by Kirby Crow
Scarlet nodded. “You did. I suppose I should have let you do what you thought was best, but I just couldn't. Not then. I wasn't ready and she’s too...”
“Pretty,” Liall finished the thought. “And maybe now she'll take a husband with a vast ambition to match her father’s, or a vast idiocy. Then, after she's birthed a son, her dear father will use his grandson to try for the throne.”
“Will she win?”
Liall stood up and tugged Scarlet with him. He held him close for a long moment. “Oh, no. You don't have to fear that. She won't win.”
But, he thought, she may die. What would Cestimir have had to say about that? What would Scarlet?
A sharp knock at the door parted them. “Come,” Liall called.
Margun entered and at once knelt at Scarlet’s feet, his head bent low. He had taken off his armor, his sword, and the colors of the keriss solda in exchange for a plain black tunic and breeches. Symbolic, no doubt.
Scarlet shot Liall an utterly puzzled look.
“Margun has come to beg your forgiveness. You are his lord, and he refused to obey you, despite swearing an oath to be your man.”
Scarlet looked down at Margun unhappily. “You didn’t give him much choice, from what I heard.”
“There’s always a choice. He could have found another way, or simply made a better job of what was required of him. Either road, he has failed. In Rshan, vassals die for transgressions much less than his. Be mindful of what you decide, t’aishka.”
“Well, of course I don’t want him to die,” Scarlet said tiredly. “But that’s twice I’ve regretted trusting him. My da had a saying; even a wise man can be tricked once, but only fools come back for seconds.”
Margun lifted his head slowly. The thin scar circling his left eye like a crescent moon crinkled as he smiled. “You are no fool, ser. Far from it. If you will allow me to continue to serve you, I swear that you will never have cause to doubt my loyalty again. I swear it on my life.”
You’re risking much more than your own life, Liall thought, recalling his many threats to Margun’s family if he proved false. And for so little reward, too.
Not for the first time, the king wondered if it would be better for them all if Margun Rook just quietly disappeared.
Blackmoat
LEAVING STARHOLD was a wonder. The giant steps, spires, and odd fortifications that Scarlet had taken for mere fancifulness on the part of the Ancients had turned out to have a purpose after all. All of the army and their horses and wagons could not climb the steps to the sky chamber, true, but there was that monstrous ramp.
As Liall led a long column of three hundred or more soldiers and knights northward out of the ward, they passed through a cavernous rock tunnel, the walls black as oil, and emerged into a high country beneath a clear sky. A wide road paved with ordinary stone led gradually downward into a valley dotted with thin evergreen forests and icy, narrow streams. Scarlet could see—far ahead—that their road would merge in the distance with another road that curved inland from the sea. Already, he could spy the head of the long train of supply wagons that rode with the king’s army.
It still doesn’t make that silly climb any more sensible, he thought. They could have just stayed below with the army and used the ramp. Liall had called the climb to the sky chamber “tradition”, but to Scarlet, it seemed a shameful waste of labor.
He was soon beyond caring about past efforts.
By the second day of riding, his thighs were blistered, and on the fourth, the blisters broke and bled. Scarlet would not let Chos tend him, so Liall sent for a curae who prescribed ointments and a lambskin between him and the hard leather of his saddle. At first, Scarlet was embarrassed to place the fluffy thing on his horse, but when he saw many other mounts with the same accessory, he felt less of a fool.
“You’re not the first rider in the world to get a sore arse, you know,” Liall had whispered to the back of his neck.
Scarlet had turned and swatted him, and they were merry that day, and again that night, when Liall came to him in his ger and stayed to sleep curled next to him, their bodies pressed together naked and warm.
Although, he thought with a smile, we had to be very careful of the blisters.
After they left Starhold, for Scarlet, every day was much like the day before. The army would march for ten hours and he would ride at the head of the column with Liall and their honor guards before Jarek called a halt, and then there would be another two hours standing by whatever campfire he could find, stamping his boots to keep his feet warm until men put his ger up for the night and cooked his supper. By then, he could barely keep his eyes open long enough to stuff his mouth before falling into a leaden sleep on a mound of warm furs.
Tesk provided fine company, as always, but he seemed to prefer the companionship of common soldiers rather than riding at the head of the vanguard with the nobility and the officers. There were days when they didn’t see Tesk at all, and Scarlet would begin to miss his sharp humor and his wry wit, when suddenly Tesk would ride up wearing his best silks, his flowing silver hair immaculate, and compliment Margun on what a fine figure he cut in his uniform despite the pitiful nag he had chosen to ride. Tesk would then greet the king, charm Jarek and her officers, flatter the rest of the nobles, and make a great show of himself as a vain fop caught in the middle of some grand, exciting adventure.
Scarlet missed Jochi greatly and had hoped that Tesk would keep him company at the end of the day’s march, but Liall summoned Tesk to his side and the two spent hours together conferring in Khatai Jarek’s ger, where Scarlet did not like to go. When the same thing happened a second time, Scarlet recalled that Tesk was a spy and his mingling with the lowers ranks was likely something that Liall had ordered. Perhaps Tesk was trying to uncover some secret, or just keeping an eye on the temper of the men. Either way, it looked like Scarlet was stuck with Margun for the time being.
Waking began to blur as well.
Margun would rouse him and Liall would already be out in the camp among his soldiers, or even a-horse. Chos would bring him food and che while he yawned and dressed, then it was back in the saddle for another ten hours, riding at a slow pace beneath a sky in which the sun never rose completely, only wheeled around them like a marble in a bowl, an endless circle of light.
Despite his weariness, he was glad of one thing at least; Alexyin rarely made an appearance. When Scarlet mentioned it in passing, Liall explained only that he had given Alexyin a great many responsibilities. The length of the column and the thousands of horses and soldiers was over three leagues long, a splendid sight to behold. Deva willing, Scarlet hoped he would not see Alexyin again before they reached the Blackmoat. He missed Jochi, but if this was the price of removing Alexyin’s shadow from his path, he would take it.
In the land beyond Starhold, between the sea and the Blackmoat, there were rock formations taller than the spires of the palace, black cliffs perched over jagged chasms, blue caves yawning open like the mouths of whales, and once, a wide tunnel formed entirely of ice that took a full day for the army to pass through.
Scarlet rode his horse to Liall’s right and stared in wonder at the gleaming ice vault above their heads. The smooth walls glistened with moisture from their torches, and Scarlet was so much in awe that he found himself chattering and pointing, overwhelmed with the strange beauty of the place and wanting to know everything all at once.
After enduring this for a time, Liall laughed and refused to give any more explanations. “You're making my head ache! Save some questions for later. There are far greater wonders ahead.”
Scarlet could not imagine how that could be true, and he both anticipated and dreaded what he might yet see.
Margun spurred his horse alongside Scarlet's. He was riding unarmored and refused to wear his steel plate so long as Scarlet had none. There had been no armor light enough for Scarlet to wear safely—even if he had wanted to—and it was strange to see Margun without his iron cuirass. Scarlet had
grown used to seeing it.
“I shall tell you as much as you wish to know about the Riftlands later, my lord,” Margun promised.
“Thank you,” Scarlet answered coldly. He had not fully forgiven Margun for hitting Jochi, but he knew he should. None of these men are truly free, he thought. They all have to answer to their king.
Like his officers and commanders, Liall was decked out in Rshani armor of steel plate, but none were like his. The breastplate was stained blue and stamped in platinum with a design depicting the Longwalker constellation. Each star of the King’s armor was accented with chips of blue topaz, crowned with one great star of blazing yellow citrine. A heavy silver and blue cloak was thrown casually over all, and his blue-black stallion, Argent, was armored at the crest, shoulder, and flanks.
The soldiers marched thirteen abreast in a long row, weapon-sleds and sleighs staggered throughout their ranks, followed by the mounted soldiers and the bulky, wagon-like sleds that Liall called drays. Bringing up the far rear were many rows of men who dragged long pulks piled high with supplies behind them, wearing harnesses of rope attached to the pulks with twisted cables.
Scarlet asked about them.
“They are called sutlers,” Liall said. “Laborers from the farming lands of Uzna. They are not soldiers at all, nor will they be expected to fight, only to maintain and supply the army during the march.”
The sutlers carried metal-tipped poles in their hands to help them steer and propel the pulks, and they wore distinctive black sleeves and black half-masks, leaving only their pales eyes showing. They were also not quite as tall as the other Rshani, and their hands were callused and hard as horn.
Scarlet had tried to engage some of the sutlers in conversation, but they nervously shied from him after making signs of respect.
“Drusa mav,” Scarlet heard time and again. When he asked Liall what it meant, Liall shook his head.
“It means noble-born. Pay them no mind. They won’t speak to you beyond that. It’s not their way.”
“Would they speak to you?”
“Probably, but what would I say? I'd only make them uncomfortable. Best to leave them to their work.”
Only once before had Scarlet seen the trailhead of the Temple Road; in the cliffs above the Nauhinir on the morning of the ceremony of the returning sun. But he had never imagined how far it went. From a distance, it had looked like a silver ribbon draped over the white hills. Traveling upon it, he saw that it was a wide, smooth road that vanished far into the distance and seemed to have no end.
“There's not a road like this in all of Byzantur, not even in Ankar,” Scarlet marveled. “How far does it go?”
“Very far,” Liall replied. “The Temple Road is the only safe path between the Blackmoat and the great mountains at the heart of the continent, the home of the Shining Ones. The Blackmoat is still several days’ march.” Liall gestured to the vast, snowy lands surrounding them. “Out there are predators, chasms, thin ice, slush, and bottomless rifts that can swallow an entire legion of men. The lowlands of Nau Karmun and the eastern shorelands are capable of sustaining life, as is the western coast, but the interior, or the Riftlands as we call them, are uninhabitable. It has an older name, too. Whitehell.”
“I thought Rshani didn't believe in hell.”
“What need is there to believe in a mythic land of punishment when one exists right here? Once, we executed criminals by sending them into Whitehell, did you know? That's how the Ava Thule came to be. Now we give them no more men, but the axe is always busy.”
Scarlet had not known any of that. The port of Sul had given him a new viewpoint of the Rshani people. He had once thought the Mariners an aberration of the Rshani character, the lowest level of their society, much as scrats and slavers were in his. In Sul, he had learned that most Rshani were just ordinary folk, with commoners, cobblers, and fishmongers just like any other land.
The horses’ hooves on the strange, icy road made sounds like icicles breaking from a frozen roof, yet their mounts left no marks on the road that Scarlet could see. The Ancients made the Temple Road, Liall had said. A great magic, indeed.
“Do you have very many criminals in Rshan?”
“Not many. We deal with them swiftly, and if anyone misses them or objects to the way they're dealt with, they do not say so. Crime is unacceptable in our society.”
Scarlet was troubled. “But you were a bandit in Byzantur. Do your people know that?”
“Of course, but they don't consider it a crime if it was against lenilyn.” Liall looked quickly at him. “I'm sorry, t'aishka.”
Scarlet shook his head tiredly. “Please. I'm used to that by now. I should have guessed it right off.”
Liall nodded, but when Scarlet tried to probe him more about Rshani criminals, Liall gave him a sour eye and changed the subject.
At the beginning of the march, Scarlet had worried about finding shelter while on the march. The trees had thinned out twenty miles beyond Starhold, and there seemed to be little natural shelter from the winds. Travelers in Byzantur traditionally camped well off the main roads, where there was better shelter and plentiful firewood. Liall explained to him that the ice became treacherous when warm weather arrived. It was safer to have the road under them.
“Surely we can stray from it a little?” Scarlet wondered.
Liall shook his head adamantly. “No. We stay on the road. All of us.”
Just as Scarlet was getting hungry enough to daydream about supper, the army abruptly came to a halt. Activity buzzed around the sleds and sleighs. Many of the complicated contraptions piled on the pulks were simply cleverly folded tents and gers lashed with rope atop metal runners. In a remarkably short time, the rank and file of soldiers trailing back for miles would become a serpentine village of tents, gers, shelters, and pitched lean-tos flickering with the lights of cook-fires, and all of it would be pitched on the solid surface of the road. Not even the silver hounds who heeled the riders seemed to want to wander from it.
Scarlet found a campfire to loiter at and turned to study the land as a distant howling reached his ears. The howls were far away and sounded nothing like wolves, but were coarser and scratchier, more like cats. He tried to imagine how large a cat would have to be to produce such a sound, and he shivered.
Liall’s own ger was loaded in a very particular order onto three drays that—when arranged in a circle and unpacked— became the compact and familiar yurt-like room with slatted wooden floors and felt walls. It was still a ger, Liall declared, but a royal one.
Scarlet followed Liall inside of it. His own shelter would be pitched nearby, but often Liall’s ger would be filled with his advisors and captains far into the wee hours. On those times, Scarlet would leave Liall to his soldiers and sleep alone, but he missed the company.
“There will be no war councils tonight,” Liall said, smiling. “So you have no excuse not to stay.”
“Wasn’t aware I needed one,” Scarlet quipped. He found a bowl of nuts on Liall’s table and cracked a few open. They were still sweet, though they had been gathered last year. “Better food here, though.”
“You see? Another incentive.” Liall slipped off his cloak and turned to pose invitingly with his hands on his hips. “In case all this is not enough.”
“All what? Oh!” Scarlet felt his face turning warm. “Well, that. Yes. I’d stay for that. Absolutely.”
Liall laughed. “Sex is a more appealing enticement than food? So noted.”
Scarlet threw a walnut at him.
Over a supper of stewed beef and the last of the autumn tubers, Scarlet brought up the subject of magic again. “This road, was it created by magic? Or just more of your machine-craft?”
“Magic is one word for it,” Liall allowed. “And the word is machinery. Not machine-craft.” He had dismissed his servants so they could be alone. The wind was still for once, and though there was no snow, the world was cold again and the sky was a somber and heavy gray. Scarlet was glad for the
fire in the ger, and for the time together. He could almost imagine they were back in that dusty yurt on the peak of the Nerit.
Liall waved his spoon. “Another might say it was merely genius, and that the Ancients have forgotten more of knowledge than the whole of Nemerl put together.” He smiled. “But magic shall do for now.”
A low howl wafted through the ger, and Scarlet looked at the flap anxiously.
“Don’t be afraid, redbird.”
“I’m not afraid. The sound just sets my teeth on edge. What's it look like, that howler?”
“You don't want to know.”
The sound of a warning horn bellowed through the encampment, shockingly loud, and Scarlet realized he had grown accustomed to the constant bluster of the wind drowning out all other noises.
“What’s that?” He half-rose to see, but Margun entered the ger and bowed. Like Theor, Margun was never far away from them now.
“Sire, the watch has sighted something on the western ridge.”
“Something or someone?” Liall asked sharply.
“I don’t know yet, sire.”
“Find out. If it’s a beast, sink an arrow into it. If it’s a man, bring it to me.”
But when the scouts returned two hours later, they had nothing to show for their search but a shattered ankle where a soldier had fallen through thin ice covering a narrow cleft in the rock.
AT THE END OF THE SEVENTEENTH day of marching, Scarlet turned his horse over to Margun for care and stumped along the column to find where they had set up the king’s ger. He knew he should have seen to the beast himself, as was his custom, but he was too tired to care if Margun thought him lazy. A guard slapped the door flap of the ger to announce Scarlet. He heard Liall’s voice inside.
