Empire of Grass

by Tad Williams

As the madness raged across the Thanemoot, Agvalt and his bandits could do little except post sentries and stay close to the fire in their camp at the end of the lake; Count Eolair, still their prisoner, could do even less. Whatever had occurred on the hill called the Silent One had swept across the camps like the wave that had destroyed ancient Gemmia.

  Hours later, as the sun sank and stars began to kindle in the wide sky, Eolair could still hear the sound of chaos everywhere, people rushing back and forth shouting contradictory tales, shrieks of joy and others of agony, people cheering, screaming, arguing, and once the sound of an entire wagon crashing over onto its side not much more than a stone’s throw away. Eolair saw flames licking upward in several places beyond the ring of trees in which his bandit captors sheltered, and for the first time was content to be a valued prisoner instead of a free man, because whatever was happening outside their camp sounded like war.

  “They have been roused against outsiders by someone,” said Hotmer, sharpening his sword with grim attention. “When they find us they will tear us apart.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” said Agvalt. “This is not the first time I have heard such madness. Mark me, it is something to do with Redbeard and his hunger to rule them all. Perhaps he has executed the pretender and they are all celebrating.”

  A screech cut the air, long and ragged—it seemed to come from the spot where the wagon still burned bright against the purple evening sky. The cry rose and rose, then abruptly ended.

  “Whatever happened, not everyone is in a celebratory mood, it seems,” said Eolair.

  “Bah.” Agvalt spit into the fire. “You know little of the grasslands, king’s man. That is how the free riders make merry. Murder and rape are their favorite pastimes.”

  A bit too proud, are you not, since you are an outlaw and a clansman yourself? Eolair thought, but kept silent as he stared into the wavering flames. I never hoped for a quiet life in my later days. I did not think it would happen, nor did I want it to. But by Brynioch and all the gods, I did not want to spend those days in the company of cutthroats and madmen. I do not want to die beside this lake in the middle of the empty grasslands, just to feed the flies.

  “I should learn what is happening out there,” he said suddenly. “My king would want to know.”

  Agvalt looked at him but only spit into the fire again. It landed on a stone and sizzled.

  “I only ask that when you go out among them again, you take me,” Eolair said. “Tie my legs, tie my arms, I do not care. You said you will ransom me, and I owe a responsibility to the High King and Queen. They will want to know what is happening here.”

  Agvalt smirked. “We are taking you nowhere, rabbit-eater, so do not try to play the fox. You would be no good to us with your throat slit.”

  “You said you will ransom me—”

  “Piece by piece if you do not shut your mouth.” The look in the bandit chieftain’s eye was murderous, but Eolair thought it covered fear of the madness that surrounded them. “He will not know you are dead until I send him your head at the last.”

  Eolair said no more but he was satisfied. He had put the idea in Agvalt’s head, like a seed. If he was lucky, it would sprout later when he could actually hope to make use of it.

  Shortly, one of the other bandits returned to the campfire. He ignored the questions from the rest of his fellows and sat down next to Agvalt.

  “What did you see?” the bandit chief demanded.

  “What did I see?” The man shook his head. It took him a moment to find words. “What did I not see? They have run wild out there, wild as horses in a fire. Brother fighting brother, clansman fighting clansman. Three times at least I saw men fighting to the death with axes and swords, and none around them were even watching, so busy were they with mischief of their own.”

  “But what is it about, curse it?” Agvalt asked.

  “The one called Redbeard is dead. I do not know how—nobody I spoke to knew either—but it is something to do with the one called Unver, who they are already calling Shan.”

  “A pox on them all,” said Agvalt. “And if Rudur is dead he deserved it, trying to pull all the clans under his banner while also toadying to the Nabbanai. It makes the wagon folk think things will get better, but it never does.”

  “But why are they all fighting?” Eolair asked.

  Agvalt made a noise of derision. “They’re not all fighting. Unver’s clan and friends are doubtless celebrating, and their newest allies are busy trying to convince him that they supported him all along.” The young bandit chieftain spat again. “What you hear out there is the madness of change—a time to take up old grudges in the old way instead of sober judgments by clan elders. I suppose they think it is freedom.” He scowled. “Every time some new upstart declares himself, the wagon-men rouse themselves to a frenzy and make the grasslands unsafe for honest outlaws. Small wonder I left this all behind for a better life.” His expression brightened. “Still, if we stay out of their way they are unlikely to seek us out. Tonight they will be more interested in killing their hated brothers-in-law and stealing their neighbors’ wives and horses than looking for strangers to mistreat.”

  Eolair could only admire Agvalt’s understanding of the dangers and benefits, but he did not feel reassured. He had seen groups of angry people turn into mobs too many times, and mobs turn into mindless, many-armed beasts, smashing and burning everything they could reach. Drunken clansman might not seek out strangers to kill, but they would probably remember some reason to hate them anyway if they came across Agvalt’s band.

  “Monstrous,” he said quietly.

  “Yes. And that is what we all are underneath,” said Agvalt. “But there is more than death being given out tonight. There will be many babies born of this when the Green Season rolls around again, and not all of them against the womens’ wishes. I said freedom before, and that is the sound you are hearing, Count Stone-Dweller, so remember that when you claim to love it, as most of your kind do. Listen well.”

  The bandits put out the fire then, preferring darkness to being noticed, and took turns standing sentry. As the night plodded past, Eolair did his best to ignore the cries and screams, the bellows of laughter like the merriment of demons, the horses whinnying and children sobbing.

  If I believed in the Aedonite hell, he thought, staring up at the distant, cold stars, I would swear that I am already in it.

  * * *

  Porto did not go far afield in his quest to discover what was happening, because the things he saw around him were too frightening and too dangerous. But by the time he returned to the campsite Levias was fighting for his life.

  Two clansmen had him backed against a tree. One of them held the horses’ reins, as though Levias had caught them horsestealing. Both the bearded men looked and sounded drunk, but they were young and good-sized and clearly were toying with Levias before murdering him.

  “You have the look of a spy,” one said in halting Westerling. “From Nabban, eh? Did the stone-dweller duke send you here?”

  Levias did not waste his breath arguing, but kept his sword raised in front of him to knock aside the half-hearted blows loosed from time to time.

  “Not right,” said the second clansman, who sounded the drunker of the two. “Not right. Nabban scum.” He lunged at Levias, but Levias had shrunk back against the trunk of the tree and just managed to turn the man’s thrust aside with his own blade. The curved sword sliced across the sergeant’s front and blood began to soak his shirt, black in the dim light of the fire.

  Porto cursed, then lifted his sword and ran forward as fast as he could, trying to time his swing.

  The less drunk of the two clansmen heard him at the last moment, but turned too slowly and had only a moment to goggle before Porto’s sword struck him a fingerspan or two above the collar of his leather armor. Having little else to do in the evenings, Porto had sharpened his blade more
than once, and the edge all but took the man’s head off with one swing. The grasslander staggered a step to the side and then collapsed.

  The other clansman saw his companion fall and managed to spin and block Porto’s next attack. As drunk as the fellow was—Porto could smell vomit on his clothes—he was still faster than the old knight: Porto could only pray that Levias would step in so that they would outnumber the clansman. But Levias did not come forward to challenge, and it was all Porto could do to keep the grasslander’s curved blade striking him anywhere vital. His opponent had realized that he was the younger one: he intensified his attack. Moving backward, unable to lower his sword and thus unbalanced, Porto stumbled backwards and fell, but still Levias did not come forward to help. In fact, as Porto scrabbled backward on his seat, trying to stay out of the clansman’s reach, he saw that Levias, propped against the tree, his shirt quite black with blood, was not moving.

  Desperate, Porto grabbed up a handful of dirt as he got to his feet and flung it into his attacker’s eyes. The man reeled back, pawing at his face, then abruptly turned and ran stumbling into the trees.

  Porto bent his shaking legs until he could kneel beside Levias. “Do you live?” he asked, his voice hoarse. “Oh, sweet God, have they killed you?”

  “Not yet,” Levias said in hardly more than a whisper. “But not for lack of trying.”

  Porto cursed, but he also knew he could do nothing about his friend’s wounds yet—not here. He looked around for their horses, but they had fled during the fight. “Be brave,” he told Levias. “I must move you. Try to hold the wound closed with your hands.”

  He rolled Levias over on his side as carefully as he could manage, then gripped his companion’s armor at the shoulders and began to drag him away from the campsite. There was every chance the Thrithings-man who had run would come back with friends, so despite the burning ache in his own muscles and the hot pincer that seemed to be squeezing his backbone, Porto dragged the gasping, moaning Levias through several stands of trees and across a number of gulleys until he found a deep coomb where he could lay the wounded sergeant down. He covered the space above them with cut branches as quickly as he could, so that no hasty observation would detect it.

  “How are you? Can you hear me?” Porto took off his own shirt and poured water onto the cleanest part of it. When he had finally found the wound he saw that it was long and very bloody, but not ragged; his friend’s guts were still inside him. That was something to be grateful for, at any rate.

  “Will my God take me now?” Levias’s eyes were fixed not on his wound but on the leafy darkness overhead. “I am tired—so tired. I am ready.”

  “Not yet, by the Ransomer. Not yet.” Porto began tearing up the shirt and tying the pieces together, trying to make strips long enough to bind around his companion’s ample middle. But he stopped, realizing he would need moss to poultice the wound before binding. As the stars wheeled past them in the unseen sky, Porto simply held the edges of his friend’s wound together. Over and over, until his words had lost all meaning, even to him, Porto told the wounded man that God would indeed take him when his time came, but swore that time was not now.

  * * *

  Unver’s back was such a horror that Hyara could hardly bear to look at it, but her sister Vorzheva kept her in place with a voice as sharp as a snapped bowstring. “Don’t be a child. Here, put more honey and beer in that bowl and work it into a paste. I have almost finished cleaning his wounds.”

  Unver lay face-down on a blanket in the great tent that had belonged to Rudur only hours earlier. Fremur and the others had seized it along with the rest of the camp as the spoils of Redbeard’s defeat, since there had not been enough Black Bear Clan loyalists left to defend it, only women and children and slaves. Outside the camp fences all was chaos, grasslanders of all ages shouting in desperation like beasts in a burning barn, but Vorzheva would not be distracted from her son by any of it. “Here, give that to me. Make more bandages—no, first make pads to put the poultice on, then we will bind them on the wounds afterward.”

  Fremur came in, still filthy and covered with bloody scratches.

  “What do you see out there?” Vorzheva asked without looking up.

  “You can hear it for yourself,” he said. “Many of our folk believe Unver is the Shan. Others do not. Some are fighting about it. Some are merely taking the chance to steal and ravage.”

  “All men are fools,” said Vorzheva.

  “Doubtless,” he said. “But there are women with knives out there sawing the rings off dead men’s fingers.”

  Hyara thought Fremur’s eyes looked empty. Such a day and night would change anyone, but she wondered if she would ever again see that kindness she had admired, so uncommon among the men she knew. Was that dying too, along with so many grassland folk who would not survive these hours of darkness?

  26

  A Clumsy Jest

  Earl Murdo’s castle at Carn Inbarh stood on top of a granite hill, high above a river valley. Standing on the wall of the central keep, Aelin could see miles in all directions, and with unusual clarity. A town’s worth of houses crouched along the curving river’s banks, and the valley’s wooded reaches lay spread before him in a rippling carpet of oak, maple, and beech; clumps of tall pines stood above the rest like arrows in a quiver. The last amber light of day brought out the edges of things, as though everything had been carved in fine detail with a sharp awl; every leaf seemed to stand by itself, even in the middle of countless others. Looking out over the lushly wooded valley, Aelin decided, he could almost understand how the gods must feel when they gazed down on the wide earth with their immortal eyes and saw all its delights at once.

  But he had never wanted to leave a place more.

  “Will you not come back and have another cup with me, young sir?” Earl Murdo stood in the doorway, arms folded across his chest against the stiff breeze that buffeted the castle’s high seat. Aelin had always imagined Tethtain the Great must have looked like Murdo, who was burly and bald on top, with a graying brown beard so thick it seemed to spread from his jaws in all directions. The earl’s brows were bushy too, his eyes dark and sharp, and though he was many years past his prime, Aelin still thought he would not like to cross swords with him. But Murdo was a good man, and that was what mattered most in a time when even the royal throne of Hernystir could not be trusted. If Aelin and his kinsman Count Eolair had only one ally left in the world—as it was beginning to seem—then he was grateful it was the Earl of Carn Inbarh.

  “Of course, my lord.” He turned his back on the day’s golden end.

  * * *

  • • •

  “There is no persuading you, then? I sent my most trusted messenger to Nial, Count of Nad Glehs, who is with us in this. He and his wife Countess Rhona are firm supporters of your uncle Eolair and the High Throne.”

  “In truth, Eolair is my great uncle, but in many ways more like a father to me than my own, may the gods give that poor man rest.” Aelin shook his head. “And I wish you could persuade me not to go, my lord. But though I trust you with my life and the lives of my men without hesitation, I do not trust any single messenger to succeed—not with such grave and timely news.”

  “But I still do not know how to make myself believe it. That our King Hugh . . . that old King Lluth’s grandson should make a pact with the White Foxes—” Murdo shook his head in wonder, his hands clenched into fists.

  “If you had spent more time at court, my lord,” Aelin told him, “—not that I blame you for keeping your distance—you would know that what is surprising is not the fact of such foolishness or outright evil, but only the magnitude of it. King Hugh has always been changeable, in a roaring, joyful mood one moment and a black rage the next, but lately he has become strange in other ways, too. And that cursed woman—Tylleth, Glenn Orga’s widow—has made everything worse.”

  “I have heard many rumors,
” Murdo said, leaning forward in his chair to hold his hands near the fire, “but I thought them the sort of thing you hear when a woman with a past, no matter how ordinary, becomes the intimate of a king.”

  “You are not wrong. Those like you and my great-uncle, who supported Inahwen’s right to reign in Lluth’s stead, already know what evil talk will follow any woman who dares to walk in the halls of power. But for once the gossips are right. Tylleth is an evil woman, I am convinced, and whether deliberately or accidentally, she has led Hugh into evil practices.”

  “But worshipping the Crow Mother—!” Murdo sounded pained. “How could anyone forget the foul things her servants did? How could Herynstiri nobles stand by and let it all happen again? Because surely if the king is consorting with the Norns, it is the horror of that filthy old cult that led him there!”

  “Again, I think you are right, my lord. When I last saw Count Eolair he was very, very concerned by what he saw and heard at the Taig. In fact, it does not breach my oath to tell you that I saw him when I carried a message to him from the dowager queen Inahwen about how ill things went in Hernysadharc—I know because she told me. And it is perhaps not entirely unrelated to my tale to say that I was nearly killed by a giant on the northern Erkynlandish border on my way to meet him.”

  Murdo groaned and said, “Brynioch preserve us, a giant so far south? Are those times come again? Is winter to bury us all?”

  “I could not say we face the full horrors of the Storm King’s deadly weather, but I do know the Norns can still call up a storm when they wish. What I saw on the plain before Dunath Tower stank of dark magicks.” Aelin took a sip from his cup. With the warmth of the fire on his legs and the earl’s good red wine in his hand, it seemed the easiest thing in the world to find reasons to stay longer. His men were exhausted after being held prisoner, and their long ride to Carn Inbarh. They would need to find new horses, having exhausted theirs in their haste to reach Murdo so that someone would know of King Hugh’s treacherous bargain with the Norns.