by K. J. Coble
The sword still caught, he hung, wobbling as the Son raised the massive mace one-handed to finish him.
More steel lanced through the smoke to plant between the giant’s shoulder blades. The thrust bent his spine and the mace spun free of his flopping hand. The Son tried to turn, snarling and still impossibly full of fight, even with two blades in him.
Aelren clung desperately to his sword where he’d wedged it in the Son’s back, trying to lean in, drive the steel deeper into muscle and bone. Something gave and the Xyxian flinched, growls becoming a squeak as Aelren’s point sank in another inch. “Captain,” the younger Vothan said through clenching teeth, “help!”
Strayden regained his balance and put all his bulk into the pommel of his broadsword. Metal and bone grated as the blade plunged deeper. The Son of Arr’s scream of pain and hate blasted into Strayden’s face with spittle and bloody flecks. He flailed, got a grip on Strayden’s forearms and—insane—began dragging him close, screeching up the length of steel, fingers fumbling for his face. Xyxian hate blazed out from depthless, black eyes.
Durrak’s axe ended it. Swung two-handed, the Vothan edge crashed through the Xyxian helmet, sheared into skull and teeth. Blood and brain spray blinded Strayden and he flinched away, let go of his weapon reflexively as he spat gagging gore taste. Vaguely, he heard Durrak’s roar of triumph. But deprived of his hold on the sword, he dropped onto his ass.
Wiping the Xyxian’s death from his eyes and whiskers, Strayen saw the Son of Arr drop to his knees, but still wobbling erect, even with three weapons planted in his body. All around them, the battle flowed away into rout, thousands running, screaming. Strayden had lost sight of his Vothans, carried away after it in their zeal. A distant part of him tensed, feared counter attack or feigned retreat. But, no...it’s done. He could taste victory, even over the vileness of the Son’s effluvium.
Aelren yanked his sword free with a skirl of rent metal. Durrak gripped his axe in both hands and tore it loose, left ruin where a face had been. But still the Son wobbled on his knees.
Strayden staggered to his feet, stepped up to the giant, and gripped the handle of his sword. With a jerk he freed it.
The Son of Arr crumpled, the life gone from the body as assuredly as the fight had bled from the Xyxian army on the wastes in the shadow of Zadam.
“THEY’RE DOING IT!” Clover cheered from lower on the Spire. “They’re going to win it all now!”
Asyra’s attention had been locked on the smoke and flame near the center of the battle line, where flashes of weird green and then forks of blue-white had gouged the air. She could think of only a handful of people or things on this world who could’ve been the source of those and it’d filled her with fear. Lyssa! Are you in that?
But of course, she was. Asyra knew it.
“Look at that!” Clover cried.
The sorcerous upheaval in the middle had started the collapse, like cracks in glass spreading out from a shattering blow. Waves of men rippled away from the conflagration and pressed further waves of panic out ahead of them. Some of the Sons of Arr were already wheeling their chariots about, anticipating disaster and pulling clear of it.
But movement on the wings was what really upended things. Sctinallan heavy cavalry, the cataphracts, led by the super-heavy clibinari—men and horses completely encased in metal—sliced in from right and left flanks. Like giant scythes, they mowed through the Xyxian infantry. Groups attempting to reform and stand powdered before their impact. Hundreds fell screaming before their lances and blades and hooves.
Where the Xyxian leadership had seemed resigned to the destruction of their peasant soldiers, the cataphract charge finally triggered a response. Retreating Sons of Arr wheeled again, coming back into small formations that tightened together enough that the blades along their wheel hubs lined up and advanced line-abreast. The Scintallan cavalry could easily outmaneuver these and did, but the effect was to channel them away from the routing infantry, preserve a corridor through which the commoners could escape.
Now the savran returned and to these the cataphracts turned their attention. The glittering waves surged towards one another across the seething wastes, for a few instants seeming like visions from a Vothan saga, or one of the Scintallan apocalypse tales come to life. Speed stretched each line out into jagged wedges. Lances leveled. Cries and horns split the air. And the thunder of their horses shivered creation.
They met with a crash that went on and on, an appalling clamor that rose above all the other battle din. The cavalry wedges shattered upon one another, splinters slicing off, a hundred separate melees whirling and cutting and screaming. Dust spun over them all, quickly stealing any details that might be discerned.
But the effect was pretty clear to Asyra. The Xyxian counterattack had stolen the momentum of the Scintallan cavalry charge, giving their infantry masses space to run while the riders mauled each other on the flanks. Confusion and sheer numbers had stalled the Scintallan advance on foot in the center, Vothans and infantry Regulars slogging their way into an utter tangle. The battle had been won there, but they couldn’t finish it. And the proximity of their own people, especially the mounted nobles, kept the terrible Scintallan archery at bay.
Out on the wastes, the Immortals shuddered and began to advance. Arya saw quickly it was not a move to attack, though. Lanes opened up between their disciplined blocks and the commoners flowed through. More blocks formed into a solid rectangle at the center of the formation, no approach allowed there, where the Heirs to the Deathless Throne watched and seethed.
The battle was over; the war would go on. With this loss, the Xyxians had failed to keep the Scintallans confined to the coastal region. But Asyra could see the next phase taking shape. They’d withdraw across the wastes, lure the Scintallans after them. There’d be another battle, and another. The Xyxian capital lay beyond the River Nex, the legendary Dark Walls of ancient Thamura. That was where the fate of nations must be decided.
“Have you ever seen anything like it?” Clover crowed from below.
Asyra blew out a breath. She hadn’t; not on this scale. But she’d been it close—really, so had Clover. They both knew death, more than intimately. The grandeur of it all shrank in Asyra’s mind, became those sick, desperate fights she’d survived, just writ large. The sheer scale of violence, the thrill soured as she thought of the utter sea of misery that would be left after this.
Bile rose. Asyra spat, careful not to hit her comrade. Another damned, meaningless cause for another faceless, uncaring kingdom. Affixed to the Spire and largely secure, she fidgeted with the ring on her free hand, a loop of pewter fashioned into an eye that she knew actually saw. She’d gotten dragged into the Eyes of the Emperor against her will; she stayed now freely. But she didn’t know why. The Scintallans were just another thuggish regime.
Actually, she did know why and winced at the moment of self-deception. Lyssa. The Eyes gave her proximity to the White Guard and to her. And, yeah, Strayden and his pack of fools had become something of a safe harbor for her, too. But really, it was Lyssa, who’d sparked in Asyra something she didn’t know she could feel anymore, something that’d been left dead and bleeding out on a Ybbasid harem rug a decade ago.
Foolish. Dangerous.
Asyra...
“What?” she growled in annoyance.
“I didn’t say anything,” Clover snapped from below.
“Then what was—”
Scowling uneasily, Asyra scanned the escarpment. She’d heard the voice. She had—her name being called. Slowly, she panned her gaze up towards the ruins crowning the cliffs, felt the hairs on her neck tingle.
A smudge of cloud or maybe a high-drifted plume of dust momentarily blotted out the sun and shadow flitted across the crags of Zadam. More dust eddied in ghost-like whisps about the fallen walls, the shards of obelisk, the sad, squat remnants of lesser tombs. Even the Great Pyramid of Thyss-Mallik, whispered across the eras as a focal point for wonder and wickedness, seeme
d a pitiful, diminished thing, humbled by time.
Empires...Emperors...nothing lasts forever.
“Nothing,” Asyra replied to Clover finally. She returned the mirror to her pack and adjusted her grip in preparation for descent. “It’s nothing. I think we’re done here.”
“Good thing, too,” the other spy said. “With the battle moving on, the skulkers and opportunists will be about.” With a clatter of pebbles, Clover shifted her grip on the Spire and began to climb down. “This place will be swarming with looters.”
“They’d be fools,” Asyra replied, starting down after her. “Any easy pickings have long-since been carried off. And the rest—the stuff that’s said to have been buried below” she shivered “you’ve heard the tales; has anyone actually ever come out with anything? With their lives?”
“That hasn’t stopped people from trying,” Clover pointed out.
“Like I said; fools. Why risk your neck on ghost stories and peasants’ babble?”
Love...
Asyra halted her descent and again stared towards the ruins. She’d heard it, no doubt in her mind. A glance showed Clover continuing down without her, showing no notice of the voice. But it had been there, spoken at her ear, almost, like a whisper from a side alley at night.
Dust devils twined in the half-buried streets of Zadam like the specters of long-gone market-goers. One of these whipped around a corner, grew in density as it meandered down the sloping ruins towards the Spires. No breeze appeared to churn it. No wind moaned in Ayra’s ears. The strange phenomenon seemed guided by its own motive force.
Asyra started to call down to Clover.
Love is worth the risk, the voice said. It’s always been love, hasn’t it?
The words froze Asyra in place, set her flesh to creeping. The dust devil wheeled closer, reached the edge of a tier of crags that had obviously once been some sort of inner wall, near where sand drifts had mostly hidden the egg-shell crags of what looked to have once been a dome of some sort, just inside the Spires. The dust thickened, almost took on a shape—a figure.
And the words spoke again, thrilling up and down Asyra’s nerves. Across a thousand generations, love has held me prisoner. I died for love, when the world was still young. The dust-figure thickened, became womanly curves and almost—almost—arms, shoulder, hair, and face. For love, I have not been allowed to rest since.
“What are you?” Asyra whispered, surprised by her own voice.
You learned to love with your body, turn that love into a weapon. But you never let yourself love with your heart. That’s what has been missing, is it not, Asyra et Mathal at Fahldan?
She swallowed with a throat gone as dry as the dust that had swallowed Zadam. “You...know me?”
I know you. I saw you coming, across a sea of time. Ages have meant nothing. Only the end of them. I knew you before you were you. I knew you’d come. This is always how it would be. You cannot escape it.
“What the hells are you doing up there?” Clover snarled from below.
Asyra flinched at the interruption. A glance down showed the other Eye had reached the base of the Spire, was looking up in confusion and a hint of concern. When Asyra look towards the ruins again, only streamers of sand twined in the dead air of the ruins.
“Did you see that?”
“See what?” Clover’s voice hoarsened with anger. “Hear what? Come the hells down from there. You’ve gotten too much sun!”
The din of the battle rose up to her again. More than that, a part of it seemed to be drifting their way, pockets of shattered Xyxian infantry and isolated berber horsemen falling back to the lower crags of the escarpment below the Spires. Desperate, cornered fights flared. Men fled from these, began climbing frantically. No single one of them would be a match for either Eye of the Emperor, just broken men with broken weapons. But there were many.
“Come down!” Clover tried a pleading note now. “Seriously, we can’t stay here. Asyra, come on!”
Chilled to the marrows, despite the pummel of the sun, Asyra glanced one more time into the ruins. She saw only rubble and dust.
It’s gone, Asyra thought. She’s gone.
But Asyra knew that wasn’t true.
CHAPTER THREE
BAZUL II HELD UP A jewel-encrusted goblet and his face creased with a stern smile. “Victory today,” he proclaimed. “And victory tomorrow!”
Urius and the nobles crowded into the Emperor’s tent echoed him, lifted their drinks in salute, and sipped respectfully at their sovereign’s wine, distributed by endlessly circulating grooms. At Urius’ side, Kleve guzzled noisily and grunted for a refill. The Duke suppressed a snarl. The man had been a mess since the battle, despite having gotten nowhere near it. The Baron’s horse had thrown him in a panic and he’d hobbled and complained of pain since.
“The men fought with great courage, this day,” Bazul went on. He’d replaced the simple circlet of earlier with the full diadem of his office, gems and pearls glinting in lantern light. “But I’m afraid the work is not yet done.”
That sent a ripple of murmurs through the nobles, not exactly surprise—they’d all seen it when pursuit bogged down in the sheer tangle of the Xyxian rout—but acknowledgement. Too, they pondered the cost of continuing that pursuit. Many of them, as grasping and greedy a nest of rats as ever existed, secretly lamented the cost of this campaign. But to show hesitation before their liege could mean the gallows.
“Highness,” a grizzled, barrel-figured noble from the opposite side of the tent growled. This was Duke Veridas of Galiz, a brutish brawler and one of Urius’ chief rivals. “We destroyed as much as a quarter of their strength today. Perhaps the time has come to attempt seeking terms again?”
“Indeed,” Urius added, not really agreeing, but not wanting Veridas’ voice louder than his at this council. He ignored the look of alarm from Xass Kham, standing near the Emperor, and pressed on. “After the spanking we gave the Xyxian brats, today, perhaps they’re of a less-sanguine frame of mind.”
That triggered some chuckles and growls of appreciation. Even Bazul’s lugubrious visage twitched with his approximation of humor. In truth, it had been a triumph, and Urius secretly seethed. Another victory for his cousin who—for all his other faults—always found luck on the battlefield.
“Yes,” Veridas hurried to add, “let us send heralds to Black-Walled Thamura!”
Bazul turned contemplatively to Xass Kham, given pride of place close to him as the Scintallan justification for the war. “What say you” the Emperor smiled humorlessly and it was hard to miss the irony in his tone “Highness?”
“I would say do not bother, Great Bazul!” Kham replied in a rush. He flicked a glance Urius’ way again and the Duke ground his teeth. The fool would give them away if he didn’t govern his emotions. “My Brothers will not give up the Deathless Throne for a bribe or promises of safe conduct. They must be destroyed!”
“I understand we slew one of them,” Bazul said and turned to the giant in crimson and gold at his flank. “Is that not so, Harald?”
“Aye, Highness,” the Vothan replied. A bandage about the brute’s forearm spoke of his involvement in the fighting and he scratched at it contemptuously. “Our Fifth Cohort overran him when he tried to rally his men.”
“Such a warning won’t give your kin pause?” Bazul asked, pivoting back to Kham.
“No.” The Xyxian shook his head, almost frantically. “It will only embolden those that survive. It’s one less sibling to worry over, once less knife in the back.”
“That, no doubt, motivates your advice to this council,” Veridas pointed out.
Kham had to raise his voice over Scintallan chortles. “Of course, it does! I’ve made no secret of it. I am a dead man, so long as one of my brothers draws breath.” He looked again to Bazul. “But know this, just as assuredly; none of the Heirs will give up their claim on the Deathless Throne so long as they live—and perhaps beyond even that.”
“Xyxian superstition,”
Veridas said with a dismissive wave. “My Lord Bazul, send the heralds. Maybe it comes to nothing. Probably, it comes to nothing. But what have we to lose?”
“They’ll see it as a sign of weakness,” Kham pressed.
“After we just ripped apart a fourth of their army?” Veridas snapped back.
Bazul no longer appeared to be paying any attention to the pair, had stepped slowly to the center of the tent, where a large map had been unfurled across a folding table. Candles fluttered around him, from lanterns, from stands, carved shadows into the corners of his sunburnt face. For a moment, he looked truly aged.
“Scouts say they’re falling back to the Oasis of Shamir,” he said, tapping the map with a many-ringed hand, “in a hurry but in surprisingly good order. That’s two days’ march across the wastes?”
“It is, Highness,” Urius spoke up.
“And it’s out in the open,” Veridas added. “They’ll be able to make better use of their numbers out there.”
“Those numbers that did them so much good today?” Urius retorted and got appreciative grumbles from the others for it.
Veridas’ smile back at him didn’t extend to his glaring eyes. “Certainly, Scintallan steel is a match for such, Lord. I’m merely pointing out the obviousness of the lure.” He looked at Bazul. “They will attempt to encircle us.”
“We need the decisive battle, my lords,” Bazul said, looking up and around at the nobles. His gaze lingered for a moment as it met Urius’. “I had hoped it would be today, but the enemy’s cowardice prevented it.” He looked down, tapped the map again. “We cannot allow them to break up, scatter, and harass us from all quarters. Even well-provisioned, we cannot fight indefinitely in this country. We certainly can’t let them use the excuse of negotiations to escape. No. We need to destroy them while they’re still concentrated.” He glanced around the tent, gaze clearly taking in the measure of his nobles.
“We will pursue them across the wastes to the Oasis.”