by Chris Bunch
Tenedos looked at him, and his expression was sad.
“I can offer but three spells,” he said. “None of them can prevent the sacrifice. One may reduce the potency of whatever magic they plan to use. I imagine they used none this last time because of the arrogance of their chiefs, who sought to conquer with only steel and cunning.
“I can probably stop that.
“The other two … I’d best prepare them now.”
He hurried away. In a few minutes, he was ready with his apparatus. The first spell was a weather spell, meant to do no more than increase the strength of the storm. This sounds bizarre, but it could well be vital in our escape.
The second spell was the one against the jasks. I do not know what it was, nor if it worked.
As for the third …
Captain Mellet paraded his men on the road. We had archers out on the flanks, to make sure the hillmen wouldn’t seize the moment and rush us. I thought they were waiting for dusk, to use the gathering darkness as a shield for their final assault But we still had three hours of light before then.
It tore my heart to see the sorry remnants of his company trying to stand at attention. There’d been 125 of them in Renan. Now, there were no more than fifty, and many of them were wounded.
“Men of the Khurram Light Infantry,” Captain Mellet began. “When we took our oath, we swore to serve until death. This is our day.
“This is the time for our final gift to our fellows, the men and women of Numantia we vowed to die for.
“ ‘That others may live’ is a saying I’ve heard now and again. I cannot think of a better one to light our way back to the Wheel.
“I choose to make my stand here in this valley. Those who wish to fulfill their vows … join me now.”
The warrants and two surviving legates were the first to cross to him. Then the privates followed, first by ones and twos, then in a stream. At the end, there were only three foot soldiers standing by themselves, shamefaced.
“Very well,” Captain Mellet said, and his voice held no anger or scorn. “You have found your vows too heavy. I release you from them. Put down your weapons and go with the civilians, and obey all orders they give you.”
One man did just that, but the other two looked at each other and hurried over to where their fellows stood.
“The Khurram Light Infantry will form up,” Captain Mellet shouted.
I saw something wonderful then. There were seriously wounded KLI men who’d been in the wagons that’d gone past us. Now I saw some of them coming back, hobbling toward us, the blind led by the halt, a man with but one arm and a wounded leg using his sword as a crutch. We tried to argue, but none of them would listen, and so we let these bravest of the brave join their fellows.
Tenedos was ready with the final spell, and he anointed each KLI man in turn.
We moved off, just as the magically enhanced storm roared in. We moved as fast as we could, in the strangest order imaginable. At our front were ten lancers, then the civilians and the wagons. The Lancers were behind them, in mass, and to the rear, the KLI.
We’d marched only a few hundred yards when our movement was seen, and the hillmen rushed once more. But they’d made no plans and the attack was ragged and easily driven back.
They tried again, and then we were at the end of the valley.
“The Khurram Light Infantry will take battle positions,” Captain Mellet shouted, and the foot soldiers spread out, across the narrows.
“Legate á Comabue,” he shouted. “Tell them in Numantia of us!
“Tell them there are still men on the Frontiers who know how to die!”
He saluted, and I ordered my Lancers to attention and returned the salute, unashamed tears cutting through the dirt on my cheeks.
Then we marched away, through the pass.
The third spell Tenedos had cast was to make the foot soldiers feel little pain, so they could be struck and struck again and still fight on.
I heard battle begin behind us, and I began praying, to Isa, to Panoan, even to Saionji herself, to grant them an easy return to the Wheel and elevation to the highest in their next life.
The Khurram Light Infantry’s last battle was still raging when we went out of earshot.
• • •
The tempest crashed around us as we went on and on. We stopped for a few hours to rest and eat. Now there was more than enough room on the wagons. Seer Tenedos examined my wound closely. “A nice clean slash.” He muttered a spell over it. “This takes its strength from your own body’s reserves. If you were old and feeble, it would be like a vampire on your energy, but you’ve got more than enough to spare.”
There were no more enemies with swords. Now our foes were the cold, the wind, the wet, and they slew as gleefully as the bloodiest-handed hillman.
I found Jacoba and Allori, and mounted them on Lucan. I walked beside them, at the head of the column.
Behind me were the Seer Tenedos and Lance Karjan. I never saw either of them stumble or weaken as we went on and on, the road winding through the cliffs close on either side.
We stopped somewhere, ate, and, I suppose, slept for a while, then went on.
I was moving numbly, limping, holding my last reserves close, knowing there could well be a final battle before we reached the end of Sulem Pass. In my heart, I felt we were lost, doomed. None of us would ever reach the flatlands and the safety of Urey.
I looked up once at Jacoba, and could barely recognize her, a scarf pulled close around her face, ice caked on the shoulders of her coat.
Allori was a small bundle of woolens sitting in front of her. I saw a wisp of blond hair from under her cap and with fumbling frozen fingers tucked it back. The little girl said something, I guess it was thanks, but the wind blew her words away.
We went on.
I don’t know how long the snow had stopped before I noticed it, but all at once there was no knife-wind cutting me. It was a miracle.
A second miracle came. The rock walls closed in, until they were cliffs only a few hundred feet apart. Then they were gone, and the land was flat around us.
We were on the far side of Sulem Pass. We were beyond Kait, beyond the Border States. We had reached Urey. I felt life, and hope, surge.
I looked back. There was a line of staggering men and women behind me, and behind them, wagons and then, to the rear, ragged men who were Cheetah Troop, Seventeenth Ureyan Lancers.
I tried to smile, and felt the skin of my cheeks crack. I caught up with Lucan. “We’re safe!” I shouted.
Jacoba pulled her scarf aside, and looked at me, numbly at first, then my words penetrated. She gave Allori a hug. “We’re alive!” she said, her voice as shattered as mine.
But there was no response from the little girl. Her head was sunk on her chest, her eyes shut. I pulled her cap off, held the back of my hand in front of her nostrils.
A single snowflake fell on my hand and stayed there, not melting.
Allori Pares had died, without our realizing it, within the hour.
My triumph was ashes.
THIRTEEN
JACOBA
The crew had barely set the long houseboat’s two anchors when dark clouds raced across the sun, and a freezing rain shattered the lake’s mirror. I sprawled on pillows covered with silk and furs in an open pavilion on the boat’s top deck, wearing nothing but a long kilt loosely tied at the waist. But I felt no cold: The four sides of the pavilion were covered with a marvelous witch-spelled fabric, a thin cloth as clear as glass that blocked the winter’s chill, and an open fire of sweet-smelling woods burned to one side.
It was midmorning, and there were no other boats on the lake, since the Time of Heat was the most popular season for these craft, not midwinter. The crew, twenty-five strong, had gone into their own below-deck quarters when they were satisfied the boat was secure and we lacked for nothing. If we wished anything more, I had but to ring the small bell set on a table nearby.
There was a pewter mug o
f a warm, dark drink infused with spices beside me. I sipped, then continued staring at the lake. The cold and pain of the long flight from Sayana drained, and warmth crept into my bones.
“Is this what I was wearing in your dream?” Jacoba asked. She wore a long robe with a high collar that cradled her smiling face like a loving hand, and then reached to the rugs on the boat’s deck. But it was hardly modest, since it was made of a diaphanous black material that hid nothing from the dark areolae around her nipples to the tuft of hair at her sex.
“Not quite,” I said. “Nothing so virginal.”
“Then away with it,” and she slipped her shoulders back, and the robe fell away to pool around her ankles.
She stretched one foot out, as graceful as a dancer, and ran it up my inner thigh, lifting my kilt.
“In your dream, what did I do?”
“Uhh, you strangled me.”
“Nothing before that?”
“There were some … goings-on I seem to recollect,” I said.
“In my dream,” she said, her voice becoming throaty, “here is what I recollect doing.”
She knelt, untied my kilt, and pulled it away. Her tongue traced the ridge of my cock, then she took me into the warmth of her mouth.
“What you’re doing … meets with my own memories,” I managed. Her tongue caressed me for a few moments more.
“Next, this is what happened,” she said, and, as in my own dream, she bestrode me and I thrust into her. Her hands caressed my chest as we rose and fell, her long black hair brushing my face. Her sighs came closer together, and merged with my own harsh breathing, and then she cried out once, twice, three times, as I drove hard and then we collapsed on our sides as we died the small death.
It had not always been like this.…
• • •
We’d marched only a few miles from the mouth of the pass when a roving patrol of the Tenth Hussars came across our column. Their commander wanted us to stop where we were and they’d ride for help. But all of us were obsessed with one thing: to get as far away from the nightmare of Sulem Pass and the Border States as we could, and so we kept moving. I learned later the legate in charge of the patrol drove his men at full gallop to the nearest heliograph tower, and that day word of the tragedy went out to all Numantia.
When we stopped that night near a small settlement, villagers came out to help, to do what they could, bringing warm food, firewood, tents, and blankets. All that night wagons arrived with more comforts from Renan and the other cities of Urey. When we moved on late the next morning, none of us were afoot. I was particularly grateful to be able to ride Lucan again, since my leg was throbbing and stiff.
But men and women kept dying from wounds, cold, exhaustion — another thirty of us returned to the Wheel before we reached Renan.
A small part of me wished to curl in a ball and sleep forever, but I could not. There were Lancers to take care of, and Numantians to be responsible for. My discipline held me in a mailed fist.
We were met by a host of dignitaries outside the city, and told we were granted the honors of Renan, and all Urey was honored to provide all we needed — shelter, food, anything — until we recovered.
We listened numbly, not knowing what to make of anything.
I myself had expected to be met with by the provost and arrested. I considered my performance the most dismal of failures. I’d left Renan with about 300 soldiers, including the company of KLI. There were only six of the foot soldiers still alive, only because they were too sore wounded to climb out of the sick-carts and join their fellows. Of the 150 Lancers I’d ridden so proudly away from Mehul with, sixty-five were left, and most of them were sick or wounded. Of the others, about half of Tenedos’s staff lived, and only one-third of the Numantians we’d tried to rescue. If there was a bright note, it was that only one of Yonge’s hillmen had been killed in the flight. To me, this was dark catastrophe.
Yet when we rode through the gates of Renan, it was as heroes. The city had declared a holiday, and the lamp standards and flagpoles of the city fluttered with bright banners, and the streets were lined with cheering men and women.
I felt I’d never been party to such a fraud I suppose Tenedos guessed what I was thinking, because he issued orders that no soldier was to talk to anyone, not officials, not cityfolk, not inquirers from the broadsheets.
We were quartered in a huge palace on a lake, each of us with his own room.
Luxurious sprung wagons arrived for my Lancers, to return them to Mehul, but they refused. They’d ridden out on horseback, and they’d return the same way.
I’d wanted to return with them, and bury myself in the safe routine of garrison duties, but Tenedos’s orders had been very firm: I was, by the gods, assigned to him until otherwise ordered, and there had been no orders, so my duty was clear.
I was presented with an oilskin pouch by the young legate who was to take the men back to Mehul. I thought him young, even though he was slightly older than I was. I thought the last of my youth burned away by the horror of Kait.
There were other surprises to come, but none as great as what the pouch contained. It was a single sheet of parchment, containing but one sentence:
Legate Damastes á Cimabue:
I find that your performance commanding Cheetah Troop to be in the highest tradition of the Seventeenth Lancers.
It was signed by Domina Herstal.
To a civilian, that sounds like nothing, but to a soldier in a unit with as high a standard as the Lancers, there could be no greater praise. But I still did not believe it.
I showed the dispatch to Tenedos, and he nodded. “It is but a beginning, Damastes.” I had no idea what he was talking about.
I bade Bikaner and the others farewell, and do not know how I was able to keep from crying like a child. I said some words, which were completely inadequate, and wondered if any of them knew how much they meant to me, and how they would always hold a place in my heart. I thought I saw Troop Guide Bikaner swallow convulsively when I saluted them, and Lance Karjan seemed to have acquired a cold, because he kept blowing his nose as the last of Cheetah Troop went slowly out of the gate.
I returned to the quarters I’d been assigned, rooms even more palatial than those I’d had in Sayana. Not that it mattered — I would have been as happy, or unhappy, in a single-room hovel.
Sitting on the floor just inside the door were two small cases and on the bed was Jacoba.
I made myself smile politely, and asked her how I could serve her.
She looked deep into my eyes, then shook her head, as if not finding something she’d been expecting. Finally, she said, “In the pass, we talked about how I might repay you for saving me, about what might happen … if we lived.”
I remembered, but said nothing. For some reason, I felt a bit of not-rational anger. All I wished was to be left alone, and it seemed that wish would never be granted.
“Is this Tenedos’s idea?”
Anger flashed in her eyes, she began to snap an answer, then caught herself.
“Laish Tenedos pays my wages to make his desserts. No more.” She stood. “Do you wish me to leave?”
I almost said yes. But there was one tiny bit of sense left, and I shook my head. She put her hand on my shoulder. After a moment, I put my hand over hers.
I felt little hunger, but forced myself to go to one of the dining halls and have a bit of soup. Then I walked in one of the gardens, not feeling the chill for the greater cold within, until it was quite late.
Jacoba was already in the great bed, carefully curled to one side. I undressed as quietly as I knew how, and slipped in beside her, lying on my side. I felt no passion, no lust, not much of anything in particular.
Her hand touched my bandaged leg, then moved up to my back and caressed it, not so much sensual as reassuring. But the ice within me was too thick, and after a moment she sighed and rolled over. After a time her breathing became regular, and after a longer time, I slept.
The
next day, Tenedos summoned me.
“You remember I said yesterday that your congratulations from your domina was just the beginning?” He held up a sheaf of dispatches. “Here are special orders, sent by heliograph. You and I, and my staff and some of those who were with us on the terrible journey from Sayana, are requested by the Rule of Ten to attend them immediately, and give them a full accounting of the evils worked on Numantians by the barbarians of the Border States.
“We are to await the arrival of the paddleship Tauler, which will be dispatched within a few days,” he went on, half-reading, “during which time we are to gather our strength and enjoy the comforts the city leaders of Renan have been directed to provide.
“Then we are to proceed directly to Nicias and await their pleasure.” He looked up. “This is where it shall start, my friend. They thought they were sending me into exile or perhaps my death, but Saionji wanted something else.
“Now they shall be forced to listen to me and realize the time has come for change.
“I tell you, Damastes, none of those who died with us died in vain if it brings about the great renaissance I’ve dreamt of.” He stood and paced back and forth excitedly. “Yes, I can sense it, I can feel it. This is the beginning.”
I found polite words, but felt no inner thrill. But if Laish Tenedos, the Seer Tenedos, wished me to accompany him to Nicias, that was as good a place as any. Why not? Far from these mountains, perhaps the ice would melt.
But it did not take that long.
That night, both Jacoba and I walked through the gardens. It was cold, and we wore heavy cloaks. We found ourselves standing side by side under one of the huge trees of Urey. Even though it was the Tune of Storms, the monstrous multicolored leaves still clung to the branches. A few feet from us was one of the many sculptures the palace’s gardens were filled with. I paid it little mind.
Jacoba lithely pulled herself up onto a thick branch that curled a few feet above the ground, so her eyes were at the same height as mine.
The night was sharp and clear. I looked out at the mountains, the awful peaks that marked the border to the Border States.
