The Sacred Band a-3

by David Anthony Durham

  Apparently so, judging by the shouts of affirmation.

  “I thank the Giver for it every day. I cannot tell you how proud I am of the army we’ve become. I know none of you would have expected to be training here, in Mein Tahalian, but I thank you for accepting the task of rebuilding this ancient chamber with me. Our time grows near. I won’t keep you from your training but a minute. I know you want to get to it.”

  She grinned at the groans they responded with. Her eyes touched on Perrin, who was watching her with undisguised admiration. All right, so she did have a way with her troops. She wondered if he understood how much they all gave her, how much she needed them to need her. Her soldiers. A different sort of family from the one she was about to fly to, but one she loved just as much.

  “I leave you only briefly. I’ll fly on my dragon. You’ve heard of her, right? The great dragon Elya? I fly on her to be at the coronation of Aliver reborn. You see? My sister raises the dead. She slays Numrek with the words out of her mouth. You think I’m scary with a blade-you should hear her sing!”

  A great noise greeted this, mock horror and praise mixed together.

  “When I return, we’ll march north and defend our nation. When I return, I will hold out my hand for you all to touch. I will bring a blessing from Aliver reborn to you.”

  Walking through the crowd as she exited, nodding and shaking hands and continuing her flow of humorous remarks, Mena wondered why she was so capable of appearing certain about things that she was not at all certain about.

  She had just stepped into the hallway when the man threw open the reinforced doors at the end of it. “Princess Mena, come… please. A Scav come from Tavirith… Something has happened.”

  The jog back to Tahalian was short and brisk, but it exposed her enough that winter’s fury ripped and snarled at her for a few ferocious moments. It always did that, but this time it felt much more sentient, intentional, personal. It poured out of the gap in the mountains that led toward Tavirith with a physical violence made no less by the fact that it was only air and tiny ice crystals. She had no idea what message awaited her, but it already felt like a punishment for the certainty she had feigned before her soldiers.

  In an anteroom just inside the inner doors of the fortress, Mena found Edell, her military secretary, standing beside a seated man. She recognized the Scav as soon as his blue eyes lifted and met hers. Kant, the same man who had shown them the route the Numrek had taken. Since Gandrel had to be fetched to translate, she stood looking at the man, unable to communicate with him for several minutes more.

  “Get it from him,” Mena said as soon as Gandrel and Perrin stepped inside, flushed from the rabid cold.

  For a few moments the two men talked the guttural confusion that was the Scav tongue, and then Gandrel stopped the man midsentence. He touched the scar on his nose as if it were a talisman against what he was about to say.” A massacre… in Tavirith.”

  The rest came out in the maddening stutter stop of translation. Kant’s words were unhurried. He stared at one object after another, as if talking to the chair and the wall and the door, not the people in the room. He had returned to Tavirith to winter, he said. He did not usually do so, but with the bounty Mena had paid him for his earlier information, he had much to trade and gamble. He arrived to find the place sacked. Houses had been smashed and gutted. Ash blackened the snow. Frozen bodies littered the ground. Hacked, defiled bodies. Limbs chopped off. A few had lost their heads. Some had been half eaten.

  “He says it was not animals that did it. Not all of it, at least. Flesh was cut away by knives.”

  “Do the Scav make war this way?” Mena asked.

  Gandrel passed her question on. The look Kant turned toward her was so full of derision she felt suddenly ashamed. “No Scav would do this. It was the Auldek.”

  “That’s madness!” Perrin said. “How could they? It’s too soon! They couldn’t have marched this far already. By his own testimony they couldn’t.”

  Edell asked, “Is he after more booty? We gave him too much before. Now he thinks we’ll pay for any fool story.”

  This got no translation, but the Scav must have read his tone.

  “He says if you don’t wish to believe him, you don’t have to,” Gandrel translated. “He saw what he saw, and he heard what the dead had to say. With his own eyes, he saw there were no tracks of marchers. A small party, perhaps a dozen of the invaders, touched down a little distance from the village and walked toward it. No tracks brought them to that point. They just dropped from the sky. They flew.”

  “Flew?”

  “Atop beasts with large footprints. Like a man’s print, but massive.”

  “This is foolishness,” Edell said. “How much does he want to go away? I’ll pay him myself.”

  The Marah captain Bledas and the Senivalian Perceven had just arrived, but they paused inside the door. Haleeven shouldered between them. He spoke to the Scav.

  “Haleeven is greeting him with respect,” Gandrel narrated. “They seem to know each other. Kant’s… telling him what he has told us… Now Kant says that he did not come for himself. He did not come for the Acacians. He came for the dead. They want vengeance. They howl for it.” Gandrel paused a moment, before finishing. “There is another thing we should know, he says. The invaders have made the turn inland. The bulk of the main force, that is.”

  “He saw this?”

  “No, but his ancestors did,” Gandrel said. “He speaks to their ghosts, remember?” He smirked, but the expression quickly faded. “The Auldek are making good time. He says they move despite the weather, day and night, slowly and steadily. That means fast in the north.”

  “And that was over irregular terrain,” Perrin said. “They may be able to move faster when they reach the Ice Fields.”

  Gandrel said something to Kant, heard his answer, and nodded. “He thinks the invaders will be out of the Ice Fields before the spring.”

  Edell began, “But do we believe him? What proof-”

  “He needs none,” Haleeven said. “I know this man. I know his people. They saw the Numrek come through. Back when you knew nothing of them, we did. The Scav did. He had relatives in the town of Vedus, the first to be slaughtered and left flaming with that vile pitch the Numrek brought with them. If he says this about Tavirith, it’s true. About the war column-it’s true.”

  “How do we know that?” Edell asked. “It was you who invited the Numrek down in the first place. You lit the torch on the pitch that burned Vedus.”

  Haleeven looked at the young soldier secretary with a measure of the disdain Kant had shown earlier. “We never meant for that to happen. I have reckoned with Kant on the past already. That’s between us. Do you doubt my word?”

  “When your word is based on stories of ghosts, yes, I’d say so.”

  “The dead don’t lie. And they don’t speak without having something to say. That’s a trait of the living.”

  Edell’s mouth twisted into a snarl, but his voice kept an official precision. “The Acacian military cannot move on the word of a Scav who claims he’s been talking to the dead. You may have sucked from the same mother’s teat as this Scav, but I didn’t. I think we need confirmation before we do anything.”

  Mena cut in before Haleeven could respond. “Peace, Haleeven. Peace, Edell. I want no arguing between you.”

  “Especially not now,” Perrin said. “Mena leaves this afternoon. Let’s give her no cause to doubt our leadership when she’s gone.”

  “Will you still go?” Bledas asked. “This changes everything.”

  “It doesn’t change anything,” Perrin said. “We’ll be here doing the things Mena would want us to. We’ll start for the Ice Fields earlier. If the enemy can travel in winter, we’ll find a way to travel in winter, too. No matter what, we’ll still meet them on the fields and defeat them.”

  Edell touched his temple, wincing. He was prone to headaches. “We should send a party to Tavirith to check the Scav’s story.�
��

  “In these conditions?” Haleeven asked, swinging an arm as if asking them to take in the view. “The howling wind from Tavirith is well known to my people. It may not stop for weeks. Marching into it would eat men alive.”

  “You both speak wisdom,” Mena said. “We should step away from this, regroup in a moment. Let’s go to the conference room. It’s warmer there, and there are the old Meinish maps to consult. We’ll plan while we can.”

  Bledas pushed his unanswered question. “Your highness, the royal coronation-will you leave to attend it?”

  The room hushed as Mena considered her answer. “Yes, I’ll go. I meant what I said-I have faith in you all. We’ll plan what we can before I fly, but I will fly.”

  She looked at Kant, who sat motionless, a bland look on his face as if he had already forgotten the confusion he had just brought with him. “Haleeven, stay with us a moment. Translate for me. I would speak with Kant about some things, just the three of us.”

  W ith the Scav’s promises still in her ears a few hours later, Mena climbed atop Elya. Her head cleared as they rose into the frigid, angry skies. Mena leaned into Elya, her cheek on the scented feathers, breathing them in. She smelled and felt so good that Mena almost could not ask of her the thing she had decided to ask. What part did Elya own in all this anyway? None of it, perhaps. In a perfect world she would be home with her babies, raising them, but this was not a perfect world. Mena was not perfection herself, so she had to rely on someone. Fair or not, it was to be her winged companion.

  They slid down along the eastern edge of the Black Mountains. The raging torrent of air funneled through the pass from Tavirith shoved them forward. They could not have fought it if they tried. Mena let Elya ride it instead, over Scatevith and the woodlands rimming the Sinks. They scattered herds of woolly oxen beneath them. From there they traced the meandering line that was the frozen River Ask. Ironic, Mena knew, that she was flying the same route Hanish Mein had attacked by, first on sleds and then on boats. She wondered what the landscape had looked like to him. To her, despite the cold, despite the coming war and the many things that roiled in her stomach… To her the frozen land beneath her was beautiful. All Acacia, all the Known World was filled with wonders worth fighting for. She had long ago decided she would die for it. Before this was all over, she would die. It seemed the only possibility, the only way through it for the people and the nation and the land she loved. The certainty of this belief made what she did next easier.

  Back when Bledas asked if she would go, her answer had not been as certain as it sounded. Now, on the wing and with the world cold beneath her, she decided upon another course. She turned Elya toward Candovia. From there she would keep flying, all the way to Tavirith and then beyond. She and Elya would see these Auldek with their own eyes.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Kelis jogged up from the town at a steady pace. He told himself to be calm, to move efficiently but not in a hurry. He had just enough time. It wouldn’t do to attract attention with too much haste, or to trip and twist an ankle or something foolish like that. He had come too far-and brought Shen and Benabe too far-to spoil it with a careless mistake.

  Since the night Kelis was attacked, they had traveled with all the stealth they could manage. It never felt like stealth, though, considering the crowd of Santoth that trailed them every step of the way. He had still not gotten used to them. He could still not quite believe that nobody outside their group saw them, but as he had no choice in the matter, he did the best he could. And the best he could do, he decided, was to ignore them.

  It seemed to work.

  They crossed through Balbara territory heading toward the trading city of Falik. It was exposed country, flat as a plate and spread like a clear night sky with a constellation of settlements, villages, and farms. The entire time, Kelis felt like any eye within twenty miles could see them. Gone was the solitude of the south. Daylong, from whatever scant shelter they found under acacia trees or beneath a geometry of cloth propped by Kelis’s iron spear, they watched movement on the horizon. Near or far, there was always somebody: herd boys switching droop-eared goats, teni root farmers piercing the ground with their pronged spears, groups of women attending to some work Kelis could not imagine, who seemed to communicate mainly in bursts of laughter.

  Once an entire caravan of merchants trudged by not thirty feet from the cluster of rocks they huddled beside. Person after person waved at them in passing, singing a story in song that they passed from one person to another. Kelis did not catch all their Balbara words, but he knew enough of their traditions to know that their travel songs tended to incorporate whatever things they saw along the way. Likely, the group huddled beside the rocks had been documented in the song. So much for stealth.

  They kept to their night travel, but it was harder here, with village or camp dogs always ready to wake the world to announce their passing. He had never seen such moisture on the plains. In the late hours of the night a knee-high layer of mist flowed across the ground like slow liquid, leaving their lower legs dripping wet. It was as if the land were dreaming itself into an ocean, making water phantoms.

  In among the stew of races and cultures of Falik their progress changed. No running through these choked streets. The only hiding they could do was to walk in plain sight, to be invisible by being visible. Kelis had known many Balbara. He had fought with them during Aliver’s war and had hunted foulthings with a few of them under Mena’s command. Now, though, he made eye contact with no one. He knew that faces, marked with the dotted lines and swirls that the Balbara found beautiful, turned and followed his progress, but he did not look. That would invite interaction, make a certainty out of what might only be a question. He just kept moving, busy, distracted, like so many others.

  They made a point of never walking together as a group of five. When they divided, the Santoth always stayed near Shen. Kelis tried to take comfort in this. They were there to protect her as well, right? They knew Aliver. Loved him. Kelis said the words. He knew them by heart. He took a measure of comfort in them, but only a tiny sliver. A moment later, he returned to fearing them more than Sinper Ou’s spies, more even than Corinn, whose reaction to the girl he could not predict, no matter how many times he tried to run through the moment in his mind.

  Once, while walking with Leeka through a market at the edge of the city, Kelis lost the old warrior. He cast about for a moment and spotted him at a stall a ways back, bent over a table, studying something. He turned the other way and watched the Santoth’s backs as they followed the others out along the road that would take them away from the city. He retraced his steps.

  Drawing up beside Leeka, he started to urge him on. The warrior said, “An Acacian blade. Look, Kelis, this was my weapon once.”

  The Balbara stall keeper standing just on the other side of the narrow table said, “Nah, nah. This one was fair trade. Not yours.” He was a short man, with eyes that were set at irregular angles. It was hard to know what he was looking at, though he did not seem troubled by it.

  “How much is it?” Leeka asked.

  The stall keeper appeared to size him up before answering. With one eye or the other, he took in Leeka’s tattered robe, the leather cord at his waist, and the small satchel of supplies draped over his shoulder, then studied his weathered face. “Too much for you, old tortoise. Too much coin; too much blade. What, would you join Aliver’s war?”

  “Aliver’s war?”

  “Aliver’s war?” The stall keeper imitated Leeka’s Mainland accent. He looked to Kelis to share the absurdity of the question with him. Kelis returned nothing. “The coming war! The war with the invaders. The Snow King’s new war!”

  Leeka blinked his green eyes. “The Snow King…”

  “I know what you want. You want to dress fancy for the coronation. Is that so? You want to impress the king, make him think you’re an old warrior?”

  “Coronation?”

  “Do you know nothing? Or is it age? Too
much wine in your young days?”

  The Balbara found Leeka’s confusion hilarious. In what must have been a local dialect, he called something over his shoulder to a group of men playing stones a little distance away. They looked up, and one of them said something back. All of them laughed. Turning back to Leeka, the man grew suddenly friendly. “See if you remember this tomorrow. Aliver Akaran is reborn. He is to become king. Finally, he will be king! He’ll fight a war and we’ll get on with it. It’s good for Talay. Good for Balbara.” The man reached out and squeezed Leeka’s shoulder with one hand, even as he made a show of guarding the sword from him with the other. “But, no, old tortoise, I can’t sell you this steel at any price. This sword needs a warrior, not a grandfather. Walk on.”

  Tension trembled on Leeka’s forehead. His eyes moved away from the man’s face and focused on the hand resting on his shoulder. For an awful moment, Kelis was sure the old warrior was going to break the man’s arm. The Balbara smiled, undeterred, but Kelis knew things about Leeka. The Leeka who had greeted them alone in a vast plain had been unreadable and strange. This Leeka was different, though Kelis had not noticed the change until now.

  “Come, brother,” he said to Leeka. “You do not need this sword.” He slipped the wedge of his hand under the Balbara’s wrist and lifted it.

  From there, at least, their journey north up the coast and then along the trade roads that ran along the western edge of the Teheen Hills proved easier. Without knowing they were doing so, they had joined a river of pilgrims flowing north, toward the shore, toward the isle of Acacia and the wonders it now purported to offer. All who could drop what they were doing to make the journey, it seemed, had done just that. Among them, the five travelers with their escort of sorcerers were just some of the many.

  I found a boat,” Kelis said on meeting Benabe out a little way from their camp.

  “Did you?”

  “Yes.” Kelis moved to pass her, but Benabe stopped him.

  She looked into his eyes for a long moment. “Perhaps we should go without them.”