The Argument of Empires

by Jacob T. Helvey

  “That was for the High Lord’s ears.” He shook his head. “Damn your pike squad. I’m going to get something to drink. And you’re going to fucking-well join me.” The street ended abruptly at the docks, where companies of soldiers waited for ferries, returning empty after depositing their loads on the other side of the Strait.

  Grith looked both ways. The waterfront was dotted by taverns, each packed to the gills with green clad soldiers, but Tain didn’t look interested in these seedier establishments.

  “This sorry slop that you people call wine isn’t even worth the effort to drink. Over there.” He pointed across the water. “They make the nectar of the gods. Wine like honey, beers that taste like a kiss. Well worth an hour-long ferry ride.”

  Grith sighed. In his current state, he would have been perfectly happy with rot gut. Now, it would be hours yet before he got that drink.

  Eight:

  Kareen

  Kareen stumbled through a corridor of dark stone. The candles lining the walls provided a feeble light and did little to keep back the chill of winter. She was back home, she realized, at her father’s estate. Why was that strange? This had been home for her entire life. She had never known another.

  Confused, she grabbed one of the candles off a wall sconce and took a left towards her room. It was snowing outside. She watched for a moment as heavy flakes fell behind one of the corridor’s few windows. It shouldn’t be snowing, she thought. Why not? It snowed often enough in Kilri. But it just didn’t seem right. It was too warm, wasn’t it?

  There should have been servants in the halls at this hour, going about the chores that couldn’t be done during the day, yet the washerwomen and the cleaners were nowhere to be found. Kareen could not remember a time the house had been so quiet. She took another left and came to the door to her bedroom. She put her hand to the knob and shied back as if burned. It was cold as mountain water.

  She wrapped her hand in the sleeve of her long nightgown and grabbed the doorknob yet again. The cold wasn’t quite as acute this time, and she managed to fumble the door open. The entryway led into a white light, like the sun on a summer day.

  Kareen woke to pain…

  * * *

  The first thing Kareen noticed upon her return to consciousness was the dryness of her mouth. It felt as if her tongue had been scrubbed with sand. She opened her eyes to find her vision blurred. She tried to move, but her arms and legs ached too badly to do much more than squirm. Something held her hands in place. It took her a moment to figure out what that “something” was.

  She was tied; hands and feet both, behind her back. She had a shadowed memory of being dragged off by Cutarans. They had forced her to drink something bitter, and then, nothing…

  Sudden memory sparked, as if a veil had been pulled back from her mind. They had been attacked. Livran’s entire force had been destroyed. And then capture.

  Kareen blinked quickly, hoping it would clear her vision, and searched around for any sign of where she had been laid. It was dark, night most likely, but there was a light to her left. It flickered in her peripheral vision. A fire? She rolled onto her side, towards the warmth, watching blurry shapes pass back and forth in front of the flame.

  Over the next hour her vision began to clear. She watched as the shapes coalesced, revealing the massive forms of Cutarans a dozen paces away. Kareen glanced around herself. She was surrounded by the shadowy lumps of other prisoners, most of whom had yet to awaken from their drug-induced slumber.

  Tirrak! She was so thirsty. Thirsty enough that she considered calling out to the raiders around their fire. But no, that was a very bad idea. All she needed was the renewed attention of those savages.

  Instead, Kareen decided to look for Livran, if only to take her mind off her thirst. The last time she had seen him, he had still been breathing. There was hope then that he might still be alive. She struggled to move, trying to crawl forward on her belly. She was eventually able to get into a shimmying motion that worked well enough, inching forward like a worm on her chest and knees.

  She found the knight not far from where she had lain. He was curled into a ball, his hands tied like hers, his armor removed. His doublet and breeches were covered in blood, and as she came closer, she could see from where that blood had originated. A half-dozen or so nasty wounds crossed the inside of his arms and the backs of his legs. There was a pattern to them, concentrated around places where the knight would have worn little or no protection.

  Livran had lost a lot of blood. Kareen had never seen wounds like this before, but like most people, she could tell when a man was dying, and it was clear that Livran was well on his way to joining Tirrak in the Seas Above.

  Using her chin, Kareen managed, with some effort, to push Livran onto his back. She gasped when she saw the wound across his head. The arrow—the one which had caved in Livran’s helmet—had caused ruin. His scalp was split so wide that, in better light, she might have been able to see his skull. The wound had ceased bleeding some time ago, the blood drying to form a thick layer of crust that stuck to his hair.

  Her heart began to race and her breathing grew sharp and shallow. Some part of her knew she was succumbing to anxiety yet again. It told her to stop, to do nothing. Livran was past saving, it said. She should worry about herself.

  “Hey!” she called out before that part of her mind, perhaps the more rational part, could take control. “I need help!” She doubted any of the Cutarans could speak Sasken, but a cry for help was a cry for help, no matter what language you spoke.

  One of the Cutarans came trotting towards her. He was short by the species’ standards, perhaps a bit under seven feet. But what he lacked in height, he more than made up for in build. His arms were thicker than Kareen’s legs and his shoulders looked as wide as her arms when fully outstretched.

  He said something in what she guessed was Cutaran Low Speech, the language the barbarians used for normal conversation. Through the hissing and strange, phlegmy words, Kareen thought she could make out a question. She tried her best to point her chin at Livran’s head wound. Blessed Tirrak! If only her hands were free.

  “He. Needs. Bandages,” she said, lengthening the words like she was speaking to a child. It was sheer foolishness she realized, but it seemed the proper thing to do when talking to a foreigner. She motioned to the wound again for good measure and hoped beyond hope the he understood what she meant.

  He nodded and went back to the fire. “Did you hear me?!” she called after him.

  “Shut up!” One of the other captives yelled. “Just shut up! They’ll kill us if you don’t shut up!” Kareen thought the man’s assumption unlikely. Why would the Cutarans execute their captives after going to all the trouble of capturing them in the first place? It just didn’t make sense.

  That single rational idea failed to quell the animal part of her mind, the part that told her to listen to the voice in the darkness and save her own skin. The part that told her to let Livran die. She had almost given into it. Before she had left home, she probably would have.

  “I’m stronger now,” she whispered under her breath. It had become her mantra since leaving her family’s estates so many months ago, a way of keeping herself strong through all the struggles she had faced. It worked, barely.

  The Cutaran returned a moment later with a few strips of cloth. Kareen shook her bound hands. She needed to be untied. She was no surgeon, but she couldn’t possibly be worse at tending wounds than some savage. He shook his head and then went to work with a care that surprised Kareen.

  He wrapped the bandages around Livran’s arms and legs. His meaty hands were surprisingly dexterous, speaking to past experience. Some of the wounds needed stitches, something that the Cutaran either could not or would not provide, but covering the gashes and keeping them tight was better than leaving them open to fester in the warm air.

  The massive tear across Livr
an’s scalp, he left for last. He wrapped the bandage up and around Livran’s head, covering the nasty wound before grunting in frustration and going back to the fire to retrieve more bandages. He returned a moment later and when finished, secured each of the strips of cloth with a knot and tiny bone pin. He nodded to Kareen, his amber eyes flashing in the twilight, before leaving her for the fire and company of his comrades.

  “Water,” she said to the Cutaran as he went to leave. He turned and threw a skin to the ground before her. Without another word, he went back to join his comrades. Kareen tried for several moments to open the skin. It was almost impossible without the use of her hands. But with some persistence, she managed to get the stopper off with her teeth, and rolled onto her back so that the skin lay between her breasts. She took a few sips. It tasted of mud and was slightly brackish, but she drank anyway. She would need her strength for the days ahead.

  * * *

  Dawn cut the eastern sky like a blade slid across dark canvass. In the rising heat, Kareen was immediately happy that she had drank her fill the night before. A Cutaran came by and dragged each of the prisoners to their feet, leaving them to stand in the early morning sun. Their legs were untied, but their arms were infuriatingly left cinched behind their backs. Then came the march. They strayed far from the deer path along which Livran had taken his party, striking out into the savanna’s tall grass. The leader of the group, only recognizable by the painted shield he carried across his back, set a grueling pace. To the long-legged Cutarans, it must have seemed casual, but Kareen found herself falling behind more and more, her shorter legs failing her. And she was one of the healthy ones. The man behind her had a nasty cut across his leg that caused him to limp. Another had had his eye ripped for it socket, leaving a bloody stain down his left cheek. Kareen had no idea how either would hold up in the days ahead.

  By comparison, Livran’s position seemed like a luxury. He was still unconscious after having his wounds bandaged the night before, and had to be carried over the shoulder of the Cutaran who had tended to him.

  They marched on like this for hour upon hour, the sun beating down on their heads, flushing their skin, slowing their steps.

  Kareen was watching a pair of striped horse-like creatures on the horizon, trying to ignore the burning growing in her arms, when Livran let out a gasp from in front of her. Kareen jumped back, eyes wide, as Livran started to kick the Cutaran who carried him. The beefy man let out what sounded like a curse and tossed the knight on the ground, leaning over to inspect him. He nodded at whatever he saw and dragged Livran to his feet with a single meaty hand.

  Livran’s eyes were glassy and he stumbled as he was left to stand on his own. Kareen gave him a nudge, hoping somehow that the contact would wake him from his half-conscious state. Miraculously, Livran turned to her, his expression suddenly lucid. “You’re still alive.”

  She nodded, tears welling up in her eyes. Tirrak! It was good to see him standing.

  “I’m still alive.” It seemed a revelation to the man.

  The Cutaran who had been carrying Livran motioned with a hand.

  “We have to march,” Kareen told him.

  “Like hell we do!” Livran growled, turning on the Cutaran warriors. Blessed Tirrak! He looked ready for a fight. Perhaps he wasn’t as lucid as she had first thought.

  The leader of the group, the one with the painted shield, was coming towards them from the head of the line. Probably to find out why there was a commotion amongst his prisoners.

  “Livran…” Kareen began. He couldn’t have won this fight healthy and wearing his armor. He certainly couldn’t win it now, injured, bound, and barely able to stand. If he pushed these savages any further, he was going to get himself killed.

  “I…” Livran stumbled slightly. Kareen thought he might catch himself, but even this small exertion seemed to have spent the man. He fell face first onto the ground, and lay still.

  * * *

  Just as the sun felt that it would bake Kareen alive, the war party stopped for a rest. One of the Cutarans came by and ladled a single scoop of water into each of their mouths. It wouldn’t be enough, not after so many hours of marching.

  Some of the prisoners already had one foot in the grave. A few more days at this pace, and many would be diving into those same graves head first. The worst off that she could see from her position in the line was a brown-haired boy with eyes the color of sapphires. Those eyes were vacant now, conscious thought absent, and his face, an angry shade of red, drooped on its left side. Even with water and bed rest, the youth looked beyond saving.

  Livran was tossed at Kareen’s side. She poked at him with the toe of her boot. Tirrak! If only they could untie her hands she might be able to see to him. He groaned and curled into a ball. Still alive, but not entirely conscious either. His condition was getting better, at least that was what she told herself. There was really no way to tell, not without several years of physician’s training she didn’t possess.

  “Livran?” she muttered.

  His eyes shot open and he let out a gasp, struggling with his bonds as he had the first time he had awaken. After a few moments he stopped, panting and impotently kicking out with his legs several times before going still. One of the Cutarans came running over, carelessly pushing the gathered prisoners aside like they were little more than children. He drew his sword and took a battle stance. After the stunt Livran had pulled earlier in the day, they weren’t taking any chances.

  Livran shouted a string of obscenities that would have made a field hand blush and rose to his full height, somehow remaining regal despite his wounds. He went up onto the balls of his feet and took a battle stance. It was as if he thought he could take on the Cutarans with his feet alone. For a moment, Kareen even believed he might.

  He turned to Kareen, the Cutaran with the sword ignored for the moment. “Why did they capture us?” he demanded. Before she could reply, Livran faltered and gritting his teeth, fell to a knee. “Damn! My head hurts!”

  “I don’t know. None of them speak Sasken,” She came to his side, keeping a cautious eye on the Cutaran with the sword, watching for any sudden moves. More of the savage’s friends had appeared in the intervening moments, bearing their own weapons.

  She looked up at the Cutarans. “Get him some water.” They looked at each other and shook their heads. Blessed Tirrak! This language barrier was enough to make her scream. Trying to remain calm, she rose to her feet and passed the group of gathered warriors, attempting to ignore the massiveness of them, and the way they held themselves, like they might strike her down at the slightest provocation.

  She found the ladle with which the leader of the group had administered water earlier in the day sitting atop a leather pack. She turned around and grabbed it with her bound hands, before stalking back towards the Cutarans. She threw the hollowed out gourd at their feet and flicked her head towards Livran. “He needs water.”

  Finally getting the message, one of the Cutarans went off to retrieve a skin while Kareen checked Livran’s wounds. It was difficult, almost impossible work, without the use of her hands.

  He smiled as she did her best to tend to him, a dumb look of satisfaction on his face. “I can’t believe we both survived this.” He looked her in the eye and gave a weak chuckle. “I think we might be fated.”

  “You’re still concussed,” she told him, trying to ignore his words. “You were babbling like this a few hours ago.”

  “That bad?” She checked the wound atop his head for any sign of rot. Impossible to tell with a bandage wrapped around it. “Regardless.” He shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”

  “You have? I thought you’d never fought before.” She gave his body a final once over, looking for any cuts that she might have missed.

  “Just duels. I had a fight against this merchant’s son. A real shit of a man. Anyway, he gave me this cut across the thigh that gave the
surgeons a scare. For a while they thought they might have to take the leg.”

  “But they were surgeons.” She got to her feet and stretched her back, trying impotently to work the ache from her arms. “They gave you stitches and poultices and all the other things surgeons do. I have some dirty bandages.”

  “Well,” Livran said, leaning back on his hands. “You’re doing fine. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to rest my legs for a moment. Being carried like that, it doesn’t exactly do wonders for your muscles.”

  “We’ll be moving soon.” Kareen reminded him. “You’ll need to be up.”

  The Cutaran returned with water a few moments later. He dragged Livran unceremoniously to his feet, ignoring his protests all the while, and poured the liquid down his throat, splashing half of it down the front of his doublet and sending the knight into a coughing fit.

  “If I fall to the ground again, do you think they’d keep carrying me?” Livran asked once the Cutaran left.

  Kareen’s eyebrows furrowed. Was that supposed to be a joke? “I think they’d just beat you.” She motioned to the bruises on some of the other prisoners. “That seems to be the way they prefer to handle things.”

  He turned his head slightly. “Probably a bad idea then.” Despite his new-found joviality, he still seemed slightly disoriented. He hadn’t even mentioned his men in the time since he had woken, wounded or dead. That worried her. Kareen would have to keep an eye on him. Still, he was awake. And this time he didn’t look like he was going to pass out again. All he had to do was hold out until they reached their destination, wherever on this Tirrak forsaken continent that might be.

  * * *

  The next days were a haze of walking, water, hardtack, and fitful sleep. Six men died and were left for the vultures that tracked their procession like winged specters. But somehow, damning the odds, Livran stayed on his feet. He was tired and ragged, the blood on his clothes long since drying into a patina of rust colored stains. Kareen knew she couldn’t look any better. Her dress was torn along the hem, the work of thorns and protruding roots, and her hair, normally oily and smooth, was tangled in a mess about her head.