by CJ Brightley
I preferred poetry to my dreams.
The sun bakes the southern desert. I no longer sweat. This morning we drank the urine of our horses because it was liquid and we needed it. The one man who refused my order fainted by noon, and after that he obeyed. I’ve lost fifteen horses already, and expect to lose five more by the end of the day. I bled them, and the remaining horses carry their thick blood. We will drink it next. There will be no more urine; the horses have sweated out all they have to offer.
Tonight we reach the Burska ravine. One day to cross it. Then two more days to Olara, provided we make good time. Olara has a well.
I will not lose a man.
Oruko did not rise when I started the men again this afternoon. I gave him my hand, and he shook his head, so I waited, my eyes half-closed against the vicious sun. Again I ordered him to rise, and he cursed me in a voice like dry gravel.
“Stand up, for the last time.” My voice was no better, but I offered him my hand. The others stood watching, swaying, dried husks of proud soldiers.
He cursed me for my stupid, stubborn pride that would not let him rest.
To rest is to die. We have no water. Olara, with its precious well, is only a day away now. We’ve crossed the ravine.
He drew his bootknife and slashed at me. I caught his wrist, twisted it until he gasped and groaned. I struck him on the side of the neck and his weak resistance ceased.
“Help me, Yuudai.” My throat was so raw the words were a rasp. With much effort, together we got Oruko on my back.
I’ve been walking for hours. My knees are bloody, though the stain is dark and dry already in this heat. I stumbled twice from weakness, and the other times because the darkness at the edges of my vision overwhelmed me. When the darkness stays at the edges, it is a welcome respite from the blinding sun. My shoulders burn. Oruko’s unshaven face scratches my back. Last time I fell, I bit my tongue at the jolt, and the warm tang of blood was a sudden gift of strength. I sucked at it eagerly, but too soon it stopped. I rested on my knees with my head bowed to the dirt, Oruko a crushing weight on my back.
I taste sand, dry dust, the lingering salt of blood, and death.
My tongue is swollen and my mouth is so dry that my orders come out mere croaks. I held my anger at Oruko close to keep my feet moving.
I have run out of anger. I don’t care if I die. I am finding it difficult to care if we all die. We could lie down on the burning rocks and dry up, shrivel into desiccated skeletons. It wouldn’t take long.
Oruko has not woken yet, though I have felt him twitch a few times. He’s not large, but my legs burn and tremble. Everything blurs. I stay at the lead, the men strung out behind me in an uneven line. I hope my dogged, stupid perseverance will inspire them, give them courage to put each foot in front of the other. I put Yuudai at the rear, because he’s the strongest and not prone to despair.
Next time I fall, I don’t know if I can get up.
I am an officer of the king’s kedani, and I will bring my men back.
21
Riona
I waited for him. There were banquets and balls, and I wished with all my heart to see his tall form in some corner. The few times I’d seen him dance made my heart swell with pride. It was no wonder he was popular; his athletic grace and easy skill when he danced more than atoned for his dark Dari skin. A few, of course, continued to look down their noses at him privately, and whispered snide comments about a common Dari soldier reaching above his place. I heard them, of course. Servants hear everything, far more than nobles imagine we do. Their arrogant disregard of him stung me, but I didn’t imagine he cared what they thought at all. But that was only a few of them; the majority welcomed him into the noble ranks, the social elite. He’d earned their respect, and if he was a bit stern for noble company, he also had courage the noblemen wished to emulate and the ladies nearly swooned for.
Lady Melora Grallin was the most aggressive; I saw her once leaning up as if to speak in his ear and then running her fingers up the lapel of his jacket and touching his hair. He was stiff and painfully polite, and I don’t think he saw me as he pulled away, bowed with utmost courtesy, and disappeared from the ball altogether. Lady Grallin pouted in a corner and I heard her whispering later that he was as cold and stupid as a block of wood. Her friend laughed and said she’d tried too hard, that a man like the great Sendoa could only be won with subtler wiles and not such blatant desire.
It made me smile to compare their idea of him to the sweet way he’d come to me in the kitchen to chop peppers, and how he’d comforted Lani after Pireyu’s rejection. He wasn’t at all as they imagined, and I loved him all the more for it.
Then he was gone traveling before the royal wedding and I didn’t see what new tricks they would devise. After my cruelty to him, when he was gone after the wedding, perhaps the deepest pang of guilt was that one of those ladies, even Lady Grallin, noble and cultured, would be kinder to him than I’d been.
I thought of him every morning and all through each day, imagining him leading the men to victory after victory. I couldn’t really imagine the far northern border, the high cold tundra where the Tarvil scrape a precarious living, but I knew it was very hard for the men. We heard sporadic reports of battles, mostly victorious. They made good progress and pushed north far past our border.
The messengers brought word of a brutal winter. In Stonehaven we have four seasons. Four months of summer, three of autumn, three of winter, and three of spring. In the far north where the Tarvil live, nine of the thirteen months are called winter. There is one month of a fleeting spring, two of summer, and one of autumn. Even in summer, though, it might snow on a cool day. Deep rivers are frozen all but a month or two out of the whole year. Winter was a great hardship for the soldiers.
In the mornings, when the sun rose clear and bright through the frigid winter air, I was full of hope and pride in him, wishing desperately for him to come back so I could beg his forgiveness.
I started letters to him, writing by candlelight late at night. I must have started at least a hundred and finished maybe some fifteen. I threw them all in the fire, one of them even after it was sealed. I nearly sent it to him, but suddenly I felt it was stupid and presumptuous of me. What right did I have to ask his forgiveness? He owed me nothing. What right did I have to assume that he cared so much about my words anyway? I knew I’d hurt him, but still it seemed unreal. I, a servant girl, should not have the power to so wound someone of his importance. I could hardly believe he’d scrubbed floors just to be near me.
In the evenings, tired from work, alone in my apartment or working during some late banquet, I was not so optimistic. My heart trembled for him, and I imagined all sorts of terrible things. That he was wounded, that he was dead, that he’d been lost in some battle and lay injured and alone in a drift of snow to slowly freeze. I dreamed about it, and woke with a start to write another letter, pages and pages of frantic apologies and vows of my love, before I threw it in the fire in frustration.
A woman, a virtuous woman, doesn’t pursue a man like that; at least, my mother would have said so.
I had my doubts since it was I who had thrown vicious words at him and stormed away in the face of his apology. Surely I should make the first move toward reconciliation.
If he even wanted reconciliation. He would have been entirely within his rights to listen to me give my full apology on my knees, and then tell me it was much appreciated but I wasn’t worth the trouble of revisiting the episode. There were a hundred noble ladies eager to take my place in his heart, all better educated, better dressed, more cultured, more proper, more beautiful, more fitting for a man of his status.
I would have borne that shame. It would have been right for me to do so; I owed him the apology regardless of whether he could bring himself to forgive me. But I was afraid to ask Kveta to send my letter with her next one and the king’s to him, afraid that bringing the king’s attention to the matter would betray Kemen’s trust, betray the priv
acy of our relationship. I was afraid he would be shamed by his courtship of me, a servant. And I was stupidly afraid of further insulting him by imagining that he cared as much as I did.
22
Kemen
I fell and Oruko slid off my back with a dry cough. He stood, I stood, and we stared at each other, swaying and grim.
“Walk, soldier.” I croaked.
He stared at me a moment more and then turned, shuffling steps following Tarek, who had not stopped.
If I didn’t stray off course, we would reach Olara in late afternoon. Without Oruko’s weight, my steps came a little more easily.
Then Besar fell. I pulled him to his feet, and with his arm around my shoulders we made it for perhaps half a league before he sagged. I dragged him only a short distance before the darkness rose and I fell again.
I am carrying him. I can’t remember how long it’s been, but the sun is beginning its descent. It can’t be much farther.
Besar is walking again.
Yuudai has fallen at the rear. I might have missed it if I hadn’t looked for him. Yuudai, my friend. I stagger back along the ragged line.
“Get up, soldier.”
“I am done, sir.” He is on his face. He strains to push himself up but raises himself only a handsbreadth before falling.
“Yuudai, that is an order.” I pull him to his feet and pull his arm across my shoulders. My throat is too dry to say more.
We stumble together as if we are drunk, and finally his steps strengthen and steady a bit.
“Take the front.” My lips crack as I speak. “Four arans north of due east.”
He groans as his arm slides from my shoulder, but he obeys. I want him in front of me so I can watch him. I give him the lead because his honor won’t let him give in to despair while others depend on him.
One night I felt the fever spike. I was dizzy and sweating, for once distracted from the ever-present pain. There was a howling blizzard, so I went to speak to the sentries without my cloak, wearing only a shirt and my winter tunic belted over it. The sentries, bundled in their thick cloaks, were nearly frozen within minutes, and we rotated them frequently to minimize casualties to the weather. They would come inside and warm themselves dangerously close to the fire.
When I walked the wall that night with no cloak, Kudret cursed roundly when he saw me and tried to give me his, but I refused. The cold would either bring my fever down or kill me outright, and I didn’t really care which.
I don’t know how long I stayed out, though I know I spoke to at least four of the sentries. I went inside when my shivering made the pain of the wound unbearable. I expected a chill, a worse fever, a fatal cough, but nothing happened. It did soothe the fever for a time though. Kudret told Eneko, and Eneko came the next morning to plead with me to be reasonable. I was still a bit light-headed, reckless and grimly pleased at the thought of death.
I see the green of Olara from the top of the last hill. Half the men run toward it, the stumbling shuffling gait of men more dead than alive. The others walk, feet dragging. Someone shouts, hoarse and triumphant. I am last so I can be sure they all make it.
I am on my face in the dust, choking on sand. It is gritty and hot on my cheeks. In my mouth. Rasping my throat. The reflected heat of the dust and rocks beats against my face, through my shirt to my chest. Burning. My lips are cracked, and the sand stings the rawness.
My eyes are closed, but I hear them approach. Yuudai, even now I know his steps, and others. A long fluid string of cursing by someone with a talent for it, obviously not one of my men, because we are all too thirsty to speak so smoothly.
Cool water pours over my neck, trickling into my hair, my right ear. My mouth is open, water so exquisitely blissful it is almost painful, and I am drinking. Too eager. I inhale it, choke, coughing and retching into the sand.
“Every man alive! We counted your company dead a week ago, sir. Help him up.”
Someone, not Yuudai, because my sword brother is too weak now, but someone in a uniform helps me up.
“Thank you, soldier.” My voice is a broken whisper. I catch Yuudai’s eye. Someone hands me a waterskin, and I am drinking again, desperate, dizzy with the coolness.
“Get some more snow. His fever is up again.” The voice is not Yuudai’s; it is higher, clearer, not raw and hoarse from thirst. My shoulder aches, the pain burning across my back and through my chest.
I am not in the southern desert. I am in Izotz, and heat is the last thing likely to kill me.
To amuse myself, I compared the memory of the dream to the memories of what really happened. In my dream, I entirely skipped the horrendous descent into the Burska Ravine and the grueling climb up the other side, where we lost our remaining horses. I’d also skipped the nights, when we walked in clear chilly darkness, windblown sand stinging our sunburned faces, the stars cold and bright. In reality, I’d lain in the sand at the end until nearly dusk, and my true memory of Yuudai’s return with help is more blurry and disjointed. I did choke on the water and someone did help me stand. There was more grit and more despair in my true memories.
Oruko nominated me for the Golden Eagle Regnant, and Yuudai seconded it. I received the award, Erdem’s highest honor for valor, from the king Hakan Emyr himself on my twenty-fifth birthday.
I planned the attack myself, but I asked Eneko, Kudret, Shui, and Akio why they thought I planned certain things. Why I thought the suvari should sweep north at that particular angle. It was because the ground was good, solid and flat with just enough of a downhill slant that it would speed their coming without troubling the horses. There would be a reserve force of suvari off to the northwest on a hill, to reinforce the main body of suvari at need. The suvari archers would come sweeping northwest and then split to flank the Tarvil forces and peel away, leaving the field to the suvari and the kedani behind them. They would join the reserve force on the hill, and be prepared to circle across the northern side of the Tarvil forces shooting south if they had the opportunity. It was a simple plan, but the ground was perfect for it. A frozen creekbed in a shallow ravine would slow their flight north if the Tarvil chose to run.
The Tarvil encampment was quite large, a gathering of their men for an assault against our fort. We had reinforcements from Fort Kuzeyler but even so, our numbers were roughly even. I hadn’t known they had so many warriors, and I changed our plan to take better advantage of our archers. The hill was higher than I’d expected, and that helped us too. They were not as well disciplined and were totally unprepared. When we attacked, they fought with courage and fury but no particular plan.
I gave Eneko command, but at the moment of decision he waited for my nod. I took the field myself despite the pain and led the main suvari charge. I couldn’t imagine simply watching from the hilltop while men fought and died. War is ugly, but it is one thing at which I am skilled. I believed I owed it to the men I commanded to be on the field.
The charge itself is mostly a blur in my memory. Thundering hooves of lanky, ragged Tarvil mounts and splendid Erdemen chargers. A stunning, nauseating shock on my shield, my shoulder a brilliant fire of pain. The familiar salty tang of blood. The dirtier reek of sweat, Tarvil sweat, Erdemen sweat, and horse sweat. The slash of a sword by my right ear, the hum of arrows, Tarvil blood splattered across my chest. Pain in my right calf, a distant ache, and a sudden burning cut across my thigh. A roaring in my ears, throbbing with my heartbeat. The clash of metal on metal, the crunch of bone, the screams of injured horses and injured men.
I led the first pass, but I watched the second suvari charge from the hill with Eneko. The main body swept around to the southwest with Akio at the head, and I smiled to see both him and Kudret clear again. I heard Eneko speaking through a great roaring in my ears.
“Sir, I am honored to report a sound victory. Shall we pursue them?”
“Only to the ravine.”
The archers shifted, a beautiful sweep, and fell back exactly as planned.
“Sir, how is
your arm?”
“Fine. What are our losses?”
“Eighteen dead, sir. Seven seriously wounded, thirty or so with lesser wounds. It was a good fight, sir.”
It was, indeed.
“And the Tarvil losses?”
“Still counting, sir. I’d guess at least one hundred and forty dead, some two hundred wounded.”
I nodded. “Finish the count and fall back. Give the mercy stroke to those who need it. Bring the Tarvil who can be moved back with us.” My shoulder burned and ached, and my chest felt tight with the pain. “You did well, Eneko. That was good timing on the suvari archer sweep.” My left hand cramped and I flexed my fingers to stretch them. When I didn’t think about it, sometimes my whole arm would cramp and tense in rebellion against the pain.
“General Sendoa!” The man came at a gallop.
I didn’t hear what he reported. The roaring in my ears was too loud, the blurring spots in my vision too distracting. I heard voices, but I couldn’t make out what they said. I have a dim memory of leaning forward holding my shoulder, trying to pull my arm free of the shield grip. I don’t remember the return to Izotz. The fever had returned.