by Matthew Ward
“Are you certain? What did you see? What does your heart tell you?”
Melanna twisted about, her voice thick. “All that she had, she gave to us. And when nothing remained…”
Glad to have insisted his bodyguard afford a moment of privacy, Kai drew his daughter into an embrace. “Who else knows?”
“Elspeth, so I assume her sisters must. And the lunassera. But they didn’t see. She didn’t fall apart in their arms.” A measure of solidity returned to Melanna’s voice, and she stepped back. “What are we to do?”
For that, at least, he’d answer. He swept a hand across Ahrad’s battered defences. “See what we have wrought, daughter. Ashana gave everything. How can we give less? The Dark must be excised. The war goes on.” He set fingers beneath her chin, and raised her eyes to meet his. “Will you fight it with me?”
At last, defiance returned to Melanna’s eyes. For a wondrous moment, she was again Aethal reborn to youth and vigour, the best of her, and of him – and perhaps also of a departed goddess.
“Yes, my Emperor.”
Nineteen
Scarlet and gold gleamed through close-set trees. Four miles away, perhaps five. No distance at all for men on horseback. Serpent banners and bright silks. A sight for which Sevaka could no longer spare emotion. Not with smoke spiralling high above the northern trees. Even though her naval coat faded into the forest as well as anything could, she squatted closer to the oak.
“You’d think they’d be celebrating,” she muttered. “Or mourning their dead.”
Thaldvar dropped to his knees in the rain-soaked mulch. “Not the Icansae. Maggad lusted after the imperial throne his whole life. His grandsons won’t be any different. Any chance to prove themselves worthy, they’ll take.”
“How many?”
Stubbled cheeks twisted into a scowl. “Perhaps a thousand. Mostly outriders, but there are cataphracts too.”
Good news and bad. Outriders meant boiled leather rather than golden scale, but it also meant bows. Worse, while the cataphracts would be weary from the morning’s assault, the outriders would be fresh to the pursuit.
“They’ll ride right over us,” she said. “Where’s the worthiness in that?”
“Maybe they’re pursuing the woman who laid low their Emperor.”
For all the good that had done. “So this is my fault?”
“Worthiness lies in the eye of the beholder. Glory is as much tale as truth. Whatever happens, Aeldran and Naradna will spin a story worthy of their grandfather’s crown.”
“You know them well?” Sevaka asked.
“Tempting me to rash admission?” A smile softened offence. “Icansae lies far south of here, and they’ve never fewer than two or three Thrakkian thanes glowering across the border. Maggad paid well for sellswords, and a few years back my people were hungry enough that I took his coin. I’m a pragmatist. I can’t afford to be anything else.”
Sevaka spread her hands. “This is pragmatism?”
He snorted. “The Hadari won’t forget I took to the walls. You and I are bound, and all because I believed Ahrad the Undefeatable was truth, not tale.” He shook his head, the smile fading. “But to answer your question? Aeldran has a reputation for bravery and generosity. Naradna? Never met anyone who knows him well. Wears a golden mask to hide scars. But I saw him fight once. Like a rat trapped in a sack with a cat. Hacked his way alone through a thane’s circle of vanaguard and took the fellow’s head. If it comes to a choice, cross swords with Aeldran.”
Sevaka grunted. Thrakkian vanaguard cultivated hardiness as merchants cultivated coin. The only one she’d seen – during a shipboard skirmish at Bregin Point with a reiver’s black flag snapping in the wind – had killed four men before a cutlass took his throat. If Naradna had bested even one, that was caution enough. Aeldran’s bravery or Naradna’s ferocity. Didn’t sound like much of a choice, but Sevaka was growing used to a losing hand. Ignoring the creak of weary bones, she clambered to her feet.
“Let’s get back.”
Thaldvar pressed crooked fingers to his lips. At his high, fluting whistle – as close to the cry of a duskfowl as made no difference – a handful of grey-cloaked figures broke concealment.
No one spoke as they made ascent to Soraved, cutting through the undergrowth to avoid the worst of the road’s winding course. The village itself was a jumble of wattle and thatch whose north, south and east boundaries lost themselves in gentle, tree-choked slopes. The western extent clung to a sheer face of crumbling, weatherworn earth as the hill slid away into Draneback Gorge. What passed for the outer wall had long since decayed or been picked apart to feed expansion. More proof that no one expected Ahrad to fall.
Lieutenant Halan Gavrida met them at the gate, two muddy, scuffed soldiers of the 11th at his back. Gavrida looked little better than his men. What would have been a face handsome enough to melt any heart had grown haggard across a desperate day. They’d found each other on the road south from Ahrad, Sevaka with her exhausted band of borderers, and he with a mismatched company of wounded soldiers and desperate civilians.
“What news?” he asked.
“They’re maybe an hour behind,” replied Thaldvar. “We leave a trail a blind man could follow.”
Gavrida nodded sourly. “We’ll get moving.”
“There’s no time,” said Sevaka. “Get everyone together.”
She caught the glimmer of objection in Gavrida’s eyes. The familiar resistance to a Psanneque’s order. Then he nodded. “At your command.”
‘Everyone’ was already assembled by the time Sevaka reached the village square. Three companies of the 11th, reinforced by scattered knots of soldiers from the 7th, 3rd and 10th stood clustered about the statue of Lumestra. Bloodied tabards and haggard faces were poor companions for the harvest garlands about the Goddess’ outspread arms. Captain Dlevera and a dozen other knights Fellnore stood aloof and apart, ochre tabards dulled by the stain of travel. A score of half-plate wayfarers –counterpart to Hadari outriders – tended restless steeds in the shadow of the ivy-clad church. Thaldvar’s borderers huddled beneath the creaking tavern sign of the Headless Shadowthorn.
There were others, of course. The villagers. The wounded who’d survived the journey – Rosa among them – who rested in the tenuous comfort of the village hall. Soraved had its own handful of militia, but Sevaka had no faith in that collection of threadbare tabards and rusted swords.
With a generous eye, perhaps six or seven hundred souls. Numbers to match those of the Icansae. But numbers lied. Discounting the wounded, Soraved had fewer than five hundred fit to fight. And those were weary. A dozen miles travelled by blistered boot drained a body more than the same journey by saddle.
Sevaka hauled herself onto the statue’s plinth. What the extra height did for her confidence, Lumestra’s graven presence stripped away. Sevaka’s head barely came up to the Goddess’ belted waist.
“The Hadari are on our heels,” she shouted. “They’ll be here within the hour.”
Hubbub faded into the predictable. Shock. Fear. Weariness. Anger.
The headman’s chain of office shook as he thrust an angry finger in Sevaka’s direction. “You led them here!”
“They’d have come anyway.” Scorn dripped from Thaldvar’s reply. “This is an invasion, you old fool. The road would have brought them had we not.”
“Then we keep going to Vrasdavora,” said Lady Dlevera. “What time we have, we use.”
Vrasdavora was deep in the mountains to the west, guarding roads abandoned since the disintegration of the Tressian kingdom. Even if they outmarched the Icansae, there was no guarantee there’d be a garrison left to offer shelter.
“We’ve too few horses, and too many wounded,” Sevaka replied. “They’ll catch us before we’re halfway there.”
“We can’t fight them,” growled the headman. “We’re not soldiers.”
Gavrida growled. “You’re supposed to be. That muster field’s for drills, not grazing cattle
. Raven’s Eyes! You’ve carried on like there’s an uncrossable ocean between you and the shadowthorns.”
“You were supposed to protect us!” The shout came from the crowd’s anonymity. “Ahrad was supposed to protect us!”
The square descended into uproar. Sevaka’s heart sank further. Rosa would have known what to say. But Rosa was delirious, her mutterings filled with the Raven’s name. Unable to do more than hold her hand, Sevaka had made reconnoitre as much to escape the makeshift sickroom as out of duty.
“You’re right.” The crowd fell silent at her shout. “But Ahrad is gone. So now we do the best we can.”
Gavrida folded his arms. “What do you propose, captain?”
Sevaka hesitated. “We fight. We’ve high ground and dense woodland, neither of them friends to cavalry. Banners on the crest might make the Hadari think twice about pressing the charge. If Lumestra’s feeling generous we can slip away at nightfall without having drawn a sword.” Heads nodded, Gavrida’s among them. Others levelled unwilling stares, resentful of the risk. She took a deep breath. “And it’s not a proposal. It’s an order.”
“I do not take orders from a Psanneque.” Ice crackled beneath Lady Dlevera’s words.
“I will.” The speaker was a sergeant of the 7th, between beard and bandage, little of his face was on display, but his eyes were steady. “Saw her put a banner-spike through the Emperor’s heart. What’s a name next to that?”
Lady Dlevera scowled. “I am a Captain of Fellnore, a daughter of a noble house. You’ll follow my orders, sergeant.”
“Begging your pardon, my lady. But if you can choose to set aside rank, so can I.”
“The lay of the land won’t favour us further west,” said Gavrida. “I’d prefer Hadari spears on my shield than in my spine.”
“Then do so,” growled Lady Dlevera. “Die with this outcast. I’m riding south.”
Gavrida’s cheek twitched, the reluctance mirrored around the square. Thaldvar had already agreed the course, but a borderer’s support was worth nothing. Again, Sevaka wondered what her mother would have done, what threat or cajolement she’d have issued. But the truth was that Ebigail Kiradin would never had let matters go so far unchecked.
“I’m staying.”
The new voice was quiet, with steel beneath. Every head in the square turned to stare at the tavern doorway, and the ragged woman who stood with one hand braced against the lintel. Sevaka felt a grin steal across her face.
“Captain Psanneque has the right of it,” said Rosa. “The Hadari are as weary as us. We only need give them a reason to pause.”
“And if they don’t?” said Lady Dlevera.
“I’ll fight. Maybe I’ll die.” Rosa stepped across the threshold, gaining solidity with every pace. “But if I don’t? You’ll be running from me as well as the shadowthorns.”
Lady Dlevera fell silent.
“11th!” shouted Gavrida. “Form up at the north gate!”
The sergeant of the 7th added his voice to the growing tumult. The square dissolved into a rush of bodies as soldiers and villagers hastened away. Then Rosa stood before the plinth, and Sevaka had no more attention to spare the commotion.
“Did you really kill the Emperor?” asked Rosa.
So close, she looked paler and more unsteady than ever. Sevaka consoled herself with the knowledge that she shouldn’t even be breathing, let alone walking. Dropping from the plinth, she flung her arms around Rosa and held her tight for a long, wondrous moment.
“It didn’t take.”
Rosa untangled herself. “There’s a lot of that about.”
“I thought I’d lost you.” The words brought grief flooding back. How fickle was the heart that it couldn’t allow joy to last?
“You nearly did. That spear… I’m still not…” A shadow passed across blue eyes. She nodded. “But I will be. Where are we?”
“Soraved.”
The corner of Rosa’s mouth twitched. “You’ve done well to get this far.”
The praise soured in Sevaka’s gut. Part irritation at the Psanneque’s barbed mantle, part resentment that Rosa had turned the tide so easily. “You saw what happened when I tried to do more. If not for you…”
Rosa squeezed her shoulder. “You’d have handled it. I just hurried them along.”
Sevaka nodded, but her smile was more for Rosa’s benefit than it was born of agreement.
“Brother.”
Aeldran Andwar, Prince of Icansae, hauled on his reins at Naradna’s greeting, and fell into step. Behind, a file of cataphracts waited in silent attendance. A quarter mile further up the road, a line of gold and scarlet spread through the trees. Further still, a string of mismatched banners and shields sat formed and ready on the crest.
“They’ve found their courage.”
“Good.” Naradna’s horse champed. Gold-clad fingers soothed its braided mane. The eyes of the mask stared at the distant hilltop. “One more triumph before nightfall.”
“Perhaps one better left for a new dawn,” Aeldran replied. Oblique suggestions always went over better. “Our warriors have been long in the saddle. The horses are tired.”
“I want their banners, brother. Saran spurned my trophy at Ahrad, so I will lay others at his feet. Tonight. Before the campaign divides us, and our peers no longer stand witness. He will recognise my worthiness. They all will.”
Aeldran winced at bitterness that seemed only to grow bleaker. The whispers of disease-scars and a ravaged face so at odds with the handsome, kingly brow of the mask only made matters worse.
For Aeldran, the war was a chance to restore Icansae to the Golden Court’s trust. Too many of his peers looked upon him without true recognition, seeing instead the shadow of his grandfather Maggad – a man whose paranoia had thinned Icansae of many a rival. Valour on the battlefield, pledged to the House of Saran, would go a long way towards ending the whispers.
Naradna’s ambitions were personal, and burned like fire; less about Icansae’s reputation, and more concerned with proving worthiness for the kingdom’s empty crown. In the months since Maggad’s death, Naradna had earned a reputation for being driven, and for indulging that drive on those foolish enough to chance the crossed swords of an honour duel.
Aeldran hadn’t approved at first, for so many of Naradna’s desires went against tradition. And yet those same traditions demanded obedience, for Naradna was the elder. Even had they not, it would have changed little. The bond of blood held pre-eminence.
The simple truth was that Naradna inspired him. Courage. Determination. Aeldran had never lacked for those traits, but Naradna burned incandescent with them.
Aeldran drew his sword. He held the curved blade high, so that its moonsilver-etched runes gleamed in the dying light. The blade had been his father’s gift, twin to that carried by Naradna, as they were twins.
“If it is trophies you seek, it is my honour to fetch them for you.”
He made to spur away, but Naradna’s hand closed on his wrist.
“No, brother. We will take them together.”
The Hadari drums thundered as the first raindrops fell.
“They’re doing it,” murmured Rosa. “They’re actually doing it.”
Her mismatched shield wall was anchored at one end by the precipice of Draneback Gorge, and at the other by upturned wagons. A concerted charge might have broken the line, but the trees and the slope would rob the Hadari of momentum and unity long before they struck home.
“Shields up!”
The bellow scraped tender muscles against her ribs. The worst of the pain was a memory, but still it overshadowed anything she’d suffered since fate had made her an eternal. Some enchantment of the demon’s spear, or the simple fact she’d no business walking about having taken steel to the heart? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now but keeping the borrowed shield tight. To hold the line.
“Death and honour!”
Rosa didn’t notice who started the cry. The line shuddered with it as
voices hammered out. Militia, soldiers and villagers, standing as one. Tressia as it should be. United.
“Death and honour!”
Bows sang to Rosa’s left as borderers spent their last arrows. Crossbows rattled from the right, where Lady Dlevera was a sullen presence beneath a tattered ochre pennant. A cataphract plunged into briars, thrown by his dying horse. Another slumped in his saddle, a shaft between gorget and helm.
“Andwar Brigantim! Icansae Brigantim!”
The shadowthorn battle cry drowned out the drums.
“Death and honour!”
This time Sevaka led the shout. Rosa gritted her teeth and leaned into her shield.
A blast of trumpets hurled the shadowthorns to the charge. The heavens burst.
A cataphract slewed on the road, the screams of man and beast indistinguishable in the hissing rain. Brambles snatching at the silk skirts of its caparison, Aeldran’s horse leapt clear and slammed into the line of shields.
A rusty sword skittered across his shield. Blue cloth and steel plate gushed red beneath his own blade. The Tressian line buckled.
“Fellnore! Drive them back!” A woman in ochre flung herself into the gap. Her mace crunched an outrider from his saddle. “Hold the line!”
A thicket of steel pressed forward through the hissing rain. A cataphract fell to the cobbles. The reforming line swallowed him up, hungry blades hacking at throat and spine. Aeldran’s horse shied from a halberd’s swing.
Then Naradna was at his side, screaming as one possessed, hacking and snarling with no thought to defence. The woman in ochre died in the breach she’d sought to close.
Aeldran spurred past the falling body. His sword took the banner bearer’s throat. Letting go his shield, he snatched the stave high into the rain.
“Naradna!” he howled. “Naradna Brigantim!”
The Tressian line crumpled.
“Behind! Enemies behind!”
Gavrida’s warning was the first Rosa knew of disaster.