Shadow’s Son

by Shirley Meier, S. M. Stirling

  “Let them get a good long look,” he said, “and remember that when they consider such a mission again. And we will save our anger, dedicate it to them, turn it on them next time. So we have suffered; only in dreams is even a winning war nothing but easy charges and triumphs and victory parties. It’s the wrong Arko did that brought us all together in the first place; let it go on binding us as one now, to make us not weaker but stronger, so they bring on themselves the fate they deserve!”

  She couldn’t hear her own voice for the roar, like the great breakers of the Lannic, going on and on. Beside Her Sova jumped up and down, sword in the air, cheeks soaked with tears.

  He said what they’d do to the Arkans who were left, Sova thought, but he didn’t say where.

  She’d told zhymata she was going to see Echera-e, which was true; she would, after she d watched this for a while. Until she’d seen enough to be satisfied, she decided. She found the place by the sound of male screams.

  There was a crowd there already, Alliance-motley, laughing, jeering, making the sign of asses’ ears that mocked the cupped hands at the temples, the Arkan prayer gesture, whenever one of the victims used it. The pole and the ground between the four draft horses were already blood-soaked; ringed in with spears on one side stood the shrinking clutch of naked men, their blond hair shorn; to the other lay the growing red and white heap, here and there blond, or innard-colors as she’d seen before, of torn-apart corpses, now and then settling of its own accord, as if something in it were still alive. She stayed upwind.

  “Tsey’re taking tseir time,” said a Yeoli beside her. “Wouldn’t want to wind tsose horses, no!” He burst out laughing. “Wahtch tsis child-raper try to take tseh pain silently ... each one thinks he’s gong to be the first one to mahnage it, ha ha ha! Shit-eaters, tsey don’t know whaht pain is.”

  Hurt, you stinking bastard, she thought. Hurt for Echera-e.

  The Arkan did, and she watched, and enjoyed, for her lover, lying in the infirmary one-footed. The sound of the man being ripped apart reminded her of when she tore the legs and wings off a chicken carcass for the stew, but so much bigger, the shoulder-bone poping out of the socket making a crack like a thick rotten banch breaking, but a little wetter. And he, unlike the chicken, was fighting it, the muscles in death-throes as they tore, the mouth screaming, sometimes screaming words ... When they untied the ropes, lopped off the head, threw the body in parts onto the heap and turned to the next, she suddenly knew one was enough to see. She walked away, feeling satisfied and sick, both at once.

  They’d refused to let her in this morning when she’d come to see Echera-e, saying he wasn’t well enough, and things were too much a mess anyway, the infirmary being cleaned up and repaired. This time, though, they said “Tai.”

  The healer’s apprentice led her deep in. This is where they keep the worst cases, she thought, fear growing. None of the patients here spoke to each other or shifted, or even looked bored; they just lay utterly still, staring upwards, or with eyes closed like corpses already. Some softly moaned.

  “Echera-e, bahd,” the apprentice, who was Yeoli, whispered in thick Enchian. “Flux. Foot cut off also. Probably naht die. He naht know where is, now. We let in you, ‘cause he call you’ name.”

  The youth lay as still as the others—the patient in the bed next to him, a Haian—his face yellow-pale. As she knelt next to him, she remembered something she’d heard, that people who’d lost a limb felt its ghost, hurting as if the flesh were still there, so they sometimes refused to believe they’d lost it. Does he know? I better not say anything.

  His lips moved, whispering in Yeoli. She leaned close to make it out. “Boru. No. Meparae .... Don’t take me to the slaughterhouse, not yet, not yet!” She slipped her hand under the Haian-pristine sheets, found his lying cold and limp, squeezed it. He’s delirious; maybe he won’t hear me. “Echerry. It’s me. Shh, you’re safe, no one’s going to hurt you. I love you.”

  His nead turned, eyes blinking slowly. “Sovee?”

  “Ya. Hi.” She leaned, kissed his forehead, his nose, his lips. “I love you.” She looked, saw a weak smile on his face.

  “I love you too. Miss you.” She kissed him for a while, holding his shoulders through the sheets, ignoring the tang of medicines on him. “A bunch of them got captured,” she said. “Chevenga said ‘draw and quarter them, for an example.’ I saw them do it to the one who ...” Cut your foot off, she stopped herself from saying just in time. Not true, but, she figured, a good lie. ‘... got you. They made it last nice and long, like putting him on the rack, and he hurt like the Fehuund, yelling and screaming his fool head off ... so to speak ...”

  The youth turned his head away, the knot of his throat shifting as he swallowed. Maybe this isn’t what he needs to hear right now, she thought suddenly. “Well, you’re avenged, anyway. Are the healers being good to you?”

  “Ya’,” he whispered. “Tsere’s a Haian next to me, see tsaht? He keep giving healer’s orders, forrh how tsey should look ahfter him.” His whisper got even quieter; Sova leaned close. “He dying anyway. Tsey take him to tseh ... baityo ... How you say?”

  “Slaughterhouse?”

  “Soon.” It came to her: that was their word for the part of the infirmary where the hopeless cases were put, to wait for death. “A Haian. How tsey could ...” They killed fifteen of them, soon to be sixteen, Sova thought, but this time kept her mouth shut.

  The youth lay silent. She wasn’t sure what to say; so she stroked his forehead, and now and then kissed him and said, “I love you,” or “Heal, livling.” So it went, with apprentices coming to check him or refill his water or help him use the bed pan, until darkness fell and one came to walk her to the door.

  The next evening he looked better, even though he’d been in a wounded-cart all day, on the march. “Flux less,” he said. “Look, Sovee.” He pulled up the leather thong that held his crystal, showed the other jewel on it. “Chevenga gave me tsis.” It was like Saint Mother’s Bloodstone, with the same setting, steel-wrought as on all Yeoli decorations, of two enwrapping arms. But it was bigger, and the drop-shaped stone, polished smooth, was dark purple. “Anchena dmahachao ayana,” he said. Saint Mother’s Amethyst, she thought. The award they give to the ones whose wounds are crippling. He knows.

  Their eyes met. “I go home,” he said.

  Sova’s stomach and chest suddenly went hollow and tight; then the feeling turned to pain, as if she were sick. She hadn’t thought of this. He tightened his big hands around hers and said, “Warrh over, you go bahck through Yeola-e, we see again?”

  Goodbye, she thought numbly. This is goodbye. “Wait—Echerry! When ... when are you going home?”

  “Nex’ big caravahn going bahck. Tomorrow morning, army go fowarrd, me bahck.” He smiled; it was steady but she knew he was forcing it. “I tell my motser ahbout you. She never heard of Thanes.”

  “Well—” What are we going to do? she thought. We never talked about the future. Does he—would he consider marrying me? A cruel thought wormed into her head, in khyd-hird’s voice. You want to live with, and defend, when fights come, a cripple? A life-mate you were already sworn to, I can see—but someone you rolled with in a war-camp? You’re a teenager, so of course he seems like the whole world to you. They all will.

  I’ve told him I love him, she answered inwardly. I’ve said I love him.

  “I’ll write,” she said, then realized however much they’d learned how to speak to each other, they had no common written language. “I’ll ... get it translated. From Enchian into Yeoli.”

  He smiled. “Inchaya esan piyae.” The die has no mercy. A Yeoli saying: fate’s whims, it meant, don’t take into account the wishes of the heart. “Sovee. Whahtever, I always remember you. You, me?”

  “I’ll draw my last breath before I forget you,” she said, and suddenly found tears coming too fast to swallow. “Echerry!” I’ll miss you was too much to say. He sat up a little, pulled her into his arms, clung to her as she c
lung to him. Look at me, snivelling; he’s seventeen, he’ll think I’m a baby. But she felt wetness on her cheek; he was weeping, too. Yeoli men, she remembered, did.

  In time, a healer came to send her away, since she’d ignored the apprentices. Children, the look on the middle-aged Haian face said clearly. “When we come back through Yeola-e I’ll visit you,” she said desperately. “Where ... ?” He’d mentioned the name of his hometown, but not often enough; it was long and unpronounceable. This time she’d write it down; she dug in her pouch for a wax tablet, spelled it as best she could. They clung kissing until the Haian laid his hand on her shoulder; then she backed all the way out waving, tears blurring her sight.

  “Think of it this way,” Megan said, as they sat together, the girl absently poking at the last coals of the fire with a stick. “There are far worse ways you and he could have parted. Or that he could have ended his days as a warrior.” That was true, and a comfort. He’s far away, but I know he’s alive and safe, even if he’s on crutches. Sova looked up at Megan. The Zak’s small heart-shaped face was blood-red in ember-light, the dark eyes staring beneath hard, thin brows into nothing. She’s thinking about khyd-hird. The Thane-girl remembered her own brother. Ya, there are far worse ways. Quit moping.

  * * *

  XVII

  Shkai’ra’s bandages itched.

  It was a minor chore to find fresh linen gauze and fresh chicken blood, but they were an advantage otherwise; nobody wanted to get close to someone who looked and smelled quite so gruesome. Fun, in a way, making gargling noises as she slurped soup behind a hand, while everyone assumed she’d had her lips burnt off by clingfire.

  The fake papers specified “detached duty” for Emmas Penaras, solas, of Marsae. A big port city in the far western provinces; she was unlikely to meet anyone from there and could always claim not to know them. The papers also mentioned “stress,” the Arkan euphemism for someone whose mind was no longer quite topped up to the cork. That would account for minor gaucheries.

  This empire is deeply fucked, Shkai’ra thought, smoothing her gloves and sucking fruit juice through the straw that pierced the bandages over her mouth.

  The tavern was only a few kilometers outside the City Itself. Here in the central provinces the inns were a half-day’s journey apart, on roads that made even the magnificent military highways on the frontiers look like goat-tracks. Each inn was lividly ornate with carved marble and terracotta, at least in the solas section, which was out on a terrace flung across a forested ravine, pleasant with the scent of pines and the sound of tinkling water. Half of the sleeping quarters had been commandeered for wounded.

  The roads outside were full of refugees: okas women trudging bare-footed, raggedly gloved with their children at their heels and their belongings on their backs; fessas families with carts; half-veiled solas and Aitzas in carriages ... and very few men. Males between sixteen and sixty were being taken out and herded off to makeshift training camps, by solas themselves past retirement age or with only fuzz on their cheeks, or wounds not quite bad enough to keep them bedbound or addled. Wagon trains rolled out of the City, as well, full of equipment that looked either brand new or as if it had rested in an armory for the better part of a century; every blacksmith shop she passed had been working overtime, with clumsy conscripted field-slaves doing routine chores to spare the skilled men. And there were columns of troops coming in from the west and south, with the lined faces of men force-marched beyond exhaustion.

  Papers were checked and rechecked at roadblocks; this last time by regular scarlet-clad soldiers under the command of a mask-faced man in black armor. She had passed dozens of corpses hanging from trees with their severed heads tied between their ankles; the last hundred kilometers had rarely been out of the sight or stink of such. Signs on their chests; she couldn’t read them but knew they must say, “deserter” or “defeatist” or “rumor-spreader.”

  They’re finally getting their heads out of their asses, Shkai’ra thought. She had been on the losing side of enough wars to know the signs. Good thing it’s too late.

  The Empire had never managed to mobilize more than a fraction of its strength, and now it never would; like a crocodile killed with an arrow through the eye, the armor and fangs and smashing tail would go on twitching uselessly, without a directing mind. Not that the mind was much to begin with.

  Press on. Even though she’d been at as brisk a pace as she could with two mounts, it had taken her eighteen days to get this far. The Empire was in dire enough straits, she’d caught on quickly, to commandeer the horses and armor of out of commission soldiers—though not swords, since they were often family heirlooms. She’d been able to take this lovely smooth road only at night and away from cities, towns, roadblocks, traveling army units, watch, or anyone else who stood a good chance of bringing her down alone. Eighteen days ... and Megan asked the rokatzk for what, sixteen? She thinks he’ll give her a month; I hope she’s doing some zteafakaz good stalling.

  Shitshitshitshit.

  The last roadblock was at the gate of the City Itself; Arko was built in a deep crater around a lake, and the only ways in were by a ramp-tunnel and the lefaeti, the winch-powered lifts. Shkai’ra had had to leave her horses stabled and her armor stored at the last tavern, buying expensive silence; they were no use in the City anyway. The road behind the in-line of the tunnel had been backed up for hours, and she could see why now. The commander of the troops checking those going in was a black; black cloth, this time, with only helmet and breastplate. He barely glanced at the papers, examining the people instead, with a slow methodical care and the meanest pair of eyes she had seen since leaving Stonefort, across the great ocean, more than a decade ago. They were as mean as her own mother’s eyes. Mahid ... one of the Imperator’s special clan of spies, secret police and dirty-tricks enforcers, trained since birth. This one for clandestine operations, obviously. He uses his eyes for something more than separating his brows from his nose.

  “Kill him,” he said in a flat uninflected voice, pointing to a plump fessas sweating before the soldiers. “He does not have the infirmities specified in his papers. Clerk, note the official who issued them; they conspire to thwart the will of the Imperator.” The soldiers graobed the fessas with swift obedience and professional skill, forcing him to his knees despite his protesting screams and thrashings, taking off his head with two strokes of a longsword.

  The regular officer working under the Mahid’s supervision took Shkai’ra’s papers. She let her head loll slightly to one side, and mumbled without words. Don’t overact, she thought.

  The Mahid looked at her for an uncomfortably long time. Fear ran gelid into her belly, worse than anything on a battlefield. There she knew the risks and exactly what she was doing; too much depended on this—her life, Lixand, Megan’s happiness—and this was not her best skill.

  He made a small gesture with his sword-hand. He’s seen through my injury disguise, but the detached duty means some Arkan spook thing. Zaik Victory-Begetter, Mother of Death, be with me now, she prayed. Not that she was very pious concerning the gods of her homeland anymore, but shit, it couldn’t hurt. Her gloved hands she kept immobile, except for the slight tremors she’d seen in warriors with head injuries.

  The Mahid nodded almost imperceptibly, as if congratulating her on her tradecraft, and signaled her through; the officer commanding the regulars handed her back her papers. Relief washed through her, stronger than an orgasm. All through the long corridor in the rock, she was barely conscious of her surroundings; alertness returned only when she came to the gate, slabs of cast steel from the forges of Temono seven man-heights wide and three high, raised out of the roadway by massive cables. She felt a slight prickle as she walked under them, one twenty meters back from the exit and one on the verge. The space between was lined with arrowslits and the muzzles of flamethrowers.

  * * *

  XVIII

  Excerpt from a report by Irefas Agent code-name Jesas, “On the Device of Glid
ing in Use by the Sun-forsaken Enemy, submitted to General Farras Magofen”:

  “Unlike the machines of ancient times, or the living avian creatures on which it was perhaps patterned, the contraption provides no propulsion of its own, and has no means of gaining height except by skillful riding of upward-traveling winds. Getting one into the air is done by one of two methods: a) running or leaping off a suitable hill or cliff; or b) the use of a giant strap made of elastic material (rubber), by which the flyer is pulled back by some forty pullers and literally shot into the air, through the same principle as a sling-stone, this would explain the enemy’s massive purchases of silk—the only fabric light and strong enough to make the wings of these devices—and rubber, from caravaneers associated with the army, most prominently Goonter Frahnzsson of Neubonn, a Thane dealing through Brahvniki, and others ...”

  O Celestialis, he thought as he watched the no-longer-secret ritual. Two lines of sweaty black savages, bodies heaving, muscles rippling, rough barbaric voices chanting to a primitive drum-rhythm, hauled on the ropes attached to the monstrous black rubber strap, stretched between two tall tree-stumps on a gentle rise. In the pocket of the giant sling sat the flyer with her—yes, certain signs were unmistakable in any race, it was a her—masterfully-made silk and bamboo craft, like a huge sky-blue bird, but more fragile looking.

  On a signal they all let go, and with an unearthly, deep, whistling bwwwoing-g-g, woman and wing shot into the sky, like a huge blue dart at first, then slowing and catching the wind, like a hovering eagle, high above.

  Actually, he thought, as the next flyer stepped up and the whole process was begun again, it looks like fun ... Celestialis, what am I thinking!? No wonder the price of rubber went up. If home ever finds out, my privates are mince.

  It had been one and a half eight-days since he’d last spoken with Whitlock, and Shefen-kas was still horribly, unmercifully, disastrously alive. That little cat-clawed bitch is stringing me along, he thought. We’re past Kirliana, I don’t have much more time ... Arko doesn’t have much more time ... She’s going to push it to the limit, and I haven’t made the limit hard enough yet, because of that fikken arrow-wound. The next one’s got to be it. Do, or he dies. All or nothing. Arko has nothing more to lose.