by Jez Morrow
A husky woman’s voice sounded at a shout from the front line, “Halt in the name of the Sovereign!”
“In my own name, I shall not!”
Whites of many eyes flared in the front ranks. The burly young woman, Rodriga, swore up the dead. The front line put up their arms and saluted, fists to their chests, with audible thumps. Word went rumbling back through the ranks in an astonished wave.
The Sovereign was here.
Rodriga advanced out of the front line to meet Devon. Her eyes moved up and down, taking in his crude clothing. With an ironic twist to her mouth, Rodriga said, “Ma dahn. Governor Kani sent us here to avenge your death.”
Devon spoke loud enough for the back of the column to hear. “I am not dead. And that is not the enemy.” He motioned back at the village on the heights. “You will take orders from me now.”
The troops roared their acknowledgment, angry happiness in their voices.
Devon asked for a Raenthe tunic.
“We have nothing fit for a Sovereign,” Rodriga said, apologetic.
“A soldier’s uniform is good enough for anyone.”
Devon changed out of his desert garb into infantry blue right there. “I need a runner,” he told Rodriga. “Fastest you’ve got to take a message to Marcus.”
Behind him, Xan blurted out, thunderstruck, “Marcus? The traitor?”
Devon turned to look at Xan, his brows lifted as if to ask who was calling whom a traitor.
Rodriga gasped. “Marcus is a traitor?”
“No,” Devon told her. And again to Xan, “No, he is not!”
Xan pressed, “The Shepherdess just said—”
Devon shouted over him, “A man told the Kiriciki to hit my litter. Marcus knows I don’t ride in the litter. Marcus would have told the Kiriciki to look for a gold crown and a black horse. Marcus didn’t tell the Shepherdess anything.”
Xan vibrated in mortal insult. His voice rumbled in low indignation. “The Shepherdess did not lie.” Even surrounded by Raenthe and guilty of treason, with Xan’s moments on this world down to heartbeats, he kept his pride and loyalty to his people.
“No,” said Devon quietly. “The Shepherdess did not lie.”
Now Xan was confused. Only one or the other could be true. Either Marcus had told the Shepherdess to hit Devon or the Shepherdess lied.
“There is a traitor,” Devon said in a whisper for only Xan to hear. “Besides you!”
Xan started, “The Shepherdess said—”
Devon lifted his hand, a sharp signal to silence. Devon would not hear Marcus’ name spoken again as traitor. Devon said, “The Shepherdess gave the name she was told. That does not make it true. She did not lie. She was lied to.”
The whole world shifted. Stunned by this third possibility he had not seen, Xan asked, “Do you know who has done all this?”
“I believe we both do.”
“I believe you’re right,” Xan breathed.
Devon said, “But I need to be absolutely certain before I start killing people. Rodriga!”
Rodriga snapped to attention. “Ma dahn!”
“Wait here. Rest the men. Xan, with me.”
Devon collected his horse and set off back up to the village. Xan fell in behind him before he could even think about disobeying Devon’s orders. Devon’s vision was as keen as an eagle’s. Xan had underestimated him. Again.
Devon rushed back to the Shepherdess. She came out of her building to meet him so he did not need to challenge her attendants for an audience.
Devon gave her a quick bow. He asked, “Ma hahn. The man who gave you the name of Marcus—did he bear a mark here?” Devon indicated the back of his own left hand. “And was the mark in the form of a disk with a serpent within?”
“Aye, to the first.” The Shepherdess touched the back of her own left hand. “And aye to the second.” She made a circle with her fingers. She closed her eyes. “He wore green.”
Devon’s lips drew back from his white teeth in wolfish wrath, fury in his eyes. He could not even talk.
Xan gazed at Devon strangely, almost in a trance. Devon had cut through the blinding smoke and veils.
Devon caught Xan’s stare and demanded, impatient, “What?”
Xan shook his head, not knowing what to say.
A sudden belief in angels is all.
If Xan was to die for his treachery, at least he could die knowing that he had brought the avenger of his people here. He only regretted that he hadn’t recognized Devon for what he was from the first. Xan regretted the wasted hate and resentment.
He couldn’t even tell Devon, I adore you.
Xan would serve the Sovereign now for as long as Xan lived, however short a time that might be.
Devon turned to the Shepherdess. “Evil things have been done with my power. I feel a hundred daggers in my gut. I know feeling bad brings no one back to life. I will set this right.”
And he asked if she had any fighting men who would join his troop.
Devon descended to the Raenthe column, this time with a contingent of armed mountain tribesmen behind him.
Rodriga hissed, “Ma dahn! Those savages attacked us!”
“They did,” said Devon. “Because of a lie.” And he shouted to all his soldiers, “Other than in the Witch’s Cleft, have any of you ever been attacked by barbarians?”
“At the citadel!” several said, hotly, as if wondering how the Sovereign could have forgot that so soon.
“You saw them?” Devon asked.
“Yes!” said several.
“Alive?” Devon asked.
The soldiers looked to one another. Come to think of it, no. Not one of them had actually fought or killed a rebel. But someone must have done. They heard a lot of fighting.
“I saw the bodies, ma dahn,” said Silas. “They had weapons.”
“I saw those bodies too,” said Devon. “They were kitchen slaves. Where did house slaves get native weapons?”
“Kani has a collection of native weapons,” said Rodriga.
“Why did kitchen slaves not simply rise up with kitchen knives and stable pitchforks and hearth pokers? All the kitchen knives were where they were supposed to be.”
“They wanted their own weapons,” Rodriga suggested, gesturing with her own crossbow. Rodriga loved her crossbow dearly. She’d named it Bryan.
“Very well,” Devon allowed the argument. “They wanted their own weapons.” But Devon had also been a soldier. He had seen enemy dead. And that had been his dream on the night he fled.
He’d dreamed of war dead on a battlefield.
“Not one of the slaves I saw was clutching a native weapon in his dead hands.”
He nodded to Rodriga, who was holding her crossbow, her beloved Bryan, tight against her broad chest.
“And one slave even managed to drop his spear across his own dead back,” said Devon. “None of those people died fighting. They were murdered and laid out with weapons to look like rebels. There was no fighting.”
“We heard them!” Silas cried. “We heard fighting and barbarians storming the gates. Did ma dahn not hear that!”
“I heard sounds,” said Devon. “Just sounds.”
“Who did all this, ma dahn?” said Rodriga.
“Kani.”
Rodriga brightened. “Oh, I want it to be Kani! I so hate that man!”
“Rejoice then,” said Devon gravely. He could not gloat. He was going to kill one of his own.
It felt good to be on the march again at the head of an army. Devon had a clear purpose now.
He did not lead his Raenthe soldiers and his Kiriciki warriors toward the citadel just yet. There were things to do before he returned to the Harpy’s Rook.
Devon led the way toward the smoke column far ahead over the south.
“We are going where harpies go,” he told Rodriga.
Into the Belly of the Beast.
Xan had been quiet for a while.
Devon rode at the fore of the troop. He had his own
horse under him now. The Sovereign’s black stallion had traveled along with Rodriga’s garrison troop.
Xan rode up to the head of the column and reined in alongside the Sovereign. Xan dared ask, “When did you know?”
“Horses,” Devon said, more to himself than to Xan.
There had been horses waiting at the bottom of the secret staircase that led out from Devon’s bedroom. “Why were there horses?”
On the night of the emergency there had been horses, saddled, assembled and waiting for him. They had to be standing there before the first shouts of battle ever sounded.
It was an unnatural sound, like a clap before the hands have come together.
Since Devon had come back into power, with his soldiers behind him, he had not brought up the matter of Xan’s treachery. That hung in the air between them, deafening in its unspokenness.
“How did you know to come to the Kiriciki?” Xan asked, hushed. He sounded like he believed Devon had magical powers.
“The inscription in the Witch’s Cleft,” Devon said. “The words were carved in Old High Raenthe. The Kiriciki’s language of the ancients is the same as the Old High Raenthe language. Only priests and scholars—and Sovereigns—know the ancient language anymore. The carving in the Witch’s Cleft says, ‘Peaceful stranger, pass in peace.’ People who carve words like that into high stones will listen to you before they kill you. I just saw the writing on the wall.”
The Raenthe column crested the last hill before they arrived at the source of the tower of smoke.
They found barbarians with shackled ankles hauling rock and pouring molten metal the color of sunlight. Beyond them gleamed a pile of gold bricks.
Smoke belched from the refinery’s furnace and coiled in the air.
Men in green uniforms stood guard with crossbows over the laborers.
At the army’s appearance, all the green-clad Raenthe guards came to respectful attention, surprised.
They were even more surprised not to see not Governor Kani leading the armed force, but instead the Sovereign himself, dressed in a plain soldier’s blue uniform.
The Sovereign spoke slowly, very loud. Devon’s baritone voice could boom.
“Every man loyal to the Supreme Reigna put down your weapons and take a step back!”
The nearest guard hissed, embarrassed for his Sovereign. “Unwise, ma dahn! The prisoners! They’ll run!”
“I DON’T CARE!” Devon roared.
When the weapons were down, and the slave miners were looking around in confusion, Devon ordered the guards into a line.
The guards obeyed, bewildered. The slaves in their pit just stared.
Devon dismounted and stalked down the line of guards. He pointed at a man who had a serpent tattoo on his left hand and motioned him apart from the others.
Devon picked out another tattooed man.
And another.
The tattooed ones got an inkling that the Sovereign knew their mark and didn’t like it. Those men turned and ran.
They got lethal bolts in the back from a crossbow named Bryan.
It had become clear that Governor Kani’s inner circle of favorites had been pitting the natives against the garrison troop. Kani had been sending innocent garrison soldiers to avenge native uprisings that never happened, which in turn provoked real uprisings from the natives. Kani’s men fed off the conflict.
Most of the guards here at the gold mine were good men, who thought they were making criminals work. Kani’s inner circle collected the gold.
Devon ordered the chains to be taken off the prisoners. Devon shouted to the miners, “Any of you who know my language, translate it for your tribesmen who don’t. Tell them I am your Sovereign. You are free. Run if you must. No one will stop you. But if you stay, you shall have food and water and some of your gold. And if you come with me to storm the Harpy’s Rook, you shall have animals from the harpy’s flocks.”
He paused while the stunned miners absorbed what he’d said. They stared at their unshackled ankles.
“Maybe some of you really are criminals,” Devon went on. “I don’t care. You’re all going free. If you’re guilty of a crime, well, you have just been pardoned. I am not holding up the others’ liberation to sift you out from the innocent. Use your freedom well.”
And to a group of guards standing near where the gold was molded into bricks and coins he said, “Gold for everyone.”
“How much, ma dahn?”
“Whatever they can carry,” Devon said.
Most of the miners stayed to be fed and loaded down with gold. Devon could not blame the ones who didn’t believe him and just bolted over the hills toward home.
Devon beckoned one of the loyal guards to him and said, “Can someone make me a new diadem?”
At sundown, Devon paced the high ridge above the mine in a cold rage. His regal silhouette appeared matted on the sky. A thin band of gold glinted on his head in the failing light. His fury was a physical thing, cold enough to burn.
Devon beckoned Xan up to him, apart from the others.
Xan took a deep breath. He expected it was one of his last. Here it comes.
Xan set down his longbow and marched up to face his Sovereign.
If he gives me a sword to fall on, I will.
Devon was beautiful, angry.
His voice was very soft. He asked without looking at Xan. “Were you wrongly accused when I first condemned you to my arena?”
Xan said honestly, “No.”
Xan had been accused of treason.
“What was your crime?” Devon asked. “Exactly?”
“I raised an army of desert tribesmen against the Raenthe overlord.”
Devon nodded. He lifted his eyes to Xan and asked, “Can you do it again?”
Chapter Eight
Before the moon turned a full cycle, Xan’s native horde joined up with Devon’s troops.
Devon eyed their numbers appreciatively. “Well done,” he said.
Xan spoke low. “I would die for you.”
“Don’t do that,” said Devon. “Live for me.”
Guards in the watchtowers of the citadel known as Harpy’s Rook sighted three forces converging on the fortress.
First was the troop which Kani had sent out to the Kiriciki lands to avenge the Sovereign’s death. Second was a barbarian horde with a big man at the fore, who looked like the gladiator Xan. Third was a full Raenthe regiment marching up the royal road, led by a crooked figure with a gleaming bald pate like the regent Marcus.
The gates of the fortress were barred fast. The towers bristled with drawn bows. Soldiers lined the ramparts.
The three columns halted just out of bowshot. A man rode forward from the first troop. He rode tall and slender astride the Sovereign’s high-stepping black stallion. A thin gold diadem gleamed on his head. His black hair was longer than the Sovereign ever wore it.
A baritone voice that sounded like Devon’s own, loud as a battle horn, ordered, “Open the gates! All those loyal to the Reigna and the lawful rule of the Raenthe Empire, lay hands on any man bearing a red tattoo on his left hand and throw him from the ramparts right now. Put Governor Kani in chains and bring him down to me. I need him alive.”
While Devon was still shouting, Governor Kani was giving his own orders, but already green-clad men were falling from the high ramparts.
Devon passed judgment on Kani in front of as many people as possible. His subjects needed to see this.
The Sovereign condemned Kani to death.
Kani demanded a chance to fight for his life. He demanded the arena.
“Not my arena!” Devon said, appalled. Kani never understood the arena. It was a sacred place. The arena in the capital was a place of redemption, a last chance to end one’s life with honor. Where there was not honor, there could be no redemption. There was no honor here. This was scum. Devon would not have Kani’s blood on the floor of his place of glory.
Kani’s crimes were beneath contempt. His deeds were not hot ac
ts of vengeance or done out of desperate need or from misguided loyalty. Kani acted from nothing but greed.
His treachery left a lot of severely wronged people of the wild lands in its wake. All that anger must go somewhere.
It needed a savage ritual, to serve as a lightning rod to take that terrible fury and channel it into the ground. The people of the wild lands must have blood.
Eyes cold, voice flat, Devon told Kani, “You are going into your own pit.”
Devon filled the stands with men from the gold mine.
Xan stood ready, his skin oiled. He wore only a lionskin loincloth, a codpiece, a baldric and a small round shield on his left forearm. He carried a helmet under one bouldered arm. His thick sandy hair was tied back in a tail.
He saluted Devon with his sword.
“Do you need to be here?” Xan asked.
Xan in the arena was mesmerizing and terrible.
“Why?” Devon asked.
“I don’t want you to see this,” Xan said.
Devon nodded. “I won’t be there.”
Devon was walking out as Kani was dragged in, shackled. Devon wasn’t just leaving the ring. He was leaving the stands. Kani bellowed at Devon’s retreating back, “This is a state execution. It is your sovereign duty to watch a death in the arena! You have to be here!”
“No, I don’t.” Devon gave Kani’s own words back to him, “You told me. This is not an arena.” Devon stalked out past Xan and growled, “Take him apart.”
In mere moments, Devon marched back into the fighting circle. Xan’s eyes looked quizzical within the opening in his helmet.
“When you’re done—” Devon stabbed a shovel into the dirt. “Bury him.”
The execution had been hideous enough that much of the desert rage was spent. Kani’s victims weren’t exactly satisfied, but they were not clamoring for revolt. They were ready to listen to the Sovereign now.
The regent Marcus was heading back to the capital with his army. Devon was staying in the wild lands until he established peaceful order here.
As Marcus prepared to leave, Devon said, “Marcus, send to the Reigna. Tell her to choose someone to replace me as Sovereign.”
