by J. C. Staudt
Then Cluspith gasped. Air rushed in, and the lake of blood began to drain like an oasis in drought. Cuts and gashes fused together. Scabs and callouses formed before the eyes of Merrick’s audience like seams stitched into fabric. Scar tissue knitted itself into existence. A murmur rippled through the crowd.
Cluspith spoke. “Don’t stand in the daylight,” he said. “Don’t stand in the daylight, Merrick Bouchard. You’ll burn.”
CHAPTER 12
Sand and Sky
The long year was drawing to a close, the days shortening as the light-star drew its line further south along the horizon each day. Lethari Prokin’s feiach stretched into the distance behind him, thousands of mounted warriors strong, spread along the curves of a hundred dunes. They would cross paths with a pale-skin trade caravan today, sometime toward early afternoon. The feiach did not know this yet, but Lethari did.
His corsil clumped down the side of a sandy knoll, high and shadowless in the noonday light. Jadoda was fast and strong, with a coat of coarse dark fur along the ridge of her back, though the animal was well into middle age. Lethari glanced down at his satchel, wherein lay the prize of his foresight. The goatskin record was as detailed as it could’ve been, and today would be the first test of its validity. He had already worked out the place and time, and even the manner in which his warriors would take the pale-skins unawares.
“So you will have a son,” said Sigrede Balbaressi, who sat beside Lethari on a corsil of his own.
“That is what my wife tells me,” Lethari said with a smile. “She has not consulted a seer—that I am aware of. Yet she claims to know.”
“I should warn you, then,” Sig said. “If you wish to challenge me over the number of our sons, I have not yet begun to live up to my potential.”
Lethari laughed. “I am sure you have many more sons to give to the world. And I know your Shonnie will be glad to bear them for you.”
“She may not be glad of it. But she will bear them all the same, eh?” Sig roared with laughter, his massive frame bobbing in the saddle. His corsil gave a braying call as if to claim solidarity with its master.
They rode on for a time, speaking of trivial things, laughing and joking, while the feiach plodded along behind them. Lethari kept an eye over his shoulder, aware that if he did not detect the pale-skins early, their caravan might appear suddenly from behind a dune and take his people by surprise. Looking back, he could just make out the thin wheel tracks of the empty slave cages. Those same wheels would be carving deep gouges in the sand by the time they returned home.
The goat herds were a loose cluster of tiny black dots meandering down the side of a distant dune. Lethari’s horse scouts, mounted on their wild, spirited sandbreds, trotted alongside the line, spread wide to the right and left. And just behind him, inches from his face in the sheath on his back, shone the emerald eyes and golden lizard’s head pommel of his sword, Tosgaith, reforged by Cairmag Charani just in time for his departure from Sai Calgoar.
“My Lord Lethari,” said Sig, “you seem absent today. If you will permit me to ask, why do we travel the Suruth when we might take the canyon instead? Would that not bring us through the hot lands more quickly, and in the shade?”
The Suruth was a ridge of high dunes that ran along the stretch of desert between the Brinescales and the Clayhollows. Along its northern edge ran a wide sandy trough, where a well-kept feiach might pass undetected from the south. Lethari knew the canyon of which Sig spoke; it would’ve been easier to take that route since they had no slaves or trade stuffs to carry. But he had taken them to the Suruth for a reason, and besides that, it was not Sig’s place to second-guess him.
“We may jest of the lighter things, Sigrede,” Lethari said sharply, “but do not question your master’s will.”
A quizzical frown passed over Sig’s face and was gone. “My regrets, master.”
Midday came and went. While the light-star passed overhead, Lethari grew more anxious by the minute. He kept his eyes forward as often as he could help it, for it would not do to have Sig and his other captains thinking him unfit to lead.
Finally, Lethari’s alertness paid off. When he felt the rumblings of movement, he signaled his men to stop. Then he kneeled Jadoda and slipped from his saddle to lay on the hot sand, listening. His captains and their attendants did the same—Sigrede and Tallis, Dyovan Angeides, Cean Eldreni. Even Amhaziel Bilmadi, the venerable soothsayer, lowered his old bones to the sand to listen.
They were here. The pale-skin traders were coming, and Lethari’s men realized it at once. He spoke to them quickly, but not without the subtle confidence of practice. Pale-skin caravans as large as the one they were about to face seldom had the mobility to flee from a fight, so Lethari laid out his plans with this in mind. After a short briefing, the captains scattered to round up their men and put themselves into position.
As word spread through the feiach, its wavy line dispersed until there was nothing left of it on the dune tops but the faint tracks of corsils in the sand. By the time the pale-skins caught sight of those tracks, it would be too late for them.
Lethari drew Tosgaith from its sheath. The hilt was hot to the touch, the emerald eyes in the lizard’s head glittering like green fire in the daylight. He nudged Jadoda forward and took up his place beneath the steep ridge of the Suruth, where the wind was sweeping sand over the lip to form tiny dust devils in the slipface.
His heart raced in his chest, full of hope and promise. He had warred with the pale-skins for as long as he had breathed, but this was the start of a new war; a war he was destined to win. The soothsayer had foreseen it, and Lethari had never been given reason to doubt the soothsayer’s predictions.
The trade caravan was not expecting an attack. When the first of the long wheeled flatbeds, pulled by a team of horses and laden with its massive iron shipping crate, penetrated the low flank between two ridges of sand, Lethari’s men did not move. Pale-skins began to pour through the gap: trail-weary shepherds, merchants clad in decadent array, and the hangers-on who followed the caravans from one town to the next by the dozens. Still, Lethari’s warriors made neither sound nor movement.
Onward the traders came, crossing through the passage from the windward face of the Suruth to the shielded one, moving roughly northwestward. Lethari smiled when he heard the distant war cries of his outriders, the signal of their advance toward the caravan. These he had sent eastward along the inner lip of the ridge to circle around behind the column.
When the pale-skins saw the outriders, they began to grow frantic. Lethari heard them urging their horses forward, hurrying through the passage as though the sandy ridge would offer them its protection. They did not run, which was as Lethari had expected; the flatbeds were too bulky for that. Instead the pale-skins rounded their vehicles into a defensive semicircle, corralling the old, the young, and the women within.
The distant outriders, meanwhile, had broken into a full gallop toward the ridgeline. Lethari had specified everything down to the number, ensuring his fighting force was larger than the one the caravan would bring to bear. He had held back the largest portion of his feiach for the ambush.
As soon as the shepherds circled around to face the outriders, Lethari raised his horn to his lips and blew a loud, long blast. The pitch snapped from low to high, its cavernous bellow throbbing over the dunes. BEHROOOOOO.
Quick as a flash, men woke from the earth like vipers, shrugging away the sheets of sand that had hidden them. Steel glinted from beneath their cloaks as they slashed at the horses’ legs and tore men from the saddle. A host of Lethari’s riders surged over one of the low dunes, flanking the arc of flatbeds and blindsiding the shepherds from the right before they could turn their spears. With their attackers too close for a crosswise thrust, the pale-skins broke and fled left, their sole route of escape.
Only it wasn’t. It was just where Lethari had planned for them to go. Now that they were cut off from their allies, he and his contingent sprinted over the
crest and barreled slantwise down the dune’s steep slipface, where they crashed upon the fleeing shepherds in a deadly tide.
Lethari’s sword came alive in his hands, hacking javelins to splinters and biting through leather and horseflesh as though it were softer than tallow. The duneside gave his men the high ground; their corsils sat them higher still than even the tallest horses ridden by the lathcu shepherds. The downward force of every scimitar and falchion strike was enough to put the pale-skins back on their heels.
The battle raged for more than an hour, the bulk of it wild and turbulent despite its decisive beginning. Stragglers wandered from the fighting and had to be culled. Shepherds, cornered and bleeding, fought like wild animals against handfuls of Lethari’s warriors. Still the tide remained in his favor, and the pale-skins’ resistance did not last long.
Gunfire began to ring out as the caravan grew desperate. Lethari was accustomed to the noise; it always came late in the fight, and always when it was going poorly for the shepherds. He used his own firearm so seldom that he often forgot how loud it was. Yet the sound had become more a herald of victory to him than a warning of danger.
When the fighting was over, the feiach penned the survivors inside the circle of vehicles. Lethari beheaded the elderly who were too fragile to live out the journey or too feeble to make decent slaves. He threw the women into the slave cages, along with what children and youths there were. The seed of the pale-skins was weak, and their offspring had become fewer and sicklier with each passing year.
Lethari Prokin held the men out of the cages so he could address them separately. “These are my finest savages,” he told them in the Aion-speech, gesturing to the line of blood-soaked warriors standing behind him. “Any man among you who believes himself brave enough to earn his freedom may fight for it. A single combat, to end only in death, for each man who accepts my offer. To each of the winners, I will give one horse out of my own plunder, along with enough water for the way to the nearest pale-skin village. As for the rest of you, there lies your future.” He pointed to the cages, full of crying women and screaming children.
Several of the men accepted Lethari’s offer, raising their hands and clamoring to be chosen. When he had caged those who refused, Lethari finished explaining the terms. “To each of you who has chosen to fight, look to the man beside you. This is the one you must defeat, should you wish to earn your freedom.”
The contestants raised a cry of protest, shouts of ‘Liar!’ and ‘Murderer!’ and ‘Cheat!’ issuing forth from the cages. Lethari’s warriors dispersed from behind him, laughing and jesting with one another as they beat the slaves and silenced the dissenters with whips and clubs. When it was quiet, Lethari spoke aloud for the last time that day.
“These are my sands,” he said. “They belong to my people. You will earn your right to live on them, or you will serve their true masters until the end of your days. Dyovan, choose the opponents and let the fighting begin. Leave the cages where they are.” So the lathcu women and children may watch.
The feiach made camp there in the late afternoon, their fires surrounding the caravan’s remains. While many of the warriors gathered around to watch the pale-skins fight with bear fists and feet to snuff the life from their former companions, others in Lethari’s horde looted the bodies of the dead, cut the draft horses loose, and tore apart every shipping crate in the caravan until their packs and pack animals were overloaded with spoils.
The bouts lasted well into the evening, with many brawls reluctantly entered and slow to start, or bitterly fought and slow to end. There were tears and petitions from the combatants; screams of terror and fits of sickness from the spectators in the cages. By the time it was over, the ground was littered with dead lathcui. Only five pale-skins had managed to escape with their lives, all of them badly beaten and hardly fit for travel. Still, Lethari kept his promise. He gave them each a horse and three days’ fresh water, then sent them on their way.
That night, the whole feiach celebrated. There was music and dancing, and bonfires that leapt so high they seemed to touch the stars. But from the cages within the half-circle of flatbeds, there was only sadness and mourning. The contests had provided fine entertainment for Lethari’s people, but they had also served as the first step in breaking the will of the new slaves.
Lethari liked knowing when and where to strike. Hiding the goatskin record felt like a game; a game which, after a lifetime of loyalty, he was surprised to find himself so good at. The idea of keeping a secret from the king had filled him with dread at first, but now he was glad of having listened to Frayla. He had served as the king’s warleader for many a year, but the charge had never come so easy. It was like competing at stones and being inside the mind of his opponent; there was no way he could lose.
The feiach moved on the next morning. They left the empty shipping crates at the base of the dunes and burned the wooden flatbeds beneath them. Without wheels or horses to pull them, the crates would go to rust, or one day be swallowed by the shifting sands.
Lethari kept the goatskin record close as his feiach crossed the wasteland, never consulting it except when he was alone in his tent at night. He turned his war party southward and intercepted another handful of pale-skin caravans before they reached the Skeletonwood. With each new conquest, a detachment split off from the feiach to return slaves to Sai Calgoar or deliver pale-skin goods to the factory camp in Belmond for trade. No one in the City of Sand had a taste for coffee, and few had any use for tobacco, liquor, scrap metal, or canned goods.
And so, after losing men to both supply crews and battle injury, the feiach shrank in number to a fraction of its original size. By the time the twisted dead trees of the Standing Bones came within sight, Lethari and his captains were heavy-laden with the spoils of war, no longer interested in what slaves or killing or plunder the pale-skin caravans had to offer.
What Lethari was interested in was the location of the hidden village Daxin Glaive had told him about. A cave beneath a large, flat stone, carved into the landscape beside a deep ravine. Dryhollow Split, he had called it. That was where those who had run from Vantanible’s Black City were hiding.
Lethari was determined to find the village, though it might take his trackers days to do so. It had been Daxin’s dying wish, and Lethari wanted to honor that. Scouts had found several old traps, triggered but long neglected, as they moved through the forest. With good fortune, they would encounter further signs of life before long.
As the remains of his feiach spread out to make camp across the Skeletonwood, Lethari summoned Amhaziel Bilmadi to his tent. High on the success of his recent conquests, he expected to receive only good words from this consultation. But when they ushered the white-haired elder through the door flap, Lethari could feel him coming like a cold, bitter wind. Amhaziel’s face was set in a deep frown, his black eyes damp and heavy as if on the verge of sleep, like slivers of dark opal beneath sheets of glass.
“We have achieved much,” Lethari said to him. “Great victories, many slaves, and much plunder. But the feiach grows restless in the dead forest. The spirits of our ancestors haunt these lands. There is nothing for them here but to wait in fear while the trackers make their search. I would know what lies ahead. You will see, and know, and tell me when we will find this hidden village and move on from this place.”
“You have gained nothing, my eminent chief, blood of the sands,” said the old man, his voice sharp and thin. “For when the day comes that you look for allies among those you love, you will find the fabric of your household turned to molten fire, and the span of your wealth will be as the space between your fingers. You are a warleader to be feared and praised. The son of lords and the ancestor of kings, yes. But you are not without these many flaws, borne deep in your flesh. Marks of strength, but also of torment. Remember that.”
“I will… remember it,” said Lethari, bewildered. His destiny had seemed so much simpler when the seer had prophesied over him at his house in Sai Calgoar.
Amhaziel’s visions had not proven untrue then, so perhaps his words would prove just as true now. Perhaps the price of Lethari’s success was greater than he was prepared to pay. That did not mean the fates would grant him a reprieve from paying it.
“You must become your flaws, or you will be made to suffer for them,” said Amhaziel. “The finding will take as long as it takes. Patience is the habit by which you will see the moments unwasted. With my master’s consent, I will take my leave.” With that, the soothsayer turned and padded from the tent without waiting for the permission he had requested.
Lethari was perplexed. Of late, the old man’s moods had been as fickle as a fat buzzard’s appetites. Amhaziel’s revelations had made him so sure of his path; now that he had taken that path, the soothsayer’s clear skies had darkened to a sandstorm in the blink of an eye. As long as the feiach lay restless amongst these decaying trees, Lethari would find no rest either, he knew.
To clear his mind, he exited the tent and took a walk through the camp. Stars punctured the darkening sky beyond a wall of low-hanging clouds while the smells of roasted mutton and seared broadroot wafted from nearby cookfires. There was a murmur about the camp; not the easy revelry of the open wasteland, but a sense of agitation that had permeated the hearts of even his fiercest warriors.
When Lethari rounded a group of horses and corsils grazing in a thicket of tall dry grass, he found his captains at the slave cages. Women were cowering in the corners as warriors dragged them out to clap them in irons. The captains straightened when they saw Lethari, as if caught doing something they shouldn’t have. Lethari knew what they were doing, and he had no desire to interrupt them. It seemed they had other ideas.
“We yield to you, master,” said Dyovan Angeides, a slender, sharp-faced man whose piercing eyes reminded Lethari of a bird of prey. “It is your right to choose any slave woman you desire—even one of ours.”