by Bell, Hilari
“But . . .” Kaluud looked at Fasal, who nodded resentful confirmation.
“There’s no one else left.”
“There’s us,” Kaluud protested. “We’re deghans, at least.”
The silence was so deep Jiaan could hear the soft wind soughing in the pine branches.
Markhan gripped Kaluud’s arm. He might be a fool, but he wasn’t that stupid. “Very well, Commander. We’ve reported to you that the gahn is slain and his heir taken. How do you plan to go about freeing him?”
Jiaan tried not to wince. He hated moments like this. “I don’t. In Azura’s name, think! What good would a four-year-old gahn do anyone now? The best way to get him back, to get back all who survive, is to withstand the Hrum for a year. Just like my fath—the commander planned. Or had you forgotten about that?”
Judging by their expressions they had forgotten, and Jiaan could hardly blame them. The Hrum’s policy of giving their own commanders one year from the first battle to complete their conquest—and of making a peaceful alliance if they failed—seemed absurd to Jiaan too. But his father had confirmed and reconfirmed it.
If the Hrum hadn’t taken all major cities, and pacified most of the countryside as well, at the end of a year, the Hrum would either offer Farsala a peaceful and profitable alliance, or they would leave them alone. And when the Hrum began negotiations, the first thing they would offer was the return of all the Farsalan slaves.
But the Hrum preferred to add the wealth and manpower of other nations directly into their army and tax base. Only if the price of conquest proved too high, would they offer alliance and peace. The Hrum had attacked thirty-one countries in the last two centuries, and there were only three allied states. So clearly, resisting for a year was harder than it sounded—Farsala had ten and a half months to go.
Even the commander, with all the information he had gathered, all his experience, had underestimated the Hrum. Maybe Markhan and Kaluud were right—there had to be someone more qualified than an eighteen-year-old, half-blood bastard to take command. But he wasn’t here now, and Jiaan was. He knew what his father would have said about that.
“The Hrum have smashed our army,” said Markhan slowly. “They’ve taken Desafon. They’ve taken Setesafon, destroyed the guard, and killed the gahn. Just how do you propose to stop them? Commander.”
“At Mazad,” said Jiaan deliberately, and saw all three of them look suddenly, grudgingly thoughtful.
“But Mazad’s a tradesman’s city,” Kaluud protested. “If Setesafon’s guard couldn’t hold out—”
“Mazad has walls,” said Jiaan. “Walls, and supplies, and deep wells, and its citizens are prepared for sieges.”
He watched their faces brighten further, and felt something approaching despair. His father had led the deghans like this, offering hope and pride as the carrot—since he wasn’t allowed, he’d once commented dryly, to hit them with a stick.
But how could they fail to realize that the Hrum must have conquered hundreds of walled cities? Jiaan was certainly aware of it.
“Mazad is also a city of weapon-smiths,” Jiaan went on. “So hopefully they can figure out how to make swords that won’t break like dry wood against the Hrum’s. I don’t know if you heard that, about the battle, but the rumors are true. The Hrum’s steel is stronger than ours.”
Jiaan’s own sword had shattered on a Hrum blade, leaving him at his opponent’s mercy. And perhaps he’d shown mercy, for he’d only knocked Jiaan out with his shield. The line of battle had passed over Jiaan when the Hrum advanced, leaving him alive. There were still times when he regretted that, but they were growing farther apart.
“Is that how they beat us?” Kaluud demanded suddenly. “When we heard about the battle, I couldn’t believe . . .”
Jiaan sighed. “Not really. They beat us when they broke our charge with their lances. But the swords were the reason they beat us so badly. That so many died.”
He knew it was true. The traitor who had lured Jiaan, all unknowing, into revealing the Farsalan battle plan, really had very little to do with their defeat. But he would still die, as soon as Jiaan found him. That wouldn’t happen today, though. Probably not till the land was free of the Hrum. Then there would be time for vengeance. But to free Farsala from the Hrum . . .
“It all hangs on Mazad,” Jiaan continued. “We have to concentrate on supporting them. I haven’t been to the city myself yet, but I’ve sent messages to the governor explaining the situation, and he’s confident he can hold out till next spring. Our job will be to harass the Hrum besiegers, and for that we’ll need more men and better weapons, so—”
“So you intend to sulk in hiding while the heir—our gahn!—is dragged off into slavery, in the hope that one day the Hrum will condescend to give him back?” Kaluud asked contemptuously.
Fasal had described Jiaan’s plan in exactly the same tone, if not quite the same words. Could none of them see beyond their honor to the facts? Jiaan sighed. “We don’t have the men, or the horses, or the—”
“Or the courage,” said Kaluud. “Which is why deghans fight and peasants farm, and putting half bloods in positions they can’t handle always fails. If the commander had seen that, if he’d had a deghan at his back, he might be alive today!”
That thought had occurred to Jiaan himself, in the deeps of the night. If only his father had appointed a deghan, a real fighter, to carry his banner, instead of a jumped-up archer who fell and broke his collarbone when his horse shied at the Hrum’s lances. If Jiaan had cared less about earning the others’ respect, if he’d had the sense to refuse the honor when his father offered it, would the commander still be alive?
In the morning light, he knew it wasn’t true. But hearing it spoken aloud struck him dumb, and he felt his face grow cold, which probably meant it was pale. A fine picture of a commander that presented.
Jiaan opened his mouth to reply, with no idea what he was going to say, but Fasal beat him to it.
“No,” he said firmly. “I didn’t see him fight—I was in another part of the line—but he was taken out by a Hrum soldier when his sword broke, just like half the deghans who died that day. And the commander survived till the very end. When it was clear that Farsala had lost, he challenged the Hrum to send a champion for single combat. Instead, they sent archers and murdered him. Right there in the circle, Razm take them. There was nothing Jiaan could have done except die, or be captured with the rest of them. Nothing anyone could have done.”
He looked up to meet Jiaan’s astonished gaze, determination to be fair written all over his open face. How like a deghan to be fair, just as you were set to bid the djinn to take the lot of them.
“It’s still cowardice—peasant cowardice—for us to cower here like jackals while the lions plunder at will,” Kaluud objected.
At least he was right about one thing—the Hrum were more like lions than the spawn of Razm, the djinn of cowardice, for which Fasal so often cursed them. Jiaan was suddenly tired of all of them. And he was done with trying to be liked.
“It was deghan courage that got us into this mess in the first place,” he said coldly. “We need a secure base, a larger force, and a realistic objective before we do anything. You can help, or you can leave. Those are your only choices.”
He felt like an idiot, spouting orders that way. But he also felt the support of the men around him—their willingness to uphold his judgment.
Though Azura only knew what he’d do if the idiots chose to leave. Bad enough that the traitor knew where this place was—but as long as no one knew the army was here, it shouldn’t matter. Right now the Hrum had no way of knowing the Farsalan army still existed, but if word got out . . . No, they were deghans. There was no doubt how they would choose.
Kaluud’s face was dark with anger. Markhan looked at Jiaan intently, but whatever he was looking for, he didn’t seem to find it. Jiaan waited.
“Stay,” Markhan spat. Kaluud nodded.
Fasal’s sigh of relief wa
s audible even where Jiaan stood. “I’ll show you where to put your horses.”
Both Markhan and Kaluud were glaring at Jiaan over their shoulders as they followed Fasal toward the horse pens, but they went.
He started to sag with relief, then caught himself and straightened his shoulders. At least he could try to look like a commander.
His father had argued with the deghans under his command—it had never left him clammy-palmed, his heart pounding with sick tension. His father had cursed them up one side and down the other, showed them a carrot or two, and they’d followed him like geese flying after their leader. His father could handle them. His father had been one of them.
Jiaan wasn’t one of them, and he wasn’t his father either. But he was the best commander Farsala had left, so he was stuck with the job. Djinn take the lot of them.
CHAPTER THREE
KAVI
KAVI REACHED Setesafon just before the Hrum’s new curfew took effect. It was dusk but he had till full dark to get off the street—and if he could show the tattoo on his shoulder, no curfew sentry would be hauling him in. But the house he sought was only a laundry in the suburbs, not some grand manor in the heart of the city. He could get there before dark.
It was the closest thing to a home he had, and part of him dreaded to arrive. If anything had happened to Nadi’s family, he’d never be able to forgive himself. He was having a hard enough time with forgiveness, anyway.
But there was little sign of fighting around the small shops and homes he passed. Nothing burned. No blood stains in the gutters. Most of the blood had been shed over a month ago, in a faraway field, and even if it hadn’t been his folks doing the bleeding, it still haunted Kavi’s dreams. The thought of the survivors, taken off to be slaves in foreign lands, bothered him even in the daylight. But the Hrum didn’t treat their slaves badly, not like the Kadeshi. There was time to redeem himself—to make things right.
And the Hrum hadn’t lied about being merciful where there was no resistance. A few broken shutters, already replaced, were the worst damage he’d seen. That, and the wariness in the shopkeepers’ eyes as they pulled in their wares and closed up. Everyone still in the streets was seeking refuge now.
No, the Hrum hadn’t lied when they promised that his folk would survive, mostly unscathed. Mind, they hadn’t mentioned they’d be imposing curfews, but that was supposed to be a “temporary measure.”
What was it his old master, Tebin, used to say? “There’s nothing as permanent as a temporary tax.” But it was the deghans who’d imposed those taxes, who’d broken their own laws with impunity, who had stolen a man’s trade and left him to rebuild from nothing. Kavi flexed his scarred right hand as far as he could, not quite fully open, not quite fully closed. The deghans were gone, and he couldn’t be too sorry for having had a hand in that.
The laundry was already dark. It usually closed a bit early—and Nadi was the kind who’d let her workers go even earlier, to be certain they made it home by curfew. The house beside the laundry, built by master stonemasons, showed no light around the well-fitted door, but a faint glow around the shutters revealed human presence within.
Kavi took a deep breath, stepped up to the door, and knocked. It was built of heavy planks, and he could hear nothing beyond it—he almost jumped when the door opened, revealing Nadi’s worried face.
“Who in the . . . Kavi!”
“Is everything all right?” they both asked simultaneously, and Nadi snorted.
“Get in before the patrol comes by. Don’t you know about the curfew? Or are you being reckless enough not to care? Where’s Duckie?”
She stood aside to admit him—a plain, middle-aged woman, worn by work and care. She was the linchpin of the small family that Kavi had unofficially adopted. She was his partner in their scheme to sell gold-covered bronze for the price of solid goods. She was the closest thing to a mother that he had.
“I left Duckie in one of the farms outside the city, along with my wares, for I’m not here to sell or buy,” Kavi assured her. “Are you all right, and the children? Sim and Hama?”
“We’re all fine, lad, and the young ones too. Though we were worried about you, with those Hrum roaming the—”
“Kavi!” It was a shrill, childish shriek, but there was nothing childish about the stout staff Sim cast aside as he hurtled forward to embrace his friend.
“Quiet, imp, you’ll wake the little ones.” Hama paused to sheathe the knife she held before she followed her brother into Kavi’s arms. If anything, she was thinner and more gangly-awkward than she’d been when he’d seen her last. He was the one who had taught her how to hide a knife under her vest like that. And many of the other skills she’d used, selling the gold-bronze pieces Kavi had forged.
“Hama’s working in the laundry now,” Nadi told him. “They’re far too lawful, these Hrum. If anyone has succeeded in bribing any of ’em, I haven’t heard about it.”
“Well, that’s being a good thing, isn’t it?” Kavi asked. “In the long run at least.”
“True enough,” Nadi concurred, but her eyes were worried.
And if Nadi was arming the older children before she’d open the door, there must be more tension in the city than he’d thought.
“They’re teaching me to fight!” Sim exclaimed.
Kavi froze, then said casually, “I’d heard they were drafting every man, mule, and dog into the army, but aren’t you a bit young?” Sim was eleven, no, twelve now, if he was remembering rightly.
“They’re not drafting him yet,” said Nadi, laying a hand on her son’s shoulder. He was taller than when Kavi had seen him last. “Just starting to train him up for the future.” She sounded calm too, but Kavi saw fear in her eyes.
Anger flared. “In Desafon they said they only drafted men fit to fight, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three, to serve for five years,” said Kavi. In all fairness, that was exactly what Patrius had told Kavi before the Hrum invaded—all men fit to fight. After the battle Strategus Garren—Governor Garren, he was now—had announced the draft to all the people of Desafon and given them three months to set their lives in order before reporting. Patrius had been astonished when Kavi burst into his tent and accused him of lying. But Kavi had told him that Farsalan peasants never fought, that that was a deghan’s job.
He should have realized that an army like the Hrum’s, that admitted women into its ranks, would also consider peasants fit to fight. It was Kavi who had assumed that the Hrum wouldn’t consider making peasants into warriors, any more than the deghans had.
When the Hrum patrol had captured him, Kavi’s one intention had been to lie fast enough to survive and escape. It was only after the long, rainy night he’d spent talking to Patrius, that he had come to believe that the Hrum would be better masters than the deghans. And they were, in many ways. But now that the invasion was upon them, the few ways the Hrum weren’t better seemed to be mattering more.
“Is it safe for you to be here?” Nadi asked quietly. “You’re nineteen. I’d think you’d want to stay as far from the Hrum as possible. In fact, I wondered . . . We were worried about you.”
“Near twenty now,” Kavi told her. “But you needn’t fear for me.” He held up his scarred hand. “This isn’t holding a sword any better than it will a hammer.” The relief in Nadi’s face lightened his heart. There weren’t many in this world who worried about him. “But what’s this about Sim being drafted at twelve?”
“It’s only for two marks each morning,” said Sim, with a slightly guilty glance at his mother. “And for now it’s just building strength and endurance. They make us lift things over and over, and run forever. But when we get strong enough, we get to start with a sword. Just a wooden one at first, but . . .”
He babbled on, as Nadi went to get a bowl of bean-and-sweet-potato porridge left over from the family’s supper, and Hama made up a pallet for Kavi in front of the fire. Hama even managed to push in a few sentences. It seemed working in the laundry w
as boring after stealing gold and selling fake pots, but her mother was giving her more and more responsibility, and some of the little ones were becoming old enough to help. And the business was doing well, Sim chimed in. Well enough they could spare him for a few marks in the morning. The fighting had shut things down for several days, for folk were afraid to go out. But now, with the Hrum patrols about, it was actually safer on the streets than it had been under the old, corrupt city guard.
The rule of law, just as Patrius had promised. And better for his folks than the deghans’ rule, just as Kavi himself had promised. He hadn’t been wholly wrong.
Still, he wasn’t surprised the next morning, that after Sim went to his training, Nadi sent Hama and the young ones to open the laundry without her.
Nor did Hama seem surprised, though Kavi could tell that her mother’s trust pleased her. He waited as Nadi cleared up the breakfast dishes, wrapped the leftover bread in a tight-woven cloth, and finally brought the kettle over to refill their mugs.
“I hesitate to ask for more help, after all you’ve done for us.” She put the kettle down on the hearth and sat on the bench opposite Kavi as she spoke. “No, that’s a lie. I don’t like it, but it doesn’t look like I’m going to hesitate for a moment, does it now?”
Kavi grinned. “I’d be insulted if you hesitated, and you know it too. But what’s the problem? The business is doing well, all the children are well and happy—even Hama, for all she says she’s bored.”
“It’s Sim. No, it’s not him, it’s those Flame-begot Hrum and their draft. I’m not having Sim go off to die in some war. I lost my husband to the accident. I’m not sending Sim off to fight—nor Pesh when he’s older. He’s already tagging at Sim’s heels, trying to fight him with the laundry paddles.”
Kavi turned his mug in circles on the table. “They aren’t always fighting. They tell me it’s the Hrum army that built those stone roads they brag on so much, and other things as well. A stonemason’s son should fit right in.”