Mistress of the Empire

by Raymond E. Feist

  The foremost ranks of warriors met the charge. Brave, steady, determined, they never had a chance. The lances impaled them, screaming, or hooves scythed them down like hwaet. The most nimble managed to duck aside, only to perish on the swords of blue-armored riders. Only the veteran of the Midkemian wars won free. His swift stroke hamstrung a beast from behind, and it collapsed in a kicking heap. The rider rolled clear, cursing over his mount's strangely human-sounding scream. Sword met sword, the victor of the clash lost in the ocher rise of dust.

  The second rank fared little better. One man stabbed a horse in the chest, before he was overrun. The riders spitted most of the defenders, but their lances were then useless, as those not broken or rammed into human flesh were too long to counter foemen now inside their reach.

  Jiro felt sweat trickle inside his armor. His teeth showed in a snarl of oaths. He could die here! And the waste of it: to go as Halesko had in the mess of battle! To perish by the sword, as any unread fool could, blinded by lust for honor! Jiro rejected such a death. He would see Mara humbled first!

  He kicked clear of his cushions and sprang from his litter, vicious as a cornered sarcat.

  Omelo was still on his feet, shouting orders. The initial rush of the charge was blunted, the following ranks in ragged order as the mounts of the Shinzawai swerved to avoid the fallen. Lances had taken one man in two. Now mounted swordsmen whirled in pirouette; as one with their hellish beasts, they skirmished with foot warriors who coughed in the dust. The Anasati warriors never flinched. They stood ground with valiant courage, and sliced at disadvantage against foes who battled higher than their heads.

  Tsurani swordsmanship was weakest against blows from above. The best fell, their helms cloven, and their blood soaking the dry road.

  And still the riders came on. They converged upon the litter and the close-ranked inner guard of Jiro's warriors. Last and most staunch in his defense, these screamed defiance. Even the most brash could see: they were not going to be enough.

  Omelo shrieked a blasphemy. Chumaka seemed nowhere to be found. Swords whined through air; some slammed blade to blade in parries, and were deflected. Too many bit deep into red armor, spilling more precious red blood.

  Hokanu's cavalry trampled on over the fallen. Another horse went down, thrashing, and a warrior too close was felled by a kick from flying hooves. Jiro swallowed a rolling surge of nausea. He raised his blade. War was not his strength; but fight he must, or die.

  The cries of the mortally wounded set his teeth on edge. He braced for his first blow, dizzied and overwhelmed by the brutal reality of battle. Only family pride held him upright.

  A horse reached his lines, and reared up, black against the hot sky as its hooves cut the air. Teeth flashed white in a face shadowed by a helm bearing Lord's plumes. Jiro knew: the rider was Hokanu.

  The Lord of the Anasati looked up into eyes that held no pity: eyes that were dark as Kamatsu's set and stamp, that stripped Jiro to his living spirit and knew him for a craven murderer.

  In them, Jiro saw his end.

  He met the first sword stroke evenly, as he had been taught. He managed to parry the second. A warrior was dying under his feet; he stepped on him, and almost tripped. Bile stung his throat. He had no strength. And Hokanu bore down, his mount sidling like a demon, his sword a slash in sunlight.

  Jiro stumbled back. No! This was not happening! He, who had prided himself on reason, would be butchered wholesale by a sword! Numbed through his vitals with dread, he spun and ran.

  Any concept of dishonor was driven from him by the horror of what thundered at his heels. Jiro's breath labored. His sinews screamed with exertion, all unnoticed. He must reach the woods. Cleverness could prevail over the sword, but only if he survived the next five minutes. He was the last of his father's sons. It was not shame, but only reason, to survive, whatever the cost, so that Mara, curse her name, should die ahead of him. Then the gods could do with him as they would.

  The sound of fighting dwindled, punctuated by the jarring thud of hooves pounding dry ground. Jiro's breath rasped in his throat as he reached the trees and scrambled up a small stone outcropping to gain what he recognised as safety.

  The breath of the horse no longer blew past his ears. It had stopped; the forest deterred it. Jiro blinked to clear his vision. Shadow seemed to blur his eyes, after the dazzle of noon. He flung himself, panting, against a tree bole.

  'Turn and fight,' snapped a voice, a half-pace from his heels.

  He spun. Hokanu had dismounted. He waited, sword raised, faceless in shadow as any executioner.

  Jiro bit back a whimper. He was betrayed! Chumaka had erred, and erred badly, and now this was the end. Red anger washed away panic. The Lord of the Anasati raised his weapon and charged.

  Hokanu flicked Jiro's sword aside as if it were a toy. A veteran of war, he had a stroke of iron. Jiro felt blade meet blade in a vibrating shock of pain. The sting shocked his nerves, loosened his grip. His weapon flashed, spinning, from his grip. He did not hear the thrash of its fall into the undergrowth.

  'Omelo!' he screamed in white panic. Somebody, anybody, even one warrior of his honor guard must be alive to heed his cry. He must be saved!

  His wits stumbled to function. 'Dishonor to you, who would kill an unarmed enemy.'

  Hokanu bared teeth in what was not a smile. 'As my father was unarmed? Dead in his bed of a poisoned dart? I know the assassin was yours.' Jiro began to deny it, and Hokanu shouted, 'I have the tong's accounts!' The Lord of the Shinzawai looked like terror incarnate as he lowered his blade, then, with a turn of his wrist, slammed it point down into earth, leaving it vibrating as he released the hilt. 'You are dirt, no - less than dirt, to whine of honor to me!'

  He advanced.

  Jiro crouched, prepared to wrestle. Good! he thought. Wits were going to triumph after all! He had convinced the honorable fool of a Shinzawai to take him on hand to hand! Though the Anasati Lord knew he was no champion wrestler, death would be slower than the downswing of a sword stroke. He had bought time, perhaps, for one of his honor guard to win through and save him.

  Still playing for delay, Jiro stepped back. He was too slow. Hokanu was hunter-quick, and driven by revenge. Rough hands grabbed at Jiro's shoulders. He raised an arm to shove free, and felt his wrist caught and twisted. Pitiless strength forced it back and back, until bone and tendon quivered in protest.

  Jiro hissed through his teeth. Tears blurred his eyes. The cruel hold only tightened. Blinking his vision clear, Jiro looked up. Hokanu loomed over above him, a sparkling shower of reflection on his helm from the partially blocked sun.

  Jiro strove to speak. His mouth worked, but no intelligent words came forth. Never in his pampered adult life had he endured pain, and its kiss stole his reason.

  As a man might handle a puppy, Hokanu jerked him up with one hand. His eyes were mad; he looked like a demon who would not be sated with only blood. His fingers were claws, tearing away Jiro's ornate helm with a snap that wrenched his neck.

  Jiro's sweat ran to ice. He gasped in recognition.

  And Hokanu, murderously, laughed. 'Thought I would wrestle, did you? Fool! I set aside my blade because you do not deserve a warrior's honor; you who bought my father's assassination deserve a dog's death.'

  Jiro choked in a rattling breath. As he groped for a plea for mercy, Hokanu shook him. In a whisper near to a sob, only one thought found voice: 'He was an old man.'

  'He was beloved,' Hokanu blazed back. 'He was my father. And your life defiles the world that he lived in.'

  Hokanu wrenched Jiro off his knees, shaking loose the pouch of documents. The Shinzawai Lord shifted one hand to seize the thong. Jiro jerked back, graceless in his terror. 'You would not sully yourself with my death, if I am so wretched a creature.'

  'Wouldn't I?' The words were a snarl as the strap twisted tight. Jiro felt the bite of a strangler's garrote around his neck.

  He thrashed and clawed. His nails broke on blue armor. Hokanu pulled th
e strap tighter. Jiro's throat closed. His head pounded. Spittle leaked from his working lips, and his eyes bulged. The dishonor of his death confronted him, and he twitched and kicked in frantic desperation as his face went scarlet.

  Yet Hokanu was a battle-seasoned soldier who had never let his training lag. He bore down upon Jiro with a hate that knew no end, but drove his blood to fury as reasonless as the flood of sea tide. For their lost child and his dead father, Hokanu twisted the strap as Jiro's color deepened to dark red, purple, and then blue. He kept on until long after Jiro had fallen limp. Leather bit deep, through skin and trachea and flesh. Weeping, shivering in the release of reaction, Hokanu kept twisting, until a Shinzawai Strike Leader found his Lord over the fallen foe. It took strong hands to separate master from corpse.

  Empty-handed, Hokanu subsided on his haunches in the leaf mold. He covered his face with bloodied fingers. 'It is done, my father,' he said in a voice hoarse with emotion. 'And by my hand alone. The dog has been strangled.'

  The blue-plumed Strike Leader waited in patience. He had seen long years of service and knew his master well. Spying the document pouch that twisted around Jiro's throat, he removed its contents, assuming them to be something his master might wish to review when his wits returned.

  After a moment Hokanu stopped shaking. He arose, still looking at his hands. His expression was blank. Then, as if the mess on his knuckles were nothing more than clean dirt, and the dead thing sprawled wretchedly in its red armor nothing more than killed game, he turned and walked away.

  The Strike Leader strode after his Lord. To his companions who fought tight skirmishes in the roadway, he shouted, 'Call to the field! Jiro of the Anasati is dead! The day is ours! Shinzawai!'

  Like fire in a dry field, the word of Jiro's fall spread through the fray. Standing next to the overturned litter, Chumaka, too, heard the call: 'The Anasati Lord is fallen! Jiro is slain!'

  For a moment, the Anasati First Adviser regarded the spilled scrolls at his feet and thought about the other document Jiro had worn next to his skin. What would happen when that was found? He sighed. 'Fool boy,' Chumaka murmured. 'Coward enough to run, but not to hide.' Then he shrugged. Omelo was rising from his knees, a scalp cut running blood down his cheek. He looked ready enough to kill, as proud as ever save that something in his eyes had gone flat. He looked to the Anasati First Adviser and said, 'What is left?'

  Chumaka considered the broken remains of Jiro's honor guard, both the living and the dead. Out of one hundred, scarcely twenty were still standing. Honorable numbers against horses, he thought analytically. He resisted a strong wish to sit down; mourn he could not. He was no creature driven by love. Duty was duty, and his pride had been outwitting Anasati enemies; that, now, was ended. He glanced at the Shinzawai horsemen who were closing in, a ring of impenetrable flesh.

  Chumaka hissed through his teeth. To the Force Commander he had known since earliest childhood he said, 'Omelo, my friend, while I respect you as a soldier, you are a traditionalist. If you wish to fall upon your sword, I suggest you do so before we are disarmed. I urge you not to. For myself, I would order our survivors to put down their arms, and hope that Mara is as forgiving now as she has been in the past.' Almost too softly to be heard, lest his hope shine too bright, he added, 'And pray that she has some post left unfilled that we are suited for.'

  Omelo shouted orders for all swords to be put down. Then, as blade after blade fell from stunned fingers, and the beaten Anasati warriors watched with burning eyes, he regarded the seamed, enigmatic features of Chumaka. Neither man heard the noise as Shinzawai warriors invaded their ranks and made formal the Anasati surrender. Omelo licked dry lips. 'You have such hopes?'

  And both men knew: he did not refer to Mara's past record of clemency. The Lady upon whose mercy their lives, if not their freedom, henceforward must depend was one marked for death. If by the gods' miracle she could survive the Assembly's ire, there was still the last, most bitter cohort of Minwanabi warriors who had been armed in Acoma green and sent out. Their orders were Chumaka's, and as near to their hearts' desire as life and breath: to kill her by any means, and see Jiro's purpose complete.

  Chumaka's eyes darted, then kindled as a gambler's might. 'She is Servant of the Empire. With our help, she might survive the Assembly yet.'

  Omelo spat and turned his back. 'No woman born owns such luck.' His shoulders hunched as a needra bull's might, before the goad that lashed it into obedience. 'For myself, you are correct: I am a traditionalist. These new things are not for one such as I. We all must die sometime, and better free than a slave.' He looked at the sky above, then said, 'Today is a good day to greet the Red God.'

  Chumaka was not quite quick enough to avert his face before Omelo lunged forward and fell in final embrace against the blade of his own sword.

  While the blood welled red out of the old campaigner's mouth, and the Shinzawai Lord hurried with a cry toward this, the last Anasati man to fall, Chumaka bent down, shaken at last. He rested a withered hand against Omelo's cheek, and heard the Force Commander's final whispered words.

  'See my warriors safe, and free, if Mara lives. If she does not, tell them: I will meet them at . . . the door to . . . Turakamu's halls.'

  Thunder boomed in full sunlight. The reverberations slammed across clear sky and shook the forest trees to their roots. Two magicians manifested, hovering in midair like a pair of ancient gods. Black robes fluttered and snapped in the breeze of their passage as they skimmed above the wood, seeking. The red-haired one used his mystic arts to rise yet higher. A speck like a circling hawk, he soared above the countryside, scanning the road that dipped and meandered through hills and glens on its northward course toward Kentosani. Tapek's magic might grant him the vantage and the vision to equal any bird of prey; yet the shadows still obscured, leaves and branches mantling the ground. He frowned, his curse flying with him on the wind. They were here, and he would find them.

  The corner of his eye caught movement. He spun, easy in his flight as a mythical spirit of air, and studied. Brown flecks, all moving: a herd of speckled gatania - six-legged deer — not horses.

  He resumed his course in peevish irritation, back, down the length of the road. And there it was: an upset litter lacquered red, and shiny in sunlight with interlaced whorls of corcara shell. Costly work, fit for only the highest-ranking Lord, and with curtains in the colors of the Anasati.

  Tapek swooped downward, nearly diving like a raptor.

  Less intent on the chase, still Kerolo was not caught off guard. He spotted his fellow mage's descent, and hastened his progress to overtake.

  His lip curled in what seemed contempt, the red-haired mage pointed to a cloud of settling dust farther up the roadway. 'There. Do you see?'

  Kerolo took a studied look at the aftermath of tragedy that milled in the roadway: horses, lathered still from a charge. Warriors in Shinzawai blue, dismounted now, with the huddled remnants of Lord Jiro's honor guard held at swordpoint. Omelo dead inside the circle, sprawled on the blade of his own sword; Chumaka beside the fallen officer, shocked past cleverness for once. The Anasati First Adviser stooped low with his hands over his face, as near to tears as he had ever been since his boyhood.

  'The Lord is not with his men,' Tapek observed in his iciest tone. All the while, his eyes flicked up and down the road, taking stock of the fallen.

  'He is not with his warriors,' Kerolo said softly, almost sadly in comparison. 'Nor would a commander as staunch as Omelo fall upon his own sword for no reason.'

  'Jiro's dead, you think?' Tapek returned, a wildness akin to joy lighting his restless eyes. Then he stiffened, as if he stood on firm earth. 'Look. Under the trees.'

  More slowly, Kerolo responded. After a moment he, too, saw what lay beneath a small rise in the ground: not ten paces distant from Hokanu's abandoned sword, left standing upright in the earth, still clean.

  Before Kerolo could sigh, or utter any word to express his wish that vengeance must continually run
to bloodshed, Tapek snapped out, 'He was strangled! In dishonor Lord Jiro died. We have been defied again!'

  Kerolo gave a Tsurani shrug, regret in his mild expression. 'We were too late to prevent killing. But none may dispute that Lord Hokanu deserved the traditional right of reprisal. It is known who was responsible for his father's assassination.'

  Tapek seemed not to hear. 'This is Mara's doing. Her husband has ever clung to her hem. Does she believe we will permit this bloodshed just because her hands seem to be clean?'

  Kerolo tucked his fingers in his voluminous cuffs, unconvinced. 'That's supposition, particularly since the Assembly already must decide what action to take over her army's engagement on the Plain of Nashika.'

  'Decide?' Tapek's brows climbed in affront. 'You cannot be thinking of reconvening the council! Our debate and delay have already cost the Empire one great house.'

  'Hardly that extremity.' Kerolo's mildness assumed a fragile edge, like a sword blade ground too long at the whetstone. 'There are cousins left who bear descent from the Anasati: a half-dozen young women consigned to the temple who have not yet taken binding vows of service.'

  Tapek was not to be placated. 'What? Set power in the hands of yet another untried female? You amaze me! Either a hapless girl who will watch her inheritance destroyed before she is Ruling Lady for a year, or another Mara! That choice twenty years ago is precisely the same circumstance that spawned this difficulty in the first place.'

  'The Assembly will appoint an Anasati successor after we resolve the issue between the Shinzawai and the Acoma,' Kerolo insisted. 'We must go to the City of the Magicians. Now. This news should be heard promptly.'

  At this Tapek's eyes narrowed. 'Fool! We can take her now, in her guilt!'

  Kerolo kept to himself his suspicion of possible cho-ja collusion. He did not repeat his inward fear: that already Mara might have won herself a greater ally than any mortal Emperor. 'Jiro is already dead,' he argued gently. 'What use undue haste now? There will be no further conflict. With Jiro dead, what need is there?'