The False Martyr

by H. Nathan Wilcox

The valati paused as the men mumbled, “May the Order protect us,” into their chests.

  “The Order is with you this day,” the di valati continued when the response was complete. “You are under Its care for you do Its will.” With that, he lowered his hands and stepped back. The soldiers muttered to themselves, but Ipid was sure that their resolution increased, that their spines stiffened, shoulders rose.

  It was his turn. Ipid took a deep breath and gripped the pommel of the sword at his side, though he was not sure if he had the strength to draw the thing should such be required. “We do this to reunite our shattered nation,” he yelled, voice rising to the men gathered around and the servants that stood outside them, hoping to see the soldiers off. “We do this to protect our lands from traitors who wish to tear it apart. We do this to punish those who murdered our brothers, who massacred families for no crime other than doing what must be done to preserve our nation. We do this for the Order. And we do it for justice.”

  The gathered soldiers yelled their agreement in a single bellow.

  “About, face,” Marshal Landon called when the sound died. The men turned as one, armor rattling like the cog of the world’s largest gear falling into place. A pathway appeared between the men as they formed two sets of rows one in front of each of the wizards. Marshal Landon walked between them and took a place four men back in the center of the stack to the right. The men held up their shields before them to create a wall, protecting themselves from the empty courtyard before them.

  Ipid looked up past them, found the eyes of Eia then Naidi. His stomach churned, his heart hammered, his head swooned, but he nodded. His emotions disappeared. For a moment, he knew calm. His breath came in a steady stream. His body relaxed. His eyes watched the soldiers before him without concern as their shields came down and their lines wavered. Before them, two great black discs appeared, and all the emotions came flooding back.

  The soldiers raised their shields, held out their swords, and charged through the portals. Ipid followed. Before he even had time to think about what waited on the other side, he was through the spinning blackness and being torn apart by the chaos that defined it. His foot came down on stones. His eyes adjusted from the brightness of the day to the dimness of a room and focused on a battle that was already over.

  Throughout the Dorington Directorate Hall, men still fought, but there was no point to their struggle. As Ipid had planned and expected, the self-proclaimed Chancellor of the South had prepared no defense against the possibility of forty knights charging from thin air into the middle of his conference chamber. There had been perhaps an equal number of soldiers in the room when the portals had opened, the majority of them officers in uniforms rather than armor. All but a handful were already dead. Caught entirely unprepared, their blood now painted the room with the colors of Dorington. The red of their banner was splattered onto the walls, formed pools across the floor, marked the statues and paintings, covered the dead and dying.

  Eia’s portal had placed Ipid and his Darthur protectors at the far end of the hall near its entrance in a great open space where the benches would have been set for those seeking an audience with the directors. What fighting remained was taking place twenty paces away around the great table where Lord Bairn and his advisors had been planning how to meet the force that was descending upon them from Aldon and Denton. Those forces had been sent from the west as a distraction to bring Bairn and his officers together and concentrate their attention on their walls. Vontel had told them when those men would be gathered to discuss that threat so that this one blow would be the only one required. The knights had trained for days. The planning had been meticulous. It had worked to cataclysmic perfection.

  Scanning the carnage, forcing himself to understand it, Ipid watched an elderly man in a dark suit and red scarf fall as a blade sliced across his chest so that his shirt soon matched his scarf and vest. Past him, two armored guards with broad-bladed spears tried to surrender and were cut down before their spears found the stones. At the same time, one of the thin rapiers that were still popular among the more militant nobility of the south snuck between the rings of a knight’s armor and found his heart. The officer who held the sword fell with the man he’d killed as a knight avenged his comrad by driving his blade through his killer’s back. Another officer dropped his weapon and was rewarded with a blow that nearly took his head. It was the same throughout the room. The knights were not unscathed – beyond the man who’d been killed, a few were nursing gashes to arms or legs – but the result was far worse for the southerners. Ipid had ordered that any man who raised or held a weapon was to die. They had borne arms against their countrymen and the rightful Chancellor, the sentence was death. The knights carried it out.

  It created a miasma of violence that Ipid’s senses could not hope to process. Through all the blood and carnage, the world became a blur. The screams and crashes faded into a buzz. Everything was clouded and dispersed by a shock so complete that he did not hear the doors crash open behind him, barely noticed the Darthur turning, did not recognize the battle cry coming from men who were not his own.

  A storm of soldiers ran through the double doors that marked the entrance to the hall, catching the, still disoriented Darthur, out of position, leaving Ipid exposed to the tall, handsome young man who led the charge. The officer closed so that Ipid could see the color of his eyes. A long, thin blade that might have split chains came round, rang against the heavy plate covering his chest, and slid to the side. Only then did Ipid try to dodge, but he was never meant to wear armor. His feet caught. He fell backward. The blade slashed against the inside of his arm as its owner brought it round.

  Pain lanced through Ipid, seeming to slice all the way up his shoulder to his neck and head. Blood splattered across his armor. Then he hit the ground all at once, carried down by the weight of his armor. The wind rushed from him. His head bounced. The world spun as he struggled to breathe, to move, to focus. The only thing he could see was the handsome soldier, who looked so much like Dasen through the blur of his eyes, as he brought the slim blade around to finish him.

  The man was engulfed in flame. Seemingly from the very floor, a tower of fire rose to engulf the officer just as his blade swept down. The heat was such that it pounded Ipid even as he laid below it. The officer did not scream. The flame came too fast, consumed him too quickly for a sound to escape his mouth. He flailed for no more than heartbeats before he collapsed into ash and cinders and bone.

  Turning his head, Ipid saw the source of his salvation. It was Eia. She was smiling.

  Chapter 58

  The 45th Day of Summer

  “I need to stitch this,” the surgeon mumbled more to himself than to Ipid. “It’s not that deep, but it won’t heal properly unless it’s closed.” He was in his middle years, likely to oldest person beyond Ipid to have made this trip. Short and wiry, he seemed almost as lost in his armor as the man he tended, though Ipid supposed that, as a military surgeon, he had actually worn the stuff before. His hair was trimmed short, high widow’s peaks showing through the stubble. His pointed face was lost under Ipid’s arm where he inspected the cut, poking and painfully dabbing away blood.

  “Later,” Ipid growled through gnashing teeth. He felt like his entire arm was on fire. The cut itself throbbed like he couldn’t believe, making it hard to concentrate on anything. His arm and side were covered with red slowly drying into ruddy brown. His hand was sticky with the stuff, and he could feel it clinging to his cheek and neck, tightening as it dried. Rotten and metallic, it filled his nostrils, so that his stomach roiled. Still, he knew that he needed to act quickly. Everything had been carefully timed. Already they had lost too much of that time. He could not lose more to this idiotic injury.

  “It needs to be stitched, Lord Chancellor,” the man said as he moved his head around to look at his patient. He was crouched down, the posture obviously uncomfortable in the heavy armor, but his patient sat on the ground, his patient was the Chancellor, so
that is where he served him.

  “Bandage it,” Ipid growled. “There are other men worse off than me.” Though his desire to avoid the stitches had nothing to do with the injuries suffered by the knights, Ipid knew that was what great leaders were supposed to say.

  Beside him, Eia watched from the downturned shadows of her hood. Her eyes showed concern, but there was the hint of a smile, maybe admiration. Ipid tried to give her a brave grin, but it withered as he remembered her expression as she watched that young officer burn. Certainly, she had saved his life, but how could anyone smile at seeing that? It was an image in many ways more horrible than the sight of the man engulfed in flame.

  His attempt at a smile was fully abandoned as pain overtook his every sense. The surgeon pulled a cloth tight around the cut. It sent spasms through him that made spots race before his eyes. He clenched his teeth until they might crack. His every muscle tensed. Sweat poured from him, though he had not exerted himself beyond falling on his ass.

  “Done,” the surgeon declared as he tied off the bandage. Ipid released the breath he had been holding and gasped for more. “That will hold for a while, but we should fix it properly before the day is out.” He looked across the room to a line of wounded knights that had formed on the other side, thoughts already turning to the men who were supposed to be his primary concern. “That bandage will probably be soaked through in an hour, maybe you’ll let me stitch it then.”

  “Maybe,” Ipid said without separating his gnashing teeth.

  “I can take the pain,” Eia whispered in his ear as she helped him to his feet. “Or at least block you from feeling it.”

  Ipid knew what she offered. It was what she did almost every night so that he could sleep. She blocked his mind from the worries that plagued it. He was typically asleep a few seconds later, but he could not afford that now. The pain will help, he told himself. It will help you focus on what you have to do. It will keep you angry, make you willing to do what must be done.

  “Not now,” he said softly and turned from her. For the purposes of this mission, she was supposed to be another of the te-am ‘eiruh, the one that had accompanied him three weeks before. Already, she had likely exposed the ruse by falling to his side and doting over him like he might die from the slash in his arm. Still, if there were those that had not yet made the connection, he did not want to fuel the fires.

  Taking a step away from Eia, the pile of ashes and bone, the splatters of his own blood, he looked out at the room around him. The fight was over. The surge of men from the adjoining room had been dealt with quickly once the Darthur and Eia recovered from their shock. Between them, the onslaught had been deterred with no injury more serious than the gash in Ipid’s arm. He was sure the same could not be said for the officers and guards who had rushed to the aid of their governor. Yet Ipid could see nothing of that carnage through the wall that the Darthur formed with their bodies to block the door, and he could only hope that the man he needed from that room had not been foolish enough to join the ill-fated charge.

  That was the first order of business, but Ipid gave in to his curiosity before pursuing it. He scanned the room behind him. Just as in Thoren, it was the old throne room of the lords who had declared themselves kings of the south prior to Unification. This, however, was nearly twice the size and barren. It appeared that almost every piece of furniture had been removed – the chairs from the gallery, the desks for the secretaries – so that only the great, long council table remained. Like Thoren, a dais had been constructed for the table, but it had been abandoned. The thirty foot table – through what must have been extraordinary effort – had been removed from the dais and set before it. A few chairs had been placed around it, but not nearly enough for the number of advisors that had been in the room. Around it, Ipid could trace the course of the battle.

  Naidi and Eia had placed the soldiers perfectly. One portal had opened just before the table. The knights rushing through had cut down officers and advisors before they knew what was happening. Their bodies were piled around the wooden surface like wheat newly cut in a field. Blood ran across the floor and dripped from the table where more than a few of the dead had sprawled as the life ran from them. The second portal had opened at the other end of the room, almost exactly where Ipid stood. The men who rushed from it had been positioned to take the guards who lined the walls. Like the officers, they slumped in their armor almost exactly where they had stood.

  Knights wandered around those bodies, kicking them over, ensuring that they breathed no more, solemnly finishing those that did. Their faces were grim, pale, screwed up tight. Most of them had never killed before, had never been part of something like this. They looked like Ipid felt. He wanted to drop to the tiles at his feet and cry, to release his stomach, to scream. Instead, he tightened his jaw and forced himself to admire the skill and bravery of the men who served him.

  His anger spiked as his eyes found the source of all this suffering. Gathered with a handful of old men at the back of the room, surrounded by knights so that Ipid could barely see him, was the would-be Chancellor of the South, Tares Bairn. He was staring wide-eyed from between the knights, looking like nothing more than the defeated old man he was. Ipid almost felt sorry for him as he followed his darting eyes to the indistinct bodies of two of the men lying dead on the floor – no doubt his sons. Despite himself, Ipid smirked at that. After what that bastard had done, he had no right to sympathy. And his life was only going to get worse before it ended in a few short hours.

  Turning from that scene, trying to wash it from his mind so that it would not overpower him, Ipid looked at the backs of the Darthur before him. “Did you leave this room?” he asked in Darthur.

  “No, Uhram Machtur,” one of the warriors bellowed without turning, using a term the Darthur had taken to calling him, which meant ‘leader of the honorable’.

  “Let me through.”

  “It is not safe,” the same man said. “There are still many soldiers in the other room. We would kill them, but you told us not to leave this room. They cower in their like sheep. Shall we rid you of them?”

  “No! I need those men.” He pushed his way through the warriors. The Darthur allowed him to pass but gathered around him, moving with him to the door. Ipid just groaned. “Captain Olinse,” he yelled into the room. “It is time. Step forward.”

  It took far longer than Ipid would have liked for the man to make himself known – he counted the heartbeats by the throb in his arm. He was just about to yell again when a man in an officer’s uniform stepped from the crowd. The others moved carefully away from him and eyed him warily. Several of the men were splattered with blood, a few were on the ground or doubled over moaning with injuries. Clearly some of them had been part of the attack that had nearly ended Ipid’s life, but true to their word, the Darthur had not pursued them into the other room when they retreated. Ipid wondered what to do with them now. He had declared that any man who raised arms against him must die, but if he killed every officer in the city, there’d be no one to bring the common soldiers into line.

  “Are you prepared to assume command, Captain?” Ipid asked, deciding that the double standard was the lesser evil. He took a step forward. His foot hit something. Glancing down, he saw the bodies – how had he not noticed them before? There were only a dozen, maybe fifteen, and the Darthur had not needed to ensure they were no longer breathing. Their bodies were mangled and twisted, blood slick under his boots.

  Fighting nausea, Ipid returned his attention to the room before him and hoped that none of the officers in the other room had noticed his hesitation. They retracted, nearly falling over themselves. Ipid marveled at the power of his stare, until he saw that Eia had broken through the warriors and come to stand at his side. Clearly, the officers had seen what the wizard could do. Ipid was almost relieved that it was not him that had invoked such fear.

  “Sir . . . I mean, Lord Chancellor . . . sir, I . . . I am, sir,” Captain Olinse stuttered. He was a well-
built man in his thirties with shoulders that filled his uniform, a thick neck, and big hands, but he was far from handsome. His face was lumpy, skin pock-marked and blotchy, nose bulbous and rough, teeth a tangle on the bottom and overbite above. His eyes were pale almost lost under his heavy brow, but they looked clever, and Ipid didn’t care about any of his other feature. Vontel had said the man was capable and ambitious. He had started disgruntled by being passed over for promotion and ended mutinous when a favorite cousin – and lover? – had been killed in the purge. At least that was the story Vontel wove. Now, it was time to find the truth.

  “Are you prepared to assume command?” Ipid asked again with a sharper edge.

  “Lord Chancellor, I am, sir!” the officer snapped back and saluted.

  Ipid eyed the men around the captain. Most looked confused, a few pleased, others murderous. “Gentlemen,” Ipid called, scanning the officers. He stepped over a body, trying not to see it, and walked into the room. Eia and the Darthur accompanied him. The waiting soldiers cowered back from them. “This is your new commander. I hereby name him High Commander of the Dorington garrison and surrounding defenses. Does any man here object to or question his command?”

  Only one of the officers had the temerity to do something with his head other than shake it. The dapper older man, whose uniform marked him as the highest ranking officer in the room, scowled and nodded absently. Ipid gestured and a warrior ended the dissent. The old man sputtered as he clutched at the knife standing from his chest. The others gasped, eyes wide, heads shaking vigorously.

  “If we are then in agreement as to the new command structure, you will do as Commander Olinse asks without question or hesitation.” Nods this time.

  “Lord Chancellor,” Commander Olinse’ voice rose over the fear. “What are your orders, sir?”

  “Secure the city. Martial law is now in effect. A curfew will begin immediately. Anyone found on the street by sunset will be arrested. Bring your men down from the walls and prepare to meet your brothers when they arrive from Denton. You will find them places to sleep in your barracks or local houses. And make preparations for your own departure. All but two hundred of the men gathered here will accompany Field Marshal Landon to join the invaders. We take with us any and all food and provisions that have been gathered for the pending siege.”