Screams accompanied the dimming of the melody. Howls of terror as every Gand soldier within range of d’Agarre’s Yellow threw down his weapon, their lines disintegrating in a rout of panicked flight.
66
ERRIS
Monument Grounds
Southgate District, New Sarresant
Forward!”
She shouted the order, and heard it carried from the lungs of every soldier in her line, echoed back to her as a wordless cry.
A strange sensation, riding atop Jiri’s back. She’d spent the better part of the battle flickering between aides and scouts, watching every section of the line while being a part of none. Here she felt the stinging smoke of powder and musket shot burning her nose, the roaring thunder of artillery ringing in her ears, the pounding blood in her heart as the enemy came into view.
Row upon row of red coats, kneeling behind their barricades, disposed to hold the center while the main force of their attack swept around to the west. Close enough to see their faces. The grim deadening of a soldier’s movements in the heat of battle; the steady rhythm of powder, ball, ram, and hammer. The golden light in the officers’ eyes, still reserved to one man in twenty here, where the lines she’d seen in the Gardens had the golden light pouring from every man. A trick she hadn’t learned. Time had run out, and too many secrets were left unknown. A better commander might have learned them, might have given her men better hope than a desperate charge for pride and honor, with little hope of victory.
Shots rippled from the men of the 14th in spurts as they crossed the grounds, a tactic she’d taught them, what felt a lifetime ago. Stay mobile, even while reloading, and you could pressure an enemy who like as not had been given no more than a musket as part of his conscription, with nothing to speak of for aim or training. Her boys fired, and Gandsmen died. Screams sounded even at three hundred paces. But even a fool could fire a musket in a line with his fellows, and whatever else the enemy had, they had a great many fools. Her soldiers fell as shots went off, belching clouds of smoke into the dimming sky.
“Forward, to their line!” she shouted, trusting an aide would take the order to Brevet-Colonel d’Guile. “First and Fourth Companies. Second and Third to cover the approach.”
The smoke cleared for a moment, and her heart sank.
A teeming mass of enemy soldiers appeared, running at full speed to reinforce the enemy line. They poured out from behind the buildings of Southgate, as though the enemy redeployed the entire strength of his western attack to meet her at the center. Perhaps he had. Her mind spun as Jiri stuttered to a halt. None of the enemy’s orders had been right, if his goal had been to take the city. First he ignored the bridges, then he swept around the western flank, and now he shifted everything to meet her at the center. No greater surety of her failure than her lack of understanding. War was deception, and the taste of her confusion bit like acid in her gut.
“Hold,” she called, knowing it would be too late, knowing such an order could never be delivered over the chaos of a battle. She’d set her men forward, planned an attack they would execute until their line commanders reacted to their inevitable defeat and fell back. She saw the next minutes in her mind’s eye. The enemy spilling out from behind buildings in a teeming mass of soldiers, plugging every gap in their line while her men assaulted the positions they’d been assigned to take, bleeding losses until despair led them to retreat.
Her soldiers would see it, too. They would know that the sight of the enemy pouring onto the field could not have been planned for, could not have factored into the decision to attack. For now her men roared, all confidence and pride, but soon they would see it. The mark of her failure. The sign she had given all and been rebuffed. She was no hero, no great general, no better in the end than all the sycophants and fools who—
“Sir, they’re breaking!” An aide’s voice cut through the din.
They were.
Howls and screams came from the enemy soldiers, but panicked shouts, not battle cries. The mass of red coats pouring from the Gardens didn’t stop when they reached the Gand lines. They ran through them, trampling their own people, sweeping up soldiers who had otherwise been set to fight in the chaos of a rout. And everywhere along their lines, among officers and men alike, somehow the golden light was gone.
“Forward!” she cried again, though even the most disciplined soldiers would have charged, seeing the enemy rout when they’d expected stiff resistance. “Forward, for New Sarresant!”
She sat astride Jiri’s back at the heart of what had been the enemy line, watching as rows of Gand soldiers formed by unit, hands raised and laid atop their heads.
Victory.
In the glow of the moment, her Need stores had replenished, and she reached out to the few remaining vessels she had along the battle lines, only to find the situation there just the same. Anywhere near the center of the Gardens was still roiling chaos, but the battle had moved away when the Gand lines broke and ran toward the river. The fighting was over, the enemy broken and surrendering in the absence of their officers’ golden eyes.
A chestnut mare galloped toward where she stood, its rider beaming as aides rode behind bearing his flag.
“High Commander,” Marquis-General Voren said, saluting, “they tell me you’ve done it.”
She returned the salute, bone-weariness settling over her. “Yes, sir,” she said.
“D’Arrent …” Voren shook his head, still beaming. “I chose well, with you.”
She said nothing, giving a wordless nod, relief taking the place of pride. Beside her a long line of Gandsmen snaked past, bound for the southern road, their hands placed atop their heads with a company of musketmen for escort.
“Any preliminary reports on casualties, Commander?”
She swallowed the beginnings of a knot in her throat. “None yet, sir. But it won’t be pretty.”
Together they rode toward the center, where companies of Gandsmen were being ushered away by her troops. That had been her first order: See the prisoners safely to holding grounds outside the city, where they were to be fed, sheltered, and treated with dignity. No surer way to earn the submission of a defeated enemy than to show respect, to let it be known they would be ransomed back in due course, headed for hearth and home after the horrors of battle. All the more so since the Gandsmen outnumbered her by two-to-one or better.
It all tasted hollow in her mouth. The enemy commander had beaten her, had driven her back, baited her into defending against phantom attacks, soundly flanked toward his objective while she was caught with one foot in the privy. Her charge had been meant as a last gasp, a gesture of pride and weakness, a final measure of spit in her enemy’s eye. And instead she was poised to begin accepting the surrender of the enemy’s generals.
What had happened? Somehow the enemy had managed to make a Need connection with every soldier in his army, to inure them against the madness in the Gardens. Had it somehow backfired, and cost him a nearly earned victory?
In spite of everything, she knew the Gandsmen’s strange commander wouldn’t number among those who surrendered to her today. He was out there, waiting. And he was better than she was. Whatever unlikely circumstances had cost him this battle, the truth of his superiority rattled like dice inside her skull. She would need to study, to rethink everything she thought she knew about strategy, bindings, soldiering, and discipline. Already she’d begun reviewing the day’s action in her head, picking holes in what she had done. That they would meet again, she was certain. And she meant to be ready for him.
“Sir,” a foot-major called up to her with a salute, halting Jiri and Voren’s mare beside her. “Allow me to present Brigadier-General Engel, sir, commander of one of Wainwright’s brigades, Fifth Army.”
She looked down, meeting the eyes of the foot-major’s prisoner. A boy. A farm boy not more than eighteen years old, clean-shaven and wide-eyed, but wearing a general’s star on his collar all the same.
“General Engel,” she c
alled down to him in the Gand tongue. “Your men fought well today.”
“I … I …” the boy stuttered. He darted nervous glances between her and Jiri, between Voren and the lines of captives marching in front of them.
In spite of it, she saluted, fist to chest. Seeing it, the boy’s eyes cleared for a moment, and he attempted an imitation in the Gand style, bladed hand to forehead. She lowered her hand, and the major led the captive away.
“What do you make of it, Commander?” Voren asked as they rode on. “The boy general, that is.”
“We’ve seen it before, with other Gand officers. A relic of Need, I think, though I don’t understand how the enemy commander maintains his connections. My officers need to be able to think for themselves. It appears his don’t.”
Voren rode a few more steps in considering silence. “Something to study, perhaps.”
“Yes, sir.”
They stood together atop their mares, watching as soldiers in red and blue coats came in from the west. And more; the tribesmen, bronze-skinned, painted men and women, coming down the same streets, wary looks passing between them and the soldiers of both sides.
She heeled Jiri forward to meet them.
At the head of the tribesfolk, the man she’d treated with wore the pride and weariness of his people like a mask. They locked eyes, and he approached, the black and red paint on his skin smeared with trails of blood.
67
ARAK’JUR
Street of the Royal Crown
Southgate District, New Sarresant
He covered the last stretch of stone in the glow of the spirits’ approval.
He knew it, by the speed with which his gifts had replenished. Mareh’et’s claws had no sooner faded than he found the spirit waiting on the edge of his sight, willing to grant his boon again. Una’re looked warmly on protecting his fellows, the bonds of brotherhood that had carried him into the unknown. Ipek’a answered the call of the hunt, proud to help him fell all who stood against him. Even the Mountain spirit answered his call again and again, in service to warding the tribes against the madness that brought them here. And now, at last, it was ended.
A hundred men had fallen to his gifts, and he bore the stain of their dying on his skin. But no few had been saved by their guardian’s prowess. A column walked behind him, following the fair-skins as they marched south, away from the madness on the green. Strange, and unnerving, to be so near the men they’d fought, so near the strangeness of the fair-skins and their city. The presence of the tribes—Sinari, Olessi, Ganherat, Vhurasi—gave pause to it, a reminder that he had a role to play as their protector. No more needed to die today, on a day when so many would be left behind. For that, he could stay the desire to exact revenge, to press the fight after the men in red had broken and fled the field. For succor, and peace.
A woman sat astride a horse half again as tall as any he’d seen, seeming to await him at the end of the street.
A short woman, as things were reckoned, though it was difficult to tell with her seated atop her animal. She wore the uniform of the soldiers in blue, and had status enough to be surveying the city around her as though she’d conquered it, though he knew the blue coats signified loyalty to the northern nation, those among the fair-skins who claimed the lands that had once belonged to the Tanari.
The woman nudged her mount forward, and came to meet him at the mouth of a wide square, where the street emptied into a park of sorts, festooned with monuments and statues and surrounded on all sides by men in blue or red.
“Arak’Jur,” the woman said, in a rolling accent that seemed to place her words too near the back of her throat. “Je m’appelle Erris d’Arrent. Haut-Commandant de l’armée de Nouvelle Sarresant.”
The High Commander. He’d suspected as much, though it still came as a surprise to see her in the flesh, without the strange golden light in her eyes.
He raised a hand in greeting.
“Erris d’Arrent,” he said, careful to pronounce it as clean as he could manage in the fair-skins’ tongue. “You spoke of peace. The fight is done. Will you honor your part?”
She frowned, offering no more than a slight shake of her head to indicate her lack of understanding.
“Honored guardian,” came a voice from behind, among the warriors. “Let me translate for you, spirits willing.” Valak’Anor, a Sinari hunter and trader, who had often dealt with the fair-skins at the openings of their barrier. Relief washed through him, for unburdening him of the struggle to understand, and for confirming the survival of one of his own.
Valak’Anor spoke quickly, drawing Commander d’Arrent’s attention as well as another man, an elder in wire-framed spectacles mounted on a chestnut mare beside her.
“She asks you to confirm what you said, before,” Valak’Anor translated. “That the tribes’ presence in the city was the fault of a strange magic, and that the woman responsible is dead, by your hand.”
The words passed among the survivors, who now gathered around, representatives from each of the four tribes Llanara had led into the city, and Corenna, who stood as the last remnant of the Ranasi, listening intently at his side.
“It is so,” he said. “And we bear no fault for what her power made us do, though our tribes will carry the shame of it until our last days.” Murmurs passed among the crowd, and he continued. “Llanara is dead, and we are free of it. We mean to return to our homes, and swear no reprisal or involvement in fair-skin wars that are none of our concern.”
The woman, d’Arrent, nodded as Valak’Anor translated, then met his eyes as she spoke.
“She asks what is to prevent this magic from taking hold of us again, what surety her people have that we will not be a thorn in their foot, should they turn their attention elsewhere.”
He stared back at her, seeking the measure of the woman before him. She had the advantage of height, seated atop her monstrous animal, and clearly was reckoned a high elder of her people, for all it was strange to see a woman claim to be a warleader. Yet she bore iron in her voice, the hardened steel of a woman who had faced loss, and seen it through. When they returned to Sinari land he would ask Ilek’Inari to divine the wisdom of the spirits of things-to-come—and spirits take the forbidden, with the shamans of the tribes dead, and only an apprentice left to carry that mantle—but for now, the spirits spoke to him through intuition. He could trust this woman, so long as he showed her strength.
“You would find us more than a thorn, were we to call each other enemies,” he said, still holding her eyes, speaking slow and firm. “But we are not enemies today. You ask what surety you have that our people will not again fall under sway of this evil. Only that I will fight it, with every breath, every magic given me by the grace of the spirits. If it will serve, then we go, and remain at peace.”
Silence fell as Valak’Anor relayed the words. Whispers carried what was said among his people, and echoed among the fair-skins in their tongue. High Commander d’Arrent looked askance at the old man mounted beside her, and they exchanged brief words Valak’Anor did not translate, until both nodded, and the old man spoke.
“You offer your strength, as surety,” the old man said through Valak’Anor’s translation. “I have the support of the assemblies of New Sarresant, alongside the strength of High Commander d’Arrent’s army. What standing do you have, to bind the actions of your people?”
He glanced over his shoulder to meet Corenna’s eyes. The import of their exchange hung over him like a shadow; a wrong word may well spark another wave of violence. They expected him to claim the mantle of chief, of Sa’Shem. With the tribes’ guardians and shamans slain he might well find them as welcoming to the idea as the fair-skins. But it was not his place, and had never been. He would not seize it now, when more than any time before his people needed wisdom, wisdom greater than he could provide alone.
“I am a guardian,” he said. “An elder, with a voice in our councils. I will speak of peace to all who will listen, but cannot promise more. Ye
t we are led by the will of our wisest members, and none among them will seek to revisit this day. In that you may trust, if you do not trust the strength of the blessings I carry, by will of the spirits.”
They conferred again after Valak’Anor translated the words, and this time the woman, High Commander d’Arrent, spoke.
“Go, then,” she said. “And, if not as friends and allies, leave as brothers and sisters in arms.”
He bowed his head, not realizing until she spoke it how much he’d dreaded a different pronouncement. A weight melted from his shoulders like new-thawed ice, and he saw the same in Corenna when he turned to share the moment with her. No more violence. Whatever madness still roiled in the green to the north was a matter for the fair-skins. His people would stay clear of it, and make their journey home.
He stood at the edge of the crumbled stone wall ringing the fair-skins’ city, watching burdened souls pass through ahead of him. The Great Barrier rose in the distance, with the promise of home. It would be a blessing to put the strangeness of the fair-skins’ city behind him, behind them all.
Corenna offered her arm as the last of the tribesfolk passed through ahead of her. A pair of Sinari warriors, strong young men who nonetheless averted their eyes in shame as they passed. So it would be. The burdens his people carried would not be washed away by words.
He took Corenna’s hand as they stepped through the ruined wall together.
For a time they walked in silence at the rear of the column, winding their way through the forests toward the barrier.
“It was well done, in the city,” she offered at last. “Wise of you to remind us of our traditions, of the wisdom of the councils.”
“You expected me to claim the mantle of Sa’Shem.”
She nodded, saying nothing.
“I would make a terrible chief,” he said, eliciting a surprised peal of laughter from Corenna. It was a welcome sound, cast against a backdrop of gloom and cold.
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