Buried Heart

by Kate Elliott

  The fast-moving Falcon Guard is assigned to be the strike force sent ahead to support General Thynos while the rest of the army lumbers several days behind. The plan is that after the Saroese armies fight, the Efean rebellion must be in position to mop up the weakened winners. It’s all a matter of timing.

  I convince Inarsis to allow the spiders to lead the way as the Falcon Guard marches out of Ibua on streets lined by a crowd eager to cheer us on. As our heavy brass bodies pound down the great avenue that leads out of the city, people step back in fear, as they always had to do before. The spiders once used to keep the population in order; mere months ago they stomped through the Ribbon Market to arrest Ro and sweep up whatever Commoners the Patrons wished to arrest. But this time when people see our faces they step forward with courage and excitement because now the spiders march for Efea.

  The other scouts don’t have the hang of smooth walking yet so I am at the front, setting a pace they can follow.

  “Spider! Spider!” the people cry. They sing Ro’s new song, which is a little too mawkish for my taste, not his best work. Hasten after the tomb spider! Do not be afraid. You will see the sun again if you follow where she leads.

  Their shining faces and exuberant cheers lift my heart into the heavens, and as we march toward the coming battle I am sure the Mother of All smiles upon Her children.

  By the time we reach the secret forward encampment on a hill west of Saryenia eight days later, I have the eleven spider scout recruits marching like real soldiers. They can move forward and backward and sideways, and they can climb pretty well, although they’re still getting used to coordinating the forelegs and back legs as weapons. They’ll be fine as long as we don’t come up against trained spider scouts or Father’s firebird veterans.

  Guides sent by Lord Thynos hurry us forward through territory crawling with enemy soldiers. At first I don’t understand where we are going because the hill we’re aiming for is too steep and rugged even for spiders to climb. Our escorts steer us single file through dense vegetation. It conceals a narrow cleft that cuts through the hill’s slope like a canyon. Two of the scouts don’t pull their forelegs in tightly enough and get wedged in. The easiest thing for me to do would be to switch places with them and extricate their spiders myself, but instead I laboriously direct them until they have worked themselves free. Finally we move on, into the hill.

  The cleft opens into a crater, a huge bowl that takes up most of the interior. Inside, shielded by cliff walls, lies a perfectly lovely village tucked amid a vineyard. But I don’t see a single Efean villager, only Shipwright mercenaries and Efean soldiers busy amid the village’s boardwalks, storehouses, and central Fives court. There is even a company of Saroese soldiers wearing sea-phoenix tabards who are somehow part of the revolt. Observers stand atop the crater amid a concealing grove of trees.

  Because she has the most military experience, Mis was promoted over Dagger to become the sergeant in charge of our spider scouts, and I invite myself along as she leaves the squad and climbs a switchback path up the steep interior cliff. We are accompanied by Captain Mahu of the Falcon Guard, a lean man about my father’s age who requires his soldiers to pace through the menageries with us every morning and every night.

  “Captain Mahu and Sergeant Missenshe reporting from Ibua,” Mis says to a sentry, who waves us forward.

  Thynos and his companions watch us approach. The Shipwright officers are a varied crew, women and men of disparate complexions and features like they were plucked out of various countries and thrown together, which, given the tradition of the Shipwrights, I’m sure they were. They all wear their hair in a version of the distinctive triple braids the Shipwrights are famous for. I wonder if Bettany has started braiding her hair in their fashion, if she likes their blunt manners and infamous equality of status.

  When he ran the Fives under the name Southwind, Thynos wore his hair clubbed back in the style of old Saro, but it’s shaved short now. He has a fresh scar on his neck, and a new tightness to his eyes.

  “Sergeant Missenshe, good to see you back. Well done on your promotion. Captain Mahu, what news from Ibua?” In all the months I’ve known him I’ve never heard him speak anything but the highborn Saroese of his birth, yet he speaks Efean with creditable fluency.

  “The army is on its way,” Mahu says.

  “I didn’t know we’d captured spiders.” He looks at me. “Or Spider. So you were a prisoner in the north, just as my nephew feared.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “No need for such titles here,” he says graciously, and with a stab of a smile adds, “You may address me as General.”

  “General Thynos, I thought you were allied with the West Saroese and thus with Garon Palace. If you do not mind my saying so, I am a trifle confused by your situation.”

  “By my loyalties, is that what you are asking?”

  “Jes,” warns Mis.

  “Yes, your loyalties.”

  He nods. I don’t take the gesture as a sign of amiability. A lifetime of getting his way means he never has to be acquiescent. “The kingdom of West Saro is suffering from a famine. They desperately need an alliance with Efea for our wheat. They are not particular about which king they seal a pact with, whether Nikonos, Kalliarkos… or Inarsis.”

  “It is the Efean queen who supervises trade and diplomacy.”

  “The rulers of old Saro don’t see women in that way. At the moment we don’t have time to quarrel with them about that.”

  “Do your Shipwright allies know they aren’t fighting for Garon Palace?”

  “Of course they know. The new Efean government is paying them, not Garon.”

  “But Lord Gargaron and Princess Berenise don’t know. You’re betraying your own kinfolk.”

  “I like to think of it as choosing new kin, but you’re welcome to call it whatever you wish. Have you chosen a side, Spider?”

  “I know where I belong. Aren’t you worried about what will happen to your sister, Lady Adia? To Kalliarkos and Menoë? Your very own nephew and niece?”

  “I’m sorry for it, because I care for them, but their fates were sealed when they were born into a game in which people kill to gain and keep power. Neither you nor I can change the fact of their lineage, and neither can they, no matter how much poor Kal tried to make a different life for himself. Even I can’t step out of it, and I have no claim to any throne.”

  “What about your new bride, Princess Shenia? Isn’t she part of the game too?”

  “None of your business, Spider. Why are you here on the front lines, anyway?”

  “Because you need me to see the openings you’re going to miss.” I’m so angry about his dismissal of “poor Kal” that I flash him the kiss-off sign.

  He answers with a look that could kill from a hundred paces, then gestures the sign back to me, because no adversary can resist. “Take a look at Saryenia under siege, Spider. Let me know what I’m missing.”

  From up here the world seems mostly water, shining in the afternoon sun. The East Saroese fleet waits out on the sea while a few of its war galleys patrol Mist Lake, drawing a ring around the city. Although I can’t see such detail, I’m guessing the city’s twin harbors have chains run across them to block enemy ships from sailing in, but those same chains prevent our own ships from sailing out.

  Wedged between lake and sea, the fields and orchards of the villages surrounding the city appear to have been infested with locusts: the swarming mass of the allied East Saroese and Saro-Urok armies. They’ve filled in the canal outside the walls so they can pull catapults up within range of the population inside. A command camp flies both hawk and peacock banners as well as the gold sea-phoenix banner that shows Nikonos is alive and determined to be king even if it means destroying the city he would rule over. He’s set up on the west side of the city because there are four gates on this side as opposed to a single gate on the less vulnerable eastern wall.

  With the gates shut tight, it’s hard to see inside the
city, but that’s not where the action is right now. The enemy army is on the move. Horses hitched to catapults are dragging them away from the walls as units re-form into a position facing west. Haze rims the western horizon, and a restless vibration stirs on the edge of my hearing like the rumble of drums.

  “That haze is the dust kicked up by an approaching army,” I say.

  “Very good, Spider.”

  “It must be Garon Palace and their West Saroese allies. Do they know you’re here?”

  “Of course they know. We’re sending them reports. They just don’t know that I am actually fighting for the Efeans.”

  “Why isn’t the enemy using this hill for reconnaissance?”

  “They are. We’ve set up a decoy post over the crest of the hill, to our left. The soldiers wearing the sea-phoenix tabards are working for us but Nikonos thinks they’re loyal to him.”

  “So you are supplying both Nikonos and Gargaron with information.”

  “Yes. Some of it is false, and all of it tells them only what we want them to know.”

  “And neither army suspects?”

  “How can they suspect when none of them believe Efeans are capable of rebellion? Much less that a highborn man like me would throw in his lot with a people they look down on?” He cocks his head to one side and, crossing his arms, smiles cuttingly. “So far you haven’t told me anything I haven’t already anticipated, Spider. You need to do better.”

  Then he nods at Mahu, person to person, a gesture between equals, and Mahu nods back. “Sergeant Missenshe, you and Trooper Spider may retire to the camp. Nothing will happen until morning.”

  “And then what will happen?” I ask, because I need to know and also I’m annoyed that Thynos beat me in even this trifling contest.

  “A battle.”

  “What if the East Saroese and Nikonos defeat the Garon alliance?”

  “Who wins tomorrow doesn’t matter. What matters is that the winner of their conflict be so weakened by the battle that it leaves us as the only healthy adversary on the court.”

  Before dawn I climb on foot with the other observers to our hidden overlook on the rim of the crater. As the sun rises the armies begin moving ponderously into place. The army of the old Saro alliance under the command of Nikonos is huge, but they are caught between the smaller Garon alliance and the city walls. Therefore they have to keep two front lines intact. A mass of pikemen and archers face Saryenia’s walls in case of a sortie from the gates. The other line, the bulk of Nikonos’s infantry and cavalry, confronts the approaching Garon and West Saroese forces.

  The Shipwrights have tubes that they say aren’t magic, but when I hold one up to my eye I exclaim and almost drop it, for my vision leaps a vast distance. Through the tube I see the faces of men so closely I can identify their features, but when I lower the tube they appear as tiny, indistinct figures.

  “Is a bird trapped inside, that we can see through its eyes like a crow priest?”

  “No. It uses a glass lens to magnify.” Thynos has his own tube, which he uses to keep track of the enemy movements.

  When I raise it a second time to my eye, the shift in perspective doesn’t shock me. I search for and find Prince Nikonos at the center of the East Saroese command company. He wears the gold-and-purple tabard of the king of Efea although he’s not yet put on his helmet.

  “Let me see,” says Mis.

  “How much longer must we wait?” I ask Thynos as she peers through it.

  “Once the two armies have settled into position on the field they’ll blow horns, shout insults, and move units around behind the main lines. That’s how every battle in the Oyia campaign started.”

  “Is that where you met Inarsis?”

  He smiles to himself like a man in love and abruptly several pieces of his and Inarsis’s story make sense to me. However, he doesn’t answer my question. “The Garon alliance is grossly outnumbered. I can’t figure out what General Esladas means to do from inside the walls.”

  “What’s that?” Mis points toward the city.

  A flight of birds rises from the walls of Saryenia, followed by a second flight and then a third, as if every songbird and pigeon inside the city has been released at the same time.

  Horns blare from the Garon alliance. A thunderous crash of drums arises as its army starts lumbering toward the East Saroese line. The East Saroese wave banners and, with cheers, push forward to meet them.

  “What are they doing?” Thynos cries. “It’s too soon! Without support, Garon will be crushed.”

  The Shipwright officers surrounding him look alarmed by this reckless act.

  “The birds are a signal,” I say as I look back toward Saryenia. “My father must be communicating with Lord Gargaron by crow priests and messenger pigeons.”

  All four western gates swing open without a horn call or a drumroll of warning. Horsemen pour out, but the East Saroese have prepared for an attack from the city by deploying companies of pikemen in the line facing the city. Horses won’t charge a solid line of pikes.

  Thynos says to his companions, “If the East Saroese rout them, we don’t want to get caught in the slaughter afterward. Prepare to retreat.”

  “Wait,” I say. “My father must have a plan.”

  The cavalry units sweep a wide circle across the fields, not yet closing with the enemy line. They leave space for the second wave to emerge from the city: spider scouts. The heavy spiders stump forward, picking up speed as they cross the empty ground toward the enemy. A first volley of arrows loosed from the East Saroese line bounces harmlessly off their carapaces. There’s something exhilarating about watching experienced spider scouts gain speed and cohesion as they turn into a headlong charge and crash into the front line of pikemen.

  The sudden carnage of spider blades sweeping through the enemy does not prepare me for what comes next.

  The horsemen converge, taking arrow-shot along their flank as they gallop at the East Saroese line at an angle. The force with which the cavalry charge hits shatters the already damaged East Saro line. And they keep going, deep, like a spearhead plunging into a body.

  “Good Goat!” Tube held to an eye, Thynos follows the track of the charge. “Does he have a death wish?”

  That’s when I see a person wearing a feathered lion helmet and a gold-and-purple tabard that’s exactly the same as the one Nikonos wears riding in the midst of the cavalry. He’s part of a wedge that’s cutting into the East Saroese center, protected by a screen of riders on every side. I snatch the tube out of Mis’s hands and put it to my own eye.

  Of course it is Kal. Who else could it be?

  Now I see Father’s plan. On the western, outer side of their formation, East Saroese troops face the main Garon army, and the two armies engage amid a clamor of drums and horns and the screaming of men and horses. Meanwhile, from Saryenia, Kal and his cavalry are charging straight for the banners of the command company.

  Nikonos is caught with nowhere to run.

  But the clash of battle isn’t what scares me.

  What scares me is that the charge from the city is a suicide run. Spiders are getting swarmed, and horses are getting their legs cut out from under them. Kal’s company is taking casualty after casualty and yet even so its momentum is unstoppable as it punches in and starts smashing down banners. The whirlpool of battle spins the two kings to face each other. Nikonos casts a lance at Kal, and Kal ducks aside, then throws a rope. The loop flies over Nikonos’s helmet and settles around his shoulders.

  Kal reins his horse into a hard turn that drags Nikonos from the saddle.

  Around Kal, his officers also turn to create a new wedge, one that will take them back to Saryenia’s gates. They cut across the havoc, opening a path.

  Kalliarkos drags his rival, who runs at first, trying to twist out of the rope that’s now settled around his torso and pinned his arms to his side. Men try to cut Nikonos free but are struck down by the soldiers surrounding Kal. The moment Kal breaks out of the mass of
fighting, he urges his horse into a gallop, and of course Nikonos can’t keep his feet. The man who murdered his brother and young nephew tumbles over the ground like a sack of rubbish.

  It’s horrific, and yet my free hand is in a fist and I want to shout aloud in triumph because it’s so satisfying.

  People crowd the walls of Saryenia. We can hear their cheers even from this distance. Infantry wearing the bright tabards of Father’s firebird veterans sorties from the gates, streams of men joining to push a fresh attack.

  Thrown into utter confusion by the capture of the man they are here to support, the army of old Saro pulls into a turtle to protect itself.

  Kal makes a wide sweeping turn with the limp body bumping behind him and comes to a halt halfway between the walls and the enemy. He raises his sword for all to see: the triumphant model of a Saroese ruler displaying the corpse of his defeated rival.

  His surviving companions form up around him, facing the enemy as if daring it to charge. But the bold strike has done its work.

  The East Saroese soldiers raise their shields above their heads as a sign of surrender. From within the enemy command company a white flag is raised on a pole.

  The battle is over.

  Watching Kal embrace the brutal tradition of his forebears is like ripping out a piece of my heart.

  Beside me, Thynos stands stunned. “That was the worst possible outcome. We can’t fight the Garon alliance now. We have to abandon this position and retreat at once. We must warn the Efean army and get them to turn around so they do not march into this disaster. We can take a defensive position in the far north—”

  “No.”

  They all stare at me.

  “No,” I repeat.

  As I find the anchor that binds my five souls to the land, the whirl of confusion in my mind slows. There are so many Rings turning at different speeds, and I can see them all.

  Inarsis’s strategy was based on the expectation that the two Saroese factions would do so much damage fighting each other that the victor would be weak afterward, not strong. But Garon has no losses and a complete victory.