by Beth Brower
“Yes,” Ammar answered.
The emperor coughed, and turned his dark eyes on Ammar, victorious. “I did not bring it.”
Ammar frowned, fingering the base of his empty cup. “I had anticipated that, which is why I brought it myself.”
Shaamil was pale, whether from the surprise or the poison, Ammar could not know. As the emperor laughed, his breathing already sounded labored. “You always were the smartest of my sons, perhaps even the best.”
“No,” Ammar disagreed. “The best was always Basaal.”
Shaamil gave no response, and he began to try to stand.
“Would you like me to help you?” Ammar asked dispassionately.
The emperor stood. “I desire to be left in peace,” he said. He studied the face of his son, looked out across the plain at the mountains of Aemogen, and the warm shadows of a spent day, and then disappeared behind a curtain.
Ammar studied his fingernails, pensive and thoughtful, before he stood, retrieved the trumpet from his trunk, and called on the guard outside the tent.
***
They were losing. The Aemogens were falling under the relentless Imirillian attack. And Basaal, heavy-limbed, tired, could find no thought to describe the horrors transpiring there. The Aemogen right flank was decimated, but not without leaving a trail of Imirillian blood in its wake. The center company, where Basaal found himself, had the advantage of falling farther south, but it was disorganized and desperate. No captains led the field. Basaal could not stop to call out any order. The left flank was isolated towards the west and would soon fall.
Basaal pulled back as another wave of Imirillians came down upon them. He stumbled over a body and did not look down to see if he knew whose it was. Basaal felt as if he were drowning.
Someone called out to him.
Clutching his sword, he twisted. Seeing only a flash of metal, Basaal’s movements went before his sight. He swung, only to be fended off and sworn at as somebody grabbed his shoulder and shook him.
Annan. It was Annan. Before Basaal could speak, a man in purple came down upon him. Swinging his sword, Basaal fended off a blow, losing his footing as he did. The Imirillian soldier moved to strike Basaal, but Annan was there, eliminating the man in one motion, just as an officer in the emperor’s army swung his scimitar, slicing through Annan’s stomach. In the time it took Basaal’s world to go silent, a dagger was plunged into Annan’s heart.
“Annan!” Basaal screamed, his own voice ringing in his ears.
The motion of the battle around him disappeared.
Basaal threw his weapon to the ground and tried to catch his stumbling friend. Annan’s eyes were frozen with inexplicable pain as he slumped from Basaal’s grasp, falling, clutching his hand to the death wound.
“Annan! Annan!” Dropping to his knees, Basaal flung an arm beneath Annan’s back, pulling his friend up towards him. Annan’s eyes locked onto his. “No, no, Annan, I didn’t see—Annan!”
The last flow of Annan’s blood soaked between Basaal’s fingers. Annan’s eyes rolled, his chest making a sucking sound of lungs fighting liquid cut short. His eyes were staring at Basaal’s face in stunned terror, then their focus was lost completely. Annan went limp.
“No! Annan!” Basaal cried. “Please, please come back. I didn’t see! I’m so sorry! No, God, please!” Basaal jerked his face towards the sky, pleading. “No!”
A wail of grief fought its way into Basaal’s words, and he gave into it as he clutched Annan’s motionless body to his chest. Basaal kissed Annan’s cheeks, bent over the body, overwrought, drowning in the blood of the day.
The movements of an approaching figure did not dissuade Basaal from his grief. He paid the man no mind, even as the shadow of a raised scimitar stretched out across the ground before him. Basaal wished for annihilation—he waited for it.
Then, another figure wearing red rushed forward, engaging the soldier of Shaamil, cutting him down with a cry. Too dazed to care, Basaal continued stumbling over words of apology to his friend, hardly even looking as another soldier in red, then another, rushed about him. Men who had sworn to Basaal unto death began to form a loose circle around him, preventing any of Shaamil’s soldiers from reaching their prince.
The perimeter grew, a circle of red extending out from him, railing against the purple waves. Basaal bent his face into Annan’s still chest, the tunic saturated with blood, disoriented by the ringing across the battlefield where bodies lay, torn, bloodied, discarded.
***
A sound, a low horn rising across the sacrificial earth, caused Eleanor to turn her head, looking away from where she sat cradling Hastian’s limp head. The late afternoon sun, preparing to flee behind the western hills, blinded her eyes.
“The trumpet,” Zanntal cried as he motioned towards Eleanor with his uninjured arm. “It is the sound of retreat. The emperor has called for a retreat.”
“Impossible,” Eleanor muttered as she stared at Hastian’s dead face.
The trumpet sounded again, in three quick successions. “The men are separating out! Running back toward the Imirillian camp. Right on the edge of their victory, Shaamil has called a retreat.” Zanntal’s voice was incredulous.
Eleanor finally stumbled to her feet, shielding her eyes, her hands stiff with dried blood. There, on the plain, a wave of purple was breaking away in groups, disengaging from the fight. Some pockets and shapes seemed to rush after the retreating Imirillians, but the remaining figures on the field stood still. Eleanor could make out a contingent of Basaal’s soldiers, dressed in red, standing near what appeared to be the men of Aemogen. But there was no movement, no shouting, no fighting amongst them.
“We must go down,” Eleanor said, but the sight of the Vestan and of Hastian’s body seemed impossible to leave. Eleanor reached for the floor as her knees gave way, and she crumbled, numb, looking at the fallen men around her. Suddenly, the battle crown felt very heavy indeed. Lifting a shaking hand, Eleanor clutched the metal crown, now smeared in blood, and pulled it away. It slipped, clanging against the stone, sounding like the strike of a dull sword. It spun to a nervous stop and remained still. Eleanor did not move to pick it back up.
***
Someone was clutching Basaal’s shoulders, pulling him up, coaxing him to release the still corpse he held in his arms. The sound had been terrible—and merciful—the trumpet calling Imirillia into retreat. Basaal thought it had sounded distant, as if coming from across the world.
Numb, stiff, and covered in death, Basaal felt the blood of his own countryman caked into the garments he wore, stained into his skin. The trumpet sounded again and someone was determined to set Basaal on his feet, patiently prying him from Annan. His friend’s body was already going stiff, Basaal realized, and his eyes were still open.
“Prince Basaal.”
It was Sean. Basaal looked up then around himself, where dozens of soldiers in red were waiting in uncertainty.
“The trumpet,” Sean began. “And the men, the emperor’s men, they all began to run back towards their camp in retreat.” It was an uncertain, untrusting statement.
“Why would my father have sounded the trumpet for retreat?” Basaal muttered in Imirillian.
Ashan, third in command of Basaal’s army, knelt on the other side of his prince. “The emperor has called the men back.” Then, he added, “At least half of your remaining army banded together to fight for you. They drew their swords against the foes of their prince.”
Sean looked confused, and Basaal could not remember what he was supposed to say to either of these men. He moved his fingers to the red Safeeraah on his arm and closed his eyes.
“Basaal?” Sean spoke in his Aemogen tongue.
“The trumpet call,” Basaal heard his own voice say, “was of final retreat. The Imirillian army has declared itself defeated. I have never thought, in all my days, I would live to hear such a sound.”
Basaal opened his eyes and placed his hands on the ground, steadying himself as he rose to his feet. As
han and Sean, one on each side of Basaal, did the same. Basaal scanned the plain, awash with fallen soldiers. Here and there, small groups began to gather in confusion. Men cried out from wounds. Bands of red began to gather and make their way towards Basaal’s immediate guard. A wave of purple, what was left of it, was on the far field, retreating towards the Imirillian camp. Eleanor’s soldiers were calling out, uncertain. They were weaving among Basaal’s soldiers, searching for the wounded, finding each other, clasping hands.
“I couldn’t leave him,” Sean was saying at Basaal’s left. “I came upon him screaming and quickly saw there was nothing to be done. So I ended his pain there, for pity.”
Dazed, Basaal turned towards Sean. “Crispin?” he asked.
“No,” Sean replied, looking struck. “Your horse, Refigh. I believe Crispin is dead.”
“Yes,” Basaal said as he shook himself awake. “Yes, I know. I saw it happen. He saved me, damn it. Damn it all.”
“What do we do now?” Ashan asked, watching Sean with uncertainty.
It was sudden as a lightning strike, and it shot through Basaal with force. His heart felt it again, and agony jolted him wide awake to the destruction of the day. Basaal shook his head, startled, taking a moment before he could look Ashan and Sean in the face.
“We must organize the men,” he said in Imirillian. “Search for the living among the fallen. Bring all the wounded Imirillians to the western rise. Count the survivors, both able and injured. But let us be vigilant. Do not let the men believe in this retreat until I can confirm it is so.”
He turned to Sean and spoke in Aemogen, giving the same orders. “Take all the Aemogen wounded to the eastern rise, below the trees. Have you seen the other officers? What about Aedon?”
“I cannot say,” Sean replied, looking grim. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, The man was covered in the burnt color of drying blood.
Basaal reached for Sean’s arm and stepped forward. The injury in his leg from earlier in the day had hardened into a stiff, swollen pain. With a sharp breath, Basaal began to limp towards the band of red-clad men who had surrounded him, men who had sworn to uphold Basaal until his death. As they gathered him in—however bittersweet this reunion might be—Basaal was home.
Chapter Sixteen
Ammar stood at the door of the tent, waiting for Shaamil’s general to return.
“It is done,” he told Ammar when he did. “The captains under me are organizing the retreat, pulling all the men back.” He looked at the physician prince with skepticism on his face, as he held the trumpet in his hands.
“Once all the men have pulled back,” Ammar said. “I want them away from the battlefield, at the far western end of the camp, until we can assess the casualties and discuss the burying of the dead with the Aemogens.”
“And the emperor?”
“Has asked I leave him in peace,” Ammar said the truthful statement casually.
“The conquest, then, is over?”
“It is over,” Ammar said. “Send a messenger to discover the fate of Prince Basaal, seventh son. Notify me as soon as he is found.” Then Ammar turned back towards the tent.
***
Eleanor and Zanntal laid the bodies in the stable yard behind Colun Tir. Even the dead Vestan were carried down to await their burials. The thought of leaving Hastian lying in his blood on the tower any longer was beyond what Eleanor could endure and so Zanntal obliged her quietly when she had insisted he allow her to help carry her dead.
The hole that had begun inside of her upon hearing of Doughlas’s death, the grave that had opened there, was larger now, and the weight of Hastian and the other soldiers, found dead outside the tower, worked to enlarge this gap between her ribs and her heart. Eleanor’s white dress was soiled with dirt and blood, forever stained. Her heart felt much the same.
Thaniel, her fen rider, arrived as they had just brought out the last body.
“Your Majesty!” he called, out of breath as he reared his horse up and dismounted, a flurry of news and exhaustion. “The Imirillians have ordered the retreat. We have begun counting the dead, seeing to the wounded. Sean asked me to send this report in hopes of finding you safe.”
“I will come down soon.” Eleanor motioned toward the bodies there as if in explanation. “And Basaal?”
“Prince Basaal has gone to ask for assurances from the Imirillian camp.”
Eleanor drew in a breath and pressed her fingers to her eyes. He was alive. It took a deep breath, and then another, before Eleanor could again feel her lungs, not realizing until now how much she had been waiting for this news.
“That is not all,” Thaniel said. He had caught his breath, though the sweat from riding fast across the late afternoon still glistened on his face. “The prince received a message from his brother before leaving for their camp: Emperor Shaamil is dead.” He gave a ghostly grin despite himself. “The emperor is dead, and the conquest is over.”
“Shaamil is dead?” Eleanor cried. “By whose hand?”
Zanntal stiffened, seeming to guess what had been said.
“I know no more than this,” Thaniel answered.
It was as strange as it was miraculous, but Eleanor did not feel the miracle of it yet. She only felt hollow and thin. She reached a hand out, and Zanntal steadied her. The fen rider, having delivered his message, finally saw the blood on Eleanor’s dress. Then he studied the bodies lying on the ground, his eyes ending on Hastian. He walked slowly towards the corpse of the Queen’s Own, crouching down and touching Hastian with the barest edge of his shaking fingertips.
“Not Hastian,” Thaniel said as he bent his tired head. “Not all the good men.”
“Who else? Aedon? Crispin?” These words escaped from Eleanor faster than she could stop them, for she did not truly wish to know. It was too endless, this knowing.
The fen rider shook his head. “We have just begun gathering the dead, but—”
“Speak no more.” Eleanor held up her hand. “I will come down…I will see for myself.”
***
Basaal refused the horse they had offered him and began to walk towards the Imirillian encampment, followed silently by his own, red-clad, battle-weary soldiers. They stepped over endless bodies, and when Basaal came upon his own horse, its throat slit compassionately by Sean, he stared at it numbly until Ashan moved him onward.
They continued across the plain.
Upon arriving at the burned encampment, Basaal saw that Emperor Shaamil’s men had been ordered to the far end of the desolated Imirillian camp. Death had come here, with the aid of the devilish powder devices, and men and horses were scattered with abandon across the earth. The emperor’s tent still stood, farther up the hill, untouched.
It was there that Basaal carried his tired soul. No guards greeted him, and he motioned for his men to remain in wait. He pulled back the tent flap and let himself in.
Ammar sat in a chair, quiet and contemplative, swirling the contents of a brass cup in his hand. Basaal’s entrance caused him to look up.
“Where is he?” Basaal asked. His own words sounded young in his ears.
Ammar nodded towards a drawn flap that led to the emperor’s private sleeping quarters inside the pavilion. Basaal crossed the room, passing his brother, moving his fingers along Ammar’s shoulder to anchor himself before moving on, pulling the ornate curtain aside. He entered the enclosed bedroom and stood, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness around the lifeless figure on the ornate sofa. Basaal stared, blinking back the oddity, the power vacuum he was now surrounded by. The emperor of Imirillia was dead.
Basaal had always loved the Zarbadast theatrics as a boy, the plays and performances, the grief and triumph of the players. Now, as he took a few steps towards the silent, still man before him, the memory of these plays crossed his mind, and he knelt down, feeling as though he were doing, perhaps, some great thing and should feel more emotion for his father’s death. But, whether it was the carnage of the day—growing stale
in the late afternoon—or his own exhaustion, or both, Basaal could not access the feelings of his heart, certainly nothing worthy of a son kneeling beside the corpse of his father.
He lifted his hand and touched his father’s brow. Shaamil’s skin was cold, already stiff, but Basaal moved away as if he had been burned by fire. The gray hairs around his father’s temple and in his neatly trimmed beard were accompanied by quiet lines of age around his eyes. His father was dead. Annan was dead. Crispin was dead. Everything was death.
“You were always your mother’s son,” Ammar said from behind Basaal. The younger prince turned towards his brother. Basaal’s mouth twitch. Shaking his head, he looked back down at the lifeless corpse.
“Yes. But I feel as if I have always been my father’s shadow.”
“Do you believe I did right?” Ammar asked. It was a rare moment of hearing a tone of question in Ammar’s voice.
Slumping over, bent and bowed, Basaal shook his head, staring at the ground. “Do not ask me what is right and wrong. I am of the damned. I know nothing of such things.”
Ammar did not respond. The sound of the curtain dropping into place was followed by quiet. There was a prayer, Basaal knew, that was to be spoken over the body of a dead Imirillian emperor. But he did not know the words, and his father had stopped allowing holy men to travel with him to war.
The rush of energy that had propelled Basaal to organize the chaos on the battlefield and then stumble up to the Imirillian camp was now gone; he fell into a numb state, so lost he could not remember what it had ever been to be found. For several hours, Basaal knelt before his dead father. The afternoon ended itself, and the dim light of dusk filled the space around him. Candles were lit and torches set as darkness fell. And still Basaal did not move from his place of numb mourning.
***
Eleanor and Zanntal had buried Hastian before descending from Colun Tir. The other soldiers would have to wait. The bodies of the Vestan Eleanor would send back across the plain. Aemogens who had survived were walking the battlefield, searching for wounded, and gathering them to a single place just inside the woods. It was there that Eleanor found Sean.
