On the morning of the fourth day, as dawn was breaking, a messenger from the Medes rode out across the open ground, inviting our high king and Sounis to a parley. It was unclear whether the insult to the queens was calculated or accidental.
It was the kind of day with brilliant blue skies and scudding black-bottomed clouds filled with rain. The sun as it rose higher turned the bright greens of the marshy ground to gleaming gold, picking out all the colors in the tents of the gathered armies. As the parley party gathered, the royal pennants blew and snapped in the wind.
Attolia would accompany the king, but both Sounis and Eddis would stay back out of an abundance of caution. They were all together as they waited for the Mede party to move first from its encampment. When it finally did, their horses shifted, stamping their feet and throwing up their heads, revealing their riders’ tightening grip on the reins.
“Gods defend us,” one of the generals said under his breath. Everyone heard it.
“What is it?” asked Xenophon the Eddisian. His eyes were not the best.
“Elephants,” the king answered grimly. “They are coming out on their elephants.”
The elephants had been brought through the pass only the day before, dragging the Mede artillery. This was the first time they’d appeared on the battlefield, their ponderous steps eating up the ground between the camps.
No one would look directly at the king. Even Fryst, with the personality of a plow horse, would go wild when confronted by an animal ten times his size, and the king was no rider to handle a badly spooked horse.
As if unaware of this looming humiliation, the king suddenly said, “I really want one of those.”
“One of what?” asked Attolia, distracted.
“An elephant,” said the king, and repeated it a little louder. “I want an elephant.”
“An elephant,” said Attolia. She briefly lifted her fingers to her temple and after a deep breath she asked, “Where do you imagine you would keep an elephant?”
The king squinted speculatively at the enormous animals. “That’s a good point. They are much too big to go in the stables. Philo,” he said, “run and get me the melons from the breakfast table.” Philologos ran as if he were being chased by wild dogs and was back with three small melons before the king and queen began their stately ride down the slope out toward the Medes. As they went, the king was stuffing the melons, each the size of his fist, into the front of his tunic, and everyone could hear him still talking.
“We could keep it in the guard’s bathhouse! There’s plenty of room.”
“And the guards will bathe . . . ?”
“In the palace reservoir.”
“Our drinking water,” the queen objected.
The king’s plans grew more grandiose as his voice grew fainter. “We’ll build your aqueduct. We’ll make another reservoir.”
“It would be cheaper to build a larger stable,” Attolia said as they were almost out of earshot. The king swept off his ridiculous hat and bowed from the saddle as if this was just the conclusion he’d been leading her toward.
“So, so, so! We’ll build a new house for our elephant.”
“Your elephant,” said Attolia.
I noticed that he didn’t put the hat back on.
Instead of riding all the way to the Mede parley, the king and queen and their councilors dismounted and walked. The king was assiduous in assisting the queen over the mud churned by the days of fighting, making the Medes wait. When he’d reached firmer ground, the king took out a melon and split it with his hook as they walked. It was the Medes who had problems with unruly mounts. One strained its trunk forward, reaching for the king.
Hilarion, who by order of precedence had the long-seeing scope, described what he saw to the rest of us.
“He’s fed it to the elephant. Gods all around us, he’s patting it on the nose and the other elephants are crowded in! He’ll be trampled.”
But he was not. Those in charge of the elephants forced them back. The Medes climbed down, and the rest of the parley was carried out on even ground.
The general sent by the emperor to conquer the Little Peninsula was a stocky, grizzled veteran. If he was disappointed not to be speaking from the back of the elephant, it didn’t show. He introduced himself as Bu-seneth and without other preamble asked for the high king’s surrender.
The king didn’t answer. Instead he leaned to look around Bu-seneth.
“Nahuseresh?” he said. “Why are you there with the junior officers? Come up and say hello.” The king waved him forward.
Nahuseresh stared without speaking.
Noting the muscles tightening in the Mede general’s jaw, the king murmured, “I’m sure he’s a great help to you.”
Addressing Attolia, Bu-seneth said, “Carry a message to Sophos, king of Sounis and Eddis. Tell him we will accept his surrender. We are not here to make war on peaceful people.”
“Then go home again,” Attolia suggested.
Bu-seneth scowled and the parley was over. The Medes had not expected a surrender; their goal had been to intimidate. If the king had blunted the awe-inspiring effect of the elephants, we soon learned the damage they could do.
At the end of the day, the council tent had been moved and reassembled, its distance from the battlefield not just a sign of the day’s retreat, but of new caution.
Out on the coast, the damp sea air turned to mist and rolled inland like a tide, squeezing through the narrow pass to spread over the dead and muffle the cries of the wounded. This was the first time we saw it, the fog they called the Leonyla’s tongue. It licked the back of the neck and made a man shiver from head to toe. It left everyone damp and chilled through.
Eddis asked the king to move through the camp, to speak to the soldiers and encourage them.
“You cannot mean that,” the king said bitterly. “Send someone they can respect.”
“Sophos will go as well. It’s a big army, Gen,” said Eddis.
“At least act like a king,” said Attolia, acid in her voice.
It had been a long, miserable day. The king might have been angry. Instead, he smiled and kissed her gently. “I will go pretend to be the best high king there ever was,” he promised.
In the growing dark, as other activities stopped and men turned to handwork, mending, and sharpening the tools of war, the king and Hilarion, Dionis, Ion, and I wandered from campfire to fire through the dripping fog, chatting for a few moments and moving on. As the night air grew cooler, one of the king’s guards offered the king his cloak and, after protesting, the king reluctantly accepted. No one wanted him to be ill again.
At one campfire the soldiers offered up a cup of wine, and he sat to drink with them. He tested the waters carefully. All were veterans, all of them old enough to be his father. They’d lost battles before and they were ready to set aside the ills of the day to savor the warmth of the fire and the life that still flowed through their veins.
“Without war, there would be no heroes,” said one man.
“Would that be a bad thing?” asked the king.
“That’s a woman’s question,” one man responded dismissively.
“Perhaps my wife can tell me the answer, then,” said the king with a dangerous smile.
“Take my advice,” said another man, one with a scar that puckered his skin from his forehead, across his cheek, and down to his chin. “Never let your wife tell you anything.”
His friends all laughed. Hilarion opened his mouth to call them to account, but the king reached out to cover his mouth. Hilarion was so surprised, as he looked down at the king’s hand, that his eyes crossed, and the men around the fire slapped their knees and rocked back and forth. Hilarion realized what the king had already seen: these soldiers had meant no insult to the queen. With his right arm and his hook covered by the borrowed cloak, the men had no idea who the king was. They’d offered a drink to a couple of passing strangers, oblivious to the guards waiting beyond the light of their fire.
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br /> “When you return home from war,” a skinny whip of a man said thoughtfully when the merriment had subsided, “you see your wife and your children and you know you have protected them. They are safe and well and you are safe and well. There’s nothing like that feeling. Nothing else in your whole life will ever compare to it.”
“And you swear you’ll never go to war again, but you do,” said the man with the scar, shaking his head at his own decisions.
“What man will stay in his bed when the Medes are coming?” the whip-thin man asked. “Who wants to say ten years from now, ‘I had a good nap that day!’” He spoke in a querulous old man’s voice. “No one will remember their nap. They’ll remember this.”
“Tomorrow we will fight for our homes and our wives and our children.”
The king shrugged then, and a little of his bitterness was back. “Not I.”
They still did not know him. Looking him over, they assumed him to be one of the many indispensable servants of war.
“Well, we wouldn’t be able to fight without your help, son.”
“Blacksmith?” the thin man asked.
“Nah,” pointed out the man with the scar, “no pox. He’s no blacksmith and no farrier. Cooper?”
The king shook his head.
“Cook, are you?”
Again, Hilarion would have said something, but seeing the king’s frown, he bit his tongue. The men saw it too, and misread his intent. “Don’t you tease him,” they said. They did not doubt Hilarion was a fighting man. “None of us can get along without the cooks.”
“But I want to fight!” insisted the king. He slumped dramatically and added, “My wife won’t let me.”
They roared. The man with the scar slapped his leg. “Didn’t I say never listen to your wife?” And they all laughed even louder.
“She doesn’t want you to lose your good looks, end up like Lefkis with his face split.”
“Spindly kid like you,” said Lefkis, pinching the king’s right arm above the elbow, not noticing the straps under the heavy cloth. “Stay in the cook tent,” he said.
The king pretended to be insulted. He muscled up his other arm and said he would destroy the Medes single-handed if she would only let him go.
“You’ll have your chance in time,” the men assured him as they sobered again. They knew that every man would fight, coopers, cooks, and all.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Lefkis, pulling a glove out of his belt and handing it to the king. “If you ever make it into battle and out again, you bring this to me so I’ll know you, and we’ll make sure you get a double ration of wine that day.”
Taking the glove, the king stood and bowed and thanked them for the wine and said he must go. His wife would be expecting him. Far more cheerful than they’d been earlier, they waved him on his way.
There had never been any expectation that we would stop the Mede advance, only slow it. Three of the next five days, we fought and retreated. On the sixth, the Medes requested another parley. After very little debate, the queens agreed to send Attolia and the king again, for no other reason than it meant a morning of rest for our soldiers. The Medes came out on horses this time, no need for petty intimidation. Again, Bu-seneth asked for complete surrender, and again Attolia refused him. As the two parties turned away from each other, Nahuseresh delivered an unscripted announcement from behind the Mede general. “I have found Kamet!”
Attolia laid a hand on the king’s arm to caution him, as he swung around angrily.
Bu-seneth had turned on Nahuseresh and was pushing him back. Attolia’s former ambassador, who foolishly thought she had fallen for his seductive offers of support from the Mede emperor and from him, had been humiliated and had returned to the empire in disgrace. His hatred of Attolia and her husband was a personal affair, and the king’s hatred of Nahuseresh was the same. It was at Nahuseresh’s instigation that Attolia had cut off the king’s hand, and the king blamed him for it. Why the king felt such animosity for Nahuseresh and not for Attolia, I do not know. People are no less mysterious than the gods. If an author’s account of any man is tidy, you must believe it has been made so in contrast with the truth, which is rarely clear and never simple.
Nahuseresh shouted past Bu-seneth’s ear. “I found him in Roa! My men took their time cutting him to pieces. Oh, I see your queen restrains you! Come out and fight like a king, Eugenides, instead of a sneak thief hiding behind your wife’s skirts!”
Bu-seneth pushed Nahuseresh one way and Attolia dragged the king the other, ending the parley.
That day we watched in horror as a wing of the Mede’s horse broke through our lines and cut off a group of Eddisians. Mede infantry drove in after the horsemen. Attolia looked for a rider to carry her orders to the Attolian reserves. “I’ll take the message,” said the king, fed up with sitting still, and he was off before anyone could stop him. His attendants galloped after him, but I stayed, as Snap would not have been able to keep up. We turned our attention back to the battle.
“What is it, Pheris?” said Attolia a little later, as I reached to tug her sleeve. “I have no time for games.”
I pointed at the white horse leading the reinforcements.
The Eddisians, hard pressed, could see him coming, Fryst glorious with mane and tail flying, the king with his sword held high. Behind the Mede line, Nahuseresh reared his horse into the air and stabbed at the sky with his own sword, exultant at having drawn the king out at last.
Faster and faster Fryst came, not slowing even as they approached the men locked in battle. Where another horse might have leapt into the fray, Fryst, predictably, dug his front hooves into the muddy ground. Head down and heels up, he sent the king flying in his pitneen-colored coat.
I had the observation glass. Philologos had handed it to me before riding out after the king. I watched the king rotate in the air, straight as a pike, arms thrust out to either side. He spun as the weight of his sword arm dragged him off-balance. Still spinning, he landed in front of Nahuseresh, swinging the sword along the ground like a scythe, slicing into the hock of Nahuseresh’s horse and bringing it down, screaming.
I saw all that before Trokides snatched the scope away. Even then I could make out Nahuseresh as he dragged himself free of his horse. He ran away—feet flying and arms pumping, head tipped back like an athlete racing for a finish line, with the king, like a reckless fool, chasing after him. The king followed Nahuseresh farther and farther onto enemy ground as Nahuseresh outpaced him on feet winged with fear, every step carrying the king away from his own men.
From the council tent, we heard the roar of the Eddisians. “Annux! Annux!” they cried as they surged forward to save him. I was terrified and exhilarated. The queens were livid. The Medes were driven back.
It was not the miracle described in Pollimius’s history. The tiny Peninsular army did not push back the entirety of the Mede forces. The Medes outmatched us by such numbers that they sent only a partial force to every battle. Their confidence was so high that they were unprepared for a setback. They did not have their reserves in order, and what might have been a hesitation in their advance became a full-scale retreat. Legend makers will exaggerate, but the truth is extraordinary enough and needs no embellishments: the Medes withdrew in chaos; Nahuseresh seized another man’s horse and fled from the king.
As the rest of the army secured the ground they had painfully won, the king returned to camp. His father had taken him up on his horse and the two rode together, surrounded by smiling Eddisians. When they reached the royal tents, the king slipped down, but he didn’t approach Attolia or Eddis, who were waiting for him. He followed after his father, who was marching grim-faced for the tent Eddis’s senior advisors shared.
The attendants hesitantly went after the king but stopped when the minister of war slipped the cords and snapped the tent flap down in their faces. Again, tents by their nature are poor at providing privacy. There was a clearly audible sound of flesh contacting flesh and we all heard the mini
ster of war say, after a moment, “Get up.”
“Why would I do that?” the king asked, bleary voiced. He must have done so, as there was another meaty smack. Hilarion and Ion stood looking uncertain, not knowing if they should rush to defend their king or spare him any witnesses to his humiliation. Before they could make up their minds, the tent flap was flipped aside and the minister stumped out.
The king lay on his back on the carpet. One side of his face was red and white with the imprint of the minister’s fingers all in a row. As we watched, the white was fading to red to match the rest of that side of his face.
“Get Petrus,” said Hilarion to Medander, but the king flapped his hand.
“Leave Petrus to those who need him more,” he said as he struggled to sit up. He had plenty of help to get to his feet. “Please tell the queens and Sounis and the rest in the council tent that I will join them,” he mumbled, “soon.” Sinking onto a campstool, he tipped his head into his palm.
When he was ready to stand again, the attendants led him to his tent, washed him, and put him in clean clothes, oddly quiet for people who had just seen their overmatched army win an unanticipated victory. They trailed behind the king like schoolboys to the council tent, where he stood with his face swollen and purple on one side and apologized to the queens and to Sounis and to his councilors for his astonishingly selfish behavior. Sounis sat next to his own father, looking sympathetic. His magus stood behind him, looking very grave. There was a pained silence until Sounis hesitantly pointed out that the prophecy hadn’t actually said clearly that the king couldn’t fight.
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