by Rachel Lee
She was killing. And she felt nothing.
Archer stood on a small knoll behind his lines, watching the Bozandari advance. The enemy had adjusted his attacking columns to negotiate the gaps between the pits, the rain of arrows turning to a torrent as they emerged and fell into battle order. The Anari were holding fast so far, but this was no mere delaying action, as yesterday’s battles had been. If this line broke, the Bozandari would flood through the gap and annihilate them.
In the distance, he saw Giri’s force descend out of the hills, in trickles at first, taking advantage of any cover the rocks offered, moving into position for their attack. Much of Archer’s plan lay on Giri’s shoulders. There was no way Ratha’s and Jenah’s men could hold off the Bozandari indefinitely. Sooner or later they would be worn down, unless Giri’s attack so distracted the enemy that panic became Archer’s ally.
He had passed orders to Giri to hold his attack until the Bozandari commander committed his Guard, but so far there was little sign of that. The massive weight of the Bozandari was battering its way forward, step by bloody step, and right now it seemed unlikely that the tired and battered Anari would stop them.
“They begin to give way already,” he said to Tom and Sara, who stood at his side. He turned to a young boy, a runner. “Tell Ratha and Giri to commit their reserves.”
“Yes, Lord,” the man said, scurrying away.
Overmark Thul screamed orders to his men, trying to shake them from their shock, even while his mind rebelled at what was happening around them. In the span between one heartbeat and the next, the enemy had materialized in the plain beneath him and surged into his lead column. These were not Anari but fellow Bozandari, marching at the side of a woman from whom death seemed to crackle and strike like lightning from a summer storm. She fought like a woman possessed, the blood of his men forming vivid red splashes on her white tunic and breeches.
Even from two hundred yards away, he felt as if he could see into her eyes, pale eyes that showed no feeling whatever but only the frenzy of battle. They were eyes that spread terror, and Thul had to steel himself against that terror.
The attackers were not flitting about from place to place in the blink of an eye, he knew. That could not happen. It was fear that made it seem thus, and he had to master that fear or he had no hope of commanding his men.
It was not possible that the pale-eyed woman was now only one hundred paces distant and in the next breath, only fifty. It was not possible that so tiny a force had already slain a third of Thul’s brigade. It was not possible that the woman was now upon him, her blade rising and now descending in less time than he—a trained soldier of the Realm, with reflexes honed in a dozen years of battles—could lift his shield.
It was not possible that she was already past, leaving him on the ground, choking and coughing on his own blood as his life flowed away into the rocky soil.
It was not possible.
Ratha had ordered his reserves forward, and they brought a new energy among the Anari, a ferocity that Ratha had feared might wane in the critical moment. But now the low rumbling of their battle cry echoed in the valley.
As the Bozandari were driven back toward the pit traps, gaps began to form in their lines as men tumbled onto the sharp stones. Their agonized screams rose above the din of battle, worming their way into Ratha’s soul, another memory that he would carry to his death.
He felt no joy at their suffering. He had not chosen this war, nor the enslavement that had sown the seeds of it. But the blood was still upon his hands, spattered across his chest and legs, bitter in his mouth. Blood for which he would have to atone someday.
He looked through one of the gaps, saw the enemy commander lower his arm and the enemy’s Guard begin to move forward. This would be Giri’s cue, and as if they were joined by a single mind, he saw Giri’s force rise from the stones and begin their descent into the enemy’s rear.
His brother was a brave soldier, and he and his men would fight well. Ratha could only hope that Giri fought not with rage but with the sober determination that Ratha himself had found. If not, Ratha knew, Giri could never find peace, even in the absence of war.
And what Ratha most wished for at that moment was peace. But that was, he knew, a wish that lay far downstream in the river of time. Ratha turned his attention from Giri to the men around him, and to the horrible business of war.
Giri’s men rose around him as the Bozandari general was finally forced to commit his last reserve. The Anari battle cry boomed across the valley floor like a clap of thunder, and his men descended as if on bolts of lightning, surging into the flank of the enemy column, hewing men the way farmers harvested wheat.
Giri was neither surprised nor alarmed when the enemy pivoted to receive his attack. And while his forces lacked the cover of darkness that had cloaked their previous battles, they were men who had faced this enemy countless times in the past weeks and come away victorious every time. They fought with the courage of confidence and the rage of a people who for too long had felt the boot of Bozandar upon their necks.
Giri, too, felt that rage and unleashed it upon the man before him, looking into his eyes as he wrenched his sword free of his body and stepped over him to the next, and the next, and the next. Whatever Ratha and Cilla might say, battle was rage and hate and blood and death, and Giri knew the best he could hope for was that the enemy shed more blood than he. It was that which drove him, propelled him, hurled him into the Bozandari ranks with the fury of a storm wave crashing against the shore.
His men felt that fury in him, found it in themselves, and pressed forward beside him, turning the Bozandari before them into leaking shreds of human refuse, advancing with pitiless determination.
Tuzza saw the enemy force come down out of the hills, and he knew instinctively that this was the force that had stalked his men since he had crossed the frontier. The savagery with which they hacked into his lines left no doubt that these were the Anari who had butchered his cousin and the other dead who had lain mutilated in the wake of those nighttime raids.
These were not soldiers like the Anari pressing hard against his lines at the mouth of the valley. These were jackals, with a taste for blood, falling always upon the unsuspecting and devouring them with cruel relish.
Hate rose in Tuzza’s belly, hate for these animals who were threshing his elite Guardsmen, hate for the man who led them, the man who had doubtless birthed their cruelty.
He saw that man now, yelling orders amidst the turmoil of battle, and felt his sword in his hand before he was aware of having drawn it. That one Anari became the object of his rage, his rage at the crown that had stolen these men as slaves, his rage at the council that had ordered him into this land, his rage at the grieving families whose sons would not return and whose lives were forfeit without victory or the hope of victory.
Tuzza could not win this battle, he knew. But he could slay that one Anari. He advanced on that Anari with an inhuman scream rising from his throat, a scream that pierced the air like an arrow, a scream against everything that had written the names of so many in blood on the ledger of Tuzza’s soul.
* * * *
Ratha heard a single scream pierce the valley and looked up to see the Bozandari commander riding hard upon a single man…Giri. The scream seemed to freeze everyone for an instant, silence falling over the battlefield like a wet woolen cloak. Even Giri hesitated for an instant. For an instant too long.
Giri heard the thunder of hooves in the echo of the scream, but by the time his eyes drew into focus, he knew it was too late. He looked up into the eyes of the enemy commander and saw reflected in them his own hate, his own pain, his own rage against the cruel scars that fate had carved into his heart.
As Giri tried to raise his sword, knowing it would be far too late, he knew the scars were not carved by fate but by his own dark thoughts, the anger that had driven him so savagely to this place.
As the enemy commander’s sword arched down, Giri realized that
Ratha had been right. Anger could not fill a soul. It could only consume one.
Tuzza saw the moment of realization in the Anari’s eyes in the instant before his sword slashed into the man’s throat, passing completely through to sever the head that now slowly fell and rolled on the bloody stones beneath his feet.
It was more than the acceptance of death. It was the acceptance of the life that had led to that death.
Tuzza’s sword fell from his open hand, and he became aware that his horse was tumbling, some stone or sword having broken its stride and its leg, their terrified screams rising together as the rocks rose up to meet him and the world went black.
* * * *
“Noooooooo!” Ratha screamed, seeing his brother fall, knowing even as he screamed the word that the depth of his scream could not undo what had happened. It was as if he could feel his brother’s soul ripped from his own, leaving an emptiness he had never known. “Nooooooooooo!”
The world crystallized into that hollow in his heart. With another booming cry, he set upon the Bozandari in front of him. Their blood could not fill that hole within him. But he would try regardless.
Tess and Otteda too, had heard the scream, and now they and their men scrambled up the side of the mountain as if carried on the backs of panthers, effortlessly leaping from rock to crag to boulder, until she could see the horror laid out beneath her.
The battle had descended into a chaotic swirl, hundreds of individual life and death struggles. The Bozandari lines had collapsed, and the Anari were pressing them from front and rear, killing and maiming, an orgy of blood that made Tess’s stomach roll.
She had been part of this orgy, she realized. The world around her no longer seemed to bend and flex with every breath, and in its wake, looking down at her blood-stained clothes, she realized what she had done.
Otteda and his companions had been at her side, but Tess knew that she was responsible for the weakening screams and sobs that rose from the path behind. And, turning back to look at the battle in the valley, she knew that, too, lay upon her shoulders. She knew not why the gods had cruelly laden her with this burden. But the burden, and the blood, lay upon her, heavy, cloying, sickening her to the depths of her soul.
Her attention fell on a single Bozandari in the valley below, one man kneeling on the ground beside a dying comrade, holding the man’s head in his lap. Time seemed to dim and flicker, and Tess saw herself in the street with her mother, holding her mother’s head as she died. For an instant she heard the man’s thoughts flicker through the shredded weave of consciousness and realized he was holding his dying brother, felt his shuddering sobs, felt the last light of hope flicker from his breast as his brother’s eyes stilled.
She could bear no more. This madness must end.
She lifted her sword and her voice as one, feeling the sword hum once more in her hand, feeling the white hot stones against her breast beneath her tunic, and screamed.
“By Elanor, enough!”
Stillness swept across the valley like a gust of wind, and in its wake lay only the ragged gasps of the living and the ragged cries of the dying. Swords fell to the ground. Men stopped in their tracks, then fell to their knees, their chests heaving in exhaustion.
The battle was over.
The Anari had won.
Epilogue
The funeral cortege wound through Anahar to the music of the city itself, which sang with grief for fallen Anari. If there lay within that the song of victory, Ratha could not hear it. He and Archer and Tom and Jenah carried a tightly wrapped form upon their shoulders, the body of his brother, borne through the city at the head of the column.
Ratha had no taste for this and would have quietly buried Giri among the other dead of Monabi-Tel, in what was now called the Valley of Victory. Giri deserved to lie in the company of the men with whom he had died, the men who had marched beside him and given their lives as willingly as Giri had given his. But the survivors of his column had insisted that he receive a hero’s honors.
And Anahar agreed, for from the stones rose a low, haunting melody, drawing words from the people who lined the streets, a song of courage and honor, a song of struggle and loss, a song of the men whose blood had purchased their freedom.
As Ratha listened more closely, he realized that every family he passed spoke the name of their own fallen, for it seemed that every family had given at least one of its sons in that valley. The ceremony, Ratha realized, honored Giri as the symbol of every Anari who had fallen. His brother would not have wanted to be such a symbol.
In Ratha’s eyes, Giri was still the laughing, jesting brother who had been Ratha’s childhood partner in mischief and companion in life. Giri should live in their memory as the boy and the man who had laughed, not as the soldier who had died.
Ratha realized he was weeping and made no attempt to cover his face or wipe away the tears. Perhaps the tears could wash away the stain of those last moments in battle, when Ratha had once again become the man he loathed, a savage angel of death, thirsting for blood. Everything that he had become in the desert, everything that he had meditated upon, every enlightenment he had found, had fled in the instant he had watched his brother die.
Cilla had said that she had felt Giri’s soul pass into light as he died, that in his last moments he had found the peace that she and Ratha had pressed upon him in their last days. Perhaps that was true. But Ratha had not felt it. He had felt only the wrenching, tearing loss as half of himself was ripped away forever.
He had not been able to look into Cilla’s eyes since the day of the battle. Nor had he looked into the eyes of Tess, or Sara. If Ilduin blood had stirred the Anari, it was Anari blood that had bought the victory. The hearts of the gods might live in the Ilduin, but the bloody hands of the gods were the Anari themselves. Ratha’s hands.
As they reached the dwellings of Monabi-Tel and the hole that had been dug near the telner, Ratha shut his eyes and let himself be guided by the movements of his companions. The Anari were children of the mountains, and to the roots of the mountains Giri would return. But Ratha could not bear to see it.
Cilla wept as she watched Ratha’s pain. She stood beside Tess and Sara in the circle of Monabi priestesses who ringed the grave. Her heart grieved not for Giri, who now walked among the gods in peace. Her heart grieved for Ratha. He had borne so much in life, and now he bore the loss of his brother with grim silence. Cilla could not read his thoughts, but she could read his face. Anger and guilt in equal measure.
She had tried to talk to him, to comfort him, but he had rejected her every attempt. He was locked within a prison of his own heart now, and she felt his absence as palpably as he felt the loss of his brother. Giri had been her friend and cousin, and they had endured much together during the war. She would forever miss the sparkle that, even to the end, had flickered in Giri’s eyes. And now, it seemed, she had lost Ratha, as well.
As she bowed her head and listened, she heard her thoughts echoed throughout Anahar. There had been no victory parade, for they had no doubt that the Bozandari would come again. There was only the grim satisfaction of this battle won, and the weight of grief.
Perhaps one day the Anari would celebrate their freedom. But this was not that day.
Cilla sang the funeral prayers with her sisters, Anari and Ilduin alike, and stooped to place a desert rose upon Giri’s body before it was lowered into the grave. Tess spoke, saying that the brilliant desert roses would grow forever in this place, in honor of the thirst for freedom that had bloomed in the man who now lay here. The words might be true, but Cilla knew they were scant comfort for Ratha. And so long as Ratha’s heart was darkened, she herself could feel no light.
Tuzza watched the procession wind past the compound where he and his captured men were held. His shoulder and hip ached, although the woman in white had mended the broken bones. She had not the strength to take away the memory of the fall, or that of the Anari soldiers falling upon him, ready to cut him to ribbons until the woman�
��s voice had stilled the valley. She had not the strength to take away his shame, or his fear of what would happen if ever he were to return to Bozandar.
His career was ruined, of that he had no doubt. He knew he should have cared for that, worried for how he would be treated by a court of the council. Instead, he found himself counting the names of his fallen. He had brought eight thousand men into the Anari lands. Fewer than a quarter of that number now wandered with him in the prison compound, their faces clouded with confusion, their sleep shattered by the memories of that final day. He and his men moved as if in a daze, numbed by the totality of their defeat.
His officers, those who had survived, had taken roll and passed to him the names of those who now lay buried in Anari soil, never again to see their homeland. Tuzza had delegated to the surviving officers the duty of writing the letters to the families of the fallen. But he alone could sign them. One after another, and yet another, and yet another.
As the tail of the cortege passed, he numbly walked back to his tent, picked up the next stack of letters, dipped his quill in ink and began again the task that now filled his days. The last humanity his dead comrades would know. A commander’s letter to their families, empty words of praise that would never fill the voids left behind.
Tuzza feared their eyes more than anything, their glares of anger if he were taken to execution. The death he deserved, even welcomed. But the specter of their eyes haunted every moment.
He had failed his men, their sons and brothers.
And that he could not forgive.
Archer watched Tom and Sara, and while he could not hear their words, he had no need to. They had found each other quickly after the formalities of the funeral dinner, and Tom had drawn her away from her Ilduin sisters. He had seen something, Archer knew, his heart tightening. There was more to come. The Bozandari had launched another column. Or his brother had felt the rift in the weave of the universe when Tess had lifted the Weaver’s Blade. Or both. Regardless, there would be more fighting.