The Flames of Shadam Khoreh

by Bradley Beaulieu

  “But the men,” Nikandr had told him.

  “We have to man the ships, Nikandr.”

  A few ships had been stationed in Trevitze, but there were dozens more flying from Galahesh, each manned by skeleton crews. The streltsi would board them, and they’d be off to Ghayavand. Leonid had already made his decision. He’d made it the moment he learned of the threat posed by the Kohori and their ships. The only question that remained was what to do with Nikandr.

  Nikandr spurred his pony into a trot. After another sotni passed, he rode across the muddy brown trail and into the white, snowy field beyond. Ahead were the line of hills where Soroush was hidden. Assuming he was still there, of course. Hopefully he’d left for Ghayavand, where he could do some good. It was where Nikandr would go soon, but only after speaking with Ranos, who should arrive today.

  Against a pewter sky Nikandr caught the sight of black wings. He felt his mother’s presence through the soulstone hanging around his neck. Yrfa, his mother’s favorite bird, winged down and alighted on his shoulder. The rook cawed several times, the sound loud in Nikandr’s ear. “We’ve made a mess of things, Nischka.”

  “Nyet. I’ve made a mess of things.”

  They were alone in the field, the road far behind Nikandr. It felt as if he were riding over the fields of Uyadensk, and that in an hour or two he could be home in Radiskoye. How he longed to return there. The roads he’d traveled had made him weary. The odds continually being stacked against him and the others. Why couldn’t Leonid see that he was only trying to protect the Grand Duchy?

  The rook made a clucking sound. “I would hear the tale, Nikandr. I need to know more.”

  After taking a deep breath, he went on to tell her everything, how Leonid had reacted, how Yevgeny had betrayed him, the long days since. When he was done, she was silent for a time. “I thought it would be Konstantin that turned on you.”

  “Not Borund?”

  “Borund was always living beneath his father’s shadow. Much of what he did when Nasim came to our shores he did to impress Zhabyn. Now that Zhabyn is gone and Borund rules alone, he’s more likely to return to his younger self.”

  Nikandr couldn’t deny it. Borund had acted like he wanted to help Nikandr but couldn’t, knowing it would be too difficult given his duchy’s ties to Dhalingrad.

  “There is still time for Leonid to reconsider. Yevgeny as well. Ranos is on his way now. He may convince the others that what you say is true, that Leonid can no longer be trusted.”

  “And what of Ghayavand?” he asked. “Have you been able to reach it?”

  “I’ve tried many times, as have the other Matri, but things have become difficult, even with the wards now gone. I was able to approach once, but only for a few moments. The ships are still there, Nikandr. They are ready, two score or more. Let Ranos come and speak with Yevgeny. He may be able to turn him to our cause.”

  “He won’t,” Nikandr said. “Not now that he’s committed himself to Dhalingrad.”

  “Men can change their minds, Nischka.”

  “Perhaps, but not Yevgeny. Not in this. Mirkotsk is too desperate.”

  “He has always thought well of Ranos. Yevgeny sees much of your father in him.” But not me, Nikandr thought. “When Yevgeny sees his strong neighbor willing to stand up against the Grand Duke, he will do so as well.”

  “Perhaps,” Nikandr said, but he doubted it. He doubted it very much. As well liked as Ranos was, he’d never quite had the savvy of their father, Iaros, in convincing others to join him. But perhaps he’s learned. Nikandr might not be giving Ranos the credit he deserved. He’d had nearly two years to settle the mantle of Khalakovo across his shoulders. The notion cheered Nikandr. He’d wanted to reunite with Ranos—it had been too long since they’d seen one another—but now he had hope as well.

  “Did you search for Atiana?” he asked.

  The rook cawed and nipped at his ear. “Of course. I felt her, Nischka. She’s alive, but her presence was faint. I know not where she is.”

  “And Ishkyna?”

  “She’ll go when she can. Mileva is strong, and her bond with Atiana will help. She’ll search in Ishkyna’s staid.”

  Far in the distance, a ship dropped down from the clouds—Ranos’s ship, following the line of hills westward.

  It was then that Leonid’s words returned to him. Rest, and you’ll know our decision soon enough. The words hadn’t sat well when Leonid had said them, but it was somehow worse now that Ranos was here.

  Without knowing why, he urged his pony into a trot. Then a canter.

  And then he was galloping across the snow-covered field.

  “Go, Mother,” Nikandr said to the rook, which winged through the air just ahead of him. “Warn Ranos. He’s in danger. Tell him to leave the ship as soon as he can. Take a skiff down to land.”

  The rook cawed over and over and then circled round. “What is it, Nischka?”

  “I don’t know! Just tell him!”

  Nikandr thought she would deny him, but he could feel her alarm growing through their shared bond, and surely she felt his. The rook flapped up and away, moving quickly toward the ship.

  Nikandr rose up in his stirrups. He whipped the reins against the pony’s flank, pushing her harder than he’d ever pushed one before. And the mare responded, perhaps sensing his desperation. They flew across the field, the pony instinctively maneuvering around the dips and depressions in the land.

  The rook grew smaller and smaller until it was an indistinct flutter of black against the high grey clouds. Then it suddenly veered away. Nikandr thought it was being attacked, but his mother must have realized she’d never make it in time. She’d abandoned the rook. She would assume one of the crewmen on board and warn Ranos that way, regardless of the insult or injury it might cause to the one she’d assumed.

  The galleon floated lower.

  Then Nikandr heard the report of gunfire. And shouts.

  A skiff drifted away from the ship. The ship was close enough now that Nikandr could see men standing at the gunwales. They were pointing muskets at the skiff. They fired. Perhaps they struck whoever they’d been firing at, perhaps they didn’t—Nikandr couldn’t tell—but it was clear that the ship’s havaqiram, the Aramahn windmaster, was using his abilities to catch the skiff in a twist of the wind.

  The skiff drew closer to the ship’s hull.

  And then a form leapt from within the skiff, not toward the ship, but out and into the wind.

  A black cherkesska fluttered as the strelet’s form picked up speed. Faster and faster he plummeted, and still some of the men on board the ship fired down at him.

  Nikandr eased his grip on the reins. The mare slowed, more out of need than Nikandr’s command. The mare huffed with breath.

  Far ahead, a quarter-league or more, the strelet’s black form struck the field and was lost from sight, hidden by the snow and the tall grass.

  Smoke now trailed up from the ship.

  Smoke. From the stern. Where the ship’s magazine was located.

  No sooner had the thought occurred to him than the stern exploded in a blast of red fire and white smoke.

  Wood and canvas and rigging flew outward. A dozen black forms with fluttering coats flew wide of the ship—they looked like rooks taking wing—and the only thing Nikandr could think of was that Ranos was one of them. He watched in horrid fascination as more of them plunged down. Nikandr didn’t know which he wished for more, that Ranos was already dead or that he would gain a few meaningless moments as the ship plunged toward the ground.

  The bulk of the ship listed as it lost buoyancy. The bowsprit tilted starward.

  Nikandr reached out through the alabaster stone Ashan had given him. Never had his need been so great. He tried desperately to bond with a havahezhan—he swore he felt some near—but none of them would approach, and the broken remains of the ship gained speed, plummeting faster and faster.

  “Please,” Nikandr said.

  But the hezhan kept their
distance.

  And the galleon crashed to the ground, the wood and smoke and fire still contained within the ship billowing outward.

  The sound of it fell over the field like a pall. Nikandr felt it in his chest, against the roof of his mouth, as if the lives of the windsmen and streltsi aboard that ship were passing through him to reach the land beyond.

  In the moments that followed, a memory of Ranos came to Nikandr like the strike of a bell. The two of them had been young. They’d snuck into father’s throne room. Only then had Ranos shown Nikandr the key he had tucked away on a chain around his neck. It was the key to the massive chest where the scepter of Khalakovo was kept. They’d lifted the heavy thing out and taken turns sitting on the throne, each pretending to be the Duke while the other took knee on the floor below. Nikandr had dropped the scepter when he’d gotten up from the throne for the last time.

  Nikandr had stared at the scepter. At the ruby that had broken off and skittered away across the floor. Ranos had warned him to be careful. He was just going to put the scepter away.

  Father had been furious. Mother as well, and she’d asked who had done it. Ranos told them that he had, and he’d apologized a dozen times. Nikandr had been too scared to admit the truth, and Ranos had suffered for it. They’d both been whipped with a switch, but Ranos had been forced to work in an abattoir in Volgorod for a month. He’d come home each day, his face sickened. No matter how much Nikandr asked, he refused to tell Nikandr of the things he’d seen and heard. Nikandr had promised himself that he’d repay Ranos some day. He’d tried to find ways to do so in the weeks and months that followed, but in the way of these things, the memory eventually faded and then lay forgotten in the recesses of his mind.

  He knew why the memory of taking the throne had resurfaced now, but he refused to think about that. All he could think of was the fact that he had failed to repay Ranos. What had Nikandr ever done but bring grief to Ranos?

  “I’m sorry,” Nikandr whispered to the wind as finally, mercifully, the sound over the field faded. In one fell swoop this idyllic place had been transformed into a burial field.

  Nikandr hadn’t realized, but his pony had come to a rest, its barrel chest working like a bellows. The reins hung limp in his hands. He urged the pony back into motion, but he allowed it nothing faster than a walk. The sight of the ship laying like some dead, forgotten beast was too much. He couldn’t look upon Ranos. Not now.

  But there was another he would look upon.

  He steered the pony beyond the wreckage. He thought he knew exactly where the strelet had fallen, but it still took him long minutes of searching. At last he found him hidden among the tall grasses, the body of the man who’d leapt from the skiff. The man who’d been trying to escape.

  His cherkesska was cut and stitched in the style of the south, but that meant little. He needed more. Nikandr dropped down and searched the still-warm body. He searched inside the man’s shirt, found his soulstone. It was the typical oval shape, and rounded like a grape cut in half, but the setting itself had the stylings of Dhalingrad.

  Still not good enough.

  He needed something to tie him to Leonid.

  He searched the pockets in his cherkesska and pants. He looked through the leather bag at his belt, hoping to find a note. There was nothing. Leonid wouldn’t have given this man orders by note in any case. It would have come from his wife, the Duchess Iyana, and no other. She would have found him on the ship’s detail, which, even though Ranos commanded it, would have been stocked with several men like this one, spies for Dhalingrad, trusted men who could be called upon should Leonid have need of them.

  Over the field, men were coming. The streltsi who’d been marching west, they were coming to see what had happened, to look for survivors.

  Nikandr had to find something quickly. He even pulled off the man’s boots, hoping to find something hidden away. But there was nothing.

  He fell back onto his rump, resting his hand on the pommel of his shashka. Nothing. There was nothing to tie this man to the one who’d truly committed these murders.

  He looked down at his hand.

  The one gripping his shashka.

  Twisting the sword back and forth, he could see the inscription that ran along the guard. For the Sons of Khalakovo, it read. Many of the swords made by the smiths of Radiskoye read as such. It referred not to the soldiers who wore them at their sides, who fought with them, but for the children they protected, the sons and daughters of Khalakovo’s seven isles.

  Nikandr looked to the other man’s sword. He slid it from its sheath, looked along its length and on the guard. It was a serviceable sword in good condition, but was otherwise unremarkable.

  Then Nikandr noticed his kindjal. It looked to be of fine craft indeed. The hilt was the deep, dark brown of walnut. The stars of Dhalingrad, their house sign, were worked intricately into the brass rivets, and the sheath was made from fine, worked leather that showed the night sky above Palotza Iyavodska, the seat of House Dhalingrad. Nikandr pulled the weapon free to reveal the bright blade. It was worked as well, and clearly by a master craftsman. It had the same design as the sheath, but it also had an inscription.

  For a trusted man of Dhalingrad, it said, and there, below it, was his name. Leonid Roaldov Dhalingrad.

  A cold anger settled in Nikandr’s chest, in his very core.

  The wind over the field picked up, swirled around him.

  It became so strong the snow lifted from the nearby grass to form a circle around him, a wall that for a moment seemed as impenetrable as stone.

  Beyond the wall of swirling snow, the streltsi stopped. None dared approach as Nikandr slipped the kindjal into his belt and picked the man up. He hefted him over his pony’s saddle and swung up behind him, ignoring the stares of the gathered streltsi. They parted as he rode through, their arms warding the wind from their faces.

  Nikandr kicked his pony into a trot, moving beyond the staring men and toward the main encampment. The wind began to scour the field. His coat was open, flapping. The wind coursed over the skin of his neck and face. It no longer felt cold. It felt warm. Like a summer breeze.

  Part of him wanted to turn back, to find Ranos and say his goodbyes. But those words could wait. The reckoning with Leonid could not.

  As he approached the camp, he could see the central tents. Nine surrounding the one in the middle. The pennants atop the central poles snapped in the wind. The walls of the tents bowed inward. Here, too, the gathered streltsi stood and watched. Some ahead saw Nikandr coming and ran to the command tent. By the time Nikandr rode his pony into the clearing within the outer row of tents, many of the officers of the stremya had gathered. Konstantin Bolgravya and Yegor Nodhvyansk were there as well.

  “Dhalingrad!” Nikandr shouted toward the main tent.

  The men standing there spoke low to one another.

  “Dhalingrad, show yourself!”

  Borund approached. “Nikandr, what are you doing?”

  “Something I should have done on Galahesh, Bora.”

  From the command tent came Leonid’s tree of a son, Vadim Dhalingrad. He was followed by more officers of Dhalingrad—a polkovnik and several polupolkovniks—and then Leonid himself. The Grand Duke was holding a short knife in one hand. Blood coated the blade. It coated Leonid’s left hand as well. Drops of bright blood spotted the lower length of his long white beard. What in the name of the ancients had he been doing in that tent? Carving a goat?

  The men between Leonid and Nikandr parted. More dukes stepped forward, Yevgeny Mirkotsk and Heodor Lhudansk and Aleg Khazabyirsk. Alaksandr Rhavanki, standing in for his father, came last. It was a council of sorts, and for this Nikandr was glad.

  Borund, seeing there was nothing to be done—not now—stepped back, giving Nikandr the field.

  The wind had settled—Nikandr had allowed it to do so—but it waited, begging for leave to howl among these gathered men. Nikandr allowed the body of the strelet to fall on the ground. It dropped
onto the muddy earth and lay there, dead eyes staring up toward the sky.

  “Your man, Dhalingrad.”

  Leonid did not so much as glance at the body. He merely stared, bloody knife in hand. “A disgraced member of my family, Khalakovo. What of him?”

  “This was the man sent on the ship with my brother, Ranos, the man sent to bring that ship down before Ranos could step foot upon these lands.”

  Leonid’s eyes thinned. He looked like a rat, standing there squinting at Nikandr. “The Matri have informed us of the ill news. An accident, as can happen on a ship from time to time.”

  “Yet it happened on that ship, this day, just as my brother, the Duke, was coming to speak to you of your orders for our fleet.”

  “Was he?”

  “You know that he was!” Nikandr’s shouted words settled over the dukes.

  “I know nothing of the sort. Your brother had been ordered to remain on Galahesh should he be called upon to defend the realm.”

  “He was coming here so that Council could be called, something you well knew, Dhalingrad.” Nikandr leaned over and spit down upon the fallen strelet. “That was why you sent your knifeman. To ensure that Ranos never arrived. You feared for your seat. As you should.”

  “A fallen windsman proves nothing.”

  Nikandr pulled out the knife and held it up for all to see. “This man tried to escape with a skiff and was shot at before leaping to his death. Moments later, the ship’s magazine exploded, dooming every last man on board. Leonid knew.” Nikandr said this to the crowd, but especially the dukes. “He knew Ranos was coming to take up Council, to vote for the seat of Grand Duke. There are other dukes here that know the same. And Leonid knew fear. He has acted brashly, My Good Dukes. He ordered the death of one of our own because he feared the loss of his mantle.”

  Some of them believed his words. Nikandr could see it on their faces: Konstantin and Yegor and even Yevgeny. But others did not. They watched him with mistrust in their eyes and the set of their jaws. Borund, however, had a look of regret, as if he dearly wished he could believe Nikandr, but could not.

  “These men know,” Leonid said, stepping forward. He pointed to Nikandr with the tip of his bloody knife. “They know the treason you’ve committed. They know the men you call your allies.” Leonid turned back to Vadim and said, “Bring him.”