Clement groaned as though the swordcut had entered her own pounding heart. Her eyes ached with smoke and from peering into the shadows. The rocketeers’ dance went on: in and out, matter-of-fact. Another rocket burst into the sky.
Clement’s head began to clear. She had gotten a few good breaths of air, perhaps, or perhaps she was simply too immured to battle to weep for long. She had begun to plan the attack on the rocketeers before she even realized it, and when Herme’s company, now missing two members, came running down the street, she was ready to tell them what to do.
Hours later, Clement finally located Cadmar. Having himself never gone near the battle, he chastised her for her hot-headedness. She had commanded the company that eliminated the rocketeers, and had, after all that, emerged unscathed. Only Cadmar, whose temper came mostly from envy, could have failed to appreciate what a hollow victory it was.
When he had used up his anger, he sent her to locate Commander Ellid, a task that wasted what remained of the morning. Clement found the garrison commander at last, standing before the smoking ruin of a barracks, with her hair singed and her face black with soot. Clement would not have recognized her if not for the insignia on her hat and the messengers that circled her like bees around their hive. Ellid was a strong-willed, short-tempered old veteran who enjoyed good food and had never forgiven Cadmar for driving away her excellent cook. But today she seemed relieved to learn of the general’s safety.
“He was fighting fires all night,” said Clement. “Now he’s visiting injured soldiers in the infirmary. He’s no worse hurt than you are.”
The commander looked ruefully at her singed uniform. “A few burns.” Her voice was a hoarse rasp; like Clement she had been breathing smoke and screaming orders all night. “The general,” she added, “was supposed to go to safety should the garrison be attacked.”
“Surely you know that he will never be so prudent. But it was my duty to escort him to safety, if any safety could have been found last night, and I could not even find him, and ended up in danger myself. It’s been a stupid night.”
“That’s true enough. Well, it’s over, eh?” Ellid lifted her head and surveyed the smoking ruin of her garrison with swollen, red-rimmed eyes. “Though I can’t believe what I see,” she muttered.
“The refectory is still standing, anyway, though the kitchen is gone. The general requests that you meet him there. Surely the cooks will soon manage to produce something to eat.”
Ellid made a soldier’s gesture, simultaneously acknowledging, agreeing to, and delaying compliance with an order. One of her lieutenants was approaching, and she turned to see what he wanted.
Again, Clement limped slowly down cobbled streets turned black with ash, past smoking ruins of charred timbers. Soldiers sprawled here and there, the dead difficult to distinguish from the exhausted living, all dressed in ashes and masked with soot. At a well where the ground was still awash from the spilled water of a fire line, some soldiers took turns dunking their singed heads into a bucket of water. Clement joined them, and took a turn with the cake of soap, and looked up from rinsing the grime away to find the gathered soldiers giving her demoralized salutes. One of them took her hat and polished the soot from her insignias. “Lieutenant-general, the Lucky Man says anyone who sees you is to tell you he’s in the general’s quarters.”
She went there. Gilly had taken over Cadmar’s table, as Commander Ellid’s quarters had burned to the ground. He and the garrison clerk had opened the log and rosters, which, being singed in places, apparently had been snatched out of the flames. Soldiers came and went, to tell the clerk and secretary the names of soldiers dead or wounded. Soon it would be Clement’s turn to deal with that dreadful paperwork. Perhaps this would be the disaster that finally forced Cadmar to close a garrison for lack of soldiers. And then the Paladins would realize the Sainnites’ secret weakness.
“Come with me,” she said desperately to Gilly.
She brought him his cane and helped him to his feet, and walked him past a newly arrived soldier, who was so tired he could scarcely tell the clerk the name of his fallen comrade.
As they walked down the hall, Gilly, leaning more heavily than usual on his cane, said admiringly, “The clerk actually ran into a burning building to save the records. If she hadn’t, we would be in quite a tangle.”
Clement looked at him in disbelief. Gilly’s ugly face twisted with an ugly grin, and Clement began to laugh. Laughter whooped out of her aching chest: mad, mysterious. She laughed until she choked, and Gilly, still grinning his dreadful grin, pounded her too roughly on the back. She sopped up the tears that were running down her face. “Gods! Don’t do that to me again today! It’s been a hellish night!”
Gilly grunted. “The soldiers think we were attacked by magic.”
“Cadmar did too, until I reminded him of Annis’s Fire. They say that Annis was a genius with explosives.”
“Was?”
“Apparently, even her family believes she’s long dead, accidentally killed by Paladins. Her rockets and her fire haven’t been used since she died, but I guess she told someone her secret after all.”
They found Cadmar holding the clenched hand of a woman whose face had been burned to the bone. The infirmary stank of burned meat and sounded like a nightmare. The medics went around with smoke pipes to quiet the agony of the ones they judge were dying, but those that might live continued to scream.
“By the three gods!” cried Cadmar in a fury, once they were outside. “The Paladins will regret this cowardly attack!”
They had nearly reached the refectory before Cadmar had raged himself into silence. Clement then ventured to say, “Commander Ellid will have enough to do just solving the practical problems of recovering from this attack. Let me handle the counter-attack. We must have a strong reaction—an intolerable one.”
Cadmar said, “You’ll need a detachment to serve under your command.”
As they entered the refectory, Gilly muttered to Clement, “You think the Paladins won’t target you now? You could be dead before midsummer.”
“I’d rather be dead than have to deal with the duty roster after this disaster.”
“What kind of revenge do you have in mind?”
“I’ll take their children,” Clement said, “and raise them to be soldiers.”
Gilly looked stunned. But later, as they ate gummy gray porridge with Ellid, her lieutenants, and some of her captains, and Cadmar’s resilience began to display itself in energetic conversation, Gilly leaned over to Clement and said softly, “It’s brilliant! But if we start stealing children you’ll put that courtesan of yours out of business.”
The commanders were piecing together a chronology of the night’s events, all of which Clement already knew, or had surmised. Cadmar announced that anyone who knew anything about the attackers was to be sent to Clement. They decided to go as a group to view the sites of the heaviest fighting.
The ten of them made slow progress across the garrison. Teams of soldiers methodically sorted the living from the dead, and the streets that before had been littered with bodies were now busy with exhausted soldiers being herded to food and shelter, injured soldiers being carried to the infirmary, and old veterans with buckets of soapy water, washing the faces of the dead so they could be identified. They passed an improvised paddock, where hysterical horses rescued from the burning stable were being soothed and treated. Shock had already given way to efficiency.
Gilly was obviously in pain, and seemed glad to have to pause again, to let some litter bearers pass. He was accustomed to pain, though, which only seemed to give his sharp mind a certain ruthlessness. He said, “This troubles me, this attack. It’s not like the others. It goes against Mabin’s directives, and the local Paladins’ own disinclination to do anything that might lead to retaliation. They pride themselves on their long view, don’t they? And on their caution.”
Cadmar and Ellid had paused ahead of them, and Captain Herme was narrating how the well-a
rmed attackers had lain there in ambush and had—he seemed reluctant to admit it—defended their position with determination and courage. Some ten of their bodies lay tossed contemptuously into a pile. Did the officers care to view them?
“What for?” asked Cadmar.
But Gilly had already limped over to the pile of dead bodies. “They are so young,” he said. “This also is not right.”
Clement stopped looking at the wounds and turned her attention to the faces. “And Paladins sneer at us for sending children to war,” she said.
“What is that on his forehead? Wipe off his face, will you?”
Clement had nothing to wipe anyone’s face with, but Gilly produced a voluminous handkerchief, and she bent over to smear away the soot and gore from the young man’s forehead. What remained was a mark, painted in what appeared to be black ink. Gilly examined it silently and intently, and then stood back, looking first bemused and then unnerved.
He said to Cadmar, who grimly waited, “I would guess these fighters all have the same mark on their foreheads. It is a glyph, the one that is called the Pyre, or Death-and-Life.”
“What does it mean?” asked Cadmar.
Gilly shook his head, his ugly face unreadable now. As they resumed their progress, Clement tucked a hand under his elbow to give him some help in walking. She said, “You suspect something.”
Gilly said, “Councilor Mabin herself wrote in her book that she was at Harald G’deon’s side when he died. She observed that he did not vest a successor. These rumors we’ve heard about a lost G’deon—Mabin has to be certain they are untrue.”
“So?” Clement felt nearly hysterical with exhaustion, and strangling Gilly seemed better than listening to him recount irrelevant history.
“So I must conclude that these people who attacked us last night could not have been Paladins. That glyph on the dead man’s face is the sign that used to be carried through Shaftal whenever an old G’deon died and a new one was vested: Death-and-Life; meaning that the G’deon burns in the pyre and yet the G’deon lives. Mabin would never allow her people to display that sign.”
Clement was silent. She had paid little attention to the rumors of a lost G’deon, and was trying now to remember when she first had heard them. It had been less than five years ago, but Harald had been dead for twenty. “You think these people who attacked us believe Harald vested someone before he died?”
“That big woman who supposedly pierced Councilor Mabin’s heart with a spike—perhaps they are fighting for her.” He paused, then said one more word, but it reverberated in Clement’s scrambled thoughts. “Fanatics,” he said.
Later, they stood together in the scorched garden, looking down at the slender soldier who had run in such glad foolishness to her own pointless death. The soldiers had separated Kelin’s body from the others, had wiped the soot and blood from her young face, and had covered her ugly wounds with a blanket. But they could not put the vibrancy back into her slack face, or the liveliness back into her blank eyes. Clement looked away from the girl’s body. Gilly fumbled for his sooty handkerchief. He should have known better than to become fond of a young soldier, Clement thought bitterly. All Sainnite children die in war. As fast as we send them into battle, they die. We might as well just kill them when they’re born and save us all the trouble of raising them.
Part Two: How Raven Became A God
When Raven was young, he had three friends: a grasshopper, a sparrow, and a wolf. They all were restless troublemakers, the shame of their clans and the scourge of their tribes.
One day, the bird gods appeared to Raven and said, “We have been watching you a long time, and we think we might make you into a god. But first you must make something that has never been seen before, to prove to us that you are clever enough to be a god.”
Of course, Raven wanted to be a god, but he had no idea how to make something that had never been seen before. So he asked his friend the grasshopper for advice. The grasshopper said, “Well, I know one thing that has never been seen before: it is the soul of my clan, that lies at the center of the village, in a hut that nobody enters.”
Then Raven went to the sparrow for advice, and the sparrow said, “Well, I know one thing that has never been seen before. It is the soul of my clan, that lies at the center of the village, in the hut that nobody enters.”
Then, Raven went to the wolf for advice, and the wolf said, “Well, I know one thing that has never been seen before. It is the soul of my clan, that lies at the center of the village, in the hut that nobody enters.”
So then Raven called together his friends. He said, “I have thought of a wonderful joke. We will go to each of your villages and make a great noise, and they will think they are being attacked. They will all run about like the ant clan, and we will hide in the woods and laugh at them.”
They all agreed that this was a fine plan. So they waited for the dark moon, and on that night they all met outside the sparrow’s village. They each had brought all the whistles and rattles they could find, and they spread out along the edge of the village and each commenced yelling and whistling and shaking their rattles. Soon, the sparrow warriors came running out of the village to find their enemy, while the sparrow elders and children hid in the huts. The three friends all slipped into the woods, laughing. But Raven sneaked into the center of the village, and found the hut that has no door, and with his claws he cut a slit in the wall and slipped in. There in the hut he found the soul of the sparrow clan.
Now, no one except Raven has ever seen a soul, so I can’t tell you what the soul looked like. But Raven bit off a piece of it with his sharp beak and put it in his satchel. Then he slipped out of the hut and sewed up the opening he had made in the wall, so no one would notice, and he went and found his friends in the woods. “Wasn’t that fun!” he said. “Let’s do it again, this time at the grasshopper clan.”
So they did it again, at the grasshopper clan and then at the wolf clan, and each time Raven sneaked into the village and stole a piece of the clan’s soul. But after the wolf warriors had run into the woods looking for their enemy, they encountered the sparrow and grasshopper warriors, who were all searching the forest. They each thought that the other clans had banded together against them, and a huge battle began.
In the morning, Raven’s friends found him in his camp, where he lived by himself. They all were sick with horror. “The warriors of our people have all killed each other, and now our clans will hate each other for many generations!” they cried.
But Raven didn’t care. He had a pot of stew and he offered each of his friends some, but they were too upset to eat. So Raven ate it all himself, and his friends went away in disgust and never talked to him again.
Now, the stew was made out of the pieces of soul the Raven had stolen from each of the clans. After a while, he started to have a stomach-ache, but he endured the pain, for he wanted very badly to be a god. And then at last he put piece of leather on the ground and he defecated on it, and there lay a raven’s turd made of the digested souls of the three clans. No one has ever seen a soul-turd except for Raven, but you can imagine it wasn’t pretty to look at.
Raven packaged up that turd and took it to the gods. “Here you go,” he said. “Here is something that has never been seen before.” The gods all looked at the turd, and then they looked at each other, and finally one of them said, “I can’t believe that you have done this! But we have no choice except to make you a god. Considering all the havoc you have wreaked, I think we will make you the god of death.” And that is how Raven became a god.
As for the turd, it was so disgusting that they buried it. A year later, Raven went back that way, and where the turd had been buried, a new clan had risen up out of the ground, and were living in a new village. They farmed and sang love songs like the grasshopper. They were clever and hard-working like the sparrow. And they were loyal and brave as the wolf. Raven took a special liking to them because his turd was the soul of the clan. They were the first h
uman people.
Chapter 8
The farm family, having been shouted out of their beds, huddled together as far as they could get from the heavily armed, impatient soldiers that crammed the dark parlor. The farmsteads’ many children had been made invisible behind a fortress of resolute adults. But one man, cut out from the crowd with a screaming child in his arms, faced down the hardened fighters that surrounded him. “You will not take the child,” he said.
By the flickering light of the lantern held up by the signal-man, Clement distantly examined the stubborn father. He did not seem old, but he was desiccated, his hair molting, his eyes set in shadowed hollows, his body sagging as though his muscles were coming detached from his bones. To admire his hopeless courage was a poor strategy, but as a nearby soldier eagerly lifted his club, Clement forestalled him with a raised hand. She said quietly to the man, “Your daughter’s last memory of you will be of your death.”
The man’s hand protectively cupped his daughter’s skull as she hid her face in his shoulder. Obstinately, fearlessly, he said, “You will not take her!”
They had just one night to round up forty children—Clement could waste no time in argument. She began to lower her upraised hand, and like a puppet the soldier again lifted his club.
“Wait!” An old woman stepped into the light, jerking herself loose from the hands that reached out to restrain her. “Take me instead.”
“No!” cried the farmers. But the old woman, trailing a blanket snatched from her bed, gestured dismissively at them.
“Take the old woman,” Clement said to the soldiers.
They laid hands on the old woman; they hurt her until she cried out. A grinning soldier pricked her throat with a dagger.
Now the little girl’s father looked panicked. Good. Clement said, “We’ll kill the old woman first. And we’ll kill the rest of your family, one at a time. And with all of them dead, you’ll still lose the girl.”
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