Tracato: A Trial of Blood and Steel, Book 3

by Joel Shepherd

  Torvaal Lenayin turned on his heel and followed the priest, his black cloak flowing out behind. Sasha felt a pain in her throat. She wanted to run after him and grab him by the arms, and yell into his face. But she did not know what she would say.

  There was dark, earnest discussion between priests, Archbishop Turen, King Torvaal and Regent Arosh. They took their places again, and the command was given to rise. The ceremony resumed with all now standing. Sasha could not see much over the tall heads of the men around her, but she did not care. Bacosh men standing nearby gave her very dark looks, but Jaryd and Yasmyn kept guard of her flanks. She could not see Sofy, nor her brothers, from this position, but she could see the Black Order, pointed hoods in rows, like sharp black teeth before the temple steps.

  Sasha trained with the officers and yuans that Damon had selected, discussing tactics, and the new use to which Lenay warriors were being instructed to put their shields. There were even several knights, one from Merraine, the other from Tournea, adding their expertise at Damon’s request. They discussed, demonstrated, and made small formations on the riverbank a little upstream from the Nithele walls. Even here, Lenay soldiers intruded upon their practice, filling pots with water, leading horses to drink, bathing, or bartering with the boats that rowed upstream from the city. Those were everywhere, a mass of narrow vessels hugging the shore where the high waters moved with less force, men aboard shouting their wares to all ashore. In others, city girls lifted their dresses to show pale legs, as men ashore hollered and laughed, and asked after the price.

  “Perhaps if our cavalry cannot win through the Steel lines,” one powerful yuan said at a pause in training, “we could send our army of whores at them.”

  Men laughed. There were hundreds trailing the Army of Lenayin, it was said, though Sasha had not visited the tail of the column to see. Many had children with them, and some, husbands. It was even said that parents were offering daughters for a price. Sasha was astonished at the utter pridelessness of the Bacosh peasantry. She had never considered that a people might discard their honour so wantonly. Perhaps, it occurred to her, honour was not a necessity of human life, but rather a luxury. Her Lenay soul rebelled at the thought.

  Mostly she watched as the men discussed and considered the battle to come, contributing occasionally, but not joining in directly. This was men’s fighting, with heavy armour and heavy blows, and no room for finesse. Svaalverd technique counted for little in such an environment. Without technique, she would be just a woman surrounded by men, and no use to anyone. Ahorse, however, she fancied she might have a contribution to make.

  One of the young men present was a new arrival, from Torovan. Duke Carlito Rochel, the Lord of Pazira province, son of Sasha’s old friend Alexanda Rochel. He had ridden in with the aance party bearing the Shereldin Star, and said now that the main Torovan column was but two days’ march behind. Sasha was pleased to meet Carlito, yet sad too, for his father had tried his best to prevent Pazira’s participation in this war. He would be very sad to know that his son now rode to fight in the greatest battle the Bacosh had ever known. Sasha wondered if Alexanda had died in vain. And wondered if she would ever again see a day where every new thought did not make her sad.

  As she sat on a riverside log, watching the men discussing the collision of two shield lines, she heard a rattle of armoured footsteps. A knight approached, in neck-to-ankles chain mail, and carrying a sack.

  “Sashandra Lenayin!” he called, as though pleased to see her. Sasha stood up. Over the mail, the knight wore a surcoat of family colours that Sasha did not recognise. Four more knights walked with him, and there was something to their manner that she did not like. Sasha heard the discussion and clash of practice stanch on shield behind her cease.

  The man before her was broad and dark haired. “Aren’t you going to ask who I am?” he asked her after a pause.

  “If I cared, I’d ask,” said Sasha.

  “I am Sir Eskwith, Lord of Assineth. Cousin to the prince regent. Your relation, I suppose.”

  “Great,” said Sasha, expressionlessly. “Welcome to the family.”

  “I saw your little performance today, before the temple,” Eskwith continued. “It has caused many of the good lords to wonder exactly whose side you’re on.”

  “Lenayin’s,” said Sasha, with certainty.

  “Pagan Lenayin’s,” said Sir Eskwith.

  “Lowlanders make that distinction. Lenays don’t.”

  “My new friends in the Lenay north certainly do.”

  “I’ve killed plenty,” said Sasha. “I don’t care what they think.” She could hear her friends approaching, wondering at the intrusion on the Lenay camp.

  “I hear you have a serrin lover,” he said. “I wonder if he looks anything like this?” He upended the sack and a severed head fell on the rough grass at Sasha’s feet. The hair was silver tingeing toward pale blue and tied with several long braids. The eyes, and features, were serrin. Sasha’s heart nearly stopped. For an instant, she saw the head as Errollyn’s. Then, as Alythia’s, as it had lain at her feet in her Tracato cell. “This one was a scout, moving by night. We caught him, and I assure you, he did not die quickly. That is what we do to demon spawn and their friends in these lands.” He paused for effect. “And to their whores.”

  Sasha drew her sword and cut off Sir Eskwith’s head. The body toppled, fountaining blood. The head rolled to join the serrin’s at Sasha’s feet. “Is that a fact?” she said.

  She advanced on Eskwith’s companions as they fumbled for their swords in shock, holding her blade low, the fourth en’alan commencement, a wrist cocked behind one hip and inviting the obvious attack. One knight swung at her, and she swayed aside and tookhis hand off in the follow through. Swung back fast to deflect the second knight’s attack, the second motion of which became a new strike that took off the handless man’s head. She spun about the falling body to impale the third in the shoulder in mid-backswing, ducking away from the second as he came at her, spinning her blade through easy wrist twirls.

  “Run away or yield!” she could hear Jaryd yelling from nearby. “I’m warning you, run away or yield, or you’re dead!” He was not yelling at her, she knew very well. There were two healthy ones left, and the wounded one. They were powerful, but their chain mail and heavy swords made them slow.

  One advanced on Sasha as she skipped backward on the grass. She invited his feint, swaying one way and then the other, only bringing her sword into play at the last moment to take his forearm as he lunged, then reverse into a cut up under the armpit, severing weak armour and most of the shoulder.

  The last had been coming after her, but now stopped, looking scared. His companion, with a stab wound through one shoulder, was wavering on his feet, clutching the bloody slice through his mail. The man whose shoulder she’d severed was noisily dying amid great spurts of blood.

  “Best let them yield, Sasha,” Jaryd warned her, still from a respectful distance. Her comrades were all watching, making no attempt to intervene on her behalf. They knew she wasn’t the one needing help. “I know this one man here, he assisted on the wedding. He’s not a bad man, Sasha.”

  Sasha looked at him blandly. “Why should that matter?”

  Jaryd looked back, warily, hand to his sword. Duke Carlito stood nearby, with wide-eyed disbelief. And Great Lord Faras, his dark eyes gleaming with admiration.

  “Do you yield?” Jaryd asked the surviving two men. “There is no shame in it. She is the greatest swordsman in Lenayin.”

  “No,” said Lord Faras, loudly. “She is the Synnich. You should bow before her, and be proud that your friends have had the honour to taste her blade.”

  “What did they say?” Koenyg asked his sister as she stood before him in the royal tent. Beyond the canvas walls, there were crowds. Royal Guards stood at the entrance, leaving the heir and his sister to privacy.

  “The leader threw a severed serrin head at my feet,” said Sasha. Her eyes seemed almost dull, devoid of feel
ing. Koenyg had never seen her like this before. It unnerved him, in a way that countless boasting, chest-thumping Lenay warriors had never managed before. “It was a threat, to my head, and to the heads of those I care for. He called me a whore to the serrin.”

  “Did you feel yourself personally threatened?”

  “Only my honour,” said Sasha. “In Lenayin, men die for less.”

  “Did you give warning?”

  “It was a threat. The codes say an accusation must be tested in honourable combat, but a threat may warrant an immediate reply. There were five of them.”

  “You had support,” Koenyg replied.

  “Not immediately to hand. I was not favoured by numbers. They threatened me five-against-one. It was dishonourable, and they deserved to die.”

  “That’s brutal, Sasha,” Koenyg said. “Even for you.” Sasha’s eyes registered nothing. “I’d have expected such an interpretation of the codes from Lord Krayliss, or maybe Lord Heryd.”

  Sasha met his stare for the first time. The old temper was still there, burning deep. Somehow, Koenyg found that comforting. “Lenayin did not march to Larosa to be buggered by swinging dicks in chain mail,” Sasha said loudly. “Are we an equal partner in this marriage, or do they get liberties? First they ask us to kneel. Do they next ask us to bend over?”

  Koenyg shook his head in faint disbelief. “Don’t attempt to excuse each of your personal tantrums as a grand act of patriotism. You’re a mess, Sasha. You and I have rarely agreed, but I admit I did find some affection for the lively girl who rode horses and skinned her knees. That girl loved life, and often laughed. The girl I see now loves only death, and she never smiles.”

  “She was a fool,” Sasha said bitterly. “She did not understand the world. She knows better now, and she knows that freedom must be fought for, or lost.”

  “And for whose freedom do you fight?”

  “The freedom for Lenays to be Lenays!”

  “Or the freedom to kill people you don’t like,” Koenyg suggested. Sasha folded her arms, and looked aside.

  “If you wish to punish me,” she said shortly, “then do so. I’ve better things to do than listen to lectures.”

  “I’m not going to punish you, Sasha. You’ve caused a mess, but it has its uses. I did warn our Larosan allies that they should tread carefully upon Lenay honour, and that lords should not presume to rub their lessers’ noses in the mud, as they do amongst their own kind. I also warned them to accept that half of our army are not even Verenthanes, and not to provoke that half with the fact. But first they make a mess with the Shereldin Star, and now this. Best that they learn their place, with us.”

  He took a waterskin from its hanging peg upon the tent’s central pole, and poured them each a cup.

  Sasha took a sip, her eyes upon him, and frowning. She’d expected him to be angry, clearly.

  “Sasha, you’re an idiot. You’ve never understood my motivations. You’re like all these stupid Goeren-yai gossipers. You think I’m putting Lenayin in the pockets of lowlands Verenthanes. No, Sasha.” He leaned forward. “I am a Lenay patriot. I wish to make Lenayin strong. This war shall secure our strength, forging ties to the most powerful lowlands kingdoms, and proving our worth to all. It shall unite our peoples, as nothing else has managed before. And if you cutting the heads off a few lowlanders helps them to learn respect and fear of us, then so much the better. A little fear can be a good thing, Sasha. I do not mind that you frighten them, and I do not wish for any of us to kneel.”

  He smiled at her grimly. Sasha looked a little dazed. Perhaps she had not expected him to be honest.

  “I saw Alythia’s head,” she said quietly. “When he tossed that head from the sack, I saw Alythia’s head instead. I just killed him. I mean…I just killed him.”

  She looked shaken. Gods, Koenyg thought, she did the strangest things to him sometimes. There was a time when he’d hated her for being Krystoff’s collaborator, for causing father and the kingdom such trouble, and for being so selfish. But she had much to admire about her too, like bravery, skill and leadership. Her presence here united the most troublesome factions of the Lenay Army firmly beneath his command—the eastern Goeren-yai, the ones who had followed her on her northern rebellion, and had never liked this war. If she followed him, then they would too. And now, it was clear that she’d truly loved Alythia, whatever their earlier differences. Sasha did not hold grudges, Sofy had insisted to him once. Sasha could change her mind about people. Perhaps there was yet hope for them, as siblings.

  Koenyg put a hand to her shoulder. “I miss Alythia too.”

  “Do you ever get scared that one day, you’ll do something really terrible?” The look in Sasha’s eyes was haunted. “That one day, you’ll just lose control, and be responsible for something that will eat at your soul for the rest of your life?”

  “No,” said Koenyg. “I worry that one day there’ll be something I didn’t do, that led to something terrible. Inaction is the worst sin of leaders, Sasha. If your cause is just, then the greatest sin in all the world is to sit and do nothing.”

  Sasha nodded uncertainly. It was the only time Koenyg could recall her seeming so vulnerable in his presence.

  “Sasha, you killed Eskwith because he killed a serrin. Yes, he challenged your honour, but that was not the primary matter. Yet we ride against serrin. Doubtless there will be many, fighting against us in days to come. If you fight with us, you may even kill some yourself. Perhaps, if you are unlucky, even a friend of yours.”

  “Errollyn is too ill,” Sasha replied, her voice barely audible.

  “But you have other friends. And they have friends, and perhaps family, in the talmaad or the Steel. I know how serrin and human intermix in the Saalshen Bacosh.” He tried to search her face, but she was looking down. Koenyg put gentle fingers under her chin, and lifted.

  Sasha’s eyes spilled tears. Her gaze was desperate. Pleading. Koenyg considered her for a long moment and nodded. Now he knew. What effect it would have, when the time came, he could not know. But he would be ready for all eventualities.

  “Very well,” he said softly. “No more questions. Do not think on it. Go back to your friends, and rest. I shall deal with the angry in-laws.”

  Sofy sat in the hot bath, and gazed at the roof of her tent. Outside, she could hear the sounds of the camp. Not for the first time, she wondered why she was here in the field, and not back in the palace in Sherdaine.

  She knew that there were some in Sherdaine who did not appreciate the fact that the new princess regent was a barbarian Lenay, but she doubted that it was that simple. The Bacosh Army was not merely a temporary allegiance of Larosa, Tournea, Meraie, Algrasse and Rakani, it was an allegiance of all the families, properties, lineages and minor allegiances within those provinces. Much like Lenayin in that each province was shared by many conflicting interests…except that in Lenayin, the nobility were largely united, a necessity given how badly outnumbered they were, and how poorly respected among the nonnobility, both Verenthane and Goeren-yai.

  In the Bacosh, those not noble were dismissed as “peasants,” and used as little more than tools of power. All true power rested with the nobility, and noble families, it seemed to Sofy, had no true friends. The borders of the provinces were only temporary things. Sofy had seen maps of the Bacosh covering the last two hundred years, and further back still, before King Leyvaan and the creation of the Saalshen Bacosh. The borders changed every decade or so, it seemed, and the smaller boundaries of noble lands that split each province in a ragged patchwork of lines were constantly clustering, uniting, splitting and shifting. On those maps, the boundaries of noble lands remained drawn on the Saalshen Bacosh side of the border, where such things had long since ceased to hold any meaning. She had noticed, from decade to decade, that those lines never shifted, preserving the holdings as they’d stood, as though the coming of the serrin had been a great winter chill, freezing the territories as they’d stood in King Leyvaan’s time.

>   There were some families marching in the army who claimed ancient ancestral rights on those territories, primarily in Enora where no surviving claimants remained. In Rhodaan and Ilduur, many thought to reinstate surviving claimants and thus gain powerful allegiances, or perhaps to have those claimants found unworthy once the lands were conquered, and struck out by ruling of the new Bacosh king. Some of the Rhodaani nobility had arrived in the army at the same time as Sasha. Men from Tracato, who now declared their rights to old Rhodaani territories, and registered their claims with old maps before the regent. Sofy had spoken with a Lord Elot from Tracato who had been displeased that instead of a joyful welcome from his noble allies, he had received cold hostility from some who felt that his claims were overstated, and impinged upon their own entitlements. Others, Lord Elot had said with frustration, were demanding land concessions as compensation for losses that would be incurred in battles to come. Sofy had tried to be understanding, yet she wondered if the Tracato nobility had ever truly considered the nature of civilisation they now sought to rejoin. It was power hungry and competitive, and wanted advancement to the detriment of others. To hear Sasha speak of it, the Rhodaani nobility had thought themselves to be fighting an ideological battle for the restoration of ancient justice. They had forgotten that to the nobility of the “free Bacosh,” such sentiments meant nothing. They wanted land, and gathered beneath the priests’ holy banners not for the gods, but like hounds behind their masters’ horses on a hunt, hoping for the reward of fresh prey, and blood.

  Balthaar and his father, the regent, had brought Sofy on this march simply for the safety and continuity of the family line, she was increasingly certain. She would not be safe from the family’s rivals in Sherdaine, particularly were the war to be lost. In that case, there would follow a quick ride to the family holdings in Ashane, seventeen leagues from Sherdaine, and a mustering of allies there to ward off further challenge. Family Arosh risked a lot in this venture. But the potential rewards were phenomenal.