Hammer of the Earth

by Susan Krinard

  “Come, if you want to save the female,” Cian said in a voice Tahvo hardly recognized. She heard the crunch of pebbles and drying vegetation, and then Nyx returned to her side.

  “He is leaving,” she said. “Can you support Rhenna if I help you lift her?”

  “Yes. What of Khaleme?”

  “I am here, Lady. I am better now.”

  “Can you walk?” Nyx asked the warrior.

  “You have found the Bearer. We must serve him.”

  Tahvo felt for the soldier’s thin leg, startled by his swift recovery. If Cian had gone, they had to follow.

  Khaleme and Nyx supported Rhenna between them, while Tahvo gathered the packs. Rhenna groaned but did not wake.

  “Cian is not far ahead, but we must hurry,” Nyx said. “I do not think he will wait long.”

  Then he has changed, Tahvo thought. May the spirits save him….

  Rhenna knew that they were moving, and that they had somehow left the raft far behind. Sometimes she woke and thought she saw bizarre visions of roiling water shaped into walls by some invisible force. Occasionally she was able to walk, supported on the arms of Nyx and Khaleme, though she could not remember when the tall soldier had regained consciousness.

  Each day flowed into the next without change. Tahvo tried to make her eat and drink, but anything that touched Rhenna’s lips tasted foul with corruption. The struggle to stay awake consumed more and more of her strength, until finally she gave up the effort.

  When she opened her eyes again, she lay on furs in a quiet place, her mouth parched and her eyes crusted. The constant shivers and waves of hot and cold had left her body.

  A moist, cool cloth dabbed at her face. The hand that held it belonged to a small, round figure whose face smiled at her with open joy.

  “Tahvo?”

  The healer put a waterskin to her lips. “You are well,” Tahvo said, “but you must rest a little longer.”

  “How long have I…?”

  “Many days. Do not concern yourself.”

  “Cian…Nyx…”

  “Have no fear. We are in a village of friendly folk who live east of the marsh. This is the hut of their healer. They have shared all they have and aided in your healing.”

  Rhenna tried to sit up and quickly lay back down. “Yseul?”

  “No sign of her.”

  Rhenna sighed and closed her eyes. “How did we get out of the swamp?”

  Tahvo’s silence lasted so long that Rhenna opened her eyes again. “What is it?”

  “Cian used the Hammer.”

  “But he’s all right…?”

  “Yes.” Tahvo looked away. She was an abominable liar. Rhenna reached for her hand.

  “Did he have reason to be afraid, Tahvo?”

  Tahvo patted her shoulder. “He and Nyx have been discussing where we will travel from here. There is more desert, though not as wide as the one in the North. Then there is a great river that leads to the mountains, and near the source of the river lies a high plateau—”

  “Tahvo.”

  “He…” She licked her lips. “He is different, Rhenna.”

  Ice congealed in Rhenna’s empty stomach. “How?”

  “He is stronger. He keeps himself apart.”

  Rhenna wedged her elbows behind her back and fought off a wave of dizziness. “I want to see him.”

  “He…will not come.”

  “Then I’ll go to him.” She ignored the weakness in her limbs and worked her way to her knees. Tahvo gave up trying to hold her down and lent her arm. Together they walked toward the door of the hut one creeping step at a time.

  The light of day struck Rhenna’s eyes like a heated awl. She paused to blink away the tears and quickly took in the cluster of huts, animal pens and brown-skinned folk who waved at Tahvo with casual friendliness. The land here was relatively dry and hilly, but Rhenna could just see a distant line of dull green that marked the borders of the swamp. Tahvo led Rhenna out of the compound to the edge of a stream, mercifully small and well contained within its banks.

  Cian stood by the stream with Nyx, the Hammer slung over his shoulder.

  “…has told me that Aryesbokhe has become possessed by the desire to find the Hammer,” Nyx said. “His tale troubles me greatly. When we reach the city, you must be prepared—” She broke off as she saw Rhenna. Her smile was brief and strained. “Thank the gods you are recovered. You should not be on your feet. Tahvo…”

  Cian turned his head. Something in the hard lines of his profile warned Rhenna before she saw his eyes.

  They were still golden and feral and beautiful, as they had always been. But there was no welcome in them—no pleasure at seeing her well, no softness, no humanity. They were like chips of amber, drained of all warmth, set in a face of pale marble.

  “Cian,” Rhenna said with a calmness she didn’t feel.

  He examined her as if she were a meddlesome insect, his upper lip curling in contempt, and glanced at Nyx. “Tell me for what I must be prepared,” he said.

  Nyx stared into the brown water at her feet. “There are several cults in the holy city, and not all are devoted to the Watchers. There may be those who wish to take the Hammer from you, and others who will not believe you are the true Bearer.”

  Cian’s hand snapped out and seized Nyx by the back of her neck. “Do you believe?”

  Rhenna took a step toward Cian. Tahvo restrained her. Nyx went still and passive in Cian’s grip.

  “Yes, my lord,” she croaked.

  He laughed, shook Nyx like a kitten and yanked her against him. His mouth ground on hers. When he let her go, her lips were streaked with blood.

  Cian met Rhenna’s horrified gaze. “Have you also come to pleasure me, female?”

  Rhenna pushed Tahvo behind her. “You are not Cian. What have you done with him?”

  “He is here.” A tint of red swirled through his eyes. “He would let you go.” He looked over her shoulder at Tahvo. “Take her before I change my mind.”

  “Rhenna,” Tahvo pleaded.

  “What is inside him, Tahvo?” Rhenna said, holding Cian’s alien stare.

  “Something that lived in the Hammer,” the healer whispered. “A spirit of great power. I did not feel it in time.” Tears ran from her eyes. “I am sorry.”

  Rhenna squeezed Tahvo’s hand and stepped in front of Cian. “I know you can hear me, Cian. Come back. Don’t let this…thing destroy you.”

  For just an instant she thought she saw the man she loved return to his eyes. “There is nothing you can do,” he said. “Go, Rhenna-of-the-Scar. Go while you still can.”

  Rhenna grabbed Tahvo’s arm and walked away.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Italia

  Q uintus breathed in the familiar smells of a Tiberian morning: the aroma of food stalls selling bread and cabbage and meat pies; the sweat of laborers and slaves passing in the crowd; the mingled odors of dust, sunwarmed stone and the Tiber River baking in the late summer heat.

  If he had used every sense but his vision, he might have convinced himself that this was the Tiberia of his childhood, before the empire had come and his family, their clients and a handful of patrician allies had fled to the mountains. But he would not have been deceived for long. Gone were the scents of animal dung on the streets and human waste in the gutters that emptied into the sewers. If he listened carefully, he heard not the shouts and laughter of free Tiberians but the strangely muted babble of a conquered populace. And when he looked about him, he saw smoking altars built on the rubble of razed temples, the blank expressions of once-proud citizens, the troops of imperial soldiers striding through the Forum Tiberianus as if they might tear the ancient buildings down with their bare hands.

  He had known it must be this way, even though he had let himself forget. He had been nearly a year in Karchedon. He had grown used to too many of the Stone’s obscenities, willfully blind to the suffering of a people not his own. He had become lost in the rarified world of imperial politics,
palace intrigues and the singular education required of the emperor’s brother. He had begun to believe that the promise of his elevation to the highest ranks of the empire was worth any price.

  Now he stood beside the massive wall constructed around the city proper nearly a hundred years before, his hands shaking beneath the folds of his toga. He recalled every word Nikodemos had spoken before he embarked on the royal galley bound for Italia. The conversation had been light, pleasant—and ominous.

  “I have a small task for you,” Nikodemos had said as they sipped wine in his private chambers. “I received reports several months ago that the rebel prisoner Buteo escaped from his cell at the Temple…much to Baalshillek’s annoyance.” He smiled and signaled a slave to refill his cup. “A pity the High Priest didn’t execute him as I expected. Now it seems that Buteo has reappeared in Italia and may have rejoined his followers in the mountains.”

  Quintus nearly choked on his wine. “Was no attempt made to recapture him?”

  “Unsuccessful,” Nikodemos said. “But it has occurred to me that there is one man perfectly suited to tracking down a Tiberian rebel in his own lair.”

  Quintus had known what his half-brother was about to say. He had shown no reaction when the emperor assigned him the mission of finding Buteo, capturing him and returning him to Karchedon. Never did Nikodemos mention a test of loyalty or show doubt that Quintus would succeed. Such words were unnecessary. Quintus understood.

  All the previous trials had been mere preliminaries for this ultimate test of Quintus’s worthiness to stand beside the master of the Arrhidaean Empire. Quintus would be given every resource, accompanied by Nikodemos’s handpicked soldiers…and a beta priest, a “gift” from Baalshillek. Troops and priest would be entirely under Quintus’s command. But they would be watching for any slip, any indication that Quintus retained his former allegiance to his adopted homeland.

  During the voyage to Italia, Quintus had spent each possible moment with his assigned Palace escort, winning the soldiers’ approval with the courtier’s trick he had learned in the past year. They, like most of Nikodemos’s favored Companions and personal guard, already shared his contempt for the Stone God’s priesthood. He had confided to the men that he’d once been held by the Tiberian rebels against his will, which was no less than the truth, and that he would gladly expose his former captors for his brother’s sake.

  By the time the galley had docked at Ostia, the soldiers treated Quintus as one of them. When Quintus had recovered from his first glimpse of a Tiberia crushed by seven years of occupation—and after he had seen a half-dozen plebeian and patrician insurgents, along with all their families, given to the Stone God’s fire—he had convinced his soldiers of the wisdom of letting him ride into the mountains with a minimal guard. If he was to approach the rebels in their own refuge, he must be prepared to take great risks.

  The beta priest, whose name Quintus hadn’t bothered to learn, refused to stay behind. Quintus had no intention of letting the man interfere with what he hoped to do. In spite of the horrors he had seen in Tiberia, his ambitions hadn’t changed. He had to reach Buteo and convince the rebel leader of his genuine goodwill—without letting the priest or the imperial guardsmen recognize his true purpose.

  Quintus strode through the city gate, casually displaying the emperor’s seal to the sentries who examined every man, woman and child who entered or left Tiberia. They snapped to attention and let him pass. He had already observed that the troops assigned to Tiberia were young and not as well-disciplined as those he’d seen in Hellas; that seemed to suggest that Danae had been right when she claimed Nikodemos sent his least experienced soldiers to Italia. Quintus could only speculate as to the emperor’s motives.

  But he had more pressing concerns to occupy him at the moment. He found his two-soldier escort and the priest waiting for him outside the gate, each with a mount and a spare, as well as two fine beasts for Quintus. They were prepared for hard riding. Quintus pitied the poor horses assigned to the priest; the Stone’s poison that lived in his body would seep into the animals and leave them fit only for the slaughterhouse when the hunt was over.

  The priest’s face was completely obscured by his black hood, though Quintus had no doubt that his skin was scarred and disfigured by the same dread power that would eventually kill his mounts. The space between Quintus’s eyes throbbed whenever he went near the man; he could feel the priest’s red stone almost as if it were a separate, living presence.

  The priest fingered the crystal pendant nervously, though his bearing held the usual arrogance. “It is not wise, my lord,” he said, “to travel without your full escort.”

  “It is not wise to hunt wolves with an army,” Quintus retorted. “They hear you coming and disappear. That is why so many rebels remain in the mountains.” He waved off a soldier’s help and mounted his sure-footed dun. “In any case, you will be there to protect us with the Stone’s fire.”

  He couldn’t see the priest scowl, but he knew the man would as soon strike him down as serve him. Perhaps that was what Baalshillek intended. This second rank lackey might very well be one of Baalshillek’s most skilled assassins.

  Quintus sincerely hoped the man would attempt an attack.

  He consulted his map again, letting his escort assume that he was less familiar with the mountains than he truly was. During his time of captivity among the rebels, they had frequently moved the location of their primary stronghold, always seeking to stay ahead of the patrols of priests and soldiers who periodically scoured the Apenninus Mountains. Though he had been kept in seclusion, Quintus had carefully gathered information about the sanctuaries Buteo’s men maintained throughout the Umbrian high country. He knew the positions of narrow defiles and hidden caves where the insurgents cached their weapons and planned raids on lowland towns, and where they made their camps.

  He had a few ideas of where to look for Buteo.

  It was not yet full noon when he and his escort rode away from the outer wall and set off along the Via Tiburtina, crossing the pastures and grove-land that stretched toward the Sabina Hills. Sprawling farms and villas, many seized from their original owners by imperial soldiers, dotted the landscape. Few of the slaves or free laborers working in the fields or vineyards looked up as they rode past. All were equally wretched under the rule of the Stone.

  Once, Quintus’s father had told him, there had been many shrines to local gods of fertility and harvest throughout this country. Not one now stood. Men prayed to the Stone God or not at all.

  Quintus spurred his mount to a faster pace and was grateful when they left the rolling farmland behind them. The foothills of the Apenninus Mountains scraped the Eastern sky. They passed the town of Tibur on the Anio River and entered the mountains at the mouth of the river valley, where the water cascaded over rocks and ledges down to the plains. The Via Valeria ran alongside the Anio, winding northeast between the mountains.

  Immediately the day’s grueling heat gave way to the relative coolness of forested slopes and blue shadows. Another twenty milliaria carried them well into the mountains, where the Aequi tribe had been subdued by the Tiberian army a mere thirteen years before. They spent an untroubled night by the roadside and reached the colony town of Alba Fucens by early afternoon the next day. Here the empire’s priests and soldiers still made their presence felt, but in the deep, thinly settled and little-traveled valleys to the north lay a hundred hiding places for the hardy and the cunning.

  Quintus turned off the road and cut north into the territory of the Marsi, who had become allies of Tiberia not long before the conquest of Italia. The imperial occupation had stricken them far worse than it had the more numerous Tiberians. Most of the surviving mountain tribes had fled north as far as Umbria and would avoid any riders who carried the stamp of the Arrhidaean Empire.

  They camped beside the River Aternus and continued along the valley. The priest, unused to riding, began to complain about delays and deception; Quintus asked him politely
if he could detect the rebels with his stone. The priest stroked his pendant and grew dangerously silent.

  On the following day they rode out of the river valley and into the mountains, following the courses of streams that tumbled down from the highest slopes. Shepherds’ paths led through woods of oak and ash, ascending to dense forests of beech and black maple; here and there lay the ruins of tribal villages, abandoned to wolves and bears. Sometimes Quintus sensed watching eyes, and once he glimpsed men dressed in furs retreating into the silence of the trees—beleaguered tribesmen who recognized a Stone priest and gave up any notion of attacking the intruders.

  For the next two weeks he drove his escort mercilessly, pushing the horses to the limits of their endurance. He kept his distance from the soldiers, who had long since lost any desire to exchange companionable banter with their royal charge. The priest ceased his complaints and clung to his mount with grim determination.

  Gradually they worked their way north, passing beneath bare peaks that jutted from green mantles of fir and pine. Quintus found evidence of deserted rebel encampments but little sign of recent activity. Over the years the number of insurgents had been severely reduced, and Buteo’s followers had been driven into the most isolated recesses of the Apennini.

  Quintus had hoped he would encounter a raider band before he was compelled to lead the priest and soldiers to the rebels’ most secret hold. He was fast running out of options. Three weeks into the search, on a moonlit night when the priest had fallen into a deep and exhausted sleep, he discovered a single boot track on the bank of a stream. He kept the knowledge to himself and pressed on.

  The ambush came almost too late. The soldiers muttered to each other as Quintus preceded them into a cleft cut between two sheer limestone cliffs, and the horses balked and tossed their heads. The priest refused to enter the crevice. By the time one of the guards decided to force Quintus to retreat, he and his companions were already trapped.

  Quintus clenched his fists on the reins and listened with bleak horror as men died, struck down like sheep on a sacrificial altar. A horse squealed and plunged past him, riderless. Harsh voices echoed among the rocks. He dismounted, locked his muscles and waited to defend his life.