Blood Requiem

by Christopher Husberg

  “Grand Marshal,” Aqilla said, “I’m afraid I must insist—”

  “Grand Marshal Carrieri is right,” Lothgarde interrupted. “We should tell him, Sirana. But not here.” He looked at Carrieri for the first time since they’d begun the conversation. “Come with us.”

  * * *

  They crossed the great Center Circle of Triah, and Lothgarde and Aqilla led Carrieri, predictably, to the Citadel.

  The Citadel, considered the most prestigious school in the whole of the Sfaera, was actually a palace that had once belonged to the kings and queens of Khale. But, one hundred and seventy-odd years ago, when the king gave up his crown, everything had changed. The royal palace became the Citadel, and today many said the Citadel ruled the nation—and in some ways, the Sfaera—more effectively than the Khalic monarchs ever had.

  The Citadel, Canta’s Fane, and the House of Aldermen made three points of a triangle that spanned across the Center Circle of Triah, forming a Trinacrya, the famous circle-and-triangle symbol of the goddess Canta and her Denomination. Carrieri had always thought the symbol a bit much; the Denomination already had enough say in political and military decisions, and the Trinacrya in Triah’s Center Circle only made that fact more obvious.

  They brought him through the large doors of the Citadel into an antechamber. Lothgarde and Aqilla looked as one at a group of students lounging in the room, who fled immediately. The Venerato and Authoritar turned to face Carrieri. Apparently, just being inside the Citadel and relatively alone was all the privacy they needed. It was a huge room for such a private conversation. The arched ceiling of the antechamber was twice Carrieri’s height, the wooden supports of the arch covered in precious metals etched with pictures and symbols of just about anything he could imagine, and some things he couldn’t. A large fresco covered one wall and most of the ceiling, while paintings and a tapestry draped the others. The Citadel was known for its art collection; Carrieri recognized the tapestry as Andrinarian, the figures woven with delicate ease, contrasting with harsh, clashing colors. The paintings were from Maven Kol, and the fresco of course was Khalic.

  “What are you keeping from the Parliament?” Carrieri demanded. While either of them could work their psimantic magics on him at any moment—Carrieri had seen it happen— he was confident they would not. Carrieri’s position was important enough—and he was damn good enough at what he did—that they would not attempt any move against him. Not now.

  Whether or not they would in the future, of course, remained to be seen.

  Aqilla looked to Lothgarde, clearly uncertain.

  Lothgarde inclined his head towards her. “Tell him.”

  Aqilla frowned, but turned to face Carrieri. “There was just one psimancer with the tiellan force,” Aqilla said. “A young woman.”

  “Just one?” How could one psimancer turn the tide of a battle against hundreds of soldiers? “And a tiellan? I thought tiellans could not access psimancy.” While Carrieri did not much care for psimancy, he could not afford to be ignorant of it. Much of his education had come from these two people.

  “We… we may have been wrong about that,” Aqilla said.

  “You may have?” Carrieri raised an eyebrow.

  “Psimancy is still a relatively new science,” Aqilla said defensively. “We assumed, after a few decades without encountering a single tiellan psimancer, that they simply could not access the Void.”

  “But this woman can?”

  “We have had dealings with her in the past that suggest she can.”

  Carrieri thought about this. A tiellan psimancer. If the Nazaniin were wrong about this, what else did they not know?

  “You said there were dozens of people being thrown about by psimancers at the battle.” Carrieri looked slowly from Lothgarde to Aqilla. He’d seen what a powerful telenic could do—Oblivion, he’d seen what Aqilla herself could do—and she came nowhere near such power. “How could one woman do all that?”

  “She is special,” Lothgarde said. “That’s about all we can say about her at the moment.”

  “You won’t tell me anything else?”

  “We don’t know anything else, Riccan.”

  Carrieri frowned at Lothgarde. “If she is truly special, as you claim, is she the only tiellan psimancer? Or if this tiellan movement actually does grow into something greater, are we going to have to worry about more?” When they didn’t answer, he asked, “Rune has nothing to say about this?”

  Both Lothgarde and Aqilla were silent for a moment. Carrieri’s eyes narrowed just slightly. Rune was always the more reclusive member of the Triad, but Carrieri had never seen them both react so strangely at just the mention of Rune’s name.

  “Not at the moment,” Aqilla said, after a pause that seemed to take entirely too long.

  “Very well. Is that all you’re willing to tell me?”

  He noticed the twitch of a smile at the corner of Lothgarde’s mouth. “Yes, Riccan. For now, that is all we are willing to tell you.”

  Carrieri took a deep breath. “Very well. I’ll be seeing the both of you.”

  He left without a backward glance.

  17

  Eastern plains of Khale

  ARROW NOCKED, WINTER SUCKED in her breath and took aim. The bow had a decent draw, though it was nothing like the bow she’d once made for herself in Pranna. She missed that weapon; the curve of the wood, the strength of the draw were aspects of perfection she had worked on through countless iterations of the same object until she finally got it right.

  With an exhalation, Winter loosed the arrow. Fifty rods ahead of her, a single bison within a herd of dozens flinched. In response, the entire herd took off in a gallop away from Winter’s position in the grass and the small creek around which they’d crowded. The ground trembled beneath her; there were at least a hundred bison in the herd. She watched as the animals receded into the distance.

  Two bison lagged behind the rest, however, and eventually both toppled to the ground, one face-first and the other crumpling to the side, each sliding to a stop in the grass.

  Winter stood, squinting in the sunlight.

  “Well shot,” Urstadt said as she stood next to her.

  Winter thanked Urstadt. She liked being the recipient of the warrior captain’s praise, perhaps because it came so rarely. Urstadt had been the first to admit she was no hunter—she only accompanied Winter for her protection—but Winter valued the woman’s judgment just the same.

  And the truth was, it felt good to go hunting again. She had considered felling the bison with faltira, but the decision to find a bow and actually go hunting had been surprisingly easy. This was one thing for which she had never needed faltira to augment her abilities. It was something she had worked at for many years in order to become proficient.

  Winter began walking towards the kill when she heard a shout in the distance behind her. She turned to see Selldor walking excitedly towards them, three horses in tow.

  “That was incredible,” he said. “How did you get two at once? I only saw you fire one arrow.”

  “The arrow went through the first and pierced the second,” Winter said. “But that’s only the first part of the process. We still have to field dress the kills before we take them back to camp.”

  “Please, Winter, that is no task for a commander. We are not far from camp; I can come back with other tiellans who would be willing to dress the animals and bring them back.”

  Winter pressed her lips together. Truth was, she hated butchering her kills. Tiellans never had much of an option— humans could hire servants for the task—but her father had always taught her that it was important to dress any animal she killed herself. Now that she thought about it, she could not remember any compelling reason behind her father’s counsel, but it was something she’d absorbed without questioning. It just felt right.

  Then again, there were two large kills here. More people, and more horses, would only help.

  “Bring more men and horses and meet us t
here,” Winter said, nodding in the direction of the fallen bison. “Urstadt and I will get started.”

  About half an hour later, Winter, Urstadt, Selldor, and three other tiellans rode back to camp with the bison carcasses distributed among a few extra horses.

  Windswept grassy plains surrounded her, and had for the past two days of travel. The vastness almost frightened her. No forests, hardly any hills. To the southeast she could make out the Undritch Mountains clearly, their peaks still white with snow. But even the massive mountain range did little to ground her in the plains. There was nothing out here between her and the sky. She felt as if she might fall upwards, her feet leaving the ground to tumble endlessly towards the open, cloudless expanse above. Winter had never seen land so… flat.

  Two weeks had passed since the battle at Cineste’s Tiellan Gate. Now that the Rangers had horses, armor, and better weapons, they could both scout the land around them with relative ease, and make quick hunting and watering trips to provide for the main tiellan camp. The tiellans who had left Cineste had fortunately gathered a fair amount of food and supplies for the journey, but it was important to supplement and grow that reserve whenever possible. The plains, thankfully, did not lack either food or water, so far. Long-horned antelope and bison ranged the grassy land freely, and there had been many streams and creeks along the tiellan path so far. Winter counted them fortunate; she was conscious of the strain that such a large group of travelers placed on the land around them, and hoped the fortune followed them until they reached Adimora.

  Now that the Rangers had horses, armor, and real weapons, they had the beginnings of a real army. During the day Winter rode with about seventy men, while the rest stayed under Ghian’s command with the main group. One of her first orders of business after taking command of the Rangers had been to open up the training courses that Ghian still ran—now under tight supervision from Urstadt—to tiellan women as well as men. Eranda had even begun training, hoping to one day ride with Winter—and Gord, who had joined up with the Rangers recently despite his age—into battle. The idea made Winter uncomfortable, but she could not very well tell Eranda no.

  The order had gone over well enough; the Rangers seemed content to let Winter take charge despite the fact that she was a woman and they were a company of men, and allowing more women into their army seemed the logical next step. She imagined some of them were less than comfortable with the idea, but Urstadt was one of the greatest warriors Winter had ever seen, and if her men could not acknowledge that and consequently make themselves comfortable fighting alongside tiellan women, she had no use for them anyway.

  While Winter hardly knew what to do with the new responsibility, and understood that she was really nothing more than Urstadt’s mouthpiece, she could not deny the sense of purpose the position gave her. For too long she had drifted, aimless—even before she had met Knot. For now, at least she had a clear role, unearned though it might be. Urstadt had made it clear she had no intention of taking command herself—the tiellans would not accept a human as a leader anyway—but Winter was learning a great deal from her. Perhaps, one day, she might actually grow into this role.

  They had yet to cross the Undritch Mountains, let alone arrive at Adimora. After leaving Cineste their course turned southeast, passing through the forest of Takk Dusia just north of the Eastmaw Mountains. The massive Undritch range, running parallel to the smaller Eastmaws, split the eastern planes in half, and Adimora was supposed to be on the easternmost side of the mountains. It was because of the mountains that the tiellan clans hereabouts had very little contact with other people, let alone other tiellans. Winter had only met two tiellan clansmen herself, and then only briefly, as they passed through Pranna when she was a girl. She could remember her excitement at seeing them; the two men had worn their wide-brimmed araifs, of course, but the brims were wider than any Winter had ever seen, and pulled down low over their eyes. Their leather clothing had been encrusted with dust, and each carried a variety of weapons she had never seen before. They looked so exotic, so dangerous. She was looking forward to meeting more of them.

  Other than a few distant riders on horseback, however, they had seen no one on the plains. The riders they had seen had kept their distance, watching from afar, then riding off to who knew where. Always one at a time, their outlines distinct on the horizon. They could be tiellan tribesmen, or human nomads. Winter had no way to be sure.

  This was a world Winter had never known, had never imagined, and being here made her oddly happy—despite the maddening flatness of it all. As much as the daytime sky on the plains made Winter uneasy, she loved the nights. The millions of stars stretching out above her as she lay on her bedroll were far more comforting than the blue emptiness that gaped above her during the day. She had slept well last night, and was glad the sun was now close to setting.

  When they returned to camp, Urstadt approached her after they’d dismounted and made sure their horses were taken care of. “Are you ready for your training?” Somehow, the woman had already procured two swords, and was holding one in each hand.

  “We’ve only just returned,” Winter said. The tiellan camp occupied the crest of a low ridge, along one side of which a small river ran through a gulch.

  “A fight is never convenient,” Urstadt said. Winter was starting to regret her request that Urstadt teach her to fight. Urstadt did not seem to think Winter was making very remarkable progress, as she monopolized every spare moment with more training.

  Urstadt stabbed one of the swords into the ground, twirling the other as she walked a few paces away. She had shed her plate armor—reluctantly—while traveling on the plains in favor of boiled leather. The grasslands grew quite hot during the day, and it was almost summer. Winter’s own black leather was becoming uncomfortable on the hotter days.

  Winter grasped the hilt of the sword buried in the ground, hefting it in one hand. The sword was not heavy, but it wasn’t light, either. “You’re sure I can’t train with a lighter sword?”

  Urstadt scoffed. “We will train with all types of weapons, but always a standard sword first. This is the weapon you are most likely to use on a battlefield, should you lose your own.”

  Winter did not argue; she did not yet have a specific sword to call her own, but she had been through this with Urstadt before. The weapon seemed particularly heavy today. Wasn’t she supposed to be getting stronger?

  The hilt was made to be held with one hand, and the leather-wrapped metal fit Winter’s grip well enough. She gave the blade an experimental twirl; Urstadt did not always give her the same blade, and this was not one that Winter remembered using. On the pommel she recognized the cresting sun of Cineste; this, like most of the other swords she had used, had belonged to a Cinestean watchman.

  “Take a defensive stance,” Urstadt said. “Your choice.”

  Winter obliged, lifting her sword, holding her free hand out before her, and placing the majority of her weight on her back foot. Bu-tine stance, a versatile defensive beginning but not particularly strong, according to Urstadt. Winter felt comfortable with it for now. There seemed to be a sort of hierarchy of stances when it came to swordplay that Winter did not understand yet. Hopefully, in time, it would be something she would pick up.

  Winter blinked. She was tired. A full day of traveling, followed by a hunt, had wiped her energy. Usually a dose of frost helped with that, but now wasn’t the time to give in to that urge.

  “Now, defend yourself.” Urstadt attacked. Winter parried one strike, then another, and then Urstadt’s sword-point found her throat.

  “Good,” Urstadt said. “Again.”

  “How was that good?” Winter asked. “You would have killed me in seconds.”

  “I’ve been training my entire life,” Urstadt said. “If I couldn’t kill you in seconds I wouldn’t be good at what I do. Again.”

  Winter took the bu-tine stance again, despite Urstadt having cautioned her in the past about using the same stance over and over. Winter
just wanted to get comfortable with one, then she would move on to others.

  Urstadt came at her again, and this time Winter could only parry one attack before Urstadt’s sword came singing towards her face. Winter flinched, but of course Urstadt stopped the sword a few fingers away from Winter’s cheek, the blade quivering. Winter could not fathom how the woman had such control over a blade. She felt clumsy, shaky, her sword never quite doing what she wanted it to do.

  “Not so good,” Urstadt said. “You lost control early. You moved with your arms when you should have moved with your feet.”

  “Swordplay requires too much legwork.” Urstadt had gone over step after step with her before she had even picked up a sword, saying that every swing, every parry, needed to begin from the toes and move upwards. Winter understood that concept now, more or less, but it was difficult to put into practice when a woman twice her size and a hundred times her skill bore down on her.

  “Again,” Urstadt said.

  They sparred time and time again, enough for Winter to work up a solid sweat as the sun set, and for a small crowd of Rangers to draw around them. A few tiellans always took interest in her training sessions with Urstadt. She supposed just watching Urstadt helped them in their own training, run by Urstadt at separate times of the day, and in groups. But Winter herself was clearly terrible with the sword; she usually only lasted two or three strokes against Urstadt, sometimes up to five or six if she was lucky.

  After a particularly long bout—Winter wasn’t sure whether she lasted six or seven strokes this time; if the latter, it would be a record for her—Winter thrust the sword into the ground and took a deep breath.

  “You’re learning,” Urstadt said.

  “Thanks for stating the obvious,” Winter gasped. Urstadt hardly seemed winded.

  “I do not think it is obvious,” Urstadt said. “Some do not learn, especially when they are older.”

  Winter raised one eyebrow. “Older?”