by Rachel Lee
The words came out in a slushy stream. Tantor knew he faced a critical decision here. To step forward would be charged as mutiny, punishable by death. To leave the guard regiment in the hands of a drunken fool would be disaster. In the end, the decision turned on purely practical terms. Tantor felt he could trust the judgment of a military court more than he could trust the mercy of the Anari attackers.
“Yes, sir. You are in no condition to command these men, Overmark Jassen.”
For a moment it seemed as if his commander were about to strike him. But finally the man nodded. “Yes, Tantor. I am sure you are fit to combat mere Anari. Now is the time to prove yourself—or prove yourself unworthy.”
So it had come to that, Tantor thought. His commander would both avoid the responsibility for his drunkenness and put Tantor to the test. And if he failed, Tantor had no doubt of the consequences. So be it.
“Guard Regiment, on me!” he cried, stepping forward to take Jassen’s place at the front of the unit. “Do not fear the Anari, but neither disdain them. We must turn them, drive them and destroy them. On my standard, march!”
Behind him, he heard two hundred twenty men step off in perfect unison. If there were any doubts as to his fitness for command, the men kept them to themselves. For now, there was a battle to be won. And he would do his best to win it.
25
Archer watched the battle below. Giri’s initial assault had pushed the Bozandari back, but they had rallied and were now giving ground only slowly, and at great price. Archer had no doubt that there would be many Anari to bury on the morn, but he could not think about that just now.
In the open yard at the center of the camp, a new unit had formed. That would be the legionary guard regiment for this camp, the elite and feared shock troops of a Bozandari legion. They would seek a flank, according to the pattern of Bozandari tactics hammered out and refined over hundreds of battles.
Archer was turning their own tactics against them. He had no doubt that his enemy was better trained. And, he suspected, better led. He and Giri had had time for only the most rudimentary training. Anari spirit, and sheer will in defending their homeland, would have to carry the day or fail in the attempt.
Below him, the legionary guard stepped off, marching for the near flank of Giri’s line. In minutes they would be committed, and the time to strike would be upon him. He turned to Tess, whose face was fixed with a grim, steely stare as she, too, observed the battle.
“Let Giri know his left flank will be under attack,” Archer said. “He needn’t move reserves, as we will be taking the Bozandari counterattack force in our attack.”
She nodded and closed her eyes for a moment, as if in prayer, her face falling for a moment in sadness, before she finally looked at him.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Giri’s men are sore pressed. They are doing what they can, but many have fallen. We must help them soon.”
He nodded. “We will, but we must wait until that regiment makes contact with Giri’s flank and engages. If we strike too soon, they will simply turn to face us, and our advantage is lost. He must hold for another ten minutes. Then we will be there.”
Tess was not happy with his response. That much was evident in her face. But there was little to be done about that right now. Her concern was for the fallen. His concern was that the fallen not have died in vain. For that, he must fight the battle as best he knew how. And that meant waiting for the legionary guard to get caught up in its attack on Giri’s flank.
With a precision borne of countless hours of training, the guard marched. Just a few more moments and they would make contact. Within minutes, both the men and, more importantly, their officers would be caught up in the moment of close, personal, deadly combat. That would leave them unable to respond to Archer’s attack. If Giri could hold for just a few more minutes…
Cilla had relayed Archer’s orders for Giri not to shift his reserves, even as she quailed at them. All around her, Anari lay moaning and crying, praying and dying. She now knew what Ratha had meant, felt the wellspring of the rage that had darkened his soul. The Anari had never known war. And many who had fought this night would never know it again.
Stepping gingerly to avoid a nearly severed arm, she tended to the wounded as best she could while awaiting more news from Tess. She could not do enough. Binding wounds was little more than a way to feel she was helping, when in fact she knew the truth. Most of these men would die, unless Tess could somehow intervene to spare them.
She knelt beside a man whom she did not recognize as a cousin until she wiped the blood and grime of battle from his face. The ugly wound in his belly was far beyond her skill, and he seemed to know that. His hand clasped hers, his breath ragged.
“Cilla,” he said softly.
“Yes, Sehnar. It is me.”
“I cannot…”
“No, you cannot,” she said softly. “But you were brave, my cousin. Brave beyond all measure. Monabi-Tel will sing of you throughout all time.”
“Let them not sing of loss,” he said, his breath labored. “Let them sing of…our freedom.”
“Our freedom,” she echoed, looking into his eyes as they lost focus and glazed over. “Our freedom. If it may come.”
Tantor halted the regiment and ordered them to dress lines. He had to shout to be heard above the din and cry of battle, a battle his decisions would soon turn to victory. The men responded to each command with swift, disciplined movements. These were the best of the best, hand-picked from the ranks of the line regiments, tested in battle, having never tasted defeat. They would not taste it this day, either.
“Honor the Crown!” he cried.
“Honor the Crown!” they responded in a single voice.
“Honor the Guard!”
“Honor the Guard!”
He turned and lifted his sword. “On my standard, march!”
The battle would be his, or he would die in it. For a Bozandari officer, a Foremark of the Guard, there were no other options. As they approached the Anari line, he lifted his voice in the age-old battle cry of the legionary guard.
“Glory or death!”
“Glory or death!” the men behind him cried, and surged forward as one into the Anari line.
“Now!” Archer cried to Ratha. “We strike!”
Ratha was already moving, his upheld sword dropping in signal to the column. They rose from the rocks and gullies they had clung to for cover, barely two hundred paces from the battle. They closed the distance at a silent, uniform run, having adapted The Run of the Stone as a unit tactic, for there had been no time to train them in anything unfamiliar. Only when they reached the Bozandari soldiers did they form into the threshing line that Archer and Giri had drilled for hour upon hour in the plains outside Anahar.
It was not the perfectly choreographed threshing that Archer and Giri and he had developed over the years. These men were unaccustomed to the swirling, scything movements, and even less accustomed to the bite of steel on flesh. But fight they would. And fight they did.
Ratha fought with fury, but it was no longer the fury of a man betrayed. It was the fury of a people enslaved, the fury of freedom denied, the fury of sisters made whores and brothers made mules. It was the fury of the Anari soul, the fury of the very mountains themselves, that drove him forward.
The Bozandari before him recoiled with shock and horror at the unexpected attack. Let them recoil, Ratha thought. Let them turn and run. Let them know the shame of loss and the pain of defeat.
His sword arced up as the swords of the men beside him sliced through the air, shielding him, before he brought his weapon down onto the shoulder of the Bozandari soldier before him. Sharpened steel, driven through the wide arc of the swing by a trained and disciplined arm, slashed through bone and sinew and muscle, through lung and heart, blood spewing and then flowing as the man’s eyes turned to glass, his face frozen in a final scream of pain.
Ratha felt neither hatred nor sympathy for the d
ead man as he wrenched his sword loose and prepared to step forward to the next enemy. He felt nothing at all. This was war, and war was killing. It was not the Anari way. But it was the necessary way.
Tantor heard the screams to his right even as he fought the Anari to his front. Step with the left foot. Lift with the shield arm. Thrust with the sword arm. Withdraw the sword. Push with the shield. Step with the left foot. Again and again. But now the rhythm of his men faltered. The screams grew louder. Shock set in as Tantor realized the enemy had waited for his attack and struck him in turn.
He had done what he had been trained to do. He had served as he had been trained to serve. Now he would lead as he had been trained to lead, or die as he had been trained to die.
“Company Three, Guard Regiment! By the right standard, turn!”
It was the last option available. Turning his left flank to receive the attack. Dividing his force while in contact with the enemy, the most difficult maneuver in war. But it was his last chance to regain control.
Had the guard commander recognized the situation only a few minutes earlier, Archer thought, he might have saved the battle. But those were minutes the Bozandari officer could not take back. And those were the minutes that had doomed the Bozandari camp.
Now surprise turned to shock, then to panic, as Ratha’s men surged into an opponent struggling to hear and respond in the din and confusion of battle. Some of the Bozandari executed the command, but not nearly enough, and with the unity and safety of drilled precision gone, the fighting turned into a massacre and then to a rout.
Archer watched as the trickle of men to the rear became a torrent, rolling down the Bozandari line, until the whole of the camp was in full retreat. With Ratha attacking from the north, the only escape route lay in the pass to the west, where Jenah’s column lay waiting. There would be no last miracle, no salvation for the Bozandari below. There would be only surrender—or death.
Archer turned to Tess. “Tell Jenah they are coming.”
She nodded stiffly, her eyes fixed on the carnage in the valley below.
“Lady Tess,” he repeated. “Warn Jenah.”
“I heard you,” she said, shaking her head as fleeing forms were caught and slain from behind. “So ugly. So ugly we are.”
He took her chin in his hand and turned his face to hers. “Lady Tess!”
Finally her eyes focused on his. “Yes, I must warn Jenah. And then I must do what I can for the fallen. All of them.”
“Yes, m’Lady,” he said. “That you must. But first, there is a battle to be completed.”
“Men are dying now,” she said.
“They are,” he agreed, nodding. “And they will. That is the horror of war, the horror against which we tried to protect the Anari. Now they must know it. But if they must know war, let them know victory. Warn Jenah.”
“Yes,” she said, nodding slowly. “Yes.”
After the din of battle, the world became surprisingly silent. Almost deafeningly silent. The fallen on the field occasionally cried out, but most seemed to have accepted their lot.
Tess moved among them, laying her hands on the wounds of the living, growing increasingly exhausted as she poured her power into them, trying to husband it, trying to do just enough to save life so that she would be able to help others.
But there were so many fallen! So many dead and dying and wounded. Her mind could not grasp the carnage she saw, yet…yet…
She was kneeling beside a Bozandari officer who wore only one boot. A mortal wound pierced his chest, but he was still breathing. When she touched him, his eyes flew open. “Waste not your time on me,” he said, and coughed up blood. “Save my comrades, Lady, I beg you.”
A tear crept down Tess’s cheek as she looked into his eyes and read his resolve. “May the gods bless you,” she murmured.
“They already have,” he answered. He closed his eyes as the first ray of the morning sun struck his face and never opened them again.
Her vision blurred with tears, Tess lifted her head to survey the scene yet again. It was then that a strange thing happened, so strange that she froze. It was as if she was seeing two images, one laid atop the other.
The first image, quite clear, was the battlefield on which she knelt in her bloodstained clothes. The second was also a battlefield, but different, so very different. The men who lay on this second battlefield wore blotchy uniforms of a sandy color and thick heavy boots. Some wore helmets. There were not as many as lay on the field before her, but their wounds were every bit as bad, bodies torn open, burned, limbs cast about like pieces of broken dolls, their moans every bit as haunting, and a distant voice muttering, “Suicide bomber…”
She blinked and the image was gone, but in an instant she knew she had glimpsed another piece of her past. Another world. Another time.
And the same ugly things happening.
Angry, she rose to her feet and called mentally to her sisters. She felt Cilla and Sara, felt their grief and horror as they worked among the fallen. But she felt others, too, the untainted who had not yet been found. Holding out her arms, she called her sisters together and begged them to share their power to heal.
Blue lightning flew from her hands. The power of the mountains and rocks around her? She knew not whence it came, but she felt the power of her sisters flowing into her. As she grew stronger with their power, the lightning flowing from her hands and began to arc across the field of battle, touching here and there, as if seeking out individuals.
In her mind, Cilla gave a murmur of awe. Sara whispered, “My sisters.”
Those Ilduin were too far away to know more than they could see through the minds of the three Ilduin on the battlefield, but they stopped everything they were doing and poured their power into the circle of light.
Lightning flared everywhere, creating a dome over the field, a bubble of incredible power. Those who were unhurt and still moved on the field, froze and watched with awe. The sky seemed to crackle with energy.
Then, with a thunderclap, it was over. Tess, Cilla and Sara all collapsed unconscious. They never saw how many of the wounded rose with wonder and awe, completely healed.
26
Jenah captured many Bozandari and pursued those who fled, but by day’s end he was certain that some had escaped for good. He turned his army back toward the outpost where they had battled in the wee hours, feeling no good could come of this.
Archer, meanwhile, had managed to discover the lone surviving officer, Overmark Jassen of the legionary guard. His men had little good to say about him, and no reluctance to turn over the man who had spent too much time drinking and gaming to lead his unit. Their foremark lay dead, having done all he could in the overmark’s absence.
One survivor told Archer with raw bitterness that Foremark Tantor might even be alive now, but for the overmark. “He was a sloppy soldier,” the man said. “But for his connections in the royal court, he never would have held his rank.”
Archer nodded sympathetically. It seemed the Bozandari were incredibly willing to talk in the presence of Lady Tess, for many of them knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that they owed their lives to her.
Tess was still recovering from that and sat quietly in a chair, her eyes nearly closed, saying little or nothing. Her presence was enough.
Beside Archer sat Tom, who also said little. Archer had never understood how prophecy worked, but he could imagine Tom feeling out the skeins of reality as each new person passed before them.
As the hours passed, however, it became clear that there was no overarching plan among the Bozandari to deal with the Anari. The legion guarded the border almost as an afterthought and sent out raiders for slaves whenever ordered to do so. Many overmarks became wealthy selling Anari in Bozandar. Apparently it was their compensation for this duty.
As distasteful as Archer found that, he let nothing of it show on his face. Tom, too, remained silent, listening.
Finally they came face-to-face with Overmark Jassen, the ma
n maligned by his own troops. If he had been drunk during the battle, he was no longer so.
He sat before Archer with all the arrogance of a king indulging a commoner. He wrapped his gilded cloak about himself with a practiced swirl, then sat, leaning back, looking down his nose.
“Well?” he said disdainfully.
One of the Anari said just loudly enough for the overmark to hear him, “He has no idea before whom he sits.”
Archer quickly waved the man to silence, but not before a flash of concern had passed across the overmark’s face.
“Well,” said Archer, calmly. “We have defeated you. The question is what to do with our captives. Are you a man of your word, Overmark?”
“No,” said Tess, speaking for the first time, her voice faint. “He will say anything he perceives to be necessary.”
One corner of Archer’s mouth lifted in a mirthless smile as he addressed the overmark. “Then I guess I need question you no further.”
The overmark shrugged. “That is your choice. But know this. We Bozandari plan for every turn of events.”
At that moment Tess rose to her feet, her face turning ashen. “Anahar!”
The council of war was hastily convened as the Anari continued to search the camp, some collecting what could be of use to the army, others rounding up the Bozandari prisoners, and others burying the dead. Archer stood in what had been the Bozandari command tent, looking at what had been Bozandari maps, listening as Tess spoke.
“They will attack Anahar,” she said.
Archer nodded, thinking through the Bozandari plans. The careful maneuvers he’d worked out depended on the other two Bozandari camps holding in place until relief forces arrived. But now he realized that of course they would not do that. It would be suicide, as would playing hit-and-run with the Anari in the mountains. No, that was exactly what they would do. Move on Anahar, knowing they would draw any Anari army to them, and fight on ground of their own choice. Just as he had planned to do.