by Col Buchanan
‘We may share the same afflicted blood, Ché,’ came his strangled voice. ‘I just might be your father!’
He released the spymaster. Alarum gasped for air with a hand to his throat.
‘My mother slept with many men,’ he said. ‘That proves nothing.’
‘No it doesn’t, not for certain. But still, don’t you wonder?’
Ché tossed the knife quivering into the ground. ‘You left the note for me in the Scripture,’ he said as the realization came to him. ‘That was you.’
‘I see you’re paying it some heed, too. Good. If you stay they’ll kill you. I’ll do what I can for your mother, what little that may be.’
‘You can help her?’
‘Perhaps. If I’m quick enough about it.’
Ché hesitated, caught between sudden emotions. He looked at the man, his gaunt face and dark, intense eyes, wondering if it might be true.
A few priests rushed past the entrance of the tent. Someone was shouting in the distance.
‘Wait!’ shouted Alarum as Ché swirled away, leaving him standing there in the middle of the tent next to the overturned cot.
Ché’s mind raced with uncertainties as he stepped outside.
‘Come on, old man,’ Ché said to the unconscious Ash, climbing back into the saddle with his pack. He nodded to Alarum as the spymaster emerged from the tent. The man seemed to be struggling for words.
With a kick and a whip of the reins Ché galloped out of the encampment, Alarum and the Acolyte guards at the entrance watching him go.
A bodyguard ducked behind his shield as something whistled past close by. For once, Bahn stood cool and unflinching.
‘Our scouts tried it before we attacked.’ Creed was telling Koolas the war chattēro. ‘It should hold, so long as we’re careful.’
The surface of the lake had frozen solid. It was strange, to face such a silent, open expanse of ice with the intensity of the battle still raging behind them.
‘With luck, Mandalay’s cavalry have scattered their zels. It should take them time to organize a pursuit.’
Creed and the others stood on a spur of land that projected into the lake for a hundred feet or more. The remnants of the army were filtering onto this projection, heavy and light infantry alike. Already, at the instructions of their officers, men cast aside shields and helms, shrugged out of their heavy armour, before they headed out onto the lake. They spread out so as to distribute their weight more evenly. Stretcher-bearers carried off what casualties they could. The ice, still reasonably thin, creaked beneath their feet, but held.
The army was subliming away.
Past the heavy press of men still heading towards the ice, Bahn could barely see the rearguard that stretched across the mouth of this projection of land. They had formed into a single chartassa, and they fought alone to hold off the imperial attackers; a mixture of Hoo and Red Guards, many badly wounded themselves, each a volunteer for this role.
Bahn found it hard to look at them.
More than anything else now, he wished to get back to Bar-Khos so that he could be in the sanctuary of his own home with Marlee and the children. He could see it in his mind’s eye. It was raining outside the house. The fire was lit. Marlee toasted sweetcakes on the flames while Juno his son played with his model ships and little Ariale gazed at him; Bahn, sitting deep in his armchair in a glow of contented peace.
General Nidemes approached, flanked by Colonel Barklee, one of his Red Guard officers, the man holding a shield aloft to protect them from the missiles that still thudded down. ‘Time to go,’ Nidemes told Creed. General Creed’s eyes glimmered in the dimness. ‘Have you taken all the neck chains from the rearguard?’
‘We have,’ Barklee replied, hoisting a bundled cloak that chinked with the many identity chains within it.
‘We must find some way to repay them for this,’ announced Creed.
Koolas the war chattēro listened from behind.
Bahn turned to the rearguard again. They were being pushed back step by step.
Once more, Bahn stood on the sidelines, watching from afar the bravery of men as they lay down their lives for the sake of others. For some reason, since regaining his feet, Bahn had found that he no longer felt any fear at all, as though he’d shed a heavy cloak he had forgotten he was even wearing. More than ever before, he understood why he was here, and why the men of the rearguard were here, giving up their lives for the sake of their people.
‘I’m staying,’ he told Creed as the general turned to leave.
Creed cast him a look of surprise. ‘What’s that?’
‘I’m staying,’ he said as he took the chain from his neck. ‘With the rest of those men.’ And he tossed the chain across to Barklee.
Creed frowned and quizzed him with his eyes. ‘You’re in shock, Bahn,’ he decided. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying. We’ve won here, damn it! Even if it doesn’t seem so just now, we’ve scored a victory here!’
‘Hold Bar-Khos, no matter what, General,’ Bahn told him. ‘That’s the only way you can repay these men now.’
Before Creed could answer, Bahn turned and walked away.
‘Bahn!’ Creed shouted after him. ‘Bahn!’ he commanded.
But within half a dozen footsteps, Bahn was lost amongst the confusion of men.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Tume
It was quiet in these hills to the south of the Silent Valley, and the pale morning daylight brightened only slowly beneath a layer of clouds. Snow still lingered in clumps within the shadows of yellowing grasses, which swayed and sighed in the breezes coursing through the small side valley where they had camped.
So this is Khos, Ché thought to himself, as though only now, in his relative solitude away from the demands and company of Mann, he could truly appreciate the landscape of this island.
Ché sat on the wet ground with his back resting against a saddlebag. He had removed the piercing in his eyebrow, and he was dressed comfortably in plain woollen trousers and a thick cotton shirt that had cowry shells sewn along its sleeves. Over it all, his cloak was keeping out the worst of the wind. During the remains of the night he’d left his ammunition belt strapped around his waist, where the pistol hung in its holster, and his knife too. He’d watched and listened for signs of pursuit, not sleeping at all.
Now, in the early light, Ché was watching a hawk as it balanced with delicate twitches of its wingtips above the opposite slope of the little valley, silently hovering as it watched for prey. Before his outstretched legs, a small campfire of twigs smoked and crackled in a circle of stones. The meagre flames offered little warmth save for the mind.
The hawk suddenly dived with wings folded tight. It vanished behind a line of grasses, appeared once more with talons empty. It must be young, thought Ché. Still learning to kill.
Try again.
The fire spat, and he stared at it, watching the two fresh branches he’d recently laid across the embers. Their bellies glowed red, the occasional flame struggling upwards, flickering, dying again. Ché’s eyes narrowed, heavy with tiredness.
The old Rōshun snored on the other side of the fire. The farlan-der was suffering from a bad chest, his breathing laboured and shallow. Indeed, he coughed just then, and stirred beneath the cloak Ché had placed over him for a blanket.
Ash’s head came up, and the man opened his bleary grey eyes.
He took a long look at the young man before him. Blinked in recognition.
‘Ché,’ he rasped.
‘Easy,’ replied Ché, as the old man clutched his head and struggled to rise. ‘I think you’re concussed. I’ve been trying to keep you awake all night.’
Ash sat up with some care. His fingers inspected the lump on his skull and the fresh stitching there.
‘That would explain why I feel like death,’ croaked the farlander, as he gently placed a palm against his skull.
Ché tossed the flask of water across to him. The old Rōshun drank from it long an
d deep. He gasped, and his neck craned as he took in the sky and twisted as he looked at the valley slopes beneath their campsite. He took another sip of water. Smacked his lips and stared at the flask between his legs for some moments.
At last he lifted his head with some clarity in his eyes.
‘The battle,’ he said. ‘What happened?’
Ché offered a weak shrug. ‘The Expeditionary Force rallied. The last I saw of the Khosians they were fleeing across a frozen lake.’
‘Sasheen. Is she dead?”
‘I hope so. She was shot through the neck. I’m curious, though, why you were there trying to kill her?’
Ash was fumbling for something in his tunic. He drew out a leather pouch, dug his fingers into it to find that nothing was there. In disgust he tossed the empty pouch into the fire. He coughed long and hard, his eyes screwed in pain. At last he coughed a gob of phlegm into the flames, where it sizzled for a moment while he hung his head between his knees.
‘The boy was yours, wasn’t he? The apprentice she burned to death in Q’os?’
‘Aye, he was mine,’ came his voice, husky.
‘But he wasn’t wearing a seal.’
‘No.’
So the old farlander was human after all, Ché mused.
He studied the man in the pale daylight. Ash had aged since Ché had last seen him all those years ago in Cheem. He was thinner than he recalled. The bones of his face were sharp and pronounced beneath his dark skin, which was creased with wrinkles, and papery thin. His wedge of grey beard had overgrown. His eyes were sunken in their sockets and faintly yellow.
He looked like a man nearer death than not.
‘What am I doing here?’ Ash asked him. ‘This makes no sense to me.’
‘I’ve been sitting wondering the same thing myself.’
The farlander lifted his head and studied Ché for a long moment. His eyes settled on the stubs of the young man’s little fingers. He winced. ‘What are you doing here, Ché?’ he said. ‘Are you one of them?’
Ché turned away.
‘Ché?’
As the moments dragged on, he could sense the old man’s suspicions growing.
‘You left Sato without telling us,’ ventured Ash.
Ché looked to the bird once more, saw it hovering again. Part of him wished to confess it all to the old man just then, to tell him what part he had played in the destruction of the Rōshun order. But he found himself unable to say it.
Still, realization gradually dawned on the old farlander. ‘You were with them all along. With the Empire. But how? The Seer would have seen it in you.’ Ash sat up straighter, though it brought him pain. ‘Ché – what are you? What have you done?’
‘I’m a Diplomat,’ snapped Ché, ‘who lacked any other choice but to live. And what I did, old man, was save your life.’
Ché tried to calm himself as the farlander peered at him in disbelief. Emotions swelled in his body.
It is over, then, the ancient Seer had said to Ché sadly as they’d sat watching the Rōshun monastery burning in the Cheem night. All the people he had known over his years of living there, the ones who had befriended him, who had been a family to him, all dead or dying in the flames.
Better finish me, Ché, the old Seer had told him. Do it now, for I would prefer that it was you and not some stranger.
Ché swallowed. He looked at Ash across the pitiful fire, knowing that the old Rōshun was one of the last of his kind now, and that he did not even know it.
The knowledge felt like a dirty secret in his mind.
‘They know the Rōshun are in Cheem,’ Ash finally said, and his eyes swept up to accuse him with sudden anger.
Ché would not speak of it.
The old man threw aside his cloak and made a lunge at Ché, though he collapsed to the ground before he could reach him. Ché remained still. He watched as the farlander tried to push himself up, but it was beyond him.
He stood and dragged Ash back to where he’d been lying. Threw the cloak over his shivering body again. Ash looked up at the clouds with his chest rising and falling fast. Ché was moved enough to speak, to share with him something of his own loss, but then he paused, his mouth gaping.
The old Rōshun was chuckling; a broken sound filled with bitterness.
‘All is lost,’ Ash cackled to himself.
Ché tilted his head to one side, curious. He watched the smile fade from the farlander’s face, Ash growing sober once more.
Ché said, ‘You wish to kill me, I suppose.’
The old farlander stared at him hard. ‘When I have the strength for it.’
He looked away, saw the young hawk lift from the far side of the valley, its great wings flapping. It clutched something in its talons, a shape struggling to be free.
He lay back and closed his eyes.
In the early glow of dawn, Bull watched imperial soldiers searching the battlefield for survivors. They were moving in pairs, and when they found one of their own still breathing they called out for a stretcher-bearer, and when they found a wounded Khosian instead they checked first that the man wasn’t an officer, then stabbed him dead with their spears.
A pair of these clean-up men had stopped not far from where Bull was lying. They looked down upon a wounded Red Guard as the soldier lifted a hand above the surface of corpses around him. One of the Imperials kicked the hand aside and stood on his arm to keep it down. His partner stabbed him twice, his eyes as blank as the grey sky over their heads.
Bull looked away, tired and beyond hope now.
All night he had lain trapped under the mountainous weight of the northern tribesman. The flow of the giant man’s blood had steamed in the freezing air, warming Bull’s torso even as his great body died, so that he wasn’t cold, only near suffocated by the pressure on his broken cuirass, which was enough to tighten it against him and make breathing a laborious command of will.
It had taken Bull the finest bladework of his life to bring this giant down in the heat of the battle. They’d fought like two pit-fighters up close and physical. Bull had taken the worst of the battering. He’d known there was only a slim chance of winning the fight – and he’d taken it, boldly, even as his own legs were giving out on him. A perfectly timed jab caught the northerner in the lower thigh, hamstringing him, and Bull had experienced the brief thrill of victory before the giant had lunged out and grappled him, and his weight had borne Bull to the ground, trapping him where they fell.
Blood caked his face where his right cheekbone seemed to be fractured. He was unable to open his right eye, nor move his left hand. With all his strength he’d been unable to move the man off him.
A fine mess, Bull had thought to himself, and had stared at the night sky overhead, listening to the ever-fading clash of arms, knowing that he had been left behind.
Around them, the dead and wounded had lain scattered and draining of heat. A man wept, broken; others sobbed from the pain and shock of missing limbs. A youth cried out for his mother, long past shame for such a thing, then howled that he was not ready to die. Voices gasped, whispered prayers; not only Khosians, but the Imperials amongst them too. Someone in a northern accent talked to their wife, telling her he would be back soon, that he loved her, that he was sorry for betraying her. Another called to comrades now gone from the field, or lying dead nearby, for no one answered him.
At one point, the great tribesman had awakened with a shudder. He spat blood and looked about as best he could, his lips trembling. He tried to move his great body without success. He sensed Bull lying breathing beneath him, still alive.
In guttural Trade, the man asked how long it might be before dawn.
For a time they had chatted.
Ersha, he offered for his name. A mercenary from a tribe called the Sengetti, all the way from the cold northern steppe.
The man had slipped once more into unconsciousness as snow had fallen again in the middle of the long night, settling over their twisted shapes like a blanket thro
wn upon them by the great Mother of the World.
Now, in the gathering daylight, a groan sounded from the Ersha; a gasp of air escaping his lips as though he’d been holding his breath for an endless time. They had fused during the night into one single mess of drying blood and numb muscles. Once more the tribesman shoved hard with his arms in an effort to pull free from Bull, but he failed, nearly crushing Bull as he settled back down with a sigh.
‘You Khosians make for poor beds,’ the tribesman commented in his rough Trade.
Bull grunted. ‘And you northerners make for poor quilts.’
A wheezing sound. Something like laughter.
Bull grimaced as the tremor of it ran through the weight that pressed down against his broken armour. The two men said nothing more for a while. The tribesman seemed to be having his own difficulties with breathing.
It was the discomfort in the end that caused Bull to speak again, if only to take his mind away from it. ‘Tell me,’ he asked. ‘Is it true your women pierce their parts with jewellery?’
Ersha lifted his head, and his bearded face turned to look down at him. His teeth were sharpened into points. ‘Aye. It’s true. It was our way long before the Q’osians began doing the same.’
‘Your women must make for interesting bedmates.’
‘Don’t,’ wheezed the man. ‘You’ll have me thinking of my wives. I doubt you’d want me to have a hard-on just now.’
Bull tried hard not to laugh blackly.
‘Let me tell you. You already have one.’
‘You jest.’
‘I wish that I was.’
A moment of silence followed. ‘You would think,’ came the tribesman’s hushed voice, ‘that bleeding out all night would diminish such a thing.’
‘You would.’
‘That was a nice cut to my leg, by the way.’ It was the second time the man had offered him the compliment. Bull replied with the same words as before.
‘You left it open. Your lower defence is wanting.’
‘It’s the height. You must have the same problem.’