by Morgan Rice
“That’s not a good reason,” Ceres said. She reached up to touch Thanos’s face. “When I marry you, if I marry you, I want it to be about hope for the future, not fear of it. Besides,” she joked, “do you think I have enough time to plan a wedding on top of the latest batch of sea defenses?”
“No,” Thanos admitted, “I guess not.”
Ceres could hear the disappointment there, and she didn’t want to hurt him, but this wasn’t the time. There was violence coming, death and destruction. If they survived that, they could think about being happy.
For now, the best thing they could do was prepare for it.
***
Justin stood on one of Haylon’s beaches, swinging a hammer inexpertly as he tried to construct a fresh barricade to slow down any invading force. He no longer felt like Sir Justin Berverlard, Warden de Castael and Burgoman of the Seventh Marsh. That was the name of a young man back on the Northern Coast, who spent his time wondering what his lord would want. Now he was just Justin, or Sir Justin at most, when he needed to be able to give orders. It was strange how more responsibility should bring with it a shortening like that.
Right now, his responsibility was to help with repairing the protections of the island, along with a large crew of men under his command. Some of them were former liegemen of Lord West, some of them were islanders, and a few were even former soldiers of the Empire. Shirtless in the sun, Justin had to admit that he had a hard time picking the different contingents apart.
Maybe there was a lesson in that.
“Sir Justin! Sir Justin!”
He looked up to see a boy running over, carrying a scrap of parchment in his hand. Justin suspected that it might be fresh instructions from Akila, or perhaps from Ceres. Justin had to admit he was more than a little in awe of the young woman with the powers of the Ancient Ones. He’d seen her arrive on the island, and it had been like something out of legend.
“What is it?” Justin asked, taking the note. The parchment looked as though it was little more than a scrap grabbed in haste and sent without even the time to scrape it properly.
“Word from the mainland, my lord,” the boy said.
Justin was no one’s lord, but he was too busy reading to correct the boy. With every word he read, his heart fell.
“What is it?” the boy asked. “What’s wrong?”
Had he come from Lord West’s lands? Did he have family waiting there? Justin had no way of knowing, but he knew he couldn’t hold back the truth. It would come out soon enough, and it was better if he was the one to tell it, so that it didn’t sound like a lie.
“The First Stone’s men invaded Lord West’s lands,” Justin said. “They tore down the castles and slaughtered anyone they didn’t enslave.”
How many people had been left there? How many people had died because Justin hadn’t been able to persuade them to go with him? How many deaths would weigh on his conscience because he hadn’t been able to save them?
“You saved lots of people,” the boy pointed out. “If you hadn’t been there, no one would have left, and everyone would have died.”
Justin knew it was the truth, and he tried to cling to it. There were people alive now who wouldn’t have been if they had stayed in Lord West’s lands. He’d managed to get some of them, most of them, to leave.
Even so, the deaths weighed on him like a heavy suit of armor.
He wouldn’t allow the same thing to happen here. He and his men would redouble their efforts. They would build defenses that no invading force could get through. They would hold back the tide of the invaders.
It would be different this time.
***
Sartes couldn’t believe how much people were doing to prepare for the invasion. There was a legion of workers forging blades and arrowheads under his father’s supervision, along with a small army of men and women knocking dents out of armor or sewing together padded layers of cloth and leather.
He and Leyana were working at one of the forges with his father, repairing fittings for one of the catapults that had been destroyed in the initial attack.
“I just wish that there was enough time to repair the gates,” his father said. “Without them, all we can do is turn the harbor into a killing zone, and that’s hard to do.”
“We could use a chain,” Leyana suggested. “Lots of harbors do it. They’d cut through eventually, but it would slow them.”
Sartes liked that idea. “If we raised it behind the first few ships, it would trap them and let us pick them off.”
He could see that his father liked that idea, because in minutes, he was calling together smiths and telling them to gather what scrap iron they could.
“We’ll get to work as soon as we can,” Sartes said.
His father waved the offer away. “Why don’t you and Leyana take some time together? You’ve been working hard enough, and you deserve it.”
It sounded like a generous offer, but Sartes understood the fear that lay behind it. His father was worried that they might not have another chance, if they couldn’t hold off the invaders.
“We’ll hold them back,” Sartes said, wanting to be strong. “We have to.”
They had to, because the alternative was death for all of them. Felldust’s soldiers would come, and they would slaughter their way through Haylon in the name of gaining a secure hold on it. They would leave nothing in their wake but destruction.
“Maybe we should go for a while,” Leyana said, taking Sartes’s hand. “Just in case.”
Sartes wanted to go with her, to spend time with her, but he didn’t want to do it just in case. He wanted to do it because he loved her.
“It will be all right,” he assured her. “We’ll fight them off. We’ll find a way.”
They would find a way because they had to. The alternative didn’t bear thinking about.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Stephania stood outside the torturers’ chambers while screams echoed from within. She listened to them, waiting with what she hoped was a suitably disinterested expression. She took no pleasure in it, but it was necessary. It would keep her safe. Around her, nobles and handmaidens stood waiting, gathered from whatever spots Stephania had been able to find them. She wanted loyal people around her.
They still wore their slave chains, of course. Freedom was a privilege they could earn, or a gift she could use to cement her place.
That place didn’t feel very certain right then. From the moment Ulren died, Stephania felt as though she was dancing atop the sands of an hourglass, waiting for them to run out. Several of his captains stood there, watching her with obvious suspicion, kept from her murder only by the story she had told of a rogue slave and a sudden knife thrust.
They were from Felldust, though, and they didn’t take such things at face value. The men and women currently in the clutches of her torturers were the ones who might have been in a position to conspire in such a murder. When it turned out that none of them was responsible… well, maybe Stephania would be the one who found herself in there.
Already, she could see the impatience on the captains’ faces. One, a pockmarked man named Askre, was already looking at her as if savoring what would happen next. If it were just a matter of killing those with suspicions, Stephania would already have put a knife in him.
As it was, she ignored the screams, quietly establishing her power once more.
“Philida, go and tell the master of ceremonies that there will be a parade, with me at its heart,” she said. To the Felldust soldiers, it would look like a celebration of victory, while to the people, it would hopefully look like liberation. “Yssen, I want the looting to stop now. The men have had their time at it, and I don’t mean to give away what belongs to me.”
“If it continues to belong to you,” Askre muttered.
“I am Ulren’s wife,” Stephania said. “What was his becomes mine upon his death. His holdings and mine became one. Steal from my lands, and it is as if you steal from your lord. Are you
a loyal man, Askre?”
“I’m loyal,” the captain shot back. “Loyal enough that if you betrayed Ulren, you’ll pay.”
Again, Stephania wished that she could simply kill him. The trouble was that doing so was as good as an admission of guilt, and Ulren’s forces were still camped in the city, taking what they wanted. So she smiled instead, reaching out to take his hands.
“Askre, your fierceness does you credit. No wonder Ulren respected you so much. Trust me, I am as eager to find his killer as you, and when I do, they will pay. Didn’t I kill his assassin?”
“Aye, and swiftly,” the man agreed. “Some might say conveniently swiftly.”
“But a man who did that would answer for it,” Stephania said. She couldn’t just be conciliatory, not with men like this. They respected strength as well as truth.
The captain looked as though he might say something then, but a servant ran in, kneeling before Stephania in the fashion the invaders had taught their slaves. Stephania decided that she liked it now that she wasn’t the one having to do it.
“What is it?” she asked the young man.
“Forgive me, my lady, but… there are ships on the horizon. I think we are about to be attacked.”
Stephania needed to see this for herself, so she hurried from the chamber, heading up to her rooms with what seemed like half the castle in tow. She walked as fast as she could without it being unseemly, then cursed to herself, hitched up her dress, and ran, trying to get to a balcony where she would have a view out over the water.
When she got there, Stephania could see the ships pulling into the harbor. More than that, she could make out some of the flags that they were flying. They weren’t Irrien’s standards. Instead, they flew the flags of Kas and Vexa, the Third and Fourth Stones. There were even a few small flags pointing to the presence of the Fifth.
Stephania should have guessed that they would come, following in Ulren’s wake and hoping to catch him at a point when he was just recovering from his fight with Irrien. Probably the other Stones didn’t care who had won, so long as they had a chance to remove them.
“We must prepare to fight,” Stephania said. “We can hold the city.”
She heard Askre snort. “We could, or we could just give you to them to execute at their leisure, as a traitor, then take our places with them.”
His hand was resting on his sword hilt. He hadn’t drawn it yet, but Stephania guessed that it was only a matter of time. She decided to go on the attack. Thankfully, she’d just been given the perfect weapon to do it with.
“Are you an idiot?” she demanded. “Can you not see what’s in front of your eyes?”
“Careful, woman,” Askre said.
“Why should I be careful?” Stephania snapped back. “I’m loyal to my husband. You want to join the people who murdered him!”
She heard the captains there murmur at that.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Stephania demanded, before they had a chance to say anything. “Do you think it’s a coincidence that an assassin murders your lord right before the other Stones arrive?”
As far as Stephania was concerned, it was the most beautiful coincidence of her life. The difference between her and other people, though, was that Stephania knew how to take advantage of anything that fate presented her with.
“Look at them,” Stephania said, pointing to where small figures were starting to disembark below. “We’ve been demanding answers of the people who brought that slave here, and now we know what answer we’re going to get!”
Especially once Stephania had told the torturers what answers to extract. People would say anything, eventually.
“Askre, you are the most loyal of my husband’s men. Are you going to stand by while his murderers stand below, advancing on us?”
“No,” the captain said. “I am not.”
“What about the rest of you?” Stephania demanded. “Will you fight to avenge Ulren’s murder? Will you bring me the other Stones’ heads? Will you?”
“We will!” they shouted back, as if this were a parade ground and not the balcony of elegantly appointed rooms.
“Then go!” Stephania ordered. “Go, take every man. Go to victory!”
She watched them rush out, already issuing orders to their subordinates. Stephania waited there by the balcony until she was sure that they were gone, and then turned to the nearest servant.
“Wait until they are gone and then lock the gates behind them. Oh, and tell the torturers that I want a confession each pointing to Kas and Vexa, just in case any of the fools manage to survive the battle.”
***
Stephania watched the battle unfolding in the city below with a certain amount of satisfaction. With just words, she’d taken a potentially deadly situation and turned it into something to her advantage. She’d killed the men below as surely as if she had struck them down with a sword. They simply didn’t know it yet.
She watched the warriors advancing on one another like armies of ants, and even from where she was, Stephania could hear the screams as they met. Catapults fired from ships and fire arrows flared, eating into the city as they struck it. Warriors on both sides died in street battles that came together and broke apart like seeds blown on the wind.
Stephania didn’t care who won right then, so long as they slaughtered one another. If by some miracle Ulren’s men won, they would be hers from that moment on, loyal with the memory of a shared victory at her urging. Then Stephania would use them to take whatever power she needed. If the others claimed victory, Stephania would sit safely behind her walls and let them burn themselves out with the little looting that was left to them. Kas and Vexa were not Irrien; they would not stay to conquer when they could head for home.
For now, the city crumbled before them, the new invaders finishing what the earlier waves of them had started. Men broke in doors and catapult stones ruined walls. Fire licked at anything made from wood, while all the time the warriors below fought and killed.
If Ulren had lived, Stephania would have seen that as a waste. Her plan had been to build her control over his men until they saw her as his natural successor when he eventually died. When it became necessary to kill him sooner, that plan had to change. Stephania couldn’t hope to control them all.
There was no point in regretting things that were necessary, whether it was the deaths below her, the murder of her latest husband, or the string of small things that had brought her to this point in the first place.
The people under her command were like the city. It was better to burn it all down than to try to cope with something that could never be repaired. Let them die. Let the city be destroyed. Stephania would find a way to rebuild it in her image.
She would rebuild the whole Empire in her image.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Thanos watched the line of the approaching fleet as it grew, filling the horizon beyond Haylon and growing into something more substantial. His hand clamped tighter on his sword by reflex, but he resisted the urge to draw it yet. A sword in the hand was a weight to carry. It would just waste energy he needed for the battle to come.
From the look of it, he would need all the energy he could get.
He had seen the fleet that had gone to attack Delos, and the first fleet that had come to the island. Somehow, Thanos had expected this one to be smaller, because surely even Irrien couldn’t have that many ships left to him.
He did, and more. There were warships and transport barges, slave ships and boats that were little more than floating platforms for catapults. They came closer second by second, oar stroke by oar stroke. Right then, it felt as though all Thanos could do was wait as horns sounded, proclaiming the impending assault.
No, it wasn’t all he could do. He ran down onto the beach, to where a crew of men were hammering in last-minute stakes. Thanos took one of the hammers, driving the next wooden post into the sand with brutal strokes. Around him, men set up revetments to fire arrows from, and dug last-minute trenches to slow
any assault.
What would Ceres be doing now? Thanos didn’t know, and just not knowing worried him. He wanted her to be safe, but he also knew that when this began, she would be the one seeking out the heart of the battle, surrounded by the most dangerous enemies and fighting the hardest fights.
Thanos couldn’t protect her, and he hated that. He found himself thinking back to his proposal. He wished he’d been able to persuade her, even though he also knew that Ceres was right. When they married, it shouldn’t be from fear of what was to come. It should be from hope.
It was just that, seeing the fleet in front of Haylon, it was hard to have hope.
Thanos ran from the beach into the town, checking that the inhabitants there had been evacuated. They weren’t even going to try to hold the city for long. It was the same as one of the beaches now: a spot that they would make the enemy pay for landing on, before fighting them in the hills. He checked the traps along one of the larger streets, deadfalls reset after the first wave of the invasion.
Ceres would be doing the same somewhere, or simply waiting, gathering her powers to her. He hoped that her powers would hold for this conflict, because he’d seen firsthand how easily they could give way. Thanos couldn’t stand the thought of her falling in the middle of this conflict because the powers of the Ancient Ones disappeared as they had before.
It wasn’t just about Ceres, though. She was powerful, but Thanos knew that even the most powerful fighters could be overwhelmed by enough enemies. If he and the others didn’t hold, Ceres might find herself brought down by the sheer weight of opponents. She might even be captured.
Thanos didn’t want to think about what would happen to her then.
Down by the docks, he could see the other men were just as nervous, staring at the fleet ahead, touching their armaments for comfort or checking objects that were obviously reminders of loved ones. Thanos knew how easily those nerves could turn to panic, so he stood on a section of low wall, making sure the others there could see him.