The Mountain of Kept Memory

by Rachel Neumeier

  Oressa also took command of her father’s Carastindin soldiers, since no one else could. There were a good number left, for they had stayed fairly well out of the battle, not knowing whom they should fight. She was almost but not quite surprised to find that they, too, were glad to take their direction from her.

  “We have no other lord to whom we might answer now,” their senior officer told Oressa, sounding rather lost about it. Oressa didn’t take offense. She knew he meant, Now that your father is dead. He was an older man, devastated at the loss of his king and plainly relieved to have a Madalin left, even a girl, giving the orders. Oressa wished she had somebody she trusted to hand everything off to, but unfortunately there wasn’t anybody.

  She was so relieved that her father was dead. It was dreadful to be relieved at something like that. But whatever she found in Caras, she believed she could handle it, as long as she didn’t have to face her father.

  She could hardly believe . . . Gulien had always . . . He had never . . . Their father had been different with her brother than he had been with her. Or Gulien had been different with their father than she had been. She didn’t know. It was too hard to think about. It was better to get on the road at last so that she could lose herself in motion and stop thinking.

  They traveled as quickly as men could march. Oressa insisted on it, and no one argued. But when they were still more than a day’s march from Caras, all three pairs of scouts they’d sent ahead returned, each within an hour of the others. They all said the same thing: There was an army outside Caras, and it was neither Carastind nor Tamaristan.

  “Estenda!” Oressa said disbelievingly. “Estenda!” After the first moments, she wasn’t surprised. She was furious. If any of the gods had still lived, she would have cursed Kelian in all their names, one after another. If she’d known the proper forms of the ancient curses, she might have done it anyway. Except it probably wasn’t wise to take the time for cursing when they had to do something about that Estendan army. She had no idea what to do.

  “Your militia commander at Addas was perhaps a little rigid,” Laasat said. “I can’t wish we’d remained in the north, but I fear his narrow-mindedness put him at a disadvantage.”

  Oressa laughed grimly. “No. No. I think some ambitious merchant-prince in Estenda was waiting his chance. He’s probably dreaming of making himself into a real prince, or even a king. This is so ridiculous. All we’ve done, all we’ve faced, and now there’s this? All I want is to get home.” She was not quite sure whether she meant Caras or the palace or her own apartment or just that she wanted to find Gajdosik and make sure he was all right. But she knew she was outraged.

  “Well, it’s a nuisance, of course, but no more than that, I hope. After, as you say, what we’ve already faced,” said Laasat.

  “Well.” Oressa had to agree that she would rather face any Estendan army than Bherijda’s horrible artifact. “Do we have the numbers? Can we keep surprise? Can we get the Estendan soldiers out of Caras, do you suppose, or will we have to fight for the city house by house? I suppose we can go back and ask the Kieba for help—”

  One of the scouts held up a hand, tentatively interrupting. “I don’t think we need help, Your Highness. Them Estendan bastards aren’t in Caras at all. The numbers aren’t so far off, except we’ll get reinforced from the city, and them Estendans, they’re drawn up outside the walls where we can get to ’em from both sides—”

  “Really? What have our people held them off with?” Oressa wondered aloud, but she was very pleased as well as astonished. She said to Laasat, “That is good, isn’t it? Surely it means we can just, you know—”

  “Catch them from the rear and by surprise and drive them back north so hard they’ll outrun their own horses?” said Laasat. “Yes, I hope that’s exactly what it means—if we’re quick.”

  So they were quick. They left the wounded to follow more slowly, so their men were mostly in decent shape. The young karanat came to Oressa and begged her to put his men in the front of the combined force, and in the center, where the fighting would be hardest. Laasat and Gajdosik’s other officers were doubtful: What if Bherijda’s men did not hold? What if they even deliberately betrayed Oressa?

  “We will not!” protested the karanat. “Please, Your Highness. We will fight for you.”

  “I suppose it will make a change from terrifying farmers,” Oressa said, not very kindly. But she could see Bherijda’s men must eventually be given a chance to earn back their pride. She straightened her shoulders and added, “Laasat will give orders that you and all your men should be supplied with shot and powder and bolts for your crossbows. Don’t disappoint me.”

  “No,” the karanat said earnestly. He bowed to the ground at her feet, which was what Tamaristans did to show their sincerity, and went away to bring his men up to their new position.

  Estenda’s army was indeed outside the city, its long moon-and-mountain banner snapping in the hot wind. But it seemed to be actually retreating, for some reason—a kind of wavering retreat, like its commanders hadn’t made up their minds what they wanted to do. This made a lot more sense when they were close enough to see the red-tinged fog that drifted here and there in the city.

  “Plague!” Laasat said, horrified.

  “No . . . ,” said Oressa. “No, I don’t think it is.”

  “What?”

  “I think . . . it’s just smoke.”

  Laasat gave her a doubtful look. “It’s red, Your Highness.”

  Oressa nodded. “Tinted smoke. Someone’s been clever.” She found herself smiling. Who but Gajdosik would have thought of so clever a plan, or put it into action so swiftly, before his enemies could even break through walls that were already breached?

  Laasat gave the rolling smoke a hard look. “Well . . . ,” he said. “Well, maybe you’re right, at that. Maybe—” He cut that off. Then he said, “Well, as someone has been so good as to provide us with a clear target, I think it would be unappreciative not to take it.”

  “Yes, I think so too.” Oressa waved her hand as a kind of blanket permission for Laasat to take over tactical command and listened with interest to the orders he gave. She thought she could learn tactics if she wanted to. She thought she might be good at it.

  The Estendan army proved rather easy to rout. They hadn’t expected an army to come suddenly out of the east, far less a combined force nearly equal to their own, riding under both sea-eagle and falcon banners. Besides, the Estendans were in a bad position if they were afraid to go into the city, and a worse one after another force emerged from Caras to harass them, probably fewer than a thousand men, but they drove aggressively forward, firing arquebuses in volley, each rank firing and then falling back to the rear to reload, and the Estendans broke in the face of the confident roaring of the arquebuses, so much more terrifying than crossbows. Oressa didn’t think the Estendans actually outran their own horses when they retreated; in fact, they retreated in fairly good order. But they did retreat, and with very little fighting. She wished her people could follow and cut them to pieces. Maybe they should follow and cut them to pieces—it would probably be a good idea to teach Estenda’s ambitious merchant-princes better manners.

  “All the mounted soldiers we have,” said Laasat, when she suggested this. “We want to punish them, and we want to press them and keep them moving, but we don’t want them to really turn and fight. I’ll send men—Carastindin men—to cut around them and alert the Addas militia, if there’s anything left of it. With luck we can make them think twice before they try this again.”

  “It’s not a matter of luck,” Oressa said firmly. “We’ll make sure they think three times before they take us so lightly.”

  As Oressa and her companions approached the gate, she was pleased but not at all surprised to find Gajdosik coming through the open gates to meet her, though all the banners showed the Madalin falcon. She was surprised to see Lord Paulin beside Gajdosik, apparently willing to take his orders. That was, she guessed, the
whole point of Paulin’s presence—to show that he was willing to take Gajdosik’s orders. Those men riding under the falcon banner must be Paulin’s own men, most of them—yes, nearly all of the Carastindin men in sight were wearing the Tegeres fox badge. She was frankly astonished. Putting his own house guard at Gajdosik’s orders, that was more than casual or theoretical support. That was a statement.

  Gajdosik carried no weapons—well, two of the fingers on his right hand were splinted, of course, so he probably couldn’t handle a sword or even an arquebus. But he also wore an iron manacle around his left wrist. For all this, though, he looked grimly satisfied. Oressa understood that perfectly: After being beaten by one opponent after another, his stratagem had finally, decisively, defeated Estenda’s army, and so he had begun to recover his pride. And he must also be vastly relieved to find that Oressa had brought him his own people and that they were safe. He couldn’t stop himself smiling at her in relief and delight. She made no attempt to keep from smiling back.

  “That was clever of you,” she said, indicating the manacle.

  “Prince Gulien and I mutually agreed upon the symbolism,” Gajdosik replied smoothly. “And Lord Paulin and I agreed it would be as well to keep it for the . . . duration. Though I hope we will be able to dispense with it shortly.”

  He glanced past her, plainly looking for Gulien and probably for her father and maybe for Bherijda, too, though Oressa guessed he must be relieved to see no sign of his brother, at least. When he saw none of them, he went on with a little less assurance. “If I may ask, what . . . ? That is, I had wondered whether the Kieba might have been compelled to act. By Bherijda or by your father. I see they are both notably absent. But Prince Gulien? Surely—” He hesitated.

  Oressa opened her mouth, but closed it again without speaking. She hardly knew how to say, Yes, I killed your brother, far less, My father died saving me from your brother. She’d thought she’d gotten used to the idea over the past days, but now, with the walls of Caras in front of them, it seemed impossible that her father should not be in his accustomed place within the palace, cool and high-handed and utterly in command of himself, as well as everything and everyone else. Except, sometimes, her.

  Lord Paulin glanced from one of them to the other and, with a tact Oressa had not really expected, held his tongue.

  She said finally, uncomfortably, “Gulien is . . . Gulien is all right. I . . . He . . .” She bit her lip, her eyes prickling, not knowing how to explain what had happened.

  “Gulien!” exclaimed Lord Paulin, leaning forward in alarm. “Oressa, has something happened to your brother?”

  “I don’t . . . I don’t really . . . He’s not dead,” she added urgently, realizing how this must sound.

  “I see you have somehow managed to acquire some of my brother’s men,” Gajdosik said, obviously changing the subject to give her time to recover. “You seem to have put them to good use in routing the Estendan troops. That was well done.”

  “Yes,” said Oressa, intensely grateful to follow his lead. “But only because you set them up for us. Estenda! As though we needed another enemy this summer! I can’t believe I ever liked Kelian!”

  “Kelian?” said Gajdosik. He hesitated for a bare second, then said, “Well. I should have realized.”

  “We both should have!” agreed Oressa. “He brought—” She gestured north, after the retreating Estendan army. “All those, I’m sure. I hope he was with them today and got to enjoy the rout you arranged. Let him run with the Estendan soldiers if he will, and I hope he leaves his bones in the dust before he makes it to the highlands! At least they all had to run! The colored smoke was brilliant.”

  She glanced at Lord Paulin, including him in this, but he said at once, “It was indeed brilliant. I wish I could take credit for the idea, but it was Prince Gajdosik’s plan from start to finish. The only difficult part was spreading the word widely enough among our own folk that we could be sure of avoiding panic in the city.”

  “Even with that complication, it seemed simpler than trying to stand off several thousand men with a mere few hundred. We also gave fifty men or so an emetic before sending them to engage the Estenda force—all volunteers!” Gajdosik added hastily at Oressa’s horrified reaction. “It added a wonderful verisimilitude to our plague, to have men vomiting as they staggered toward the enemy. If the Estenda commander hadn’t ordered a retreat, he’d have lost all his men to immediate mutiny.”

  Oressa laughed. Then she caught the somber, wary look in Gajdosik’s eyes, and stopped laughing.

  “Your brother?” he asked her again, gently.

  Oressa shook her head, even though she again answered, “He’s all right.” But once more she found no way to go on from that simple, hopeful statement. At last she only nudged her horse toward the city gates, letting the men turn to follow her. She remembered only after she’d started forward that she had forgotten to tell Laasat what he should do with the soldiers, where they should go, that he should have Bherijda’s men watched but not actually guarded; she should have made sure the Carastindin soldiers with Gajdosik understood the Tamaristans were to be regarded as allies and treated with respect—she started to turn, but then heard Gajdosik give all those orders, everything she would have said. She realized, from Lord Paulin’s tight-lipped glance at Gajdosik’s back, that this might be interpreted as a usurpation of her authority, or of Carastindin authority in her person. She said nothing, but only checked her horse and waited for Gajdosik to catch up with her.

  He had clearly realized, too, belatedly, how his assumption of authority might seem. As soon as his horse came up even with hers, he began, “Your Highness, I apologize—”

  Oressa lifted a hand to stop him. “No. That was well done. Listen, I’ll tell you. I can tell you. Let me—” She looked away from him. Then she looked back and met his eyes. “Bherijda and some of his magisters and—and my father got into the Kieba’s mountain, and Gulien, too, somehow. Something happened there. I don’t understand precisely what, only none of the magisters came out again, and I think—I know—that Gulien did something to help the Kieba. I think he—well, I think he gave the Kieba his mind, or his soul, or something. She said she ‘put him back.’ I think she meant put him back into himself, somehow.”

  Gajdosik nodded grimly, clearly finding the idea as disturbing as she had. Lord Paulin rubbed his mouth and gave Oressa a little nod to encourage her to go on. Neither of them said anything.

  “She tried to restore Gulien, but she couldn’t restore him all the way. He’s not—he’s not—for a while he didn’t recognize me.” She was speaking faster now. “It was horrible. Even after he came back . . . He’s not the same.”

  “I am sorry for that, then,” Gajdosik said gently.

  “And before that, before . . . Bherijda was horrible to me. I think he was trying to use something, something of the gods’ power, something terrible, and I slapped him, and he tried to kill me, and my—my father got in the way, and Bherijda killed him, and I killed Bherijda—”

  “You killed Prince Bherijda!” Lord Paulin exclaimed.

  “I had this knife. A woman gave it to me.” Oressa tried not to remember the way the knife had felt as it had gone into Bherijda’s back. She swallowed, swallowed again, and fixed her eyes firmly on the ears of her horse before she said again, in a small voice, “So I killed your brother.”

  “Of course you did,” said Gajdosik. “Good for you.”

  Oressa gave him a quick, sideways glance, but he obviously meant it. She finished, “And Bherijda’s men all surrendered to me, so we came back here, and that’s all, I think.”

  “I believe we would appreciate the long version, eventually,” murmured Gajdosik. “Now, here we had some difficulty settling matters with Bherijda’s garrison. However, Lord Paulin found it possible to work with me—”

  “Because Gulien gave Prince Gajdosik tactical command and ordered the rest of us to respect that,” Lord Paulin said bluntly. “I thought it was a terrible
idea.” He gave Gajdosik a sideways look. “I was wrong.”

  “Fortunately,” Gajdosik said smoothly, “the Estendan troops appeared at about the moment that we’d finally sorted out the men Bherijda left to hold Caras, and though I doubt they meant to do anything so helpful, they did furnish us all with a common opponent. . . .”

  They came around a last corner, and Oressa checked her horse sharply, staring at the palace. “Gajdosik!” she exclaimed. “The palace! What did you do to it?”

  Gajdosik actually laughed; so, really, Oressa thought, it might have been almost worth blowing up nearly the entire remaining palace. But she was still appalled.

  “You can rebuild it. With, no doubt, beautiful sturdy roofs, nearly flat, and a good deal of fancy work to lend good handholds.”

  Oressa rolled her eyes.

  Lord Paulin dismounted, rather stiffly, from his horse, and took Oressa’s reins with a slight but courtly bow. “In the meantime, Your Highness, may I offer you the use of my town house?” He nodded to it. It was quite near, its iron gates standing wide, a gracious and welcoming building, several stories, with its own stables and cistern and pigeon loft.

  “It offers ample room for your household,” Lord Paulin said earnestly. “Do me the honor to agree. I assure Your Highness that I and my staff will make the utmost effort to see to your comfort and security.”

  Oressa gazed at Lord Paulin in surprise. Then she wondered why she was surprised at all, because really, he was just the man to make such an offer—both ambitious and kind, and intelligent enough to support Gulien and now even Gajdosik. She gave him a little nod, finding that she liked him a good deal better now, after everything that had happened, than she had ever expected to. Just as long as she didn’t have to marry him. She gave him her hand and let him help her down from her horse. Gajdosik swung down beside them without a word, beckoning men to come take the horses.