I left my eyes closed and slept the sleep of heroes.
61
Admiral Soma O’Nropeel
The 60th of Spring, 1197
Sesmundi’s Keep was noisy, drafty, and dirty. Crickets and a fresh layer of ash found their way in each night and when the daily rain bathed its stone walls, they would tick louder than my knees.
I dangled my feet over the edge of the bed, trying to get my knee to click in time with effects of the sunrise.
“No sleep again?” Pikailia asked.
I looked up at her through the tangles of my hair. The air of the mountain valley made her hair curl, too. She had corralled it with a wide headband. I was ready to cut mine off. She brushed the hair from my eyes and handed me an immense cup of mate with a heavy note of cinnamon. I took it and let the steam bath my face.
“Has the rider arrived, yet?” I asked.
“He is approaching the city now. It doesn’t look good.”
“Kiel was a fool for going. We’ll have a hard time keeping everyone in the city.”
“Don’t be so sure. They stay for you, not for whomever they pick to succeed Kiel.”
“I’m going to open the gate, regardless. The city can’t become a prison, and we’ve outstayed our welcome. We’ll sail for Enhedu when the wind starts shift.”
“You’re confusing Aneth for Bessradi. You are not as hated as you think. Now get up, you old bag of bones.”
The look I sent her was crueler than it should have been, but it didn’t move her. She put her hand upon my cheek instead. “You can be old tomorrow, mother. Today you are my admiral. I’ll fix your hair. Come, the sunshine will warm away your aches.”
She was abusing an old mother’s love for her only surviving daughter. I could not stay mad at her. I gulped the brew while she coaxed my hair into shape. Her brightest smile always appeared when she was helping me into uniform and it cheered me, despite myself.
We joined the city’s officers and loyal nobles above the keep’s gate while the city gathered to hear the rider’s news. He was young, wounded and upon a borrowed horse. He limped his way up, described the fate of Kiel’s army, and fell to his knees.
I ordered the city’s pennant lowered and the city fell silent.
“Who will take up Oenry Kiel’s crown?” I asked the gathered nobles. “Oenry had no sons. Will his uncle take claim it?”
The old man knew I would ask. He stepped to the battlement and tapped his cane on the rocks to hush the crowd. “No. My time has passed.”
I closed my eyes for a moment to prepare for the bickering that would follow. There were no great choices amongst the rest. The Yentif had beaten the spine out of Sesmundi years ago.
“Which family has the consent of the rest to take up his crown?”
None of them spoke. They looked at each other. Some pointed. Those pointed at shook their heads.
“Very well,” one of them said. “I’ll do it.”
“You’re a thief,” said another. “You should have been hung with your hoarding brother.”
The squabble that followed was a blistering idiocy as predictable as the afternoon rain. The rapping of a cane carried over the battlement and the argument slowly came to a tentative pause.
“Uncle Kiel,” I said. “You would suggest a claimant?”
“I would,” he said, and the chattering nobility leaned in while he cleared his throat, all hoping like school boys to be picked. The air stilled as if everyone held their breath. Uncle Kiel stepped forward, his cane making one last tap on the stone. “I choose Soma O’Nropeel.”
“What?” the men and I said in unison.
I wanted nothing to do with it and opened my mouth to say no.
“A woman isn’t capable,” one man said.
“Excuse me?” I said and took three steps toward him. “Was it a man or a woman who bested your horses?”
He wouldn’t answer.
“Was it a man or woman that saved you from the corsairs? Was it a man or woman that has held this city together these 100 days?”
“A woman,” he said toward his shoes.
They all had their heads down. I’d taken center stage, and it was with an ugly flash that I started too late to look for a way out.
“So, you would accept the crown?” uncle Kiel asked me. His mischievous smile was gone. He had his cane in both hands and looked me straight in the eyes.
Pikailia stood wide-eyed and nodded her head angrily at me. Tayler and Graves were smiling.
What had I done to desire it?
I punished myself through memories of piloting my first barge, ease-dropping on my father as he out-negotiated greedy men, and learning to read when no one thought I should. I’d been making mistakes from the start, I supposed, if leaderships was not what I had intended.
“I ... Yes,” I said, and before any upon the wall could voice opinion or decent, the city erupted with cheers and applause.
“I’m glad I did your hair,” Pikailia said.
“Shut up. You’re a princess now.”
She gasped while the nobles slowly joined in the applause. Some looked for an exit.
“Colonel Graves,” I said, “Get them all into line. Tayler, take each to their concern in writing, and read everything they say to the crowd.”
My officers fell upon those men like a steel trap and it was with renewed cheers that each noble stepped to the battlements and declared to the expectant crowd that they had no objections.
“With no objections raise,” Uncle Kiel said, “Will you take a knee, Madam O’Nropeel?”
I looked down at the hard stone and grimaced. Pikailia untied her yellow jacket and bundled it into a makeshift pillow for me to kneel upon.
I knelt before uncle Kiel and he held up a circle of silver for the crowd to see. It looked to be my size. The old man had a speech ready, too. My knees were screaming by the time he was done, and when I rose, the people of Sesmundi were waiting for my first command as their queen.
“Rise,” I said and the city leapt up, screaming and dancing.
I said some words, I think. Kindness, steadfastness, love of sea, love of our children.
Climbing down off the battlement I lamented the extra work to be done. Tayler and Pikailia looked at me sideways, and I did not understand this until two days had passed with nothing much different about my day—save my headdress. I received visitors, kept the city organized, and got the farmers and villagers ready to return to their fields.
On my third day as Queen of Aneth, and Pikailia arrived with my cup of mate and a bounce in her step.
“What is it?”
“The winds have picked up.”
“Direction?”
“North, ma’am. A strong gust. It’s pushed the ash column back out to sea.”
I’d slept so well that night I had not noticed the added chill. It was the Bergion and that wind would blow the rest of the season.
“I’ll have the crews to ship at once.”
“So we are leaving?”
“No. Patrols. If we can sail, so can the Yud. I want our fastest ship to run down to Hida and back, and have the rest prepared for engagement. We are no use to Dia here, but I’ll see the Yud bloodied enough that they never trouble these shores again. I’ll see to my uniform. Go.”
She went and the same superstition that had kept the Anetheon from their boats had them crediting me for the new wind and leaping to their boats with vigor. Catches of fish began to come ashore and the masts of our patrols marked intervals upon the distant horizon.
“What do we do, ma’am,” Graves asked, “if the Yud march on us instead?”
“I’ll raid their supplies behind them and see them starve. They’d be a season marching pikemen this far. I’d welcome them to try.”
The nervous nobles gathered behind him withdrew with tepid smiles. The concerns of farmers and fishermen were too much like the trouble of bargemen. They had needs, some of which only gods or great magic could solve. The rest were often
simple problems of supply or transport. I borrowed heavily from the way Selt and Barok delegated but diverged when it came to the punishments for selfish acts. I had no tolerance for it.
I was stuck in a debate regarding where to find enough bricks to shore up the river embankments around Sesmundi crumbling bridges when Pikailia interrupted. “Two of the patrol ships have broken line.”
We’d expected it, and I ordered Pikailia to ready the Kingfisher and a squadron of our able craft. Before she set sail though, three more of the patrol ships broke back and the last followed before I’d made it up to the battlements of the keep.
Each of returning ships had red pennants aloft, and I called every able man to the harbor.
“You’ll stay here, ma’am,” Colonel Graves said. It was not a request, and I’d anticipated that the Chaukai meant to enforce my protection.
“Yes, Colonel. I’ll command the day from here. Check the signalmen at the harbor mouth and let’s practice a relay of orders down and back to be sure of it.”
It was midday on the 79th of Spring when we sighted the armada. The captain of the first returning patrol ship reported its number as beyond counting.
I ordered our fastest ship out to get a closer look at them and the rest into deep water where they could find the best wind for the fight. I’d hoped to fight the Yud in series of smaller, more manageable engagements. All of them at once suited me fine. Numbers would not help their thin craft in the steep swells, and my great ships would ride them down like a galley did a longboat.
Panicked people from the countryside began to stream into the city while the first of the local nobles arrived to clamor for an escort west or passage north. All the noisy people were ushered to a quiet hall where they would not get underfoot.
I got a look at the Yud for myself then, and I thought at first the horizon was occupied by a single monstrous flotilla. On the armada came, its ships indeed beyond counting.
But they did not move to engage Pikailia’s squadron, nor did they move to block the harbor. They eased into the shallows along the coast south of the city, weighed anchor, and bobbed in the waves. Twenty thousand ships or more piled up there with no ability to reach our harbor mouth, facing a wave battered beach that would kill as many got ashore if they tried a landing.
Pikailia swung close to them and then darted back into the harbor while the Yud held position. I waved Pikailia in as she ran up with her report.
“Not a single soldier aboard that we could see.”
“Civilians?”
“Refugees, ma’am, stacked thick on every deck. And, ma’am, I believe I saw Sikhek aboard the lead ship.”
“What?”
A Chaukai in earshot hurried to the battlements and we searched the armada for magic and trickery.
“What is he plotting?” I asked and got no answer.
“Perhaps he is waiting for permission to come ashore?” Tayler said.
“Never,” I said, but as we watched the silent fleet of refugees, nothing changed.
“I’ll not risk a ship getting within range of him. Raise the safe harbor pennant and four red warning banners. And, Pikailia, get the Kingfisher back to deep water. If my welcome comes down, smash them.”
She raced down and the yellow over white went aloft.
The Kingfisher was back on station when the lead Yud sailed a bit further south toward a small hooked cove. They send two longboats ashore there and the group started toward the city. The group was mostly women and in their midst stood Sikhek—or perhaps a much younger man who looked like him. His stride was powerful and the women with him were as impressive. A redhead with a pike balanced on her shoulder dragged a large sack across the sand behind her. They reached a small hill a reasonable distance away and came to a halt.
Behind them, a second ship had made for the cove. The men they put ashore included a contingent of pikemen. I could see Sikhek aiming his anger at them even from that distance.
“Ma’am,” Graves said while I considered going down. “We’ve managed a counting of the ships. If each is filled with people as Pikailia described, there are many hundreds of thousands of people aboard. That is not the Yud fleet. That is half the Yud people.”
“Why did they come?” I asked and no one had an answer for me.
The list of possible explanations was short, and it included the wholesale pillage and conquest of Aneth. Even unarmed, such a mass of humanity could overwhelm Sesmundi.
“I’m going down.”
Uncle Kiel, my colonel, and his company of Chaukai accompanied me. We reached Sikhek’s knob of hill as the second group of Yud were marching up behind him.
“Well?” I said to him.
“Geart killed Aden and is lost to the Shadow. Dia escaped him across the lakes of Berm. He tried to take me in Yudyith and his beasts move north as we speak.”
The sack became conspicuous.
“And the men marching on us?”
“The Roto Arilas of Yudyith and those who refused to save Cyaudi from the Hessier Geart has unleashed upon the province. I tried to leave them behind.”
“This is your doing? A salvation of a hundred thousand refugees?”
“There is well over half a million people with us, Soma. We need to get them ashore before the smaller ships flounder.”
Ice coursed through my veins. He was a liar, and whatever his intention I could believe that the safety of the Yud people had anything to do with his plans.
Yet, here they were. Saved as through Barok or I had done it.
“And in the sack?”
“For you to see with your own eyes. Geart’s magic defies description.”
The redhead dumped the weigh from the sack, and the matted and decayed mass was savaged almost beyond recognition. I knew the stink and grey slick. It has been Hessier.
“A bear?”
“Yes. Bear, caribou, and hawk. Any creature he knows the noun for have become vessels for a human soul. The Yud fought through a hundred of them to escape.”
I turned to the women with him and they bowed. I skipped introductions, reached out instead, and mended their souls. I expected half of them to be Sikhek’s thralls and fall dead. The redhead dropped to one knee as the Shadow savaged her, and He had hold of each of them as though they’d been through hell. It was almost too much at once for me to handle, and when I was done they rose. One of them spat in the sand.
“That one is a Nuar,” my colonel whispered. “The head man’s daughter.”
I would have questioned her, but the Roto Arilas and his mismatched retinue clamored forward. “I’ll speak with whatever simpleton succeeded Oenry Kiel.”
“You have met Sikhek?” I asked him.
“This fool has no part here. Call upon your arilas. Is it this old man here? He looks like a Kiel, minus the pike rammed up his ass, of course.”
“Tell me what happened in Yudyith.”
“Nothing. I have brought an army like none before assembled. Now call upon your arilas. I would have his surrender.”
I swept my power across him and his men, and two of his retainers fell dead. The rest of their souls were simple to save, a few soldiers amongst them but none as damaged as the women with Sikhek. The Roto Arilas was so untouched by death and war that my magic had almost not been necessary. He swooned anyway and looked around for the source of their affliction.
“Whose thralls?” I asked Sikhek and pointed at the dead men.
“Aden’s perhaps. They might have been mine, too, I suppose, from before. It would have saved me some trouble in Cyaudi if I’d remembered them at the time.”
“You are preposterous.”
The Roto Arilas got his wits back about him and started yelling at me.
“Shut your mouth, sir,” I said. “You address the Queen of Aneth and the Admiral of her Fleet, Soma O’Nropeel. You have no army and will surrender what few weapons you carry and step aside. The people of Yudyith need to be ashore.”
He kept yelling, and I turned to Sikh
ek, his eyebrows still raised from having heard my new title. “I have no need of this Roto fool. The Yud are welcome to do with him what they please.”
Sikhek waved his group at them, and they leapt at the unready men, knocked them down, and robbing them of their pikes. The redhead disemboweled the screaming Arilas and then slit the throat of the only officer amongst the pikemen. The Nuar woman got the rest corralled as fast as any Chaukai could have.
“I’ll have her story, now,” I said to Sikhek and she crossed with pike in hand.
“Soma, this is Mika Nuar. I was a prisoner of the Roto when she rallied some of the locals and sprung me.”
The woman was fit, extraordinary so, and bowed with grace. “We’d heard Sikhek had gone overboard and had been picked up by a corsair. I followed word of him to Cyaudi where I was fortunate to find friends of his. The rest you know, more or less.”
“Friends?” I asked and turned to the redhead.
“We fucked him until he ran out of money, stabbed him in the guts, and threw him out a third-story window. We didn’t know he was Sikhek until Mika showed up.”
I wanted to know how Mika’s information about what happened along my coastline was better than what Chaukai scouts and sailors could gather, but left that for later.
“You would bring them all ashore?”
“Yes,” Sikhek said, “and move them west on the tithe road ahead of Geart. The people of Aneth must escape him, too. His beasts will overrun Havish and Dahar in a matter of days. I sent word ashore for them to flee. I have no hope they will do so with the speed required. Geart’s beasts need no rest.”
“Just like that, move a million people down one road?”
“Yes. Move every soul in our command, boats and all to the Bessradi River. Every soul we get clear of him will be one less Hessier we must kill. I can rally the Savdi-Nuar to hold Geart off while you move them.”
“You are not the wretch I left to sink to the bottom of the sea.”
“The Vastness has taken hold of me. I despise it as much as the touch of the Shadow or the Earth, but he rewarded me for moving these people.”
“Could we not fight Geart here?”
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