by Jim Butcher
“Yes?” Kitai asked.
“That since the woman chooses the contest, she has ample opportunity to reject her suitor. If she doesn’t care for him, she simply selects a contest at which he is unlikely to prevail. Say, a young woman of Horse doesn’t care for the attentions of a Wolf suitor, she challenges him to a horseback race.”
Kitai’s eyes danced, but her tone and expression were both serious. “The One witnesses the contest. The Marat most worthy prevails. This is known, Aleran.”
“Of course,” Tavi said. “I doubt that The One cares for his children to be forced to mate with those whom they do not desire.”
“Many young Marat males would disagree with you quite loudly. But in this, you are very nearly as wise as a Marat woman,” Kitai said solemnly. “Not quite. But very nearly.”
“I seem to recall a trial by contest between a certain beautiful young Marat woman and a foolish Aleran youth. It was quite a number of years ago, and the trial was held in the Wax Forest near the Calderon Valley. Dimly though I recall such an ancient time, I seem to remember that the young man was victorious.”
Kitai opened her mouth to reply hotly, then seemed to think better of it. She let out a rueful chuckle. “Only because the young woman willed it so.”
“How is that any different from any other young Marat woman who wishes to accept a young man as a mate?”
Kitai arched an eyebrow at him. “It . . .” She tilted her head. “It . . . is not.”
“Well, then,” he said. “According to the laws and customs of your people, for which I have the deepest respect, we have been married for a number of years. The child is perfectly legitimate.”
Kitai narrowed her eyes, and a smile haunted her lips. “We are not wed. That was not a proper mating trial.”
“Why not?” Tavi asked.
“Because it was not intended as such!” Kitai said.
Tavi waved a hand airily. “Intentions count for far less than the consequences of the actions born from them. You are my wife.”
“I think not,” Kitai said.
“I know,” Tavi said solemnly. “But in this, you are less wise than an Aleran male. Still, one must tolerate occasional fits of irrational passion from one’s wife. So in your judgment, what needs to happen to make this a proper mating?”
“A proper challenge!” she replied. “You cannot dare think that . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she said, “Oh.”
Tavi arched an eyebrow at her this time and waited.
“You . . .” She looked down. “You truly think the child is . . . that this is all right?”
“Why shouldn’t it be?” he replied quietly. He dropped the playful, bantering tone. “Kitai, what does it matter what excuse we use to accept the child? So long as the child is welcomed and loved? Isn’t that the important thing?”
“Yes,” she said simply. She closed her eyes, and said, “Thank you, Aleran.”
“There’s nothing to thank me for,” he said. Then he touched her chin and lifted her eyes to his. “If our child is to be born, Kitai,” he said, in little more than a whisper, “I’ve got to do everything in my power to protect it. I’ve got to. I can’t do anything else. It is who I am. Do you understand?”
“I understand that you mean to leave me behind,” she said softly. “To go into this war alone.”
“I must,” he said. “Kitai, it would kill me if I lost you. But now, it would kill someone else, too.”
She shook her head slowly, never blinking. “I will not stay behind, Aleran.”
“Why not?”
She was quiet for a moment, thinking. Then she said, “Do you remember when I said that the vord could do nothing to us?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Do you know why I said it?”
“No,” he said.
She put her hands on his face, and whispered, “Death is nothing to me, chala. Not if we are together. Death is not to be feared.” She leaned forward and kissed his mouth, very gently. Then she rested her forehead against his. “Being taken from one another. That terrifies me. It terrifies me. I will go to any wasted wilderness, to any horrible city, into any nightmare to keep you at my side, chala, and never flinch. I never have. But do not ask me to leave you. To send you into danger alone. That, I cannot do. That is who I am. And that is why I did not tell you. Because I knew who you were.”
Tavi inhaled slowly, understanding. “Because both of us can’t be true to ourselves. Someone has to change.”
“How can we stay together in the face of that?” she asked. There was something desperate in the quiet words. “How can you respect me if I abandon my beliefs? How can I respect you if you abandon yours?”
“And how could either of us respect ourselves,” Tavi said.
“Yes.”
Tavi took a slow breath. Neither spoke for a long time. The noise of the camp around them was growing louder as it began to get ready for the day’s march.
“I don’t know what to do,” Tavi said. “Yet. But there’s time. I’ll think on it.”
“I’ve had weeks,” Kitai said. “I haven’t thought of anything.”
“It’ll take us another two days, maybe more, to reach Calderon. There’s time.”
Kitai closed her eyes and shook her head. More tears fell. Tavi could feel a nauseating fear in her he had never felt from her before.
“I’ll think of something,” he said gently. “Take off the armor.”
She hesitated.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Take it off.”
She did, very slowly. Tavi helped her unbuckle the vest. He slid it from her. Then he grasped the hem of her shirt and lifted it slowly. With his hands, he guided her lovingly down onto the bedroll again.
Then, very gently, as if he might shatter her to so many chips of ice if he moved without utmost caution, he laid his hand over her belly, spreading his fingertips over her pale skin until his palm rested against her. The child was too small yet to show to the eye. But he closed his eyes and once more could feel the small, contented presence there, within Kitai’s own quiet, controlled terror.
“Can you feel? Have you tried?” he asked her.
“I can’t,” she said, her voice quietly miserable. “I overheard some midwives talking. They said that you can’t sense the baby with furycraft when it’s in your own body. It’s too much like you. And the child is too little to have moved in me yet.”
“Give me your hand.”
Tavi took Kitai’s hand and intertwined her fingers with his. He focused, and his sense of her presence suddenly leapt into something far more vibrant and detailed than simple proximity could accomplish alone. He concentrated on her, then upon the little presence, sharing its warmth and peace with Kitai.
Her green eyes went very wide. “Oh,” she said. Her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, chala.” She suddenly broke into a smile, still weeping, and let out a quiet little laugh. “Oh, that’s beautiful.”
Tavi smiled at her and leaned down to kiss her very gently.
The three of them stayed like that, in the quiet, just for a little longer, treasuring that moment. Neither of them said it, but they both knew. Such moments were swiftly growing rarer and rarer.
And, in the next few days, they might even become extinct.
CHAPTER 39
Bernard rode into the command center a few yards ahead of Amara and stopped to look slowly around him. Amara rode up beside her husband, and said nothing.
“Technically,” he said, “the old place is still Isanaholt. Elder Frederic hasn’t taken his oath yet.”
Amara smiled at him. “I still think of it as Bernardholt.”
Her husband shook his head. “I wasn’t ever really comfortable with that name. Me-holt. Sounded ridiculous.”
The steadholt around them was laid out like virtually every other steadholt in the Realm—with a large hall at its center, surrounded by an enormous barn and a number of workshops, homes, and other outbuildings. Unlike most of the Realm,
which until recently had enjoyed a much less dangerous climate, every building was made of solid stone, proof against the frequent furystorms that plagued the Valley. It was also surrounded by a defensive wall—not a fortress wall, by any means, and it didn’t feature battlements, but it was thick, solid granite and showed no signs of weathering or decay.
Now, the hall, the workshops, and even the barn were all changed. The holders and their stock had long since been evacuated, just as had the seven smaller, newer steadholts that had been founded to the west of them, in what was (or shortly would be) vord-occupied territory. It was instead filled with armed and often armored men and women, legionares, Citizens, and volunteers. There were perhaps forty or fifty Marat in and about the steadholt as well. A gargant bellowed from the vast barn, where several of the wounded beasts had been quartered out of the weather, to be tended by their Marat handlers and by a trio of old farmhands from the Valley with a gift for husbandry.
Multiple broad staircases were new additions, and ran from the ground up to the steadholt’s walls. From there, a number of stone walkways led from the steadholt to the wall proper, a crenellated Legion-standard defensive structure twenty feet high.
Already, legionares were pouring up onto the wall, readying the second line of defense. Their march to the wall had been a difficult one. The cohorts stationed nearest the causeway had been able to move rapidly down the Valley, outstripping the pace of their pursuers, who moved in a slow, enormous block that was being steadily compressed by the terrain. Those poor souls who had been on the northern or southern lengths of the wall had been forced to march overland the hard way, without any sort of furycraft to help them, until they had reached the causeway as well. Then they had raced ahead of the pursuing enemy, and they were slogging back out to their positions again. It couldn’t have been an easy task for them, to make such a march after spending half of a furious hour in hand-to-hand combat.
But they were Legion. All in a day’s work.
“Giraldi,” Bernard said as he dismounted. “How much longer before our men are all in position?”
The old centurion saluted. “Within the next few moments, sir.”
Bernard nodded. “Everything is prepared?”
“Yes, sir. Except . . .”
“What?” Bernard asked.
“The civilians, sir,” Giraldi said, his voice softening. “A lot of them are too old or too young to make use of the causeway. There are a lot of sick and wounded. A lot of confusion. Crows, my lord, there’s just a lot of people. We haven’t been able to get them out of this section of the Valley and behind the last wall yet.”
Amara spat a curse and got off her horse, passing the reins to the same valet who had come to take Bernard’s. “How long before they’re clear?”
“If it happens before midnight, it’ll be a miracle.”
“It’s going to be one long afternoon and evening.” Bernard spat. “That tears it. We can’t go with the plan if we’ve got to hold the walls that long.” He looked out to the west as if picturing the oncoming foe. “I need to talk to Doroga. Love, please inform the Princeps and ask if he has any suggestions.”
From the north, a bright green signal arrow burned as it rose, then fell slowly through the air. A moment later, more of them fell, both in the north and to the south.
“They’re here,” Amara breathed.
Bernard grunted. “Get moving. Giraldi, sound assembly, let’s make sure we’re ready to deal with these things. Send runners to the firing lines and spread the word—load the mules.”
Giraldi’s fist rapped his armor, and he marched away, bawling orders in a voice that could be heard for a mile.
Bernard and Amara touched hands briefly, then each of them turned to their tasks.
Amara hurried to the command post in the great hall. Its doors were heavily guarded, albeit by an entirely different group of men. One of the men challenged her, and she answered him somewhat curtly. The vord’s takers were deadly in their fashion, but they could not make the bodies they occupied emit intelligible speech. Amara was high enough in the councils of Aleran command that the challenge was essentially a formality, to ensure she hadn’t been taken.
She entered the hall, a very large structure with a fireplace at each end of sufficient size to place an entire cow on a spit over the fire within it. At the far end of the hall, the fireplace had been blocked off by suspended cloths. Another pair of guards stood outside the makeshift chamber. Amara marched over, and said, “I have information for the Princeps. It can’t wait.”
The taller of the two guards inclined his head. “One moment, lady.” He vanished into the chamber, and Amara heard voices. Then he emerged and held the flap open for her.
Amara slipped inside to be greeted by a wave of uncomfortable warmth. The fire in the huge fireplace was taller than she. A bed stood nearby the fire, and Attis lay in it, his face even more pale and drawn than before. He turned his head listlessly toward her, coughed, and said, “Come in, Countess.”
She approached and saluted him. “Your Highness. We have a problem.”
He tilted his head.
“The evacuation is moving too slowly. We still have a horde of civilians west of Garrison’s walls. Our people estimate that it may take until midnight to get them all through.”
“Hngh,” Attis grunted.
“Furthermore,” she said, “the vord somehow managed to divert a river onto the coal plain. The fire held them back for less than an hour. They’ve been sighted approaching this wall. Signal arrows are rising at all points.”
“It never rains.” Attis sighed. He closed his eyes. “Very well. Your recommendation, Countess?”
“Keep to the plan, but slow it down,” she said. “Use the mules to grind away at them rather than trying to do it for the shock value. Hold the wall until the civilians are safe, then disengage.”
“Disengage in the dark?” he asked. “Have you any idea how dangerous a feat that is? The slightest error could turn it into a complete rout.”
“Ask Doroga and his clan to hold them off for a time and cover the retreat,” she responded. “Those gargants of theirs are natural-born vord-killers, and they’re fast enough to stay ahead of the enemy on the way back down to Garrison.”
Attis thought about it for a moment, then nodded slowly. “That’s likely the best we’re going to get, under the circumstances. Make it happen, Countess, on my authority if need be.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
He nodded wearily and closed his sunken eyes.
Amara frowned at him and glanced around the room. “Your Highness? Where is Sir Ehren?”
Attis’s cheekbones seemed to become even starker. “He died on the wall this morning, while stemming a vord breakthrough.”
Amara felt her belly twist. She had liked the young man and respected his skills and intelligence. She could hardly bear to think of him lying cold and dead on the stones of that wall. “Oh, great furies,” she breathed.
“Did you know, Countess,” Attis said, “whose idea it was for me to present myself as a target back at Riva? Alone and vulnerable to draw out Invidia or the Queen?” His exhausted smile still had a leonine quality to it. “Of course, he didn’t phrase it like that.”
“Was it?” Amara said quietly.
“Yes. Put forward so diffidently I had to think for a moment to recall that it hadn’t been my idea.” He coughed again, though it had no energy to it. “No one will ever be able to know for certain, of course,” he said. “But I think the little man assassinated me. Barely a fury to his name and . . .” He coughed and laughed as he did it, both sounds dry with exhaustion. “Perhaps that was why he insisted on watching what would happen this morning, when he sent Antillus and the others out to be a bellows for the fire. Because he knew that his suggestion had such power.” He waved a hand down at his own shattered body. “Perhaps because he felt guilty to see the results of his actions.”
“Or perhaps instead of being a manipulator and ass
assin, he was simply a loyal servant of the Realm,” Amara said.
A wry, bitter smile tugged at his lips. “The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, Countess.”
“He shouldn’t have been there. He was never trained as a soldier.”
“In a war like this, Countess,” Attis said very softly, “there are no civilians. Only survivors. Good people die, even though they don’t deserve it. Or perhaps we all deserve it. Or perhaps no one does. It doesn’t matter. War is no more a respecter of persons than is death.” He was quiet for a moment, then said, “He was more than I have been. He was a good man.”
Amara bowed her head and blinked sudden tears away. “Yes. He was.”
He lifted a weak hand and waved it at her. “Go. You have much to do.”
The vord arrived perhaps a quarter of an hour after Amara emerged from the steadholt’s hall. Trumpets sounded. Legionares stood ready as engineers finished closing the gates that had been crafted into the walls, until the walls presented a single face of solid granite, its front smoothed to a gleaming finish. She stood beside Bernard upon a tower ten feet higher than the wall. Defensive towers had been spaced every hundred yards down the length of the wall, here a little less than three miles long.
A courier put down upon the tower, briefly kicking up a small gale of wind, and saluted. “Count Calderon, sir.”
Bernard didn’t take his eyes from the field ahead of him. “Report.”
The young man stood there, blinking uncertainly.
Amara sighed and beckoned him. He took a few tentative steps closer.
“There,” Amara said, once he was past the windcrafting she was maintaining to keep Bernard’s orders from being monitored by enemy crafters. “Can you hear now?”
“Oh,” said the courier, flushing. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Report,” said Bernard in exactly the same tone as before.
The young man looked mildly panicked. “Captain Miles’s compliments, sir, and there’s a sizeable enemy force moving to the north, sir, to circle around the end of the wall!”
“Hngh,” Bernard said. “Thank you.”