Rise of a Hero (The Farsala Trilogy)

by Bell, Hilari

  Her father had knocked before entering peasant homes, Soraya remembered. Her mother had had no patience with it.

  “I require information and assistance,” Soraya told them, taking the chair the man had vacated. It felt good to sit in a chair again. “Where are . . . What happened at the manor house?” Cowardice was despicable in a deghass, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to ask straight out.

  The man’s creased face softened. “Your moth—The lady Sudaba and the little lord both live, Lady,” the man told her. “When I last saw them, they weren’t even hurt, though the lad was properly scared.”

  Relief struck like a hammer blow. Soraya had refused to admit they might be dead, but now the painful knot below her heart relaxed, and the hearth fire blurred and brightened.

  “Here now,” said the man kindly. “Let’s be getting you a cup of tea.”

  Marlis moved without prodding, to fill a kettle and put it on the fire, but her back was stiff with resentment.

  Soraya cared nothing for her—all her attention was focused on the man, and she blinked back tears and faced him squarely. “Where are they?”

  “Ah . . . well, I don’t exactly . . .”

  Soraya had come to detest the sight of pity in men’s eyes.

  “The Hrum took them,” she finished calmly.

  She had known it ever since she’d seen the stains around the grating. Only Sudaba would have ordered that, and the Hrum only captured those who fought them. So if they weren’t dead, Soraya knew what had become of them. And curse her mother for the daughter of Kanarang! Only one possessed by the djinn of destruction would have committed such folly.

  The man was talking about the battle at the manor. He’d been too old to take part himself, but many of the village’s younger men had been there.

  Marlis slapped a mug onto the hearthstone in front of Soraya, so abruptly that hot tea splashed over the side. Soraya opened her mouth to demand a clean mug and less insolence, and stopped at the blaze of anger and satisfaction in the woman’s eyes.

  If I make them too angry, they don’t have to tell me anything.

  A chill passed down Soraya’s spine. She was at the mercy of these peasants. Oh, they wouldn’t dare harm her, but if they refused to aid her, to tell her where Sudaba and Merdas had been taken, there was nothing Soraya could do about it. And even more chilling, there was nothing to stop them from telling the Hrum where she had gone.

  The man, sensing her tension, had fallen silent.

  “I thank you,” said Soraya. Even to her, the words sounded stiff and unnatural. Marlis snorted. Soraya scowled, but she had to go on. “I appreciate your telling me this. Your hospitality.” As if hospitality wasn’t the clear duty of any house—especially to a deghass! Peasant manners. Her father had tried to teach Soraya about them. Why hadn’t she paid more attention?

  “That’s all right, Lady,” the man said gently. “We’re glad to be helping you.”

  “For your father’s sake,” Marlis added.

  Clearly not for hers. But why did this woman dislike her so? Soraya didn’t remember being particularly unkind to her mother’s maids.

  “Ah, he was a fine master, the high commander,” said the old man. “We were sore grieved to hear of his death, and that’s Azura’s truth. He must have hurt the Hrum bad before he . . . um . . .”

  “Died,” said Soraya calmly. She’d had weeks to face it, but even though her voice was calm, she felt the annoying tears slide down her face again. She wiped them away and picked up the tea. It was scorching hot, and bitterly strong. It helped.

  “Well, yes,” said the man awkwardly. “But the Hrum have taken Desafon, so they say, and are moving right on to the gahn’s city. And they’re not bothering much with anything along the way, so the commander must have been angering them plenty, for them to send a squadron this far off the Trade Road just to loot one manor and—”

  “And take two slaves.” Soraya sipped the tea again. Alive, she reminded herself. That’s the important thing.

  “Oh, they took more than two. All the lads they captured, who had helped with the defense, were hauled off with ’em.” For the first time, anger stirred in the old man’s voice.

  Soraya cared nothing for peasant slaves, but awareness of his helpless fury, his caring, pulsed through her. She had been more aware of the people she met on the road, but she’d put that down to fear—and despite the woman’s hostility, she didn’t fear these people. Was this extra awareness of how they reacted some effect of the magic the Suud had taught her? Or was it just that in learning to see the Suud as people, she had learned to see people in a way she hadn’t before?

  Perhaps Marlis had reason to dislike her. Either way, it didn’t matter.

  “Where did the Hrum take them?” Soraya asked quietly. “Do you know?”

  “Main army camp,” said the man promptly. “Least, that’s what we heard. All the slaves, all the loot, goes to the main camp, to be writ down before they ship them off.”

  “Well, that shouldn’t be too hard to find.” Soraya finished her tea and set the mug on the hearth. She stood, turning toward the door. The moon would rise shortly, and the road was sufficiently familiar that she could manage until it did.

  “Here, you’re not going now,” the man protested. “It’s being night!”

  “I traveled nights all down the Trade Road,” Soraya told him. “I only came on in the light today because . . . because I couldn’t sleep.” So near to home, hope and fear had flooded through her nerves. But Sudaba and Merdas were alive. As long as they lived, she could find a way to free them.

  “But—”

  “I’ll be all right,” Soraya interrupted. “My horse will have scented the village herd. She’ll be grazing beside their pen. She’s slow, but sound. She’ll get me there. After that . . .”

  She didn’t know what she’d do after that.

  “Lady.” It was Marlis who spoke, and for the first time, her voice held something besides resentment. “You’re never going to the Hrum’s camp. There’s an army there. They’ll take you too, or kill you, or—”

  “I’ll have to find a way to avoid that,” said Soraya, wry humor prickling through her weariness. “But if the Hrum camp is where my mother and brother are, then that’s where I’m going.”

  The woman’s eyes met hers, lighter brown than most peasants—they looked faded. “You’re not afraid?”

  Soraya’s head lifted proudly. “I’m a deghass.” A deghass didn’t let fear stop her.

  “Well, that’s as may be,” said the man. “But even a deghass has to sleep. You’ll spend the night in our bed, if you’d be willing to sleep so humble. It’s not what you’re used to, but it’s clean, and as good a mattress as any the village can offer.”

  Sleep. In a bed, in a warm room, instead of in the brush beside some stream. It was infinitely tempting, but . . .

  “I should go on. I could be a third of the way to the Trade Road by morning.”

  “Yes, and sleep the day away, and by dusk you’ll be in exactly the same place you’d be in if you spent the night here and traveled in the day! Your father commanded an army, Lady. Let me ask you just one question: What would he be saying to you right now?”

  The words sounded in her mind as clearly as if her father had spoken them. “That to march day and night to a battle, and arrive too tired to fight, is so stupid that only a deghan would do it.”

  The weak, foolish tears were flowing down her cheeks again, but thinking of her father wasn’t quite as painful this time. And as always, he was right.

  “I thank you for your hospitality,” said Soraya. “Truly.” She smiled at them, and to her astonishment, Marlis smiled back.

  CHAPTER TWO

  JIAAN

  WHEN THE SENTRIES dispatched a messenger to tell Jiaan that Markhan and Kaluud were on the road to the croft, his first impulse was to flee. But a commander couldn’t run from his own subordinates, so Jiaan folded his good arm over the arm his mending collarbon
e still kept in a sling, and stepped out in front of the farmhouse to wait for them. In the open, as a commander of an army—such as it was—should.

  Less than three hundred men had escaped the Hrum on that disastrous day—over a month ago now. And of those who’d escaped, over a hundred had chosen to return to their homes and try to keep the Hrum from learning that they’d ever been soldiers. For the Hrum captured all who fought against them, and sent them off to their own lands as slaves. All who fought them and survived.

  Jiaan pushed down the wave of grief. He refused to let Markhan and Kaluud see him weep.

  But over a hundred and fifty men, the shattered remains of Farsala’s army, had followed Jiaan to the hidden croft. Only one of them was a deghan—the rest were just the archers and infantry who had supported the deghans’ mounted charge. And crazy to the last man, to have followed him to this place in the preposterous hope that they could hold some part of Farsala till the Hrum’s year was over. And Jiaan himself the craziest of them all. He blushed to think what his father would have said.

  It had surprised him, arriving at the croft with his battered, exhausted men, to find that the lady Soraya and the family who had cared for her were gone. The only reason Jiaan had known about this place was because his father had selected him to see the lady into hiding last fall. The lady—she was his half sister, the only blood kin he had left. Not that she had ever seen him as anything but a servant. Jiaan had spent his whole life wishing that his father would call him “son.” He knew that the lady Soraya would never even think of calling him “brother.”

  But the hoofbeats were approaching now—at a gallop, despite the muddy, rocky road. The last of the snow had finally melted, even in the shadow of the trees, but the road was still slick and treacherous.

  The sound brought Fasal out of the barn they had converted into a carpenter’s shop, to build shelter for all his troops and for the others they hoped might come to join them.

  Sawdust frosted the straight, black hair of the only deghan who had survived the battle to follow Jiaan into hiding, and Jiaan nodded grudging approval. Fasal had worked as hard as any of them, gathering supplies on the way to the croft, cutting timber, inventorying and repairing what few weapons they had. Of course, he’d shirked the menial tasks of cooking and digging latrines, but Jiaan knew that was too much to expect. In all fairness, Fasal had worked hard. It was only in every other way he’d been an unmitigated annoyance.

  “Who comes?” Fasal demanded. He reached for the hilt of the sword he persisted in wearing, even though it was a hazard to him and all around him when felling trees. It wasn’t a tone anyone should use to their commander, but since the question wasn’t unreasonable Jiaan decided to overlook it.

  “Markhan and Kaluud.” Jiaan kept his voice neutral, and only winced inwardly at the way Fasal’s face brightened.

  “Well, about time! It shouldn’t have taken them this long to get here, even from Dugaz.”

  Jiaan’s father had sent them away with a message for the governor of Dugaz, Farsala’s violent, fever-ridden port, shortly before the battle. Jiaan wasn’t certain if his father had done it to get them out of his own way, or to keep them from making trouble—more trouble—for Jiaan. His father had granted Jiaan far greater rank than was permitted by his birth. All the true-born deghans had disliked him for it, but Markhan and Kaluud had been two of the worst. He had prayed they wouldn’t be able to find this place. In fact . . .

  “How in Azura’s name did they know where we are?” Annoyance gave way to alarm. If the army’s presence at this hidden croft became known, the Hrum might be able to find them too.

  “Don’t sound so panicked,” said Fasal. “I sent one of my grooms for them. I knew they couldn’t get back to us otherwise. Hiding like rabbits, the way we are.”

  Jiaan opened his mouth to answer in kind, but Markhan and Kaluud were clattering into the yard, pulling their muddy, blowing horses to a halt.

  “Fasal! What in Azura’s name is happening? Your man wouldn’t tell us anything except that you had survived, and he was to guide us to the army.”

  It was Markhan who spoke as they slid from their saddles, but Kaluud was the first to reach Fasal. They seized each other’s wrists in a warrior’s greeting, but it wasn’t enough, and they ended in a three-way embrace, thumping one another’s backs. Three heads of glossy, black hair shone in the sun. Jiaan, standing with his arms folded, thought of his own peasant-brown curls and regarded them with distinctly mixed emotions.

  After only a moment they pulled apart, though it seemed to Jiaan that Fasal let the others go reluctantly.

  “So what happened?” Kaluud asked.

  Fasal took a deep, steadying breath. “You know the army was defeated?”

  “Of course. The whole countryside knows that, and the Hrum are advancing. But how could we be defeated? We had assembled the mightiest army in Farsala’s history!”

  For a moment Kaluud looked his age—eighteen, the same as Jiaan and Markhan. Fasal was actually a year younger, but his face was old with bitterness as he replied.

  “They had lances. Very long, over five yards. We didn’t know—who could have imagined men wielding something like that? They brought them up as we charged, and killed the horses.”

  He had to stop and swallow, and Jiaan grew cold remembering the sound of the chargers’ screams. At least Rakesh was healing well. The high commander must have somehow pulled his steed aside in those last, impossible seconds, for Rakesh had suffered only a deep gash in his shoulder.

  “With the horses dead,” Fasal went on, “we had no choice but to fight them on foot.” He took another breath, but found no further words, and ended with a silent gesture of despair.

  In truth, no more needed to be said. The Farsalan deghans were—had been—cavalry, all their fighting methods dependent on their agile, well-trained horses. And the Hrum were the best infantry in the world. The deghans hadn’t stood a chance.

  Kaluud and Markhan exchanged dismayed glances.

  “I see,” said Markhan quietly.

  Fasal’s groom rode into the yard, breaking the moment of silence. Jiaan heard the door open behind him as men began to emerge from the farmhouse that now doubled as the camp’s kitchen and the headquarters of Farsala’s so-called army.

  No, it is an army, Jiaan told himself. No matter how small and battered. My army. He didn’t know whether to laugh or weep.

  He hadn’t wanted to command, the night after the battle, as survivors slowly found their way to the fire he had kindled. But Fasal had ordered the handful of injured, exhausted men to attack the Hrum camp, to try to rescue the prisoners. Ridden with guilt for having survived when their friends and comrades had fallen, and trained from childhood to obey their deghan leaders, the men would have tried—if Jiaan hadn’t intervened. He had taken command in his father’s name, because he knew it was what his father would have wanted. He just wished he knew what to do with it.

  Men were coming from the barn too, and the woods where the barracks were being built, as word of the new arrivals spread.

  Fasal stiffened his spine, bracing himself for bad news, and turned to Kaluud. “You said the Hrum were advancing?”

  “They took Desafon shortly after the battle,” said Kaluud. “You’ve probably heard that?”

  Fasal nodded, and but now Kaluud hesitated. “Well, they marched straight to Setesafon. The city guard fought. They fought like lions, the country folk said, but Setesafon is too open. The palace was even worse. You remember. All those gardens. The Hrum . . .”

  “They took Setesafon two days before we reached it,” Markhan finished harshly. “The gahn is dead, executed in sight of the whole city.” A murmur of dismay rippled through the listening crowd, but Jiaan had expected it. “His wife and his children, the young heir, are in the Hrum’s slave pens now—if they haven’t been shipped out already. That’s why we made such haste to join you. The first thing we must do is free the heir. But your groom found us at Setesafon an
d it took us over a week to get here, so I hope the army isn’t too far off.”

  He looked around the yard, now filled with somber, listening men. “Is it much farther? Your man said you were with them.”

  “Markhan.” Fasal’s voice was rough. “This is the army. All that’s left of it.”

  “What!” Markhan looked at the crowd again—fewer men than a small village could boast. “But that’s . . . There were almost seven hundred deghans in the army! Where are they?”

  There had been almost seven thousand other men in that army, Jiaan remembered dryly.

  “Dead,” said Fasal. “Dead or enslaved. The commander is dead. Our fathers are dead. We’re all that’s left.”

  “But . . .” Markhan shook his head, as if trying to shake off the truth. Kaluud was gripping his stomach as if it hurt him, his golden brown skin pale. Jiaan felt a flash of pure pity.

  “But . . . Who’s in command then?” Markhan asked.

  “That would be me,” said Jiaan. For a wonder, his voice didn’t squeak.

  “What? Don’t be ridiculous. By what possible authority would you command?”

  So much for pity. “By my authority as High Commander Merahb’s son,” said Jiaan. He had spoken those words the first time right after the battle, and a few times since, but it still felt like taking off his clothes in the middle of the town square on market day.

  “His peasant-born bastard,” said Markhan. “The commander may have granted you some rank, but only a true-born son inherits. And high commander isn’t an inherited title at all.”

  “That’s true. But since the gahn is dead and can’t appoint a new commander, you’ll have to make do with me. Peasant-born bastard or not.”

  The men who’d gathered around them were peasant-born bastards themselves, or the descendants of such. Only those with some deghan blood were trained to fight, even if they only served as support troops. Peasant-born support troops didn’t talk back to deghans, no matter how idiotic their attitudes, but Jiaan could feel the subtle shift of the crowd as those standing nearby moved to stand behind him, and even those who didn’t move somehow made their allegiance clear.