He experienced none of those misgivings any longer. Not only did he have the benefit of traveling comfortably on horseback with a well-provisioned army, but Elyas no longer felt such weaknesses of humanity. In fact, he did not feel much of anything other than a tranquil void of thoughts most of the time.
The fact that Nesnys had a second army already positioned within Ketania should have surprised him, but it hadn’t. His mistress was wise and knew what was best.
As a result, his force was well provisioned. A formidable supply train had met them the day prior, already prepositioned from Nesnys’s earlier march north, and he remembered the magical gateway they’d used to deliver goods from ships into the very heart of the kingdom, hundreds of miles from the sea. His host was fresh and eager to fight, having made good time marching north from the Nebaran capital of Orialan over the past months. He had taken command in Ammon Nor, the city now mostly a burned-out shell of its former self.
He did wonder when he would see his mistress again, for he always felt a strong desire to please her. She saved me from death and a life of humiliation and then made me her champion. She gave me a purpose, and I gave my oath to serve her.
His prior self had become a remnant of sorts, a faded spirit that haunted the depths of his mind, deeply ashamed of what he had become, but it was easily ignored and only rarely made itself known. He easily stamped out whatever feeble morality it might have sought to impose on him.
Elyas glanced back at the long column marching behind him, ten thousand strong—not as large as Nesnys’s first army, but sizable enough to handily defeat any Ketanian rabble that might seek to test him. Once he joined his host with Nesnys’s, they would be truly unstoppable.
Colonel Bertram caught his glance and saluted. He was a fine officer, from what Elyas had seen, having a keen mind for strategies and military tactics, so Elyas let him manage the myriad of routine tasks required to keep an army running smoothly.
Elyas nodded to Bertram and returned his attention forward. He had heard the mutterings around campfires at night. The men were a superstitious lot, and they had first thought Elyas was but another of Nesnys’s conjured fiends. The impression was understandable, for the Soulforge armor was certainly imposing, with its soot-black color, protruding spikes, glowing glyphs, and fiendish visage. As far as he could discern, the helm could not be removed, to his remnant’s horror and dismay, for it was fastened into his skull and locked to the gorget. Elyas the general merely saw it as a minor inconvenience to be overcome, so he took every opportunity to raise the visor when among the men in camp and show them he was indeed flesh and blood. He knew it a foolish vanity, but he also believed it a useful gesture to inspire loyalty if the men could identify with him at such a basic level as shared humanity.
“General!” A pair of outriders rode up, hailing him. “A party of refugees fled our approach, but we rounded them up for your review.”
This had become a common enough occurrence over the past several days of marching. He looked past the pair of horsemen, seeing the rest of their patrol herding a dozen people toward him. They were sorry-looking wretches, mainly women and elderly, dressed in rags and bearing young children with not a warrior among them. He remembered the way such people cluttered the streets in Ammon Nor, nuisances that were a drain on resources and breeders of disease.
A necessary task to eliminate such vermin. Sow fear and death far and wide, the mistress commanded. As if on cue, the pressure returned in his head, an agonizing, stabbing headache between Elyas’s temples, the Soulforge armor’s hunger. He knew of only one way to appease the armor and bring relief to his pounding skull.
“Accompany me,” he ordered the scouts.
He spurred his horse toward the approaching herd of refugees, the scouts falling in behind him. The sorry lot watched him in apprehension that swiftly turned to shrieks of alarm as they realized he wasn’t slowing his mount. Elyas rode right over an old man and boy who were either too slow or too foolish to move aside. Then his sword was in his hand, and blood was splattering his steed’s flanks and his armor. A skull split apart from a blow, and a woman fell screaming and was trampled beneath the hooves of his mighty destrier. Others turned to flee, only to be impaled on his men’s spears or shoved back to face Elyas’s judgment.
Within moments, it was done, broken bodies crushed and hewn apart, the ground muddy and trampled, stained crimson. One boy remained alive, a few years younger than Elyas’s cousin Taren, held at spearpoint by his men. The boy’s cheek was spattered with the blood of those whom Elyas assumed to be his kin, his eyes dull with shock. The crotch of his threadbare breeches was stained dark from his loosened bladder. Yet depite that, he was physically unharmed.
“Set this one free,” Elyas commanded. “Go forth, boy, and spread the word of what you witnessed here this day.”
The boy didn’t respond, apparently petrified by shock or fear, until one of the scouts clouted him on the ear with a spear shaft. He flinched and eyed Elyas fearfully, cowering like a beaten hound when seeing an upraised fist.
Elyas repeated his command, pointing sharply to the horizon.
The boy turned and fled.
Elyas ignored the carnage on the ground, turning back toward the column still marching north, although many had witnessed his massacre of the refugees. The act held no appeal for him, nor did it trouble him, for it was simply a distasteful duty to perform. Yet that faint remnant of himself deep inside roiled in agonized revulsion.
His headache had faded, mercifully, the Soulforge armor appeased once more for the time being.
“General, there’s a village an hour’s ride northwest of here.” The ever-efficient Colonel Bertram had ridden up and spoken with the scouts in the meantime. “If you approve, we might sack the town and then make camp there for the night.”
“Give the order,” Elyas said.
Sow fear and death far and wide.
***
The feedback through the Soulforge helm delivered Elyas’s feelings directly into Nesnys’s mind like a lightning bolt. The two were linked telepathically by the armor, much like their physical bodies were currently joined, her champion always a small flicker of awareness in her mind. But at times, his feelings and thoughts seemed to grow into a conflagration, as they were now. A curious mirroring of her own lustful desire and physical pleasure reflected back at her from her partner, magnifying the sensations Nesnys was feeling. This drove her to even greater heights of passion as she had her way with Elyas.
When she was sated, she rolled off him and lay beside the panting man. Elyas was flushed with ardor and lay beside her naked save for the fiend’s-head helm. Stripes of blood glistened on his chest and neck from her teeth and talons. The visor was raised, and his blue eyes stared at the ceiling.
“You have new orders, Mistress?” Elyas asked after a time.
She growled low in her throat, remembering why she had sought him out. She had arrived to find Elyas and his men sacking some nameless plains village, putting homes to the torch and townsfolk to the sword, save for the few witnesses they released. The sight of Elyas bathed in blood had inflamed her lust, and she’d given in to her desire right away, dragging him to his pavilion, where she’d taken him immediately.
“Indeed,” she replied. “Two days hence, I shall return and deliver you to Carran. You shall approach the gates under a flag of parley. Call for your cousin to be summoned and attempt to entice him to join us. Once you have done so, demand immediate surrender from the Atreus girl-queen.”
Elyas was quiet for a long moment. “I do not think Taren will concede to that.”
“If he will not join us and they foolishly refuse to surrender, then we shall raze their city to its foundations and slaughter their army to the last man. Perhaps Taren will come around once he sees the destruction we shall sow.”
“You told me that once I joined you, we could negotiate a complete and peaceful surrender,” he said stubbornly.
Nesnys rose up on one el
bow, frowning in annoyance as she studied Elyas. His handsome face indicated no guile that she could see. Sometimes, he still showed irritating streaks of independence, yet she knew that should fade in time. She could compel him through the Soulforge helm, much like yanking hard on the reins of a stubborn steed, yet preferred not to do so, to avoid shattering his mind. If that occurred, she might as well have one of her automatons leading the army. Mortals could be surprisingly fragile in that regard.
I did say something to that effect as part of our agreement. “I may be inclined to show mercy if they are not so foolish as to resist your ultimatum to surrender. You concern yourself with recruiting Taren to our cause and leave the rest to me.”
“Aye, Mistress.”
They lay there for a time. Nesnys steered her thoughts back to her earlier torture and execution of those men who had failed her. She could still almost smell the fresh blood, the salty taste of it, and then seeing Elyas spattered with it had been too much to resist. She ran a hand idly down his muscled belly and then lower. After a moment of her ministrations, he was ready for another round. She smiled and mounted him once more.
Chapter 18
Sianna had ridden beside King Nardual at the head of the elven host for much of the past two days. The procession moved at a brisk, tireless pace, even with all the elves afoot save Nardual, who rode a magnificent white stallion at the head of his people, and a handful of his distinguished advisors. Upon the elven king’s brow rested a graceful golden crown fashioned like interwoven ivy leaves studded with emeralds. He was handsome, with long brown hair and pale-green eyes. He spoke Common well and made polite conversation throughout much of the day as they rode.
Just that morning, a unit of the Ketanian army, which had been dispatched earlier to keep an eye out for Sianna and her rescuers, joined up with them to escort the procession to Carran. The men were led by a young officer, Lieutenant Mons, whom Jahn and Creel both knew and had favorable opinions of. Sianna thanked Mons and his men in a short speech that seemed to hearten the soldiers.
With the newly added two hundred infantrymen, along with Nardual’s two thousand elven warriors and another few dozen servants, retainers, and the like, their force was a small army in itself, and Sianna’s fears of pursuit had eventually begun to wane.
Iris and Rafe rode near her, their heads together in quiet conversation much of the way, sharing meaningful looks and smiles. The two were obviously a couple now, and Iris hadn’t denied it when Sianna had casually inquired that first night in camp. Their relationship didn’t bother her—in fact, she was happy for them as she thought of the two as her closest friends. Their relationship would be problematic once they arrived in court, however, for Iris was born nobility, albeit from a minor house, yet Rafe was lowborn. But Sianna hoped to eventually grant Rafe some lands and a title for his bravery and loyal service, which would put that pending scandal to rest.
The day after their escape from the Nebarans, Rafe and Jahn had appointed themselves as her royal guards. The move had obviously been planned in advance, and when they presented the idea to her as more of a mandate than a suggestion, she agreed to the idea, touched by their loyalty. She was getting used to the two men’s reassuring presence near her at all times.
Taren, Creel, and the others rode farther back in the delegation. Taren and Mira had recovered well from their injuries, the former spending much time conversing with his friend, Aninyel, the elven King’s Blade. Aninyel was not only skilled and deadly with her swords, as Sianna had witnessed firsthand, but also beautiful and charming, and she found herself a bit jealous of the elven warrior, wishing she herself could be such a formidable swordswoman. Not only that, but having the freedom to chat freely and be the subject of Taren’s attention was appealing.
She silently berated herself, annoyed at her straying thoughts, and swiftly banished the callow hope. You are a queen. Focus on your duty, you fool.
Yet she couldn’t help but remember her relief upon seeing the young mage awake and looking well in his tent and then the moment they shared a brief embrace, against her better judgment at the time. Iris had predictably objected when Sianna had confessed to her friend afterward, yet her disapproval seemed half-hearted. She wondered if Iris’s softening stance was a result of her relationship with Rafe.
Iris lecturing me on who I can flirt with is a bit like the crow calling the raven black, she thought with a hint of amusement. Sianna being queen was on a whole other level from her handmaiden’s situation, of course, but she figured in the grand scheme of events, embracing a lowborn youth was a minor infraction, and she didn’t regret it in the least.
“Would you care for some wine, my lady?” King Nardual held out a wineskin.
“Yes, thank you, my lord.” She smiled, relieved her reverie was interrupted, and hoped her expression had given nothing away of the turn of her thoughts. She took the offered skin and enjoyed a long sip of the crisp, slightly fruity wine.
Taren’s revelations the past night had been eye-opening, particularly at the extent of Nesnys’s plans. She tried not to think how the casual destruction of her kingdom and murder of her family was all just part of an elaborate diversion, for those thoughts made her furious. Better to focus on the next challenge in front of her, as Taren had said, and deal with what little she could control—rallying her kingdom to try to stave off destruction.
Just then, an elven scout appeared ahead, loping toward the procession with the easy grace of a wolf. Aninyel jogged over to intercept the scout. Following a brief discussion, the Blade approached Nardual, while the scout darted off ahead once more.
“Your Majesty, we are approaching the human city of Carran,” Aninyel said. “It will be visible in the distance in another mile. We should arrive in about an hour’s time.”
Nardual thanked the Blade, and Aninyel gave a quick bow and slipped back along the column again to ensure everything was in order.
Their impending arrival in Carran raised Sianna’s spirits tremendously. Having Lord Lanthas’s wise counsel would be a great boon, for her distant cousin was loyal to the Atreus family and had been a trusted friend to her slain father.
No more disguising my identity and traveling incognito with my companions. I’ll have to become a queen in truth now. The thought was distressing, yet with her cousin’s support and Sol’s blessing, perhaps she could pull off the guise and even manage to gain pledges of military support at the conclave.
Jahn had the presence of mind to dispatch a herald to ride ahead to Carran, so by the time Sianna arrived at the gates an hour later, her family’s standard flew over the city, a red falcon on a field of blue and white. She was shocked to see a mob of people cheering in the streets. All the attention made her feel both humbled and overwhelmed. Also, she felt exceedingly alone at the head of the procession with thousands of eyes soon to be scrutinizing her every move.
“Welcome to Carran, Your Majesty.” The captain of the guard bowed low, his guardsmen all having taken a knee. “A messenger has been dispatched to notify the duke of your arrival.”
She thanked him, and the captain led a small group of his men as an honor guard to escort her to the castle. Once inside the city gates, she discovered a small army of the city watch had been deployed to clear the street and safeguard against any threats to her person. She kept her head high and back straight to keep up the façade of a proper queen, which she thought might do well for the people’s spirits. Rafe and Jahn were reassuring presences to either side, while her friends rode just behind them. Next came Lieutenant Mons and his infantrymen, who seemed proud to accompany her all the way to the castle. Nardual had fallen back to head his own entourage, which followed behind the Ketanians.
Sol, help me to do right by my people and be the queen they need me to be in such dark times. She had to force herself to take long, steady breaths to help keep her nervousness in check.
Around them, people cheered and applauded, thousands packing the streets and leaning out of upper-story win
dows to watch. Those she took to be refugees and locals alike mingled together. One man in the crowd, a minstrel possibly, was enthusiastically sounding a horn as if he were an official herald. A number of wide-eyed children were perched on their parents’ shoulders, many waving at her.
Sianna smiled and waved back, doing her best to ignore the anxiety that knotted her belly.
“This is all for you, Sianna.” Iris had to nearly shout to make herself heard but looked delighted by the cheering throngs. She had nudged her horse up between Rafe’s and Sianna’s horses, the two bodyguards giving her a bit of space to either side.
“It’s all too much,” she muttered, though she knew her friend couldn’t hear her. This is the type of greeting Father should have received upon returning home in Llantry, alive and victorious.
“A rousing welcome, Your Majesty.”
She looked to her right in surprise to find Taren had also moved his mount up beside her. Mira and Creel rode just behind them, with Ferret walking beside the two. Sir Edwin rode slightly behind the others. He’d been sulking and maintaining his distance for the time being. She was somewhat glad of that, for she wasn’t ready to deal with him yet.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude on your moment of glory,” Taren said, somewhat teasingly, she thought.
“No, please, stay.” She was reassured by his and Iris’s presence, so she didn’t feel quite so alone.
Taren nodded and smiled. “You looked overwhelmed for a moment, if you’ll pardon me for saying. Thought you could use some company.”
“I was. And it does help to have the company of friends around.”
“Indeed it does.” He scanned the thousands of people lining the streets. “I don’t envy you, though. My relative anonymity seems a blessing sometimes.”
Trial of the Thaumaturge (Scions of Nexus Book 3) Page 15