by Kate Elliott
“No. I’m not that desperate. I don’t want oblivion.” Her voice trembled with the the ferocity of her desire, unexamined until now. “I want to be alive. Even in such times, in these days, in this situation, I want to walk and breathe—” She shut her eyes, wondering if he would take the moment to draw his sword and run her through. “Great Lady. Therefore I am already corrupt.”
Words spoken months ago by the woman who wore the cloak of Night, on the first occasion Marit had encountered her, sounded ominous and revealing now.
“In the end even death can be defeated.”
Could it be that simple?
All thinking, speaking creatures—the eight children of the Four Mothers—expected to die. But what if certain individuals were thrust out of death back into life? If the cloaks held a dead spirit in this world in order to serve them by measuring truth to exact justice, might that spirit, grasping its second chance at life, fear more than anything having to let go and cross the threshold of the Spirit Gate into darkness and oblivion?
Did the cloak of Night fear the second death so greatly that she had corrupted the council of the Guardians and now allowed this vile army to trample and destroy land and village and lives just to protect herself? Could anyone be that selfish?
“What you offer is more of a burden than a gift,” said Joss softly.
She understood where her duty lay. She was a Guardian. She had to serve the land.
She spoke toward the distant tower of Ammadit’s Tit, where the end of their days together had begun. “Maybe so, Joss. But war has come. The tale has changed. Let me tell you how to kill a Guardian.”
PART FIVE: WEAPONS
28
“WE’RE BACK IN the Hundred at last,” said Keshad to Eliar.
At the side of the road stood a white post. The name of the road, West Spur, was carved below the top in the old writing, and a single groove marked the first mey of the road. A wayfarer’s lamp could be fixed to the post at night or in a storm. Today, although cold, was quiet, not even very windy. The caravan had climbed through snowfall on the southern side of the pass as the seasonal rains began their cycle; here on the northern side, they walked into the dry season.
But they hadn’t left the worst tempest behind.
She approached on horseback. Her headdress glimmered with enough gold and gems to tempt the most cautious bandit. Why the old woman must flaunt her wealth Kesh could not imagine, but he supposed the five hundred Qin soldiers who accompanied them would slaughter importunate thieves.
With ten stolid Qin soldiers in escort, she reined in beside Keshad. Over the weeks, she had adapted her dialect of the trade speech to mimic Kesh and Eliar’s by insisting they instruct her—and her chief eunuchs—every night. “This is the border gate, is it not? I will speak to the captain in charge.”
“Your Excellency,” said Kesh quickly, “of course you shall speak to the captain in charge. Please offer to me a moment’s generosity and allow me to present our party and its purpose to the officer before you convey your requests.”
Captain Anji had her eyes: handsome, dark, and cutting. “You fear I will offend some minor functionary, who will then refuse us entry simply to spite any woman who speaks bluntly to him.”
“Maybe that is how it works in the empire, Your Excellency, but I assure you that in the Hundred, women speak as bluntly as men. Let me first explain why he should admit five hundred outlander soldiers. Unless you would prefer to send the military escort back to the empire and proceed with only the wagons.”
“Not at all! My old friend and ally Commander Beje sent these troops to me as a gift.”
“Naturally, Your Excellency, you can then imagine—”
“You need not repeat yourself!”
“I beg your pardon, Your Excellency.”
“You do not.” She was not angry, merely speaking exactly as she thought. “However, you are right. I have endured the distrust meted out to a foreigner for all of my adult years. As you are a son of this land, you are correct to remind me it will be no different here.”
He glanced at Eliar, but the Silver was stalwartly staring up at a rugged mountain peak just off to the east, its bare summit surrounded on all sides by cliffs. Was that a wink of light on the high peak’s icy summit? Surely not; the sun was concealed behind clouds.
“Eliar, call the party to a halt in sight of the gate but at a prudent distance. I’ll go ahead.”
Without waiting for Eliar’s reply, he urged his mount forward. Behind, brakes screamed as wagons hit the incline. Kesh approached the wall. Armed men watched from the parapet as the caravan lumbered to a halt. Kesh rode across the big ditch on the same plank bridge he’d used every time he’d come back from the south. He hoisted his travel sack with his permission chits, ledger, and tax tokens.
“I’m Keshad, riding under the direction of Captain Anji of the Olossi militia. I request to speak with the captain in charge.”
The guardsmen were staring at the party behind him, and Kesh turned in his saddle, abruptly seeing from their perspective: this was no caravan but a significant military force with remounts, supply wagons, grooms, servants, and slaves. Why should they even be allowed into the Hundred?
“Master Keshad?” Kesh looked up at a Qin soldier. “I’m Chief Deze. I know of your mission. These Qin soldiers fly Commander Beje’s banner together with that of Anji’s clan.” He eyed the caravan without even the flicker of a smile. “Someone wanted to make sure you arrived safely.”
The white mountain peaks of the Spires loomed behind them, a seemingly impenetrable barrier between the Hundred and the empire. It was a fence Kesh would never again cross, not if he wanted to stay alive. “I don’t think my safety was of concern. This troop escorts Captain Anji’s mother.”
Some might call the Qin callous and hardened for their lack of emotion, but Kesh was pretty sure they had simply learned in a hard school to mask their feelings behind impassivity. Chief Deze’s astonishment flashed brightly as he leaned on the parapet. Then he barked an order and vanished. Shortly, a big basket was swung over the lip of the parapet, and Deze climbed in and was lowered down. He sprang out of the basket and, after hurrying over to Keshad, grabbed his arm in a powerful grip to tug him out onto the plank bridge. Adders writhed and hissed in the ditch below, provoked by the movement. As the planks shifted under Kesh’s feet, he was dizzied by an overwhelming sense that he was about to plunge into the pit and be bitten to death.
“This means that Commander Beje—or his wife Cherfa—has been in contact with the captain’s mother all along,” said Deze in a low voice. He rubbed his wisp of a beard, a man whose thoughts were spinning new threads into the weave. “Take your party to Old Fort and there take the road to Astafero.”
“Astafero? Where’s that?”
“The naya sinks. That’s what folk now call the settlement out in the Barrens. Do not go to Olossi.”
“Why not?”
Chief Deze began to speak, stopped himself, and began again very like a man who has changed his bargaining position in the middle of negotiation. “You can see that a big force of outlanders will scare the Hundred folk.”
Kesh had gotten used to the soldiers. He liked them. But they were cursed intimidating, if you took a step back from familiar faces and considered them as a group. There was a reason the Hundred folk called them the black wolves for their black tabards and Captain Anji’s black wolf banner. And honestly, it was difficult to imagine how Anji’s mother would react to a delegation of Olossi merchants and clan-heads traipsing out to greet her with all the flourish and babble so beloved of Hundred merchants.
“I’ll do it. Do you want to greet her?”
“Hu! If the var’s sister wants to speak to me, she’ll call me to her.” Having reached a decision, the chief moved with dispatch. The gates were opened; the caravan trundled through, and the beasts set to water. Anji’s mother took her attendants to the camping field where her servants set up screens of cloth so her veiled women�
��she was the only female who rode—could emerge from their wagon hideaways where no one could see, or count them. Anyway, their heavy robes and veils made them appear all alike. Most of the wagons conveyed their luxuries.
One of the eunuchs emerged from behind the screens and set up a padded stool fringed with gold tassels. The old woman sat down with her back to the cloth as a slave fetched Chief Deze.
“The Qin are cursed odd,” muttered Eliar as he and Kesh watched the man approach. “Look how he comes like a dog to her call.”
“He’s not being servile, just respectful. No dog would be given such a consideration.” Kesh smirked at Eliar as a folding stool was brought so the chief could sit. The old woman proceeded to ask him questions, or so it appeared, because he did most of the talking and she did most of the listening.
The caravan waited until she dismissed the chief. Then the veiled women climbed back into the wagons; servants took down the screens; the wagons were rolled into line.
“Did you see the reeve go?” said Eliar as they took their usual places at the front.
“What reeve?”
“You didn’t notice, did you?” Eliar’s self-satisfied smile at having noticed what Kesh had overlooked was, like a point scored in hooks-and-ropes, an unspoken boast. “A reeve flew, with a passenger in harness. The chief has wasted no time in sending word forward. A lot of trouble for one old woman, don’t you think? The sooner the old bitch gets back inside the women’s quarters, the better.”
“Aui! You Silvers! Captain Anji’s got no ‘women’s quarters.’ ” The train started moving, local guardsmen falling in as guides. “It’s not ‘a lot of trouble.’ It’s just the respect you would show any eminent elder.”
Yet Kesh wondered.
• • •
“CLAN HALL DOESN’T have the means to house and train you,” Joss said to Badinen as they stood on an eyrie at the southeastern tail of the Liya Hills. “I’m taking you to Copper Hall. That’s where I trained as a young reeve.”
Whether Masar would curse him or thank him for bringing in a novice whose speech was difficult to understand and whose eagle was also young and untrained he did not know. But he’d not yet made contact with Gold Hall in Teriayne where they likely housed other reeves with a northern way of talking. Masar he could impose on. The old marshal owed him that much.
The lad was staring at the astonishing vista: not, mind you, at the cultivated plain, but at the vast forest spreading southward. He asked a question which Joss puzzled out as “What is that?”
“That’s the Wild.”
“The Wild? As in the wildings?”
“Indeed, wildings live there. It is forbidden for any human to enter its boundaries. Have you wildings up in the north?”
Yes, he did. He told an incomprehensible story about a tribe of wildings and a cliff and a valley and someone’s child falling into a fell stream—or maybe a fallow field strewn with seed, hard to say—but his nonchalance in recounting the tale made Joss wonder what in the hells it was like growing up in the uttermost north where you might see a trading ship twice a year and now and again an outlander’s fishing boat blown to shore in the storm season. He could barely imagine a place where all you knew of the Hundred were the tales handed down by your grandmother and the same everyday local faces. Which evidently included wildings.
“We won’t fly over it today,” Joss added, “but in your training you’ll get a taste of how big it is. Come on.”
They hooked in. Scar launched, and Sisit beat after, keeping her distance. She was very young, unsure of how to respond to another eagle except that she always kept her feathers up. Of course all eagles were hatched and raised in their early months in the distant mountainous wilderness of Heaven’s Reach, but usually the fledglings returned to the halls with a parent in tow and learned to recognize their family group within the eagles. Within these groups the eagles could be remarkably cooperative. Outside them, training taught most to subdue their territoriality when in company with their reeves.
They sailed over the wide coastal plain. Farmers turned no earth; dug no ditches; trimmed no mulberries. No one was hauling water. No young shepherds guarded grazing flocks. When the first burned villages came into view, Joss knew he should have expected it, yet even so the sight shocked him. Lord Radas’s army was spreading its blight.
Lord Radas, whom he might kill if Marit had told him the truth.
Yet thinking of Marit caused him to recall the way she had responded to his kiss.
The hells! He had to focus. With Nessumara under siege, the old Silver had ceased providing bags of nai and rice, and it had therefore become urgent to clear Law Rock of anyone not contributing to the defense. But because the town of Horn had refused to take in a single refugee, they had to haul the hapless refugees all the way to Candra Crossing from which staging area the refugees could slog the rest of the way to Olossi on roads made safe by Captain Anji’s militia. It took a cursed long time to transport hundreds of people hundreds of mey, one at a time, but just seven days ago Nallo and Pil had lifted off with the last two. Now, at last, he might send messengers to the other halls to get their news and call for a council to coordinate plans. Meanwhile, Clan Hall’s stores were running low, and it took too gods-rotted long to haul sacks from Candra Crossing. You couldn’t feed a reeve hall, even a small one, one sack at a time.
Smoke billowed skyward in the distance. He tugged on the jesses to shift Scar’s trajectory, and Badinen and Sisit followed. The lad handled the eagle cursed well for someone without a single day’s training.
Seen from the sky, events unfold like tales: burning cottages and shouting farmers, bawling sheep and barking dogs heard intermittently as the wind changes. Folk fled a village; soldiers set torches to thatched roofs while others heaped wagons with sacks of rice and nai, cages of chickens, baskets of radish and rope. The villagers saw him; he knew by the way tiny figures hesitated, waved arms, then stumbled onward.
With the lad in tow, and him alone, he could not stop. What could he do for them beyond telling them to run and hide? He had the luxury to rage, on high, yet as always it seemed he could do nothing to stop injustice. For that was not the only village under attack along the coastal plain near his own birthplace. Smoke rose in bloated, expanding pools, dissipating as plumes reached the upper air. The watch beacons along the shore were on fire up and down the coast.
Had the army reached the town of Haya? Beyond it, to his childhood village?
The hells! Copper Hall’s high bluff was surrounded by a full cohort. Incredibly, the army had brought up a fleet of fishing boats and coast-hugging trading ships that were roping in the skiffs and shore-boats used by Copper Hall’s population to fish and collect kelp. The cohort had massed on the landward side to cut off retreat by foot, forcing thereby every eagle remaining in Copper Hall to take off from the training ground—no difficult feat, naturally, but those fawkners and assistants and slaves who had not already gotten out were trapped, so every eagle leaving was weighed down by a passenger.
An intelligent mind commanded the enemy. Archers launched volleys as each eagle banked up, vulnerable before it caught an updraft. Two eagles were already down. One lay lifeless, both reeve and passenger sprawled dead in the harness. The other was wounded, a wing trailing uselessly as it struggled to right itself on an injured leg. In its fury it dragged the harness, its reeve limp and unresponsive but the passenger fighting to get out of the tangle. Joss winced as arrows punctured the helpless eagle’s flesh; blades flashed in sunlight as armed men closed in for the kill.
Another raptor was hit, but it kept climbing. Struggling. Listing. Tumbling into the sea as its reeve and passenger unhooked just in time to fall free into the rolling waters.
Blessed Ilu! How could this be happening?
He had taught Badinen four flag commands, the least you needed to know. Now he flagged: Stay aloft.
He sent Scar down the well-remembered landing path to the training ground just as a huge yammerin
g shout rose from the gatehouse where soldiers had broken through. The raptor thumped down hard. Two eagles launched from the adjoining parade ground as Joss unhooked and dropped out of his harness.
Masar recognized Joss with a start of amazement, quickly controlled. “Can you take a passenger? What of that other eagle, the one with you?”
“He’s freshly jessed and the eagle is still a fledgling. I can take two. Scar’s strong enough.”
“Strong enough, but you can’t risk two. Arrow shot—they’re so close now—”
Beyond the gate, guardsmen fought a hopeless rearguard to buy time, but the clash ended with a shout cut off in the midst of a word. Hammering shuddered on the closed gates that walled off the training ground. There were three eagles left, in addition to Scar, and seventeen fawkners, hirelings, and adolescent debt slaves watching with not one begging for passage despite the army killing their comrades outside.
“Masar! I can take two.”
Masar’s age already weighed on his shoulders; he seemed to wilt, his spirit burdened until it might break as he scanned those who remained.
“You two,” Masar said, “and you three.” The five he indicated were experienced fawkners, not the youngest by any means. Not the prettiest. That unfortunate distinction went to a young woman whose strained expression trembled, then firmed, as she realized—or perhaps she had already known—that she was to be left behind.
“Jenna,” the marshal added, “take the rest to my cote and hide in the cellar. They’ll burn everything, but you can wait it out as long as they don’t find you. We’ll send sweeps and pick up the survivors as we can.”
“Yes, Grandfather.” She turned to the others. “Move!”
“Masar!” Joss cried as the girl led her companions away. “You can’t possibly be leaving—”
“We must save the experienced fawkners,” said Masar. “You take Gerda and Eiko, they’re the smallest.”
Two small-boned women trotted up. They had the wiry toughness of fawkners who have survived many years caring for the raptors. Their expressions were fixed and bitter. Eiko carried a spare harness and leashes.