The Sacred Band

by David Anthony Durham

  In the moment that Howlk stared wide-eyed at Nawth’s bare neck, Mena yanked back his head, slipped the cutting edge of her sword right along the rim of his neck guard. She let go of his hair, grabbed the back edge of the blade with her free hand, and yanked the blade into his neck with all the might she had. The man’s eyes—startlingly blue—looked up at her, a childlike disappointment in them. His hands came up as if he wanted to explain something to her, but they got no farther before his body started to convulse.

  Mena shoved him, which pushed her body back away from them. The three of them fell, drifting slowly apart. She watched the distance between them grow, and then looked past them to the ice field far below, the armies just eating into each other. For a few moments none of it seemed to have anything to do with her. The fact that she plummeted toward the earth with the air raging at her ears and her arms and legs kicked about by the force of her fall did not matter.

  And then Elya appeared beside her. She touched Mena with the bottom of her muzzle. That brought Mena back. She grabbed Elya’s neck, loving her like mad, and slipped around and back into the saddle. Elya slowed their descent enough for them to watch from on high as Nawth and Howlk crashed down in the center of the Auldek formation. The soldiers beneath them were squashed on the ice, and those around them sprang back, sending a shock wave out around them. There was too much fighting for all the soldiers to understand what had just happened, but the fréketes swarmed down, landing one after the other around their fallen comrades, making the circle of confusion wider. Mena did not need to watch them.

  She checked what was happening elsewhere. There was not much daylight left. She caught sight of the sun biting into the horizon and knew the battle had just minutes more before both sides realized they had to withdraw. It was hard to make sense of the scene from above, but she knew what she was looking for and saw it. The Auldek in the foremost square of troops—near where the two had fallen—had pressed forward against Perrin’s troops. She knew they would because she had instructed them not to truly engage. To fight a slow backward retreat, cautious and defensive, just staying alive. The second thing Rialus had told her was about their hidden armor. No use wasting lives trying to injure soldiers who could not readily be injured.

  Instead, it was the units facing the quota slave ranks that truly pressed the attack. From above, she could see that it was working, more so on the left than on the right flank.

  What she did then she explained to Elya in images so that she would see it all and fear none of it. Passing over the crash of the two front lines, they swooped low over the right flank of quota warriors. Seeing the spot she wanted, she had Elya dip nearly to the ground above a patch of clear ice. At what she gauged to be the right moment, Mena pulled free of her harness for the second time that afternoon. She went over backward. Her legs kicked free of the stirrups and passed through the sky above her, all the way over until she was chest down and skimming off Elya’s back. She hit ice knowing she had to roll. She did. Rolled and slid.

  She came out of it with the King’s Trust in her hand. She took out the nearest man by severing his leg at the knee. He went down screaming, splashing crimson across the ice. The next nearest she slashed across the chest. Another she hit awkwardly with the side of her blade, breaking his wrist instead of severing it.

  As the soldiers pulled back to take her in, she got her footing. She gripped the sword in two hands and steadied herself. The fury that she recognized as Maeben came into her. It had been a while, but the screeching wrath of the goddess scorched through her veins now. She knew she would remember what she was about to do later with horror at herself, but in that moment it did not matter. She had a purpose in the world, and the blade in her grip was the instrument with which she wrote it. She blocked a spear thrown at her, cowardly, and charged the fool who had thrown it.

  It got bloody after that.

  When Elya returned, only a few minutes later, Mena was the center of a swirl of red desolation. Her blade was warm with the work, dripping. The ring of soldiers facing her tripped and stumbled on the bodies she had cut down. Elya swept in emitting a hiss so fierce the enemy soldiers dropped to the ice on hearing it. Mena sheathed the King’s Trust and caught Elya at a run. She leaped just in time to grab her stirrup loop. She held on, though her arms wanted to pop free of their sockets as Elya lifted her into the air. A frékete pursued them. Elya grabbed Mena and darted away as nimble as a skylark, dodging thrown spears and arrows with a grace that made Mena grin.

  Pressed into the creature’s citrus-smelling plumage, arms aching and feet running in the air above two armies clashing, Mena laughed like a madwoman. Battle joy. A short-lived euphoria, but in the moment there was nothing else like it in the world. The princess laughed so hard it became crying. The two blended so that she could not separate one from the other, or tell apart the emotions that wracked her.

  Battle joy. Battle shame. She owned them both. She always would.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Dariel’s second arrival in Avina was markedly different from his first. This time he walked down the city’s wide thoroughfares near a vanguard of escorts. Mór strode in front of him, Birké and Anira at either shoulder. Others from the Sheeven Lek river party made a wedge around them, and still more of the People who had met them outside the city increased their numbers. Dariel gripped leashes securing Bashar and Cashen to him, both of them excited by the commotion, stomping about, large pawed and awkward in their growing size.

  For this entrance Dariel wore no bonds. He was not the prisoner that Sire Neen brought as a token for the Auldek, nor the one stuffed under Tunnel’s massive arm. No bit clogged his mouth. Instead of bruises and an inflamed lip he wore a face tattooed with the spots of the Shivith clan. A rune rose from the center of his forehead, a declaration for all to see. And there were many who wished to see it.

  The throng they cut through grew as they progressed. More and more people crowded the streets, pushing in to get a look at him. They were quiet, eerily so. The signs of belonging stood out even more than usual because many gathered in clan groups. Whereas Dariel was used to seeing the People as a collage of individuals, some tusked and others tattooed, some with metal whiskers and others with pale flesh, here most seemed to have segregated themselves, making blocs of individuals sharing skin tone or altered features.

  They strode past groups of wolflike Wrathics, all of them looking like Birké’s kin. A small clump of Fru Nithexek stared, their eyes somehow rounder than normal, seemingly unblinking. For a time several Shivith youths ran alongside them. They called to one another in amazed voices, shouting that the Rhuin Fá was one of their clan. The Rhuin Fá was Shivith! Their voices were harsh in the relative silence, and before long others cuffed them into silence and held them back to fade into the distance. On one section of street, Dariel and his group had to physically plow through a sea of light blue birdlike faces, all of them staring at Dariel. He could not read whether their expressions were kindly curious or hostile or something in between. He was glad that Mór kept the pace brisk.

  When they passed down a thoroughfare lined with massive statues of strange creatures, Dariel knew they had arrived. They went through a colonnade of painted pillars, up a stone staircase, and stepped into the gaping mouth that cast them in darkness for a time. Just as before, Dariel thought. This is just as before. Except that it was not, and could not be as it had been. Before, he had no control over his fate. He had no voice. This time he had both, and he had the responsibility of using them for the good of everyone in this chamber, both those who supported him already and those who believed they hated him.

  Though he still was not sure how he would manage it, he had never felt a clearer sense of purpose. He made sure that when he strode into the high-ceilinged chamber there was nothing but quiet confidence on his face. They came to rest at the edge of a large rectangle of light that fell from a skylight. Throngs of the People crowded the shadows, more than he could see or numb
er. He did know that they were sectioned by clan affiliation. That had been a requirement of Dukish of the Anet clan. It was he who controlled this portion of the city, he who permitted this gathering and built his strength on keeping the People divided.

  Dariel was trying to sort out who was who when a shape hulked up in front of him. A giant of a man converged on him, grinning madly, his tusks exaggerating his joy. “Rhuin Fá! There he is!” Tunnel crushed Dariel in an embrace, lifting him off the ground. He spun with him, making sure everyone heard and saw that the Rhuin Fá had arrived.

  “Hello … Tunnel,” Dariel managed to gasp. “Good to see you, too.”

  “Good that you are alive,” Tunnel said, once he had set Dariel down. “I like this. It’s good.” He touched a thick finger to Dariel’s forehead. “Yes, that’s good. But what are these? Cathounds!”

  If Bashar and Cashen found anything odd about Tunnel’s appearance, they did not show it. They jumped into his arms, paws on his chest and knees, as he bent to greet them. He laughed as they slopped his face with their tongues.

  “Hounds like me,” Tunnel explained. “They should fear me, but …” Back on his feet again, he wiped his face dry with a handkerchief before greeting the others. He hugged Anira at length and Mór briefly, seeming to know that she would not return the gesture as fully as he offered it. Birké took the hounds’ leashes and promised to keep them safe in the back of the chamber. Dariel let them go reluctantly.

  Throughout all this exchange, Mór scanned the crowd. She nodded greetings to some, stared icily at others. “Where’s Skylene?”

  Tunnel grew somber. “She was injured, Mór. Shot with an arrow in the chest.”

  “No,” Dariel said. “Is she all right?”

  “She is not well.”

  “Where is she?” Mór asked.

  “Safe for now. We’ll take you both to her, after this. She wants that, but she did not want you to know before. She did not want it to change anything, to rush you or … You know how she is. As stubborn as you, Mór, but quieter about it.”

  Mór looked toward the contingent of Anets and Antoks that grouped beside them. She kept her emotions hidden, but Dariel saw the tightness in the way she moved her neck. “Who shot her?”

  “Not them,” Tunnel said. “The league did it. They—”

  The deep sound of a bell resonated through the chamber, cutting Tunnel off. The long tones called the meeting to order. Each of the clans sent a handful of representatives into the center of the lighted space. As they moved, Anira whispered a few names in Dariel’s ear. He knew who they were as she said them, and wondered how that was possible. Plez of the Kern. Randale of the Wrathic. Than, with his savage demeanor, of the Lvin … Each name he knew just before she uttered it. How could that be? He may have heard some of the names before, but he could place their faces now. He even knew things about them that he was sure he had never been told.

  He did not have time to ponder it. Representing the Free People, Mór stepped forward, with Tunnel as a towering, muscled protector beside her. Anira brushed past Dariel. She reached back, took him by the wrist, and pulled him forward. More so than ever, he felt the touch of hundreds of eyes on him.

  An Anet spoke first. He took a loop of metal that looked like a goat horn from the small table it rested on. Holding it high, he called the meeting to order. He was not Dukish, Dariel knew, but one of his secretaries. Dukish himself had a seat brought out for him. He sat while the others stood, legs crossed, head tilted, and his gaze on something in the chamber’s shadowy distance. He had not, as far as Dariel knew, even looked at him, and he did not seem to intend to. But looking at Dukish, Dariel realized he knew things about him. He knew too much about him.

  Dukish’s man said that they were all gathered here due to the Anet clan’s generosity. He reminded them that weapons were not allowed. If any had weapons hidden on them, they should leave now or face disgrace and exile for violating that cardinal rule of the gathering. Someone from deep in the shadows shouted a curse at him, but he thrust the horn above his head, clenched tight in his fist. “The horn is the voice!” he shouted. “Only the holder of the horn speaks!”

  Many grumbled, but nobody disputed the tradition. At least, not until the Anet had held on to it too long, doing nothing more than justifying the bloody actions they had taken to “secure” the city. Eventually, the man did let the horn be tugged from his hand, and another speaker stepped up to make his or her case.

  The Free People, being removed from any particular clan, were to be the last to receive the horn. Dariel would have found the wait interminable if he was not experiencing so much each moment. His belief that he knew many of these people grew stronger all the time. He did not just read them based on the things they said and their demeanor as they said them. Dariel remembered other things about them. When Than spoke, he called Dukish a tyrant who should be put on trial for every murder he had incited. He roared his words with passion and a lion’s strength of bearing. But … he said nothing about his shame over not being asked to go with his Auldek masters on their war march. Dariel remembered the man making that confession to him, admitting how much that shamed him. He saw that emotion behind every gesture, but knew that nobody else did.

  Randale of the Wrathic reminded them that Ushen Brae was vast and should be settled, that the clans could divide and live separately. They should first share out the resources and wealth of Avina equally. Dariel, watching one version of him, recalled another speaking quietly about how he wanted only to go to Rath Batatt himself and range across the mountains there like the wolf his long teeth were modeled after. Plez of the Kern did not say the thing that troubled her most: that with the Lothan Aklun dead they no longer had any way to make the belonging changes to any new people who arrived. What would happen, she wondered, when the next generation of Kern did not have blue skin or a beaked appendage that lengthened their noses? Would there even be another generation of Kern? Nor did Maren, speaking for the Kulish Kra, admit that her mind was mostly on her lover, an Antok man who had been forced by his clan affiliation to leave her.

  There was so much behind each speaker’s words, so many hidden fears and objectives, thoughts noble and sometimes wicked. It was almost too much for Dariel to sort through. A bombardment beyond anything he had experienced before. He held it all within himself behind a calm façade. With so many eyes on him he could not show uncertainty. Whatever was happening mattered. It was important. It was part of what he was here to do.

  During their discourses, each of the clan leaders mentioned Dariel in some way or other. Some praised him. Randale wanted very much to hear what he had to say. Some expressed doubts about him. Than questioned why he wore Shivith markings if he was truly of the old lands. Some attacked him as a fraud. How convenient, the Antok contingent said, that the Rhuin Fá had been found just after the Auldek fled! If he was truly the Rhuin Fá, why had he not come in all the years that the Auldek had enslaved them?

  A good question, Dariel acknowledged. Not sure how to answer that.

  And what sense did it make that the Rhuin Fá should be the heir of the bloodline who had sold them for generations? the Anet speaker had asked. Why should any of them believe that he was not just lying to them, trying to use their own legend against them? And why, he asked, should they turn their backs on the league? It was the league, after all, that set in motion the chain of events that destroyed the Lothan Aklun and set the Auldek on the warpath.

  None of that is a lie, Dariel thought, and yet neither does it equal the truth.

  When the horn finally passed into Mór’s hand, the Anet who handed it to her made it clear it was an indulgence to even do so. How many did she truly represent? Who were the Free People now that everything had changed? The old and infirm, rejects living in the wilds of the country? “You have no voice here,” he said.

  Mór wrenched the horn away. “Don’t I? What am I speaking with, then? This is my voice, and the Free People speak for all of you, whether you
are wise enough to know it or not. Who but we kept the dream of freedom and unity alive all these years? You do us wrong to abandon us now. Yoen and elders—”

  Than strode up to her. He grabbed the horn, ignoring the way Tunnel glared at him. He did not pull it away from her; he just held it with her for a moment. “We know what you think,” he said. “We have all heard your speeches enough times to spit them back at you. I want to hear what he says.” He thrust his index finger of his free hand at Dariel. Judging by the roar of voices that seconded him, the entire chamber awaited the same.

  “Before you do,” Mór said, “you should know that”—Mór turned and met Dariel’s eyes—“that I did not want to trust him. I hated him when I first set eyes on him. I wanted him to fail and to be revealed as just another devious Akaran. But I was wrong. Dariel has fought for us. Without him, we would never have destroyed the soul catcher. The league would have it instead of the Lothan Aklun. The Sky Watcher, Nâ Gâmen, knew him, took him in, and gave his soul into him. Listen to what I say and think what it means. I have come to believe that Dariel Akaran can help save us, from ourselves, from the league. Listen to him carefully.”

  Mór tugged the horn from Than and extended it toward Dariel. He stepped forward and took it, staring into her eyes as he did so. By the Giver, she was beautiful! He had come to accept that she loved another woman and could never return his desire, but he would always find her features lovely. He had not known how much warmth would flood into him at hearing that she believed in him, but flood him it did, enough so that he looked away from her and took in the crowd. They stared at him, waiting.

  The horn in his hand was heavy, solid metal, warm from the touch of the hands that had been holding it for the past few hours. All those hands, all the things they had argued for and secretly thought. He knew better than anyone that so far the meeting had been a vast confusion. They would never be able to vote on anything or to walk away from here with an agreement that would serve all.