The Sacred Band a-3

by David Anthony Durham

  T he next day the first contingents of scouts and supply trains began the march that would prepare the way northeast along the perimeter of the Black Mountains, around them, and north into the Ice Fields, where she intended to meet the invading Auldek. Not one of her soldiers had abandoned her. They playfully shamed her for even thinking any of them might. They joked, Perrin told her, that she had been mistaken if she thought she commanded them against their will. Perhaps in the first few weeks, yes, but after that they were with her because they wanted to be. She was one of them and they would be proud to die with her. Soldier after soldier told her this, each speaking it low like a secret. Like a declaration of love. Morbid as it was, it was good, very good, to hear.

  The body of the army left the steaming warmth of Mein Tahalian in a long, narrow column. They traveled mostly on foot, draped in layers of furs and woolens and oil-treated outer skins, hoods pulled tight around their faces, with glass shields to protect their eyes. They carried packs on their backs, necessary, for they did not have enough sleds or dogs to pull all their supplies. It would be slow, tortuous progress, but they had all known that.

  The day never fully lightened. Instead, the sun skimmed the rim of the world, sending slanting rays of light over the land for several hours before disappearing. They traveled on in the dark, sighting on fires the scouts had prepared for them.

  Mena would have marched right along beside them, but Haleeven convinced her that was a self-indulgent gesture. “The troops know you would suffer beside them, and that means you don’t have to prove it. You mean more to us in the sky, Princess. That’s what the men need to see.”

  So she had taken to the sky. On Elya, Mena soared above them, riding down the long column from end to end, marveling both at how small it was on the landscape and at how much it filled her with pride. The first week out, she flew back from the marching column to Tahalian as often as she could, knowing that any correspondence from Acacia would not easily get beyond the fortress. No bird could be trained to seek out a moving army in a hostile landscape, and any messenger sent after them from Tahalian would have to travel slowly, in pursuit of a target that was moving away from them.

  Eventually, she had to give up hope of receiving any correspondence. She did not even have a bird left to send with a final message. She did write two missives, though, and left them with the villagers gathered to shelter in the fortress. When a bird did reach them from the south, they would forward her letters for her. One addressed to her sister and brother. One to her husband.

  And then she left. She circled above Tahalian for a time, looking down at the scruffy, snow-covered wildness of it for what she thought was likely her last time. Strange how a place that she had once thought of as an enemy’s lair had come to feel so quickly like a second home. Is all the world like that? she wondered. Perhaps, if we take the time and give our enemies a chance.

  O ne morning a week later, Gandrel requested Mena join him on a glacier-scoured hillside. As Perrin was briefing her for the day, he went as well. The hillside afforded a view of the passing army and well out toward the terrain ahead of them. The Black Mountains gnawed at the sky off to the west, but they were no obstacle to them. It was the jumble of frozen debris out on the northern horizon that was. Mena had seen it from above yesterday, but had planned on getting a better look today. The low light made the shapes mysterious, hard to make sense of. All shadow and highlight, the stuff seemed to change shape and color even as she stared at it.

  “Those are slabs of sea ice,” Gandrel said. He handed her his spyglass. “Beautiful stuff to look at, like green and blue glass when the light hits it right. But it’s treacherous. It’s been getting pushed up against the shore since Elenet threw the Giver’s world into chaos. Crossing it will be miserable. Rife with fissures, crevices, and weak spots. It’s always moving, see, breathing as the season changes-believe it or not. It’ll be a few days of all-out scrambling, I’d say. Feet and hands, ropes, hauling and praying to the Giver. It’ll be hard to camp in there. Might need to divide up at night to find decent spots. We’ll lose some men. Animals, too. Only good news is that beyond it, once we’re well out away from where the ice buckles against the shore, it goes smooth. Good place to have a battle, I’d say.”

  “There’s no other way?” Perrin asked. “I never came this far north, so I don’t know, but are you sure there isn’t some alternative?”

  “No, there’s no other way. From what the Scav told me and from where Mena met them, the Auldek will come this way. Take Elya out and scout just in case, Princess, but I’m as sure as I can be.”

  “I don’t doubt you,” Mena said, lowering the spyglass.

  “We could wait for them here,” Perrin said. “Let them do the work of crossing the stuff.”

  Gandrel pursed his thick lips. Released them. “Won’t be the obstacle for them that it is for us, not if they’ve come this far already.”

  Mena thought for a while. “No, we can’t sit here waiting for them. We’d lose more than we’d gain. The Auldek wouldn’t do it. If we do, they’ll see it as a sign of cowardice. Plus they have many flying creatures to our one. Those alone could make life miserable for us.” And, she thought, our men might start to think they can flee south if things go bad. I don’t want them thinking that. Not yet, at least. It was an uncharitable thought, out of keeping with the brave mood of the men. She could not help having it, but she did not choose to voice it. “I’d rather we meet them boldly, all at once.”

  Both men seemed to accept this. Gandrel moved on. “I called you because I wanted to show you something else. Here.” He motioned for her to lift the spyglass again, waited for her to squint an eye and pressed the open one against it. He adjusted its direction. “A little way before the ice begins. Just west of due north. Do you see them?”

  She would not have unless he had directed her to them. And still it took a moment to see the moving figures, antlike even within the warped view of the glass. A line of people worked their way toward the ice slabs. They were not numerous.

  “Who are they?” Perrin asked. “Those aren’t Auldek soldiers. And they’re not ours.”

  “No,” Gandrel agreed. “They’re Scav.”

  “What are they doing here? They want to join us? If so, somebody should tell them to wait.”

  “Not join us, no. That’s not the Scav way.” He squinted out toward them, though Mena could not imagine he could see them with his naked eye. “They’ve got something planned, though.”

  Perrin motioned for the spyglass. Looking through it, he asked, “How do we know it’s not treachery against us?”

  “To aid the Auldek?” Gandrel scoffed. “No chance. They hate them with every stringy muscle in their bodies. And they’re not hiding. Even at this distance, they’ll know exactly where we are. The Scav want us to know they’re with us, but I don’t imagine they’ll want any official welcome. When they want to become invisible, they do. If I know them, we’ll not see much of them. However, if they’re going to help us, they’ll follow no one’s orders but their own.”

  Smiling, Mena said, “They sound like trouble.”

  “For the Auldek, let’s hope. Wave to them, and wish them well, I say.”

  Mena happily did so.

  T hey crossed the edge of the ice fields as soon as the light allowed the next morning. From ground level it was hard to measure what faced them. From above Mena could see the width of the jumble, but it was still hard to make sense of the shifting colors and shadows, the glasslike shadings and hidden crevices. It was not a territory meant for humans, a landscape that in no way acknowledged the possibility of people traversing it. Elya despised the place. She did not even like landing among it. When Mena forced her to touch down, her feet slid, skittish and unwilling to settle, her wings flapping. Mena had to resign herself to shouting her encouragement from the air.

  Throughout her flights, Mena saw no sign of the Scav group at all, but on one flight north she spotted the coming army, rolling and mar
ching, torches burning against the coming night. Their flying beasts saw her as well. Several of the winged creatures flew toward her. In response she and Elya rose high, circled away in a manner just leisurely enough to show no fear.

  Of course, Mena did feel fear. For the first time in weeks she realized she had not thought of protecting Elya from all this. Hadn’t she always said Elya would never see war? What happened to the resolve with which she had spoken to Corinn? She had meant it, but instead of staying true to it, she had taken Elya into danger, far from Acacia, a world away from the Talayan grassland on which Mena had found her. What right did she have to do that?

  The worst of it was that she had taken Elya away from her children. She did not even know what Elya thought of that. If she thought anything of them, she kept it hidden, no trace of what emotion she might feel in her mind. That, more than anything, made Mena believe that Elya was hiding her thoughts from her selfish mistress, she who was too afraid to face death alone. Mena thought all these things, but she did nothing to change it. This is how we are with the ones we love, she thought. Too afraid to set them free.

  She hovered at the edge of the flat ice, waiting for her army to join her, watching the enemy emerge into reality. They rose out of the ice on feet and hooves and wheels, leaping into the air, winged. She whispered a prayer to the Giver, hoping that the plan she had come up with might work, might even save some of her soldiers’ lives.

  That evening, once the army was through the ice maze and settling in to camp, Mena called her officers to council. Inside a tent flapping and loud from the wind that had kicked up, she said this: “I thought it necessary that each soldier come here of his own free will, and that each of them face death as a foregone conclusion. I will never be able to explain how proud I am of every one of our soldiers.”

  “You don’t have to explain it,” Perrin said. “We feel it, too.”

  “Then you won’t be surprised that I am not willing to send them all to their deaths.” She let that sink in. Her eyes drifted from one face to the next. The candlelight they huddled around made them look like somber participants at some arcane ritual. It will not, she thought, be a blood sacrifice. “I’ve been trying hard to find a way that some of them might live while also doing what we can to hurt the Auldek. I think I have such a plan. It will require treachery, deceit. It will not be entirely honorable, certainly not in keeping with the Old Codes.”

  “I’m liking the sound of this,” Gandrel said. His creviced face was one of the most frightening in the light, no less because he was smiling. “Never had much use for the Codes anyway, and treachery and deceit are underrated.” The others laughed.

  “It will also require you to trust the Scav,” Mena said. This was not met with quite the same joviality. “Haleeven, explain to them what we’ve worked out with Kant and his people.”

  As the old warrior began to speak, Mena withdrew to watch the unsteady light play across the men’s faces. It was a lot to ask of them, she knew. To hear the scheme from the mouth of one of the empire’s recent enemies and to learn that it involved depending on a ragged people that scrounged a living out of frozen waste so far to the edge of the world that they lived on unmapped terrain. Strange, indeed, but it felt right, necessary. If they were to win this war, they would have to remake how their society worked in the process.

  That might as well begin here, she thought, with us.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  As they came down from the mountainous wave peaks of the Range, when they caught their first glimpse of the barrier islands of the Other Lands, and when shore birds darted out to greet them, Melio decided that he might not die on this voyage after all. It would not make sense to die now, not after getting this far, not after seeing so much, and especially not after what happened that night on the Slipfin . One doesn’t have such moments without reason.

  The night that Kartholome called them out of the cabin into the glowing, slithering motion was the strangest Melio had ever experienced. All around them-where there had been calm water for days-shapes rose and fell and rolled, like enormous chunks of luminous, writhing, and somehow living ice. The ocean was these creatures. They pressed so thick around them that the boat shimmied and rocked with the pressure of their bodies brushing against the ship’s hull. They were silent save the wet sounds of their motions and an occasional expulsion of salt-rich vapor from slits along their bodies.

  For all the terrified beating of his heart, Melio could not move. None of them could.

  “We shouldn’t have spoken of them,” Clytus whispered. “These are sea wolves. Be calm, lads. Calm for the moment.”

  “They’re nothing like wolves,” Melio said. They did not look as they were depicted on the mural inside, but, then again, in all the slurping, seething of their bodies, Melio could make no sense of their forms. Whitish hulks, yes. Tentacles and rippling ridges and flat, circular eyes, yes. But he had no feeling for the whole of any one of them. It just felt that the sea had been revealed for what it really was-a mass tangle of slippery, sentient life.

  Geena brushed his shoulder. “I don’t think you’re the first to notice that.”

  “Stop joking,” Kartholome said. “They’ll swarm us in a moment.” He moved over to a pile of spears. He began untying the ropes that held them in place. Clytus, seeing what he was about, joined him. They moved on tiptoe, with stealth that Melio thought absurd considering the massive, round eyes that watched every move as they rose and fell and slid along above the railing.

  Melio still did not move. It was not fear that held him immobile, though fear did pump through him with every pulse of his heart. Something else froze him and kept him staring. He could not help but notice that the creatures seemed to be caressing the Slipfin, searching it, learning its contours. He could not shake the feeling that the eyes paid even more attention to him than they did the men lifting weapons to hurl into them. A tentacle slipped over the railing, slid across the deck, and then withdrew. He knew what he should think. That was a probe, searching for victims. There would be another, and then another. And then they would tear the ship apart and consume them in a savage swarm. Of course they would.

  Kartholome said something and jerked at his arm. Melio looked down to find a harpoon in his hands. It was old, worn, a discard bought cheaply in Bleem. Kartholome had spent days sharpening the blade. The iron barb of its point was deadly enough.

  When Melio raised his head, he was eye to eye with one of the creatures. Its orb rose above the railing as the leviathan slipped along the ship’s side, plastered by the pressure of the wolves behind it. The lid closed, a strange circular motion to it, nothing like the workings of a human eyelid.

  Melio lifted the harpoon into throwing position. There was a target, if ever he saw one. He watched the vague outline of himself and his companions reflected in the eye, warped by its shape and the moisture dripping down it. Instead of sinking the harpoon into it-as he knew the others were preparing to do-he wondered just what the creature saw looking at him. He had never questioned such things when looking into the eyes of the foulthings. He had felt only their abhorrence, the awful war with life that raged within them. This eye contained none of that. This eye saw him. It knew him, and it…

  He found his tongue just when Kartholome pulled back his arm, harpoon high in it. “No!” he whispered. He wanted to scream it, but feared raising his voice. “No!”

  Kartholome heard him. Weapon still raised, he snapped his head toward him. His face savage with questions, impatient.

  “Don’t,” was all Melio could say in answer. How could he begin to explain what he himself could not believe? That the creatures meant them no harm, and that they would do harm only if they were attacked? “Don’t.”

  If he had not shared the experience that followed with the others, he would have thought it a dream, a vision conjured up from the eerie stillness. He bent over and set his harpoon on the deck. Stepping forward, he raised a hand and held it near the creature’s slick skin. Its ey
e watched him, completely still now. He touched just beside it. The eyelid opened and shut with its bizarre circular motion, but that was all.

  A moment later Melio turned as Geena let out a gasp. A tentacle had stretched across the deck and touched her leg. It drew back and rose, mobile and lithe and completely inhuman. It touched Geena’s hand. She responded by raising it, and the tentacle moved with her.

  “By the Giver,” Clytus said, “what is this?”

  Melio did not know, but he knew not to fight it. He knew he had discovered something, and that it was huge, that it was important. In this was something that nobody living knew. If he did not make a misstep, he might someday find out what.

  And then it ended. The creatures pulled back their tentacles and slipped away from the ship. They became seething motion again. The Slipfin rocked as they released their grip on it. The bell high on the mainmast tinkled, first with the swaying, and then to announce the wind that filled the sails a moment later. Melio glanced up, just for a moment. When he turned his eyes to the sea, it was water once more, not a creature to be seen. What’s more, it was water in waving, rippling motion, waves building right before his eyes.

  “Come on, then,” Clytus said, his captain’s eyes already scanning the swells the wind pushed them toward. “There’s a range of waves between us and Spratling. Let’s ride it.”

  They were blown right into them and spent the next two days rising and falling over peaks incredible to behold. Clytus and Kartholome took turns at the wheel. Together they steered them through. Coming out on the other side was a relief only shortly. For there on the horizon were new peaks, of stone this time. Also, they caught glimpses of ship’s sails. No time to rest or be pleased with themselves. They were in as much danger now as ever.