by Beth Brower
“I can’t recall how long—”
His answer came quick. “Two hundred and twenty-seven days.”
“In truth?” The weight of all those months now felt heavy on Eleanor’s chest. “I suppose that it must have been.”
Aedon’s mouth quivered, and he wiped his eye, reclaiming her blistered hands in his. “What happened to you?” he asked gently.
Eleanor tried to answer, but she was so tired that the words would not come.
“Sleep,” he said, seeing her expression. “We’ll talk afterward.” The afternoon light from a small, thick-paned window accentuated the lines in Aedon’s face, revealing where a tear had run down his cheek. “And, I will be here when you wake up.”
There was something she knew she wanted to speak of, that had consumed her mind, but now it had fled. So Eleanor nodded and she closed her eyes, her hands still in his as she turned towards him, pressing her cheek against the pillow. It would come, she thought. Tomorrow, it would come.
“Oh, yes,” Eleanor said, finding these words just before she lost consciousness. She had wanted to ask him about the fighting at the pass.
***
“We are at war,” Eleanor said the next morning when Aedon entered her room. If he was surprised to see her up, dressed, and sitting at the small table, he hid it well. Shoes had been left for her in the room, and Eleanor had braided her hair up, hoping it would not look as strange, but the braids made it worse. She had procured a quill, ink, and scraps of paper and was scribbling numbers and dates as best as her hands would allow.
“You knew?” Aedon asked.
“Yes.” Eleanor motioned for him to take the other chair. “Only a few days before I escaped from Zarbadast—”
“So he did take you to Zarbadast?” Aedon interrupted.
Eleanor brushed past Aedon’s question. “Prince Basaal received a missive saying that fighting had broken out at the pass. It was a mild winter, then?”
Aedon knit his eyebrows and sat down. “Shouldn’t you be resting one more day?”
“The war calls me to Ainsley immediately. You know this,” Eleanor said, looking Aedon in the eyes.
“Yes,” Aedon replied with the tone he always used in council meetings. Eleanor almost smiled, the familiarity of it being such a complete feeling of home. “You also look half dead,” he continued. “You’ve no weight on you—your bones show through your skin—and you have dozens of unaccounted for scars on your body. It is important that I see you back to Ainsley, yes,” he added. “But, it is more important that the queen, leader, and figurehead of our government gets there alive.”
“I am not ill,” Eleanor insisted. She raised her hand to quiet Aedon as he moved to speak. “Assuming we are near High Field fen, it is a two day ride to Ainsley Rise. I will agree to take it in three if we can leave today.”
“Four days,” Aedon countered.
“Three,” Eleanor insisted stubbornly. “I need to know if the emperor has arrived in Marion.”
“The emperor?”
“Yes,” Eleanor stated. “As a warning to Prince Basaal, he has come to supervise the conquest personally—with six thousand of his own troops.”
Aedon’s mouth twitched. “Six thousand? Combined with those already in Marion, we now face thirteen thousand men?”
“Yes,” Eleanor responded.
“Well, that will change Crispin’s plans,” Aedon said, and he sat back in his chair and ran his fingers across his chin. “We should send a fen rider immediately.”
“How did you come to be here?” Eleanor asked, frowning, remembering a question she had forgotten to ask Aedon yesterday. “Why were you at High Field fen?”
Aedon looked down at the table. “There was a casualty at the pass, a friend of mine, who was from High Field,” he explained. “I came with the company delivering his body to pay my respects personally to his family.”
“Doughlas is from High Field,” Eleanor said as she leaned her elbows across the table and rested her face in her hands, still looking at Aedon. “Did he know the man?” As Aedon looked away, Eleanor froze. “Aedon?” she said, using his name with the full weight of a question behind it. “Aedon, was it Doughlas you brought back to the fen?”
“Yes.”
Eleanor stood up, causing the chair behind her to clatter against the floor. Not Doughlas. Aedon watched her, his expression torn. She could hear movement outside the door—worried voices.
“We go now,” Eleanor stated before Aedon could protest. “Prepare the company to ride for Ainsley Rise.”
Then Eleanor turned and marched from the room.
***
Zanntal did not wish to be left behind. Eleanor was preparing to mount the horse Aedon had found for her while trying to appease her friend. Aedon, Thaniel, and the rest of the company were waiting.
“I would ride with you,” Zanntal stated plainly in Imirillian, no other option a consideration in his mind.
“And I would have you,” Eleanor said, equally as frank. “But I must ride in haste, and you told me yourself Sharin has come down with a deep fever and should not be moved.”
The soldier looked at Eleanor with obvious consternation. “My place is with you. There is a family here to tend the girl.”
“Zanntal.” Eleanor took a long breath and laid her hand on his forearm. “She is tired and scared. We are the only people she knows. I ask you, please, to patiently wait until Sharin is well. Then both of you will ride for Ainsley.”
“And, if the fighting breaks out before then?”
“I will send for you if we go to open war sooner than expected. I promise you that.”
Zanntal surrendered. “May the Illuminating God bless your way,” he said. “I will come when I can and stand beside you in the fight.”
He helped her mount and then stepped back, watching, as Eleanor and her company rode on to Ainsley.
For the first time since she’d left Aemogen it was a complete relief to be back up on a horse.
“I can ride,” Eleanor had said shortly to Aedon earlier, when he had questioned her conveyance. “If I can grit my way through the Shera Shee, I can ride a horse to Ainsley Rise.”
“Fine,” Aedon had said as he set his face and shrugged.
For the first several hours, Eleanor peppered Aedon with questions regarding the state of affairs. Aedon answered comprehensively.
After she had ridden out to stop the Imirillian army, Aedon stayed at Colun Tir with a small company until a spy confirmed the news that the Imirillian prince had ridden towards Marion City with Eleanor. Edythe, upon hearing the news, had been distraught, frozen in grief and immobilized only for one day, before taking her place as regent, and fully occupying the role.
“She has grown up,” he remarked with no further information. He also explained that the explosions had left the pass completely damned up, and it would have remained so until late spring, but the winter was unusually mild.
“Even the mountains seemed to catch little snow,” Aedon said as he motioned towards the northern range at their right. “Were it a normal year, we would be working frantically to prepare ourselves against the inevitable drought. As it is, I’ve a small committee of fen lords seeing to that problem while the rest are involved directly in the war. They are all at Ainsley now, save Danth, who insisted that every man was needed at Common Field,” he added.
“It was not too long into the winter,” Aedon continued, “that the guard at the pass reported Imirillian troops were investigating. Despite the cold, there was little snow to keep them away. So, they began to send men every day to begin the task of clearing a way through. But Crispin deployed several companies of archers, who worked on keeping them at bay. The Imirillians, in turn, sent their own archers to protect the men clearing away the rubble. And, not long after that, small skirmishes began.
“And so,” Aedon said, “it has continued the last several months. A few weeks of snow slowed any hope of Imirillian progress, but there was enough of a thaw
that they have again begun their work. We always have five hundred men, stationed to guard the pass, while the others spend their time at home: working in their trades, preparing for spring, and training for combat. Now that spring has come upon us it is only a matter of time before the Imirillians come again in force. Word from our Marion sources confirms what we’ve long since suspected: the Imirillians will only go so far, until their prince returns to begin the conquest in earnest or until he sends a message authorizing a steady attack.” Aedon gazed across the greening fields. “So, while we have been at war, we have been spared far more than we otherwise might have.”
“How many casualties?” Eleanor asked. She had hoped Aedon would supply the number himself, but he had not.
“Just shy of two hundred men,” Aedon said, clearly considering this a small number. “We’ve done well, considering it has been nearly five months of struggle.”
“Two hundred men?” Eleanor said, looking at Aedon in disbelief.
“We’ve come off extremely light. Crispin has been miserly with those fighting in the pass. Cautious almost to a fault.”
“Yes,” Eleanor grimaced. “I applaud you for the caution. But two hundred men? That’s the size of a small fen, gone. Two hundred families—” she faltered.
“Yes. Two hundred mothers and widows,” Aedon said practically. “And we will be lucky if we do not lose ten times that amount.”
“We should have surrendered,” Eleanor said, struggling with the guilt of the lives lost.
“No,” Aedon disagreed.
“Bringing down the mountain has made Emperor Shaamil so angry he’s declared openly that the people of Aemogen will not be spared.”
“We met with the fen lords,” Aedon said. “The decision was to fight. We all decided to fight, and we are a long way yet from defeat.”
“But can you see a way to victory?” she asked.
“Crispin and Thistle Black have been working on that,” Aedon replied.
“And what does Gaulter Alden think of their ideas?”
Aedon’s expression dropped. “I forgot I haven’t told you yet,” he said, chastising himself. “Gaulter Alden is dead.”
“What?” Eleanor reined her horse up sharp, forcing Aedon to do the same. “When? How? At the pass?” The ground was spinning, and Eleanor lifted a hand to her eyes to steady herself.
“No,” Aedon said, regretful. “He passed away no more than a month after you’d left. He was old, Eleanor. A fever took him, and he was glad of it. His wife had been gone long enough, and seeing you rushing out like that—” Aedon paused and held up his hand. “Stop, Eleanor. I see that look on your face. He would have died had you been there or not. The man was old and past his time.”
Eleanor closed her eyes, feeling dizzy. “I need to get down, Aedon. Help me get down.”
Aedon dismounted and signaled to the other riders to move ahead and set up camp. Then he helped Eleanor dismount. She dropped the reins of her horse, walking off the road into a field, her face in her hands.
“Do you need water?” Aedon asked as he followed her, offering Eleanor a drink from his water pouch.
“No.” Eleanor sat. “I’m dizzy. Can we just sit awhile?” she asked. “Rest—space to think—that is what I need.”
Aedon brought Eleanor’s horse over and staked it with his own, then he came and set himself on the grass beside her.
“You’re tired,” he said after some time. “And I keep forgetting—” he trailed off and made Eleanor take a drink anyway. “If you insist on pushing yourself,” he added, “then I insist you give yourself a fighting chance at it.” They both were silent for a few moments.
“Who else has died that I should know about?” she asked after a time.
Aedon listed the names that were familiar. A few were distant cousins of Eleanor’s.
“Most of the casualties were men you would have recognized, but they were farmers and thatchers, and you would not have known them by name. We’ve a record of the dead back at Ainsley Rise. And, every few days, Crispin sends a message from the pass.”
“I will acquaint myself with it as soon as we return home,” she said as she lay down on her back in the grass, staring up at the late-afternoon sky. Aedon, too, lay on his back, a blade of grass between his teeth, thoughtful.
“I’ll never forgive you for that,” Aedon said after a time.
Eleanor looked over at him. “For what?” she asked. But he would not meet her eyes.
“Riding out like that before the Imirillian army,” he finally answered.
“You’ve already forgiven me,” Eleanor answered back, her voice subdued. “I can see it in your face.”
“Then you misinterpret,” Aedon spoke sharply. “I believe you took ten years off my life.”
***
The ground rumbled under the thunder of thirteen thousand soldiers marching in place. Basaal could feel the vibration buzzing in his hands through Refigh’s reins. Then came the sound of trumpets. Then there were banners, soldier’s livery, all marked with the symbols of Emperor Shaamil and of Basaal, seventh son.
As the royal company came over the rise, just above the swollen war encampment, Shaamil raised his fist, and all the men, standing in perfect lines, began an endless roar that rang in Basaal’s ears. He shifted in his saddle and then raised his own arm. The noise became deafening. If Shaamil had noticed that the soldiers gave out a louder sound in response to Basaal, he showed no sign of it.
Ammar rode beside Basaal, frowning at the companies of Basaal’s men, which were adorned in red and black. They had spent the winter, waiting patiently, and now their time would be coming. The soldiers of Shaamil’s forces wore a shade of purple so dark only the bright sunlight could catch any color out of it. Standing at perfect attention, both armies turned their shouts into the war chants of Zarbadast. The men’s hunger for a fight, Basaal knew, would be insatiable.
As he rode towards the line of tents, waiting for the emperor and his sons, Basaal heard again in his mind the words he had heard that morning in prayer before he had left Zarbadast. He felt a shiver as he stared at the men before him. He watched the nape of his father’s neck, knowing clearly what the Illuminating God had asked of him. The words came crowding into his mind now, louder than all the chants and cheers of men ready for war.
“You shall not lead your army into Aemogen.”
Again, even in the warmth of the mid-spring afternoon, Basaal shivered.
Chapter Seven
Ainsley was at war. As they rode in from the north, Eleanor could see several encampments of soldiers out beyond the western gates.
“The men of the northern fens gather here at Aemogen for training as they prepare to serve three week’s time at the pass,” Aedon yelled over Eleanor’s near gallop. “There is also the southern camp, as I told you, near Rye Field fen. They are ready to mobilize as soon as we call for their aid.”
The towers of Ainsley Castle held steady against the sky, and Eleanor could feel the beat of her heart, the emotion stinging her eyes as they came nearer. Up through the northern gate they rode, sweeping towards the western side of Ainsley Rise. A horn blew from above, and the men of the encampment let out a cheer as Eleanor’s small company entered the gates of the courtyard.
Then Edythe came running out, followed by a stream of people. Eleanor dropped from the horse into Edythe’s arms. They were laughing, and Edythe was crying and rushing through words Eleanor could not hear. Aedon stepped behind Eleanor, his hand on her back, leading her through those gathered.
Then a commotion caused the crowd to split as Hastian, Queen’s Own, came sprinting, holding the sheath of his sword in his hand to keep it from swinging as he ran towards Eleanor.
***
Despite knowing better, Eleanor and Edythe, with warm mugs of tea, sat up late into the night talking on Eleanor’s bed. Edythe spoke of Gaulter Alden, Doughlas, their preparations, the long winter, and how she had stepped into role of regent.
“I’m
sure Aedon mentioned how Crispin and Thistle Black are testing a new idea of weaponry involving the powder,” Edythe said.
“Yes.” Eleanor nodded. “But not many details beyond that.”
“Tomorrow, Crispin is expected to arrive,” Edythe explained. “He has a plan that, until I heard another six thousand men were to arrive, I was sure would work. Now, I am so not certain.”
Eleanor’s head was hurting, and she wished for just one night to push the threat of war away. “Tomorrow, we will discuss it all in detail. But, tonight, let’s forget about the war and just talk about anything else.”
“Would it be too hard if I asked you to tell me of Imirillia?” Edythe inquired as she leaned against the pillows, burrowing farther beneath the warm blankets. It felt to Eleanor like an overwhelming request.
“I hardly know where to begin,” Eleanor admitted, the words soft on her tongue. “It makes me want to smile and cry simultaneously. Each memory of beauty is accompanied by another of shadows.” She leaned her head against the headboard and closed her eyes. “I can hardly believe I’m home,” she admitted. “It still feels strange, as if I’m wearing a garment that doesn’t quite fit me anymore.”
Edythe reached her hand up and touched Eleanor’s chin.
“Did he hurt you?” The question had been asked lightly, but Eleanor could see that Edythe feared the answer.
“No.” Eleanor squeezed her sister’s fingers. “No. We became partners of sorts, actually.”
“Then how come the scars and sores on your back? Your wrists? Your hands?” Edythe asked.
“The journey home.” Eleanor pulled her hand back and covered her wrist instinctively. “I was caught by slavers, but one of Basaal’s soldiers rescued me, helping me home at Basaal’s request.”