The Darkling Hills

by Lori Martin

  “No, they don’t pray. I was bartering with one only last fall before the cold came, and when I called on Mother Nialia he didn’t know what I was doing,” a third said.

  “Shouldn’t be trading with the likes of them,” the first said. For a moment the group glanced over at the king. Raynii gave the man a look that silenced him.

  “The messenger.”

  “That may be him now, Sire.”

  The king knew what they were thinking, the turnabout of their emotions. While peace had given them prosperity it was a blessing, and the royals were the gifts of the gods and none knew better. Caught now, suddenly it was obvious to all of them that the peace had been misguided, a royal error of judgment, and here was the payment. A surprise attack. And punishment, for the sins the king had let come into his household; or else the unborn creature gave out its evil even before its birth.

  “Keep your temper, whatever else,” Ayenna had said. He almost smiled, for the way his wife knew him.

  “Sire! Sire!’

  Finally the man was back, waving his arms and out of breath. “What news?” the king said. “Where is Sillus?”

  “Through, Sire! They’ve broken through the line of foot soldiers, they’re into the horses!’

  The group cheered. “All right,” he shouted. “Forward! Push this line forward!”

  The trumpeter sounded his instrument. The Lindahne effort turned from holding its ground to a full attack. For all of it he was proud of them, of the courage they had found, and the quick acceptance of the truth of it. Beside him a man fell, screaming, his arm hacked half off above the elbow. The blood gushed out and spattered Raynii’s chest and shoulders. He leaned over, savage, after the heretic, and killed his third. As he turned, a flame entered his body just below the shoulder and drove burning into his flesh. It was not his sword arm; he whirled back to see another Mendale; the man was pulling out his blade, bringing it covered with Raynii’s blood but leaving behind the fire. Their weapons clashed.

  “The king!” Someone shouted, and two or three leaped to his aid, but there was no need. The Mendale fell. Raynii clutched at his wound, and tried to remember how many that made.

  “Sire!”

  They were pulling the horse around. Hands came out from nowhere and held him to the saddle. He caught a few words.

  “–to the tent – for the wounded –”

  “No,” he said. “I’m all right. It’s surface flesh.”

  “Just let them bind it –”

  “I won’t leave the field,” he insisted.

  A new voice said, “Then let me at least stop the bleeding, Sire. Get him down.”

  The hands eased him off the horse to sit on the ground. The pair belonging to the new voice pressed something to his shoulder. He raised his eyes to the face.

  “Boessus. Boessus!”

  “Don’t move, Sire.” The king’s failed ambassador wound the bandage around his upper arm.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Raynii demanded. “You’re far too old to be in a squad! And you’re not well!”

  “I’m only four years older than you, my king.”

  “Yes, but – but I’m king!” Raynii exploded, feeling the absurdity.

  “And I was your ambassador to Mendale,” Boessus said. “And if I had performed my duties properly, things would not have come to this. I owe this service. Are you in much pain?”

  Raynii flung back his head, in supplication to the gods. In the distant blur of the Hillside he saw a woman crouch and take aim into the crowd of fighting men below. Another arrow shot at her and tumbled her down the slope. It was impossible to tell whose archer she was: should he rejoice or mourn?

  “Too alike,” he said aloud. “Too alike.”

  By nightfall the Mendales had been driven back from the passage, into the farther foothills and the open plain, where they camped, pitching tents. The Lindahnes huddled together between the Hills. Beacons of light threaded up the slopes, one here, one there; at the top the sentries gazed out on the enemy campfires. The smell of ash and old smoke from the First Hill’s burning still hung in their nostrils.

  The First Squad was happy, as all the rest, and proud of the part they had played in leading the attack. Sillus had done well, urging them forward, winning their respect. Another day or two, he told them, just to push the miserable Mendales back over the border. And then we’ll go in and teach them a lesson. They wanted a war? They’ve got one. The men of the squad repeated this to one another, nodding their heads.

  The king eased Boessus onto the bed, over protests that it was unfit. “You helped me,” Raynii said. “We’re all soldiers together. And you’re the one who’s unfit, for this kind of punishment.”

  The old man – and Raynii couldn’t help thinking of him that way, even if it was only a matter of four years – stretched out and gasped for air. His face was drawn and heavily lined, the skin so bloodless as to be almost translucent, showing purple veins. “I got two of them,” Boessus panted. “Two of them much younger –”

  “Save your strength, don’t talk.” Raynii glanced around for water. Seeing none, he put his head out of the tent and called for it. They had been able to set up only a handful of tents – a few for the wounded, one for the king, one for Sillus – and most were sleeping out of doors. Their weapons were at hand, and no one had changed out of battle gear: who knew what the Mendales would try next? A line of archers went up the Hills beside the sentries. The rest of the women came down into camp.

  “Please, Sire,” Boessus begged as the king bent over him, sponging his face. “Don’t wait on me. It’s not right. And you’re –” He paused for breath. “You’re hurt yourself.”

  “Surface flesh,” Raynii said. He had been repeating it for hours. “The healer didn’t think it was much. There are too many with real wounds.”

  Boessus began his coughing. By now Raynii was accustomed to the sharp hacking, the sudden flush and sudden paling, even the hands at the throat as he tried to breathe. This time his ear caught a harsher note, a fiercer straining in the body. The old man turned his head weakly and spat out blood.

  “Failed,” he whispered.

  “Stop that,” the king ordered. “You’re making yourself worse. And it’s not your fault. It’s far more mine, with my peace and my hand out for friendship. They simply turned on me.”

  Boessus put out a shaking hand and covered his own, lightly. As easily as if he had already known it the king thought: He’s dying. He’s dying. He won’t see the dawn. I’ll watch with him, then. Let the gods take him in quiet.

  Two hours later Sillus presented himself to the king, smiling.

  “Hail, Sire!”

  “Hush.” Raynii shook his head and pointed to the bed.

  “Is he sleeping?”

  “No. Dying.”

  Sillus raised his eyebrows and looked more closely at the old man. His mouth hung half open; his difficult breath was loud in the tent. His closed eyelids twitched in his long dreams.

  “What was he doing here?” Sillus asked. He pulled a chair up beside his brother. Raynii saw that his face was flushed, as if in suppressed excitement.

  “I think he was hoping to pay off his life’s debts,” Raynii said. “He’s the kind of man who wants everything settled, before he can leave it.”

  Sillus tilted his chair back, putting his feet up – to his brother’s annoyance – on the end of the bed. Boessus was jostled; he murmured something, and his head fell to the side.

  “He reminds me of Father,” Raynii added, surprising himself.

  “Now there was a tough old man. For a while it looked like he’d never let go and let you into the Chair. Have a little wine?”

  “All right. There’s some on the table there.”

  “No, no, I’ve some.” Sillus produced a wine flask from his cloak. He hunted around the tent for goblets and came back, spilling a little over the brim. “How’s your arm?”

  “Surface flesh,” he said automatically.
/>   “But you must be in pain,” Sillus leaned over to pull at the bandage. In the evening’s cool his hands were still wet with sweat.

  “You seem keyed-up. Have you been sampling it already?”

  “What? Oh. No, no, I haven’t.” He paused and then repeated, “No, I haven’t.”

  Raynii swished the wine back and forth, without tasting it. He felt no rancor. In his sadness and sense of failure, which cut him even more than it did the old man in the bed, he could not fault Sillus for having rejected his policies. And it was something, as he waited in the tent for death, to have with him someone who knew the past. “You did very well today. Very well. You really inspired the men.”

  “Well, the First turns out to be a good outfit. They have a sense of themselves as a unit already.” He added thoughtfully, “And they’re loyal.”

  Boessus coughed, from the lungs. They could hear the fluid in his chest.

  “Like Father.”

  “Yes. And he got along with his sons just as badly,” Sillus said. It was exactly the wrong comment. Like deities of the mist he conjured them up, a dead man and a traitorous brother, a clear image that seemed to rise up out of the wine, whispering their animosity and what it had wrought. Beneath the newness of the colors was the trace of an older picture, almost without form, of boys from long ago who had also called each other brother.

  “It wasn’t for the same reasons,” Raynii said. “This man was proud of his sons. One of them, at least.” He took a long swallow from his goblet, tasting bitterness.

  They were silent. The only sound was the old man’s struggling. Once Ayenna had thought that royal families did not love; Raynii’s kin had been the ones who made her believe it so. The man was too suspicious, too used to fighting, too insecure in himself and in the Chair; the woman was a little too cold, a little too preoccupied. Their children had never felt trust. A middle girl there had been, and if she had lived no one could say how the father might have acted, but he was rough with his sons. The elder, unaccountably, learned to turn away anger – even his own quick temper – and to try for understanding; he had once tried at dinner to defend a thieving servant, and been dismissed from the table. The younger learned his father’s need for power, set up in an impossible rivalry for a position that would never be his.

  Yet had it really been that way? Raynii wondered. I’ve always seen it so. But everything I counted on has left me.

  He took another swallow. To his shock his brother suddenly asked, “Raynii, do you hate me?”

  They looked at each other. Sillus had stood again, leaning with one hand on the table, holding his goblet. His strange eagerness had been replaced by something else, a kind of intensity. “Do you?”

  “Sometimes,” Raynii said. “Often.”

  “Now?”

  “No.” He drained his goblet, breaking the contact of their eyes. “No. I’m too tired.”

  Sillus’s voice was high, pitched drunkenly, but he had still not touched his wine. “I wonder how it might have been if I had been the elder. It would all have been different.”

  “It would all have been different if we had ever loved each other.”

  “Yes,” he said, but he did not sound as if he believed it.

  “Finish your wine and leave me,” the king said.

  Sillus put down his goblet, the wine untouched. “I seem to have lost my wish for it. Good even’ to you, Sire.”

  When he had gone, Raynii slid to his knees beside the bed. He took one of Boessus’s hands between his. A failed life, old one? his eyes asked the face beside his own. No. No, it was better to have tried.

  All at once he began to feel ill. His stomach seemed to be pulling in on itself, and the chills started along his neck. A bitter taste was heavy in his mouth.

  The king of Lindahne put his head down on their joined hands. His tears slid between the fingers, as he wept.

  CHAPTER 20

  Less than half a day after the first messenger, a second arrived, looking as if demons had chased him there. He was panting and covered with blood; most of it, he said, was not his own. He demanded, “Where is the queen? I must speak to the queen!”

  “In her tent,” a soldier said. “Can’t you let her grieve in peace?” The Second and Third squads had mustered a little way out from the palace. After the word of the victory they had been traveling to meet the army in the passage, to help chase the Mendales onto their own ground. When the other news had come late in the morning, they had halted.

  “I have to speak to her!”

  “Send for Councilor Seani,” the guard said.

  The messenger stamped his foot in impatience and repeated his demand to the councilor’s face, too beside himself to show respect. “It’s about the king!’

  “The king is dead,” Seani said. “He died of his wound, from a poisoned arrow.”

  “Oh yes, he’s dead – but not from that. In the name of the gods, let me speak to the queen!”

  Seani’s eyes flashed, from weariness to alarm. “Come with me.”

  In the tent Ayenna was on her back in the bed, fully clothed and staring up.

  “My queen, this man has just come from camp. He says it’s urgent that you hear what he has to say.”

  “I asked not to be disturbed.”

  “My queen – ”

  “I’m not the queen,” she said flatly. “Sillus is king now.” She had not been the blood heir; marriage alone had made her a ruler.

  “Sillus is a murderer.” The messenger could no longer hold it back. “Please, my lady! He murdered him! They’re fighting, they’re –” He choked. Seani stared at him.

  Ayenna sat up. He was shaking. There were cuts along his upper arms and bruises on his cheek. Sweat and grime dripped down from his hair. “Who are you?” she demanded. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m from the King’s Guard. My name is Jenoon. I escaped from the First Squad to get here –”

  “Escaped from who?” It was Seani.

  “The First Squad. The First Squad attacked the King’s Guard and won, but I got away. A few followed me, but I killed two and lost the other.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “It’s the First Squad that’s gone mad, Councilor! They’re following Sillus!”

  “King Raynii died before dawn,” Ayenna said carefully, hanging on to it. “Sillus is the heir. Sillus has succeeded to the kingship. The messenger came this morning. He said the ki – he said Raynii had died of the poison on the tip of the arrow that wounded him.”

  “No, my queen. That’s Sillus’s story. Please, you have to listen to me! The king had a sword cut – there wasn’t any arrow! I was right there. I saw him get it. He killed the Mendale who gave it to him. We all helped him down off his horse. It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t mortal.”

  Ayenna swung off the bed and advanced on him. Jenoon’s eyes opened wide in pain as she clutched him by the shoulders, her face inches from his own. “Then how did he die?”

  “Sillus killed him. He poisoned his wine.”

  “Mother Nialia,” Seani said. “Is it true?”

  “I swear it,” Jenoon said. “Sillus announced the death this morning, and the First Squad proclaimed him king. That’s when they sent you the message. The squad’s all for him, he led them well and it must have made sense to them. But we – those of us in the King’s Guard – we were there, we knew it couldn’t be true –”

  “What did you do?”

  “A few of us told the rest in the guard. Then we tried to talk to Sillus – it was just that we couldn’t understand it. He started shouting. Someone said there’d been an empty goblet in the tent. Someone else sent for the healer – he’d taken care of the king, of course – but no one could find him. It’s my opinion,” he added, “that he’s been murdered, too. He knew it wasn’t an arrow.”

  “How did the fight start?” It was still Seani. Ayenna’s breath was on his face.

  “I couldn’t tell you, Councilor. There were the Mendales, cowering o
ut in the plains and not knowing we were at each other’s throats.” He tried desperately to avoid Ayenna’s look. “And the guard refused to proclaim Sillus. We wanted someone to investigate, have a truth-seeking. The men in the squad said we were traitors – traitors!” he repeated in disbelief –”because we wouldn’t follow the succession! Sillus must have ordered the attack, I don’t know. It just happened. The guard’s smaller – I think we lost it. But I got through to tell you – someone had to; if they destroy the guard they’ve killed all the witnesses –” He began to cry. “It’s Lindahne blood on me. Lindahne blood!”

  The queen released her grip. “Blood,” she repeated. Her voice hung with ice. “Blood for blood.”

  “My queen?”

  “Full formation, call them out,” she ordered. “We’ll ride at once. He’ll pay, blood for blood. May we beat the Mendales to it!”

  “Well, here we are once again,” a voice said behind him. Carden jumped back so quickly he almost fell. “We first met in this garden, I believe,” Temhas continued. “On the night of the festival, remember? You were hiding from your father and I was trying to break in. Is that what you’re trying to do now?”

  Carden hastily stuffed something inside a cloak pocket. The dead leaves under his boots crackled. “What are you doing here?”

  “Oh, I’m allowed at court now. I’ve been presented, you know. As a matter of fact, you’re allowed at court yourself, so I thought it was a little surprising to see you creeping around out here instead of going through the gates.”

  “Leave me alone,” Carden whined. “I’ve got something to do. I don’t want you!”

  “What’s that you’re hiding there, friend?”

  “Nothing. It’s nothing, I tell you! Let go!”

  Temhas pushed him up against a tree and pinned his arms. He wasn’t much larger, but Carden was a coward, with a lifetime’s experience of being bullied. The object turned out to be a short piece of thin rope, knotted on both ends. “What’s this for?”

  “Why do you care? Let me go!’ He struggled. Temhas shoved him harder.