by Victor Milán
“No. I have some grasp of tactics, which is more than most of my brother and sister nobles can boast. They think there’s nothing more to war than charging straight ahead and striking hard blows. Our victories are really won by the courage of my men, my Knights-Brother and Ordinaries. They’re the heroes the bards should sing about.”
“You are too! I won’t let you deny yourself credit.”
“Well—maybe. But while we Companions have a gift for derring-do, Voyvod Karyl mastered war in every aspect. He took good care of his troops, and gave good value to his employers. In short: he won battles.”
He grimaced.
“Until the last. When we attacked his already-disordered Legion from behind.”
“But if he was a traitor—”
“He wasn’t.”
Jaume sat up. He smoothed his hair back from his face and did not look at her.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” he said. “Before his Legion crossed the frontier from Slavia into Alemania, the war was lost. We’d lost. His living fortresses’ horns turned the Wheel toward us.”
“Three-horns,” Melodía breathed.
Even in one as indifferent to dinosaurs as she normally was, Triceratops horridus awoke awe. She knew the giant hornfaces existed, on the Ovdan plateau and eastward across vast Aphrodite Terra. Yet to Nuevaropa they seemed to belong in Faerie tales—as wonderful and terrifying as the hada themselves.
“Yes,” Jaume said. “With them, Karyl won us time to bolster Prinz Eugen’s army with the Companions and a regiment of Nodosaur infantry. We were poised to crush the Princes’ forces on the Hassling.”
“But what about Karyl plotting to betray the Empire? Didn’t he mean to seize the Fangèd Throne itself?”
“As hard as I looked,” Jaume said, “I never found the slightest scrap of evidence he intended anything but perfect faith. And believe me, I wanted to.”
“Then why did you attack him?” she asked.
“Orders. When the White River Legion rode into the midst of the stream and was fully engaged with von Augenfelsen’s men, we couched our lances and charged Karyl’s monsters. From behind. Fearsome as they are, those horns and the neck-frills face forward. They never had a chance.”
“So it was Prinz Eugen?” she asked, eager to believe ill of a distant cousin she had never met, rather than … anyone she knew and cared for. “He ordered this, this treacherous attack?”
“No,” Jaume said relentlessly. “Him I might have disobeyed. And taken the consequences, however stark.”
She stared at him. The strange separation was back, stronger than before. They might as well have been fully clothed; there was no longer intimacy between them. She mourned that loss.
But she couldn’t let go. “Why didn’t you disobey? The Creators themselves tell us to defy wicked or unlawful commands. Not that I believe in them, of course. But it’s in the Books, plain as day.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. They had few arguments, and her determined atheism had caused most of them. She knew she was right. But as the head of a religious order and a Prince of the Church, he had no choice but to disagree.
“You’re right,” he said. “I’m bound by law and honor alike to disobey wrongful orders. But I’ve sworn loyalty to the Fangèd Throne. And to the man who occupies it, my Emperor and my uncle.”
She felt sick. “You can’t be saying—”
“Yes. The scroll the Prince-Marshal sent was addressed to me personally, quite explicit, and sealed with the Tyrant’s Head.”
“But why?”
“The Princes offered peace. With a price: Karyl’s head. Many in our camp would have happily paid. Some out of jealousy at his success, some fearful of the power he was amassing, with this terrifying new means of waging war and the wealth it showered on his little March. It seems the same sentiments found voice at court. And were whispered again and again in the palace corridors until someone with your father’s ear—poured poison in it.”
She buried her face in her hands. Hot tears streamed between her fingers.
“It may sound like the same justification the Princes’ Party used to cover treason. But it’s true: someone gave your father bad advice. And this same person or persons might be leading His Majesty toward disaster. I’m terribly afraid the war we’re about to begin will have the opposite effect from what Felipe intends: that far from dousing the flames of rebellion, it will spread them across Nuevaropa.”
Melodía jumped to her feet, unthinkingly snatching her hand from his.
“But this is just awful,” she said, pacing around the room.
“I agree,” he said.
“I wish I could doubt what you’re telling me. But I can’t. My father would never do anything but what he deeply felt was right. The trouble is, once he feels something, he doesn’t think about it anymore. He doesn’t question himself.”
Jaume smiled without joy. “Not to second-guess oneself can be a gift.”
“But now it may curse us all.”
She drew a deep breath.
“One thing’s clear,” she said. “You mustn’t lead the expeditionary force out the gates tomorrow.”
He blinked as if she’d slapped him. “How do you reckon that?”
“Isn’t it obvious? You don’t believe in it. We both know it will cause political instability—not to mention the suffering and loss of life. It’s war. And now you tell me my father compromised your honor and your conscience. How can you serve him in this, when you know it’s wrong?”
“Because he’s my Emperor.”
She whirled on him. “But what about your duty to the Lady? To truth? Of course my father’s been led astray. He always listens to the last person to tell him what he wants to hear. And this new confessor of his, this Fray Jerónimo no one knows anything about, even the Church—I’ll bet he’s behind it all!”
She came back to the bed and knelt before her lover. She took his right hand. She felt its strength, and the calluses of countless hours plying lute, sword, and lance.
“You can stop this, Jaume,” she said. She felt as if she was a little girl again, begging a favor from her dashing older cousin. “Please.”
“But I can’t.”
“But you can. You’re not just the marshal leading the expedition. You’re Condestable Imperial now, ruler of all Nuevaropa’s forces. My father declared you both, right there on the lists.”
“That’s true,” he said.
“So order the army to stand down. Send the glory seekers and greedy grandes packing. March the Nodosaurs back to their barracks in the Barrelmakers’ District. Put an end to the madness.”
“If I gave such orders, your father would simply sack me.”
“He wouldn’t dare! You’re his champion!”
Jaume shook his head. “We both know Felipe better than that. He’s stubborn as an old nosehorn bull when he’s set his heart to something.”
“Then let him sack you! So what?”
She was truly angry now. How can he keep arguing with me, when his heart knows I’m right?
“Then the Ejército Corregir will march out of the Firefly Palace’s Imperial Gate with a different mariscal at its head. Tomorrow, or at the latest, the day after.”
“Then let it. At least you’ll spare yourself having to … to do more evil on my father’s account.”
Jaume put his free hand over hers.
“Would you rather see the Duke von Hornberg command the expedition?”
She might have pointed out that Falk’s broken arm had led the Emperor to release him from his oath, and even forbid him outright to ride with the army. But she had spun beyond objection. Fury rose up to possess her as completely as lust had so short a time before. The sense of betrayal burned like hot oil on her skin. How does he dare? I don’t want him doing this!
“Yes!” she shouted through tears. “Anything but see you do it!”
“I must. It’s my duty.”
She jumped from the bed and turned
away. Snatching her gown from the chair back where he had tossed it, she swept it imperiously around her shoulders.
“Then we are done here,” she said to the wall. “I see that my efforts are wasted. I trust my lord Count will see himself out.”
She stood, not moving, not seeing, now scarcely even feeling as he rose, gathered his clothes, and walked naked into the hall.
He closed the door as softly as he might kiss her closed eyelids.
Melodía threw herself facedown on the bed and cried until it felt as if her ribs had cracked.
Chapter 20
Titán espinoso, Spine-Backed Titan—Diplodocus longus. Quadrupedal herbivore, Nuevaropa’s longest titan; grows to 30 meters and 20 tonnes. Exceedingly long neck tipped with a small head; whiplike tail. Distinguished by a row of dorsal spines.
—THE BOOK OF TRUE NAMES
“Am I talking to myself here?” Rob asked, puffing slightly as he approached the hilltop. All he saw before him was white sky and his companion’s cloaked back.
Having grown tired of trying to elicit details about Karyl’s past, he’d been imparting his own autobiography. Or trying to. Karyl vanished over the rise.
Nothing. Just the wind whistling among the thorny weeds of the ditch. Rob scowled and grunted and tugged on Nell’s lead to make the hook-horn step it up.
“My mother told me never to ask questions I wouldn’t like the answer to,” Rob muttered. Then, louder: “Is your heart made of stone, then, man? Don’t the sad tales of my youth at least make it twinge?”
On the far slope Karyl stood by the track with the air of a man who had waited patiently for many minutes.
“If the details didn’t change quite so randomly,” he said, “my heart might twinge a little, perhaps.”
“I’m a poet, not a historian,” Rob said. “Everything I tell you is true, considered metaphorically.”
“Consider my sympathy metaphorical too, then.”
Karyl set off into a broad valley of tilled fields. Through it ran the river that formed the border of the province they were crossing, Métairie Brulée—Burned Farm—and Providence. Beyond stood the mixed conifer and hardwood forest known as Telar’s Wood, which ran across the Tyrant’s Head from Slavia to Spaña. The map said it covered much of the western, narrow end of wedge-shaped County Providence. They had already passed through a kilometer-wide spur of it.
Far beyond the forest, the mighty Shield Mountains climbed the sky. The breeze that blew from them felt cool. To Rob’s admittedly fanciful perceptions it seemed to smell of never-melting snow as well as pine, cedar, and oak.
In the course of three weeks on the road, Rob had often enough found Karyl a trying companion. Along with the nightmares that frequently jolted Rob from sleep, Karyl suffered sporadic blinding headaches. When those struck, he was prone to becoming querulous, and sometimes had to ride atop Little Nell with a wet rag tied around his eyes.
But Rob found himself strangely drawn to the man. The rare story that escaped his bearded lips was a rich reward to a man of Rob’s temperament. Not to mention what such reminiscences might be worth to a professional minstrel, cast into song.
And … there were the bandits. Just the occasional singleton or pair, seemingly driven by greed or meanness to prey on their fellow men, since this seemed no hard land to live on. Fortunately Rob and Karyl had encountered no substantial bands. Or the larger groups hadn’t thought the pair worth bothering with.
Rob knew already that, for a man who professed himself reluctant to use his sword, Karyl was alarmingly efficient with it. Accordingly they found themselves in possession of a few extra coins, for when they felt an urge to slake their thirst with something other than water, or pass a night at a country inn, out of the sometimes-chilly upland weather. Which at least got drier the closer they came to the jagged blue mountains.
Thanks to their earlier brush with bandits, they now possessed a shortbow and quiver of arrows. Rob’s skill with these proving greater than he let on to, if only just, they brought a steadier and readier supply of fresh meat to the pot than his snares alone could.
Today both men walked. Little Nell ambled amiably behind, her gizzard stones rumbling as she digested a purple-leaf thornbush she had uprooted in passing. As usual, Rob let his companion keep a slight lead. Not out of deference—or so he told himself—but to keep an eye on him. The nearer they came to their destination, the more focused Karyl became. But along with the dreams and headaches, he was given to brooding, to such an extent that he appeared to lose the outside world entirely. Rob was far from certain Karyl wouldn’t simply wander off and be seen no more.
Without warning, Karyl stopped and stood looking to his left.
“What is it?” Rob asked, running a thumb for reassurance beneath the springer-hide strap that held his axe across his back. The Empire’s roads were dangerous places—if mostly to the bandits unlucky enough to brace Karyl and Rob. Their whole point in coming here was that Providence was beset by predatory neighbors. And Métairie Brulée was one of them.
Karyl pointed with his sword-staff. Around a ridge half a kilometer to the north lumbered a herd of a dozen spine-backed titans. Long, narrow creatures, green with pink undersides, the largest adults reached thirty meters and perhaps twenty tonnes. Calves a mere ten meters long frolicked between their columnar legs. The giants proceeded at their customary slow, oblivious pace, stripping leaves from the scrub with peg-shaped teeth.
They had no voices: they couldn’t force cries down the tremendous length of their necks. From the books of ancient lore, allegedly passed down by the Creators themselves, Rob knew they needed a system of air-tubes along their neck-bones even to move the dog-sized heads at the ends of them. But when they whuffed and chuffed and farted, it carried as far as a shout. You could hear them coming.
Karyl took off his woven-straw hat and wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. His left hand, its fingers mostly grown out but still weak, wrapped in a bandage to protect the soft, pink skin from sunburn. Rob let Nell’s lead drop so she could munch the roadside foliage, and joined Karyl to watch the monsters.
Rob knew dinosaurs. Better in some ways than he knew men—and far better, sadly, than he knew women, to go by his record. He’d spent his life around them. Still, the size and majesty of these animals struck Rob Korrigan speechless. He felt as if his flesh and the blood in his veins had chilled beneath his sun-warmed skin.
A sound like a whipcrack magnified a thousandfold split the air. That was what it was. A calf had strayed too close to the woods, which might hide a matador or a horror pack. The herd bull had snapped his fifteen-meter-long tail like Paradise’s biggest whip. The sound, which stung Rob’s ears even at this distance, brought the young one hustling back, obediently bobbing its head.
“They may not have voices,” Rob said, “but they can still talk to each other.”
“Indeed,” Karyl said. His eyes shone.
“You feel it too?” Rob asked.
“How could I not?”
“Ask that of most of the world, my friend.”
The majority of folk viewed dinosaurs as nothing more than tools, toys, or terrors, depending on circumstance. They regarded the beasts as simply there, like rocks and trees, and paid them no particular mind unless they were about to be trampled or ripped to pieces by them. But no man or woman became a dinosaur master who ever saw a dinosaur, no matter how small, without a sense of affection that was almost proprietary.
And none could behold one of the titans without a sense of awe verging on religious.
Rob unstopped a water bottle, drank, wiped its mouth with a palm, passed it to Karyl. Karyl held it without looking at it, as if he didn’t know what to do with it. Sometimes he needed reminding to perform basic self-maintenance; Rob cleared his throat. Karyl drank.
“Let’s move on,” Rob said. “They’ll always be here. Whether we humans are or not, the dinosaurs endure.”
Karyl nodded. He put his hat back on. Clucking
to his hook-horn, Rob picked up her tether, and together the three of them made their way onward into Providence.
* * *
It was the kind of morning that made it seem as if the Creators themselves smiled on the great enterprise about to begin. The sky for once was clear over Montserrat’s head, a canopy of brilliant blue. In the naked light of the sun rising in the west, the Imperial colors and Heriberto’s blue, gold, and green almost glowed from the flags on the palace walls. The air was fresh and clean and redolent of the smells of the forest, thanks to the rains that had fallen overnight and then considerately stopped.
All but bursting inside her skin with anticipation, Montse stood by the road leading north from the Firefly Palace’s Imperial Gate. Beside her, her father stood barefoot in the simple brown hemp robes of a mendicant of the Sect of All Creators. Montse vaguely understood that was his way of displaying humility and gratitude to those marching out to fight. Not just for him, but for the greater cause of the majesty and authority of the Fangèd Throne, and blah, blah, blah.
She wondered just how humble he thought he could look with her right there beside him in her horribly uncomfortable red-and-gold princess suit, and Chief Minister Mondragón looking important and grave. To say nothing of a whole century of Scarlet Tyrants, red-dyed horsehair crests waving in the breeze, arrayed behind and to both sides of the Imperial party.
Near the Emperor in his ceremonial sackcloth stood the other grandes. Courtiers not bound to go on the expedition tried visibly not to look too relieved. Falk glowered in his beard with his arm in a showy sling. Montse’s cousins Lupe and Llurdis blinked out of deep, dark puffy sockets at the sunlight, as if unsure what it was. Josefina Serena wept; nothing unusual there.
Fanny of Anglaterra caught Montse’s eye and winked. Montse gave her back a big grin, which she shifted to Abigail Thélème. Abi gave her a quick thin smile. Montse liked them both. Fanny treated her like a little sister. The skinny girl from Sansamour talked to her like an adult. Montse didn’t at all understand why everybody thought she was so sinister.
It was a Day of Two Swords: Swordsday, the first Día de Lanza of the month likewise named for the Creator most identified with war. It was the most propitious possible date for a campaign to begin.