The Sacred Band a-3

by David Anthony Durham

  To Hanish, she sent the thought, We have them all behind us.

  “You’re sure of it?”

  Yes. I can’t tell you how many they are. Their number never sets in my mind, but I can feel that they’re all together. They have a different energy. It hums at the same tune now, with only one purpose .

  “Catching us?”

  Exactly.

  “We have the scoundrels just where we want them, then,” Hanish said, turning back toward Corinn and the fire. “Ha-ha! Take that!” He swiped at the air with an exaggerated flourish that made Corinn smile. Or that made her know she would have smiled, had it been possible. He came away from the cave mouth and settled himself beside the fire. He rubbed his hands together and held them, palm out, toward the flames.

  Old habits, Corinn thought to herself, are hard to break.

  Hanish said, “I guess that’s it, then. We have a few hours. Until dawn, perhaps. Then it’s nothing but the Gray Slopes for us. Have you any way of calling this worm of yours?”

  I won’t need to. It can hear the song even more clearly than the Santoth. It has been telling me as much for years. I just didn’t listen. I suspect it already knows we’re coming.

  “Ah. So the worm is expecting us,” Hanish said. “I guess it’s not the first time either of us has had dealings with worms.”

  No, but this one I like better than senators and leaguemen. It’s not like anything else. It doesn’t really talk to me. That’s not quite right. It’s more like the way I communicate with Po. It thinks to me. It’s very old, Hanish. I think it’s something the Giver made when the world was still new, before Elenet, before any of the creatures of the land. It has a quiet mind. It’s gentle, except that it knows the Giver’s tongue is not for us to speak. That’s one thing that matters to it.

  “And what, exactly, happens when we find this creature? You’ve not filled me in on the specifics yet.”

  I don’t know, Corinn said. This was not entirely the truth. She did know. The worm itself had shown her what was to happen in images that she had once thought of as nightmares. Now, those same images were the exact fate she sought. They were not, however, things she could say. Not even to Hanish. I think we just have to find it, she said. The rest will come with that.

  “All right, love,” Hanish said, “the rest will come with that. You should sleep now if you can. Even just a little. This next flight will be long. Come.”

  He indicated that she could rest her head on his lap. She did so, and, without prompting, he began to talk. Corinn lay, watching the play of the firelight on the cave wall, marveling that even now-with everything that had happened and was happening-she was still learning more about how to love this man. How was it possible that she could rest her head on a ghost’s lap and learn of things he had never told her while he lived? How could she feel the warmth of him, the texture of his tunic against her cheek, the weight of his hand where it rested on her shoulder? She tried to listen to his tales, but after a while what she truly did was listen to the sound of his voice. How she liked his voice. It managed to be truthful but at the same denied that life was anything less than a grand amusement. Corinn breathed him in, wishing she had some of his equanimity herself, wondering if this was how she gained it, by having him complete her.

  Later, after Hanish had fallen silent, thinking her asleep, Corinn remembered another dream. It had nothing to do with the worm. She had only had it once, on the morning that she had worked three acts of magic, including bringing Aliver back from the dead. In the dream, she had been riding in a carriage down from Calfa Ven. When Aaden became unwell, she stepped out and walked the path to avoid smelling his stink. Aliver and then Hanish had walked beside her for a time, and then both of them had rolled into somersaults and become leaves that blew away on the breeze. For some reason, she had whistled a tune for them.

  She asked, Are you real?

  He still sat as before, stroked her hair slowly, as if counting the strands one by one. “Yes, of course.”

  Are you sure you love me?

  “Corinn, you’re the single woman who has ever had all my heart. You did in life and you still did in death, and you will do forever.”

  Why? Asking it, she was not seeking praise, not looking for false comfort. She really meant the question. At times, thinking of all the mistakes she had made, she thought herself unlovable. Unworthy of anybody’s trust. She had proven herself that so many times, in so many ways.

  “Who knows why anybody loves anybody? I love you for the things I love about you. I love you for the things I hate about you. I think, Corinn, that you love me as well; me, the one who would’ve killed you. Don’t ask me to make sense of it, and I won’t ask you. My heart is yours for as long as you want it. Do you want it?”

  Yes.

  “Then it’s yours. In life and in the afterdeath. Glad that’s decided.”

  He leaned forward and kissed the damaged skin where her mouth should have been. Though she knew he was but a ghost, a vapor that no other eyes except Barad’s could see, she still loved his touch. There in that small cave at the edge of the Gray Slopes, with her eyes closed, it seemed each of his kisses glowed with golden warmth, each of them a pulse of light in the midst of an ocean of darkness.

  A s the sun broke over the eastern horizon later that morning and cast crimson highlights over the gray waves, Po spread his wings and lifted the couple into the sky again. Gaining height, they saw their pursuers. They still ran atop the surface of the water, rising and falling with the swells. Unrelenting.

  Po turned and headed west. Before them stretched nothing at all except moving mountains of water, and the rest of their lives.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  As soon as the vessel cleared the quay, Lethel called to his pilot, “Let’s go.” He sat on a seat he had ordered specially constructed. It perched high on the sleek ship’s deck, the perfect vantage from which to watch the Lothan Aklun vessel devour whatever distance he set it toward. “Make it fast,” he shouted as he pulled tight the straps across his waist.

  The pilot backed out, as silently as if by sail power, and yet without any sails or oars or poles. The boat moved with a power infused into every portion of the craft. It spun atop the water and surged forward, into a curving arc that bore them away from the estate Lethel had claimed on one of the craggier barrier isles. It moved north around the island, then turned west.

  When the open stretch of the Inner Sea came into view, the vessel raced, smacking and leaping across the waves with a speed like nothing Lethel had ever experienced. He clung to his chair, roaring with laughter each time the spray fanned over him. He liked speed very much. In no time at all, the leagueman’s hair was a disheveled bird’s nest blown back behind his pointed cranium. He clutched his skullcap in his hands, riding high on the exhilaration of the journey.

  When they joined the invasion fleet, the great mass of soul vessels plowed toward Avina. Lethel had his pilot zip among the barges and larger ships at breathtaking speeds. He could not help himself. He laughed idiotically. Every spray of water that fell over him, or any expected turn that yanked his body one way or another, caused him to throw back his head in uncontrolled hilarity. To think that the league had avoided military campaigns all these years! What a waste.

  As far as Lethel was concerned, this invasion was a lark. They could not lose. The outcome was obvious. They had the troops. Ishtat by the thousands. Sire El’s trained army of quota slaves. They had the means to deposit these troops anywhere they wished. Everything just as he had told Dariel Akaran and Mor of the Free People. The only thing for him to do, really, was to enjoy it.

  The pilot pushed them through a narrow, choppy gap between two barges. Their ship squeezed past them and shot out ahead of the armada. The coastline of Avina stretched before him. It shone bright in the morning light. The city’s drab seawall crawled with life.

  The Free People out to defend themselves, Lethel thought. How charming.

  They raced toward the
shoreline. The pilot pressed the speed so unrelentingly that Lethel let go of his cap and gripped the seat beneath him. His cap flew away in the wind. The pilot wrenched the boat to the left at what must have been the last possible moment. Water sprayed up from the side of the boat, drenching the breakwater and washing well up onto the quay that ran along the base of the city’s walls. The flat stone ledge would make a wonderful platform on which to deposit their soldiers. The boat sped along it, sending up a spray of water the whole way. The speed was such that Lethel’s eyes watered in the wind. He still managed to look up at the figures on the wall beside them. A few of the figures threw stones at him, but none of them gauged the speed right.

  In response, Lethel waved a chastising finger at them.

  A little later, back out toward the rear of the fleet now, he sat watching from a safe distance. He spotted the large schooner that Sires Faleen and El had chosen for the occasion. At least, he thought he should call it a schooner. It hardly looked like one in his understanding of the term, but for pure size and carrying capacity he thought the term fit. Multistoried, outfitted for pleasure, the ship crawled with Ishtat guards, staffers, hangers-on, and concubines. El, when he arrived with his army, had done the leaguemen the service of bringing a great number of these with him. Most of them, it seemed, hung about the upper decks of the schooner.

  “They’re hardly even paying attention,” Lethel muttered. He waved a hand, trying to catch someone’s attention so that he could point at the attack, which had commenced. He did not try for long. The proceedings proved too interesting to be distracted from them.

  The barges approached the shore first. Though massive, packed with soldiers and ballistae, battering rams and movable towers, their draft was so shallow they could press right up to the quay, with the water beneath them only on the height of three or four men. It would be as if the barges had simply added a wide extension to the shoreline, one filled to the brim with soldiers.

  The barges halted a little distance from the quay. The large ballistae, with their mortar-punching missiles, cranked back. When they shot, the barbed bolts flew with blurred speed. They slammed into the stone walls with explosive thuds, sinking deep and sending shards of rubble into the air. Each bolt was attached to a length of rope trailing back toward the barges. More and more of the missiles struck home. Soldiers fastened the trailing end to anchors jutting from the barges. Then they reloaded and shot still more missiles.

  The fools on the wall hunkered down. They cowered each time a missile sent up clouds of debris. “Do you know nothing?” Lethel asked. Having been briefed just the previous day on how the attack would proceed, he knew that it was not the impact of weapons they had to fear. It was what they did next.

  Once enough of the bolts were set, the ballistae stopped firing. Normally, Lethel had learned, winches would crank back on those ropes. The lines, going taut, would pull the missiles, which in turn would cause the barbed points of them to expand inside the stone, pulling down sections of the wall for the invaders to clamor over into the city. Normally, this winching was a slow process, dangerous for the attackers because of the tension in the ropes and the possibility of mechanical failure. But these were not normal circumstances.

  Today, the barges simply backed away from the shore. The ropes went from drooping lengths to straight, taut cords. All along the expanse of the wall, Lethel watched the chaos that ensued through a small spyglass. In some spots single blocks crashed down. In others the wall buckled and weakened before the prong fell free. Whole sections of wall crumbled toward the sea in an avalanche of stone blocks, debris, and screaming Free People.

  Lethel set down his spyglass and clapped his hands. He yanked it up to view again. Where was Dariel Akaran along that wall? Where was Mor or the bird woman or anybody else he recognized? The confusion was considerable. He could not make sense of what the defenders were doing, like so many ants responding to the destructive pressure of a boy’s foot. Swarming, running in circles. He thought of calling for a larger spyglass, but with the pitching of the boat he would not be able to keep anyone in focus.

  The barges approached the wall for a second round. As with the first, the poor defenders could do nothing but scurry about or cower. The walls came tumbling down. As they should. They were unforgivably ugly. The Lothan Aklun, having feared the sea, had looked away from it. They left the shoreline drab and unfinished. Not a facade at all, the wall more resembled the dingy rear of a city. Let the entire thing fall. The league would redesign the coastline to wonderful effect. Avina would become one of the world’s premier trading cities, a powerhouse for a nation that the league would rebuild to suit them.

  Why am I so far back? Lethel wondered. He shouted over his shoulder for the pilot to move them in.

  The boat closed some of the distance so that he had an improved view when the barges pushed forward a third time. They smacked right up against the quay, stopped dead there. The first contingent of soldiers jumped the narrow gap. They poured onto the platform and clambered over the rubble. The defenders, to their credit, rushed down to meet them. They seemed, in their exuberance, to forget that they were supposed to stay safely in the city. They brought the fight out to the quay itself.

  Only the early ranks of the troops could engage, but that was perfect. The first ashore would batter the defenders into bloody heaps until they surrendered or fled. Lethel rather hoped they would do the latter. Let them run through the city streets, Ishtat in pursuit. Slaughter every last one of them, for all he cared. They did not need them. In the coming years, the league could repopulate the city as they saw fit, just as they would rebuild it to suit them. Crumbled walls, massacred rebels. It was all messy at the moment, but to build a sturdy foundation one always began with a bit of demolition.

  Lethel still could not find the Akaran. He did focus in on one individual who seemed to be directing the defense, but it was not Dariel. His hair was darker than the prince’s, an unruly mop clinging to his head. After pointing and shouting and gesticulating for a time, he dove down into the melee below the wall.

  Lethel assumed that the sound, when he first noticed it, was coming from the besieged city itself. He had experienced an earthquake once while staying along the Talayan coast, and the strangeness in the air reminded him of the odd moments that preceded the earth shaking. He yanked the spyglass up, expecting to see the entirety of the wall come tumbling down or something like that.

  It did not. The fighting just continued.

  What happened next did not so much frighten Lethel as perplex him to his core. The humming grew louder. He wrinkled his forehead, making the thin slashes of his plucked eyebrows into two squiggles. The fighting figures stopped. They must have heard it, too. And then the sea… it went flat. Not calm, but completely flat. The entire undulating surface of the water became as featureless as polished stone. Lethel saw this all clearly, especially when his vantage point shifted.

  He soared up from the deck, so fast he left his gasp at water level. His seat came with him, ripped free of the vessel. He hung in the air with a view of the sea beneath him. Craning his head around, he saw that all the thousands of soldiers on the transports likewise floated in the air. The leaguemen and staffers and concubines turned circles, their arms and legs waving about them in a slow pantomime of panic.

  How unusual, Lethel thought, sure that nothing like this had been included in his briefing.

  There followed a moment of stillness, and then the world changed. The soul vessels concussed with a sudden explosion of pressure, except that it was not really an explosion. It was soundless. There was no flame or smoke, no flying debris. Only a flash and ripple in the fabric of the world. In an instant, the vessels all disappeared. Lethel’s ship vanished beneath him, as did the frigates and schooners and brigs, as did all the barges. They just ceased to be. Just afterward all the hovering people-thousands of them-splashed down into the sea.

  As he hit the surface, losing control of his bodily functions on impact, Lethel
was certain this had not been mentioned in his briefing. Nobody had said anything about this.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  The next couple of days brought a steady inflow of troops coming onto the plateau. Not just soldiers, the new arrivals included the young and the old, women, bakers and cooks, merchants offering their wares, laborers offering their bodies for whatever work needed to be done. It looked, gloriously, as if the people of the empire all came to aid the war effort, bringing whatever they could with them. Aliver had known from his connection to them that this was happening. As he spoke to them about why and how to overcome the addiction to the vintage, he challenged them not to lose their sense of purpose. Clearly, they had not.

  Elder Anath, and Sinper and Ioma Ou of Bocoum appeared. They came riding in a covered carriage that looked most out of place on the plateau, among the dreary disarray of a growing war camp. They petitioned for a meeting with Aliver. The king allowed it, but he kept it brief. He could see these men wanted only to ingratiate themselves with him, to play up their role in getting Shen back to him, and find some way to turn all this turmoil to their benefit.

  Aliver gave them nothing. Once he was gone they would grab for power and influence through their connection with Shen. He had already done the best he could to leave a legacy behind him, in that locked box back in Alecia. He gave Rialus Neptos more of his time, for the things he had to say had more bearing on his present actions. Beyond that, he decided to speak to no one but those he needed to help him end this war.

  The Auldek approached as well. Before them, freketes swooped through the air, calling taunts from a distance. They did not come very close. The dragons had only to lift off the ground to drive them back. The invading army crept over the horizon one morning, and by midday had paused to make their camp. That was it. They were in place. The tundra between them would be their battlefield. The meeting Aliver had arranged with Devoth would happen tomorrow, before the two hosts, both of them ready for battle.