by Vale Aida
Anyas swore again. The injured man screamed and flung his arms around his head, gibbering a mottled stream of prayers and pleas and oaths. “Gods,” said Anyas. “Cerris, take your patrol and go see what’s happened. Don’t go far. There can’t be that many of them. Where’s the bloody stretcher?”
Cerris ran off, shouting. Someone else went to find the doctor. Alone once more with the postern sentries, Anyas bent and, ignoring the man’s protesting screeches, seized him under the arms to haul him back to standing. “You have to come in, sir. We need to close the gate. You’ll be safe inside. Now, if you please…”
They tottered through the gate. Adrenaline seemed to have lent the man some measure of strength: he did not stumble again, and barely leaned on Anyas at all. “Sit down,” said Anyas, once they had cleared the ringwall. There was another brazier by the postern, which would stave off the worst of the cold. “I have to check on my lieutenant. The doctor will be here any moment.”
“You are kind,” said the man. “In the next life you will have your reward.”
His voice had altered. It was languid now, and smoky, like the last blaze of a funeral pyre. Anyas looked up. The man was standing without help, meeting his gaze full on in the light of the brazier. His face was young and shapely, with deep golden skin that clung tight to the prominent curve of his high cheekbones. Beneath his auburn hair, his eyes were perfectly lucid, and shining with mischief. “Not in this life, I fear.”
In times like these, logic fled, to be replaced by a decade’s worth of hard-won battle instinct. Responding before he was aware of any conscious thought, Anyas lurched back, snatching up a spear. “To arms!” he shouted. “It’s a trick! To arms!”
The sentries scrambled to bolt the postern. But quicker than one would have thought possible, the redhead was already moving. A pair of throwing knives materialised in his bloody hands, as if he had conjured them out of thought. Then his wrists flicked. Anyas looked away from the man for a moment, long enough to see both sentries on the ground, slender silver hilts glimmering in their throats.
A moment too long. The redhead was smiling at him, hands hovering over the brass brazier. The noises of fighting had grown louder, and closer. “Do you recognise the knives?”
Anyas did. He also recognised the throw. “Savonn,” he said. “What have you done with him?”
No answer. His spear-tip met thin air. The man moved; the brazier winked; and then all Anyas knew were falling coals, and the bite of fire, and the high, thin sound of his own screams.
18
Fresh exiles, the men of Betronett took three forts along Ilsa’s Pass on their way back to Medrai.
The first, Nikas showed them, had a wall with a crumbling section. Daine lit a dozen cookfires in front of the fort to make it look as if they were settling down to a long siege; then Savonn and Hiraen led them over the weak spot in the wall, and took it within the hour. The second fort did not hold out much longer, though the defenders fought admirably, hurling rocks from the ramparts and shooting at them through arrow slits. Given the dubious honour of leading the van, Emaris and his patrol grappled their way through a window to open a postern for the others, and were feted like kings when the day was won. All the same, he was relieved when the garrison of the third fort—having heard of their predecessors’ defeat—abandoned their posts in the night and melted into the new snow.
It was a tiny holdfast labelled Kimmet on their maps, the last inhabitable fort on Ilsa’s Pass. “Send out scouts to track the garrison,” Savonn told Emaris, as they concluded their tour of the kitchens—not meanly provisioned—and the empty stables, still smelling of horse. “They can’t have gone far in this weather.”
The road was slushy with sleet, the first sign that autumn was about to sink its teeth into the Farfallens and spit them out into the paralysing cold of winter. They had come nearly full circle from where they had begun. Another two days or so, and they would see the towers of Medrai rising through the mists. “And after that?” Emaris asked as they stopped in the drafty hallway outside Savonn’s quarters. He was not hopeful. The shape of home was tiny and faraway in his mind, like a jewel viewed from the wrong end of a looking-glass. “Back to the Bitten Hill? Cassarah?”
Between the extremes of trivialities and matters of life and death, they had had little to say to each other since Astorre. Savonn seldom slept, and never seemed to be looking properly at anyone when they spoke to him. “That depends on Hiraen, when he decides to start talking to me again,” he said pleasantly. “He may want to regroup at Medrai. Or take you lot home and give the Council a few choicely worded instructions on what to do with their heads and their bungholes.”
The use of the second person pronoun was alarming. “Us? What about you?”
“I thought,” said Savonn, “I made it quite clear that I had a personal feud to attend to. Since my adversary appears to frighten you all so much, I shall deal with him myself.”
He was already listing towards the open door of his chamber. He no longer roomed with Hiraen, a development on which only Nikas had been blithe enough to comment. Emaris planted himself squarely in Savonn’s path, scowling. He had not abandoned his sister and his dead father only to be turned off in the middle of a campaign. “Wherever you go, I shall follow you.”
“Presently,” said Savonn, with his most malefic smile, “I am not going anywhere except to bed. If you insist on coming along, I shall charge admission.”
Emaris glowered, turned his back, and beat a dignified retreat.
* * *
It felt like his head had barely hit the pillow when a hand touched his shoulder, shaking him awake. He groaned and swatted it away, still submerged in fragmented dreams of snowstorms and rockfalls and the gleam of lamplight on auburn hair. Then a voice spoke into his ear. “Emaris!”
It was Nikas, hunkering low to whisper. “The scouts found the runaway garrison. Not many, maybe thirty. They’re about fifteen miles off, fleeing southward down the Pass.”
Emaris pushed himself up on an elbow, rubbing bleary eyes. The sky had faded to a watery blue-grey, the moon a pale wafer wallowing in its shallows. A foot away, Lomas was snoring in his own bedroll. “How fast are they going?”
“Slow. We’ll catch up by noon if we leave now.” Nikas hesitated, his hair a fuzzy halo around his face. “Should I wake the Captain?”
These days, any message for Savonn usually passed through Emaris first, since no one else wanted to risk incurring his ire. He sighed. “I better do it.”
He stepped over the sleeping forms of his patrol and padded out into the hall. Savonn’s door did not lock, but a tripwire had been rigged across the bottom of the doorway, with the effect that Emaris nearly entered the room head first. He found the Captain actually asleep for once, curled up like a nestling bird in a shaft of twilight with his head under a pillow. Remembering the last time he had touched Savonn, Emaris decided against laying hands on his person, and tugged at the blanket instead. “Savonn?”
With Savonn, the transition between sleeping and waking was a quick and abrupt one, unmarked by any external sign save a slight tensing of the muscles and a shift in the tempo of his breathing. Crouched by the bunk, Emaris relayed the news to him. “I’ll wake my patrol. We’ll be ready at once.”
Savonn pushed the pillow away. His gaze went straight through Emaris to alight on the ceiling. “Who brought the news?”
“Nikas.”
A missed beat. Then Savonn sat up, still fully dressed. “Let your boys rest. Wake Hiraen’s patrol, I’ll take them instead.”
Emaris did so, and came back to the room with a chunk of bread and a flask of water. Despite the muffled chink of cuirass and sword and the murmur of the arming men, most of the doors were still shut, the rooms quiet. “Go back to bed, gazelle,” said Savonn, stepping out into the hall with the food Emaris had brought. “This won’t take long.”
But all thoughts of sleep had fled. Emaris ran after him to the stairwell landing, the stone floo
r chilling his bare feet with the savage cold unique to early mornings. “You’re not taking me with you?”
“There’s no need. Your place is with your patrol.”
“I’m your squire!”
Savonn smiled. There was something different about it this morning, something soft-edged and sad. “I promoted you.”
He disappeared down the stairs. Emaris turned away, seething. He swung a kick at the baluster, quite forgetting that he was unshod, and all but crushed his toes against the cold stone. He was hopping about on one foot, yelling, when someone peered down from the attic landing. “What’s all the noise about?”
It was Hiraen. A fresh surge of outrage bordering on absurdity loomed over Emaris, and crashed over his head. Savonn had not even woken Hiraen, his deputy, to tell him where he was going—with Hiraen’s own patrol at that. “He’s gone. He took your men and went after the bandits.”
Shirtless and tousled from sleep, Hiraen’s response was still sharp. “Who brought word?”
Savonn had asked the same question. “Nikas.”
Hiraen swore, invocating the Mother Above and at least four minor deities. He vanished for a moment and then reappeared with a crumpled shirt on, holding his bow and quiver. “Get your things,” he said. “Leave your patrol, there isn’t time.”
Emaris started to limp towards his room. “You think he’ll let us come?”
Hiraen shrugged. His face was a thunderclap made flesh. “He won’t find out we’re there until it’s too late.”
* * *
Under the impression that their patrol leader was playing a trick on their commander, Hiraen’s men did not comment on the stowaways trailing the column. Savonn remained unaware of their presence for a good two hours, until they halted for a meal and he came to mingle with the troop. As usual, he revealed no surprise when he spotted them among the ranks, but his shoulders tightened and his lips came together in a narrow line, and he concluded his conversation at once to go over to them. Under his breath, he said, “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same,” said Hiraen. “It’s my patrol.”
“We’re hunting Saraians,” said Savonn shortly. “I thought to let you sleep.”
“You thought—” Hiraen threw up his hands in mute fury. “Gods, how much of an idiot do you take me for? Whatever game you’re playing with your friend from the wrong side of the border, you’d best leave my men out of it.”
Emaris edged away, wishing he were out of earshot. He had very little idea what they were fighting about, and thought it might be best in this case to stay ignorant. Savonn was rigid and pale, his fingers furled tight at his sides. “This is the road the scouts said the garrison took. Ask him.” He jerked his head in Emaris’s direction. “Or don’t. I may have corrupted him into lying for me, after all. I have such a way of doing that.”
He flung off to the front of the column, and soon they were moving again.
They were more than a mile away before Emaris dared to break the icy silence. “He’s right, you know.” It was easier to address his feet than to look at Hiraen. “Nikas said they went this way.”
“I know,” said Hiraen. He sighed, blowing some hair out of his face. “I’m an ass.”
Emaris said nothing. He hated quarrelling.
“It’s not you he’s angry with,” Hiraen added. “Never you.” He grimaced. Unlike Savonn, trained to a hair-splitting fault in the great theatre of Cassarah, he did not often trouble to school his face. “We grew up together. That’s a long time to accumulate grudges.”
Emaris worried at his bottom lip with his teeth. Presently he said, “That night in Astorre…”
“You must have questions,” said Hiraen, fidgeting with a strap on his cuirass. “About the things you overheard.”
“That’s putting it lightly.”
The buckles on the strap clinked against each other, an agitated, discordant noise. “They were lovers,” said Hiraen abruptly. “Years ago, before he became Captain. You’ve probably guessed that by now.”
“I—”
Hiraen spoke over him with a sort of vicious desperation. “Being Savonn, he chose the most lethal of Astorre’s beautiful men to toy with. The Saraian consul. He didn’t even try to pretend he didn’t know. The danger was half the attraction.” He pulled the strap loose altogether, stared blankly at it, and let his hand fall. “When we get back, I’ll make him explain. You deserve to know. About this and—and other things.”
Something in his voice struck a chord of dread deep down in Emaris’s memory. He killed for me, Savonn had said. “Does it have anything to do with—”
The words caught in his throat. He swallowed. “Rendell?” Hiraen suggested, his eyes dark with loathing. “He knew about the whole business, no doubt. One can only imagine what he made of it.”
Emaris fought down a wave of dizziness. More than ever, he missed his sister. Shandei could always make palatable what was hard to swallow, and what she could not put right, she would beat up. “The problem with Savonn,” said Hiraen, the words coming low and quick, “no, the problem with everything, is that I owe him too much.” He said it as if in answer to a question, though Emaris had not spoken. “It was my fault, him coming to serve under Merrott at all. He never wanted to leave the theatre.”
“His father made him,” said Emaris, baffled. Everyone knew that.
“Yes. But it was about me. Gods, this isn’t the time. I’ll—”
He broke off. Emaris said, “What’s wrong?”
Hiraen had stopped walking, his head cocked to one side. When Emaris started to speak again, he shushed him. “Pursuit.”
“What?”
Hiraen crouched down, swept aside a patch of old snow with his gloved hands, and put his ear to the ground. Emaris imitated him. They were still at the back of the column, and no one took notice. After a moment the sound came to Emaris too, a messy rhythm of dull clips and clops on the cold packed earth. A sizeable host on horseback, by the sounds of it. “But we can’t have passed the garrison yet,” he said. “Not if they’re mounted.”
“It’s not the garrison. If they’re mounted, they probably came straight from Astorre. A fortnight. Celisse must have let them go early.” Emaris was still unravelling this thread of thought when Hiraen leapt up and sprinted to the front of the column. “Savonn! It’s a trick! They’re behind us!”
A man of Betronett needed no orders. Almost in unison, the patrol stopped and drew their swords, or began stringing their bows. Emaris scrambled after Hiraen, checking his quiver as he went. “At least fifty,” Hiraen was saying. “A quarter-mile off. They’ll be on us in no time.”
Savonn looked from him to Emaris and back. His eyes were the same colour as the blade of the shortsword gleaming in his hand. If he felt anything besides a mild irritation, it did not show. “You shouldn’t have come.”
Hiraen ignored him. “We’re outnumbered two to one. If you pull that disappearing trick of yours, you and Emaris might be able to slip back to Kimmet and get help. We’ll try to hold them off—”
“Martyrdom doesn’t suit you,” said Savonn. “Stop talking and nock your bow.”
He took in the terrain, gaze alighting briefly on rock and tree and tract of hoarfrost. There were several large boulders on either side of the road, which might provide some cover and encumber a horse. Apart from that, the territory was utterly unhelpful. “We haven’t got spears, so there’s no sense trying to repel a charge. Split up and get behind those rocks. We’ll shoot as soon as they come into range, try to throw them into disorder before they close in. I hope,” he added, off-handed, as if the thought had only just occurred to him, “that none of you are afraid to die?”
The men chorused their vehement assent. Hiraen’s patrol was much older and hardier than Emaris’s new-formed one. These were soldiers who had been serving for decades, who had fought under Merrott at the Battle of the Morivant and then, rich as merchant-princes with plunder, simply went back to the Bitten Hill and ke
pt fighting. Death, faced down and defeated a dozen times over, had lost its power to frighten. But Emaris was not like them. He wanted to live.
He exhaled loudly, and fumbled for an arrow from his quiver. Everyone wanted to live.
“I’ll take the right side of the road,” Savonn was saying, as the patrol divided itself up and got down in the niggardly cover of the rocks. “You two can take the left.”
“I’ll stay with you,” said Emaris at once.
Savonn’s stare was glacially impersonal, as if Emaris were no more than an obstacle in the road to be levelled. “No.”
Hiraen’s hand found Emaris’s shoulder, drawing him off to the opposite side of the road. He went unresisting. There was no time for an argument, or even for hurt. Already the hoofbeats were plain to them all, and soon their attackers would be among them.
Scarcely after they had concealed themselves, the first riders came round the bend in the road. They bore no standard, but the trappings of their horses, white and grey, fluttered in the wind of their speed. Emaris squinted. The sun played on the scarred seams of frost on the road, drawing the eye in confusing patterns. Spears, swords, a few bows. No Empath, but the big figure in the lead had to be the Marshal. Isemain was shouting, hand lifted in a signal. He had seen the rocks.
“Hold,” Hiraen whispered.
Emaris’s fingers perspired in their gloves, tense on the bowstring. Shoot in the calm between breaths, or so a long string of teachers had exhorted him, his sister and his father and Daine and Hiraen and Savonn. But he was breathing so fast that it was impossible. The Saraians had slowed, swords bared like shining teeth. Their armour shone as they approached, not the patchwork of mismatched plate and mail like that of the brigands they had routed from the forts, but the costly finery of Marguerit’s army, flashing bold and brazen in the noonday sun. “Hold,” Hiraen muttered again. “A bit more…”