An Accident of Stars

by Foz Meadows

  “Now that,” said a dry, laconic voice, “was a very impressive speech.”

  Both Viya and Safi jumped and turned. It was Gwen, her lips curled up at the edges. Viya felt her neck flush with a mix of hope and embarrassment. How long had the Uyun woman been listening? Was she really impressed, or would she run straight to Yasha? Viya stiffened, holding her chin up high. If Gwen was going to punish her, she’d endure it straight-backed.

  Much to the cost of her dignity, Gwen chuckled. “Don’t fret, girl,” she said. “I’m no tattletale.”

  Viya bristled. “The correct form of address is my liege or your highness.”

  “I’m not your subject. And even if I were, it’s generally advisable to respect one’s elders.”

  “I will,” Viya said, coolly, “if you respect your betters.”

  “Hah!” Gwen barked merrily. Her brown eyes shone with approval. “That’s the spirit, my liege. Never let politics get in the way of a good argument!”

  Unable to help herself, Viya snorted with laughter. Safi glanced between them, clearly enjoying the show.

  “Now,” said Gwen, “while I have a moment, will you do me the courtesy of explaining why it is you’re so keen to get away from us, and who it is you’re wanting to see?”

  And so, because it was a respectfully-worded question, and because the older woman had made her laugh, Viya told her everything: Rixevet’s defection, Hawy’s politics, the circumstances of her marriage, Kadeja’s poisonous influence and her decision to head north. Her only omission was how she’d managed to leave the palace, as she neither wanted to credit Luy for his interference nor betray the fact that, in one sense, Yasha was right: she had known about the compound raid, even if that knowledge was only apparent in retrospect. Both Gwen and Safi listened in silence.

  Once she’d finished, the older woman raked her with an appraising look.

  “Well then, Iviyat ore Leoden ki Hawy. My thanks for your tale. As to whether or not I can help you, that’s a different matter.” She spread her hands, shrugging. “I’ll try. We’re on the same side in this, but there’s more going on than can bend to a single person’s desire, no matter how important. You understand?”

  “I do,” said Viya. Briefly, she hesitated. “And thank you for your consideration. I am – I have been – Cuivexa in name only, and though I want to change that fact, this isn’t how I dreamed it would happen. I have a temper, I know, and it… disquiets me, to be working with other Vekshi. But I was raised to believe that the hottest fires temper the strongest steel. It wasn’t of my choosing, but perhaps the gods have sent me here for a reason – and if that is so, the very best I can do is to try to learn their purpose.”

  “Fair-spoken,” said Gwen, and looked to say more, but at just that moment, a panicked-looking Jeiden returned to the group at a gallop. Throughout the day, Yasha had been using him as a forward scout, riding down the road ahead to report on any difficulties or dangers. Always before, he’d found nothing, but from the look on his face, things had definitely changed for the worse.

  “The Vexes men are coming!” he shouted, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Twenty honoured swords riding this way from Envas, fast – on horses, not roas! They saw me and chased – Leoden must have sent them word! They’ll be here any minute!”

  Yasha swore and wheeled her mount around, facing the rest of the column, barking out a string of orders. “Everyone form an outward-facing circle, Trishka and the packbeasts in the middle, quickly! Pix, Matu – dismount and see that everyone’s armed, then lead out with me. Jeiden, you’re in charge of my daughter – don’t move from her side, don’t let the beasts bolt, and if anyone asks you to pass them something, do it! Gwen, take the van and keep an eye on Safi – she fights too, but it’s your job to keep her alive! Yena to the left flank, Zech to the right – you girls remember what I’ve taught you, and keep your grips firm! Cuivexa Iviyat, up here with me – we open with knives and close with fists, and if you run, Ashasa help me but I’ll hunt you through this world and any other you care to name. Now move!”

  No one hesitated. Already, the drumming of hooves was audible: as Jeiden had said, the riders were evidently wealthy and well-trained enough to ride horses rather than roas, which boded evilly for their presence on such a remote stretch of road. Viya’s heart beat at double-time as Pix, already on foot, stopped by her stirrup and handed up a courtier’s knife-belt and a pair of blade-knuckled gloves.

  “My second-best set,” she said, her grin sharp with battle-frenzy. “Yemaya give you strength!”

  “Nihun give you courage,” Viya replied. Like all Kenan noblewomen, she’d been trained in the proper use of knives since age six, and though Leoden had taken her blades and denied her practice, still she’d kept up her forms in private. Trotting to Yasha’s side, she met the Vekshi matriarch with the calmest stare she could manage.

  “I won’t run,” she said. “Not until after we win this.”

  Surprisingly, Yasha cackled. “Good enough for me!”

  As Pix and Matu reclaimed their saddles, Viya sat side by side with Yasha, drew her knives, and watched as a whooping, screaming line of riders crested the hill.

  * * *

  Saffron stared at the axe in her hands, unable to comprehend quite how it had got there. The whole world was a roar of white noise; then Gwen was shaking her, swearing and shouting, “Focus, girl! You focus and listen to me!”

  “I’m listening,” Saffron said. Her voice came from far away.

  Other people were shouting, too – both men and women, their voices an angry wave.“You stay beside me,” Gwen was saying. “Beside and behind, and if someone gets past, don’t aim at them – aim at their horse. You listening, girl?”

  “I’m listening.” Her breathing was shallow. The axe was short and surprisingly light, with a wedge-shaped, double-headed blade whose edges tapered to thin-honed sharpness. The grip, which she held, was wrapped with leather and cloth – like a tennis racket, she thought desperately. Even the length was similar, and she clung to that sense of it as something more comprehensible, more familiar than a weapon. She gripped it tight in her right hand – hefting it slightly, as if it really were meant for tennis – and clutched the reins with her left. The horse beneath her, a steady grey mare, snorted and tossed her head.

  “Oh god,” Saffron moaned. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

  But there wasn’t time for that. The riders were closing in, and though she didn’t want to look, she somehow couldn’t stop herself from pivoting in the saddle, turning to stare, open-mouthed, at the scene unfolding before her.

  Over the hill came a double line of riders armed with swords and daggers that glinted in the fading light. Almost half were women, and all were Kenan, their hair either bound in marriage-braids or, more rarely, clasped in simple tails. Suddenly, four riders were down, tumbling catastrophically from their saddles as Pix and Viya’s knives hit home in their throats. It’s just like a film, Saffron told herself desperately, a film, a film – because even knowing it was a lie, she had to at least try to believe, or else she’d just seen two women she liked take the lives of four total strangers, and that was a truth she couldn’t process now.

  And then there was Yasha, riding out to meet the line with only her everyday staff in hand. It was agonising – Saffron wanted to scream at her to come back, come back, but gasped instead when, contrary to every expectation she had, Yasha swung sideways and down at the horse’s delicate forelegs. There was an audible cracking sound; the horse gave a shrieking whinny, stumbled, and ploughed head-first into the ground, catapulting its rider through the air like some twisted mammalian trebuchet. Five down, fifteen to go; the world moved in slow motion, every detail shining and illuminated like lead-lined glass.

  Now level with the charging line, Yasha roared like a lioness as her horse reared back on its hindquarters and swung around, pressing herself to its neck as she drew her own knives and, quick as lightning, flung them sideways into the backs of
two more riders.

  Matu broke ranks and followed her lead, his horse bodily charging side-on into another while he struck out with his sword. And then the line was at Pix and Viya – they drew their last knives, screaming and grappling – flowing around their circle like water, reaching Yena and Zech, the horses adding screams of their own – and then the world was flung back into vicious real-time. Three riders were pressing Gwen; she was armed with a sword, her horse reined sideways in front of Saffron, slashing at whoever came in range. But a fourth – a woman – had bypassed Zech and was coming up on her left, and suddenly, suddenly–

  The stranger’s horse rammed into Saffron’s mount, chest to chest. The rider was right-handed, armed with a knife, and in the moment when she raised it up, Saffron’s single, terrified thought, activated by the barely-there part of her brain that thought of the axe as a tennis racket, was backhand slice. Her axe-as-racket scythed through the air, connecting meatily with the woman’s wrist. It severed her hand with vicious ease, continuing in its downward arc to embed itself in the horse’s muscled neck.

  Vomit rushed up Saffron’s throat. The woman shrieked and flailed, her marriage-braids flying as the horse reared backwards, the axe still stuck in its flesh. The rider, unable to grab the reins, began to slip from the saddle; the horse reared higher and higher, forelegs beating the air in a grotesque pirouette. It staggered away; the woman fell. The horse screamed, and then – Saffron gagged – it collapsed backwards onto the rider, crushing her. Landing on the axe. Audibly, something snapped. The sound the horse made was terrible, a pain-wet noise like metal being wrenched apart. There was nothing but fear and bile and stench, and darkbright blood on Saffron’s hands, the spray from the woman’s severed wrist. It was on her face, too, and it hit her then, a raw stunning slap, that she’d just killed someone. I killed her – I killed it – I killed them –

  She sobbed, and fainted, and fell.

  * * *

  “Jesus fuck! You fucking fuckers, you fucks – come on, come on!” Gwen screamed, the words ripped from her throat like scabs from a wound. Years ago, she’d learned that rage was more use in such moments than terror, and though she was no fighter either by nature or tutelage, she’d been forced to learn enough self-defence to (thus far) stay alive. She’d taken down one and Saffron another, but then the girl had fallen and maybe she was dead or wounded and maybe she wasn’t, but this next fucker was still pressing her, his blade meeting hers with a strength she couldn’t surpass. She was over-matched and tiring fast, they all were, and with no reinforcements to back them up – she thought of Jhesa, Naku, Louis, prayed with a fierceness she seldom felt to find her way back to them again–

  A green-fletched arrow sprouted from her opponent’s neck. The woman faltered, choked on blood, and slipped sideways off her horse, a look of surprise on her face. Gwen stared at her, panting, unable to comprehend what was going on. Shouts from the surviving riders suddenly turned to gargled screams as more arrows zipped through their midst, each one piercing an honoured sword until none remained alive.

  The sudden silence was deafening. Gwen trembled, her breath coming in ragged gasps, and slowly lowered her sword. The anger and fear that had fuelled her fighting ebbed away like a tide, leaving behind a bone-deep ache that penetrated every fibre and sinew of her body. And pain, too: there were cuts on her arms where she hadn’t quite been fast enough to block, and one on her cheek that must have come from the upwards flick of a sword.

  “Good girl,” she murmured, patting her horse on the neck. The animal snorted and flicked her ears back in displeasure, clearly unsettled.

  “Allies! Allies!” came a shout – presumably in response to the question of who their deliverers were, though Gwen had no idea who’d asked it. One by one, a group of brightly-clad strangers began to emerge from the woods on the left, each one covered head to toe in flowing robes, so that only their eyes and hands were visible. She laughed out loud, though the sound was more of a rattle.

  “Shavaktiin,” she muttered, half in wonder. “Saved by the bloody Shavaktiin.”

  And with that realisation, she knew they were safe. It was over. Only now could she let herself worry about the prospect that not everyone had survived the battle intact. Arms and legs protesting mightily, she forced herself to dismount, grimacing as she stepped between the bodies of dead men and women and that one dead horse to examine Saffron Coulter.

  Jeiden had care of the girl, evidently having pulled her out from under the hooves of her blood-spooked mount and backwards into his lap. She was curled on one side, her head on his knees. Tears made grimy tracks on his cheeks as he stared up at Gwen.

  “I couldn’t help,” he said, choking on the words. “She wouldn’t let me help.”

  Gwen knew the she in question wasn’t Saffron, but Yasha. Like a tapped ember, she felt some of her rage rekindle in her chest, letting it muster a flame as she crouched before Jeiden. He looked nothing like Louis, but in that moment, she saw them doubled, the memory of one boy overlaying the other’s flesh.

  “Is she hurt?” she asked, but even as she spoke, she knew it was the wrong question. Saffron’s body was unscathed; it was her mind that mattered. Yasha, I will burn you for this. You and Leoden both.

  “She’s unconscious,” said Jeiden, visibly trying to pull himself together. “At least, I think she is. She just sort of… fell.”

  “I can’t say I blame her.” Gwen rubbed her eyes and straightened up. She wanted to stay with Jeiden, with Saffron, but thirty or so Shavaktiin had just emerged from the trees, and rather than crowding near, they were waiting respectfully for someone to approach them. Inwardly cursing, she cast about, then pointed her sword at a single, thick-trunked tree growing at the roadside between Gwen’s party and the Shavaktiin camp.

  “Do you think you can get her over there?” she asked Jeiden softly. “She’s not cut, but you’ll have to be careful all the same; she might have hurt herself falling off like that.”

  “I can,” said Jeiden. He was calmer now, the prospect of responsibility working on him like medicine.

  “Do it then. And after that…” she faltered, restraining what she wanted to say in favour of what he needed to hear, “…wait and see what else needs doing. You’re good at so much, I trust you to keep an eye on things.”

  The praise steadied him further. Nodding, he woke Saffron and got her moving, his small hands deft and gentle. Gwen watched them go, heart aching, then limped stiffly away to see what had become of the others.

  Minutes later, she had her answer. Though nowhere near as bad as it could have been, in that none of their party were dead or dying, there were still a fair number of serious injuries. Almost as soon as the line had reached them, Viya’s roa had been cut from under her. The Cuivexa had fallen badly, but had redeemed the situation by cutting the hamstrings of the nearest horse. Her action had saved Pix’s life, but earned her a truly spectacular gash from the rider’s sword: barely missing the bridge of her nose, the blow had sliced up the centre of her forehead, then flicked to the left in such a way that a flap of scalp was left fluttering loose. The only mercy was that her actual skull remained undamaged – nonetheless, she was bleeding fast, and once it had been established that the Shavaktiin included two healers graced with the sevikmet among their number, one had immediately rushed forwards to see to her wound.

  Yena and Zech had fared little better. Zech’s horse had died taking the brunt of a blow that might otherwise have severed her left leg, but which instead had cut hard into the top of her thigh – almost down to the bone. She was white as a sheet and barely breathing, her injury the most serious of anyone’s for having gone so deep. She’d lost a lot of blood, though mercifully the blow had struck well above Zech’s femoral artery. Even so, without a healer present to stop the damage, the shock alone might have killed her. Instead, she lay semi-conscious on the grass, tears of pain leaking out of her eyes as the healer knit her up. Yena was lucky by comparison: armed with a staff, she’d raised
it to protect her upper body from a sword-strike, only to have the blade cut down on her left hand midway between her wrist and the base of her littlest finger, crushing the bones (though not, fortunately, cutting all the way through to her palm). The wound oozed blue-black blood and was so painful that Gwen was forced to knock her out with moonsleep while she waited for the healers.

  She sat with Yena until they arrived, one hand clasped gently around her wrist, the other stroking her hair. Gwen’s tears were hot and silent, shed for a child who was, in every way that mattered, her niece. Too many places on Earth were dangerous for girls like Yena, boys like Jeiden, but oh, luck, to have spared them this – to have spared them all–No world is ever truly safe, Gwen thought, half bitter, half grieved. Just safe enough, until one day it isn’t.The adults, by contrast, were virtually undamaged: Pix and Matu, like Gwen, had only minor cuts on their thighs and forearms from weapon-tips that had snuck past their guard, while Yasha – having charged through the line and emerged behind it – was utterly unscathed. And then there was Trishka, still tied to her horse, as burned now as she had been at the start of the attack, and just as stable. The healers would see her last. But of course, Gwen thought savagely, that’s how it goes in warfare. The eldest scheme and the youngest suffer.

  Of Leoden’s twenty guardsmen, not a single one had survived, despite the fact that the quality of their arms in combination with their horses suggested they were elites, maybe even arakoi. Or – she frowned – perhaps they were simply regular troops who’d been recently resupplied with better mounts and weapons. Either way, seven boasted Shavaktiin arrows through eye or throat, and another six had fallen to the knives thrown two apiece by Viya, Pix and Yasha. Matu’s sword had accounted for a further two, while one had broken his neck after Yasha tripped his horse. One to Gwen’s sword. One to Zech, who’d cut the throat of the man who’d cut her leg. One to Saffron, a kill of luck. And one to Yena: her staff had crushed his windpipe. Only Jeiden and Trishka had been spared the battle, and even then, Jeiden was still scarred by it – or, more specifically, by his exclusion from it, the fact that Yasha had, in essence, forced him to stand helpless while his friends were hurt.