The Savage War

by Esther Wallace

  Snorting, Miro stated, “Should he perish… I fear Mira loses all her hope.” The king finished his thought in a whisper, as if worried about being overheard.

  Once again looking down at the islander, Carpason inquired, “Then you agree with me? Arnacin—Arnacin and his peculiar ways alone—can save us.”

  “You know I agreed with you in my own way, until now,” the king sighed. “Now, however, he has lost all face, even to most of the nobles who held him in awe only a short while ago. Yes, even Mira was beginning to wonder if the savages’ scared whisperings about the gods sending a phantom to end the war were true. That question is no more. Now he is simply a failed—if once talented—foreigner.”

  “Had he succeeded, Your Majesty,” Carpason whispered, grinding a few of those black hairs between his fingers in frustration, “I think we would have won. I realize, under the circumstances, that politics dictated your disregard of his strategy, yet… I still believe that politics has therefore destroyed us.”

  Turning to his lord in scrutiny, Miro pressed, “You are thinking something. What is it?”

  “Sire, now that Arnacin has paid the price for his foolishness, would you allow me to prove that his war trail was the one to take and do what he could not?”

  “He could not because it was impossible, Carpason.”

  “No, Sire, it was because it had been made precisely for his death. I think they knew all that he was discovering. They knew better than we did how often he trespassed on their land, and they knew what would bring him up there at a time of their choosing, within range of their killing shafts.”

  “And what makes you think they will remain as they were now that they have succeeded in their mission, pray tell?”

  “It was a large gathering behind their own lines, and the threat to them—they believe—has been destroyed. Perhaps not all of them will linger, but I hope a good quantity has remained for the present.”

  Sighing, the king whispered, “Very well, Lord Carpason, if you will fight to restore his honor and return any hope remaining to us, I pray you do so, and may you return unharmed.”

  Inclining his head, Carpason whispered, “I will do so, my King, for you, for Arnacin, and for all of Mira.”

  Chapter 14

  Shifting Sands

  IN THE DEAD OF THAT night, Carpason asked messengers to gather all the knights and infantry in the inner bailey. There, he told them of the need to attack the native camp in the mountains.

  “This is not something I can order anyone to do. Although Mira needs a sizable number, those who fight in her hour of need must come by their own choosing.”

  Naturally, the men of Tarmlin and Arnacin’s men instantly pledged their services. Many more also volunteered and, in total, a host of five thousand swore to follow the lord into the mountains that same night.

  For the sake of speed, each man had to have his own mount. Those who did not volunteer still helped by lending steeds for the horseless infantry.

  While the five-thousand hurriedly prepared, Carpason took Hadwin aside, pulling out the map of the natives’ mountains. Compressing his lips, Hadwin looked at it. “Arnacin’s talented in many ways, but he can’t yet write in Miran.”

  The knight was speaking of course about the way Mira’s marks were so carefully applied. Each line had its own starting point and the space between each mark was calculated in order to avoid making one letter look like another. Arnacin, of course, had not trained for hours on the perfect mathematics of their script. Although he wrote their letters as precisely as possible, it was occasionally hard to decipher one letter from another, and it looked nothing like a Miran’s handwriting.

  “Never mind that, Hadwin,” Carpason sighed, hastily dismissing the thoughts of Arnacin’s lifeless body in the keep. “You know these mountains. Where’s the camp, and what’s the best way of infiltration?”

  Hadwin pointed to a wide blank space marked only as “Witilin Valley.” Drawings of cliffs rose on either side, with thin passes to the east and west. “It’s a large valley, where they can see an attack coming long before it reaches them. Arnacin was just going to cut off their escape and burn the valley from all sides.”

  Nodding, Carpason commented, “Yes. Unfortunately, we will need to be able to identify exactly how many mediums we kill, so that we know how many of the forty-nine remain.”

  The closest place to scale the mountains was a stair marked on the east coast. “Are the Windy Stairs well-guarded?” the lord asked, looking up.

  “They shouldn’t be. The natives know our commanders don’t swim and those stairs are more or less a natural formation that leads directly into the ocean.”

  “Very well,” Carpason decided. “We’ll ride the horses as swiftly as we can there and, at the foot of the stairs, we’ll leave a few men to take them back to the capitol. We’ll go through the mountains on foot, which will hide our passing at least a little.”

  Unsurprisingly, yet unfortunately, word of the troops’ movements reached the enemy encampment and when the five thousand Mirans arrived, the natives were packing hurriedly. Quickly, Carpason positioned his men in a wide arc in an attempt to trap the enemy in the center. Once they were on all sides of the encampment, he ordered the attack. If a native was spotted with an eye burned into his forehead, the Miran strike honed onto him and he was swiftly cut down.

  Even with five thousand men, however, the Mirans were outnumbered and with the desperation of both sides, the fight was fierce. In the sweat and heat of battle, a single scratch went unnoticed, until the fevers came.

  As the world swayed before Carpason, he knew even before he noted the red slash down his sword-arm in his peripheral vision, he only had moments left. In that moment, he knew he had no wish other than to spend even his dying breath living for Mira.

  Incessantly, he parried each native attack as his muscles began to burn in fever, his head pound, and his eyes lose sight of the colors around him. His vision turned the world red and gray, yet despite the fact that he knew he had become an easy target, he felt no weapon pierce his flesh.

  His elbow bumped one of the Mirans and he heard Hadwin’s alarmed voice. “My Lord!” Shaking his head, and wincing as the movement caused his nauseous stomach to protest, Carpason ordered with a moan, “Keep going.”

  The world, however, was shaking the lord, spinning around him in flashes of random color. He could no longer see or hear an attack, nor could he keep his legs under him. As the insidious poison at last managed to bring him down, he heard a shout all around, and it seemed the sounds of battle ended. Then, the darkness of unconsciousness swept in, leaving pain behind.

  The moment Carpason collapsed, the natives had all backed away, refusing to fight, and the Mirans had warily mirrored the movement, glad for a chance to breathe themselves.

  Panting, Hadwin slowly lowered his blade as the chieftain across from him, marked by the three feathers he wore at his elbow, gave him a half bow. “Return to your home,” the chieftain said in Mira’s tongue, thickly accented as it was.

  “What?” Hadwin asked.

  “Go, in honor of your noble.”

  “But… the bodies…” It was impossible to say that for the Mirans, retreat was forbidden.

  The chief, however, nodded. “Yes, you fought well. We will both gather our own dead together.” Several snorts of disbelief and distrust sounded among the Mirans nearby. A smile crossed the chieftain’s face. “We will both all leave our weapons with men outside the valley.”

  Looking down at Carpason who was still shivering with the last moments of life, although beyond consciousness, Hadwin felt his resolve shake. The likelihood of winning through destroying the mediums was not a practicality anymore, for many had probably left after they had packed. Mira could likely gain as much by accepting the honor granted Carpason as by wiping out the remaining mediums.

  Submitting, he nodded, and as orders were sounded on both sides, Hadwin crouched down by Carpason. The wary shuffling of many feet sounded
around him, but the chieftain joined him placing a hand on the lord’s hot shoulder.

  Although Hadwin twitched in a second of disgust, he allowed it. Arnacin’s benevolence toward the enemy had effected the knight too much to look on the chieftain’s act as anything other than what it was—remorseful compassion.

  In his own tongue, the native said something and then, looking up at Hadwin, he repeated it in Mira’s language. “May the gods pardon your…” He stumbled in his translation, then finished, “wrong loyalty and give you happiness in your new life.”

  Then, standing the chieftain said, “We offer horseless carts for your bodies.”

  At the moment, Hadwin could not laugh at the peculiar phrasing, but he nodded. The chieftain turned away with that and the knight remained there, wishing he could soothe the ache of his lord’s passing.

  Around them, Mirans and natives alike were departing to discard their weapons. Oddly enough, the natives seemed unperturbed by the temporary arrangement of peace. Only many of the Mirans looked disgusted.

  An abrupt change in Carpason’s breathing caused Hadwin to look down. The fever’s chills had stopped, yet the lord still breathed, no longer in broken gasps, but evenly, as if he simply slept.

  That seeming health was only momentary, however, and then Lord Carpason of Tarmlin breathed his last.

  “A god accepted him.” The awed voice caused Hadwin to turn. Only a few paces away, a younger man, one of the savages, stood staring wide-eyed at Carpason’s body.

  “What do you mean?” the knight asked.

  “The fevers continue until death,” the native explained, “unless they are accepted into the richness of the afterlife, in which their pain here ceases to be a moment before they die. I have never seen it happen, although we share stories of it.”

  The native nodded at Carpason. “It happening to him…” He shook his head in awe. “The high god must treasure him.”

  Before Hadwin could ask about the natives’ high god, the young man hurried away.

  There could not have been a queerer day in all of Mira’s history, Hadwin was sure. Mirans walked alongside savages, their very enemy that day, without fighting and mostly without resentful glances, picking up the dead. The savages piled their dead in a heap and provided carts for the Mirans. Only Firth seemed to remember why they were there as he whispered to Hadwin in passing, “We eliminated twenty-eight.”

  The knight only nodded and the thought fleetingly crossed his mind that if Arnacin’s research was correct, there were still twenty-one mediums left—twenty-one who would, if they were smart, instantly begin training more. The Mirans had lost.

  His despair came in force as he placed Carpason’s body in one of the native carts, made of whole logs, with wheels of the same logs, rounded in the imperfections and cut to a width of five inches. As he gently arranged his lord’s limbs, he felt the tears running down his cheeks.

  “Here,” a thick female voice said and, swiping the tears from his eyes, the knight looked up to see a native woman holding out a bouquet of pearly flowers. “These seuteeja will bring him well in the afterworld.”

  “You may place them.” Hadwin nodded to the cart and, hesitantly, the native accepted. As she finished, she drew back, whispering, “If all Mirans were Carpasons, we would not war.”

  “Yet you started your war in Tarmlin itself!” The angry words came out before Hadwin could think about them and he hastily bowed his head in apology. There was no need to begin the fighting again in that moment.

  “Those were… men… angry, very angry… very temper. The gods tell us, though, that Mira’s time must end. There are few Carpasons, if not no more. Yet today, we honor a worthy opponent. The gods kill him for his service to Mira, but not for else. Tomorrow, we war, but today, we peace.”

  “Thank you.” It was all Hadwin could say.

  As the woman turned away, however, she said, “Tell your king this.”

  “What?”

  “All I said and all we do today.”

  As the Mirans lined up around the carts, the chieftain who had ordered the temporary peace again approached Hadwin. “The gods order your safety back to Mira. No one will attack. Do not flinch if you see something thrown. If anything, it is seuteeja for the fallen.”

  “Thank you.” The knight bowed.

  “Do not enter the mountains again. The gods will not favor you twice.” With that warning, the chieftain also bowed and the Mirans started off, many wary, some simply defeated.

  It was to afternoon sun that Arnacin weakly awoke with someone’s fingers pressed against the side of his neck. One of the castle’s physicians sat beside the bed, his brow furrowed as his head bobbed in time to his slow count.

  “If that isn’t the slowest pulse of a conscious person, I’ve ever felt,” the man finally grumbled. As Arnacin tried to push himself up, the physician snapped, “Don’t move. Not an inch, boy.” Only when Arnacin relented did the man continue in a softer tone, “It’s a miracle you still draw breath. Push your luck this early and you’re not likely to continue doing so. As long as you are awake, however…” He carefully lifted the islander’s right hand in a gentle, practiced grip. “We’ll give it a slight test. Can you move your fingers—just your fingers, mind?”

  It was harder than he first imagined and the islander did not know whether he had succeeded or not as sharp pain burst just beneath the right side of his collarbone. Instantly, sweat broke out on his forehead and a cry escaped him, drowning out the man’s following words.

  He lay there for a minute, unaware of anything beyond his own pain, until an arm slipped beneath his head, and he looked up into the physician’s comforting smile.

  “It all still works, boy. With time, you might be able to use it again. Drink now. We’ll worry about putting you back on your feet when your heart rate is normal.”

  Taking a sip, darkness swooped in and Arnacin did not try to fight it.

  “Arnacin.” The clipped tones caused the islander to jerk awake, finding his left arm under his head and the pillow discarded unceremoniously on the floor. One of the castle’s older squires stood nearby, his hair graying, frown lines in his weathered skin. He held out a thin, rolled parchment. “You are deemed ready to be about soon, and so the king wishes to give this to you.”

  Wincing, Arnacin slid his arm back out from under his head and slowly pushed himself up. “Kings,” he muttered in exasperation at Miro’s impatience, not even allowing him a full recovery before issuing orders. His remark caused the squire to shove the paper onto his chest.

  “Whatever you intended by that, young man, you may skip it. Read it as soon as you feel ready…”

  “What if that’s never?”

  “Then let me remind you, you are in this war of your own choosing. We all know about your argumentative side and most of us don’t care to hear it. Lord Carpason would likely have been given the duty of telling you in person, but we buried him last week.” To disbelieving silence from the islander, the squire made his exit with a crisp, “We’ll see you tomorrow, when the physicians release you.”

  As the door closed with a click, Arnacin forced his mind out of its current blankness, glancing down at the parchment in his lap. Slowly, wincing as he used his right hand to help, he unrolled the orders, flattening them against the covers. A glance at a few of the words caused him to angrily wad it into a tight ball, his temper causing him to disregard the pricks in his shoulder, and chuck it across the room with his left hand. How much did Miro expect from him, as if he were Miran, not a visitor from the sea?

  And yet, there it was. He hadn’t been forced into it. He had, as the squire said, chosen it. So if the king wished him to serve the war on the political front, his honor dictated it. Hopefully, it would lead—as the islander knew the king hoped—to a quicker end to the endlessly dragging war.

  Slipping quietly out of the library and easing the door shut behind her, Valoretta started back along the corridor to where she knew Sara would be awaiting her
with a lecture about how she should not be disappearing. Glancing out the window, she paused, however. As a smile brushed over her face, she quickly changed direction. Arnacin was trailing along the terrace’s rail below.

  Joining him, she remarked, “I heard you were awake last week. Has it taken all this time to escape the physicians?”

  “All this time,” Arnacin repeated with a slight smile, though his tone was preoccupied. “A week sounds like a very short time to me.” Valoretta smiled and her gaze traveled to his shoulder. There, she noticed what she reprimanded herself for not seeing instantly—Arnacin was now dressed in Miran attire beneath the cloak he had pushed off his right shoulder. Although the cloak looked like his old one, it also showed signs of having just come off the loom. The detail showing in the shirt’s embroidery declared how much love had gone into its crafting and, with a fond smile, the princess looked back up. Arnacin had not noticed her quiet appraisal, looking out toward the hills.

  “That fits you better,” Valoretta softly commented, dragging her companion back to where she stood.

  For just a minute, he simply stared at her, before comprehension lit his eyes and he teased, “Yes, the thieves. They just couldn’t wait to filch Matalaide’s craft.”

  “Matalaide?” Valoretta repeated.

  “Our village weaver. She’s always grousing about usurpers. Actually, she fakes it all, and some of the boys love testing how far she can go without cracking a smile or tanning their hides. She once told a friend of mine, Tevin, that she would stop making any clothes for him if he didn’t change his behavior, and let him struggle with all the work.”

  Watching the islander’s smile, the princess prompted, “What did he say to that?”

  Almost laughing, Arnacin admitted, “He started off about how he would make sure to steal her position as best weaver around. I thought for sure she was cornered. She has said she drowns thieves, but she simply scowled and yanked him in, telling him it was about time he learned something useful. Five minutes later, Raymond and I saw him running for the safety of the woods.”