by Beth Brower
“We’ve begun to gather in our wounded men,” Sean said as he took Eleanor aside after greeting her. “A company was just sent up the road to bring down some large tents that we’d placed inside the storeroom—and food, with whatever blankets can be found. Some of the wounded should not be moved, even to the tower,” he explained. “Edythe will bring the women through soon, I suppose, with more supplies.”
It was then that Sean brought Eleanor to Crispin’s body.
“Briant is dead,” Sean said flatly. “And Crispin, as you see. I am about all that’s left of your war council.” Her councillor of husbandry was looking at Eleanor, but she was not certain he saw her. She did not mind. The air around Eleanor was heavy and stiff, and as she moved she kept thinking to convince herself it was all a dream. Why should it not be the same way for Sean?
“And Aedon?” she managed to say.
Sean shook his head. “He is not yet accounted for.”
Eleanor blinked, and swallowed, glancing aside as Sean continued speaking. “We’ve a messenger back just now from the Imirillian camp, sent by Prince Basaal. The retreat is final, the emperor no more, and the Imirillians will be returning to their country once they have worked out the logistics of burying their dead.”
“Did the prince say when he would return?” Eleanor asked as she looked tiredly across the plain toward the rise of the Imirillian camp.
“No,” Sean answered.
Tents were brought down, erected on the edge of the woods, a short trail away from the overgrown road that ran north of the pass to Colun Tir. Eleanor asked that Crispin’s body be placed in the smallest tent, tucked behind and apart from the others. Once his body had been laid out, Eleanor meant to leave and attend to the wounded, to organize the men and ask for reports on casualties, and to send a message across the plain. But, as darkness fell, it was here that Eleanor sat, beside the cold, torn body of Crispin.
Sean did not let her stay any longer. When he guided her away from Crispin, Eleanor concerned herself with the first wave of her wounded soldiers, working into the night, attempting to bring them comfort, to clean their wounds, to call for desperately needed water—and more water. But, when the fifth man died as she held his hand, Eleanor—her vision blurry, her head heavy as a stone—gave strict orders to notify her once Aedon was found and disappeared into the small tent to convince Crispin somehow that he could return back to life…that he should return back to life.
Hours passed, but each time she reached for his hand, there was still no response. Eleanor would press the back of her hand against her forehead, supposing perhaps she had gone mad, wondering why she still hoped that Crispin’s fingers would respond to hers.
Later, when night was at its deepest, and when Eleanor could no longer sit beside Crispin wishing she could take back the day, she left the tent and asked Sean for a report on the wounded.
There were more men than the tents could hold. Eleanor found herself again weaving through rows of bodies. The groans and cries were insufferable until Eleanor learned she could close her ears, stop the sounds from penetrating, remain apart, even as she mopped their wounds with a rag and a bucket of water. It was the only way to move from one soldier to the next.
“Your Majesty!”
Sean had been asking her a question, or so Eleanor thought.
“Yes?” she asked.
“The dead. What would you have us do with the dead?”
“Have all the wounded been brought up?”
Sean’s eyes were rimmed red from exhaustion. “As many as we could find in the darkness. We’ve begun to bring up the dead now and have found one or two men yet alive amongst them.”
Eleanor brought a hand up to brush her hair from her face and paused. It was bloodstained. Bringing it down slowly, Eleanor looked out towards the battlefield. There, men holding torches were wandering the plain in groups of three or four, lifting and carrying corpses until they were piled below the tents of the wounded. Someone had found a wagon and was bringing the dead back a dozen at a time. Some of the torches belonged to the Imirillian soldiers, who moved about in their operations as a mirror image to Aemogen’s as they took their own dead back to their camp.
“It’s a devilish business,” a soldier said to Eleanor and Sean at some point during the night. “We are stumbling around these fellows, none of us speaking a word of the same language, gathering our own dead and ignoring the fact that the man next to us, who is gathering his dead, would have killed countless of our men.”
Those words were still stuck in Eleanor’s head when she answered Sean’s question regarding the place of burial. “We will bury the dead here,” she said. “This side of the mountain range is still Aemogen land. We will bury them here, at the edge of the woods, and will make a single marker for each man, using the surviving fen lords—or any man—who can identify the dead. We must also keep a record of where each man has been set to rest—for his family. If King Staven finds cause to complain,” she added, “well, let the man fight me for it.” Then Eleanor went back to her work, whatever that work was.
There had yet to be news of Aedon.
Eleanor could not remember later when it had happened or how many hours from dawn it might have been, but, at some point, arms began to surround her, soft, matronly arms. Eleanor became aware that the Marion women had come with blankets, food, and teas; fires were lit and kettles were put on. The men who still drew breath in agony, facing the horror of their half-hacked limbs, were given gentle treatment, or soothing stories, before they lost a hand, or a leg at the knee.
And then, it was not just the Marions but the women of Aemogen, sober-faced and labor-minded. Edythe had found Eleanor, and Thayne had also come. Eleanor was too tired to fight as they took her into the small tent, which now held not only Crispin’s body but every other member of her war council and every fen lord, found dead on the field.
Aedon was not yet found? Eleanor remembered asking.
No, Thayne had answered as he shook his head. Aedon was not yet found.
Thayne left the sisters alone, and Edythe stripped Eleanor of the bloodied gown and washed her body with water, cold from the mountain. She carefully placed Eleanor’s hands into the bowl of water, scrubbing the blood away. Then Edythe slipped a simple, blue dress, which any Aemogen farmwife might have worn, over Eleanor’s tired body, wrapped Eleanor in a large blanket, and tucked her down into sleep.
To her own relief, Eleanor did not sleep long after the sun was up. Tired as she was, she did not wish to be away from the operations of the day, and the tent now smelled heavy with death. Outside they had to begun to bury the dead.
“How many?” Eleanor asked Thayne after she had spent a few hours treating the wounded. “Have the dead yet been counted?”
“They are still bringing bodies up from the plain,” Thayne replied. He stood with a paper in his hands, marking the dead as they were delivered to their burial sites, his blue eyes surveying the marks before him.
“What do we know so far?” Eleanor asked.
“I estimate we will have lost almost two thousand men.” The fen lord cleared his throat and frowned as he watched the next wagon approach, filled with the battle’s dead. “That is not including the wounded.”
Eleanor stored this number away, unwilling to look at it or to think about it until she was alone. “When there is a final count, find me,” Eleanor said as she placed her hand on his arm.
They worked the day long. The Aemogen women and any soldiers left standing went about feeding and washing and digging grave after grave. Someone suggested a mass burial and Eleanor’s glare burned so fiercely into the man that he retreated, his shovel in hand. These soldiers were not to be nameless.
The women prepared the dead for burial with great reverence. There was not time to pay full homage, for the smell of death had risen with the sun and the work stretched out before them in endless rows. But, sometimes extra care was taken: a wife burying her husband, a neighbor, or a child. And the woman w
ould not be moved until his body had been prepared according to the honor she felt he deserved.
Eleanor joined the women in the washing. Moving from corpse to corpse, she worked alongside, wishing that those who recognized her would not, craving oblivion. Late in the day, Eleanor dropped her bucket beside the body of a young man, a boy really. A woman was already preparing his body for burial.
“Let me help you,” Eleanor muttered, saying the same words she had said countless times throughout the day.
“No!” the woman flung her arms protectively across the body. The set of her lips defensive, her eyes, beleaguered with sorrow. “No other will prepare my son for his death. He is mine more than he ever was Aemogen’s. I will see to his washing. I will see to his rites.” She looked up as if she were a wild thing, injured and fierce. There were large black circles beneath her eyes; they were desolate.
Eleanor retreated without words.
She and Edythe prepared Crispin’s body for burial and accompanied the wagon that took him to his grave. A soldier, one of Thayne’s men who had taken on Eleanor’s mandate to identify each corpse, marked the grave and Crispin’s name before leaving Eleanor and Edythe to watch Crispin’s still form disappear beneath each shovelful of dirt. Then the fieldstone, dug up from the place of Crispin’s own grave, was set into place.
“Is Basaal still with the Imirillians?” Edythe asked.
“I believe so,” Eleanor said, admitting her ignorance. “He is, I am sure, overseeing the same work there that we are about here.”
Not long into the day, Zanntal found Eleanor and let her look through his spyglass to see the long trenches dug by the Imirillians.
“I believe that they wish to leave as soon as they can,” he said in Imirillian, “so they will bury the men in mass graves.”
“Can I ask a favor of you, Zanntal?” Eleanor asked.
“I will serve you as I can,” the soldier said as he adjusted his blue robes, stained with blood. He had been helping gather in the wounded and dead. He had also, Eleanor found out, stood watch outside her tent as she slept.
“Go to the Imirillian camp,” Eleanor said, “See if Basaal is well and find out what they mean to do. I should send a formal delegation across, but we have too much work here, and I know that he would be pleased to see you. Stay as long as you need to—stay as long as he needs you.”
Zanntal went, and hours passed without a sign of his return. She found that she did not have the space to pay his absence—nor the lack of a message—any mind.
In the late afternoon, Eleanor disappeared into the woods, into the solitude of a tree-filled ravine. There, she sat and forced herself to think of the numbers Thayne had shared with her. Possibly two thousand men. Almost two of every three men of Aemogen, dead. Hundreds more injured. Aedon still missing.
Finding a moss-covered tree trunk, Eleanor sat, her finger rubbing against the rough wood as she tried to elicit an emotion, any emotion, for the events of the last two days. But nothing came. A blank, heavy weight seemed to hang from her collarbones, a pressure against her chest, but there was nothing else—no tears, no relief that it was ending—nothing.
She felt numb. No, not numb. She felt dead. Eleanor sat, her head in her hands, weary and dead. The numbness had begun with Hastian’s death, and had continued with Crispin’s. It had been beaten into her with all the wounded she had tended, and all the bodies she had prepared—this inability to reckon what had happened to her people.
It was almost belligerent, the way that spring ignored the foolish things men killed for—the flitting of birds from branch to branch and the green growth of living things, felt at once a desecration and a promise of cleansing.
“Please,” Eleanor petitioned, not knowing why or to whom she spoke. “Please.”
***
“They’ve found him!” Edythe came running at Eleanor as soon as she could be seen coming down through the trees. “They found Aedon!”
Eleanor forced her shaking legs into a sprint and passed Edythe, grabbing her sister’s hand and pulling her around. “Where? Is he alive?”
“For now,” Edythe said, pulling Eleanor to a hard stop. “He is in a very bad way, and I do not know if he will last the night. They’ve taken him up to the tower.”
“Colun Tir?” Eleanor said. “Why?”
“Come.” Edythe pulled Eleanor towards the line of what few horses remained. Thrift stood there, waiting for the queen. “They found him in the woods below Colun Tir. He lost much blood, his face was slashed, and his body was run through at least once. He has yet to regain consciousness. But a Marion physician is attending to him now. Go!”
A soldier waited to help Eleanor mount her horse.
“Will you come up with me?” Eleanor asked, clutching Edythe’s wrist, feeling small and young.
“Later,” Edythe answered shaking her head, overwhelmed. “There are so many here who need me. I can’t leave them.”
Nodding, Eleanor mounted, snapped Thrift’s reins, and guided him to the tower road with a cry of urgency.
***
Edythe’s report had not been exaggerated, it had been edited. Aedon looked like death. The cut on his face stretched from his left temple, across the bridge of his nose, and through his cheek. It was split wide and caked with dried blood. His chest was slashed across twice, and a bloody, gaping wound below the line of Aedon’s left ribcage was infected and deep.
“I found him one hundred yards down the hill—” a soldier told Eleanor as she watched Aedon’s chest move so subtly it seemed impossible he was not dead. “Amazed to find him,” the soldier was saying, “still breathing after two days.”
“I cleaned Aedon’s wound partially,” the Marion physician stated. “But let me be very clear with you, Queen Eleanor, any further treatment would be a waste of time. This man will not live.”
“Yes, he will,” Eleanor contradicted doggedly. “Bring me fresh water and a clean rag if it can be found. I want a drinking flask as well.”
When the Marion physician did not move, Eleanor stared at the man, motioning towards her soldier to fulfill her command. The young soldier left immediately, and Eleanor’s expression scared the physician from the room as well.
“Aedon,” Eleanor whispered touching his head, moving his hair back from his forehead. The skin on his face was already ashen, his lips blue, and his breathing slight. Upon the soldier’s return, Eleanor took the bowl and rag from his hands. He slung a flask from off his shoulder and set it down beside his queen.
“I need you to send a message to the Imirillian camp. Can you bring me paper and ink?”
***
“An Aemogen messenger rides towards the camp,” Ashan told Prince Basaal as soon as he was called into the emperor’s pavilion.
“Send him straight here,” Basaal said, not bothering to look at his officer but rather at the scribbling on the paper before him. That afternoon, he had ordered his men to prepare to leave. The trenches would be finished tomorrow night, and the dead buried. The wounded that could travel would have to suffer the journey home, for the Imirillian army was leaving in two days’ time.
When the door to the tent again swung open, a young Aemogen entered, sweating from his swift ride across the plain. Basaal stood, his fingers stretched out and resting on the tabletop.
“Soldier,” he said.
“Prince Basaal,” the young man answered as he rushed a bow. “I’ve an urgent message from the queen.” The soldier held out the missive toward Basaal.
Basaal left his table, walking over to the soldier, and taking the note from his hand, uncertain. He had just sent Zanntal back to Eleanor with no message. What could he have to say? Zanntal had told Basaal months ago he would not swear unto the prince until death, and Basaal could see the man’s allegiance was now to Eleanor. “You serving the queen is better than any message I could send at this point,” Basaal had said casually to Zanntal, as if it had still been his right to direct him.
“This is not for me,�
�� Basaal said, leaving his thoughts as he now stared down at her familiar handwriting.
“Sir? The queen directed me here—”
“Yes,” Prince Basaal interrupted, handing the note back to the soldier. Then he walked over to a chaise, where his sword lay. He belted it on. “It’s for my brother. Come.”
They left the pavilion, and Basaal frowned as he led the Aemogen soldier through the destroyed camp to a line of tents that had been set up to protect the wounded from flies. The tents did nothing for it. The stench of blood and death was beginning to ease now as the bodies of the dead were carried to the trenches and the wind blew toward the east. For this Basaal was grateful.
“Ammar,” Basaal called to a figure leaning over a wounded soldier. “A message for you from Aemogen.”
The physician did not look up but continued to sew his patient’s wound together. Basaal watched the procedure, knowing he must wait for Ammar to finish. He also knew that Ammar was forbidden under Imirillian law to continue his practice of medicine after having committed a murder. This did not stop Ammar, and he went about his work of healing. The wounded man was a soldier of their father’s. Basaal grimaced as Ammar was finishing his procedure, and the one time Basaal met the invalid’s eyes he was greeted with an awful contempt.
Basaal smiled in return. It was a default reaction for maintaining power: prove that you are above it all to keep the men in check. It was a disgusting business, but the soldiers of Shaamil must be subdued until they were returned to Zarbadast. A few of the generals had tried to rally the men against the prince and his troops. Basaal, who was unable to afford an uprising, had them put to death. This had silenced any further thoughts of rebellion.
Once Ammar finished, he motioned to his assistant, washed his hands, and then dried them with a towel. Basaal told to the Aemogen soldier to give Ammar the message. The crisp sound of paper being unfolded felt out of place when surrounded by so much death.
“She wants me to come across the plain to a place called Colun Tir to see to a patient,” Ammar said, folding the paper again and tucking it inside his white robes. “Do you know where this tower stands?”
