with guarded eyes.
“That isn’t true!” He already knew his words were wasted. “Nothing’s changed.”
“Everything has changed.” Crovan’s eyes burned into his. “Your sister is a hostage. You’re afraid the Hadari will award your lands to another. And then along comes Lord Viktor Akadra, offering you a way out. I don’t blame you for taking it. But I’ll slit my own throat before I let you drive us into senseless battle as Malatriant once did her thralls.”
The rumble rose to a throaty growl. Voices grew loud enough for Josiri to make out individual words.
Puppet. Fool. Traitor.
Yes, the Wolf King had designs on becoming the Hadari’s client monarch, but Josiri read no deeper ambition in the darkly handsome face. Maybe he genuinely believed what he’d said of Josiri’s so-called bargain. Maybe he’d even resisted bringing it up until he’d had to. Crovan’s reputation of caring for his followers was well-proven. But in the end, it didn’t matter whether a king’s ambition or a protector’s desire drove Drakos Crovan.
“String him up! Hang him!”
The crowd picked up on the lone voice’s demand, the volume swelling as others joined the chant.
“Hang him! Hang him! Hang him!”
A wolf-cloaked man broke ranks. He took Revekah’s fist in his throat and sprawled beside the leaping bonfire. Her sword came free, challenging others to follow his example.
The crowd surged.
“Phoenixes! To me!” roared Revekah.
Moonlight washed across the glade anew. The hillside awoke with blue tabards and drawn steel. Josiri watched, hand frozen on his sword hilt. A spectator in his own life.
“Enoug
h!” bellowed Crovan. The intimidating majesty of moments before had faded. It left a face alive with confusion and sorrow. He seized a burning brand from the fire and climbed the toppled statue once more. “Enough!”
Uneasy quiet swept through Maiden’s Hollow. Josiri, hemmed inside a ring of phoenix tabards, at last found he could move, if not speak. His mouth was too thick with failure for that.
Crovan cast the brand aside and shook his head as one waking from a dream – or a nightmare.
“Josiri. Out of regard for your mother, and all you have made possible, you have my protection until dawn.” He rubbed at his brow, his eyes on Josiri but his thoughts elsewhere. “But when the sunlight comes, be far from here.”
Josiri gazed on each of the Vagabond Council in turn. None save Revekah would meet his eyes. Akadra had destroyed him without even lifting a sword. In so doing he’d handed the Southshires to the Hadari.
Without another word, he strode for the circle’s edge. Revekah’s phoenixes marched with him. Only Revekah herself hung back.
“This isn’t over, Crovan.”
“No,” he agreed. “It’s a new beginning. For us all.”
Josiri followed the path from Maiden’s Hollow without conscious thought, barely aware of his escort. He was losing everything, inch by inch. First he’d driven Calenne away. Then Anastacia. And now? Now Crovan had all but stolen his birthright and his duty. Worst of all was the lingering suspicion that he’d brought it all on himself.
He’d no way of knowing how far he’d walked when Revekah fell into step alongside. One moment he was alone, and the next she was there.
“Is this true?” she asked.
“No.” He snorted. “Akadra offered me a bargain, but he wanted me to lead Crovan and the others against the Hadari. In exchange, he promised to restore the Southshires’ fortunes.”
“You’re . . .” Revekah broke off and pressed on at a whisper. “You’re joking.”
“I’m many things, but I’m not a jester. And I’m not a traitor. I can’t work with Akadra. I don’t trust his promises any more than Kai Saran’s.”
“Good. I’m glad I don’t have to cut your throat.”
“Thanks,” he said drily. “Why Calenne’s still with Akadra, I couldn’t say. Crovan might be right about her being a hostage.” He’d tried not to think about it being so, for the possibility worried him greatly, but denial served nothing.
Revekah brushed a strand of silver hair back from her brow. “So, your grace. What in Queen’s Ashes do we do now?”
“I don’t know,” said Josiri, unable to keep the bleakness from his voice any longer. For years, life had been defined by a stark choice: fight, or wait to fight another day. Now, it seemed, both choices had been stripped away. The future had become as grey and featureless as the mists of Otherworld. “I don’t know.”
Twenty-Five
The patrol returned after nightfall. Some walked, cradling bloody, bandaged limbs. Others were dragged on makeshift biers fashioned from broken spears and torn cloaks.
Lunassera strode down the fire-lit darkness of the hillside like ghosts. Melanna went with them but stood apart as the masked sisters went about the wounded. A touch of gloved fingers upon the brow, the warrior was borne away to physicians. The same touch on the chest – always delivered to those lost to unconsciousness, or adrift in dream-sent madness – and those men were hauled into the gloom of the sanctum tent.
Melanna sought the patrol’s leader. “Havildar! What happened?”
He shuffled to a halt, so weary that his bruise-mottled face barely registered surprise at being spoken to by a woman. “Bronze giants waiting in the trees on the Kreska road. We never heard them coming. We lost hundreds.”
Melanna gestured for the lunassera to lead him away. If her father saw her worrying over every last soul, it would only harden his resolve to keep her from the battle lines. She walked back to the sanctum, lost in pity for others and resentment for herself.
One warrior alone had been taken neither to physicians nor sanctum. A lunassera knelt at his side. Sweet song spilling from her lips, she closed his eyes and slid the remembrance ring from his right hand. The band of engraved silver glinted in the moonlight, then vanished into a pouch. One day, it would be returned to a family who did not yet know their loss.
The tale was scarcely less bleak in the outer sanctum. Already the cool air of the sacred tent stank of blood and misery. Dying men lined the approach to the silk-shrouded altar.
“You are troubled, savim.” The lunassera spoke softly, her lips as expressionless as the gentle curves of her mask.
Melanna tried to gauge her age and failed. The robes left little clue to the woman beneath, beyond the athletic physique the lunassera cultivated for its physical beauty. She could have been two years younger than Melanna, or forty summers her senior.
“Do not be,” the lunassera continued. “Ashana will welcome them.”
“She shouldn’t have to. I could have warned them. I could have led them.” She scowled at the swelling sensation of uselessness. “I know the sounds the giants make. I know how to sift the scent of their magic from the breeze. I wouldn’t have been taken by surprise.”
“You must learn your place.”
“I’m tired of people telling me that.”
Two lunassera moved among the dying. One bore a silver pitcher, the other a goblet. At each makeshift bedside, they filled the goblet to brimming. Then they knelt, parted the man’s lips, and trickled the liquid into his mouth.
Melanna wanted to look away but couldn’t. Part of her felt duty-bound to bear witness. One warrior to another – even if no one else accounted her thus.
“If you would serve the army, there are always the vows.”
“Give myself to the lunassera?”
“To the goddess, savim.”
Melanna shook her head. “I was made for more than prayer and solace. The goddess told me so herself.”
Her lips twitched in sympathy beneath the half mask. “Did she, savim? Or is that merely what you wished to hear?”
“I will be empress one day, and I will pass the throne to a daughter. I can do neither from behind a lunassera’s mask.”
“But there is much you can do, savim. Gifts only the lunassera can give.”
Across the sanctum, the dying man gave a last fitful exhalation. His attendants slid the ring from his hand, refilled the goblet, and moved on.
Melanna stifled a sigh. The lunassera meant well, but she didn’t understand. She was too much a part of tradition. “I’d sooner bring death to our foes than offer dreaming mercy to our own.”
“It is the goddess’s desire that we do both, if called to. Our sisterhood served your grandfather’s great-grandfather as bodyguard. At least, until he was wed. The new princessa did not approve of her husband living ever in the company of women.”
Melanna frowned in surprise. “Lunassera do not bear swords. Women do not bear swords.”
“The sword does not make the warrior.” She shrugged. “And we are not women, savim. We are handmaidens, and it is not the same. How else could we be with the army, where no woman treads?”
Somehow, Melanna had never considered that. Her whole life, she’d accepted that lunassera accompanied armies simply because that was their role. She’d never considered why. Just as she’d only moments before renewed her assumption that the sisterhood prized beauty for beauty’s sake.
“What is your name?”
“Sera, savim.”
Melanna snorted. Sera meant sister in the old language. A sister in the sisterhood. Likely she’d been marked for this path from birth. A daughter given in wedlock to the goddess needed no dowry and would make no father poor. Slavery was no shame if it fuelled holy purpose.
“Why are you telling me this, Sera?”
“Because times change, and we with them. If your place is not with the lunassera, it may be that the place of the lunassera is with you.”
Melanna’s frown deepen
ed as she struggled to keep pace with realigning assumptions. “And how will I know that? How will you?”
“By the goddess’s gift, savim. You must learn your place.”
You must learn your place. The second time Sera had spoken those words. On the first, Melanna had taken them as admonishment. Now, she wasn’t so sure.
“You must be mad.”
Viktor regarded Anastacia with as much patience as he could muster. Which, at the end of a long day, was not a very great deal.
“Far from it. You want to be free of Branghall. This makes it possible.”
She stared down at the mannequin without enthusiasm. Laid on the altar of Branghall’s tiny chapel – with a lantern at both head and foot, no less – it resembled the sombre engravings on the surrounding tombs more than a means of escape. Petite without seeming shrunken, slender but not willowy, it might have passed for a woman but for the immobile, deathly white “skin” of its beatific face and the dark-tanned leather of its joints.
The velvet of Viktor’s old cloak had been reborn as a lace-trimmed gown perfectly fitted to the gentle curves of the porcelain body beneath. Viktor had no idea where the purple and cream hooded shawl had come from, nor the petticoats and boots. He’d simply handed over the coin and been glad to do so.
“You must be mad.” Anastacia’s dark-eyed gaze flickered to Calenne, stood to one side, beyond the lanterns’ reach. “Are you part of his madness?”
“Me? I’m here because I was curious.” Calenne shot Viktor a pitying glance. “And to think I used to be scared of you. One too many knocks to the head, and the Black Knight’s reduced to playing with dolls.”
Now she mentioned it, the mannequin was quite doll-like, but for its scale.
“It’s very simple,” Viktor ground out. “I can’t break the enchantment, but I can cheat it. You’re bound to the stones of the manor. A portion of that stone now rests within this clay. You can wear it as you would raiment. It will carry you wherever you wish, and the enchantment will never know you have strayed.”