Ashtadukht scanned the ranks, picking out the billowing banners of seven of the eight Houses. Hers was the only one missing. She wasn’t sure what that meant, and wasn’t too worried about it besides.
The archers and heavy infantry came next, followed by another line of Savaran.
Behind the main force were the Immortals, ten thousand specially trained Savaran units held in reserve for crucial manoeuvres. Ashtadukht had to keep a keen watch on their movements especially: they were known for changing the tide of battle.
Taking up the rear were the elite among Savaran, the royal guard. Where the Savaran shimmered, the royal guard glinted like the constellations, and did so in tandem, as if even their armour had been rigorously trained to catch sunlight uniformly. They were distinguished veterans, valiant and fierce to the last—the Savaran poured through an especially fine sieve many times over. Waray’s band would have to contend with them. Ashtadukht believed in her half-viper companion, but she feared for her all the same.
Out of that prestigious company rose the golden throne of the King of Kings. Unlike Ashtadukht’s garish seat, his was tastefully embellished. All the glow he needed emanated from his person, where the divine glory had alighted, proof of his favour and righteous rule. And how! He resembled the face of the sun such that she had to avert her eyes and wipe away another wave of tears before she could get a look at the star-reckoners in his retinue.
She knew she had her work cut out for her. While hostilities with Hrom had surely put a strain the Iranian military, their numbers were nevertheless about even. As far as Ashtadukht was concerned, that put her at a disadvantage. Divs were vicious, but they lacked order, a sense of comradery, and a love for one’s homeland. For them, this was an invasion; that would suffice as motivation, because invasions were bloody and terrible, but it wouldn’t match the enemy’s.
Her host was growing restless; their shrill baying carried from the front lines. If it weren’t for the Eshm sisters standing firm, the formation would have been utterly ruined. She gripped her cuff. Clashing too soon would make it a trivial thing for the Iranian ranks to withdraw onto the plateau, thereby pulling the divs—who’d surely give chase—into the comparatively narrow gap.
The Iranian forces embraced the juncture fully, rotating as they did to face her host head on. This surprised her, because it left the flanks of their second and third lines utterly exposed to her Hephthalite allies. Thinking it circumspect to wait for them to commit to their position, she refrained from giving her hornbearer the command to signal the Hephthalites.
Ashtadukht glanced behind her throne at the defile to her rear. It led further away from the plateau, and would be her channel of withdrawal if necessary. When she turned back to the set pieces—which reminded her of the vexing games of nard she’d shared with Tirdad—a volley of arrows had been fired. They arced like a cast of falcons, then dove as if they were a thousand peregrines plummeting into her host. The Savaran were galloping close behind the volley, lances poised to run through several divs at once.
“Charge!” she bellowed, and her officers trumpeted her command to the ranks. “Pull out their organs, piece by tortoise-fucking piece!” she went on. “Take everything from them! Humiliate the scum! Make their families weep!”
She sat back, red-faced and kneading furiously at her cuff. She was really getting into her role now. Ashtadukht wondered whether this was how her father had felt when he’d leave her in his pavilion to take charge of a battlefield.
Having spotted the heavy infantry in the second line, she surmised that their Savaran units would break away before engaging. When organized as they were, the Savaran were meant to put the enemy on its heels, whereupon the heavy infantry would rush in and slaughter the intimidated foe.
Her observation had been an astute one: the heavy infantry hurried in to fill the space the cavalry had vacated. Rather than respond to the Savaran by drawing back, she’d encouraged her ranks to charge in kind. So when the infantry came forward, so too did her host. The lines clashed, erupting in a riotous din that carried for farsangs, and the formidable Eshm sisters hammered a sanguinolent wedge into the centre of the melee. Ashtadukht watched their progress with interest. She’d been right in accepting their aid. Each and every sister displayed the inimitable ferocity of her bloodline, but without Waray’s aversion to or intolerance for discipline. She smiled to herself. Probably a bit of both on that front.
Cleanly hewn by the Eshm sisters and the divs that followed, the infantry broke off and circled away. This, too, Ashtadukht had anticipated. It was a common and remarkably effective tactic among Iranian generals: the three lines would rotate one after the other, refreshing the soldiers and buffeting the opposing force like storm-livened waves. She signalled to her trumpeter to summon the nomads. At the same time, she gave the order to pull back.
“What are you planning?” she pondered aloud. “Why haven’t you drawn any lots?”
Ashtadukht was thinking of the star-reckoners—the wretched, fingernail-swallowing star-reckoners. The divine glory had a soft brightness that belied some sort of inherent intensity, so she couldn’t do more than peer their way out of the corner of her eye. Regardless, she knew they were there, conniving and snivelling. She had a surprise in store for them. Waray and her shit-stirrers would teach them that even the most sanctimonious cypresses were just another tree to a well-honed axe.
Her host withdrew behind the trenches over hidden pathways, thanks in part to the behest of the Eshm sisters, who were proving to be excellent at herding divs. The Savarans gave chase, some skewering as many as three divs on a single lance. They were like stampeding elephants tusking anything in their path. Their pursuit was ill-fated, though; many fell victim to the trenches, gored by the trap same as they’d gored their foes.
Those who’d witnessed the trap before falling victim to it broke off to rejoin the Iranian legion. This was when the Hephthalites rounded the toe of the adjacent ridge and slammed into the archers and Savaran on the left flank.
“Loose everything!” Ashtadukht bellowed, thinking she’d wear them down before sending her host back in. “Unload everything we have!”
Her order heeded, every form of munition issued from the ranks. Behemoths flung boulders from among the cliffs. Siege engines issued masses of burning pitch. Archers loosed every arrow in their quivers. Unlike the orderly, elegant volley of the Iranians, the missiles her divs unleashed crisscrossed the battlefield in a chaotic downpour like leaves tossed in a gale.
Ashtadukht surveyed her handiwork with a sense of accomplishment. She’d rebuffed two assaults now, and dealt punishing blows in doing so. All without her planet-reckoning. It wasn’t farfetched to think she stood a chance at routing them here and now.
She was on the cusp of belting the order to attack when something in her peripheral vision corked the words in her throat. The forty-armed div had returned, and had just straddled the ridge to her left. She grinned wickedly. Then it crested that mountain and waded into her forces, stomping and flinging divs about with abandon.
“That’s what you’ve been up to,” she said through gritted teeth. “Damned star-fucking scum reanimated him.” Beneath all the hatred she held for star-reckoners—which really could not be overstated, and was certainly too much hatred for any one person—Ashtadukht respected their answer. They’d turned her weapon against her.
In the worst way, too. It was now heading straight for her litter. “Get me out of here!” she ordered. “Trumpet the retreat! To the designated area! Behemoths, hold off the forty-armed bastard!”
Her litter spun around, and the divs carrying it hurried away as fast as their hooves could manage. She peered around her throne, heart pounding in her throat, a white-knuckled fist clenching her cuff, and looked on as the forty-armed div turned its ire on her host.
“Fuck,” she spat. “Fuck. There’s no way they can keep that up for long. It’s impossible. We’ll have to regroup.”
She continued watching as it wre
aked havoc on her ranks. Even after it disappeared behind a bend, she watched, unsure how far the star-reckoners could send it.
• • • • •
Ashtadukht’s withdrawal brought her back to Nishabhur, and had her censuring herself over how far she’d gone in bringing ruin to the city. She’d been overconfident, too focused on an unyielding offensive. If she’d been thinking clearly, she would’ve known better. Blinded by her hatred, she’d acted rashly. She admitted this to herself, and herself only. It wouldn’t do to let her underlings know she was questioning her own orders. Ashtadukht wore an air of confidence for their sake. Inside, however, fractures had begun to weaken her resolve.
What remained of her host had been packed into the only quadrant of the city that had tenable fortifications. According to her scouts, the Iranian legion had bivouacked within range, which meant they’d overtake her if she made for Murv. She had no desire to weather a siege in what could scarcely be called a fort, forced into flimsy sorties until they’d reduced her host to nothing. So Ashtadukht had decided she’d make for their bivouac at nightfall, and show them just what her planet-reckoning was capable of.
She surveyed what was left of her ranks. All things considered, she’d come out of being routed fairly favourably. The forty-armed div seemed to have expired before it could inflict too many casualties on her host, which had benefitted from her swift decision to retreat. There’d been no news of the Hephthalites since. She considered them lost, to her cause anyway.
More than anything, Ashtadukht resented how she’d been outmanoeuvred, even manipulated. They’d lured her into thinking she had the upper hand, toyed with her, likely to achieve nothing more than the utmost effect when the forty-armed div appeared out of nowhere to turn on her.
So caught up in thought, she didn’t notice Waray climbing into her litter until the half-div had pulled out an egg and started crunching it.
“Where have you been?” Ashtadukht asked, taking on the dangerous tone of a calm storm. “The star-reckoners made a fool of me.”
“Felling,” Waray replied. “Maybe.”
“Not star-reckoners.”
The half-viper canted. More crunching followed. “Dells.”
“What?”
“Dells.”
Ashtadukht was about to demand a more elucidating response when she spotted the shit-stirrers transporting timber into the city. She took a deep breath, trying very hard to contain the placid wrath within. “I want this to be clear. So please just answer with a simple yes or no. Are you telling me that, instead of doing what I asked of you, you had your company chop down trees?”
“I thought—” Waray angled her head away from the half-whore as if a part of her recognized she’d wandered out onto thin ice. “Ithoughtwe’d ruffle the feathers of that šo-sappy, tree-lusting Amurdad. Fell a dell. Betshe masturbates with resin. Smears it all over herbarkybits. So I took my axe to her domainsomething fierce. By the sweat of my own brow. Went above andbeyondthe call of duty.”
“You had your company chop down trees?”
“Maybe.”
Ashtadukht’s glower bored into the floor of her litter. “Why?”
“. . . Amurdad will throw a fitlikeašo-fuming goose? Flapping and making a scene. Or a šo-frigidtrunk ravished by winter’s member until she explodes? Bet she’d likethat.” Waray made claws of her hands, scratching at her ear with one, then thought to add, “Got somehardto reach eggs, too. Spruce haul.”
“No,” Ashtadukht said with a sigh. Her wrath was beginning to give way to disappointment. Her one remaining friend had let her down, and now that friend stood beside her acting as if she’d done nothing wrong. “Why’d you betray my trust? You cost me the battle, perhaps the war. All because I depended on you.”
The half-viper looked around, but said nothing. The gravity of what she’d done finally struck.
“Tell me.”
Waray issued an uncertain hiss, partly agitated by the situation, partly by the misty, far-off memory she’d written out. “I . . . there were . . . things. Things I hadtoforget. Šo-wretched things. Itoldyou. Said they were taking form.”
“So you forgot?” Ashtadukht asked, deflating considerably after catching on to what’d happened. She was partly responsible. If she’d just given Waray a dose—or had refrained from ever giving her a reason to resort to it—she probably would’ve avoided this predicament. Still, she felt slighted.
“Your girdle,” she said, rolling her arm over to show her palm. “Give it to me.”
Waray tapped her nails on the lapis lazuli. “Don’tthink it suits you.”
“It suits you less. I gave it to you because I thought we were companions, and because I thought, being my closest friend, you’d do your utmost to further my cause. That was my mistake. Now, I’m correcting my mistake.”
“We’re chummy . . .” Waray ventured. “I think. You’remy only friend. I . . .” She turned a crestfallen stare on her girdle, and began to slowly untie it. Once she had it removed, she handed it over as if it were as fragile as butterfly wings. “Didn’tmeanto ruin your crusade,” she offered. “I can’t—” Waray canted her head. Then again the other way. She pressed her fists to her temples. “Can’t figure outwhy, butI want your šo-righteous justice. They ruined my life, sameasyours.”
Ashtadukht dropped the girdle at her feet. “Go away,” she said softly.
“We’rechummy,” the half-viper declared. “I’m your companion.”
“No, Waray. We aren’t. This isn’t something you can apologize for—not that you’ve even made an attempt. My host was routed, and I’ve you to thank for it. I should order you thrown in a gibbet. You’re no longer a captain. You’re just—” She gave a limp wave. “You’re nobody. Just get out of my sight.”
“Oh.” Waray lingered for a moment as if she had more to say, then quietly disappeared into the night.
Ashtadukht sighed, and gorged herself on dried apricots.
• • • • •
Gloom collected in the corners of her litter like lagoons on the shores of darkness. The moon was only a sliver, but a sliver was all it took to intimidate the night into huddling in fibrous shadows to avoid its scrutiny.
What was left of Ashtadukht’s host formed a gaunt line on the Iranian plateau. Not far off, the Iranian military had assembled. She’d only just arrived at the bivouac, meaning to surround them in their sleep, or at least catch them off-guard; they’d anticipated the move. Her scowl spoke for what she thought of that. Ashtadukht was beginning to come to terms with the fact that she wasn’t half the tactician her father had been, and she didn’t like it one bit.
But she was, irrefutably, a planet-reckoner. She’d laboured at it for most of her life, if under a mistaken title. She’d earned it through sweat and blood—more importantly, through sacrifice. And that’s what she’d show them. Let those military-minded fools mock her failures all they like. She’d draw a lot and—
Ashtadukht rose from her throne. A div had broken off from her host, and was ambling toward the Iranian line. “You can’t be serious,” she muttered. Then to the officers by her litter. “The fuck is that div doing? Get it in formation before the ranks break up!”
“She means to challenge one of their champions,” answered the one with too many ears. “We thought—we assumed you’d approved.”
“What? Why in the seven climes would you—oh.” Ashtadukht leaned out of the front of her litter, squinting into the night. “Bring me closer. Hurry!”
The behemoths brought her to the frontlines, where she called to the lone div. “Come back, Waray! Whatever you hope to accomplish, it’s not necessary. There’s no way they’d honour your victory anyway. We’re all divs here, in case you’ve forgotten. They won’t just turn around and be on their way.”
The half-viper ambled on, not so much as glancing over her shoulder. A rider broke off from the Iranian vanguard, and the two met half-way.
• • • • •
“Shkarag,” Tirdad gr
eeted, dismounting.
“Wa—” Waray swallowed her correction, blinking hard as she did; it went down sour. “Pinecone-up-his, up-his, what’sit?”
“Arse.”
The half-viper doddered unsteadily to one side. “Arse.”
“It is good to see you again. When I left . . .” Tirdad shook his head. “I would have rather it been under better circumstances.”
Waray brandished her axes. “I’m heretochallenge you.”
Tirdad looked doubtfully down his nose at her. “Are you drunk?”
“Maybe. Odd stipulation, I think. Canget drunk; can’t getpoisoned. Who decides that? Whopicksand chooses like some, like some—” Waray canted her head and almost took her body with it. “Like some šo-fussy darter that won’teatthatfish, butthis fish, thisfish is okay.”
“I will not fight you in this state,” Tirdad said, his severe delivery blunted by honest concern for an old friend. “There is no honour in it. I would not want to regardless. Besides, what do you think will happen?” He gestured at the army at his back. “Do you think they will just excuse the destruction she has brought to their homeland? The only reason I am here at all is because it does not matter whether I live or die, not because they intend to take your challenge seriously.”
Waray shrugged. She seemed to be trying to focus on the bit of her axe, and having a hard time of it.
“Go back to Ashtadukht. Tell her this is foolish. She should never have sent you out here.”
“Shedidn’tsend me. I’m not her šo-mangy dog.”
“Huh?”
“Always wanted tobeahero. To have a šo-dynamic statue erected. Somethinglewd yet gallant. The OneMostSlithered at its base. And centuries down the road somezealotswould be offendedenough to topple it. Mytale would live on in song, I think. Changed to suitothercultures until it’s no longer recognizable, but I’d be there somewhere. As a bird or a wise old crone. I’dbethere.”
A Star-Reckoner's Lot (A Star-Reckoner's Legacy Book 1) Page 33