Mather smiled wanly.
The Vast were all miserable. Mux let Mather worry, but of course he couldn’t possibly indulge such a plan against the general citizenry without the Hezzan’s direct approval. Today’s festivities were to be a message, loud and clear and public, that the rule of the Vast was over, the rule of the Drammune had begun. It was about the Hezzan Shul Dramm replacing their king. It was about Fen Abbaka Mux subjugating their prince. It was about revenge for the defeat of the Rahk Thanu and the Nochto Vare. It was about proving the weakness of their government, their people, and the falseness of their religion.
But mostly, today was about killing Packer Throme.
Mather had told Mux all he knew, and this included all the heroic deeds Packer was supposed to have achieved against the Achawuk, and against the Firefish. Mux asked and Mather related all that was told him by John Hand, word for word, of the demise of the Rahk Thanu and the Nochto Vare, how the crew had believed that their God sent the Firefish, and that Packer was chosen to command these creatures. Such tales were being told even now on the Green below, Mux knew, stories of the yellow-haired warrior who fought like a hornet and had defeated Fen Abbaka Mux and the Drammune through miracles sent by God. Such was the sewage that flooded the streets of this vile city.
But this morning, the Vast hero would die, and with him, these false hopes, these fictitious dreams. Mux couldn’t remember when he had wanted to kill a man as much he wanted to kill Packer Throme.
“I want a speech from you today,” he said to Mather.
“My lord?”
Mux took a folded scrap of parchment from his vest. “I want you to praise the Rahk-Taa and welcome the rule of the Drammune. This is the purpose for which I have made you a citizen.” He handed the parchment to Mather.
The prince took it, began reading. He would stand before his own people and admit his treachery, his treason. “As you wish,” he said dutifully. The power had shifted, and he had shifted with it. That was all.
“You will of course speak them in the Vast tongue.”
“Yes, Your Worthiness.”
Huk Tuth had counseled Mux against this course, arguing that a prince of Nearing Vast could not be trusted. But Mux knew men. And he knew Mather was not one. This weakling was terrified, and would do precisely what he was told to do, nothing more, nothing less. And thus Mux would rub all Vast noses in their own soil.
Prince Ward awoke in the half light of an alcoholic haze. He was sitting up, his back against something hard and uncomfortable. He looked around him. A candle on a clay dish had burned down to a nub. His head felt like someone had put an axe into it. He reached up to touch it, just to be sure that was not actually the case.
He saw bottles and mugs and dishrags in front of him. He was seated on the floor, on hard wooden slats. He was behind a bar. He looked up. A spigot was directly above his head. He reached up, touched it. Yes, that’s why he was here. From this spot he could refill his mug without needing to stand. He looked around on the floor, saw a mug lying on its side. He picked it up, looked into it. Empty. He started to reach up to fill it. Then he remembered that he was supposed to be doing something.
He sat up straight. A sledgehammer hit him in the back of the head. He let the pain pass, then stood, wiping drool from his chin. He was in the King’s Arms. He squinted around, saw the two pistols and the sword, still where he had left them on the bar. A memory crept back.
Packer! The self-recriminations rolled over him like high waves at high tide. He put a hand to his forehead. What time must it be? He looked at the clock. Just after one. He stared at it for a long time. Just after one? He had come here at one in the afternoon. Light was shining through the shutters now, but it was indirect, gloomy. It was still one o’clock. Nothing connected. How could it be…But wait, the pendulum wasn’t moving. The clock had stopped at one in the morning.
It must be dawn.
Ward laid into himself with a stream of whispered invective. Packer would be hung in a matter of hours, and here was his rescuer, recovering from a drunken stupor. He put the sword belt around his waist, fastened it, then picked up a pistol. He looked down at the wavering barrel, considered putting it to his temple. But no, that would be stupid. He’d just miss and make a mess, and the end result would be one more self-inflicted delay. He considered going back to the prison, trying to free Packer himself. But that was also foolish. He didn’t mind trying, certainly didn’t mind dying, but if he couldn’t hit his own temple, how could he hit someone else’s? No, he had to find some soldiers.
Maybe there was still time, if he hurried.
He cursed himself three more times in rapid succession. Feeling better for it, he staggered for the stairway. At the top, he paused and cursed the Sennett line. On the way down, he cursed the time he had wasted. At the bottom, he cursed the life he had misspent, that would now cost the life of Packer Throme, a young man as noble as Ward was not. He managed to get his key into the secret lock, and pushed wide the door to the passage that would lead him out of the city. He closed the door behind him, slid the bars across, locking it.
He took a deep breath of the dank air.
It smelled good. It smelled right. It smelled of getting on with it.
CHAPTER 23
The Gallows
Ten o’clock approached. The sun had not grown any more merciful, though dark clouds now threatened on the horizon to the south. The promise of more rain could be felt in the humid air. The people gathered, a large, sweltering crowd that still didn’t know who the Drammune planned to hang. Their trauma, their fatigue, the bitterness of their defeat, and the uncertainty of the moment had coalesced over the last few hours into an edgy impatience that showed itself in a growing carelessness, a disregard for their status as the newly subjugated. Voices rose and fell. Shouts came from nowhere—“Hang the Drammune!” and similar.
The Drammune troops surrounding the Green did not enter the heart of the crowd to investigate the source of each impudent outburst, but they silently grew impatient themselves. Firefish armor was many things, but cool and breezy it was not.
“Let’s get this over with,” was pretty much the theme of the morning.
Then suddenly, there was the condemned. Without announcement or fanfare, he stepped into the sunlight from the dark arched doorway set into the Rampart, guided by two guards. The crowd went silent.
To him, the people filling the huge square felt like part of the sodden heat that now blasted his senses. He could hear them breathing in the humid air. He could feel them; he could smell their sweat and last night’s ale and this morning’s coffee and the frayed nerves and the bitterness that bound them all together.
He could not see them, however. He was blindfolded. Nor could he reach out to them; his hands were manacled behind him. Nor could he run; his feet were chained together. The crowd went silent, stood shocked, until the rhythmic jangle of his shackles was the only sound in the Green. They watched as he walked to the gallows.
Then a murmur grew, like a wave. His name was spoken, overheard, then repeated, spoken again, building, swelling through the crowd.
At first the name was a question. Is it Packer Throme? How could it be Packer? Isn’t he at sea? The Trophy Chase…? But as the repeated name built to a crescendo, it became an exclamation. It is him; it’s Packer Throme! They caught him! And then it fell away, withdrawing, the name turned to lament. They’re hanging Packer Throme! Then the name, the murmur, and the wave died away into a whimper, draining down into the sands of the inevitable, into silence once again, a silence thick with one stark thought:
Packer Throme, the best of us, conquered like the rest of us. Now we must watch him die.
Packer felt a hollow dread. He felt a sharp, pointed sorrow. But he felt no fear. Death was an open gate, and he walked toward it quietly and quite willingly. He’d been here before. How many times? And how many times had he been turned away? But this was different. This time he was brought here by the world, for crimes against the nature of the
world, for choosing something that was not of the fabric of the world.
He had made a stand; he had laid down his arms. That choice had led him from a hero’s welcome to a prince’s prison to a conqueror’s gallows with almost stunning speed. Was that sequence a coincidence? He had thought about it all night, and he thought not. He thought it highly remarkable, the power of the world to thwart anyone who countered its blind blood oath of mutiny. There were many varieties of mutiny, perhaps as many as there were people on the earth, he had concluded. So there were many ways to drop the sword. Some men, perhaps many, could wield a weapon and trust God at the same time. Samuel did it; so did David, and Joshua. Senslar Zendoda, certainly. Marcus and Delaney, most probably. But Packer’s own mutiny was sheathed in the darkness of a scabbard. He had picked this weapon to redeem himself and his name, and his father’s name. He had chosen this form of piracy.
Perhaps, he thought, as his feet reached the gallows, as he felt for the step and faltered, as the two guards caught him, held him, and propelled him upward, perhaps it’s impossible for us to see the world for what it is, and ourselves for who we are, until we are prepared to die. That’s how blind we are, how devoted to ourselves and our own ways. We cannot bear the meaning of it all, so we avoid Him, invent luck, fight with one another and alongside one another, agreeing in the darkest places of our hearts that we will believe lies.
And why? Because we cannot bear the meaning. Anything is preferable to the weight of a life lived entirely at the doorstep of the Kingdom of Heaven, where everything matters, where every gesture, every thought is eternally significant, and yet where we are also all too keenly aware of our inability to measure up to the lowest standards of the humblest doorkeeper within its gates, let alone the standards of the King Himself. We cannot bear the light that shines on us here, mere inches from Eden, just a hairsbreadth from the patient and invisible Gardener, who waits, all powerful but entirely humble, always watching, refusing to force Himself on us, wanting instead that we would drop our arms and raise our heads. We maneuver ourselves into dead ends; He sends us there Himself so that we might finally accept our own brokenness and our uselessness, and simply cry out to Him, for rescue.
But when we do cry out, we prefer to do it as angry, wounded animals, rather than as fearful, helpless infants. And yet, true power can only be found in infancy, in tears, in the acknowledgment of our own powerlessness.
And Packer was through being angry. He was through fighting. His own mutiny was at an end. God would now do as He pleased with Packer Throme.
Packer climbed to the top of the stairs, a Drammune warrior on either side of him. No drums beat; no fife played. Once on the platform he stood still, his shoulders squared to the crowd. Abbaka Mux took his place on Packer’s left. The prince took his place on Packer’s right. Next to the supreme commander was a translator, a Drammune guard who would take Mux’s low, rumbling, foreign words and bellow them as pronouncements to the Vast, and who would take the prince’s proclaimed words and whisper them in Drammune to the supreme commander. Next to the prince stood one Drammune guard. Packer’s two escorts took their places behind him. All together, seven men stood on the platform: four Drammune guards, Mux, and the two Vast natives.
In front of Packer was a trap door; at the edge of the platform on his left, by the stairs, was the wooden lever that would open it. Above him hung the noose, coils draped over the crossbar like a sleeping snake.
The supreme commander looked out over the audience, sniffed once, and said in a low monotone, “Haraka rolhoi Nearing Vast.”
“Here is the hero of Nearing Vast!” the translator bellowed.
“Nochter harakar karchezz nocht.”
“His death is the death of your nation!”
“Kai rayn nochtor ar.”
“Your hope dies with him!”
“Hezz Drammun, hezz Hezzan.”
“The Drammune now rule! The Hezzan now rules!”
“Kai hezzo ak Drammun. Hezzo taa.”
“Your prince has become a citizen of Drammun! The prince will now speak!”
The prince took a step forward. Murmurs, then hisses could be heard. Prince Mather, a citizen of Drammun? Certainly they had heard wrong. But the crowd saw a miserable little man, hair plastered in rivulets of dripping sweat, a blackened eye dark and uncovered, makeup blistered and running down onto his white jacket and ruffled shirt front. Though he wore a look of grim defiance, the fear within him was legible; the way he stood, the way his eyes darted. He seemed hunched and small next to Mux, next to Packer, next to the guards.
Mather looked out over the crowd. They questioned; they narrowed their eyes, waiting for the proof he was about to give them, the stench of his disloyalty already showing on their faces. He glanced at Mux, whose slitted eyes were a warning. The Drammune guard beside him drew his dagger.
Mather shook his head at this unnecessary show of force. He had never known such fear as the Drammune commander engendered in him; he had no strength within him to counter that power. As Mather stood on the platform, prepared to become the most despicable character in the long history of his country, he realized he had no power whatsoever, and never had. And he still didn’t. He had always had position, and now he had it again. But power? No, he had nothing within him that would allow him to stand for one moment against the true, stark, ominous strength wielded by a Fen Abbaka Mux. He was quite as repugnant to himself as he was to the crowd before him.
Mux cleared his throat, impatient.
Mather swallowed, then raised his hand. He would obey, just as Mux supposed he would. He could do nothing else. “By authority of Fen Abbaka Mux,” the prince’s voice was thin, and it quavered, “Supreme Commander of the Glorious Drammune Military, and the government of Drammun now in power here, I have been made a full citizen of the Kingdom of Drammun!”
A sick pall fell over the crowd. The translator repeated the words in a low tone in Drammune to the supreme commander, assuring him that Mather was following his script.
Mather closed his eyes tightly, remembering the words. Then he opened them. “I am now revealed to you as a follower of the Rahk-Taa, the great and true book of the Law of these, the Worthy Ones.”
Grumbling and catcalls from the crowd. With their doubts now answered, their contempt was undisguised.
“Silence!” roared Mux. The crowd went quiet, obeying but not bowing.
The prince sniffed once, then continued. “I am but the least Worthy of the Worthies. My errors are many. Here on this platform with me, however, is one of the great Worthy Ones, one who will rule in power in my father’s place, and take his dominion for the Emperor of Drammun.” The prince paused again as the translator droned. He looked out over the crowd. They were a rough and ragged group, and their hatred of this moment, of the Drammune, and of him, was etched into every face, manifest in whispers and gritted teeth and hard, hard eyes. His beloved subjects.
Mux nodded, quite satisfied.
“And so,” the prince continued, his stomach now wrenched and burning, “as a Prince of the Kingdom of Nearing Vast…” he paused once more, then fell to silence. The prince’s text was prepared. He had now only to tell all here gathered that he would give the Kingdom to the Drammune, and then that he would gladly, symbolically, and dutifully pull the lever that would hang Packer Throme for his many crimes against the state.
But he never said those words.
Prince Ward’s mission had been one misstep after another. Finding the Army of Nearing Vast was not the problem; in fact, that had proven far too easy. Ward arose from under ground far outside the city, well past the main encampments of the Drammune. He needed to evade only a few patrols to get to the countryside. But once there, he was helped by every citizen he met. In fact, the disheartening fact was that while no one knew who he was, everyone knew the exact location of the Army, details about its poor condition and its wretched morale, and all were more than happy to reveal it. They told everything they knew to a stranger who ree
ked of ale and who had clearly slept in his rumpled clothes. His people, he realized, simply did not know how to keep a secret.
He found the Army, such as it was, encamped on farmland several miles from the city. Ward was immediately appalled by what he saw. It was just after dawn when he arrived there, but campfires burned everywhere. Men sat and slept around them, fully visible from miles away. They talked as though in no danger greater than perhaps the accidental disturbance of a random anthill. Here and there loud talking, laughing, even a pistol shot—men who had not slept at all, women, too, even children. Ward’s spirit burned within him. He was angry; but what right did he have to be angry, when he was guilty of the same? And yet he had to fight back rage.
“Where is Bench Urmand?” he asked a soldier who stood casual guard at the edge of the encampment.
The man, hardly more than a boy, seemed taken aback by Ward’s harsh tone. “Who?”
“Take me to your commanding officer.”
“He’s dead, I think. They was mostly all killed or injured, they say.”
“Well, who is in charge?”
The boy thought hard, sure he would be blamed for something. “I don’t guess I know.” He was afraid. Afraid of Ward Sennett, whom he recognized not in the least. The prince felt his anger wither and his scorn falter, like a chock kicked out from in front of a wagon wheel. “Can you at least suggest where I might look?”
“Well, General Millian is here. But I know he’s injured. He’s in the ’firmary, which is that white tent right over there. With the bright lights on inside it? But I don’t think he’s in charge.”
Ward walked away without another word.
General Mack Millian, brought out of retirement for the occasion of the inglorious Invasion of Mann, was certainly not in charge. He was not conscious. Bench Urmand was not in charge, either, though he was at least conscious. He lay on a stained bedsheet that had been spread over the hard ground just a few feet from the general. He was sweating out a fever.
“We need to evacuate in an orderly manner,” Bench told the prince with dark and troubled conviction as he grabbed the kneeling prince’s sleeve, almost pulling Ward down on top of him. Beads of sweat streamed down from his forehead; his hair was matted with it, his eyes wide with intensity.
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