by K V Johansen
These were now the whispers that flowed south to meet them, here in Numiya Province. Somewhere, the empress’s army prepared to move—she was in the Old Capital, she marched through Solan, she was in Kozing Port and sent her generals of the northern provinces to encircle Choa, who could say? Rumour at least was certain as rumour could be that to the north the rebels of Prince Dan and the holy one of the gods—the devil’s puppet, the necromancer’s toy, the false god who was only another rebelling slave—held Choa and maybe even Alwu and to the west Shihpan as well.
Nearly all the length of the empire crossed, night-travel, in haste and secrecy, hidden under wizardry Rat said was something else, a blessing of the goddess of the Little Sister, who had given herself up to become part of Mother Nabban, to fight Yeh-Lin long ago. A Nabbani goddess, yes, but the Little Sister was Lathan too, Rat claimed, and some echo of what she had been blessed them. The few men and women with whom they dared speak, being without papers, were mostly outliers of the villages—the poorest, the outcast, the least likely to hear reliable news. They had found secret dwellings of priests, more than once, but their news was no more certain. The holy one was in the north—was that not enough? As warriors travelling to the service of the heir of the gods in the battle to come, Kaeo and Rat went on their way from such folk with a blessing, if no other aid, poor as such priestly fugitives were.
Rat might be touched by holiness, but Kaeo no longer dreamed visions, not since the night of the typhoon. It was as if all the prophecy had drained out him as he lent his voice to Rat’s—to Anlau’s prayers and her magic that had built some little protection against the storm. Had the dreams of the gods left him, or had he walked away from them? He no longer wanted to find Prince Dan, to lay his sword at his feet. The sword of a free man. The freedom of all the folk might have been Prince Dan’s desire, but it was the Wild Girl of Darru and Lathi who had freed Kaeo and given him that sword. He no longer even wanted to lay it at the feet of the god, who should be his god, the holy one, the heir of Nabban. Not that he doubted the god’s holiness or his cause. Not that he regretted his service to Prince Dan, either. It was only that he gave himself elsewhere.
But he did not know if that was something a god of the land would understand. Nabbani birth and blood and bone, the land was in him; Kaeo was of the land. How could he face the god whose prophet he had been, to say, I’ve given myself to a priestess of Darru and Lathi and through her to her gods of the jungles and mountains and the river she says is hers as much as yours—I cannot serve you?
Rat stirred, warm against his side in their hollow nest. Sunlight had finally found them beneath the canopy of young leaves, coppery sunset striking low through a gap in the greenery. Another night’s journey.
“Soon,” she said.
“Soon, what?”
“Soon we eat.”
They had only a handful left of the roasted sedge tubers, grubbed out of a forest pond and softened in the ashes of their cautious little fire as the sun rose. It was going to be a long and hungry march this night, and that Rat could nuzzle at his ear, a cold hand warming itself inside his shirt, and ignore a gnawing belly made him feel . . . most thoroughly desired, and rather less weary than he knew he was.
“Not that we have much to eat,” she said, voicing at least the more practical of his thoughts. “I’ll hunt when dawn comes, find us a lizard, at least. No, I meant, soon, we’ll find him.”
“The god.”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” He folded arms around her, held her close and gave up what he had begun, which was undoing the ties of her shirt.
She lay over him, cupped his face in her hands, kissed him. They made a long moment of it, but the time for lovemaking was past, or had slipped away with the growing dark. Miles before them, and the nights grew shorter, the roads, even these byways between villages, more dangerous. They had spotted scouts in imperial colours only the previous evening, heading to a manor house they were circling at a wary distance. There had come a heavy smell of smoke in the night, after that. They had not gone back to look.
“And then?” he asked.
“Then,” she said. Her smile was lost in the gathering dark. If it was a smile, and not a grimace. “Kaeo, I don’t know. I only follow, now, where I am led. Or go where I am moved to go, and what our two swords may do . . . but if we do not win the god of Nabban to be a friend to Darru and Lathi, and not another conqueror, then we will have war, still, and no peace in the south, and how many more generations can live so, before all our very souls are born crippled in our hate?”
To that he had no answer.
It did not take long to eat their sparse meal and gather up their small bundles. They passed from the forest eaves to the rutted cart-track beneath a clear sky and a full moon rising bright and silver. If he were a poet and not a mere singer of the songs of others, he might make it a portent of hope, of new light in the world.
But it could as well be said it was a very cold and distant light. A poet was not a prophet and could make of a sign what he would. There was a chill in the air that night, a wind from the north.
CHAPTER XXXII
The pace of the river quickened with the passing days as it narrowed and deepened and the land about became more rocky. It demanded all the skill of the rafters, but also carried them more swiftly, so that they often reached the next flag-marked camping site with much of the day to spare, and twice overshot it altogether, causing acrimony and weary marches into the evening for the footsoldiers.
The moon had been new when they left Dernang; now it rose in the deep night and stood high in the morning sky, diminishing dawn by dawn. It had been three days since anyone had sighted the occasional scouts that shadowed them on the eastern shore, sent out from Dwei Ontari’s cavalry, moving south through Alwu. Gar Sisu, travelling with the rafts, had been set to divine for the Dwei lord. They had, however, made contact with couriers from another of Prince Dan’s lieutenants, a Lady Dwei Liu, who had moved to secure the crossings of the Shihpan River against possible imperial movements north, as bidden, and sent her imperial cousin promises of her continued support—and proclamation throughout Shihpan of the falsity of the empress’s claim to godhead and the coming of the heir of the gods.
Ghu still went to the rafts every few days. Ahjvar followed, now, though it was hard to endure. Too small a space, no way to escape the nearness of other people, and on another level of irritation entirely, the chopping of the raft through the water made him feel vaguely sick, though it was nowhere near as bad as being on the open sea, crossing the Gulf of Taren on a ship, which he had done once, and once only.
By night, there were fogs over the camp, and the breath of them lingered through the day, even under blue skies. That, at least, was Ghu, and not wizardry, and Ahjvar did not think it was the fog itself that shrouded them. The fog was only what he might shape as walnut, yew, rowan—secrets and shadowy illusion and protection interwoven, drawn softly over them and nightly renewed.
He and Ghu were both ashore and among the rearmost company the evening that a pair of exhausted scouts returned from a cast far ahead, horses hard-ridden and failing. They were two day’s march from the ferry at their current pace. To the south, steep hills rose harsh against the sky. Somewhere there the Wild Sister earned her name, plunging through a gorge that, so legend told, had been torn through the hills by the birth-throes of a dragon, draining the great lake that had drowned the land. The same dragon who had been tamed and broken to obedience by the goddess of the river long before she ever was lost into the Mother. The same whose bones had been the first foundation laid for the castle of the White River Dragon after death in some battle against . . . no one remembered what. An ancient darkness of the dawn of the world. Usually conflated with the seven devils, but the tales had been ancient when Yeh-Lin was a girl, she said. And another story said it was the Wild Sister herself who was the dragon.
It was Ivah came back down the line to find Ghu.
“Captain Lin n
eeds you,” she said briefly. “Will you come, holy one?”
“What?” Ahjvar demanded, as they swung away to bypass the road. Not immediate threat; she carried her own bow cased. Half the march was already spread into the camp. A good time for an attack, but there was no alarm ahead.
“Imperial forces have both ferry landings.”
“Dwei Ontari?”
“They found a wounded man who’d gotten over the river, stole a fowler’s skin boat after he escaped an imperial patrol. He was one of Ontari’s scouts. He said Lord Ontari must have had enough warning the road was held there, because he never came to the ferry. Yeh-Lin’s trying to see.”
“A raid, an army?” Ahjvar demanded. “Or treachery? How secure is Alwu?”
Some old woman of the Dwei Clan was the Kho’anzi, if he remembered correctly, but she had ceded authority, in most practical matters, to Lord Ontari in Prince Dan’s name. She had sons and adult grandchildren, though, and their commitment to the past winter’s failed revolt . . . He wouldn’t rely on it, whatever faith Dan might have. The young had more to lose in a lost cause, and Dan and Daro Korat must certainly look like that, outside the reach of those who saw and recognized their god. He didn’t understand faith anyway, mistrusted it in Dan, in Ivah, in Daro Korat. It baffled him. His trust in Ghu was something entirely other. Had to be. Grown over years. Part of himself.
“Dan says this will be some raid up from Numiya, either Lai Clan loyal to the Kho’anzi of Numiya or imperial conscripts under the high lord’s officers. The border’s very close.”
“I want to know where Dwei Ontari is.”
“Yeh-Lin said you would.” Ivah’s voice didn’t give away her own opinion. “She’s searching. We don’t know anything. I don’t, anyway. She sent me for Ghu before she had asked many questions. She told Lord Ontari’s scout the holy one would hear his report.”
Numbers, Ahjvar wanted to know. And what they were, horse or foot, archers. What they had on the water, what kind of defences they had taken or raised, how long they had had to prepare . . .
“Scouts,” he said. “Patrols down the river.”
“She’s doing that, yes.” Ivah didn’t quite roll her eyes, but her careful mouth tucked up a smile. “I thought you claimed to be an assassin, not a captain.”
He shrugged. Realized how very little he liked having Ghu—and himself, but his impulse for himself would be to simply ride away—engulfed in this herd. Not comfortable and not safe, not a safety he could take on himself to ensure, no matter what scouts and patrols were out about them to watch the land.
What simple tents they had were going up, the first companies in already at their cookfires, as Ahjvar and Ghu followed Ivah’s grey up the central laneway of the camp. The weeds were already trampled into earth. Yeh-Lin, Prince Dan, Yuro, a handful of lords and officers, waited at one fire, folk of Yuro’s following—mostly former stable-hands with no official title—and Lady Ti-So’aro’s were scattered out, marking out a private space more effectively than any tent could.
The alleged scout of Dwei Ontari’s forces was hunched by the fire, an arm swathed in clean bandages, a cup in his other hand. A boy, not a man, and his cheek torn and black with bruising, too, as if he had rolled down rocks.
They rode right to the fire. Yuro rose to take Snow’s bridle, give Ghu a nod that was a lord’s hasty and respectful greeting, not in any way self-conscious. A couple of his girls darted in to lead the horses off.
The scout was looking up at them doubtfully, but when Yeh-Lin flowed to her feet to make a graceful bow, he staggered up and did his best. Ghu caught him, hand under his arm, as he stumbled. The boy was shivering and his face, where it was not bruised, was the colour of greasy clay. Whatever those bandages hid was ugly.
“Sit, Gar Oro.” Ghu helped him down, settled on his heels before him. “You’re safe here. Lady Lin’s had someone tend you?”
“I saw to him myself,” Yeh-Lin said. “He won’t lose the arm after all, but we should tuck him up by a nice warm fire so soon as he’s told all he knows.”
“Is he truly Ontari’s man?” was what Ahjvar wanted to know.
“Oh yes, and if there is any betrayal in Ontari’s vanishing, he knows nothing of it. He risked much to come so far up the river and cross in search of the prince and the holy one, believing it was what his lord would have wished and having no way of knowing if any other message might have been sent. The village just below us, where he stole the boat, is Dwei and its banner-lady had joined Dwei Ontari as he passed, but the boy didn’t want to risk discovering its overseer had decided otherwise. We’ll put a half-company of Dan’s men over by raft in the morning, to make sure it remembers where its loyalties lie. They may even know where Ontari will have gone. Don’t loom over him like that, dead king. Even if he is Wind in the Reeds, he would fall over before his knife could touch your horseboy. Gar Oro,” she addressed the scout in Nabbani again, “now that the holy one is come, tell us all.”
Gar Oro drained the last of whatever they had given him, set the cup carefully aside. His report was delivered with equal care. He had witnessed the imperial forces crossing the Wild Sister to the western ferry landing, seen the dozen Dwei retainers who manned the ferry and the courier post on the eastern shore beheaded, their bodies, and those of two imperial couriers as well, thrown into the river. The couriers were by tradition held to be neutral and untouchable, because even in civil war, lords must speak with lords. Had this been murder or had they defended the post against the forces from Numiya rather than standing aside? Gar Oro did not know.
There was only the one ferry, held against the push of the current by chains cast in bronze and wizardry, and in the time that he observed only a single company of footsoldiers and crossbowmen were assembled on the western shore, where they began to erect a palisade across the road, as if they would enclose and fortify all the landing. There was the ruin of an old watchtower on the steep and barren outcroppings of rock that began to rise as the river dropped. A jagged, broken land began there, much of it unclimbable except perhaps for goats, but they seemed to be trying to make the tower secure. An outpost for archers over the road. But on the east there were the banners of the empress and the high lord of the Lai, and he had counted two hundred banner-lords and perhaps two thousand men, imperial soldiers and Lai retainers of the banner-lords. Their camp was set with its back against the broken hills, with the river where its white waters began to guard their left. There was a ditch and palisade going up, enclosing road and the little village of a dozen huts that served the ferry post. The fortified house had been taken for the commander, who was, the scout thought, a lord of the Lai.
They had horse, yes, he said, in answer to Ivah, but only one company, the lord general’s escort. Numiya was not a province of pastures, Yeh-Lin observed, but of ploughlands. It did not breed riders.
Yeh-Lin asked what little more needed asking—what the scout could guess of the manner of their patrols, if there were wizards of the imperial corps among the Lai lord’s officers, what other vessels they might have access to besides the ferry. Patrols were mostly on foot, with a few mounted, he thought, and there was at least one blue robe that he had seen in attendance on the Lai lord, before he himself was seen and hunted and lost them in the night and the riverside scrub. There were canoes and a few fishing boats in the ferry village, a few skin boats, nothing of any size. They could still have carried more men over to the west, yes. Many more, but the area they had been enclosing there was small.
“They won’t abandon the east,” Yuro said. “They’d risk cutting themselves off from Numiya. They only want to secure the western landing. Probably the idea is take southern Alwu for the empress, annex it for the Kho’anzi of Numiya, force any movement out of Choa to go down the highway and over the Shihpan, through Vanai and Jina.”
He might be illiterate, but Ahjvar had seen him with Daro Korat and Daro Raku, and a table spread with the sort of maps Yeh-Lin claimed were forbidden to leave the imperial l
ibrary but in the possession of a wizard assigned to an imperial general—not an artist’s story but the land as a bird or visionary with a mirror might see and measure it.
“We have the numbers,” Dan said.
“On the wrong shore,” said Lord Zhung Ario.
Ghu, who had been silent, only nodding now and then and making some encouraging noise to the weary Gar Oro, looked down to the river.
“My river,” he said. “There is no wrong shore. Someone find Gar Oro a place to eat and sleep, if Lady Lin has done all that’s needed for his wounds. Lin—ask your pages to round up the raft-captains. Yuro, Ti-So’aro, Ario, Dan—we’ll want the captains of the companies. The cavalry and the archers. Ivah—horse-archers?”
“We have some. Most were with Dwei Ontari, though. Men and women of Alwu.”
“Two days’ march yet to the ferry, Yuro thinks.”
“If we go on as we have, holy one,” Yuro said. “But we could move faster.”
And show up with weary soldiers who would still, once they had dealt with whatever enemy forces were on the western shore, need to be ferried over the river, and could they use rafts for that, there where the current strengthened above the reportedly unnavigable gorge? The enemy could pick them off as they landed.
“Wait,” Ghu said. “Wait for the captains.”
And when the captains came to sit around the fire with those who thought themselves the great folk, he laid out what they would do. Ahjvar stood behind, watching them all, the faces attentive, solemn—delighted, a few. Doubting, some.
“You can’t,” Yeh-Lin said, and switched to Praitannec. “You’re not thinking of the weight of the water, the push of it, Nabban. You don’t understand the strength of the river. Even iron bends under the force of water . . .”
Her voice trailed to silence.
