Demon King

by Bunch, Chris

  He should have shouted silence and gone outside the tent for five minutes, breathing deeply, calming himself. Then he should have pictured the battlefield in his mind, imagined where his forces were, or should have been, and gone back inside and brought order.

  But he just stood there helplessly, mouth moving as if he were a stranded fish. I wanted to help, but knew I must not. If the general was to become a general, he must learn I’d not be there to save him when matters went out of control — which is invariably what happens five minutes after a battle commences.

  But the emperor didn’t realize that. “Silence,” Tenedos bellowed, and stillness spread like a wave, save for one wide-eyed captain who babbled on for a few seconds until he realized his voice was the only sound. “Now,” the emperor said, “we must try to save the day. Send for … Who’s the domina in charge of the First Wing?”

  “Tanagra, sir.”

  “Very well. You. Galloper. Ride down the road until you see Domina Tanagra’s battle flags. Tell him …”

  What the emperor wished to have Tanagra do went unknown, for shouts, bellows, and screams rang, and fifty horsemen thundered into the camp, sabers slashing tent ropes, guards knocked spinning, and men running in all directions. Their leader slid from his horse, ran into the tent, and shouted, “You’re all my prisoners! Surrender or die!” It was one of Yonge’s legates. Three archers ran up beside the “enemy” officer, blunt arrows nocked.

  “The hells we are,” Guil snapped, reaching for his sword. An arrow thunked lightly into his chest.

  “Sorry, sir,” the legate said, no sorrow at all in his voice, “but you’re dead now.” He turned to the emperor and me. “Now, you two. Don’t — ” His voice went into a squeak as he recognized his emperor. For an instant, he almost knelt, then he remembered his role. “Your Majesty! You’re captured. Don’t move!”

  Tenedos’s face reddened. His gaze lanced out. “This,” the emperor began, his voice like thunder, “is truly absurd! I …”

  He must have seen my involuntary head shake, for he caught himself. He had his temper controlled instantly. The snarl on his lips became a smile, and a laugh came. Possibly I was the only one who knew how false it was.

  “Absurd,” he went on. “And a fine piece of work, Legate. You seem to have won the battle and, I’d suppose, the war. Damned few armies fight on when their emperor’s in the hands of the enemy. Was this your idea?”

  “Yessir.”

  “You’re now a captain. Of the Upper Half.”

  We lost a battle and the war game, but the emperor won the day.

  • • •

  “Men of the Guard, listen to your emperor.” Tenedos’s voice boomed across the plain. He stood on a small reviewing stand, ten feet above the drawn-up First Guard Corps. “I came to see what sort of soldiers you are,” he went on. “And now I know. You think you have done badly, and, in a manner, you have. But the blood that was shed was not real. The lives that were lost have not gone to Saionji.

  “This battle can be replayed and won, if we so choose. What you should have gained in the past few days is knowledge of who you are. You are young, you are strong, you are learning. None of us — not you, not I — learn without making mistakes. Yesterday a mistake was made. Laugh about it, for it is worth laughing about. But learn from it, for it’s also a great lesson.

  “You are the first to carry the name of Guards. There will be others that will come after you. Now you must train harder, work harder, so that so long as there is an army in Numantia, so long as there are Corps of Guards, any soldier will know that the greatest duty he can perform, the highest honor he can reach, is to fight as well as you will fight. I salute you, Numantians, Guardsmen. You are mine … and I am yours.

  “This day is the beginning. Ahead there is nothing but glory and honor.”

  He saluted, and the Guard Corps cheered him until I thought they’d rupture their lungs, as if disgrace would be buried in the wall of sound.

  I’d seen another reason why the emperor was the emperor. This silly defeat in a war game in a desert state might steel the First Guard even more than a victory.

  • • •

  “I should’ve turned that limp-dick into a toad,” the emperor growled.

  “I didn’t know you had that kind of power,” I said.

  “I don’t. But I’d find a spell somewhere.”

  “By the way, who are we talking about? The legate?”

  “Him, too. But I meant Guil. I hope Saionji toasts his foreskin on a very hot fire when she takes him back to the Wheel!”

  “Do you want him relieved?” I asked.

  There was a long silence. The emperor sighed. “Do you think he should be?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He lost his feel for battle. But I don’t know anyone who hasn’t done that. He just did it at a time that was a little embarrassing.”

  “Embarrassing, my left testicle,” the emperor said. “Damned humiliating.”

  “Especially for me,” I said. “Showed me what happens when I start following people like you into tents.”

  The emperor glowered, then his mood broke, and he started laughing. “No. Don’t relieve him,” Tenedos decided. “My sister owes you a debt. But make sure he learns. I don’t want there to be a next time.”

  “There won’t be,” I promised. “Not for him, not for his whole gods-damned Corps. I’ll have Mercia and his instructors drill them until they’re bleeding through their eyeballs and toenails. I’ll get an order out as soon as we get back to Nicias.”

  “No, you won’t,” the emperor said. “You’re on two weeks’ leave.”

  “Why? I’m barely back from the last one.”

  “It seems a certain lady came calling before we left. A certain Countess Agramónte. She wished a boon. She said her lands have a certain feasting when they plant the corn. She said it’s a custom that goes back before there was an Agramónte, and the people feel it’s the worst of luck if their lord is not present.”

  This was the first time Marán had ever asked a favor of the emperor. “That’s sort of the truth, sir,” I said. “But I’ve missed it three times since we’ve been married, off rooting around the frontiers for you.”

  “Terrible,” the emperor said. “Custom is what binds the peasants closer to the lords. You’ll not miss it this year.”

  “If you say so, sir.”

  “Besides, I promised Marán. And Jaen knows your wife is very beautiful, and I’ve never broken a promise yet to a beautiful woman.”

  He stared out at the Latane River, and once again his mood changed. “So the First Guard isn’t as ready as I hoped it to be,” he said gloomily. “Which means none of the other corps can even think about full-scale maneuvers.”

  “I’m afraid not, sir,” I said.

  He said something very odd: “Thank Saionji that I’ve bought us all some time.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  “Nothing,” he said, hastily changing the subject. “Look. Out there. Is that child on the world’s tiniest raft, or is she walking on water, in which case we should begin worshiping?”

  • • •

  Amiel and Marán were waiting at the dock when we disembarked — our departure from Amur had been signaled to the capital by heliograph. In spite of the weather — a light spring mist, almost a rain — their carriage was open except for an overhead canvas. Marán had a merry expression on her face; Amiel looked angry. I wondered what had happened. I looked closely and saw a thin film of sweat on Amiel’s face.

  “Here,” Marán said, holding something out to me. I unrolled it, and saw it was a pair of women’s underpants.

  “Your wife,” Amiel hissed, “is a hussy.”

  “This is true,” I agreed. “What made you realize it?”

  Marán started giggling, and said, “We’ve been good little girls while you were gone. Two whole weeks without doing anything with each other or even ourselves.”

  “If you had to do without, we
should do the same,” Amiel said. “So we did. Until this morning.”

  Their outfits were as seductive as could be imagined, barely permissible beyond the bedroom. Marán wore a flaring skirt that hardly went below her crotch, and revealed matching underpants of the sheerest silk, and a single-button black jacket, its button between her breasts and navel. She wore nothing beneath the jacket.

  Amiel wore a dress that buttoned high on her neck, then opened daringly in a crescent to below her cleavage. It clung close to her waist, then was slit high on one side.

  Marán explained — she’d arranged to have a light rainproof robe in the carriage, “in case the weather worsened.”

  “Liar,” Amiel put in, then took up the story. “As soon as we left our house, she pulled the robe over our laps. Then she ran her hand up my leg, under my dress, and began rubbing me. I, uh, well, I let her. It has been almost two weeks. Somehow she got my underpants off, and got her fingers in me.

  “I was trying to keep from yelling, trying to keep from squirming and keep the damned coachman seeing what was going on. I told her to stop, but she wouldn’t. So I told her to go ahead, to help me finish. Just before I came, she did stop. The bitch!”

  “I read in one of the books you loaned me,” Marán said, “that sex is always better when you’ve been anticipating it for a while. I’m just being helpful, and wanted to make sure we wouldn’t disappoint Damastes.”

  “Then for Jaen’s sake, let’s get back to the house before I explode,” Amiel said plaintively.

  • • •

  Candles flickered on either side of our bed. Amiel half-lay on her back, propped against pillows, legs lifted and parted. Marán lay on her back, against Amiel’s sex, as Amiel rubbed Marán’s breasts hard. Marán’s legs were on my shoulders, her heels on either side of my head, and I held her buttocks in my hands, lifted clear off the mattress.

  Marán cried out, twisted against me, then went limp. Her legs thumped down on the bed. Still inside her, still hard, I lay down across her body and Amiel’s legs, and found a pillow to support my weight.

  “This,” I said when my breathing slowed, “may be the best welcome home I’ve ever had.”

  “I’d say you should go away more often,” Amiel whispered. “But we don’t like doing without you.”

  “What are we going to do if war comes?” Marán said. “You’ll have to smuggle us along. I can get a close haircut and pretend to be a drummer boy, maybe. But what about Amiel? How can she hide her titties?”

  “I’m sure you two will devise some scheme,” I said. I yawned. “I can’t tell you how nice it is to be home.”

  “But not for long,” Marán reminded me. “There’s the Feast of the Corn. We’re to leave tomorrow.”

  “Marán,” Amiel said, and her voice was very tentative, “I don’t think I’ll be able to come with you.”

  “What?” Marán said in surprise. “You must! We’ve had everything set for weeks now!”

  “What’s the saying?” Amiel said. “Man proposes, Jaen disposes? Yesterday a seer confirmed what I already knew.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  THIRTEEN

  THE FEAST OF CORN

  Marán spun, sitting up, and I slid out of her, unnoticed. “You’re pregnant?” she said, in rigid shock.

  “A time and thirty days now. The seer and I calculated, and it happened on Festival night, the first night the three of us were together.”

  Marán stared at her friend, and for an instant what might’ve been unutterable hatred flashed across her face, but it was gone so quickly I wasn’t sure I’d seen correctly in the candlelight. She took a deep breath.

  “This is a surprise.”

  “I hoped I was just late,” Amiel said. “But really, I knew better. Isn’t it funny, Damastes, all the times Pelso and I tried to make a baby, we failed. Then you succeed on the first attempt. I guess your seed is strong.”

  I hid my wince. Amiel had said exactly the wrong thing, considering all the times Marán and I had tried to create a child.

  “So,” Amiel said after a time, “that’s why I won’t be able to go to Irrigon.”

  “I don’t follow,” I said. “You’re not that pregnant. Did the seer say there was some problem?”

  “Oh no,” Amiel said. “My health’s excellent. But I’d like a few days to recover from the chirurgeon’s ministrations.”

  “What?” Marán said.

  “I’m already an embarrassment,” Amiel said. “This would make things worse.” She shrugged. “So I’ll deal with it. I had to once before, long ago when I was a girl.”

  “You mean … have the baby aborted?” Marán said.

  Amiel nodded. I started to say something, but held my silence hard.

  “Don’t you want the child?” Marán said sharply.

  Amiel smiled, wistfully. “Of course I’d like a babe. A child of Damastes the Fair? A man who’s welcomed me into his house, treated me always as a friend, and loved me better than anyone I can remember? The seer said she’s certain it’s a girl. Who wouldn’t wish such a baby? I’ve wanted one for the last few years, feeling my time was running short.”

  “Then have the baby you shall,” Marán said firmly. She recollected my presence. “I’m sorry, my husband. I didn’t even think of asking you.”

  “You didn’t need to,” I said, and was honest. We’d have the child we’d both wanted now, and I didn’t give a rap for what anyone said or thought. Not that I had any choice, not if I wished to look at myself in the shaving glass.

  “Amiel, we told you once you were welcome here,” I said. “Welcome now, welcome forever. We shall go on together. As three.” I stretched out my hand to Marán. Amiel clasped our hands in hers, tears running from her eyes.

  “Thank you. I didn’t dare even think … Thank you. Thank you, Jaen, Irisu.”

  “The emperor sealed Damastes and me in marriage,” Marán said. “He prayed to the gods and goddesses our union be blessed. I pray to those same gods for the three of us.”

  “As do I,” I said huskily.

  “And I,” Amiel whispered.

  “Now let us secure our alliance,” Marán said. She tenderly took Amiel’s head in her hands and kissed her, long, deeply. The two lay down, their legs twining, rubbing against each other as their passion grew. Marán took her lips from Amiel’s.

  “Damastes, come love us. Love us both. And when you come, come in us both. Now we are three for all time.”

  • • •

  The two women rode behind me, talking excitedly about the decorations for the nurseries in our three palaces, whether it would be better to have them all the same, or do them in different styles so the child could learn variety.

  Karjan was beside me, and flanking us were twenty of my Red Lancers, again commanded by Legate Segalle.

  I was feeling a little hungry, a lot thirsty, and was looking forward to our midday meal. We’d been traveling for some days, and had crossed onto Agramónte land two hours ago. It’d become Marán’s and my custom to stop in Caewlin for a meal. It was a wonderful little village, with maybe a hundred or so people, just a few days from Irrigon. There was one merchant — who sold everything from spices to peas, generally on credit against the harvest — a village witch, and an excellent tavern known for its country ham, its fresh-baked bread, ales brewed on the premises, and its salads, spiced with herbs grown by the owner. We’d helped build her garden with exotic herbs from the capital, and now it threatened to devour the tavern.

  I should have noted something wrong as we came around the final tree-lined bend, for I saw no playing children, nor heard the lowing of cattle or the gabble of geese. But part of my mind was on my stomach, and the rest on how I could further improve the Guard Corps.

  Then we rode into desolation. The village had been utterly destroyed. The neat thatched roofs were gone, and torn brick lay open to the uncaring sky. Caewlin had burned, and then rain had drenched the fire. The windows of the tavern were shattered, and
its door had been pulled from its hinges and lay in the yard. Men had torn down the nicely painted fence around the garden, and then horses had trampled the plants. Bodies were scattered about, some animal, more human. They’d been dead about a week, I estimated, long enough to bloat and blacken into thankful unrecognizability.

  Amiel gasped, Marán swore, but it might as well have been a prayer.

  My soldiers’ lances were down, ready, although there was nothing to fear, nothing at all but death and the dry buzz of flies in the spring silence.

  “Who …” Amiel’s voice trailed away, then came back more strongly. “Who did this? Why?”

  Legate Segalle pointed at a tree that had a wide stone bench around it, a tree that had been the communal meeting place. Nailed to it was a battered, swollen head, barely recognizable as human. I couldn’t tell if it had belonged to a woman or a long-haired man. There was a dagger driven into the tree below it, and around the dagger’s grip a yellow silk cord was tied.

  “Tovieti did it!” he said.

  “No,” I said. “The other way around. Somebody thought these people were Tovieti. I suspect I know who the murderer was, or rather who ordered these deaths.”

  Marán looked away, then boldly met my gaze. “If they were Tovieti,” she said, “then they got what they deserved.”

  “Tovieti, mistress?” It was Karjan. “Y’ think she was Tovieti?” He was pointing at the corpse of a baby, facedown in the dust. The top of the infant’s skull was crushed, and there was a dark stain against the tree.

  Marán’s face flushed with rage. “You,” she snapped, “be silent!” She spun on me. “Can’t you keep your retainers in hand?”

  I looked pointedly at the child’s body, then at Marán. She stared back, then her eyes dropped. We rode on in silence.

  • • •

  The rest of the journey was quite different from the first part. Marán and I spoke only when necessary, and Amiel also held her silence. When we stopped at an inn, we slept in separate chambers. The trip seemed interminable, but at last we rounded the curving river road and saw Irrigon.