The first orbs exploded before the armies ever met. The blasts fanned out in all directions, incinerating everything within a fifty-yard radius and throwing globs of molten matter even farther. The soldiers ran away from the impacts in a frenzy, clambering over one another, pressing bodies in toward the center. Confusion already sown. Maeander had several of the catapults repositioned and recalibrated. Within a few minutes the first of them dropped an orb on the rear of Aliver’s forces. It took out a unit that might have expected to see no action the entire day.
Let them feel surrounded, Maeander thought, hemmed in by fire and destruction on three sides, facing their executioners on the other. Watching the billowing smoke and the waves of confused motion within the enemy ranks, he turned to offer a grin and jest to the man beside him. That man was not Larken, however. The thought of this soured his mood. Only for a moment, though.
The two armies met as the rain of fire from the sky continued. Watching what happened next, Maeander could not have been happier with how he had planned this action. He’d placed a wedge of cavalry in the center of his line. Aliver could not match them even if he wanted to; he had no cavalry unit at all, just a splattering of mounted men here and there. Hanish’s horsemen were heavily armored, bearing lances with which they darted foot soldiers, puncturing breasts and necks and faces before yanking the weapons out. They were top-heavy, muscled men who had trained and trained and trained for a moment like this. They could repeat their overhand thrusts hundreds of times without fatigue. Their horses were the largest in the empire, unshakable, belligerent mounts trained to smash men beneath their hooves.
Within a half hour they had carved a gash right toward the center of the Acacian troops. This might have seemed a risky maneuver, as they were soon deep within the enemy, hemmed in on three sides. But behind the horsemen poured a river of infantrymen, swinging swords and axes. The weapons were of such quality and honed to such sharpness that they cut through flesh and muscle and bone, leather and light mail. Aliver’s lightly armored troops fell in bloody pieces before them. Maeander’s foot soldiers ate into the center, leaving the bulk of the enemy army as largely immobile targets for the catapults.
In many ways Maeander felt that he controlled the ensuing slaughter with his own hands. It went on for hours, through the morning and into the afternoon. It was fatiguing just watching this bloody work. By the time he signaled for his troops to pull back he was drenched in sweat, muscles sore as if he had been in the thick of it all day himself. Nothing had transpired the entire day that he had not planned and pulled the strings of. He had lost few men and slaughtered a great many, it seemed. It was only because of the sheer numbers of Aliver’s troops that any of them were left.
His generals, when they debriefed later that evening, were not as sanguine. They’d killed many, yes, but not as many as Maeander seemed to think. The battle that they described bore a resemblance to what Maeander had witnessed, but it differed in some particulars as well. Numbers, for one. The Acacians had been trampled, hacked, battered. Some of them had fallen to grave wounds. Many, however, managed to back away despite injuries that should have lamed them. Others, whom the infantrymen believed they had dispatched and stepped over, rose sometime later and attacked them from behind. To their eyes the catapults had not been as destructive as Maeander thought. They had hit, yes, but only the immediately incinerated died. The others were blown from their feet, sent hurtling. They were aflame one moment and then out, steaming and largely unharmed the next.
“They’re hard to kill,” one officer said. “That’s the disconcerting thing. They are just hard to kill.”
All the generals who had viewed it up close agreed. None of them could make much sense of it. Again, Maeander wished he had Larken to consult with or his brother or uncle…but he doubted any of them would have advised him in any way he could not manage himself. Regardless of the details, the day had been theirs. If the Acacians came out to meet him on the morrow, it would be the end of them. His generals did not dispute this much, at least.
* * * *
The next morning Maeander joined the front ranks of his soldiers. He wanted to see the enemy up close, to take his bloody part in the victory he anticipated. But from the first moment the two armies met, nothing transpired with the inevitability he had imagined. The enemy did prove hard to kill. Wounded, they fell back when they should rightfully have fallen dead. Those he thought killed often crawled away or rolled back up to their feet, not so badly hurt as he imagined. It almost seemed like he had to separate a head from its body to be sure of a kill.
And they fought improbably well also, despite their inferior weapons and training, regardless of their thin or partial or nonexistent armor. In one instance, clashing hand to hand with a boy in his early teens, Maeander found himself having a hell of a time killing him. It should have been easy. The boy was a slender-shouldered Bethuni, fighting with only a spear, his legs and arms and chest all bare, easy targets. He was terrified, Maeander could see. He was trembling, eyes wide and frantic. He managed to move just fast enough, blocking, defending, occasionally lashing out. Maeander could not help but laugh at him, at the strange combination of the boy’s fear with Maeander’s inability to strike him. It was comical, until the whelp nicked his shoulder. Angry at this, Maeander dove to press his attack. But, pushed by a sudden surge of motion from one side, he lost sight of the boy. He was left fuming and spitting, watching him slip away, something like mirth in the lad’s brown eyes. This incident was just one of many of the morning’s frustrations.
Back on the ridge that served as his command center later that afternoon, Maeander concluded that Aliver’s separate units were functioning with a rapidity he had not noticed at first. Communications passed quickly from one part of the mass of troops to the next. Too quickly, really, to be explained. Maeander had the catapults focus on destroying the handful of moving viewing towers interspersed throughout the Acacian army. He could not know for sure, but presumably these towers housed generals, tacticians, perhaps even the Akarans themselves. It struck him as foolish to draw attention to oneself that way, but the towers were there. They were being used for something. Twice he saw projectiles explode directly atop the mobile towers. That was satisfying. Whether an Akaran was in one or not, each explosion had certainly taken officers with it.
By the close of the day he was feeling better again. He would open the next day by destroying the rest of the towers. He’d switch tactics, sending the cavalry around to flank the Acacians while concentrating the catapults in the center. The orbs of pitch were running low, but he would use them anyway. That was what they were for. He would finish them and finish Aliver off in a massive hail of fire. Two days of slaughter and injury would have left them crippled, depleted. His men were still strong, still numerous. The third day would end the entire thing.
But overnight it seemed Aliver’s army replenished its numbers. New recruits must have poured in to replace the fallen. The army the Acacians fielded the third day looked little diminished from what it had been on the first. It didn’t make sense that they could so swiftly incorporate the new additions, but they placed them on the battlefield the very day of their arrival. Somehow, they fought with the discipline and grace of veterans.
And his downpour of fire? It poured down, rightly enough, but it had even less impact than in the days before. One tower, directly hit, buckled beneath the impact, flared into flame, and then…well, then the blaze went out, as if a breath of wind had extinguished it. Even as Maeander stared, the structure seemed to regain its footing, to rise back into shape. It smoldered, blackened, but it survived. By the time he called the day closed he felt he was fighting at a standstill. Instead of reveling in victory he felt himself floundering. He was not winning at all. And if the trend continued, the following day would see his troops driven backward.
The first day had confused him slightly. The second confounded him. The third worried him. He entertained the thought for the first time that perhaps
Aliver had been blessed by some form of sorcery. He had thought all such things long dead, but what other explanation could there be? Nothing else made any more sense. With this realization came the first tingling of doubt. It appeared like an itch at his elbow, a nagging sensation that he just could not get rid of. If he scratched it with reason, it vanished, but only until he pulled his fingernails away. Then the itch crept across his skin again. He didn’t like it at all.
The Numrek had not arrived. Where were they? What game were they playing? The league was still readily available, but it would be four days before they could resupply the pitch orbs. His men were starting to look worried around the eyes. A messenger from Hanish arrived, demanding news. He had the man sequestered in a tent, guarded.
That evening he came to a decision. He was going to try something Hanish had cautioned should be used only as a last resort. They had a weapon they had not yet revealed to anybody. It had been a gift from their allies across the Gray Slopes. Not a disease this time but another thing unheard-of in the Known World. He did not like revealing their secrets if it was at all possible not to. But the situation they faced, Maeander’s gut told him, was just that sort of dire circumstance.
He sent a messenger to Aliver, proposing a two-day break in the fighting. Let the morrow be a day spent clearing the field, tending the wounded, and let another follow to honor the dead. Aliver agreed. With the delay in place, Maeander next contacted the vessels that carried the secret cargo, docked, as they were, in the harbor of Bocoum. He needed the antoks, he said. Bring them to shore and ready them.
Chapter Sixty
Corinn knew she had only one chance to speak to the leagueman. He had arrived in Acacia secretly the night before. She learned of this because she had coerced several of her servants—none of whom were Meins, of course—into feeding her bits of intelligence. Before her shocking discovery that Hanish would offer her as a blood sacrifice to his ancestors, she would never have looked to servants for such information. It would have seemed inappropriate, like lowering herself, demonstrating weakness. But she had decided that there was no weaker outcome than her ending up dead on some altar, nothing more pathetic than being led to her own slaughter in the throes of doe-eyed love. She had no intention of exiting life quietly. Indeed, she had no intention of exiting at all.
After learning what she had that strange night, all her old assumptions had to be revised. Her servants had once been faceless, nameless beings at the periphery of her vision. But from that first morning she saw them differently. She could not help but study their faces, wondering what they knew that she didn’t. What did they think of her? To whom did they owe loyalty? She took to watching them, observing their demeanor in various situations. She tried to gauge which of them were more disposed to her than others, which wore resentment barely disguised, and which looked like they could be manipulated. And then she had begun to cultivate them accordingly.
It had paid off. The servants were not as loyal to the Meins as she had assumed. It almost seemed as if they had been waiting for her to wake up and conspire with them. She learned that many of them believed Aliver’s return was fated. A male servant had told her that Rialus Neptos was in the palace. Another had informed her of Larken’s death. When a girl named Gillian brought her word of Sire Dagon’s arrival on the island, Corinn thanked her with an embrace and a peck on her cheek. Apparently the leagueman had asked to have a messenger bird readied for dispatch as soon as possible. He himself was scheduled to depart first thing in the morning, so Corinn wasted no time.
She left her quarters in the gray light of predawn, working her way through the palace silently, by memory, carrying no torch or candle. She had dressed carefully even earlier. She wore a light blue dress of a silken material, one that framed her collarbones and neck to flattering effect. Leaguemen were men, after all.
She had come to understand that the palace was a sort of prison for her now. Neither Hanish nor anybody had ever said this, but she had not been off the island for several weeks. The few times she had mentioned possible trips, Hanish had brushed her off. Recently, Meinish guards’ eyes followed her with a different sort of attentiveness than before. She watched their demeanor as she approached the edges of the royal grounds or when she ventured near the council chambers. She never pushed it far enough that any guard had impeded her, but she became quite sure Hanish had put her under surveillance. There was an invisible boundary thrown up around her. Her skin crawled with awareness of it.
The area of the lower palace reserved for the league, however, was largely a privately run compound. She passed into it without drawing attention to herself. Presumably, Hanish had never considered that she would have any desire to communicate with the league. Once through its gates, she did not have to contend with Meinish guards at all. She did, however, have some difficulty convincing the Ishtat officers to send her request for an audience to Sire Dagon. In the end she managed it only by threatening them with Hanish’s anger, pointedly suggesting that it was the chieftain himself who had sent her to see the leagueman. This won her a meeting, although only a few minutes were promised.
Entering Sire Dagon’s office, she found him already shuffling through papers with his long fingers. He glanced at her with a distracted air, as yet giving her only half his attention. “My dear princess,” he said, “what can I do for you? Please be brief with me, as my time is regretfully short. You have some…communication from Hanish?”
The princess was not as nervous as she had imagined she would be at this moment. She knew that the grip of her dilemma should be enough to paralyze her with fear. At times she had found herself standing still, staring off into nothing. She often thought back to the past, to her father, to her mother, to her short-lived exile on Kidnaban. But she was not the same now as she had been as a child. She felt increasingly disconnected from her old way of being. She could affect the world, she believed. She could have a say in her fate. Perhaps the thought of Aliver still living and breathing gave her strength. If this were true, though, it was an irony. The agenda she worked for was only partially in line with what she imagined Aliver’s to be.
“You can tell me why you have returned,” Corinn said. “What news do you have?”
The leagueman’s eyes rolled up and fixed on her. “Am I to believe that Hanish requests this information?”
“If you wish. But you are not Hanish’s pawn. I know that, even if he doesn’t. If possible, let this be between you and me. You would not have stopped in here and requested a messenger bird without news of some import. I have reason to be curious.”
“That I can believe. You may not like what I have to tell, however. Why ask about things you cannot change?”
Corinn shrugged. She wanted to know, she said, for the sake of the knowledge itself.
Sire Dagon mimicked her shrug. He pressed his thin lips together derisively but relaxed them the next moment. “If you must…I returned to dispatch a message to the Inspectorate. It seems one of our patrols spotted a…well, a fleet, I guess you could say, of fishing and merchant and trading vessels sailing into the Inner Sea. They’re Vumuans. For a number of reasons, we’ve concluded that they are on a mission to rescue your sister.”
“My sister?”
“They’ve come to join the battle, which invariably means they are not on the Meinish side. It is my intent to send a messenger bird to the Inspectorate, who will then crush the fleet before they ever reach Talay. They’ll be like a child’s toy boats bobbing on a pond compared to our warships.”
Corinn heard him, but she had not yet fully swallowed the mention of…“Did you say that Mena is alive?”
Sire Dagon chuckled. “I thought that would interest you. Your sister is a goddess.” He said the last word with feigned reverence. “A goddess…Tribal peoples always amaze me. It may be that she’s not a goddess at all but is actually a goddess slayer. I’m not sure which it is, really. My information on this is vague as to the particulars. I can tell you, however, that she was
captured by Maeander and Larken. She didn’t stay captured long, though. She stabbed Larken in the heart with his own sword. She killed two Punisari and injured several others, and then commandeered the vessel and convinced the crew to sail her to Talay. By the end of the voyage, it seems, she had convinced most of the sailors to join your brother’s cause. Hard to imagine, isn’t it? Little Mena, a sword-wielding deity slayer, a match for one of the craftiest Marahs I have ever set eyes on.”
The leagueman had been shuffling through his papers as he relayed most of this. He paused, looked up, and studied Corinn a moment. “My dear, this does tug at your allegiances, doesn’t it? Perhaps I shouldn’t have told you. I always heard you were of fragile temperament. It must be very strange to be Princess Corinn Akaran. It might surprise you, but I find these developments with your siblings quite interesting. Consider what they have become: one of them leads an army that is loyal to him; one is called a deity by people who are fanatically devoted to her; another is a raider, a sea captain who also has followers that would die for—or at least with—him. Not what your father would have planned, I’m sure, but at least they have made something interesting of their lives. Pity that you weren’t allowed to become anything but your conqueror’s mistress.”
Corinn had been about to express shock and confusion at the strange news of her sister. She had pursed her lips, about to ask for a chair to sit in. She might even have looked to Sire Dagon for guidance, for help. But all these possibilities vanished the moment he expressed pity for her. She did not want pity. She would not accept pity. Nor would she allow the suggestion that her life added up to nothing of interest or worth to stand.
Acacia, The War with the Mein Page 59