Voada’s hand moved again, and a second grotesque mouth appeared on Dilara’s neck. Her lifeblood gushed in a diagonal across Voada’s robes, threw heavy droplets on the marble of the altar that dripped sluggishly down. Hùisdean released the Voice-wife as Dilara’s breath gurgled and bubbled in the wreckage of her throat, and the woman fell to sprawl beside her husband.
Voada bent down and wiped the blade of her knife on Dilara’s robes. She slid the blade back into its sheath. Maol, Hùisdean, Comhnall, and Magaidh were all watching her, their expressions carefully neutral. Only the anamacha spoke.
“Have someone remove these bodies,” she said. “Impale them on spears in the market square so that everyone can view them, and leave them there to rot. Then have the temple properly washed so that Elia’s faithful can worship here again.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She walked to the door of the temple and out.
She should have felt some satisfaction. She should have experienced triumph with their deaths. A release.
She felt … nothing. She felt hollow.
Empty.
Voada walked alone down the hill to the Hand’s house—her old house that was now strange and wrong—to find some of the Cateni women of Pencraig rummaging through the rooms. They started to scatter at the sight of her, but she sent two of them farther down the hill to the vanguard wagons to fetch her a new set of clothing and a few others to bring her water and a sponge to wash herself. She went into her old bedroom, the room she and Meir had shared, stripping off her bloodied clothing as she did so. The women obeyed her without protest. “The Ceanndraoi Voada …” she heard them whispering. “They say that she is Leagsaidh Moonshadow returned …”
The blood took time and effort to wash away, and she stared at her arms and hands, expecting to still see the stain there in the folds of her skin or under her nails. She stared at her reflection in the copper mirror she found in the bedroom, trying to see if traces were still on her cheeks or in her hair. Finally, dressed in the clothes that had been brought to her, she sat on the bed—placed now on the wrong side of the room—and stared at the walls she remembered so well. Here she’d lost Meir; here they’d made love and had their few inevitable arguments; here their children had been born; here they’d grown up.
Here had been love.
She could almost hear the ghosts of them. She found herself weeping without realizing she was doing it; all the emotions she’d been holding inside for moons now tumbled out, and she put her head in her hands and sobbed. Her anamacha watched silently from the corner of the room, making no move to come toward her.
“Ceanndraoi?” Voada heard the soft query from the door of the bedroom. She sniffed and wiped at her eyes, looking up to see Magaidh standing there. “I’m sorry … When you left the temple, I thought … I wasn’t certain if you needed to be alone, or if … if …”
Voada managed to smile at the young woman—so much like Orla might come to look. “Come in,” she told her. She patted the bed next to her. “And thank you, my friend.”
Magaidh sat alongside her. Her hands found Voada’s. “I can only imagine how you must feel. If someone did to my children what has been done to yours …” She stopped. “I think I would have done the same.”
“Would you have?” Voada asked. Her voice cracked, comfortless.
Magaidh drew in a long, shuddering breath. “Perhaps,” she said. “I don’t know.”
“That’s honest, at least. Magaidh, killing them didn’t help, even though I thought it would,” Voada told her. “And what I did … I don’t know how many people I’ve killed with the Moonshadow’s anamacha, but that was always at a distance, always somehow impersonal. Killing someone like this, executing them with my own hand … it’s different. Harder. Uglier. I thought …” She took a long breath that threatened to turn into a sob. “I thought killing those two would make me feel satisfaction, but it’s changed nothing for me. Nothing. Meir and Hakan are still dead, and Orla is lost. Everything I had and loved is gone. My entire family. Gone …”
Magaidh’s arm slipped around Voada’s shoulders, and for several breaths, Voada relaxed into that embrace, neither of them saying anything. “What are you going to do now?” Voada heard Magaidh half whisper at last. “Will you leave us to look for your daughter?”
Voada straightened on the bed, and Magaidh’s arm fell away as the young woman took Voada’s hand again. “I don’t know where she might have gone or how I can find her.” A deep rage surged within Voada, its heat burning away the tears.
“And this is what you want?” Magaidh’s hand slipped away from hers as Voada nodded, tentatively at first, then more forcefully.
“It’s not only what I want. It’s what I have to do.” She looked at her anamacha across the room, and it seemed to nod to her. It was the Moonshadow’s face that it wore. Magaidh’s hand returned to hers, as if she’d seen the same. “I have no choice.”
“Then, as your friend, I’ll help you,” Magaidh told her, but Voada could hear sorrow and worry in her voice. “We’ll all help you.”
25
Returning to the South
IT WAS TOLGA, ALTAN Savas’ driver, who brought the scroll to Altan’s tent just inside the second ring of hill-forts on Onglse. It was raining, pelting the canvas above them. It was always raining on them since they’d arrived on the draoi island; the Red-Hand’s sorcerers saw to that. The promise of the sun and dry clothes that would result when they finally took this accursed place was a large part of what drove the Mundoan army as the fighting dragged on.
Altan glimpsed Great-Voice Vadim’s seal impressed into the leaden tag enclosing the copper wire that wrapped the heavy parchment in Tolga’s hand and raised an eyebrow. Tolga shrugged. “Sub-Commander Musa said I was to give this to you immediately. A messenger ship brought it to our Onglse harbor this morning with orders to place it in your hands as soon as possible. I told him I’d bring it to you.” He held out the scroll to Altan, his hand covering most of the thick paper so that Altan’s hand would have touched his as he took the scroll. Instead, Altan nodded to his field desk, and Tolga placed the scroll there, disappointment on his face. It was a game Tolga had been playing with Altan recently; it was obvious the man thought that he could replace Lucian as more than just Altan’s driver.
That wasn’t going to happen. Altan couldn’t imagine ever feeling for someone else what he’d felt for Lucian.
“My bet is that the Great-Voice is getting impatient for his victory and wants to know if he can assure Emperor Pashtuk that we’ll have Onglse by summer’s end,” Altan said to Tolga, picking up the scroll and hefting it. “But we should have it before then,” he said. Despite the fact that this offensive was never a good strategy in the first place. That thought—a constant companion of his since their arrival on Onglse—he kept to himself. You do what you’re ordered to do, and you don’t question those orders in front of your soldiers. “The Red-Hand is nearly out of options. Maol Iosa seems to have abandoned Greum Red-Hand, and that cursed woman draoi is missing, too—hopefully she’s dead.”
He wondered at that last statement, remembering the stran
ge half dream he’d had of Hand-wife Voada of Pencraig claiming to be draoi and here on Onglse. Could she really have been the draoi she claimed to be? Certainly we haven’t felt that power since she disappeared. What had she said? That if I stayed I would die here, that she wanted peace between our people? I haven’t died yet, but maybe she has …
Altan used his knife to sever the wire around the scroll. He unrolled it on his field desk. He read the words there with growing trepidation and anger. He smashed his fist down on the scroll as he finished, breathing heavily.
“Sir?”
And there are times when you should ignore orders entirely, no matter what it costs you …
“Sir? Altan?”
Had Tolga been Lucian, Altan would have stood and taken the man in his arms for the momentary comfort it might have given him regarding the statements on the scroll. But he’d never hold Lucian again, and Tolga’s use of Altan’s given name only fueled the anger that was already surging through Altan because of the words unrolled before him. “You dare to address me in such a familiar way?”
Tolga’s eyes widened. “Sir,” he said. “I’m sorry. It’s just … I know that Lucian …”
“Lucian is dead.” Altan stared at the man. “You are not Lucian.”
“No, Commander. I …” Tolga swallowed hard. “I’m sorry, Commander.”
If Lucian were alive … Altan would have confided in Lucian and told him all that he’d just read: that his worst fears had been realized; that the clans had attacked the poorly defended south while he was occupied in pursing the Great-Voice’s ornamental victory; that the army of the clans had sacked and plundered Muras, Pencraig, and other towns in the north; that someone calling herself Ceanndraoi Voada, along with Ceannàrd Maol Iosa, were directing their army; that they were now moving toward Trusa; that the Great-Voice wanted back half the troops he’d sent to stop this invasion, to be commanded not by Altan but by one of his sub-commanders; that Commander Savas was to remain on Onglse with the main army and complete his mission of taking the island and Bàn Cill and bringing back the body of Greum Red-Hand.
So that’s where Iosa and that draoi woman have gone … Sourness sat heavy and bitter in his gut. Altan found himself wondering, if only for a moment, what might have happened if he’d accepted the offer of the dream who claimed to be Voada. Perhaps she hadn’t been a dream after all. Perhaps … But he shook the thought away and looked again at the orders in front of him. The Great-Voice is ignorant. He knows nothing about war. This order is another terrible mistake, one that’s potentially fatal for all of us …
Altan straightened. Tolga was standing stiffly at attention, his face pale as Altan rerolled the parchment. Walking over to the brazier that warmed his tent, Altan placed the parchment on the glowing coals, watching the edges first curl and darken, then smolder, then finally brighten to flame. He waited for the scroll to turn to ash before he turned again to Tolga. “Go find Musa and Ilkur. Tell them to come here. The Great-Voice has given us a new task. I’ll need a good driver like you in my chariot, so make sure our horses are readied.”
As Tolga bowed in relief and left the tent, Altan watched the last of the scroll shrivel in the brazier. “Lucian, my old love, I think I might be with you soon after all,” he said to the air.
Ilkur scuffed his feet as if movement alone could calm him, his gaze as restless as the rest of him. Musa stood solid and unmoving, his olive face impassive under his short-cut black hair. Altan regarded them, wondering how they would receive their new orders. “I’ve just received an urgent message from the Great-Voice,” Altan told his two sub-commanders. “We know now where that troublesome woman draoi and Ceannàrd Iosa have gone; the two of them have left Onglse, presumably at the Red-Hand’s orders. They managed to do the impossible and unite the northern clans àrds, and a Cateni army crossed River Meadham at Muras. They’re ravaging the countryside and appear to be heading for Trusa.”
Musa’s eyes widened slightly. Ilkur took a step back, then forward again, his hands cutting the air. “Trusa, Commander?” he said. His face had gone pale. “My family’s there …”
“I know,” Altan told the man. “I have family there as well. My parents and many cousins live in Trusa or nearby.”
Musa’s jaw was clenched; Altan could see the muscles standing out against the scars on his face. He knew what the man, who had been his sub-commander in previous battles in Rumeli as well, was thinking. There aren’t troops enough in Albann Deas to keep Trusa safe against an invading army of Cateni warriors and draoi; the Great-Voice gutted the garrisons everywhere and sent them here because he was impatient and an idiot and has never been a soldier. We’re days away, too far away …
Altan sighed. And now I have to tell my officers a lie with the hope that it’s not too late already, knowing that if I’m convicted later for this mutiny, they might be taken down with me, their deaths laid at my feet. I have my orders, but I can’t obey them. Not if we’re to survive this.
Altan took a long breath. “The Great-Voice has wisely ordered us to abandon our attack on Onglse entirely and return across the Meadham to deal with this threat,” he told them. “We’ll move as quickly as we can. I want as many experienced cohorts as possible on the transports we have in the harbor by tomorrow evening—Musa, you know the ones I mean. They’ll need to be ready for a fast march as soon as we’re back on Albann.” Musa nodded. “We’ll sail down the coast for Gediz—going upriver to Muras against the Meadham’s current would take longer than marching overland, and in any case, there are no longer any supplies or reinforcements for us there.
“Ilkur, I want you to take command of three cohorts. No more. Pull everyone back to the harbor hill-fort we first took; you may have to hold it against a renewed assault by the Red-Hand once he realizes that we’ve retreated. You shouldn’t have to hold the fort more than a hand of days, certainly less than two hands. If you feel you can’t safely hold here, then fall back across the strait and wait there. As soon as our transport ships have offloaded at Gediz, I’ll send them back for you and the remaining cohorts. I’ll leave orders for you in Gediz as soon as we know the situation better.”
“We should never have come here in the first place,” Ilkur said, and Musa growled at the younger officer.
“Soldiers do as they’re ordered,” he said, “and officers don’t voice opinions about those orders, no matter what they think of them. Not even here. Not even with those officers you think agree with you.” Musa looked at Altan and nodded slightly, as if acknowledging that he shared Altan’s own thoughts. He held Altan’s gaze as he added, “But it’s good that the Great-Voice had the wisdom not to ask for only some of the troops to return, forcing us to fight on two fronts at once.” Again that slight nod came, and Altan knew that Musa had guessed at the lie he’d just been told and what its cost might be and had accepted the risk.
Altan smiled grimly. “Indeed,” he said. “It’s far better to have one strong arm than two weak ones.”
Musa tapped his cuirass in salute. “Is there anything else you need of me, Commander? If not, then I should start gathering my men. We might be able to get the troops ready and on the ships a few turns of the glass earlier if I’m there pushing my cohort officers.”
“That would be excellent if you can accomplish it, Musa. Both of you, go and put everything in motion, and send Tolga back in to me. We’ll meet you at the harbor fort later this afternoon. Everyone needs to understand that moving quickly is essential.”
And we must hope it’s not all in vain, he thought as he watched them go.
In his mind, he already had visions of Trusa burning.
26
The Swelling Tide
THE ARMY OF THE CLANS, with Voada and Maol at its head, crossed the Yarrow once more and moved slowly southward toward Trusa. Word of them, they knew, was racing ahead. There was little fighting to be done in the settlements and villages through which they passed. The Mundoa had already retreated in anticipation, or—as in a few set
tlements they passed through—the Cateni servants and slaves had already risen up and killed their Mundoan masters.
The ranks of Voada’s army were growing every day. Hands upon hands of largely untrained fighters—both men and women—joined them in the rearguard, and their families followed in the wagons of the baggage and supply train.
As they moved through the low, rolling hills of middle Albann Deas, Voada sometimes paused at the summit of a hill and looked behind them. The Yarrow Road, built by the Mundoa, followed the old Cateni path. Voada marveled at the size of the force that spread out into the misty distance along the road, spilling out on either side in a great dark mass.
Voada’s army was a wave of resentment and anger sweeping the Mundoa away from their land entirely. She nodded in satisfaction and heard the echo from her anamacha.
Each day brought them closer.
Each day the whispers and rumors and tales of Ceanndraoi Voada spread further throughout the land.
Each day she prayed to Elia that Orla would hear that name and would somehow find her way to her.
And each night, as the army slept around her, she tried to find Meir, Hakan, and Orla again in her dreams. But her dreams were too often images of war and death. The ghosts of Voice Kadir and Voice-wife Dilara haunted her still, pursuing her until she woke up screaming as their dead hands clutched at her.
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