M A R Barker - [Tekumel- The Empire of the Petal Throne 01]

by Flamesong (v0. 9) (epub)

  This last was a sop to Horusel’s feelings: the old veteran was Tirrikamu of the first Semetl, while the others came lower down in the pecking order. Horusel’s men would have the best and driest accommodations, and thus military propriety would be observed. The less grumbling, the quicker Trinesh would earn a promotion to Kasi—Captain—of a Cohort. His Clan of the Red Mountain would then do everything in its power to wangle him a promotion directly to General Kutume’s headquarters staff. The General was said to be reasonable, provided one’s clan made the proper gifts, and a moderate could find a safe harbor in his entourage. After that, why, who knew whither? Trinesh was still more than a little vague about his eventual ambitions. He was sure, however, that he did not want to remain a field soldier for the rest of his career. He was as certain of that as he was of tomorrow’s dawn!

  The Tirrikamu saluted, fist to breast, and departed. Trinesh sighed and looked about for a dry place to sleep. The cramped little rooms at the end of the hall were already filled with Horusel’s people. Dineva, one of his female soldiers, had already got a fire going in one of them. She was a good trooper, one who ought to be promoted soon, a shrewd fighter, and reputedly as tough as a piece of untanned Chlen-hide. Nobody touched Dineva without an invitation. The camp wags,had spent hours imagining what might happen if General Karin Missum himself had ordered her into his tent. The odds they gave were three to two in Dineva’s favor. That particular bit of soldierly whimsy had never come to pass, unfortunately for the gamblers in the Legion.

  Dineva rose and saluted him. “You want this place, Sire?” “No—you people killed all the sand-worms and earned it for yourselves. Anywhere else?”

  “Ai, there’s a room on the other side of the hall—where the Yan Koryani officer slept. It’s drier.”

  She had stripped off her armor and her soaking kilt. Trinesh eyed her angular nudity, but he was too tired. Not even the voluptuous curves of the Goddess Dlamelish herself could arouse him tonight! Moreover, he was no pretty-mannered city-soldier to favor his troops—-male or female—on the basis of how well they danced on their backs upon his sleeping-mat. . . . And then Dineva was no great beauty either.

  The room the woman had mentioned was indeed better, more private, and—to the point—dry. Trinesh’s body-servant,

  Bu’uresh, was already there, squatting before the sooty hearth and feeding its small fire with the papers and documents abandoned by the previous occupant. Who the Yan Koryani commander had been might never be known, but he—or she (the northern clans were matriarchal and employed more female soldiers than Tsolyanu did)—had certainly not been tidy. Scraps of yellowish Hruchan-reed paper were strewn everywhere: rosters, accounts, dispatches, orders, and all of the trivia of war. Some of the documents gleamed with gold and bright-hued inks, perhaps the commands of the Baron Aid himself. Had he not been so exhausted, Trinesh might have cared.

  “Lord?” Bu’uresh looked up. “There’s a little money here—silver, copper, a gold coin or two. If you want it. . . .” The rascal had probably already hidden away the bigger share for himself. Bu’uresh was a trifle too clever. He came from the western nation of Mu’ugalavya, and while the Mu’uga-lavyani were usually honest, slavery did seem to weaken that particular trait in a person.

  “Keep it. What can I buy out here?”

  Bu’uresh shrugged sleek, coppery shoulders. “Sand, Lord. Mayhap a Milumanayani chieftain’s daughter.”

  Trinesh ignored his insolence. He squatted down upon the Yan Koryani commander’s tattered sleeping-mat to remove the rest of his garments. The breast and backplates came off first, together with his belt of metal plaques and the tabardlike tasses that protected his thighs; then the stuffy, padded arming-jacket beneath; next the Chlen-hide greaves; then his soaking kilt; and finally his soft Fzrya-cloth undertunic.

  He ran his fingers through his shoulder-length black hair, stretched muscles that ached from the burden of armor, sprawled his rangy body (“the pride of the clan-maidens of Tumissa,” his schoolmates in the Temple of Vimuhla of his native city had jokingly named it) out upon the mat, and dragged another rolled mat over to cushion his head.

  Something glittered there on the floor beneath the mat. He looked closer—and was momentarily astounded to see his own triangular, sharp-nosed features staring back at him!

  By the Three Fingers of the Flame . . . ! It was a mirror—a woman’s little silver mirror. He picked it up.

  This had never belonged to any Milumanayani desert harlot. It was beautiful: a dainty little trinket, its gold-inlaid back carved all around with unfamiliar Yan Koryani gods and heroes in low relief. There was some sort of symbol in the center, too: a stylized leaping flame. Whoever the woman had been, she must have served Lord Vimuhla, as Trinesh did, or whatever the northern equivalent of the Flame Lord might be. Moreover, she must have been as wealthy as an Imperial tax-collector: the thing looked like it might have cost a hundred Kaitars

  Interested now, Trinesh unrolled the other sleeping mat. There was a smudge of black Tsunu paste on it, the stuff women used to paint their eyes. He rubbed at it with his thumb. It was still greasily fresh. There was also a single long raven-hued hair caught amongst the coarse fibres of the mat. He sat up to find Bu’uresh standing by with a ewer of water and his little jar of scented Puru-oil, ready to massage him.

  He held up the mirror. “Was Horusel done removing the slain when you came here?”

  “Almost, Lord. Two or three sand-worms—put up no fight at all. A single Yan Koryani trooper. . . Bu’uresh’s staccato Mu’ugalavyani accent made the deadly struggle that had just occurred in this room sound commonplace.

  “No women?”

  “None I saw. You want one of the prisoners—the sand-worms’ hags? One of your lady soldiers—? Saina in Chosun’s Semetl is not too bad.”

  Trinesh pretended outrage. “None of your affair! No more than I want you snuffling about between my legs, you . .

  He stopped, struck by a thought. “Send me Horusel—or one of his men.”

  The slave grinned but forbore from making the obvious jest connecting Trinesh with stiff, devout Horusel. This handsome, arrogant, young Tsolyani officer could be teased, but a slave must never go too far. Bu’uresh raised an eyebrow, went out, and returned with a soldier in tow: morose, longfaced Jirega of Horusel’s Semetl.

  "Where is the body of the Yan Koryani commander?” Trinesh began.

  Jirega cast a glance toward the one tiny loophole in the western wall. “Outside, Sire. Dead. Enjoying the rain in his face.” The man’s tone hovered just barely within the bounds of military courtesy. He was one of Horusel’s devoted followers.

  “Who was he—she? What legion? What rank? You know their insignia.”

  The man scratched amidst the hairs of his pot-belly. “No one high, Sire. A man, an officer of their Gurek—as they name their Legions—of Niktanbo of Riilla. What they call a Niimiir, I think—a commander of fifty. ...”

  “No Yan Koryani women? Courtesans? Female officers?” “Ah, no, Hereksa.” Jirega looked puzzled It did not fit. Trinesh stumbled to his feet, tired joints cracking. “How well have you searched the cellars of his hovel—looked for hidey-holes in the walls?”

  Jirega frowned. “Sire—Hereksa—we did the job. I—I don’t think we missed anything. A pile of dirty grain-sacks, a wine-cellar without so much as an Aqpu-beetle in it, a—a closet or two. ...”

  Trinesh held out the mirror. “A Niimiir of fifty owned this? Did he also wear the spangled skirts of a Jakallan dancing girl?”

  Jirega blinked solemnly at the trinket, and the lines between his thick brows deepened. “No, Sire. No, of course not.” He smiled, then, with all the toothy servility he could muster. “Oh, Sire, maybe a keepsake, a memento from his clan-wives?”

  "Chlen-shit, man! This work? No piddling clan-boy from Rulla could afford this!” He pointed to the sleeping-mat. “Fresh Tsunu paste and a hair from a woman’s tresses! There was a high lady here—recently, by the look of it. The roa
d we came by is the only one in through the damned mountains, and no one escaped past us. Certainly no dainty trollop! No, there must still be somebody lurking somewhere in this hole!”

  “Sire—”

  Trinesh would be a laughingstock if this turned out to be a blow swung at empty air, but he had gone too far to back down. He said, “Get Horusel up. 1 don’t care what time it is. Go over this worm-riddled ruin again—and again until you can swear upon your clan-father’s tomb that no charming little Yan Koryani harlot is crouching in some oven or other, dagger ready to slit our gullets as we sleep!” He rounded upon Bu’uresh. “And you—! Don’t bum any more of those damned papers—not until somebody who reads Yan Koryani looks at them! The Flame knows you may have destroyed too much already!”

  He stood to watch Kirega depart at an undignified—and indignant—trot. Then he let out a long breath and began the slow process of putting his damp, sweat-stinking armor all back on again.

  The great hall—which was hardly a hall, and certainly not great—danced with gusty torchlight when he entered it. Two of Horusel’s soldiers dozed on the highest dais. Somebody had decided to turn the place into an infirmary, and the wounded slept or twisted restlessly beneath the driest blankets they had. Against the far wall, that nearest the door, two silent forms lay wrapped head to foot in blood-spattered sheets. A pair of the wounded had not survived. They would be added to the sacrificial pyre on the morrow, along with those already dead—and Horusel’s prisoners.

  The priest, Chekkuru hiVriddi, sat crosslegged beside the bodies, his shaven head nodding in time to a mumbled litany to Lord Vimuhla. Those who worshipped one of the others of Tsolyanu’s ten gods and their ten Cohorts would have to depart this life with whatever rites their co-religionists could manage. Chekkuru did not suffer unbelievers easily.

  Trinesh expected to see Horusel, but it was Charkha, he who had been assigned to the outer gate, who met him instead. The Tirrikamu of the fifth Semetl towered over the rest of his troops, as thick through the chest as a Mash-tree trunk—and almost as devoid of brains, his men said. Charkha had his armor on, and the heavy one-handed war-axe that was the standard melee-weapon of their Legion swung loosely in his hand.

  “Visitors outside, Hereksa,” he said.

  “Yan Koryani? Sand-worms? How many?”

  “Tribesmen—scouts—maybe a score, maybe fifty. No regulars we could see. We potted one or two with our crossbows, but our strings were wet, and the men couldn’t get off many shots.”

  “Spare strings?”

  “Not enough. The rain would wet our extras. We didn’t want to use more than we needed.”

  Trinesh spat. His cheek still pained him. “Double the watch.”

  Charkha grunted. “Already did.”

  He watched the subaltern leave. Then he returned to the business of getting the chin-strap of his helmet tied. The burgonet of the Legion of the Storm of Fire had cheek-pieces, an aventail of lappets and mail, and padding inside. It was hard enough to get on properly even when it Was dry. The flame-crest was made of red-lacquered Chlen-hide and was permanently fixed to the helmet’s crown, but he had removed the rain-bedraggled plumes. No matter; the gilding would tell his men who he was.

  From where he sat by the wall the priest Chekkuru raised his loaf-shaped bald head. “When you have a moment, Hereksa—”

  “Now is good enough. What is it?”

  “Sire,” the man said softly. “Sire, these are noble dead— men who died in service to the Flame Lord. Persons who deserve respect. ...”

  Trinesh knew what was coming. “Of course. So?” Chekkuru blinked at him, both eyes at once, like a Chlen-beast. “They should be cremated, Sire, before corruption can begin. Else do they go polluted unto Lord Vimuhla’s Paradise of Ecstatic Flame.”

  “Not tonight. I already told Horusel that it all will be done in the morning—our dead, the prisoners, all in one sacrifice.” “I saw some beams in the shed in the courtyard. Not many, but enough—and a heap of straw for the savages’ Hmelu-beasts. A pyre, now, tonight; that is what is proper.” He laid a finger alongside his hooked, eastern, aristocratic, Vriddi nosev Damn the man.

  “No. Not now.” The helmet at last sat snugly upon his head. “Morning will do. The bodies won’t decay enough to summon Lord Sarku’s Undead minions. Their souls will go on to the joys of the Flame.”

  “ ‘Wherever corruption and dead things dwell, there do Lord Sarku, Master of Worms, and his servant, Missum, Lord of Death, come forth to exult, to glorify putrescence, and to take possession forever . . .’ ” the priest quoted solemnly from “The Scrolls of Pavar.” Musty texts larded with warnings and dire prophecies concerning the Gods and the Demon Lords of the Planes Beyond were Chekkuru’s favorite reading matter. He conned those as avidly as Trinesh did the romantic odes of the Tumissan court-poets.

  “Enough, man. As 1 say, all will be done properly at sunrise.” The priest gave him a sidelong glance but said no more. Trinesh saluted Horusel’s guards in the little vestibule and clattered down the steps outside.

  The night was as black as the inside of one of Lord Sarku’s tombs. In a somber mood, Trinesh toured the gate, the three crumbling wall-towers—their ancient wooden floors so desiccated and riddled with 0.w-beetle tunnels as to be perilous— and the battlements. Kashi and Gayel, Tekumel’s two moons, might be up, but no one could have guessed it tonight: the sky was overspread with layers of scudding rain-clouds and fingers of drifting mist. The rock-strewn ravines and hillocks beyond the fort hugged their secrets to themselves, and the wind whispered of cold, damp things, of antiquity beyond remembering, and of hearts—human and other—full of hate and death. A thousand cloaked savages, a full Yan Koryani legion, might be out there for all the Tsolyani sentinels to see.

  . Something hooted and shrieked outside, far away. It might have been a Zrne, the terrible six-legged predator of the wilderness. It could also have been a signal. Trinesh shivered, even in his mantle.

  “Sire,” Horusel said from behind him. Trinesh jumped, and the Tirrikamu strove to repress a grin. The fellow was always doing that, a not-too-subtle way of discomforting his superior. One day Horusel would go too far! If the bastard were ever slain, Trinesh would see to it that Lord Sarku and his tomb-monsters would dine upon a sufficiency of corruption. He’d find some excuse not to cremate the man for a six-day!

  “What?”

  “Hereksa, we’ve found some Yan Koryani.”

  “What—? Where? How many?”

  The subaltern didn’t even have the decency to look apologetic; his expression was unreadable. “No idea of their numbers, Sire. They’re hiding in the cellar, down in the well—back in a hole where we can’t get at them.”

  Trinesh refused to give Horusel the satisfaction of hearing him groan. He turned, his aching legs as heavy as stone columns, and tramped back inside.

  2

  The cellar was not large: a single rectangular, windowless room beneath the main hall of the keep. The walls extended out in successive courses until they were joined by a flat capstone a man-height or so above Trinesh’s head. The builders had not employed the true arch, a practice common among the petty warlords who had occupied the fringes of the Desert of Sighs after the fall of ancient Engsvan hla Ganga. A door opened off one of the shorter sides of the room, probably a store-cellar, behind which Trinesh could hear the captured Milumanayani moving about and murmuring amongst themselves. A child whined, and one of the adults shushed it.

  Great Lord Vimuhla was said to delight in flaming human sacrifice, but Trinesh had always been too gentle—and, he had admitted to himself long ago in the temple school in Tumissa, too squeamish—to receive much spiritual benefit from the rite. Battle was different: it was “noble.” One fought to win, and both Lord Vimuhla and His counterpart amongst the Lords of Stability, mighty Karakan, honored the warrior. If one were defeated and captured, there were just two options within the societies of the Five Empires: slavery or sacrifice. Ransom was sometimes possibl
e for a prisoner of war who accepted slavery, but it meant coming home to face humiliation, and sacrifice was thus preferable for a “noble” person, male or female, human or one of Tekumel’s nonhuman races, since it left one’s dignity intact. A noncombatant was different in Trinesh’s eyes. There was no glory in casting a woman or a child into the flames, not even the family of an enemy—no, not even a sand-worm’s dirty relatives. He would do what he could to save the women and children from Chekkuru’s warmly earnest little performance at sunrise.

  The well occupied the center of the cellar floor, a circular shaft about a man-height across, surrounded by a low coping of mossy, green-stained bricks. Horusel’s torch revealed only black depths; the water level was too far down to see. A rope swung limply from a bronze hook in the ceiling, its end neatly cut as with a sharp knife. There was no bucket.

  Chosun, the Tirrikamu of the second Semetl, stood there, one booted foot up on the parapet. He waggled the severed rope-end at Trinesh.

  “Hoi, Hereksa,” he called jovially. “Sharp-toothed fish swim in our well.”

  “How many? How far down?”

  Jalugan, one of the youngest of Chosun’s troopers, glanced at the remaining rope. “About three man-heights, Sire. We had the bucket down. Someone sawed it—I felt it. Didn’t see anybody, though.”

  “Cha! Anybody who goes down on the rope will be fish-food indeed!” The young soldier looked brash enough to try the feat, and Trinesh gestured him back. They needed all the men they had. “You’ll be a nice haunch of Hmelu-meat dangling there while somebody sticks you with a spear out of a side-tunnel, man. Worse, your corpse will pollute the water.” “They may have spoiled the well already,” Horusel said.

  “Best get the troops above to collecting rainwater in helmets— pots, whatever we have, Sire. They can cut any bucket-rope we drop. We can’t reach them with spears, and a crossbow won’t fire straight down.”