The Vastness

by Hausladen, Blake;

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 Sikhek, 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?”

  “Do you know how to make more like yourself?”

  “No. It cannot be done.”

  “Your presence argues otherwise. A thousand like you who can kill Hessier with a touch of their hand is a force we could count upon to fight him.”

  “I will consider no such a thing. The price I paid was too high.”

  He let the matter rest there, but I did not trust his expression.

  Uncle Kiel pointed a crooked finger at Mika.

  “The Nuar have never answered a call to ar
ms. They have relied upon exemptions granted by the church for generations. There isn’t a family more hated along the entire gulf. No man in Aneth will stand with them.”

  “They will come if I call,” Sikhek said. “Deliver a message to them and their men will come with better magic and steel than the rest of Zoviya combined.”

  I found myself nodding and growled at the world for the choice it presented me. I could not stand to listening to him talk one moment more.

  “Tayler will write your message,” I said, pointed my officer at him, and added, “All of you will stay upon the beach and see that the Yud do not wander. If they want their boats when they get to the Bessradi River, they will have to carry them. I trust you to organize this. I’ll send Chaukai to escort you to the meeting if the Nuar agree to come.”

  He bowed without reply, and his poise angered me. I’d left him to die, and here he was, doing things as though we were on the same side.

  Sesmundi was convulsing when I returned, and the news fell hard. Hopeful farmers and fishermen bowed their heads and looked south with fear. Few of them had been over the mountains. None were ready to abandon the homes they had fought so hard for.

  I was standing upon the battlements of the keep, watching beaches turn black from the spill of humanity across them, when Tayler handed me Sikhek’s letter.

  Master Maison,

  The time has come for the Nuar to repay their debts. Present yourself to me and the Queen of Aneth, Soma O’Nropeel upon the top of the Anethean tithe road three days hence where you will place yourselves under her command.

  Minster Sikhek Vesteal

  “Minister? The arrogance of this man,” I said.

  “The Nuar will be some trick of his,” my colonel said.

  “I know,” I replied.

  Sikhek kept his word, the Savdi-Nuar replied that they would attend, and on the appointed day a pavilion was raised at the top of the pass while a million terrified people made ready to move.

  61

  Minister Sikhek Vesteal

  It was well before the dawn when Soma’s colonel collected Mika, the redhead, and me from the Yud camp. The refugees had spread up the beach south of Sesmundi and along the banks of the Smoke River, almost up to the tithe road. Our Chaukai escort was grim, and they spent as much time eyeing me as they did the fog-shrouded Yud. The winds had calmed overnight and a fresh layer of ash from Mount Sesson had settled over everything. The gray layer was damp with dew and it made the unhappy camp look like a foul graveyard. They needed to be moving before they got any ideas.

  They led us up the tithe road toward Suttony Pass while the rising sun lit the green peaks that crowded it. Soma’s yellow pavilion upon the crest of the road blazed like it was touched by magic. She stood in center of the road flanked by ready contingents of Chaukai, gray cloaks from Thanin, and a group I guessed to be from Dahar.

  I tried to enjoy the view, but the coming encounter made it impossible.

  “Stay close to me today, Mika, no matter what happens. I am going to need your knife.”

  “Who is making trouble?”

  “We are.”

  We reached the top of the slow crest. The sun had not touched the far side of the pass, and the long scrubby approach was still shrouded in thick fog. We dismounted and started toward Soma.

  Her gaze was fixed upon the coast and the hazy rows of boats and ships being hauled up toward the tithe road along every river and beach from Walsemi to Sesmundi. Soma had not shared any of the reports from the fast ships she’d raced south, but Geart’s faster beasts could not be far away. Some of our boats could be portaged through the pass by then, but not the ones still arriving from Dahar, and certainly not the lumbering hulk that was Soma’s grand ship. It had been hauled into a log-trundled scaffold they apparently intended to roll all the way over the pass and down to the Kaaryon and its river. I thought its survival improbable and the effort to move a marker of Soma’s arrogance. Such a ship was a tool at best and it would never serve its purpose again.

  More worrisome, for those who decided to care about such things, were the camps being established along the tithe road where the throngs of refugees would find their meals along the way. The Yud has not begun to mix with their northern neighbors yet, and the camps seemed a bad place for recent enemies to break bread.

  Barok would thank me for turning Geart away from his darling wife. I could not be expected to save everyone.

  “The Savdi-Nuar wait below for your signal,” a Chaukai said as we joined Soma on the road.

  Mika whistled down, and a group of men emerged from the fog. Each was covered in tattoos and mismatched brown clothing. Soma’s soldiers and allies snorted and shook their heads.

  Maison led two of their numbers up to us. They embraced me and Mika and we kissed each other’s hands and cheeks.

  “If I may, Queen Soma,” Mika said. “This is Maison, my father, and Senior Acolyte and Elder of the Savdi-Nuar. Maison, this is Queen Soma O’Nropeel of Aneth and King Sepsion of Dahar. You all know Minister Sikhek.”

  “Dear Minister,” Maison said to me with a deep bow and then to Soma and the unassuming king, he said, “We know what moves against you and share your impatience to see them destroyed. We may dispense with the preliminaries, if that would suit you.”

  “Yes,” Soma said with visible relief and led us all inside. “My officers have questions about your road.”

  The space was dark despite the direct sunlight, but the layers of silk drapes kept out the ash. The table was spotless, as was the single map of the Sesmundi tithe road Soma pointed them, too.

  “Such a thing to see here,” Maison said. “My grandfather made this map.”

  The Chaukai officers opposite him glowered as though they’d been practicing. “It’s a very poorly made,” Colonel Graves said.

  “It was not commissioned with men like you in mind. When Ulsar Kiel commissioned it, he was not concerned with the correct location and shape of each river, peak, and coastline. It was made to advertisement to Alsonelm that the tithe road to Aneth was straight. The trade that flowed along it made Sesmundi what it is today.”

  “Are all mapmakers such miserable liars?”

  “We all have masters. What can I tell you my grandfather’s map cannot?”

  “We have eyes on its meandering, but not its soft spots or gaps. Are there places where the ground will be too soft for our ships?”

  “No,” Maison said. “Its foundations will not disappoint you. Your ships will also enjoy the baked clay west of the pass. You will be able move all your lighter craft in parallel upon it, though your people will want for water. It is a bit salty.”

  Graves traced his finger along the long line of the Jivillion Mountains south of the Crimson Valley. “Are there ways over the mountains south of here the beasts could use to get in front of us?”

  “Not unless they can scale our walls.”

  The men from Aneth and Dahar all crossed their arms at him.

  “Walls?”

  “Mount Karikur and all the peaks around it belong to the Savdi-Nuar. None of you have ever cared to climb them, and it is perhaps best you have never tried. Over the centuries we have carved the high valleys and passes into sheer walls, and our towers upon the mountaintop can see from Sulma to Sesmundi. Suttony Pass is the only route over our mountain north of Havish.”

  Dahar’s king, already distraught before the meeting began looked ready to draw his sword. “Towers upon Mount Karikur? You have been looking down on my lands and offering no help as the Yud snatched our wives and daughters away to Cyaudi? You are a liar or a villain.”

  “We are what the Conservancy requires. Today we move to save you. Judge that as you will.”

  Soma spoke over the rising tide of voices. “By all accounts your family is insignificant. Now you brag of walls and an army. What can you bring to this fight that we could possibly rely upon?”

  Maison looked to me, and I motioned for him to speak. His eyes met mine and it was a
hard thing hold my tongue as my most guarded secret was offered up.

  They would all thank me, one day. I liked being the hero.

  Maison cleared his throat and said to them, “Sikhek has long required that we maintained a regiment of pikemen and singers enough to hold back the touch of any rogue Hessier who might try to claim the valley. Today that army marches here and is in your command, Queen Soma.”

  The air swirled with resentment and anger.

  “You are most welcome,” Soma said and proved herself a nimble queen when she stepped around the table to embracing Maison and kiss his hands and cheeks. The rest could not manage the old ways of friendship and bowed low to him instead.

  “Tell me what you require,” Maison said in earnest reply.

  “Call your army here. The east must escape and needs your strength to do so. We have moved the ships of the fleet up onto the tithe road and have prepared everyone for the long march west to the Bessradi River.”

  “Why not use the ships to flee up coast?” Maison asked her. Mika seemed as embarrassed by the useless question as Soma was annoyed.

  She managed a polite reply. “We have food enough for ten, perhaps twelve days. Nowhere north of here along the coast will have food enough for us, especially beneath the ash of the broken mountains. Alsonelm and the Kaaryon are where we must go or the Yud will starve.”

  “Some will not want to try the road.”

  “There are ships enough for any to go where they are able,” Soma said. “But none may remain here and none can do back the way they came.”

  “I’ll go north,” the redhead said, and I was surprised she would leave me. “Very well,” Soma said to her. “Take those with you who would do the same.”

  “You’ll not stay with me?” I asked.

  “Do you have any coin left?” She asked me before she turned. The room eyed me as she started out, looking for a hint of embarrassment they could cherish. They would get none of it. I focused on what I had in store for Soma.

  “Very well,” Maison said. “We will hold the pass until you are clear and then withdraw back to our valley.”