The Warrior's Tale (The Far Kingdoms, Book 2)

by Allan Cole, Chris Bunch

  Now it was time to shed my Evocator’s cloak, such as it was, and gladly return to what I knew best. Sword in hand, I pelted off the quarterdeck and forward, along the storming bridge to where my assault party waited. Xia grinned, a hard humorless smile she probably wasn’t even aware of, and now we were closing on the Ticino docks.

  Five of Yezo’s ships . . . five seagates . . . I’d ordered him to strike directly in from the sea at the gates, where the water would be deepest. One veered to the side either by accident or perhaps the helmsman had been hit, and ran aground, hard against the embankment.

  Evidently the soldiers didn’t recognize the intent of the attack, because some of them broke off firing at the other four, and ran to concentrate fire on the stricken ship which had failed in its mission. Yezo’s ships were seconds from crashing, and I saw Yezo’s men were as disciplined as he boasted. Sailors, ignoring the arrowstorm, were cutting the ropes that bound anchors to improvised derricks hung over the ships’ sterns, as they’d hastily trained to do, and the anchors splashed into the dark harbor waters.

  Yezo’s four ships struck. I heard the rending crashes loud above the roar of the battle in the roadstead as all four struck fair into the center of the entryports, sending the sailors aboard sprawling. Then the men came back to their feet as the ships they’d deliberately wrecked lurched and rolled on their beam ends, then back, and were at the crude windlasses we’d had mounted on the quarterdecks, kedging the ships out of our way.

  I heard Stryker shouting for full sail, and Duban crying to our oarsmen for speed and more speed but was intent on Yezo’s craft. Slowly, laboriously, one, two, then three were moving back, freeing the canal mouths. On the fourth I saw a flicker as both anchor cables snapped and whipped back across the decks, cutting men down as they lashed. But three gates were open to the canals, our passage into the heart of the city.

  Three openings, and on his flagship Cholla Yi was bellowing and I was shouting, and our oars were coming up, feathered, as our galleys, driven by that now high magical wind from the Evocators shot into their galleys. I heard wood scream and rend as one ship ground along the stone canal banks, but it mattered not how close the fit was as long as we were still moving.

  The waterway widened, and we could row, and our ships drove onward. Ticino’s planners had laid out their city logically — the canals ran straight from the waterfront, and ended around the city’s main square. That efficiency would doom the city. Ahead was the empty square overhung by The Sarzana’s huge round tower. I had a moment to glance behind, as I heard the din of battle building, and knew what was happening. Yezo’s men were coming off their ships as they’d been ordered — swimming, jumping, or hopefully using the long planks we’d put aboard as gangways.

  Their orders now were simple — to spread panic in the city by fire and sword. They’d been told to spare the citizens and take no loot, but I knew better than to expect that of most of them. Not far behind them, if the battle in the roadstead went as hoped for, the other Konyan ships would be landing troops with the same orders.

  I wanted chaos, because if Ticino was drowned in rack and ruin our real enemies might not notice my women and the mercenaries striking for their throats.

  I heard Duban shriek pain as “his ship,” our galley slammed into the stone wharf at the edge of the square, but what of that? If we lived the Konyans would rebuild our galleys a thousand times over before we sailed for home. Gangplanks slammed down and we poured ashore, onto the hard stone square of Ticino. Other men came sliding out of the canals they’d taken. But there was no time to pause, nor even look around, and I was running hard for the stairs that curled up to the causeways to the tower. There were five, no six sentries, but they were dead, stumbling down with shafts in their chests that’d punched through their armor like it wasn’t there.

  The causeways were open, and I could see into the heart of The Sarzana’s stronghold, and we were running harder than before, desperate to get inside before the gates that must exist could crash closed. There were archers on the top of the ringwall ahead of us, and an arrow scraped brick next to me and pinwheeled away. Our bows thrummed, and arrows sang away and those walls were bare.

  I heard the battle-cries of my women, Corais’s yip-yipping like the savage fox she was, and felt a flash of brief joy. This was what I’d built the Guard for, what I’d led them toward. Now they were my shining battle-blade, and now I’d strike a deathblow with them. We were united in that moment, in that blood-drenched run down the causeway, past the slumped bodies of soldiers.

  This was what my life was meant to be, not an endless array of hobbling up and down at sentry-go, nor crouched around a fire muttering incantations like some dried-body crone, but even as the red thought came through my blood joy I knew it false.

  We were a few yards from the short tunnel that lead through the tower’s ring-wall into an inner keep when rusting metal, long-unused, grated, and I saw the iron spikes of a portcullis grate down from an overhead slot. Then Locris and Polillo slammed into it, keeping it from closing. Four other women — I don’t remember three of them, but one was Legate Neustria — leapt past me, and one of them jammed a spear into the groove the second, inner portcullis was supposed to travel down, and jammed it. I stood in the center of that tunnel, and saw Polillo impossibly holding the iron grating by herself, and then Locris reappeared, half-carrying, half-dragging a balk of lumber that she forced up into position, bracing the portcullis open, and the way was open.

  Up the causeway ran the rest of my women from the other galleys and behind them Cholla Yi and his men. Far below, in the square, I saw three figures, and knew they were Gamelan, indomitable even in his blindness, and his two escorts. There were bodies down on the causeway, bodies of my Guardswomen, too many for me to keep my eyes on, and turned back toward the keep on the other side of this tunnel that led to the tower.

  From above me, through a murder-hole in the center of the tunnel’s roof a crossbow string snapped and a bolt slashed into Locris’s side, burying itself nearly to the vanes. She screamed, clawed at the bolt, took two steps and died. A bowwoman sped a shaft back through the slot, but there was no one there, or at least we heard no sound of a hit.

  We were running again, out of the tunnel into the lighter darkness of the keep, and now the great round tower rose above us. Its monstrous gates were barred and, in line in front of them was a company of crossbowmen.

  I shouted “Down,” and we were flat, just as we’d trained so long in our mock-charges, and Xia thudded down beside me as the crossbow strings twanged as loudly as slashed ship-cables and the bolts whined overhead, catching only one or two of Cholla Yi’s men who’d never learned to duck.

  Five yards from me, Dica leapt to her feet. “Come on! Before they’ve time to reload,” and was running, sword high, no one else on her feet, and before I had a chance to shout warning the front row of crossbowmen knelt and the second rank fired, and Dica contorted, hurling her blade high into the night sky, and then she fell.

  The night was sudden red, not the red of fire but of blood as the Guard came up and charged, screaming rage, and poured across the courtyard like quicksilver, like lightning. Ismet was beside me, snarling like a jungle cat for her once-lover as she ran, and we were among the crossbowmen with sword and ax before any of them of them had time to cock their pieces, and so they died to a man where they stood.

  Guardswomen went down with them — and in that fierce moment of slaughter Neustria and Janela went to the Seeker along with others.

  I had a mere second to mourn Dica. Of course she’d erred in rushing the bowmen before she realized they hadn’t shot their course, but she died bravely and she died at the head of her troops. I wondered how many Guardswomen might’ve hesitated before charging, given that front rank time to reload and died if it hadn’t been for Dica’s unknowing sacrifice. That’s the way all too many of my best have met the Seeker, and why the Maranon Guard has buried as many officers as privates.

  The
huge gates into the keep were barred, but our sudden bloody rush had left the soldiers without time to close their small sallyport, and before anyone within could move, we were inside.

  Polillo somehow had gotten in front of me, and there were three soldiers coming at her. I suppose to them, she was a blur, a killing engine, but to me her movements were very precise, very slow, and exact as she used the head of her ax to shove one man back into another, then while they stumbled, recovering, to change her thrust and lunge, as if the ax were a halberd and bury its curved head in the third man’s throat.

  Without changing stance, she recovered, her enormous strength pulling the axhead free as the other two came at him. She batted the first man’s sword out of line like a kitten with a stick, and with the backswing used the bill to hook and snap the neck of the second man. The first man shrieked and tried to flee, but Polillo, still moving as carefully as if she were demonstrating the Art of the Ax to awe-stricken recruits, sent it crashing into the back of his spin and the man flopped away like a gaffed fish.

  A man lunged with a long bill, and Xia slashed through the weapon’s wooden shaft and the man’s arm as well. Spouting gore, he shrieked and fell.

  In that instant I “felt” the spell Gamelan had cast vanish, and knew I stood naked to the gaze of The Archon. I “heard” a scream of surprised rage, and we all felt the stone flags under our feet grind and rumble, as if we were in an earthquake, but I knew it was just another sign of The Archon’s shock at having been fooled, as he realized I yet lived.

  I shouted the charge again, and we dashed down a long, twisting corridor. Squads of soldiers came out of doorways, and arrows flashed past or found a target, spears clattered against stone walls as The Sarzana’s guard tried to stop us, tried to rally, but couldn’t, and the men were driven back into their cuddies or they died. Then the corridor ended, and the roof rose high, and we were in The Sarzana’s throne room.

  The domed ceiling was a hundred feet above, the chamber was two hundred feet or more in diameter. The walls were hung with tapestries or battle standards, and there were flaring torches on the walls and a huge fire guttering down at one wall.

  The room was empty save for my soldiers and, on a high-raised dais in the center of the room, The Sarzana. That is all any of my women, or Cholla Yi and the handful of men who’d followed us down the corridor saw.

  I saw more.

  Standing above The Sarzana, looming like a puppeteer bestrides his marionettes, was the Archon! He was huge, maybe thirty feet, and I could see the stones of the far wall through his only partially-material body. His arms were coming up, to strike at me.

  Corais was beside me, and her bow came up and was full drawn, broadhead against wood, her fingers holding steady beside her ear. She was as firm and calm as if she were at the butts, and then she loosed and the arrow sped true, straight for The Sarzana. His hand came out, and I swear it was moving as slowly as a fly in honey, but he plucked her shaft from midair, and snapped it between two fingers.

  As he did, I heard a CRACK, and Corais’s bow, the one that’d been made so lovingly so long ago cracked like a twig or like the arrow The Sarzana now tossed aside.

  We broke into a run, a desperate charge toward the dais as The Sarzana’s right hand lifted, fingers curled like a snakehead, and green fire like I’d seen on the ship’s masts during a storm flickered, and then gathered into a ball and flashed toward us. It sent Corais spinning. I thought she was dead, but then she rolled to her feet, her face bloodied as if she’d been beaten.

  Green fire flickered again on The Sarzana’s hand, just as Corais drew her dagger, brushed its blade over the bit of robe she’d tied to her arm and threw. Corais was no magician, nor claimed any powers of the Evocator, but perhaps that talisman had gathered some of the hate she felt for being nearly shamed by The Sarzana.

  Her cast was true, and thudded into The Sarzana’s chest, just below his ribs. He screamed, a wailing agony like a gutted roebuck, then his scream became a cry of joy, a screech of “I’m free!”

  In that instant I felt The Archon depart.

  The Sarzana plucked the dagger from his body and spun it away, back at Corais. The blade darted back toward us like a striking serpent, and took her in the chest. I don’t know if The Sarzana was already dead, or if his great magical powers meant Corais’s strike was but a flesh wound, nor did it matter. I was on the dais, sword slashing with all my rage and pain behind it. It struck The Sarzana full on the shoulder, beside his neck, and clove him nearly to the breastbone. Blood fountained, and he fell limply as I yanked my sword free.

  But I took no chances, and as Ismet had, slashed and slashed once more and then cast his dripping heart into the dying fireplace. Perhaps I should’ve saved it for an icon but couldn’t. Not with Corais’ life still clinging to it. The flames took the wizard’s heart and roared up and out, as if a barrel of oil had been poured on them. The room shimmered, as if seen in summer’s heat, and once more the earth shuddered under my boots, and I heard a far-distant wailing as demons took The Sarzana’s soul, or what’d been a soul once, and this world would never know him again.

  But I wasn’t thinking that then, but was going to where Corais lay, her head pillowed on Polillo’s knees.

  Surprisingly, she still lived, although I could tell the Seeker would embrace her in minutes. She looked at me, tried to smile, but couldn’t.

  “I would’ve made a . . . shitty . . . old lady, anyway,” she said, then blood runneled from her lips and she was gone.

  Polillo looked at me. “Magic killed her,” she said in a whisper only I could hear. “Just as it shall take me.”

  I got to my feet. Xia was beside me, but I didn’t want any comfort from her at that moment.

  I know we all have to die, and Corais, when she chose a soldier’s life, chose a soldier’s fate as well. And she had brought down The Sarzana.

  But just then I would’ve traded him, and everyone else in those damned Konyan islands, for Corais’ return.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  ON HOMEWARD WINDS

  In most lands the god of victory is gloriously winged, its face an image of fierce nobility. But the idol of victory ought to be a direwolf howling over its gutted prey. In battle, I’ve never found victory noble, much less sweet. Oh, there might be joy for a time — drunken boasting to one’s mates about how you tricked and overcame a particularly canny enemy. But a soldier’s joy soon rings hollow when she fully realizes it was only luck that left her standing; and how many of her comrades were deserted by luck that day.

  There’d been other deaths, of course, besides my Guardswomen. Phocas had been killed as Cholla Yi’s galley swept through the canals by an arrow launched by an unseen sniper. Others included Captain Meduduth of our own force, Admiral Yezo; Nor, who I prayed found some release in death; and many hundred Konyan soldiers and sailors whose names I knew not. It would be many a year before this victory lost its mourning banners.

  We limped back to Isolde, heroes all. Ships and small boats sailed out to greet us from every island we passed. Trumpets and horns hailed us. Hilltops were alive with Konyans cheering our return. But below-decks the wounded groaned; and on the decks the Evocators blessed corpse after corpse, and put a coin on their tongues to bribe mercy from the Seeker when he carried them to his lair. I spoke to no one, not even Gamelan, not even Xia; but only huddled in my bed mourning Corais and all the women I’d fed to the demons of war.

  There were fifty of us now.

  Fifty!

  Out of all the hundreds I’d set out with when we marched on Lycanth. I did not weep; I was too frozen with grief. When I awoke in the morning I waited long moments before I opened my eyes — praying that when I did another nightmare would have passed — and Corais would be looking down on me with that sardonic grin. I missed her. I miss her still.

  If there is life after this place, I pray we can march together again under the same banner.

  Two nights out of Isolde Xia crept into my arms
. Our lovemaking was slow and bittersweet. Afterwards, we half-dozed in one another’s arms listening to the booming seas. Just before dawn Xia turned to me and looked deep into my eyes. They’d aged — there was pain there, there was knowledge won at much cost.

  “I love you, Rali,” she said. Before I could answer, she was gone.

  I arose — not fresh, or even particularly cheerful — but I did feel somewhat healed. Also, mourning had been replaced by worry. A feeling of dread nagged at me, but of what, I couldn’t say.

  Gamelan was waiting for me in his cabin. “I was about to send for you, Rali,” he said. “I have need of you.”

  “It’s the Archon, isn’t it?” I said, guessing immediately what was in his thoughts. “He’s not done with us, yet. Or we, of him.”

  “I’m not certain,” the wizard said. “I’ve cast spells in every direction, and he doesn’t seem to be about. Admittedly, my conjuring abilities are far from healed. Still, each spell I cast was blocked. No, not blocked — that would be like a wall. This was more like encountering a locked door. That in itself makes me worry.”

  “How may I help?” I asked, settling by his side. “What can I do that you cannot?”

  “I believe there was — or is — a bond between you and the Archon,” he said. “It’s a bond of hate, to be sure; but there are no stronger chains than can be forged on those fires. Perhaps that bond began when your brother defied the Archons. There were all sorts of black spells about in those days, what with Greycloak and Raveline and the Archons burrowing into places few have dared to approach since the ancients. Unwilling though he was, Amalric was at the center of it. Then you came along, and once again an Antero is about when great forces are at work. I knew at Lycanth when Jinnah could not hold, much less cast the bones it was to you, and only you to whom they spoke. Then you slew one of them, confirming the Archons’ worst fears about the Anteros. Finally, when the last Archon cursed you with his dying breath — and then managed to defy death by fleeing into the ethers — that curse forged the strongest link of all.