Winter King

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  Neither did Andrion. “Stop it,” he said in a quiet voice that penetrated the darkness like a javelin thrust. Miklos pulled himself to clanking attention, his eyes rolling aggrievedly toward Andrion. Tembujin shrugged his tail of hair and slouched as if unconcerned. But his eyes, too, turned in silent question to Andrion. “Give Governor Patros the falcon,” said Andrion to Miklos. “Go, bring me Ventalidar.”

  Miklos handed over the standard and hurried away. Andrion looked after him with an inward groan; always the same questions of love and honor and reality, inescapable. Bonifacio came backing out of the tent, intoning a prayer, and Andrion interrupted with brisk orders. “Bring me the red-plumed helmet. Find me a crimson cloak. In the name of Harus, tell no one that Bellasteros is dead.”

  Bonifacio, too, stared in amazement. “Go on,” Andrion said, making a quick shooing motion. With many a dubious backward glance, Bonifacio went.

  Patros and Nikander, Ilanit, Lyris and Dana, still waited, trusting if bewildered. Andrion beckoned Tembujin and asked them all, “Would it not be a terrible blow to see the emperor die, wasted by sorcery, on the eve of battle? Would the people not prefer to see him die powerful in victory? Would he not himself choose to die strong and confident, in duty’s saddle?” Each face was rapt, unblinking. “Let us then set him to lead the army before Iksandarun, as he did once. And I shall then be freed to take Iksandarun from within.” There. It sounded ridiculously simple. It sounded impossibly macabre.

  Nikander and Patros exchanged a wild-eyed glance. “But if anyone deserves now to rest . . .” Patros ventured.

  “I know that you mean no disrespect, my lord . . .” essayed Nikander.

  Andrion pulled them closer, held them fixed with the intensity of his eyes, his voice. “He asked for this, did he not, with almost his last breath? How can we deny him, deny his land, one last hour of youth and strength? Bellasteros always wrote his own rules, even for me . . .” He gulped, but his eye did not waver.

  “Of course,” Patros sighed. “He did ask. How he would enjoy the irony of it.” Nikander seemed almost dazed, turning the scheme in his mind, approving it. Ilanit nodded slowly, and the shield glimmered in her hand. Dana glanced at Tembujin, and he shook his head. “Such audacity,” he murmured. “Worthy of the falcon indeed.” Lyris stared at Andrion as if he had gone mad. Then she checked herself, looked right and left at the steady faces around her, and shrugged acceptance.

  Andrion began to breathe again, and doled out his orders. Everyone scattered, gray ghosts in the night. No, the night was lightening toward dawn, a faint glow in the east giving each tent, each weapon, a crisp silver edge.

  Tembujin remained. His black eyes flashed as if to say, Come now, anyone capable of such humor can surely be my friend. “Well,” Andrion said to him, “I suppose that we bastards should work together.”

  With a short laugh Tembujin, too, disappeared, his bear-like escort shambling behind. Andrion’s smile grew tighter and tighter until at last it broke. His scheme slithered through his mind; the price of the Empire indeed: my youth, and my father’s life . . . Only then did he wonder whether Tembujin had meant to name him the falcon.

  * * * * *

  The dawn glimmered behind a sky plated with blue-gray cloud like chain mail. The wind rang coldly from some profound depth. The moon was hidden. It will return tonight, Dana thought, at the full. And I am not in Sabazel, not in Andrion’s arms celebrating the day of his birth. I celebrate death. But then this day is the meeting point of light and dark, when the sun begins its return to summer, when hope dies and is reborn.

  She tucked her lengthening hair under her helmet, and laced on her breastplate. No, her belly was not yet round enough to thrust protestingly against it. She searched her thoughts, seeking some tendril of the Sight, but her senses were as numb as the sky.

  Andrion loomed up beside her, darker than dark in his black cloak. “No point in asking you to stay behind and protect our child,” he stated.

  “Your mother carried you into battle the day you were born.”

  “Marking me with death,” he said. Dana darted a sharp glance at him; he was not bitter, not fey, not even worried about the fortunes of the day. She kissed his cold and stoic lips, their helmets clashing together, and drew from him a grave smile.

  Behind them Ventalidar stood as tremblingly still as one of the paintings in Ashtar’s cavern, his eyes rolling in bewilderment at the stillness of his burden. His burden was Bellasteros, as straight in death as he had been in life, integrity instilled in his very bones.

  Danica stood at the horse’s head, crooning reassurances, glancing up again and again at the carven features framed by the red-plumed helmet. Her lips tightened in some wry humor between tears and laughter, but her eyes gleamed with an uncanny patience, as if for once she knew the ending of the game and had only to wait for it to be played out. Her firm, fragile hands spread the crimson cloak across Ventalidar’s haunches, settled the reins around the wicker stand that braced Bellasteros’s back, snugged the ropes that bound his legs to the saddle.

  The morning lightened, a sun like the fading embers of a watchfire reddening the haze. Andrion stepped to his father’s shining greave and said with a quiet, resigned humor, “For months now I have had visions of riding this horse, my own god-given horse, in a bravura charge against the enemy. But it is you who will do that.”

  Andrion pulled Solifrax from its sheath. What? Dana asked herself. The cloak was pinned over Bellasteros’s mutilated arm; he could not carry the sword even if Andrion gave it to him. But Andrion moved with the assurance of one who has plumbed the depths of doubt and found a solace beyond.

  Solifrax etched an arc of fire in the mist. The flare of light was so bright that for a moment Dana could see nothing. Faint incandescent shapes seemed to move before her, the walls of Sardis, the wings of Harus, young Bellasteros . . . The light faded. The emperor’s features were cleanly chiseled, the angle of his chin softened by a neat sable beard; his mouth was tightly closed, set firm with the habit of command. One dark-lashed eyelid shivered into a wink—ah, the demands of the game we play—but no, it must have been some aftereffect of the light emitted by the sword. But his eyes remained open, dark, clear gemstones.

  Danica emitted a short, strangled cry of recognition. Bellasteros was strong again, and whole; broad shoulders filled the crimson cloak, two hands grasped Ventalidar’s reins. Not breathing, not living, but whole. The cloak billowed in sudden tolling wind and Dana smiled.

  Andrion waved Solifrax in salute and with a flourish sheathed it. He glowed with exaltation and power; he glanced around at the watching faces, not ashamed to exult. He patted Ventalidar’s quivering shoulder, and the horse calmed, no longer wary of its burden.

  Danica, smiling in fierce satisfaction, kissed Bellasteros’s right hand and closed it about a polished Sabazian saber.

  Nikander and Patros appeared from the murk, startled by this image of their emperor, alive and well and determined to achieve victory. Awed and pleased, they, too, saluted. Valeria slipped from her father’s horse and regarded Bellasteros without flinching, her unveiled cheeks pink, her eyes bright with the courage of those who must stand and wait.

  Bonifacio hovered behind her, muttering prayers and protests. A breath of wind brought the word sacrilege to Dana’s ear; she glanced around even as Andrion did. Andrion’s keen eye fixed the priest, and he flushed beet red; Andrion’s eye discarded him and he turned, almost colliding with the phantom shape of Tembujin’s white horse. Bonifacio made the sign of the evil eye. Tembujin, jerking himself away from Bellasteros’s cool, almost arrogant features, cordially returned it.

  The odlok left his guard with a terse Khazyari phrase at Danica’s side. Evidently his loyalty was not to be tested in battle against his own people; Tembujin asked that only of himself.

  And here was Miklos, bearing the bronze falcon yet again. His features were sharp, pared to the bone with elation and resolve. “My lord,” he said to Andrion, “may I le
ad the emperor into his last battle?”

  “Why?” Andrion asked. “Ventalidar has wit enough to carry him.”

  “To prove my loyalty to you,” Miklos stated.

  “I have never doubted your loyalty.”

  “Have you not?”

  Andrion’s eyes burned with a chill flame; the emperor’s eyes, subtly refined. “Is this the greatest gift I can give you? Go then, with my blessing. And may you feast this night in paradise.”

  “My thanks, my lord.” With a salute of the falcon, Miklos turned away.

  So, Dana thought, the playing pieces move onto the board. Andrion braced himself like a legionary preparing for inspection. “Iksandarun waits for deliverance,” he said to Dana, to Danica, to all the watching faces. And to his father as well. Bellasteros’s handsome features remained serene and certain.

  And it is this, Dana thought to Andrion, that delivers you. She caught the brilliance of his eye, nodded, and turned away. The dawn stirred with muted voices, turning wheels, hoof-beats, as the army lumbered forward.

  Andrion led his troop of a hundred picked veterans, Lyris and twenty Sabazians, to the grove, through the tunnel, out into the palace without really seeing anything around him. Willow branches, water, stone were all the same gray shadows. The surreptitious whispers of the soldiers might as well have been the distant humming of insects. He saw a prancing black horse bearing a crimson plume and a crimson cloak, he heard the blaring of Sardian trumpets, a resonance of Iksandarun’s past as strangely altered as a dream. His hand clutched Solifrax, as though if he released it, he would disintegrate into a figment of his father’s vision. But the hilt thrilled against his damp palm, sensual, cold; the vision was his.

  Sarasvati waited, wearing a chiton, a modestly draped cloak, and a Sardian stabbing sword. Her tied-up hair was a sleek copper helmet, her eyes points of blue fire. Briefly she greeted Lyris and Andrion and introduced them to her officers, ragged men and women armed with knives and scythes, bricks and sturdy staves, hatred and determination.

  It would be useless to ask her to stay behind, Andrion told himself. He told her quietly of Bellasteros’s death and transfiguration; she swallowed any grief, any surprise. “Later,” she said, and he nodded. Later, the leisure to reflect and comprehend.

  With dour approval Lyris found Sarasvati a coat of mail large enough to encompass her waist, and a leather cap. Andrion organized his troops; soon the ragtag army was flowing like turgid water from the palace and through the city. The turbulent sky diffused a thin sunlight over city and plain, casting no shadows. The wind raced in cold muted chimes around each corner, down each street. Wailing cries echoed eerily as the Khazyari moved toward the pass. Dully pealing trumpets echoed in reply. Camels bellowed.

  The crowd slipped across the amphitheatre as silently and as inexorably as wind scouring stone. Andrion remembered sitting there laughing at comedies, sighing at tragedies; he had a sudden vision of his father’s life, his own life, becoming in the end only a garbled drama played before thousands of remote faces. Andrion Bellasteros, the man of honor.

  Every alleyway, every building, disgorged more people. A few tossed bodies of Khazyari warriors like so much garbage onto rubbish heaps. The vengeful wave swept to the gates of the city. The huge doors were supported by pylons carved with reliefs of fabulous beasts, enameled eyes staring. Here, Andrion thought, Hilkar stood on a midsummer’s night, throwing back the bolts and writing the heart of that drama. Surely the gods were amused that a worm would have so much power over the life of Andrion Bellasteros.

  The slaves and soldiers rushed forward, slaughtering what few Khazyari stood about the guardhouse. Now it was Andrion’s own hands that released the bars; with a hundred eager hands beside him, he opened the city to the world outside. The Khazyari encampment lay in bedraggled lumps before him, and beyond that a dim mass seethed with the faint sparklings of weapons, rumbled with shouts and cries.

  Sarasvati gasped. Andrion turned and started. There, a fragment of evil memory, was Hilkar himself. Or Hilkar’s body, rather, pinioned upside down to the front of the gate, with arrows through hands and feet. His mouth was gaping in horror, mottled with blood. Andrion noted bleakly that his throat had been cut; so, his death had been more merciful than he might have received from this mob.

  Shouting curses, the freed slaves, the citizens of Iksandarun, threw bricks and stones with sickening thuds at the body. The arrows loosened, and the scrawny form fell and was torn apart.

  Lyris’s stance seemed to say, such is the fate of traitors. But Andrion averted his gaze, and Sarasvati’s complexion turned slightly green.

  At last the jeering shouts died away. Subdued, the people turned again to Andrion. He felt his face hewn of frosted stone, not applauding them, not criticizing them. He drew Solifrax and thrust it, a clear crystalline flame, toward the sky. He told his army, “Let the women and children live. Let any warrior who lays down his weapons live.” He knew they would obey.

  He allowed himself a thin smile. He let his eyes reflect the flame of the sword. He raised his voice in the Sabazian paean. Now, now! Lyris’s keen white face broke into fierce glee, her arid voice climbing beside his. The wind swirled, the clouds swirled above them. The makeshift army streamed with fell songs into the Khazyari camp.

  * * * * *

  “What!” Raksula shouted. “Do not jest with me!”

  The panting messenger stood firm. “Our camp has been attacked from behind. Not just the slaves in the city, but imperial soldiers led by the black prince himself and the fiery sword of the emperor.”

  “No!” screamed Raksula.

  Another messenger fought his way through the mayhem. “The Emperor Bellasteros himself leads the legions, with the odlok Tembujin at his right hand. They cannot be stopped!”

  “No!” Raksula howled. “No, it is not so!”

  Odo jerked his pony around and overrode her shrill voice with his own orders. The messengers hurried away. The Crimson Horde eddied, uncertain, and began to fall back. Vlad, bouncing like a sack of meal upon his pony, disappeared into the mass.

  Raksula screamed curses at Odo. He ignored her and followed the retreating Khazyari, trying to keep their uncertainty from becoming a rout. She glanced around, saw the shining falcon, the red plume, the shield of Sabazel that glittered despite the gloomy day, advancing implacably up the throat of the pass. The Sabazian paean rang down the wind, was caught and magnified and altered by the imperial army that came to reclaim its own. She spun her horse about and galloped back to the camp, back to the shelter of Khalingu’s cart, laughing and weeping hysterically.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The horde fell back toward Iksandarun. Sprays of arrows filled the air like showers of clattering rain. Andrion’s small band found themselves almost overwhelmed; frenzied faces spun by, daggers flicked, and one tore Andrion’s black cloak. Another left a gleaming scratch along Sarasvati’s mail; her own blows were enthusiastic but much too clumsy. Now, Andrion told himself, now is the moment to turn. Solifrax blazed. The attackers fell back. Andrion and Lyris bracketed Sarasvati and led a wedge of their followers through the smoke of burning yurts toward the city.

  A hoarse voice shouted, and a Khazyari nuryan dove through the swirling legionaries straight at the black cloak, the falcon brooch, the sword, the unmistakable signatures of Andrion. Andrion thrust Sarasvati behind him; Solifrax leaped, whistling through the air, and the man’s tunic was suddenly laced with red. He fell, his face twisted with pain and despair. Lyris was upon him, sword lifted—

  “No!” Sarasvati screamed. She pushed Andrion aside and lunged at Lyris. Lyris, startled, missed her blow and her sword struck sparks from the cobblestones. Several other warriors froze in mid-stroke.

  The slumped Khazyari looked up, some measure of sanity stilling the maelstrom in his eyes. “No, lady,” he gasped, “I die now.”

  “Nonsense, Obedei,” Sarasvati told him. She kicked his dagger skipping across the stones and bent to help him; ove
rbalancing, she fell.

  Lyris stood in an awkward stance, sword half-extended, mouth open. With a snap she shut her mouth and looked indignantly at Andrion.

  Obedei. The name was not a strange one. Andrion extended his hand to his sister, signed to two legionaries, and had Obedei hauled inside.

  Willing hands slammed and bolted the gates before the astonished faces and horrified screams of the Khazyari. They dashed themselves against the walls, turned, were crushed by the tide of the imperial army.

  Andrion leaned on his sword, considering the dirty and exhausted face of the nuryan. “He helped you?” he asked Sarasvati.

  “Yes,” she said. “He is a man of honor, loyal to his own people.”

  Tembujin, thought Andrion, saw beyond his people to a greater loyalty. “Your lord Tembujin is still alive.” he said to Obedei, “and reclaims his title. Will you serve him?”

  It took a moment for the words to penetrate. Then Obedei’s features collapsed into a crooked grin. “Surely, lord, surely.” Lyris shrugged, and sheathed her sword.

  Sarasvati wiped the perspiration from her brow and looked with wide eyes at the rust-stained sword she held. “Gods,” she whispered. “So that is battle. My respects, Lyris, for choosing it as your profession.”

  “It was forced upon me,” Lyris growled.

  “Indeed.” Sarasvati draped Obedei’s arm across her shoulder, and with a grateful look at Andrion, led him away. Andrion saluted them.

  He and Lyris watched the battle from a walkway above the gate. An occasional arrow whistled by them; one, its force spent, bounced off Andrion’s cuirass. He hardly noticed, so intent was he on the scene before him. He held Solifrax across the parapet, its blade unstained by any blood it had shed save his own. Its gold glowed beguilingly against the stained brick, and Andrion wondered whether he loved it or hated it.