The Argument of Empires (The Corrossan Trilogy Book 1)

by Jacob T. Helvey

  Oranhur cleared his throat. “Your Highness… we did receive numbers.”

  “And?”

  “Xisa has collected more tribes. According to the scouts, she has at least twelve thousand warriors under her command now.”

  Hadan gritted his teeth and circled to the other side of the table where his map lay. “Then we can’t fight them in the field.” He put a finger on a line labeled “Sikara Divide.” “An army of that size will take hours to cross the Sikara Bridge, two by two. If we attack them during the crossing, we might just have chance.”

  Oranhur nodded his agreement. “A sound strategy, Your Highness. The army will need to pick up the pace. I can put the men on a ten hour march. They won’t like it, but they’ve toughed it out so far.”

  Kareen frowned, drawn back to the present, for the time being. She had seen the looks on the faces of many a soldier. They were already tired, unused to the pace. The land was growing drier with each day and already the air was filled with a heat haze that threatened to cook the men in their armor. Several soldiers had already been treated for heat exhaustion. No one had yet gone on to join Tirrak, but just as with Livran’s captured soldiers, it was only a matter of time before the first men began to drop.

  “Do it,” Hadan commanded. “Double the ration if that’s what it takes to keep order.”

  “Your Highness…” Oranhur shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. “If we double the ration, we might not have enough food for the journey home.”

  “One problem at a time, Oranhur. For now, we have to gain the advantage, or none of this matters a damn.”

  Hadan turned his attention fully to the map. He waved Oranhur away, who bowed before taking his leave. The Emperor stared at the piece of parchment like it would suddenly reveal some arcane secret to him in its inked lines. It worried Kareen to see him like this. He was so intense. And men this intense could make very bad mistakes—just as Komay had done at the end of the Autumn Rebellion. Just as Livran had done, when he had challenged Xisa.

  Like a breath of wind, something stepped into the room behind the Emperor, coming through the rear tent flap that presumably led to Hadan’s private chambers. The man—Kareen still thought of the thing as a man—wore the same white head covering and simple robes as before. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought this Delver might be different from the one she had first met. He was taller, and slightly broader in the shoulders, and his two-handed sword, carried in the crook of his arm, was wider at the base.

  Hadan turned as the Delver entered the room and smiled. The man remained stock still, but it seemed that there was some conversation going on between the two. The Delver nodded after a moment and then walked to the front entrance, passing Kareen with a ripple of loose cloth and jangling jewelry. She couldn’t quite put a finger on it, but he smelled of something strange. Spices? Not those that would be worn as a perfume, but cooking spices: sage, oregano, cloves.

  Kareen stared at the tent flap for a long while before turning back to Hadan. She had wanted to ask this question for so long, but had never worked up the courage. The Emperor never mentioned these strange Delvers who worked for him—Kareen was now convinced there was more than one—and that had to be for a reason.

  “Your Highness,” she began, nervousness rising, her heart feeling as if it might burst from beneath her ribs. He raised his head, a slightly bored expression on his otherwise lordly face. “Who are they?”

  “The Delvers, you mean?” he casually said. “My weapons.”

  There was a long silence. Neither of them spoke, and after a moment, Hadan went back to studying his map.

  “Thank you,” Kareen belatedly said, though she found the answer lacking. “I will beg my leave then.” Not waiting for a response, she bowed and exited through the open tent flap into the chill night air. His weapons? She couldn’t even begin to fathom what he had meant by the word.

  * * *

  The column of soldiers, stretching ahead and behind as far as Kareen could see, seemed small now. Twelve thousand, against their fifteen… it didn’t seem like good odds. She’d seen the Cutarans fight. They were each worth two Corrossan soldiers, at the least. Despite this knowledge, Hadan seemed ready for battle. For some reason, that gave her even less confidence.

  Oranhur’s new pace was already wearing on Kareen. She had never developed the muscles needed for long distance riding. Her father’s estates were large, covering the better part of two valleys in central Kilri, but still small enough that you could ride from one side to the other in a single morning.

  Kareen twisted in her saddle to examine the men marching behind her. They carried their long pikes with gritted teeth and grim countenance. Blessed Tirrak! The thick pieces of wood looked like they each weighed a ton.

  Yes, things could always be worse. She could be with these poor men. They marched faster than she would have thought possible, almost at a jog. The well-ordered lines that the officers had held together over the past days had started to collapse, and those same officers didn’t look like they had any interest in reforming them. The only goal for most men now was taking each step one by one, and in this, the Corrossan infantry did their job well.

  But still, Kareen wondered how long they last. “We can only walk them like this for so long, general,” Kareen told Oranhur as they rode past a particularly beaten block of pikemen.

  “I tried telling the Emperor the same thing, but he wouldn’t listen. Even at this pace, it is another four days to the Divide. Four days!” He lowered his voice so that the soldiers they passed couldn’t hear. “If we aren’t careful, this army will mutiny long before then.”

  Kareen cast her eyes across the men who marched at their side. These weren’t career soldiers. Most had been farmers or laborers or fishermen only a year or so ago. “Even if they hold out, they’ll be spent by the time we reach the battlefield.”

  “The only fresh soldiers we have will be in the cavalry and I don’t like having relying on those fops to fight the entire battle by themselves.”

  It wasn’t just that, Kareen knew. They only had three thousand mounted soldiers. And as Komay had learned at Anton, horsemen, even knights, couldn’t win battles on their own. They needed infantry and archers to hold ground for them, to break up formations, and to provide room for maneuvers.

  Horns sounded in the distance ahead, snapping Kareen out of her stupor. Her gaze was drawn to the front of the column, trying to peer through the thick forest of pikes that obscured her view. Cavalry were scrambling up ahead, forming into wedges and trotting out in a wave across the plains.

  Ornahur counted the second set of horn blasts. “Enemy spotted!” He spurred his horse forward, passing formations of pikemen. The entire column slowed to a halt. The sound of chatter filled the air, quiet like a whisper. The men were confused. Even from her higher vantage point atop her mount, Kareen felt much the same.

  She trailed Oranhur at a trot. Her legs hurt badly enough as it was, and a full gallop would simply exacerbate the problem. She kept her eyes ahead, watching for any sign of an attack, while trying to ignore the pain in her thighs. She half expected to see a horde of Cutarans appear from the brush around them, whether ambush was Xisa’s style or not. She was crafty, and after tricking the most powerful man in the world, Kareen would never again underestimate the woman’s cleverness.

  A cavalry unit passed her on the left. Not a unit of light dragoons as she had expected, but heavily armored knights and men-at-arms. Their armor glinted in the sun, giving them the look of armored seraphs, off to fight the demonic Titans of old. The warrior at their head held aloft a scarlet banner on which was emblazoned a black eagle. She smiled. They were Kilrians.

  They carry themselves more proudly than the others, she thought as they passed. These men, who had likely lost fathers and brothers during the Autumn Rebellion, had something to prove.

  Kareen spurred her horse for
ward to match pace with her countrymen. If Oranhur was mustering such heavily armored horsemen, than perhaps things were worse than she had first thought. But even still, there was no sign of a battle. No wringing of steel, no echoes of death, no constant blowing of horns. If there was, Oranhur would have ordered the infantry deployed, but here they were, still in marching order.

  The company of Kilirians broke into a gallop as they reached the front of the column, heading towards an ever growing formation of cavalry several hundred yards ahead. It was only when she got closer that Kareen realized that the cavalry were not in their typical wedge or block formation. They had formed a circle, surrounding something.

  Oranhur gave orders from the close end of that circle, directing units to positions along the perimeter. “Kareen.” The general noted her as she approached. “I was about to call for you.”

  Kareen frowned. There was worry in Oranhur’s voice. Every new development had seemed to weigh heavier and heavier on the man, carving new wrinkles into his face and stooping him as responsibility fell onto his shoulders like a yoke.

  Kareen stood in her stirrups to try and get a better view of what lay within the circle. She could just barely make out figures behind the wall of horsemen. They were tall and broad, but withered. Many held small bundles in their hands, and was that crying she could hear?

  “Cutarans,” Kareen breathed, so quietly she thought no one would hear.

  “Their elderly and the children too young to walk.” Oranhur shook his head and his expression quickly changed. “It seems that Xisa has no problem shedding dead weight.”

  Kareen could only shake her head. She couldn’t believe it, believe even Xisa would do something like this. “I don’t know what she told the other chieftains to get them to do this, but it must have been something inspired. The Cutarans respect their elders. They take care of the tribe’s children… care for the sick and wounded.”

  “Desperation can do strange things to a man… or woman,” Oranhur concluded. “But it will let them increase their pace. It might even buy them enough time to reach the Divide ahead of us.”

  Kareen wanted so badly to the keep her mind focused on tactics and strategy, divorced from emotion. But she left that to the officers and the generals. Instead, her thoughts were drawn to the poor souls inside the circle of horsemen. She thought of how terrified they must be, surrounded by steel clad men, lances lowered, and bows at the ready. They had been betrayed, betrayed by the woman who had sworn to win them glory, to save them from those who sought to destroy their way of life. Just another reason she needs to be stopped.

  “What will you do with them?” Kareen asked. She wheeled her horse around to face Oranhur. She couldn’t bear to look at the “dead weight” of Xisa’s army any longer.

  “They were given food. Not much, but enough to survive a few days out on the plains.” He shook his head and lowered his voice slightly, as if the Cutarans could hear or even understand what he said. “We can’t spare them much.”

  Kareen opened her mouth to respond, but Oranhur cut her off with a chop of his hand. “We have to think about our own. I don’t want to see these people starve any more than you do, but I also won’t see Ytem burned to ground. We have days, days, until we fight Xisa’s army, and the men will need to be fed.”

  “I know,” Kareen breathed, shaking her head. “I just wish there was something we could do…”

  “Hadan won’t be happy about this. He’ll want them thrown out onto the plains, perhaps even into the badlands to the east, as far from the Front as we can get them.”

  “They’re old men and babies, general. How much trouble could they cause?”

  Oranhur sighed. “Emperor Hadan has ruled for more than four-hundred years and has only held onto his Empire through a healthy dose of suspicion. Without it he would have been deposed a long time ago, by men with sharper knives and less scruples than his own.”

  Kareen nodded slowly. Yes, yes, she’d heard this speech before, this same damned speech. “That still doesn’t change things… does it?” She expected a sharp reprieve from Oranhur. She had just questioned Hadan, after all. But the general either didn’t notice, or didn’t care about her insubordination.

  “For the time being,” said Oranhur, “I will send the Cutarans back towards the Front with a small escort. A company of light cavalry should do. But understand this: if I am given orders to the contrary, then I will carry them out without question.” There were enough implications in that last statement to worry Kareen, but she didn’t push the point. And still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being placated. She had quickly become one of Hadan’s key advisors, and over the past days had given valuable insights on the Cutarans. Was this a way of keeping her in line or did Oranhur actually believe in what he was doing?

  The General whistled, and at once, the cavalry turned and retreated, freeing up more space for the terrified Cutarans. The horseman at the rear of the circle began to advance at a slow canter, lances lowered, pushing and prodding the group forward.

  The few thousand poor souls before Kareen stumbled ahead on old and unsure legs. Strange. After all they had done to her, to Livran, Kareen still wanted to weep.

  Twenty-Seven:

  Grith

  For a moment, Grith thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. The Sikara Divide… they were here. The ravine lay like a scar across the dry, red-tinged landscape, dividing the world from horizon to horizon. There was no way across, no way around, and no way through, except at the bridge.

  They came down off the rise overlooking the Divide, slowing to a jog as they descended towards the wooden bridge. It was wide enough for two men to cross shoulder to shoulder with room to spare and was perhaps a hundred feet in length. If he was honest, Grith had expected more from a bridge that could determine the fate of thousands when the Cutarans came.

  Grith’s life had been simplified over the past three days, all the non-essential complexities degenerating into a few basic actions, performed without any real conscious thought. Running, food, fitful sleep, they were the only things he gave a single shit for. And above it all, like a blanket of knives, the ever-present pain. He had plumed the depths of the Deepening on this journey, using it as a shelter from the burning in his thighs and the tightness in his back. But he couldn’t go deep enough now to ignore the ever-present agony. What would happen when he left the trance? That thought had had occupied his mind for hours now. He imagined he would just curl into a ball and sleep for a week.

  If only he’d had that luxury…

  Grith followed Tain across the formations of loose scree at the rise’s base and onto a stretch of flat ground before the bridge’s first planks. They were dark as pitch, made from some tropical hardwood that he didn’t know the name of. They also didn’t shift underfoot as he would have expected from a bridge of this kind. Even hundreds of feet above the bottom of the Divide, it was steady as a bedrock.

  Grith gingerly peaked his head over the side of the bridge. There was a river below them, so deep he only knew it was there by the distant sound of running water. Moss grew on the interior walls of the Divide, the only plant life other than a few shrubs Grith had seen for miles around. The land here was drier than on the savannas to the south and west. The hills to the north towered higher than anywhere else in Fanalkir, almost mountains in their own right. Grith could only guess they blocked the lion’s share of the rain off the Godsea.

  Ignoring the terrifying chasm below, Tain continued on, but Grith remained still, glancing around at the structure and layout of the bridge. He recognized this place…

  There were no railings along its edges, and in their place were posts upon which were tied great conch shells. Although he had never been here in the waking world, he knew that they would play a mournful tune when the wind stirred in the channel below.

  Grith turned to look back in the direction from which they had
come. He half expected to see the burning monsters from his vision come down off the rise, but no—this was no dream. He carried no saber in his hand, and yes, the bridge was different. It didn’t shake and sway, for one.

  I’m not going mad, he told himself. And I am not seeing into the future. It’s different enough. It was all coincidence, he told himself, as he walked the rest of the way across the bridge, just an after-effect of the strangeness he had seen in the Eye.

  “Halt!” came a voice from one of the watchtowers flanking the far side of the bridge. The voice sounded strange in the Deepening, slower and more sonorous than it should have. “We’ve crossbows trained on you! Don’t come any closer unless you want us to feather your necks!”

  Grith’s hand went slowly for the spear strapped to his satchel, but Tain grabbed his shoulder, arresting the movement of his arm before he could get his hand on the weapon. His teacher took a cautious step forward and raised his free hand to show that he was unarmed. “Don’t worry yourselves,” Tain said softly, looking up at the pair of wooden towers. They were shoddily built and looked to Grith’s eyes like they could be toppled by a stiff wind. Still, they would provide a commanding view of the Divide for miles around.

  “We’re on the same side,” he continued, trying to placate the men within. A man emerged a squat stone building, constructed slightly behind and to the left of the watchtowers. He wore the uniform of the Akvian Corps, black with a falcon emblazoned on the chest and white piping along the seams. He was perhaps forty and walked with a noticeable limp. He lifted the visor of sallet helmet as he stepped onto the bridge. The years hadn’t been kind to him. He had lost several teeth, and the rest were deep yellow. His face was jowly and slack, covered with the scars of a dozen battles. Despite the injuries, he carried a crossbow confidently in the crook of his arm. This was a true career soldier. Not a man to be messed with.

  “Then why’d you come from off the plains?” he demanded in the heavy accent that could only be found in the dirtiest slums of Akiv. “Nothing out there but dead grass and bronze skins.”