by S L Farrell
Niente wanted to do little more than lie down and let the warriors and nahualli leave him in the dirt. He was grateful when Tototl called a halt to the quick march. He sank down in the grass alongside the road and accepted the bread, cheese, and water that one of the nahualli handed him, gulping down the sweet coolness. He saw a shadow looming near him, and sat up. Tototl was watching him.
“I will get you a horse, Uchben Nahual.”
“I’ll be fine in a few moments, High Warrior.”
“I will get you a horse,” Tototl answered. “I need the Uchben Nahual to be ready when we begin the attack tonight.”
Niente had rarely talked to Tototl, since the High Warriors, with the exception of the Tecuhtli with the Nahual, rarely had interaction with the nahualli. He found himself looking at the man’s painted face and wondering what he might actually be thinking. “We’re that close, then?”
“We’ll see the tops of the houses when we cross the next rise. The scouts have told me that there are troops readying to meet us. The battle will begin very soon now.” For a few breaths, Tototl was silent, and Niente was content to sit on the grassy bank of the road. The breeze was fragrant with the scent of this land. Then Tototl stirred. “What did you see when you looked in the scrying bowl, Uchben Nahual? I watched you, watched your face, and I don’t believe that you told Tecuhtli Citlali everything.”
“I told him the truth,” Niente insisted. “Nahual Atl saw the same.”
Tototl’s mouth twisted under the paint and ink that adorned his face. “Your son is not you, Uchben Nahual. He may be one day, but not yet. You were holding back something you saw, something that frightened you. I saw it in your face, Niente. I want to know-did you see us defeated?”
Niente shook his head. I saw our victory here, and its terrible cost. I saw that it might be averted, and I saw that there the future was too confused and tangled to predict. “No,” he said.
“I’m not afraid of dying,” Tototl said. He was staring northward along the road, as if he could already see the city. “Dying well in battle is the end that every High Warrior looks for. It’s not a fear of dying; I’m afraid of the cost of this to the Tehuantin.” Tototl looked down again at Niente, and hope sprang up in him, a hope that the warrior might understand what Citlali could not. “Is that what you’re afraid of also, Uchben Nahual?” Tototl asked
Niente’s throat seemed to close under Tototl’s steady, unblinking regard. He nodded silently.
“So you’ve seen something.” This time Tototl said it with certainty. Niente shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I’ve seen too many paths, High Warrior. Too many, and all of them uncertain. But…” He inhaled, long and slow. Can you trust this man? Could this be a trap he’s set for you, maybe even one that Citlali and Atl have set? “Let me ask you this: if you killed a warrior in challenge, you would claim that you have won a victory. But what if in killing that warrior, you have in turn so inflamed his son that when he becomes a warrior, he brings an army and destroys everything that you’ve built, destroys everything you cherish so completely that it cannot be recovered? Was your initial victory worth winning, then?”
“That would depend,” Tototl said, “on whether you could tell me-without doubt-that the son would do all this.”
Niente was shaking his head. “The future is never entirely certain,” he told the warrior. “Even what happens in the next moment might change, if Axat wills it. But what if I could tell you that this was the likely outcome? Would you hold your sword stroke, then?”
“It would depend on whether holding my sword stroke cost me my own life,” Tototl said. “No warrior wants to give the enemy their life freely. I would think the same would be true of a nahualli.”
“That’s what I might say in your place,” Niente said.
Tototl’s head cocked slightly to one side. He grunted something that might have been assent. “Since you say the future is always uncertain, would you give your full support to a High Warrior, Uchben Nauhual, even if you thought it might be the wrong path?”
“That’s a nahualli’s duty,” Niente answered. A quick amusement crossed Tototl’s face, and he knew the warrior understood that he hadn’t fully answered the question.
“I will get you a horse, Uchben Nahual,” Tototl said to Niente.
“She was with him? You’re certain it was her?”
Sergei nodded. “It was Rochelle, Hirzgin. So at least that much of what she told me would seem to be the truth. Rochelle was raised as Nico’s sister by the White Stone. Whether she knows that he’s not really her brother…?” Sergei raised a tired shoulder. “I’m not sure she understands that.”
Sergei and Brie were sitting astride their horses, overlooking the fields around the Avi a’Sutegate where the Garde Kralji was encamped. There were too few of them, Sergei knew-given the report the scouts had brought back of the size of the Westlander forces advancing toward them. Though the offiziers were running the gardai through maneuvers, the troops looked sluggish and lost. They were not trained for this: open, full-scale combat against another organized and trained force. That much had been shown in the debacle of the Old Temple, when even the equally untrained Morellis had been able to hold them at bay for too long. The Garde Kralji was a glorified personal guard and policing unit, not an army battalion.
The battle won’t be won here, Sergei reminded himself. It will be won across the River A’Sele, with the Hirzg and the Garde Civile. We just have to hold our own here, hold them back long enough that the Garde Civile can return and rescue us.
He was fairly certain they would need that rescue, and he wasn’t particularly hopeful that it would be coming.
“They look terribly clumsy and slow, and I’m not at all impressed with their offiziers,” Brie said next to him, as if she had overheard his thoughts. She was dressed in full armor over a quilted tashta and wore a sword at her side, though her helm was still lashed to the pommel of her saddle, her brown hair braided and hanging low down her back. She looked entirely comfortable in the martial outfit-much, he thought, as Allesandra did when she commanded the field troops. It was a shame, he thought, that the two of them had been so long sundered. Allesandra’s son had married someone much like his matarh, either unwittingly or consciously. “I wish I had brought the Garde Brezno as well. These Garde Kralji are going to need strong leadership on the field, or they’ll break the first time the fighting gets difficult.”
“Indeed,” Sergei answered.“The Kraljica and the Hirzgin must be the ones to give them that. Commandant cu’Ingres, I’m afraid, is still troubled by his injuries, and A’Offizier ci’Santiago is, well, let’s just call him inexperienced.”
“Where is the Kraljica?”
“On her way, I expect. We should see her any time now.”
Brie made a noise of assent. He saw her lean forward in her saddle, leather creaking. She was peering toward the south. “Is that another of our scouts? He’s riding fast…” She pointed, and Sergei saw a cloud of dust far away along the avi. His own vision was poor, and he couldn’t quite make out the rider or the colors.
“It may be,” he said. “Whoever it is, they’re coming fast. There must be news.”
The two of them flicked the reins of their horses, cantering down to the road to meet the rider. They were joined by A’Offizier ci’Santiago as the rider came galloping up, his mount lathered with effort. The rider saluted them.
“The Westlanders,” he said, panting. “Not far down the road… A thousand or more… All along the road.” He stopped, catching his breath. “A few turns of the glass and they’ll be here,” he said. “They’re coming at a fast march, and they have several of their spellcasters with them, and the makings of siege machines with them as well. We need to be ready.”
Ci’Santiago nodded, but he did nothing. Sergei sighed. “We’ll need to send for Talbot and the sparkwheelers-A’Offizier, perhaps you can give this man a fresh horse and have him bear the message. Hirzgin.. .
”
“I’ll take the field command of the troops until the Kraljica arrives,” she told Sergei. “Ambassador, you and Commandant cu’Ingres can see to the main strategy here in the command tents.” Sergei could see her already looking at the landscape and deciding where to place the troops for best advantage. “I’ll need signalers, cornets, and runners, and I’ll want to talk to the offiziers. A’Offizier ci’Santiago, I need you to arrange that immediately. What are you waiting here for? There’s no time, man. Go!”
Ci’Santiago was gaping at her, but he shut his mouth and saluted as Sergei stifled a laugh. The man turned his horse and galloped away; the scout following him. Brie was staring south, her mouth set. Sergei thought he could see smoke rising from the horizon.
“I do believe you frightened the poor man,” Sergei told her, and she sniffed through her nose. “He’s probably already complaining about the demon woman from Firenzcia.”
“I’m happy to be the demon woman if it means we survive this,” she told him. “Do you think we can, Ambassador?”
“Would I be here if I didn’t?” he answered, and hoped she couldn’t hear the lie.
Nico heard the lock to the house gates snick open under Rochelle’s ministrations; she grinned toward Nico as she slipped the thin pieces of metal back into their packet. “Easy,” she said, pushing the gates open; Nico slid inside ahead of her, but he felt her put a hand on his shoulder almost immediately. He glanced back at her from under the hood that masked his head, the cloak that disguised his green robes heavy around him.
“Something’s wrong here,” Rochelle said.
“What do you mean?”
“Listen,” she answered.
The street outside the gates was crowded with people leaving the city. They could hear their voices: the calls, the arguments, the cries of children too young to understand the panic of their parents and relatives. There were the creak and groans of the carts, the shuffling of feet on the pavement, the whistles of utilinos vainly trying to direct traffic and quell the inevitable confrontations. “There’s all this noise out there,” she told him. “But inside here-the staff should be scurrying around, getting things ready for whatever, but there’s nothing. The shutters to the windows are all closed and probably locked, and I don’t hear anything at all. It’s too quiet here.”
“What are you telling me?” His voice was a husk. He already knew the answer, could feel it in a despair that settled low in his stomach.
“I don’t think she’s there, Nico. I think she’s gone already. I’m sorry.”
Nico pushed past Rochelle, striding angrily toward the front doors of Varina’s house. It was locked, but rather than wait for Rochelle, he kicked hard at it and the wood around the lock cracked. He kicked again, and the door opened.
“Subtle,” Rochelle said behind him.
He ignored her, stepping into the marbled entranceway. He was certain now that Rochelle was right; the servants should have come running, perhaps ready to defend the house, but there was no one in sight. “Varina?” he called. He thought he saw a cat dart across the hallway ahead of him. Otherwise, there was no response. He heard Rochelle enter the house behind him; glancing over his shoulder, he saw that she was holding her knife, the blade naked in her hand. “We won’t need that,” he said.
“Probably not. But it makes me feel better.”
He shrugged. He walked slowly down the hallway, glancing into the reception rooms to either side. The furniture there was covered with sheets; the cat glared at him from atop a blanketed couch, then went back to licking its front paws. He continued to move through the house: the sunroom, a library, the kitchens-they were all the same, empty, with every indication that Varina didn’t expect to return here soon. He heard Rochelle calling him from upstairs, and he followed the sound of her voice. She’d put the knife in its sheath, and was standing at the door to what had to be a nursery. The furniture here, too, was covered. She opened the drawers of a dresser along one wall. “Empty,” she told him. “I told you-Serafina’s not here, Nico. The Numetodo’s taken her elsewhere.”
Nico was shaking his head. “Varina’s still here in the city. I can feel it.”
One eyebrow rose on Rochelle’s face. “Well, if she is, she’s not staying here, and the baby’s not here either.”
“She’s sent Sera away,” Nico said.
“I gathered that. So can Cenzi tell you where?”
He scowled at her, a warning about blasphemy on his lips, but he held it back. She seemed to realize it as well, holding up a hand. “All right, so you don’t know. What do we do now?” Rochelle asked, but Nico could only shake his head.
“I don’t know,” he told her. After his confrontation with Sergei, he’d hoped to take Sera, to leave the city with his daughter and his sister, and find a place to think and pray: to know what Cenzi wanted of him, to know how to assuage the guilt and pain he bore… He’d hoped-he’d prayed-that Cenzi would give him his daughter, but it seemed that Cenzi still had other plans for him. He looked upward. “Cenzi, what are You trying to tell me?”
He listened to the whispers in his head and in his heart, and his face grew grim. “I think it’s time for us to part for a while,” he told Rochelle.
The Storm’s Fury
In the late afternoon, the sun hung low in the west, but where there had been clear sky before, a storm had birthed itself across the River Infante. Thunderheads rose high in the sky, though these were clouds that lurked impossibly close to the ground. Underneath them, the army of the Tehuantin was cloaked in shadow, and the storm walked itself forward on jagged legs of flickering lightning. The black, roiling clouds stretched off southward along the front the Tehuantin had established. Jan’s horse shifted uneasily under him, nostrils flaring as low thunder growled like some great beast. There was a sharp odor in the air that wrinkled Jan’s nostrils.
“War-storm,” one of the chevarittai near Jan muttered. “The cowards-they won’t even give us a chance for honorable single combat first.” Jan nodded-he’d heard of the Tehuantin war-storms, called up by their spellcasters: a cooperative spell. The Westlanders had used them to great effectiveness when they’d last been here, as well as during their battles with the Holdings in the Hellins, but Jan had never seen one himself. He doubted he was going to enjoy the firsthand experience.
“Alert the war-teni,” he said, patting his horse’s neck to calm it. “We’re going to need them. The attack’s starting.”
Jan, with several companies of Firenzcian troops and chevarittai, was on the western side of the River Infante just below the village of Certendi. The bridge over the river was at their backs. On the eastern side of the river, he could see the earthen ramparts they’d built; he had little hope that they would be able to keep the western bank for long. Starkkapitan ca’Damont was farther downriver, with the remainder of the Firenzcian army; Commandant ca’Talin, with the Holdings’ Garde Civile, at the southern end of their line, near where the Infante joined with the A’Sele.
“Tell your men they must hold,” Jan told the chevarittai. He yanked on his horse’s reins, riding up and down just between the lines of infantry and archers. “Hold!” he told them all. “We need to hold here.” As the war-storm stalked forward, the rumbling of the great cloud growing louder and more ominous, the war-teni came up to the front. He gestured to the green robes. “Here’s where you begin to earn your forgiveness,” he told them. “There-that storm must come down.”
The storm lurched nearer with every breath. The air smelled of the lightning strikes but not of rain. Ahead of the troops, in what had formerly been a field planted with wheat and grain, Jan had placed entrapments for the Tehuantin warriors: sharpened iron spikes set in the ground, covered pits whose bottoms were festooned with wooden stakes, packets of black sand that Varina and her Numetodo had enchanted so that they would explode when someone stepped near them. But the storm was marching across the field, not yet the Westlander warriors. The lightning strikes tore at the ground, up
rooting the stakes and exposing the pits, tossing earth everywhere and causing the black sand packets to explode harmlessly.
Jan cursed at the war-teni. “Now!” he shouted at them. “Now!”
The war-teni began their chants, sending the energy of the Ilmodo surging outward toward the false storm. With each spell that was released, the storm began to fall apart, and underneath, they could see the Tehuantin warriors hidden below, marching steadily toward them. “Archers!” Jan shouted, and behind him, bows creaked under tension, then a thin flurry of arrows arched upward, curving back down to rain upon the Westlanders. They snapped up shields. Jan saw several of the warriors fall despite the protection, though wherever one fell, another took up his place. To the south, the war-storm loomed over the ranks of the Holdings, and Jan heard cries of pain and alarm as the lightning tore at the soldiers there. But the storm was already falling apart-the power behind it released. Now, he heard the guttural shouts of the Westlander spellcasters; fireballs shrieked like angry Moitidi in their direction. The war-teni chanted their counter-spells; Jan saw several of the fireballs explode harmlessly above, but others came through, slamming into the ranks and spewing their fiery, terrible destruction and gouging holes in the lines. His horse reared in terror. “Move the lines forward! Fill the gaps!” Jan shouted as he tried to calm his mount. The offiziers shouted directions; signal flags waved.
Then, with a great shout, the warriors charged, and there was little time for thought at all. Jan unsheathed his sword and kicked his horse forward. The chevarittai gave a cry of fury and followed him, the gardai infantry rising in a black-and-silver wave to meet the Westlanders.
They crashed together in a flurry of swords, spears, and pikes.
Jan had fought the legions of Tennshah. These Westlanders were equally ferocious as fighters, but they were also far more disciplined. He could hear their own offiziers calling out crisp orders in their language, and their spellcasters were embedded in their midst, wielding staffs that crackled and flared with spells. He remembered that much from the last time. Jan hacked with his sword at a sea of brown faces painted in red and black, and wherever one fell to him, another sprang up to take his place. They were being pushed slowly back, and still the Westlanders kept coming. Jan realized that they couldn’t hold here on this side of the river-if they were pushed much closer to the river, there could be no orderly retreat; they’d be slaughtered.
