by Tanya Huff
His shield arm hung limp and blood ran down the armor, pouring from his fingers in a ruby stream. His sword wove dizzying patterns of steel, trying to protect his wounded side, but he was tiring, and there were too many attacking.
“No!” Practically lifting the animal onto its hindquarters, Rael yanked his horse around, cutting and chopping like a madman the entire time. The Melacians surrounding him began to fall back. If they were crazy, he was crazier. If they welcomed Lord Death, he’d happily send them Death’s way. But Rutgar was not going to die.
Three horse lengths apart.
Rutgar faltered. A sword drove through the seam between breast and back.
Two.
Hands stretched up to pull the swaying armsman down from the saddle.
Too far away to help, Rael saw the terror on Rutgar’s face; saw Rutgar’s hand reach and close on nothing; heard, as though there wasn’t another sound on the battlefield, Rutgar call his name.
It was Doan who kept him from vaulting out of his saddle, Doan who steered him back to the Ardhan lines when he would have ridden into the heart of the Melacian army and tried to cut it out, and it was Doan who held him while he wept.
Later, in the command tent, he glared out at the assembled men and said, “Enough.”
“Granted,” Cei agreed. “But what can we do?”
“We take out their commanders, tonight.”
“Tonight?”
The raw emotion on Rael’s face choked off the babble of questions before it truly began. “Doan.”
The Captain of the Elite stepped forward.
“The Elite will follow where you lead, commander.”
“Will you follow him into Lord Death’s embrace?” Cei sniffed. “Because without a moon, that’s right where you’ll be going.”
Although Cei stood almost two feet taller, Doan managed to look down on him as he repeated, “The Elite will follow where he leads.”
“Cei’s right,” Belkar said gently. “Without a moon, that valley will be pitch black.”
“Then they won’t expect an attack. The lack of a moon can work to our advantage as well, giving us cover and a better chance of success.” Rael ground out the words, the lack of expression in stark contrast to the pain that twisted his face.
Belkar sighed. He wished, not for the first time, Glinna had allowed Raen to attend. A king and father could command where others could only advise. “I want to end this as much as you do, Highness, believe me, but men cannot see in darkness.”
“If the Elite will follow,” Rael lifted his head and green fires blazed in his eyes, “then darkness will not stop us.”
FIVE
It was raining the next morning when Rael came to his father’s tent. He stood for a moment and stared blindly at the wet canvas, letting the water cut channels into the red-brown mud that caked his armor. The lines etched into the pale skin about his mouth and the purple bruises beneath his eyes, eyes in which the green fires had all but died, bore eloquent testimony to the night’s work. He had never looked less like his mother.
The Guard before the entrance saluted and stood aside but Glinna, standing guard within the canvas walls, could not be so easily passed. She folded her arms on her chest and blocked the way.
“The king finally sleeps. Anything you have to say can wait.”
“I have news of the war.”
“No doubt,” she said dryly. “But I don’t care if the war is over, you may not wake him.”
“The war is over.”
Her eyes widened. She looked down at the dried blood that stained his sword hilt, so thick in places that it filled the hollows in the ornate scrollwork, then she stepped aside.
“Don’t allow him to become excited,” she cautioned as Rael passed. “If he opens the wound again . . .” Her words trailed off, but the meaning was clear.
When Raen had left his bed and reopened the wound, it had infected, swelling and putrefying. From a serious although hardly fatal injury, it had grown to be dangerously life threatening. Glinna, however, refused to admit defeat, draining, cleaning, cauterizing, and pouring potion after potion down the king’s throat. Three times she forced Lord Death away, and in the end she won; the king lived. But under the scented smoke that eddied around the inner room, the smell of rot remained.
“Less than a week,” thought Rael, looking down at his father, “how could he change so much in less than a week?”
As the war had aged Rael, the wound had aged Raen. Flesh hung from his bones as if it belonged to another man, and the lines of his face were now furrows. Not even the most loving son could deny that the king had grown old.
Rael dashed a tear away with an impatient hand. You will not mourn him while he still lives, he told himself fiercely. He needs you to be strong. He dragged a chair over to the bed and perched on its edge. “Father?” Reaching out a slender hand, he placed it gently on the sleeping man’s chest. The steady rise and fall seemed to reassure him. He sat quietly for a moment then called again.
With a sound that was half question, half moan, the king woke, blinked, and focused slowly on Rael’s face.
“Father, the war is over.”
“You have the battle commanders.” It wasn’t a question. Late in the night, Belkar had told him what Rael planned to do, indeed, was doing, for the prince had ordered the duke not to speak until he and the Elite were well on their way. “You did the right thing. The only thing. I wouldn’t have stopped you.” The boy had needed an outlet for his grief. The war had needed to be ended. That both had been accomplished at once, and with a plan only the prince commander himself could carry out, would further consolidate said commander’s position with the army. That said commander was his son, and the plan placed him in mortal danger, had given Raen a sleepless night. “Did they surrender?”
“Not quite.” Rael leaned forward and propped a pillow behind his father’s head. “We torched their camp, destroyed half their army, and still had to knock a tent down on the commanders to get them to quit.”
“Prisoners.”
“Besides the seven commanders, about eight hundred; at least half of them wounded.”
Raen brought up a skeletal hand to stroke his beard. “Hmmm, not many.” His eyes unfocused as he considered the best course of action. “The men are rabble without the leaders. Strip them of their arms and have them taken back across the border.”
“But, Father, the pass is blocked.”
“Oh,” Raen looked momentarily confused. Had he known that? Memories of the last few days were soft edged and smoke-filled; he remembered pain clearly but not much else.
“And they don’t want to go back.”
“Are you sure.”
“Very sure.” Rael shrugged wearily. “But I don’t know why.”
“Well, I’ve a pretty good idea,” Raen snorted, suddenly more energetic as he came across something he thought he understood. “They lost. Melac and that idiot who advises him aren’t likely to be very welcoming.”
“Father, about that counselor . . .”
“An ambitious upstart,” the king dismissed their unknown enemy with a choppy wave of his hand. “I’m not surprised someone like him showed up to grab power. Melac was always weak. We’ll keep the border guarded and have nothing more to do with either of them.”
Rael was not convinced. From things he’d overheard in the last few hours, he suspected Melac’s counselor would remain a threat. But that was for the future to deal with; here and now he had other worries. “So what do we do with the prisoners?”
“Divide them up and scatter them amongst the dukes.” The crease between the king’s eyes deepened as he remembered the mass graves that held the flower of Ardhan’s youth. “We’ll all be a little short-handed for a while. I’m sure they can find ways to put them to use. If they truly don’t want to go home, they can begin to work
off the lives they owe us.”
“And the battle commander and his officers?”
The king sighed. “Well, they can’t go home. Melac can always get more spear-carriers and crow-fodder, but returning his officers would be asking to do this all over again. Have them take the standard oath about laying down arms and ever after cleaving to the soil of the land they invaded.”
“They won’t.” Rael sighed as well, and rubbed a grimy hand across the bridge of his nose. “They say they’ve taken blood oaths to fight for Melac and the Empire until death.”
“Empire!” Raen snarled and tried to sit up. “What Empire?”
Rael pushed him gently back. “The one we were supposed to be the first part of. They’re fanatics, Father. When we took away their weapons they attacked with bare hands. We practically had to bury them in chains before they stopped. They fought like men possessed.” He paused and his eyes narrowed in memory. “Or men in mortal terror.”
“They’ll have to die.”
“Father!”
“How many men did you kill last night?” Raen asked gently.
“I told you, we torched the camp. It’s likely hundreds died.”
Raen held his son’s eyes with his own. “No. How many did you kill? Yourself?”
Rael yanked his gaze away and stared at the carpet. “I don’t know. Eighteen. Twenty maybe. I lost count.”
“And Rutgar’s still dead.”
The terror; the reaching hand; his name screamed.
“Yes.”
“It didn’t bring him back, so the killing is over.”
Rael lifted his head and green embers stirred. He’d fought last night blinded by anger and pain and with every life he sent to Lord Death the anger bled away until there was only the pain. “Yes,” he said. “There’s been enough.”
“Unless those seven die, the war isn’t over and we’ve won nothing. Rutgar died for nothing. The men you killed last night died for nothing.” Raen lifted a hand and touched his son’s arm. “A king has no conscience, lad, he gives it to his people.”
“That’s garbage, Father, and you know it. The people do what you say.”
Raen let his hand fall back onto the blanket. “Then do as I say, Rael, and carry out my command.”
Rael searched the stern, closed face on the pillow for his father but saw only the king. He stood so quickly his chair tipped and fell and he almost kicked it out of the way as he spun and headed for the door.
“Rael.”
He paused but didn’t turn.
“Last night you let your anger define the thin line between justice and murder; a king never has that luxury.”
“A lesson, Father?”
“If you wish, and here’s another. You’d rather I gave this task to one of the dukes, but the king must be willing to carry out the king’s justice. As I am not able, you must stand in for me.”
“I don’t think I’m ready to be king.”
Raen’s teeth flashed white amid the dusky gray of his beard and the lines of his face lifted with the smile. “Good.”
Doan was waiting when Rael left the king’s tent. The night’s work had added a limp and several new scars to the Elite Captain’s inelegant appearance. He fell into step beside the younger man.
“You were right,” Rael said at last.
Doan kept silent. He appeared to be watching the rain drip off the edge of his helmet.
“We’re to divide the men amongst the dukes, but the commander and his captains die. I’m to see that it gets taken care of.”
Doan merely pulled his cloak tighter to stop the rain from running down his neck.
Rael’s laughter sounded a great deal like choking. “Life would certainly be a lot easier if my father was a woodsman or a farmer.”
The captain grunted, there being little he could say to his own words.
“If it must be done, then let’s do it now.”
“I’ll call for volunteers, Commander.” As Rael’s head jerked around to face him, he added. “You must only be present, Highness. You don’t strike the blows yourself. And it’s not a job you can command a man to do.”
By the time the Guard was formed, the rain had stopped. The sun came out, and seven men died.
And the war was over.
“At least I never enjoyed it, Mother,” Rael whispered as the breeze lifted his hair from his forehead and blood soaked into the ground at his feet. “At least I never enjoyed it.”
* * *
The fire reached the grimy foot of the elderly woman tied to the stake and began to lick daintily at the blistering skin.
“’Ware the child,” she screamed in a mad voice raw with much shrieking. “’Ware the creation of Lord Death’s children.”
“Lord Death’s children?” Lord Elan half turned, enough so he could see the king’s counselor but not so much that he must look at the king. That pain at least he would spare himself. “What does she mean, Lord Death’s children?”
The golden-haired man lounged back in his chair and sighed. “The race of Man was created for Lord Death’s benefit. Thus Man,” he inclined his head toward the stake with chilling courtesy, “and Woman also, are Death’s children.”
“It burns! Brilliance within! Brilliance without!” And then not even madness was enough to overcome the effects of the flames. The old woman sagged against the ropes and prophesied no more.
The king shifted on his throne, hips rotating with each spasm of the body on the pyre.
“She wasn’t very clear,” Lord Elan grunted.
Full lips molded themselves into a smile. “She was clear enough earlier and more than willing to repeat the entire prophecy as often as I chose to listen.” Even the most obscure prophet could be convinced to find clarity and while there was no real need in this instance, the convincing had filled a few otherwise tedious hours.
“Then what does it mean?” The old lord sounded tired. The greasy smoke stung his eyes and coated his throat. He hated executions, even the most necessary, and had attended this one only because he’d vowed that the king would spend as little time alone with his counselor as possible. Others of the nobility, those who had not died with the army—he saw their faces wide-eyed in the firelight—seemed to be taking their idea of pleasure from what pleasured their liege. He gritted his teeth and glanced quickly at the king.
He was beginning to lose interest now that the body had stopped moving.
The voice of the king’s counselor was closer to content than it had been in years. He lifted his face to let the evening breeze cool skin flushed by the heat. “It means, Lord Elan, that I have something to look forward to.”
“But we’re going back to Ardhan.”
“No.”
“But . . .” Lord Elan jerked as sapphire eyes caught his and held. A thin rope of drool fell from one corner of suddenly slack lips. He jerked again as he was released and would have fallen had he not clung, panting, to the arm of the king’s throne.
“I said no,” the counselor repeated quietly. He stared past the pyre, out over the remains of the army. So clever of him to have kept the cavalry back; they would replace the officers killed and, well, one could always get more peasants. South and east, he thought. I will create an Empire to the south and east, giving Ardhan enough time to fulfill the prophecy. Glancing down at the smoldering pile of meat and bone, he rubbed long fingers against the silk covering his thighs. “Well,” he purred in a voice barely audible over the sizzle and crackle of burning fat, “almost enough time.”
* * *
The army returned triumphant to the city, although the king did not ride proudly at its head but was carried on a litter. Rael, with the Elite behind him, led the army home.
The war quickly became a thing of the past. Men went back to holdings and fields, battle armor was polished and put away, and Rael rece
ived a most unexpected welcome home from the Duke of Belkar’s blue-eyed daughter—who had supposedly ridden to the palace to meet her father. Rael was pleasantly surprised to find that blue eyes held depths as well as green and that the eyes of mortal women also glowed.
The king did not recover.
Glinna now slept in the room next to the royal bedchambers, when she slept at all. The infection had returned and spread, and now the king’s whole lower body strained against its increasingly heated covering of skin. She did what she could but finally, no longer able to deny what training and common sense told her, she admitted defeat.
“His life is now in the hands of Lord Death,” she told the prince. “I can do nothing more.”
“My father doesn’t believe in Lord Death,” said Rael bitterly.
“Well, Lord Death believes in him,” replied the surgeon and left Rael alone with his thoughts and his dying father.
But Lord Death, never predictable, stayed his hand and the king did not die; although he didn’t exactly live. Affairs of state were left in the hands of the council and royal decisions increasingly fell to the prince, for the king tired easily and Glinna demanded he rest.
“Why have a council,” she snapped, prying dispatches from his hand and shoving them at an embarrassed Belkar, “if you don’t use it?”
Raen raged against the weakness that held him to his bed, and the raging left him weaker still, until he was only a shadow of the man he had been.
“I am no longer a man.”
“You’re more of a man than anyone in the kingdom,” Rael told him, his eyes filling with tears he refused to shed.
The king laughed humorlessly and stared down at his wasted body. “That doesn’t say much for the other men in the kingdom.”
The king was dying and everyone knew it. Already a funereal hush hung over the land. The dukes, down to crippled Lorn and ten-year-old Hale, gathered in the King’s City, waiting. Rael went numbly about the task of learning to rule. He knew he should go to the Grove and tell his mother that the mortal man she loved lay dying, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. He told himself that Milthra, being who and what she was, probably already knew. That didn’t help very much.