by Bunch, Chris
• • •
The last two horses died, and were consigned to the pots. Two horses and perhaps a dozen sackfuls of roots we’d scrabbled from the frozen ground, to feed nearly a thousand.
We reached the great river, and Isa was with us, for it was frozen solid. We hastily crossed.
Another miracle — one of the skirmishers found a shallow backwater, and in it were three of the bewhiskered, evil-faced fish, seemingly asleep. We cut a hole in the ice, spears went down, and the fish awoke to lashing agony. But as they wriggled, smashing the ice about them, arrows flicked into their hides, and we had fresh food.
Two were over twenty feet long, the third almost forty, and we devoured them eagerly, half-cooked or even raw. Other fish were found sleeping close to the banks and we broke the ice and killed them as well.
We made several meals from those fish, enough so everyone was heartened. Perhaps it was possible to live in this spare land after all.
Men still died, but not as often. When they did, we carried their bodies until the night’s camp, and then our wizards said the words and tried to summon the flames. All too often they failed, and we had to bury them under mounds of rock. But this was better than letting them lie where they fell. And there was no more cannibalism.
• • •
The country looked slightly familiar, and I thought the weather was becoming milder. We were coming to where Bakr’s Negaret had been camped. It might have been a hundred years ago. I remembered how good that antelope tasted we’d hunted, and if Isa was truly on our side, perhaps there’d be game wintering over here, and who cared if it was a bit gaunt. We could rough-tan their hides, and that would give us better footwear and coats for the icy mountain passes. I put scouts far ahead of the formation to make sure we saw any game before it saw us.
We found better meat than I’d hoped. Our scouts reported seventy black, circular tents in a large hollow: Negaret. I guessed they might be having one of their gatherings, their riets.
My Brethren sensed no magical wards, so the Negaret weren’t on their guard, never imagining there’d be any enemy this deep in the suebi. I sent the Ureyan Lancers to sweep wide around them and attack from the rear.
I had the former skirmishers, such men as they recommended, and the dismounted Hussars move forward as my main attack element, and held the rest of my column about a mile in the rear, guarded by the Heavy Cavalry.
It wasn’t a riet, I learned from the scouts who’d crept close, but a camp of Negaret women and children, safe while their men harried the outlanders.
There were only a handful of sentries, just boys, and they were quickly silenced. We swept down from the heights around the camp screaming battle cries.
The Negaret women and even children poured out with what weapons they had, sometimes swords, more often butcher’s implements or even sticks. They fought bravely, but we vastly outnumbered them. They fell back through their tents, and the Ureyan Lancers took them from behind.
Some fled into the suebi, others tried to fight on and were cut down or disarmed; still more held up their hands, knowing what horrors were about to come.
I saw a man reach for a woman, who struck him down and kicked him. Other officers and warrants were shouting, screaming, and the bloodlust died, a little. Before it could rise again, we beat the men back into ranks and began the systematic looting of the camp, working in squads, for a man alone is more likely to murder and rape than when he’s with his fellows under tight control.
We took food, drink, weapons, heavy clothes, all the boots that fit, blankets, packs, horses. I wanted the cook pots, sleeping robes, and tents that could be made small through magic, but one of the women said their nevraids were at the battle, and none knew how to work the magic. Of course she was lying, but what was I to do? Put her, or others, to torture?
It was almost dusk when I ordered the men to march on. We could have, should have, stayed the night in the comfort of the tents. But I doubted I could keep control of my soldiers with enemy women, particularly those of the loathed Negaret, close. Not that I was, or am, innocent of crimes of war. Perhaps the Negaret still had their tents and cookware. But what could they prepare in them? And how would they hunt for game? I refused to admit pity, any more than I permitted that weakness when I abandoned our sick.
At least, I thought to console myself, the women and children of Jedaz Bakr and the other Negaret who’d befriended us hadn’t been at this camp. Not that it would have mattered if they had.
• • •
The plains became foothills, and the mountains drew closer, dark shadows through the clouds. The weather was warmer, and it rained constantly. The rivers beside the rough trail were in full flood, and fording the creeks crisscrossing our track became a challenge.
One day we reached a clearing I thought I remembered, where men in dark armor had been waiting for me. But if not, it was as good a place as any to announce we’d crossed the border. Maisir was behind us. We were in the Border Lands, which Numantia had long claimed for its own.
Cheers rang, and I ordered an extra ration of the Negaret’s grain, which we ground and added hot water to.
Over us hung the silent mountains.
• • •
The climb went on and on. Once more we were surrounded by snow, but it didn’t matter as much, for that signified we were farther away from Maisir, closer to our homeland.
It stormed, and we found shelter in a canyon for a day? A week? Time became meaningless in the grayness. Our sturdy Negaret horses could go no more, and we slaughtered and rough-butchered them. Most of the meat we froze, but I permitted one great feast.
Soon enough all around us would be nothing but cold, and the memory of that meal would have to warm.
The storm ended, and we went on.
We heated snow water in whatever served as a canteen, mixed that with grain we’d mashed up, and ate it as we marched. The way was now narrow, with high cliffs to one side and emptiness on the other. Men began dying again, of the cold, or a stupid fall they wouldn’t have taken if they had had proper strength.
Sometimes, scrabbling for a hold as they fell, they found another man’s leg, and pulled him over the edge with them, to tumble screaming into white nothingness.
We reached the head of the pass and started downhill, and again we rejoiced. I was happier than most, for I’d been certain no body of soldiers could make this passing without being destroyed. I’d been wrong, and humbly swore I’d never forget this triumph of the spirit. Men, properly led or leading themselves with a strong will and heart, can storm the very heavens.
A day was simple: Wake from the shivering half-sleep you’d passed the night in. Hope someone nearby had found enough wood for a fire, so you could melt snow water for your “tea.” Pick up your pack and weapon and stumble on, one foot in front of the other, over and over, sucking air, not letting yourself fall, then another step, and another, and another. When a warrant shouted stop near dark, eat whatever scraps you and your mess-mates had, or whatever had been doled out. Try to find a place out of the wind, close to a fire if you were very fortunate, and spread whatever blanket or canvas you had, and slip into a nightmare-ridden drowse. Wake when you were kicked for guard duty, or to tend a fire, and pray for dawn. Again and again, over and over.
On this dreary trek, I had time to brood about the past, then to do something I was most uncertain at: think. About who I was, why I was, and consider coldly the endless disasters, from Kallio to the present. Catastrophes, in various shapes, had been constant since I’d helped the Emperor Tenedos seize the throne.
I couldn’t believe we’d gone against nature when we overthrew the stumbling morons of the Council of Ten. But why had there been nothing but tragedies ever since?
The strongest memory that kept returning, and I kept trying to push away, was of Yonge’s questions before he vanished. Reluctantly, for there was nothing else to hold my mind but the dirty snow I was plodding through, the wind down my back, and my so
dden clothing, I considered Yonge’s sardonic queries.
Quite suddenly, the answer came, an answer that should’ve been obvious. Evidence assembled itself, things Yonge hadn’t been privy to.
I began with the night the emperor had gotten me to volunteer to enter Chardin Sher’s fortress, spill a certain potion, and say certain words that brought up that nightmare demon from the burning hells under the earth.
Tenedos had said that for the spell to work, the powers he’d contacted wanted someone Tenedos loved to willingly perform a great service that could cost his life. Of course that meant me, and of course I volunteered.
But there had been more. He’d said this “power,” which I thought to be that terrible monster from under the mountain, had another price, and Tenedos’s words came clearly: You may not ask what its price is, but it is terrible, but not to be paid for some time to come, fortunately.
A price. A sacrifice? That word sprang into my mind. This was appalling. My thoughts were traitors to the country I served.
No, I reminded myself. My inner oath, the oath of my proud generations, was to Numantia. But the oath I had sworn was to the Emperor Tenedos. Very well then. I was being disloyal to him.
I returned once again to Yonge’s questions.
Why had Tenedos waited so long to cast the spell that made the trees become stranglers at Dabormida, wait until heavy cavalry units and Yonge’s skirmishers had spent themselves bloodily against the Kallian defenses?
Did the casting of that spell also require a price? A price not in gold or in servitude, but in blood? Of course, my mind said contemptuously. What sort of debt do you think a man who loudly espouses vassalship to Saionji the Destroyer would incur?
I remembered the conversation I’d had in Polycittara, in the seer scholar Arimondi Hami’s cell, and his words came back very precisely. A friend of Chardin Sher’s mage Mikael Yanthlus, Hami asked if I thought one man could pay a high enough price to call forth the demon that destroyed Yanthlus, Sher, and their mountaintop citadel.
I also remembered when I’d tried to ask the emperor about Hami’s conjecture and was forbidden to mention the subject. There had been a price the emperor couldn’t discuss, not with the person who was the nearest thing he had to a friend.
Price … I thought of how nervous the emperor had been the longer war took to come, and then the sudden inexplicable plague that had appeared in Hermonassa, slain a half a million, then vanished as strangely as it had come.
Blood. Could blood — enough blood — satisfy any demon, make it do anything its summoner wished? Was this Laish Tenedos’s great secret, something he’d deduced in his far wanderings and studies with dark sages?
If his spells required blood, did that mean he must be willing to sacrifice anything, including his own army, for eventual victory? To feed a mountainous, V-shaped demon? Or to feed Saionji herself?
Must the emperor make constant blood sacrifice to the dark Destroyer to hold his power, either magical or temporal?
Yonge had warned me after Tenedos had rejected our idea to free the Maisirian peasants.
But why these disasters, then? After all this slaughter, all this destruction in Maisir, wouldn’t the goddess be well pleased with her servant?
Again, Yonge’s voice came, saying that when Tenedos rejected chaos, rejected unleashing the peasants against their masters, Saionji turned away from him. Certainly she must have welcomed the slaughter, but just as a drunkard who is grateful for a pint of wine at first soon thinks it’s his due, the goddess of destruction wanted more: utter chaos, with each man’s hand turned against his better.
Was Tenedos scrabbling to regain her favor? Or had he gone beyond that? Was his power now completely grounded in blood, in disaster?
And I’d sworn an oath, an oath to help in whatever he endeavored, my mind ironically reminded me. Did that include helping him destroy Numantia, if it came to that?
Thank Irisu that Domina Bikaner came with a problem requiring my immediate attention, so I wasn’t forced to answer that question. For the moment.
• • •
Now we moved faster, for we were marching downhill, and I swear I could smell Numantia’s welcome warmth. But almost a third of us who’d marched away from Oswy were dead.
• • •
I stared downslope at the huge temple and the small village where we’d been fed and sheltered, and where we’d obtained our zebus. I remembered that young Speaker who wore no more than a summer robe against the snow, and the riddle he’d told me. I also remembered Yonge’s fear and hatred, and wondered what demoniac curses might be brought against us, six hundred men who surely wouldn’t be welcome.
But there was no choice, and so I went ahead, flanked by Svalbard and Curti, gathering my stuporous wits, trying to think of words that might grant us safe passage.
But I needed none. Before, the temple had been dark, foreboding. Now it gleamed with bright lights, and soft music floated toward me. There was a huge, winding stone staircase, with fabulous beasts on the balustrades and, at the top, enormous stone doors. I should have felt fear, trepidation, after Yonge’s snarl of how he hated these villagers, their temple, and most especially those who have some sort of tin god whispering in their ear and think they’ve been adopted into his son-of-a-bitching family. I recalled, too, him saying that he and three of his men, all wounded, had been turned away by the Speaker’s father.
The doors swung open as I approached, and I knew they couldn’t be of stone to have moved so easily. A man came out, a big man, but old, bearded, with still-dark waist-length hair, floating like silk in the wind. I thought I knew him, but that was impossible.
“I bid you and your soldiers welcome, Numantian.”
I bowed. “Thank you. But there are far more than we three.”
“I know. I counted them as they came across the glacier. Five hundred ninety-three warriors, women, and children, by my figuring.”
“You’re correct,” I said, covering amazement. “We accept, gratefully. We ask only a night’s lodging, and perhaps a place to prepare our rations, and we’ll march on at first light, without disturbing anyone.”
“I bade you welcome, and it would be a poor host who wasn’t prepared to feed his guests. Summon your command, if you would.”
I nodded to Curti, who saluted and trotted back down the staircase. The big man looked at Svalbard and me.
“Your companion may be harboring suspicious thoughts of my intent, although how one man could harm as many soldiers as you lead seems hard to imagine. Does it not, great Svalbard?”
The big man jolted, looked afraid, then forced resolve. “Not f’r a magician like you, which I know you to be, knowin’ my name an’ such.”
The man inclined his head. “It might be possible. If I were a wizard. You’re welcome to post guards if you wish, and those two men with you who’re students of magic, even if they’re not quite sages, may wish to lay any spells they care to. It matters not.”
“I don’t see any purpose in guards,” I said. “You are a sorcerer, and if you think my two men nothing but acolytes, then we’re in your power anyway. I’d rather my soldiers come in out of the weather. If you have evil intent, at least we die together. And warm.”
Of course I had no intention of putting myself completely in this man’s powers. But there wasn’t any reason not to let him think I’d lowered my guard.
“I’m honored at the trust,” he said. “You and your men will be more than warm. Please enter.”
“I thank you,” I said, bowing once more. “I am First Tribune Damastes á Cimabue, General of — ”
“I know you,” the man said. “And I know your army. All of it. Come inside.” He made no move to give me his name.
I looked up the hill, saw my men coming toward me, less an army than a ruin, and walked inside, feeling no fear at all. I touched the doors as I passed. They were the heaviest stone.
• • •
The temple was even larger than I’d th
ought, extending for many levels underground, stone ramps curving down and down. There were floors of nothing but small one-man stone cells, perhaps thousands of them, which we were offered as bedrooms. There was an oil lantern and a straw mat in each, and they were spotlessly clean, but smelled old, disused.
“These were for your monks?” I guessed.
“You might have called them that,” the man said.
“How many live here now?”
The man smiled, but didn’t answer. He said for my men to leave their weapons, packs, and outerwear in their cells, unless they felt particularly fearful, and to go down one more level. They would come to two doors. Men were to take the one on the left, our few women the one on the right. He said a clean man would be even hungrier.
Those chambers were high-ceilinged, solid stone, and had changing rooms with stone benches, where we left our clothes, and one great room with stone tubs four feet deep and twenty feet across. Naked, I felt my skin burn, as it always did when I came inside after spending a long time out of doors. I stepped down into a tub and let the bubbling water, just uncomfortably hot, lave me. There was no soap, but bars of sandstone we could scrub with.
I ran my fingers through my hair and beard again and again, trying to comb them, but not making a very good job of it. As I did, tangles, knots of hair came away, and I was reminded once more of how I was aging.
If it weren’t for my howling gut, I could’ve spent the rest of my life in that stone tub, but I was forced out.
As I walked back to the changing room, a blast of hot, perfumed air caught me, and I was dry. More than dry, I realized, as I reflexively started to scratch, a habit we all had, then realized there was nothing biting me.
A greater marvel was our clothes. Ashamed of our rags, we’d tried to stack them neatly when we stripped. Now they were folded as if a laundress had been at them, and so someone invisible had, for they were clean, rips and tears not just mended, but the cloth seamlessly joined together. They were still stained and battered, but lice-free.