by Kate Elliott
“As your captain, I have always put your welfare first. Maybe you think I’m a generous man, a merchant who gives out rice cakes to children just to see them smile.” That caught and released a few chuckles. “Maybe you think it’s occurred to me that I can’t be a captain without a cohort to command, and so it should. What is a captain, except a man with soldiers to lead? What is a commander, even a lord commander, except one who holds the reins of an army? So I ask you, if a commander proves again and again through his actions that he is no wise commander, ought a captain to follow him even into disaster? If a captain places the welfare of his loyal men above all things, shouldn’t he pause rather than leap blindly? If a captain who wants his men to stay alive, to fight again, to earn a decent reward, sees that those who give orders don’t know what they’re doing and are leading their army into a mire, isn’t he required to change his path?”
He had their full attention.
“Who will feed us if we burn down all the villages, trample every field, and drive away the farmers? Most of you hail from such villages. Have you ever wondered what in the hells we’re doing? What end it serves? Does it serve your families and clans? Does it serve us? For what reward are we fighting?”
They had settled into a stillness like that of children listening to the most ancient of tales, bound as by the sorcery of the storyteller. So far, it was working. Even his subcaptains, for whom this was not entirely a surprise, were nodding.
“I’ll tell you, I’m tired of this. This isn’t fighting. A soldier ought not to be proud of bullying the helpless. Of stringing up men and women from poles just to watch them suffer. I don’t fear a fight. You know that, who served with me in High Haldia. Nor do I fear death more than any other. A fighting man always takes a chance with death. But there are better commanders to serve. And I know where they are. Right up ahead, as that reeve has given me to know. Lord Radas’s army is not invincible. They’re losing now. Toskala has thrown off its garrison. High Haldia’s garrison will go down likewise. An army from Olossi has marched all the way here, and it’s them who fight out there, them who have a leader who knows how to deploy his forces and take charge.”
These revelations shocked them. They muttered restlessly, and he raised a hand to call for silence. They quieted at once.
“How can it have happened, you wonder? That we who have fifteen or more cohorts are struggling now? We’re struggling because of poor command. Squandered units. Terrible planning. Because of arrogance and ignorance and blindness and pride. Yet aren’t we trapped where we stand? Aren’t we caged by our past choices? Neh, it’s never too late to take a chance on a new path. Everything we do is subject to a thousand chances. So I’m asking you, if you trust my judgment, take a chance with me now.”
They cheered. Not one hesitated or turned away.
He climbed down off the wagon.
To Giyara he said, “Give Zubaidit her weapons.”
To the subcaptains he said, “Form up your companies in attack order. We’ll go broad, one, two, and three across the front, four and five flanking, and six at the center back as reserve, Piri, so you keep your eyes open. I’ll stand with you in the command unit.”
He looked over the troop as they fell into marching order, each soldier knowing the comrades at whose shoulder he stood. He had trained them well; they knew their business.
“Shall we?” he said to Giyara, and to his subcaptains, who were gathered around him.
He was answered with an emphatic “yes.” They, too, felt the sting of a hundred small slights and niggling doubts; he wasn’t the only one who was ambitious, who felt he’d not received the reward he’d earned or a full measure of credit for his labors.
He gestured, and the Sixth Cohort banner was raised and lowered. The horns called the advance, and the drums set the pace. They marched out double-time, and soon the clamor of battle filled their ears, drowning out the sound of the river. The rearguard of the other Saltow contingent, massing at the ferries and bridges to cross, saw them coming and raised a cheer.
Arras signaled, the banner rose twice to pass the command. The pace quickened.
Again he signaled, and again the banner rose. The beat hammered faster, and the cohort shifted into a trot. From across the river, horses pounded, men shouted, steel clashed.
He raised a hand and the banner raised and lowered a final time as they closed with the now-bewildered Saltow units. The drums, like his heart, raced. He’d made his choice. There was no going back.
His front line broke into their charge.
• • •
JOSS HAD TO admire the way in which Captain Arras and his cohort smashed their former comrades. They hit them from the rear and took them apart while the other soldiers were still trying to figure out what was going on and who had attacked them. It was brutal but effective, worthy of Anji’s Qin, if you wanted to look at it that way. From on high, he watched as the Sixth Cohort took control of the ferries and bridges. They cut down soldiers fleeing in retreat across those crossings toward what looked like the safe harbor of one of their own. On the other side of the river, Anji’s rear units had reached the battleground and were advancing step by step, clearing all opposition. The open ground between Skerru’s livestock palisade and the causeway was littered with the dead and the dying, with Olo’osson and Nessumaran militiamen stalking the wounded to drag free their comrades and finish off their enemies. Meanwhile, the forward units pressed the remnants toward the river. Many dismounted to harry the enemy on foot, while riders swept around the flanks to cut off men trying to escape into the swamp. Arrows flew with deadly grace. Skerru’s gates remained resolutely closed, although some desperate men tried to scale the palisade and were driven off with poles and pitchforks wielded by Skerru’s frightened populace.
As the army disintegrated, losing cohesion, the slaughter began. Here and there, soldiers threw down their arms and tried to surrender, but in the frenzy they were cut down anyway. Men threw themselves into the river, carried away on the current.
Anji’s command unit rode through the carnage to consider the crossing arrayed on the other side. Captain Arras had managed to winch all the ferries over to his side of the river, leaving only the two bridges to protect. His cohort had fallen back to open ground away from the corpses of their dead comrades and shifted into marching order, ready to retreat in ranks and at speed. But they weren’t moving.
A single figure sauntered out over the main stone bridge. She halted about two-thirds of the way across. To Joss’s surprise, Anji rode out onto the span with six Qin solders in attendance. He dismounted, and he and Zubaidit conferred. She stepped away from Anji to wave a strip of cloth. At this signal Arras left the lines, also alone. Driving a wagon in which lay a man much cushioned by pillows and silk, he approached across the bridge.
Zubaidit looked up. Of course she had known all along that Joss was there. She waved the cloth again, a clear invitation. Join the meeting. Maybe even: Meet me after. Aui! A dangerous woman!
Setting down on the bridge was a risky and reckless maneuver. As a young man, he’d shown off in exactly such a way once or twice. He grinned, hands tightening on the jesses as he gauged the width of the span, the feel of the wind, and his angle of approach.
The sun’s glamour flashed to the north, at the tip of the massive ridge that divided the river. Yet how could that be? The sun was high, although the shadow of Scar’s wings protected him, and a heat haze combined with drifting smoke to obscure the landscape.
There was a Guardian’s altar at Kroke’s Ridge. He’d seen Lord Radas earlier. Where else would a Guardian go, but to an altar?
He hauled on the jesses. Reluctantly, the eagle’s muscles bunching and easing behind Joss’s back, Scar came around. Because he was looking, he caught sight of a second flash, like a signal sparking from a lamp. He followed that beacon down until he plunged toward a sun-swept treeless spine of rock where a winged mare ridden by a man swathed in a cloak the color of the noonday sun clattered
to earth.
Lord Radas wore the cloak of Sun.
Lord Radas, at whose command Marit had died. At whose order Joss’s dreams and hopes had come apart. And he was the least of it; he’d squandered some chances and made good use of others, but he’d not had his farm burned down around him, his husband murdered or wife raped, his children led away in chains to become slaves, his coin and store house ransacked, his body hung from a post until thirst and pain dragged him under.
Kesta and Peddonon were right. Lord Radas had broken the boundaries.
He tugged on the jesses and, obediently, Scar, with wings spread and talons pitched forward, dropped to land at one end of the spine of rock. Joss unhooked and hit two-footed. There wasn’t much to see, a dusty level surface glittering under the hot sun. There was no cave, no boulders, no hollow, just a long flat ridgetop scattered with rocks and a ghost walking with a cloak like the sun shining its lamp in Joss’s eyes. The heat and sun and smoke made his head ache, but cursed if he was going to let that stop him.
He drew his sword and ran forward to the entrance to the glimmering path that marked the Guardian’s labyrinth, the track that led to the hidden altar, where it was forbidden for any but Guardians to walk. Anji had walked there, and lived to tell of it. Joss had survived its twists more than once, and this time, by the Herald, he’d have his revenge.
He put his right foot down, and then his left. The pavement on which he walked might have been the thinnest glaze of crystal, or it might have been the veins of the Earth Mother, cutting through stone into the depths of the obdurate earth. As he paced the measure, the air seemed to slowly rotate around him, and each time he shifted at an angle, a fresh landscape appeared as through an open window, glimpsed and, with each new step, left behind.
He knew these places!
Needle Spire, seen once beyond Storm Cape and never forgotten. A tumbled beacon, doubtless from the South Shore. Stone Tor in the midst of the Wild. An altar overlooking the Salt Sea in barren Heaven’s Ridge. Mount Aua, where he and Anji had conferred. An unfamiliar village. Aui! The pinnacle where he had found Zubaidit and her brother.
There were one hundred and one altars sacred to the Guardians scattered across the land. And they were all empty except for a whisper that chased through his heart and rumbled like wind in his ears.
A man’s voice made hard by selfishness. “Where are they all? Yordenas? Night? Bevard? Why do you not walk?”
Beneath, a different voice spun like song into the heart of the altar. “Go to Indiyabu. Release me.”
Sinking deeper yet, as faint as a whisper, a woman spoke in a timbre oddly like Mai’s voice: “Anji betrayed me.”
He fought past the horrible whispers, for perhaps they were only the altar’s third eye and second heart ripping his secret fears and angry hopes out of the thoughts and feelings he had struggled for years and months and days to conquer. He stumbled into a hollow as the sun burst in his face. Where his foot slammed into the ground, pain stabbed up through his sole, but he grasped hold of the billowing cloak with his free hand. The ground slammed sideways beneath his feet as the cloak pulled him back from the precipice. He stumbled backward into knee-deep water that burned through his leathers. A man knelt in the shallows with liquid pouring out of cupped hands that he lifted to his lips. He rose fast, straining against Joss’s pull, his expression fierce with anger and pride and years of having his least whim obeyed instantaneously.
“Who are you?” he demanded, gaze striking like an eagle to grasp Joss in its talons. He extended a humble arrow as if to jab it into Joss’s chest. “Look at me!”
Joss thrust his sword into the man’s gut. He held on as water and cloak strangled him, fire on top of fire as blood poured down his arms. The man grunted softly. How easily his life drained away with his blood. How easy it was to kill. To be angry. To give up when the tide has turned against you; to give in to despair.
How much harder to build a life out of ruins or beyond the heartache of what has been torn from you.
The man’s weight sagged onto Joss, and Joss slipped, and both fell. Joss gulped a lungful of air before the waters closed over them. Unlike his quarry, he was not taken by surprise. He groped with his gloves, just as Marit had told him to do, and unhooked the clasp and yanked the cloak free.
He drowned in blue fire so blinding it was like floundering in the heart of a gem. Voices thundered and snapped in his ears, too loud to be understood. Four Mothers extended their hands: she with skin as black as soot, her hair flashing gold with fire; she with skin the red-brown of clay, her hair short and spiky; she with skin dark as deep water and hair flowing in heavy coils like seaweed; she pale as the wind. Cursed if they weren’t as attractive as any females he had ever seen, and they laughed to admire him, pleased with their own creation. Let him be healed, for it would be a shame to lose such beauty, neh?
The hells! Had it really come to this, after all these years? That he saw visions about his own gods-rotted good looks? Was he truly that vain?
The arrowhead grazed his forearm but did not stick. A hand clawed down his vest, but he twisted the wrist and shoved the grasping arm away. Then the creature who had called itself Lord Radas expelled a bubble of air and the body went limp. Joss broke the surface, gasping and choking, and stumbled up out of the pool hauling the sun-bright cloak behind him as he had once hauled fishing nets out of the sea. He folded it up in haste and weighted it under so many rocks it was hidden. A corpse floated in the pool, such a horrible desecration of an altar that he began to wade in to fetch it, but the touch of the water burned him and he skipped out, shouting in pain. He was wet through, yet his leathers were drying quickly under the sun’s blast. He stripped off gloves shedding flakes of burned leather; beneath, his hands were chapped red but not damaged. Indeed, he’d come off more lightly than Anji had. He felt light-headed; his headache was gone; his mouth was dry, and his throat had a nagging rasp. He blinked back tears as he crouched in the hollow, in the heart of the holy altar, and watched the body floating in the pool. He watched for the rest of the day, and through the night, because Marit had told him that a cloak will heal the body it has chosen. Beyond all things, Radas must not be healed.
Dawn came at last, sun limning the eastern lowlands as distant horns called and the first bell rang in Skerru, although the town was impossible to see from here.
The flaccid corpse had nudged up at the lip of the pool, head down in the water. Joss carefully grasped the wet cloth of the man’s first-quality silk jacket and heaved him up onto stone.
Lord Radas was dead.
He was dead, while Joss had survived.
It was not good enough. He wrestled the dead man out of his fine silk jacket, undershirt, belt and sash, and with these he wrapped the cloak of sun and stowed it in his pack. The corpse was beginning to stiffen. He dragged the body out of the labyrinth to find Scar slumbering on the rim of the height. He woke the raptor with a gentle tone from his bone whistle. After the bird had taken time to wake, to spread his wings to catch the sun, and to preen a few feathers, Joss hooked in. He harnessed in the corpse so it dangled before him, but the gods-rotted thing was by now so rigid it was difficult to handle.
He did not circle back to fly over Skerru or the battlefield, although he heard drums beating to mark an advance. He flew west, the dead man bumping against him all the way, until he spotted a deserted village. It was not that far a journey, in truth, for the entire countryside had been scoured and lay eerily silent.
They landed, and when he had unhooked the body, he could take a breath without gagging. He sought through farmers’ sheds and porches until he found a shovel. In a woodland thicket he dug through the loamy earth, climbed down in the hole, and dug deeper yet, breaking the boundaries yet again, for all knew that to bury the dead was a calculated impiety. The dead are meant to rest on the high lattice of a Sorrowing Tower so they may be scoured by the four elements, as is fitting, leaving their spirits free to cross the Spirit Gate to the other side.
He scrambled out of the pit, shuddering, and shoved the body in. It tumbled in to make a ghastly sight with legs and arms stuck straight out, pointing rudely. He retched, bent over, yet nothing came up for he’d eaten nothing, only sipped at water. After the fit passed, he wiped his brow and began shoveling. Let Radas, once Lord of Iliyat, remain trapped beneath earth forevermore. Surely no Guardian’s cloak could insinuate itself through the soil to revive him, nor he claw his way free. Surely he had sown enough injustice throughout the land that the gods would revoke their favor from him now and forever after.
He tossed the last shovelful of dirt and leaned on the shovel, sweat pouring off his bare back. He murmured prayers to the gods, not sure what was proper. Let Ilu the Herald guide me, let Kotaru the Thunderer make my hand strong, let Sapanasu the Lantern reveal what I need to know, let Taru the Witherer ease that which pains me and let bloom my joy, let Atiratu the Lady of Beasts grant me wisdom, let Ushara the Devourer the Merciless One stoke my passion.
He faltered, coming to Hasibal the Formless One. The midges were gathering in a fury. The only words he could think of were those he had heard chanted by Mai and her servant Priya to their foreign god, the Merciful One: May the rains come at the proper time. May the harvest be abundant. May the world prosper, and justice be served.
He returned to the familiar expanse of cultivated fields, orchards, ditches, and houses.
“Accept my prayers out of compassion,” he said to the sky and to the earth, to the wind and to the waters of a pool lined with mulberry trees. He unfastened the bindings and shook out the silk jacket. Freed, the cloak of sun rippled like a living thing, billowing and beating into the air as the wind caught in the bright fabric and lofted it heavenward. Released to the gods.