“You go back,” said Arlin to me, as though speaking to a horse, or a dog, and by God I found myself obeying her. I felt her hand stroke my hair as I rose to leave, and I glanced back to see that it wasn’t her lean face over me, but that of Dowln.
“It is hard for you,” he said, not in Velonyie. His voice was filled with compassion.
I thought I was alone, but the young duke was still with me, trembling with human fear perhaps, or with the need to rush to the king’s side. “I want you to know,” he whispered, so loudly he spat into the air, “… that before I saw you this spring, I’d seen you before. All my life I’ve seen your goblin face out of the corner of my eye. In the house you think should have been yours.”
I had forgotten—I, who was the image of the Minsanaur of Rezhmia—that I was also a ghost in the halls of Norwess. It was too much to accept, here in the dark, and at the edge of death, and I didn’t answer him.
“Well, perhaps you will have it after all, as your father intended.” He started to squirm away from me over the ground and I could think of only one thing to say, which was “I wouldn’t take it, my lord. I don’t want any of it. I have better.”
And as he flinched away I knew I had been cruel.
I sneaked back among the dead and I cried out like a wounded man, as I had been commanded. I had no difficulty acting the part; I was weary and full of fear. The sentry line broke without resistance, and the night became lively with brave, blind men searching by touch among the corpses. I remember someone called out to me that Garel was dead, but that old Haimin would bring me in—that they had no opium but still some brandy. That there was a doctor somewhere in the line.
No one even asked my name.
I felt a huge respect for these Rezhmian sentries, who were such good men and such bad sentries. I was appalled that this game might end in my having to kill them, or them me. But they were soldiers and I was only a young tramp, used to nights without light. I avoided them for ten minutes and would have avoided them all night, except that the great bell was rung, and all the sentries flung themselves back to their positions.
I heard my name called by the Emperor of Rezhmia, and then the same awkward syllables from Rudof of Velonya. Before I could decide whether to respond, the two greatest rulers of the northern world shouted for me together, the aged treble and the young king’s full tenor. The sentries spun in place, astonished, and in the distance I heard catcalls from the besieging army. I answered as respectfully as a man might answer two rulers at once, but as I was not confident of my welcome, I crawled through the sentry line on my belly and came in shadow to the door of the pavilion, where the height of King Rudof almost eclipsed the slight form of the Sanaur of Rezhmia.
“I am here, sir,” I said. “I am here, Grandfather,” and both men started. Their vision had been ruined by the lamplight within. Rudof grabbed me by the arm and pulled me through the door.
Dowln was drying his hair in a towel. Arlin was eating bread and gravy with a soldier’s singlemindedness. The young duke sat on a stool in the corer of the pavilion, looking like a man who wished only to die. There was no one else in the room.
It was the ’naur who spoke to me first. He gestured to the tall blond, so recently his slave, and he hissed at me, “I thought I told you to take him to safety! I asked nothing else of you but that you take him to safety!”
Dowln answered without taking his face out of the towel. “How, master? What safety was there for them or for me, with your entire army descending upon Warvala? By the way; did you choose Warvala because I told you how entertaining it was? Because of my stories of the jewel-cutters and the jewel merchants and the jewel thieves? A poor reward to the place, and to my friends in the place.”
I was astounded in the middle of my astonishment. I—who treated the King of Velonya with so little respect—could not believe Dowln’s rudeness.
Sanaur Mynauzet was abusing me and would not be distracted by Dowln. “You could have put him on a horse and sent him north. It would have cost you little.”
“How could any of us send the man north, south, or anywhere?” said Arlin, sounding much like you in your driest irony. “You freed him, didn’t you? Whom the Sanaur of Rezhmia calls a free man, can any of us treat as a slave?”
King Rudof glanced from the tall woman to the short emperor, his green eyes gleaming, and inexhaustible energy and curiosity in his stance. I didn’t want to fence with the old man, who was so clearly in pain about Dowln’s danger. “Forgive me, ’Naur. Grandfather. He told me that many lives depended upon my bringing him with us.”
“Rezhmian lives, or of your own kind? Or did he mean the tens of thousands of savages that have us trapped like bison?”
So Arlin had been right. I had not really believed it was Duke Leoue’s men who had trampled the Rezhmian cavalry, but to hear that it was Naiish for certain was to hear us condemned to death. All of us. I was looking not at the emperor but at a wax candle sitting upon his map table, and the light of it dissolved and turned colorful in the prisms of the tears in my eyes.
“I did not ask whose lives, Grandfather,” I answered him, and without invitation, I sat down beside Arlin and drank a long glass of the juice of the fresh harvest.
Rezhmia by the sea had been so beautiful.
King Rudof cleared his throat, and spoke in his clean but accented Rayzhia. “So. Velonya is safe—from this force, at least. And the land of Rezhmia is safe, too. The Red Whips will never extend their violence over the edge of the plains. It is only that all here are going to die.”
He gazed calmly from one face to another. King Rudof was still full of spirit; that is his birth-gift. “Who is your heir, now, Emperor of Rezhmia, since Reingish proved disloyal?”
The old sanaur had one hand over the shoulder of his former slave. He had to raise that hand so far above his own shoulder, it was like a man comforting a horse. “I don’t know, sir—that is the inadequate title they grant you, isn’t it? ‘Sir’? There are three or four of equal blood-standing. I have written my choice, but whether that holds after tonight I cannot tell. There will be a man ready to take the task, whatever.”
King Rudof’s bristly orange eyebrows rose. “You take the matter easily, Emperor.”
The old man sighed. “I am eighty-two years old. I have outlived many heirs. What about you? If you are so careful of your line, why did you commit such idiocy as to break into our camp?”
Now the king laughed outright. “Well, you see, ’Naur, I expected you were about to overrun my city. And I had only two hundred soldiers under my command. Sometimes idiocy is an inspiration of genius.”
The emperor put his hands upon his lap and worked to understand this. “But not this time. After what happened to your father’s invasion, when I was a young man…” He sighed.
“Ah, but you see we have always believed the Naiish were loyal to you, Sanaur of Rezhmia. Loosely loyal.”
The emperor’s wrinkles retreated from his eyes, for just a moment. “What a barbaric thought! Is a mad dog loyal, even loosely? Besides, they are obviously more of your blood than ours.”
Arlin made a rustling, to deflect national angers. “I suggest, sir, Sanaur, that those of us in this room exit the situation as we came, darkly and without noise. The riders’ west line is weakest, and we have some chance of making it back to where we left the horses.”
The old man snorted. “Leave my men to die and go as hostage? Why? My old life is worth nothing to my people if not as a figurehead.”
King Rudof stood, and paced, and glared at the Emperor of Rezhmia. “No, ’Naur. Not as a hostage. Call off your infantry, which is probably murdering my people along the sea road even now, and ride with us as a free partner.”
Now the old emperor laughed. “Of course. You have nothing to lose in that offer, have you? Call off the war you didn’t want and can’t resist and one old man can go free. Great thanks for your generosity!”
I was stung by the emperor’s response, because I know
my king’s ridiculous generosity, and I knew the offer was Rudof at his best, not at his most politic. I thought the king would show his equally ridiculous temper, but he did not. I edged out the tent, hating arguments, but I heard him say, “Your war upon Velonya is over, Emperor, even if you are burning Morquenie now. There is nothing to win here but survival, or at least a quick death. The Naiish are not kind to captives…”
I remembered that the Velonyans had not been kind to a Naiish captive, once, but it did not seem the time to speak good of our common enemy. I let the tent flap down behind me.
In five minutes of listening outside, I knew that Arlin’s plan was doomed. I came back in to more rancorous argument, this time about the attacks upon the eastern villages. I cut both monarchs short and told them that the Naiish had closed the southern aspect and we were fully surrounded.
“What then?” asked Arlin, as though we two were alone.
I sat down on the bench with the King of Velonya and the Emperor of Rezhmia. “I suggest, my lords, that the company gear up as quietly as possible and strike to make an opening. Use whatever powder weapons can be prepared quickly and leave no one behind. Strike as one, toward the West, where they have only now taken position.”
The sanaur rubbed his old hands along his thighs. “We can be ready by dawn,” he said.
“No. They expect that. Only the Naiish fight by night. This is their great advantage. We must surprise them with their own tactics.”
Rudof stared at me intently, greenly. “And you think we have a hope of success, doing this?”
I was forced to honesty. “No,” I told them all. “It is only the best thing.”
For the first time since military school, I was dressed in armor, and for the first time in my life, in the light, silken Rezhmian armor, padded below with cotton pods. My arms felt slightly constrained in this gear, but after all what did a slight constraint matter? We were going out into hell.
Arlin wore her armor over her civilian clothing, remaining a secret always. The King of Velonya seemed to get a great enjoyment out of wearing the clothing of the people who had been his enemy until a few minutes ago. The duke refused to change.
The horses made the most noise, jingling in their harness. The men were by and large too frightened to talk.
It was a mad parade we prepared. Nothing like this had happened in the seven hundred years that Velonya and Rezhmia had been bad neighbors to one another. I saw the king and the emperor on matching gray horses, though the old man rode up behind his unfreeable servant, Dowln. The eunuch no longer cared about the impropriety of his riding a stallion.
The young duke rode in front of Rudof, and his face was whiter than the hide of the emperor’s horses. In front of all, between the king and the emperor, rode Arlin and I. She held out her hand to me, and though our horses were confused and restive, I took it and held it. Behind us stretched a ghostly line of horses of all colors and men of all sorts upon them, and behind us all, those who had lost their mounts. Last of all came the wagons full of wounded—pitiful imitations of hope.
Our way was now utterly obscured by fog, and the wet air held the smell of death close to the ground. I could see the efficient little fires of the Naiish all around, and I imagined their voices.
“You’re exuberant for a man going to slaughter,” said the emperor to King Rudof. “Are you so sure of your little son and heir, then?”
“I’m sure he’s my son,” answered Rudof. “And my heir. What more can a man know?”
Old “Grandfather” wasn’t finished with his teasing. “I’ve heard you don’t get on with your queen, royal cousin. Is that why you are so eager to leave life behind?”
Rudof made an exaggerated gesture of outrage. “By God’s faces, does the whole world know that story? Emperor, I tell you I do not leave life behind, and if it wants to be rid of me, it will have to leave me. Now let us do this thing, if we’re going to do it!”
They both turned to me, as though I was to give the signal. I was willing. “Why wait?” I thought aloud. “The Naiish will only learn more of what we’re planning.”
“So,” called the emperor. “The King of the Dead will lead us. So be it. Into the dark!”
But it was not I who spurred first into that solid fog. At least I don’t think so. It was Arlin, still with my hand in hers. We sprang forward together on fresh horses, war-trained, leaping puddles and leaping the dead. I shouted a battle cry, and to my own amazement, it was neither that of Velonya nor of the East, but the treble scream of the Naiish themselves. Arlin did it better.
I did not see the archer who struck me first, and I felt only a light blow against my chest padding. The stuff was more effective than I had imagined. I heard other shouts behind me and the thud of a horse hitting the ground. I heard the bang of powder charges from the line behind us, spooking our horses left and right.
It seemed we were dead already, in one of the worst hells of Zaquashlan folk religion, for enemies came grimacing out of the white night and disappeared again, either dead or left behind. Something drummed me lightly on the back; it was another Naiish arrow. Beside me, close as parade drill, Arlin was using her dowhee. She cursed at something.
Behind me was the king, and a little arrow bobbed from the padding of his side. I saw this arrow had gone in, puckering the silk around it. The king was still full of life, however, and his saber was flickering against the obscurity of the night. I did not see the duke, but there was no time to ask; we floundered on over the corpses.
Arlin’s horse hit mine, side-on, because she was assailed by two riders on barrel-ribbed ponies. I lost my objectivity and like any Velonyan I thought they looked inhuman. Like monkeys. Though I could see little enough of their faces or those of my friends. I could not help my lady, so I trusted to her blade and kept her back against the monkeys that came for me.
No one fights on horseback like the Naiish. I lost my dowhee and took another arrow in the padding of my thigh, and I heard my horse scream, though it did not go down.
Shoving between us was the white horse of the emperor, and upon it Dowln sat swaying and blinking, pricked as full of arrows as a thistle was full of thorns. He drove his beast between Arlin and me, and not by accident. The old emperor had a few arrows of his own in his armor, and was holding his slave upright with both hands. Again we found ourselves defending the enemy of our native country, while behind us the king made a back gate no Naiish warrior had the luck to open.
Even in the dim light I could see the stains spreading over Dowln’s linen. I wondered if some custom had forbidden him armor. The emperor, too, was watching, and though he had no weapon, he kicked the horse forward between us and shouted, in his old man’s voice, “Rezhmia! Rezhmia! For the pink city!”
The cry was picked up by a hundred men behind us, but then it was cut and broken by a loud voice close behind my ear.
“Velonya!” cried the king. “For the swan, and the blue and white! Velonya!” He charged to my left side, as though to show that the king himself was protecting this beggar.
Silence greeted this unexpected shout: silence from the men behind, and silence from around us. A few more arrows sang past, and I heard a babble of Naiish idiom, and then all movement stopped. I let my horse hang his head.
“Keep going,” said Rudof, shaking me by the shoulder. It hurt. “They’re preparing something, but now we have a chance to break through.”
I didn’t want to tell him I wasn’t sure we were breaking through. I distrusted the direction our wild charge had taken us, and besides, two torches approached decorously through the fog. It looked like parley.
Dowln was at my other side, and he was drenched in blood. “One more thing,” he gasped, and even his mouth was bleeding. “One more thing I will see. As I told you.”
The old emperor was weeping, and I do not think it was from fear. The wavering lights with their oil stink drew near, along with the clopping of ponies’ hooves. Two faces were so illumined. One was surrounded by fe
athers and silk. The other wore Naiish dress, but wore it like a costume. He looked at us—you looked at us—your damned eyes as expressionless as ever, and you lifted one hand above your head, and all the Naiish cattle horns blew, one starting another, until the round world was filled with them.
You trotted forward, and unless I misremember you said, “Sir, I think the Rezhmian incursion is over.”
The king came to meet you, his green eyes glassy and his breath hard in his throat. “You did this, Powl? You got all the tribes to obey one rule?”
“Why not?” you said. “It was done before, as I have reason to know.” He bowed to the Naiish magician beside him—the one I had traveled with, eaten with, and seen dressed as an old woman as well as an old man. “Even a Velonyan nobleman can learn from his mistakes. Though of course I did not expect to cause discourtesy to the Sanaur of Rezhmia himself. How could I know? Besides, I have no real power among the dryland people.” He bowed in the same fashion to Sanaur Mynauzet.
In front of that old man sat Dowln, though whether anything other than the emperor’s support held him in the saddle I do not know. He was conscious, however, and he said, “Earl of Daraln, I have waited to meet you. I am very glad it is now done.”
“And I am honored to meet you, prophet of the emperor.” You reached out your neatly groomed hand and touched Dowln, and then added, “Though I believe it is now too late.”
I glanced again and you were right. The man was dead. The old man held tightly to the frame so much larger than his own, and he held it upright. The golden collar twinkled in the torchlight.
“Leoue is dead,” said King Rudof. “He took a stroke in the neck, protecting me. He was scarcely more than a boy.”
You must have looked as though you had something to say about Leoue, or about his house, for the king continued. “And anything else about him, we will discuss later. The emperor is my guest, or else I am his. The matter is disputable. We must send messengers to the South, to stop meaningless bloodshed.”
The Lens of the World Trilogy Page 55