A hand touched him, and Bellasteros struggled up from a fathomless well of sleep. Thin gray night shading to dawn-the battle fixed, and this day the fulfillment of destiny …
“Forgive me,” said Chryse. “I told Patros I would wake you.”
He roused himself, leaned on one arm, took the hand she proffered. Her face was thinner, her eyes sunk deep. “What is it?” he asked.
“I—I know of your birth, my lord.”
He winced. “Yes, my fate is upon me. Perhaps we should have the herald declare it to the camp.”
His jest escaped her. “Oh, no, no; I shall not betray you. I spent the night thinking, praying, dreaming of strange places and strange gods …”
“As do many of us, these days.”
Her hand tightened on his, demanding his attention. “Marcos, I respect you too deeply, I love you too deeply, to believe that you could have turned heretic. So it must be that our definition of heresy is wrong. That … His Eminence is wrong. It is you who are in the right, and the queen of Sabazel with you—that must be.”
“That is,” he replied. “How you must have struggled with such thoughts, Chryse. I am pleased.”
“Are you?”
Some men, Bellasteros thought, would have beaten her for daring to think at all. He lifted her hand to his lips; I have wronged you, Chryse, down these many years, over and over. And I need you, too; reassure me …
“His Eminence frightens me,” she continued, frowning, seeking comfort in his strength. “At times you frighten me, but never in the same way. He—he came to me, he touched me …”
“He dares even to set himself in my place?” Bellasteros exclaimed. “Evil has taken him, Chryse.”
“Yes. I believe so.” She bent to kiss her husband lightly on the cheek. In all the years they had been together she had never once been that forward.
Bellasteros returned her kiss, as gently as he could. “What do you wish, my lady?”
For a moment she hesitated, her teeth set into her lower lip. Then, gulping, she met his eyes. “I wish a son for you and Danica. An heir, to the Empire you have won. Peace for men and for the gods.”
“If it is a son, then you will have him as your own. You are my first wife, and will remain so.”
She smiled. Her eyes glistened. “My thanks that you should think so highly of me …” She pulled herself away and stood. “Victory, my lord. Victory, and the Empire at your feet.”
“My thanks to you.” He lay back after she left, staring up at the fabric above his head, listening to the shouts of the centurions beyond. So Adrastes dares to court my wife even before I am dead—dead at his hand, no doubt, in the flush of victory. I was helpless to move against him, until he moved first; but now … He will strike first, he has already struck, at Danica.
Bellasteros sat up and with a decisive movement threw the covers from his body. “You have much to pay for, Adrastes Falco,” he said aloud, and he reached for his armor, his helmet, his sword.
*
Danica caught her breath sharply. “Forgive me,” Shandir said. She bound the last bandage around her queen’s bruised ribs with a touch as light as the fall of an eyelash.
“No, no,” said Danica. “You did not hurt me; the baby kicked me.”
“Strong as his father?
“Indeed.” Danica slipped on her shirt and corselet. “Shandir, is it a boy?”
“Judging by the way it lies within you, yes. But it would be just like a child of Bellasteros’s to go its own way, shattering our expectations.”
Danica shot a searching glance at her friend. Shandir was smiling, her eyes dancing. “If he has changed,” the queen said, “then so have we all. If you had told me at last midwinter’s moon where I would be, what I would be doing and thinking at this one … I would surely have thought you mad.”
“It is just as well, then, that I cannot foresee the future.” The healer began rolling up the remaining bandages and stowing them away.
“Shandir”—Danica sighed—”my friend, my shield … I have sadly neglected you of late.”
“As you said; we have all changed.”
Softly, “And you do not condemn me for it? “
“No. Your destiny is with him, beyond the borders of Sabazel. Who am I to condemn the will of the gods—particularly when you are gods yourselves.”
“Ah, Shandir,” Danica said. And there were no more words; an embrace, a kiss, and the queen once more turned to her armor and her weapons.
*
Lyris knelt at Chryse’s feet. “Forgive me, lady, for the grief I have brought you.”
“Lyris, no. I have brought you grief far beyond any nightmare …” She shivered and looked over her shoulder, but no one was there save a serving-woman packing away the shrine. “Here, this, as a token of my sorrow.”
Lyris looked in dismay at the gold chain she held. “My lady … I shall never return to Sardis—I cannot …”
Chryse hushed the woman as she would her own daughter, raised her to her feet, and embraced her. “Guard the lady of Sabazel, Lyris. She needs you more than I.”
*
Declan helped to load the lush appointments of Adrastes’s wagon. The high priest stood nearby, a dim shape in the darkness, talking to Mardoc, quietly, urgently, as if he were giving orders to the general of Bellasteros’s army. Mardoc made a smart about-face and strode away. He passed so close to Declan that he could have touched the young priest but did not see him. His eyes were pyres of madness.
Declan leaned his forehead against the closed doors of the jeweled shrine, touching in thought the gold image inside. “Harus, protect your own, I beg you; intercede with your lady Ashtar for us….”
Adrastes raised his hands, molding the mist before him into the shape of a woman. And with a gloating smile he crushed the small form into nothingness.
*
A dawn for binding up relationships as raw wounds are bound, carefully but firmly…. Danica came up behind Atalia as the woman saddled her horse.
“Would you betray me if my birth were proved to be under Harus’s wing?” she asked quietly.
Atalia looked at her in surprise. “You are Ashtar’s daughter. My loyalty cannot be swayed. Do you not believe that, Danica?”
“I meant only … a supposition …” But no. Atalia burned with a love and a faith as intense as death itself. “I am honored to have you by my side,” Danica told her, and with a grave kiss turned away.
*
It was that uncertain hour between dark and dawn. In the east a faint blush rose up the sky, licking at the stars. A light mist hung tattered over the army as it prepared to move out; each man looked uneasily at the phantom shape of the man next to him, wondering if before the day was out that mortal form would indeed be nothing but phantom memory.
Atalia glowered grudging acceptance at the falcon standards, one held by Aveyron at Bellasteros’s side, the other held by Mardoc himself in one last, desperate pledge of faith. The bronzed images rode upon the mist, swooping and circling, seeking their prey.
Danica watched the red plume and the red cloak, muted now in the feeble light, neither sun nor moon nor stars, that presaged the dawn. Bellasteros spoke quietly with Patros and laid a smile like a benediction upon Ilanit’s tousled head. And there, too, she thought, a love that hurts like a battle wound …
Ilanit returned to her place with the Sabazians, her eyes downcast. Patros and Bellasteros went to the front of the column. For one moment the conqueror’s eyes sought and found Danica’s; they were calm and confident beyond faith, confident with certain knowledge. And I, too, have seen the gods, Danica thought to him. Strength, my love, for the ordeal ahead.
His mouth softened, twitched, firmed again. We shall meet again before Iksandarun or in paradise … He raised Solifrax, she lifted the star-shield, and with a salute they parted.
The army moved forward. The chill gloom echoed with footsteps, hoofbeats, the creaking of the carts in the baggage train as it laboriously follow
ed. Shandir rode there, and Chryse and Declan, and Adrastes in his luxurious wagon. Its wheels stirred Hern’s unmarked grave.
A darkness loomed in the mist, a hint of the edge of the plateau. Bellasteros, Patros, Mardoc splashed across a thin stream, through a stand of stunted poplars, and with one last glint of the falcon standards disappeared. Swiftly Danica and her Companions dismounted, consigning their beasts to the care of Bellasteros’s horse master. Their path and that of the archers diverged from the army’s, leading instead along the course of the stream to where, the scouts reported, it fell from the top of the plateau down a narrow defile.
It was a walk of less than an hour, away from the low reverberation of the army, through spiky, knee-high grass. The strands of mist were like lethenderum, Danica thought, the crushed grass an intriguing scent of sage. Marcos Bellasteros, the name a caress … She shook her head and settled her mended cloak more securely about the telltale curves of her body.
The plateau rose before them. “Not as steep as the cliff of Azervinah,” Atalia announced, peering up into tumbled blotches and streaks of shadow.
And there was the defile, twisting upward, blotted with mist, its top lost in darkness against a dark sky. It was steep and rocky, but it could be climbed; it was filled with thorn-bushes, dwarf oak, and hazel, an occasional tamarisk anchored to solid stone—perfect cover.
At Danica’s nod Atalia stepped light-footed through the trickle of stream and across the loose rock at the mouth of the defile. She eased around one large boulder, used an overhanging branch to hoist herself into shadow.
Danica gestured at the archers, but their commander waved them back. “You are to go first, my lady,” he said politely, “clearing the way for us. We are not accustomed to such climbing.”
True enough—but she had to ask. “Whose orders?”
“General Mardoc’s.”
Every fiber of her body jerked itself into singing tautness and she felt her face flush. She cast a glance at the archer so keen that he stepped back, confused. But no, this man did only as he was told, not a traitor but an innocent dupe. “Very well,” she said. “I shall expect you to guard our backs.”
“Of course,” he said. He patted the bow arching over his shoulder, full of his own ability.
Atalia was poised between two boulders, looking back curiously. Danica could not quite see her face in the gloom. Suspicious? Resigned? “Up,” Danica ordered Ilanit, and, taking Lyris aside, “Stay with my daughter, I beg you.”
“What?”
“I cannot explain. Please.” Puzzled, Lyris turned and followed Ilanit. For a moment Danica watched them clambering upward behind Atalia, and the other Companions behind them. I took the shield from my mother’s dead hands before Iksandarun, she thought with a grim precision. Ilanit is young, too young—but she must live to take the shield from me, live to hear the goddess’s words stir her mind, if Ashtar so wills it.
Danica started her climb. The boulder, the branch, one foot in a cleft—the shield was heavy, her mail was heavy, the child lay a still, heavy weight in her belly. But on the plateau of Iksandarun the game would end, for good or for ill.
A light fell on her, a hint of warmth, and she started. Clinging to a root she turned and looked back. The sun rose, a flare of red along the horizon washing away the stars, and then the blazing disc itself burned a hole in the sky. The mist thinned and vanished. The plains lay before her, dim shapes and smudges solidified into hills and fields. And the Sardian army moved into battle, weapons glittering, trumpets singing high and sweet, banners fluttering.
The pieces move onto the game board, Danica thought. The conqueror comes to claim his victory. She rode at his side, her hand and his together on the hilt of shining Solifrax, his arm and hers together bearing the weight of the shield … She blinked, returned to her precarious position in the ravine. The archers were looking at her, waiting for her to move on.
She moved up into lingering curls of mist and damp, earth-scented air.
*
The mist thinned and vanished. Fitful puffs of breeze stirred the flags.
Patros emitted a shaky breath. “Look.”
Bellasteros looked. The imperial army might have shrunk considerably since the days of Kallidar’s glory, but it was still imposing. Cavalry in sparkling armor, archers, their bows bent, rows of infantry with their shields high, reflecting the morning sun. Elephants, tusks banded with gold. Chariots, each wheel armed with the sharp blade of a scythe.
Bellasteros shouted his orders; the centurions wheeled, right and left, forming their soldiers into the phalanx, an impenetrable wall of shields, spears, and swords held by the youngest soldiers with the veterans just behind. Mardoc and his standard led the cavalry to the far flank.
The two armies watched each other in silence. For a moment Bellasteros sensed the enclosing walls of a rocky defile, damp, earth-scented air around him. Danica, the name a caress…. Would the army turn against me now, he wondered, if they knew of my birth? But no, by Harus, that nightmare has lost its power to wound.
The sun was at his back. A falcon coasted across the sky before him, shrieking a battle cry; the Sardians greeted this omen with a great shout. Bellasteros laughed. “In the name of the god!” he called, carefully calling no god by name; he drew Solifrax and thrust it upward. It caught the sunlight and flared, a pure crystalline flame before the army of Sardis.
The officers of the imperial army drew their swords and with them beat their reluctant levies into position. The elephants, goaded, screamed.
Solifrax spat lightning. The army of Sardis lunged forward. The falcon images seemed to screech and flutter on their poles.
With a rumble the chariots began to move. The imperial archers strung their bows and let fly.
“In your name, Harus,” Bellasteros cried. “In your name, Ashtar!” But his soldiers were also shouting, a great wave of sound that by itself deflected the rain of arrows, and no one heeded his strange words.
*
A distant shout flooded the still morning air. The wagon stopped. Adrastes did not even look up from the small clay figure he had shaped. Two green beads for eyes. A long strand of yellow flax for hair. A scrap of wool for a cloak. The figure’s breasts and belly swelled grotesquely.
Adrastes pressed a lead pellet into the clay, and another, and another. He muttered over the tiny flame that burned before him, and it sparked.
*
The still morning air filled with the shouts of many voices. The distant cry of one voice echoed in Danica’s mind. In your name, Ashtar … So the battle was joined. But she had no attention to spare for it. She was as clumsy, she chided herself, as she had been the night before when Hern had attacked her; she moved like some lumbering elephant. Atalia dropped back to aid her, grasping her hand and pulling her bodily up a steep slope.
“Forgive me,” gasped Danica, clinging to a tamarisk root and wiping the sweat from her eyes.
“You bear too much weight,” Atalia said laconically.
“True …” She looked up. Pale blue sky glinted between the bare branches of the trees. The stream burbled happily, oblivious of the many feet disturbing its course. Ilanit and Lyris clambered from rock to branch to rock like cats, almost at the top; the other Companions were close behind.
She looked down. The archers had fallen back, huffing and puffing indignantly.
There was not the faintest hint of a breeze in the defile; the air was moribund. Danica’s senses pricked, sending gooseflesh flowing over her body. She cast a tendril of her mind into the shield and it rippled in a quick luminescence.
Her body grew even heavier and she slumped against the root. It was as if a great hand pressed her into the ground. “Mother!” she murmured. “Please …”
Sorcery. Adrastes practiced sorcery against her—he was strong, and her strength was spread thinly … A most effective spell, she thought with acid admiration, playing upon her weakest point.
A shout from the top of the rock, the flash
of weapons, a scream. Ilanit came sliding back down in a flurry of dirt, matted leaves, pebbles; Lyris scrabbled at her heels. “Ambush!” Ilanit cried. “They are waiting for us!”
She did not need to speak. Imperial soldiers crashed down into the ravine, swords raised. Two Companions sprang forward, drawing their weapons, and were slaughtered before they found their footing.
Lyris and Atalia turned to Danica. “Up!” said the older woman, and began to push her queen straight up the side of the defile.
Danica shoved her away, trying to pluck her sword from its scabbard. The shield wavered with a watery light but her hand was leaden, not moving … “Up!” Atalia said again.
Another Companion leaped forward and fell. The Sardian archers, to their credit, were taking cover and firing. But their arrows were worse than useless in these tight confines. “Stop!” Danica shouted at them as one flying shaft nicked Lyris’s breastplate and embedded itself in a tree trunk.
They stopped. Ilanit and Lyris seized Danica’s arms and pulled at her; she seemed rooted to the ground. Atalia turned, plunging upward to intercept the soldiers. She struck one down, and another; a third, an officer, leaped by her, heading as straight for Danica as if he had been given a description of her. Atalia threw herself after him. They fell together into the stream, armor crashing, water splashing in prismatic droplets around them.
Ilanit jumped to the rescue. The officer raised his sword. Atalia seized it, heedless of its deep bite into her hand, trying to turn it … He held a dagger in his other hand, and he drove it through her throat.
“Atalia!” Danica screamed, but her voice was only a sick wail. She could not move, she was slipping backward, the shield was falling from her arm, its light winking out …
*
The low sound of Adrastes’s incantation lay heavy on the air, sinking like a heavy cloak around Declan and Chryse as they whispered together beside his wagon. “No one will think it odd that you are here,” he said.
“I … will try,” she breathed.
“You can do it,” Declan assured her. And, thrusting his head between the hangings, he called, “Your Eminence, a message from General Mardoc!”
Sabazel Page 23