by K V Johansen
Uproar towards the river, but . . . Yeh-Lin they must trust to be there, having had a shorter march by virtue of it being flatter.
And then there could be nothing but what was before him.
They were flung against the line, and the soldiers were scattering from the man on the white horse, crying, “The holy one!”
Priest secret among them, that prisoner had said.
Ghu ignored them, searching. The imperial line sagged around him, fraying. Lai Sula’s army had the numbers to engulf the banner-lords and their household troops, to open like a mouth and swallow them, but fear of their own officers would only hold them so long. The imperials should have had archers throughout, not bunched away in a corner, but then they had been planning to be the ones emerging to fall upon panicked and disordered survivors in some grim rush from the fire and smoke. Ahjvar killed an officer who came screaming curses against them. The man had cut down one of his own who was trying to shove his way to the rear. Snow struck down another and they were engulfed, a churning mass, those willing to die for their empress or for fear of the lords who drove them, or of shame, or trapped and having no way out. He kept them from Ghu, did not number those he fought, who came battering against him and Niaul to be broken, and torn, and flung underfoot. Break the line, split it, find the lord who commanded here. A few mounted imperials charged up and down beyond, but no stand of banners, no clustering, observing command—if all this trap was only the rearguard and Lai Sula himself down by the river, Yeh-Lin would deal with him and his traitor wizard, too.
Ghu found what he sought, maybe, swung horse and spear to point like a hunting dog. Movement amid movement. Ahjvar swore and swept around him, another officer, cut down and under Niaul’s hammering forefeet. “Run!” he roared at the boys who had dropped spears and shields and clutched at one another, two shielding a third as if he would kill the bloody child on the ground, and they grabbed up their comrade and dragged him away. It was another three running at the rear, struggling to break into, not out of, the crush of panic, that held Ghu’s attention. Ill-equipped conscripts, bare-legged, but among the few to have lamellar armour for breast and back, and one a woman’s face. They did not conscript peasant women. And too well armed. The woman and one man had swords, the other—a hunter’s blowpipe.
CHAPTER XXXIV
Man with long hair in caravaneer’s braids, not a nobleman’s knot, and he saw Ivah, knew her, as she knew him. Grinned, swung his horse her way, reined in and bowed in the saddle.
Ride with him.
The words crashed like a wave through her mind. Daughter of emperors, daughter of devils. An empress to fear . . . your god is nothing, a slave, a dreamer, all hope and no strength to fulfil those dreams. He drags you to your defeat and death and you have never belonged to him, you are your own, my own chosen daughter, and I will show you what your father never did . . . Buri-Nai was only ever a place-holder. I am Jochiz, the Stonebreaker, they called me in the north, and I have been waiting for you. Ivah, come. The Pine Lord waits to show you the way.
“Exalted!” the man cried. “Come! Hurry!”
Mulgo Miar, the Pine Lord appointed by the empress and supposed traitor to her, ally to Dan and traitor to him, and in Dernang, hunting him, witness to Yeh-Lin’s challenge of Hani Gahur. Mulgo Miar, crying, “Exalted, come quickly! Ride! Your army, your folk . . . ride with me!”
Ride with him. Go now, go quickly, before they notice, before they see you, before they understand what you truly are, daughter of Ghatai. Come! Now! To me!
What he truly was, was a dead man, and he spoke Grasslander, which had never passed the tongue of that wizard before her.
Red Mask, dead thing, soul torn away—
Arrow on the string, free like a falcon, and it burned in the air, a fire on it that she had not even shaped a word to set. Wrath. The sun’s heat on the dry earth, the golden grass and the searing blue of the sky—
It pierced his armour, his heart, but his heart did not beat. It pierced the black knot of thorny script over his heart, which she could not read, but which she had struggled to decipher, the script on the prison-tombs of the gods in Marakand. The writing of the devils.
It sliced the threads that bound him, the puppet’s strings, and he fell, and his horse ran, shaking the corpse loose.
He was all burnt away within, taken by the devil. A husk.
She remembered, Old Great Gods, she remembered the voice, caressing and vaunting, words in her dreams, one night, two? More? Many, many more. She gagged. Remembered suffocating, cobweb in her mouth, her throat, spreading.
Clawed her helmet free, raked unbraided hair, yanked at it, bit her lip hard enough to bleed, wiped fingers in the blood and smeared it on the hairs she had torn free. Knotted loops so fine they might be lost in a careless breath and wove. Careful now. Cold, deliberate, though her heart raced. A wrath that might have been her father’s, as his sabre took her betraying mother’s head.
Held the pattern to the sky. Parted her hands, tore.
The threads pulled from her, ripping, as if a thousand tiny hooks had been set in her flesh, her mind. Leeches. Worms in the gut, a cramping pain that faded and was gone, and there was a strange, calm coolness behind her eyes, an ease of something so subtle she had not felt it, till it was gone.
Ivah leaned over, vomiting, and Steelgrey pranced and sidled, ears back, snorting. Her hands shook so she could hardly manage even to wipe her mouth.
“Lady Ivah!” A man wheeled around to her. “Riders from the east! Prince Dan’s banners—Dwei Ontari’s proved true!”
She looked where he pointed, eyes narrowed against the distance.
She remembered the helmets, the masks—
“Not Lord Ontari,” she said. “That’s Lady Dwei Baya, riding ahead.”
The archers of Alwu were spreading out, a great skein of them, riding to intercept the fleeing imperials, the lords and officers who abandoned—cowardice or orders?—this army of the ferry landing. She stood in the stirrups, gathering her people to her, a shout. “With me!”
They rode to meet Baya, with Lai Sula’s escort caught between.
Jochiz Stonebreaker. Understand what I truly am. Daughter of An-Chaq, daughter of Ghatai—what is that? I am only Ivah, and I claimed myself for my own on the battlefield where I fought what you had left of your mad sister.
My god sees me.
She would make her heart a shrine for her god, and the stone core of her—oh yes, she had that image now; she saw where Jochiz had gone before, the stone and the grass beneath the wind. For all he thought he had hidden his tracks the grass showed them—she would make that shrine within herself, and be the stone at the heart of it.
Stonebreaker. Hah. A Northron byname, nothing more, as they called Vartu “Kingsbane” for her brother’s murder, and that was a lie.
I am the stone, the altar of my god, that you will not break.
Serve Nabban.
He is my soul’s home, she had said to Nour.
Most people never feel that for their god at all, Nour had replied. The ones who do, we generally call priests.
The old Nabbani word for emperor, empress had also meant the priest of all the land, once upon a time.
And Dan would be a hermit.
Understanding settled on her with the inevitability of winter’s snow, soft and heavy.
CHAPTER XXXV
Lady Ti-So’aro saw it too, the dark, straight bamboo tube. She spurred ahead, swerving in front of Snow, sweeping her banner down like a lance, but too late for the silk to be the shield she intended. Her horse dropped as if struck down by lightning, still, not a twitch, a last spasm, unwounded. The stinging of a wasp, a dart, on the soft lips below the chamfron’s protection. Ti-So’aro dragged herself from under it only to struggle in a flurry of battering blows, swarmed by soldiers. Motionless even as Snow wheeled about them, savage teeth and hooves and the spear taking the one with the heavy horseman’s mace. Those that fled were ridden down by Ti-So’aro’s ret
ainers. One circled back, dropping down the side of his horse to snatch up the banner. They needed Ivah and her bow, now, now. Ahjvar swept around them all, kicked Niaul to surge ahead. If they had that poison on a blade as well this was the end of Evening Cloud, this was why he didn’t name horses, damn the boy, and he did wonder how long it would take him and his curse to fight off the frozen death of the islanders’ arrow-poison.
The assassins killed two of their own who pressed between, stabbed in the back and thrown aside and Ahjvar cleared their way for them, cutting down conscripts who had a will to stand and fight. Something slammed into Niaul’s shoulder and the horse stumbled, didn’t fall, seized and shook and flung a man. Snow flashed by in that and an assassin’s blowpipe could hardly miss the naked flaring nostril, to put Ghu down at their feet—or to be run over by the racing knot of Zhung retainers and stable-folk turned cavalry that trailed him like a ship’s wake. The horse spun and turned, turned back and the assassin went down, Ghu’s spear pinning him to earth through the throat, arms flung wide. Ahjvar let Niaul’s momentum make his sword a spear, dropped low at his knee, ripped his blade up and free and leaned to the side to take the head off the third even as Snow wheeled left, Ghu coming back for his lance, but one of Ti-So’aro’s riders had crashed sideways into it, snapping the shaft, narrowly avoiding bringing himself and another down, and Ghu spun Snow away again, to clear ground. They were on the road, and behind the mass that surged and heaved.
A spearhead thrusting through, they were, beneath the stained and torn sky-blue silk, and there was a roar, a surge like the sea, or that was how it felt, as if they were gone to one will—but the imperial soldiers were each a frail body alone, and each to save himself. Just as well. Ghu didn’t have the bodies to spend, to throw wave after wave at the imperials, or to force a slow way through with every step paid in blood.
“Lai Sula?” Ahjvar shouted.
Ghu shrugged. One of the riders offered him her spear, bloodied and unbroken. He shouldered it with a nod of thanks and she unhooked the axe from her belt. Ahjvar leaned over to pluck the feather-fletched dart from the breast of Ghu’s coat. He dismounted long enough to bury the point in the ground, take the hardened leather pouch from the assassin’s belt for later burning, and split the pipe, long as a man’s arm. Into the saddle again, and the imperial soldiers were falling back around them, parting as if they were some headland. They didn’t flee, though, but remained, washed up on the shore of them. As if the blue banner were their rallying point and not the death that had come upon them. Yuro, out of nowhere, striking a mounted imperial officer with the Lai badge on his helmet to the earth, roaring, “Kneel! Lay your sword at the feet of your god! Where’s Lai Sula?”
“Find me Mulgo Miar,” Ahjvar muttered. “Ghu?”
Ghu shook his head. Ahjvar set Niaul between him and a sudden new rush of imperial soldiery, but the men went to their knees, their faces, crying on the holy one of the gods to spare them. There was still fighting, but it had broken into chaos, knots and swirls, a pattern Ivah could weave, hazed white, pearl-streaked, edged in ghosts. Ahjvar was blinded by them. And all this folk was Ghu’s, all these deaths . . .
Spears were cast down as if wind swept through a field of ripening oats. Ripples, spreading. Lords and officers, too.
The sun was dropping towards the hills over the river. A rider—she raised her visor to be recognized, a woman of the stables in the armour of a Daro banner-lord—pallid and her left arm resting awkward over her lap, reins in her right hand. “My lord!” she called shrilly. “Master Yuro! Holy one! Lady Lin says, she holds the landing and the ferry, and the commander of the western tower’s surrendered to the prince. They didn’t put up much fight across the water at all—thought Dan had all the army of Choa with him.”
“Lai Sula?” Yuro demanded.
“No, my lord.” Remembering Yuro’s rank now. “There’s a Lai Acen commanding; only a banner-ranked.”
“Tell Y—the captain-general to take charge here,” Ghu said. “Thank you. Yuro, round up the lords and officers who’ve surrendered. Isn’t there any command here? Can’t they signal a retreat, a surrender? They’re lost and they don’t all know it, and they’re still dying. It’s a damned tavern fight.”
Yuro snorted. But it was like that, the disorder. No one to cry out, enough. “Drums,” he said. “Have we taken their drums, any of their runners?”
Some of his people scattered, presuming the question a command. It was over here, about them, but up and down the village and beyond, no. Like a fire, breaking out renewed. Fewer and fewer though.
“Have all the houses and the station searched,” Ghu said. “There’s a priest somewhere, remember, who gave these people hope of our coming. Find him, Yuro, please. Ahj—Ivah.”
They gathered a large enough party around them to move with impunity now, and where they went, the fighting faltered.
“The banner of the god,” he heard.
Drums broke out behind them, signalling something. A call to throw down arms, Ahjvar guessed. Niaul had lost his easy flowing stride, moved halting, stiff. Bruised, but no worse than that beneath his battered armour, Ahjvar could hope.
Ivah, coming towards them, her lightly-armoured grey blood-spattered but moving unimpaired. Archers of Alwu in their hundreds swept up around her, and others, mounted banner-ranked with the god’s ribbons and the badges of Alwu. Dwei Ontari’s folk. Ahjvar had not sheathed his sword. He urged Niaul ahead, barring their way to Ghu. Riders spread themselves out to either side of him, a pitiful handful to throw against Ontari’s companies.
“These are true,” Ivah called, and one rode forward, lifting her snarling mask. She bowed. Dwei Ontari’s niece, Dwei Baya.
“Holy one,” she said. “My uncle is dead, for his treachery. I don’t say you’re the god of this land. I don’t say you aren’t. I say my family will keep faith where they have given it, and Prince Dan is still our lord, and he has given his oath to—at the least—a man there is no dishonour in following, whatever his birth.”
She looked ten years older than when she had challenged them on the road from Swajui.
“Why?” Ghu asked. “Dwei Ontari served Dan so long, so faithfully. Why now?”
“You, my lord. Daro Korat’s stableboy. He despaired of the prince at the end, when he gave up all command to you and was willing to follow you down the river, thought him witless and broken in the mind, to find his god in a Dar-Lathan bastard, forgive me, his words. He said we could never return to imperial favour but we might yet hold Alwu as princes. He offered you to Lai Sula, you and the southern manors of Alwu, in return for the north.”
Ghu bowed gravely. There didn’t seem much that could be said.
“I give you my sword,” she said, and held it out across her hands. “And my life, if you will, for my uncle’s betrayal.”
“Prince Dan needs both,” Ghu said. “He’ll need this river crossing held against anything else that comes from Numiya. He’ll need Alwu held for us, for the old Kho’anzi—Dan’s mother’s aunt, isn’t she? He’s over the river. Leave your companies to Lady Ivah just for now; take your household folk and go over the river to Dan, with my blessing. Let him know that you, at least, have kept faith.”
She bowed, signalled her people, and rode on. Ivah spoke a few words and some of her archers went with Lady Baya, to see she wasn’t challenged on her way, Ahjvar supposed.
“Lai Sula’s dead,” Ivah said. She sounded exhausted. “We shot him unknowing. They told me just now—the prisoners. They’re telling the truth. There’d been rumour going around—Lai Sula killed two soldiers just this morning for repeating it—that the heir of the gods was bringing his death. He thought it was prophecy. It might only have been a whisper the priest started to break his nerve, I think. So when their own trap was sprung against them, he panicked and fled with his tent-guard.” That was her weariness showing, certainly, the Grasslander term translated. As if for a moment she lost her Nabbani. “A coward,” she added dispa
ssionately. “He was very young.”
So many of them had been. But maybe that was his age.
Ghu was watching Ivah gravely. “Mulgo Miar?” he asked.
“I—destroyed his link with the devil. He was dead already. He was—sent to take me back to them. To Buri-Nai, I suppose. To Jochiz. The devil is Jochiz.”
Ghu said only, “Ah.” Gave her a long, long look, and a grave nod. “I’m glad you’re still here, then.” Turned Snow away. “We have the field, I think. Don’t we? Ti-So’aro is dead. I think—I have lost too many folk here. Ahj?”
“We need to stay,” Ahjvar said, though Great Gods, he did want to ride away.
“I know. Come down to the river. I need to hear it.” He glanced back. “Go to Captain Lin, Ivah. She may have wizard’s work for you, and she’ll know where she wants the archers of Alwu. We need scouts sent out, far out. The empress is somewhere, and if wizardry can’t find her, human eyes may.”