The Warrior King: Book Three of the Seer King Trilogy

by Chris Bunch

  “Canals stretched through the city, connecting — ”

  A gentle snore came, and her body was soft next to mine.

  I stared up at the deck above me, thinking about what she’d told me and what I’d said and wondered what would come in six months, a year, two years.

  I’d thought once before about that and decided that it was unlikely I’d survive to see anything resembling peace, which I found strangely comforting.

  But suppose I did?

  What then?

  • • •

  It seemed that we were in a time of our own, but that was not so, when I remembered how few days we’d been traveling.

  The question that came, even though I didn’t want to ask it: What of the armies?

  Cymea cast Seeing Spells south, saw fragments of Bairan’s army, grimly retreating in long, sullen lines toward Maisir.

  She tried a spell north, to see what Tenedos was doing, but felt a building, malevolent pressure, and broke away.

  “He’s still there,” she said. “We didn’t get lucky and one of his demons ate him.”

  “That’d give even a demon terrible indigestion,” I said. “What about Nicias?”

  Again, she tried, said she could not be sure, but felt presences beyond Tenedos.

  I guessed that both sides were holding their positions, the Grand Councilors in the capital, Tenedos somewhere outside, hopefully above the Latane Delta.

  I assumed Tenedos had discovered Bairan’s death, and the Maisirian retreat. But that would do no more than take some of the pressure off him, and make it easier to take care of first my rebels, being the hardest fighters, then the Grand Council.

  Cymea wasn’t able to call a Seeing Spell on my army, but she tried to send what she called a feeling to Sinait … we were alive, well, moving as fast as we could.

  Or as fast as the river could take us.

  • • •

  “Look at this,” Cymea said. She held a container that looked like something intended for flour. “I was going to teach myself how to bake and almost dropped this because it was so heavy. Look what was inside!”

  She held three imperial gold coins in her hand. “There’s two dozen more just like it.”

  I tapped one of the coins on the tabletop, could tell by its ring it was genuine, then patted the cabin wall beside me.

  “Boat,” I said earnestly, “I think you’re being too good to us.”

  • • •

  I drove my hips upward, letting her body pull my semen out, my hands kneading her breasts, and she contorted back, cried out, then fell limply forward on me. I stroked her back, her hair, and after a while she murmured, “I’m back.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “I’ve got a question.”

  “Mmmh?”

  “What happens when we rejoin the army?” she asked.

  “We’ll have to fuck less publicly, and you’ll have to learn to not shout so much when you’re coming?”

  “That wasn’t what I meant! What’ll your soldiers say when they find out we’re sleeping together?”

  “You won’t lose your temper?”

  “No,” she said. “No matter what.”

  “They’ll probably think it’s great that their General Damastes is fucking a Tovieti. Subverting from within.”

  “That was a really rotten joke,” she said. “But they really won’t care?”

  “No. Some of them probably think we were anyway, since soldiers normally think any two people who’re reasonably good looking of different sexes are going to end up in bed together.”

  “That’s not very fair to women,” she said. “What are we, nothing but creatures of lust?”

  “That’s what soldiers hope, especially the young ones, because that’s what they are. When I was a youth, thinking about sand could make me lustful. But that brings up a question for me. What are your people … the Tovieti … going to do?”

  She thought for a while.

  “Honestly?”

  “Of course.”

  “I don’t think they’ll like it a lot. You — all of you who aren’t Tovieti — are their enemies, and they’ve only signed a temporary truce.”

  “Odd,” I said. “A time or so ago, you would’ve said ‘we.’”

  Again silence, then: “I would’ve, wouldn’t I?”

  “Again, my question — what are they going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Probably nothing but growl. I’m a wizard, so I’m allowed a great deal of license, even though I’m a Tovieti. I guess, so long as I don’t become a turncoat, which I won’t, nothing much should happen.

  “Besides,” she sighed, “as I heard Svalbard say once, back in that tower, ‘fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.’ And we surely have more important things to worry about. Like the emperor and those fools down in Nicias.”

  “Of course,” I said. “First those fuckers, then we worry about other fucking.”

  “Speaking of which,” she said, “since I’m not really sleepy, and since I’ve been a really good girl today and let you steer the boat for a while, and I brought the oil in, which is right beside you, what do you think about doing it everywhere, the way we did the first time we made love?”

  “I think that could be arranged,” I said.

  She rolled on her side, then onto her back.

  “Then come up here and let me taste you.”

  I obeyed, getting to my knees, and a thought came: I think I’m very close to falling in love with this woman.

  • • •

  The land on either side of the river was unburned, unlooted, and every now and then a brave soul had chanced rebuilding within sight of the Latane. I identified where I thought we were by various bends in the river, although the great river changes its course often enough for no one except an experienced boat captain to be sure.

  We landed not far from where we saw enough smoke to suggest a village, or at any rate a prosperous farm, and disembarked with our gear.

  We’d debated on what to do with our boat. Logically, we should have tied it up where we landed and sold it to someone in that village.

  But there was something wrong with that idea.

  So, when we had everything we needed ashore, I pushed it back out, and let the current take it.

  It spun twice, then was carried to the center of the stream, moving steadily, as if an invisible pilot were at the rudder.

  “I hope it goes downstream and finds two other lovers who’re in trouble and helps them,” Cymea said, leaning against me.

  I put my arm around her.

  “That’s not very good, coming from a pragmatic sorcerer.”

  “Right now I’m just someone who’s feeling sad, feeling like we had something very special, and now…” her voice trailed off, and she looked back at the boat.

  “Would it help any if I said I love you?” I said softly.

  “It would,” she said. “It would a lot.”

  • • •

  We came to a rather small farm that had two beautiful horses in a tiny paddock, one a gray, the other a bay, the bay reminding me of my own long-lost Lucan, who I hoped was having a peaceful retirement on some horse ranch beyond Nicias. Neither horse was fit for plowing nor even a carriage.

  We talked to the farmer, who claimed they’d shown up in his field one day, and he was holding them for their proper owner or owners.

  “Meantime,” he grumbled, “they’re eatin’ me outa house an’ everything.”

  We examined them carefully, found them to be in good shape. One had the earcroppings of a cavalry mount, which I ignored. Three of the boat’s gold coins, two more for saddlery, and we rode on.

  I named the bay Swift, Cymea called her horse Wanderer.

  • • •

  We rode due east, and even though it was the end of the Time of Storms, the new year beginning, and it was wet and cold often, it was a wondrous time.

  The farmers we met were mostly cheery, this being the
time of year they didn’t have to labor from dawn to dusk and beyond in the fields, and they had food to spare and, not infrequently, a loft to let for the night.

  There weren’t many fresh vegetables, but this was hog-killing time, and so we had succulent pork chops with dried fruit, freshly smoked hams, roasts with berry or mustard sauces, breads and pies made with dried fruit.

  But the land still showed the scars of war, with abandoned farms and acreage lying fallow, and we went for leagues without seeing anyone, riding as fast as we could without foundering either ourselves or the horses.

  But for us this wasn’t lonely, but the best nights, when we were alone.

  Sometimes we slept in these abandoned houses, but more often, for they gave us a bit of a shiver, in their barns or haylofts.

  • • •

  We wove our way through a strange forest, the young trees planted in even rows like corn or wheat.

  “Who grows trees just for the wood?” Cymea wondered. “Lazy carpenters,” I guessed, and Cymea stuck her tongue out. I rode to one, leaned close to its trunk.

  “I wasn’t far wrong,” I said. “This is some kind of hardwood, and the trunk’s been guided with wire wraps to grow perfectly straight. Maybe in its normal state it’s twisty, bent, and someone wants straight-grain lumber for something. Expensive furniture.”

  “I don’t believe you’re doing anything other than guessing,” Cymea said. “We’ll ask when we come to the owner’s house.”

  But if there was one, it was well hidden, for we saw nothing by dusk but this endless plantation, with straight lanes cut at intervals.

  “It appears we’ll be sleeping out,” she said.

  “And there’s nothing the matter with that,” I said. “We’ve supplies in the saddlebags, you can make some sort of soup, and I’ll prepare the most luxurious bed you’ve ever slept in.”

  “So where do we stop?”

  “At the next creek.”

  Cymea took care of the horses, piled stones together for a fireplace, built a large fire as I’d asked her. I cut the limbs off two trees twenty feet apart, clambered up and topped them where they veed apart, hacked down the ones between, and muscled out the shallowly rooted stumps. One of the slender trees I’d cut went across the veenotches of the two standing trees, and others were laid against it on one side. I laced branches between these trees, until we had a good, strong wall against the brisk wind.

  On the inside of the single-sided shelter I carefully laid leafy boughs, layer on layer, until we had a high-piled bed. On top of that went our bedding.

  In front of the bed, I made ready another fire, this one narrow, as long as our bed. I found dry wood, cut and piled it ready at hand.

  “And there you have it,” I announced. “We sleep in the windbreak, with a fire on the outside. When somebody gets cold, all that’s necessary is to throw another log on the fire.”

  “You sleep on the outside,” Cymea said, “so you’re closer to the wood.”

  “We’re not even going to draw straws, or twigs, rather?”

  “Not a chance,” Cymea said. “You cheat. And if you don’t, I would. I’m a magician, remember?”

  Dinner was half a loaf of bread we’d bought a day ago, heated by the fire and buttered, and a thick lentil soup, spiced with herbs picked along the trail. I’d learned a sorcerer’s plant knowledge wasn’t just for magical benefit.

  We washed ourselves and our dishes at the creek, and I took coals from the cook fire before I banked it for the night, and started the fire in front of our bed.

  A winter wind whispered, but we were very warm.

  “Pretty impressive,” Cymea said as we cuddled. “You do know all sorts of woodsy lore, don’t you?”

  “The product of a misspent youth,” I said. “Less schooling, more woods running.”

  Neither of us was sleepy, the smell of the boughs we lay on like incense.

  “Speaking of youth,” I said. “All you’ve told me about yours was the bad parts. Was that all?”

  “No,” Cymea said. “Of course not. But are you sure you want to hear it?”

  “As long as it’s not an endless array of the lovers you had to make me jealous.”

  “Fool,” she said, turning her head and kissing my chin. “Who can be jealous of the past?”

  “Me.”

  “I meant,” Cymea said, her voice very serious, “that if you want to hear about me, you’re going to hear some things you won’t like and about some people you’d probably rather see dead. And sometimes it isn’t that pretty.”

  “I asked, didn’t I?” I said after a moment. “Which means I’d best be prepared to listen. Start with what happened in Polycittara. Leave out your family, if you wish.”

  Cymea took a deep breath.

  “Very well. And I think I do wish. So let’s start with me in your prison cell. I was still stunned with what’d happened at Lanvirn, so I don’t remember the first couple of days.

  “But slowly I came back, and what I remember is the jailers. There were women in the cells, and the jailers were always going on about what they wanted to do with them. Or to the boys in the cells. And to me, even though I was a little girl.

  “The worst of them was a bastard called Ygerne. I can still remember his name, see his face. He had the most appalling imagination. I still have trouble believing any mind can be that much of a sewer.”

  “He wasn’t just a jailer,” I interrupted. “He was a torturer. A warder from Nicias.”

  “That explains a great deal,” she said. “I told him once he wouldn’t dare do anything to me, or I’d report him to the prince regent.

  “He thought that awfully funny and said after the emperor’s brother pronounced sentence on me, which could only be one thing, no one would care what happened.

  “I saw he was right, for now and again a warder would let himself into one of the cells and pleasure himself. Ygerne loved to watch that.” She shuddered. “But I knew, before I’d submit to him, I’d have the strength to bite my tongue through and bleed to death, and, strangely enough, that gave me heart to stand firm.

  “But then the castle was attacked, and we heard the sound of fighting, of dying. None of us knew what was going on, but all knew whatever it was, it couldn’t be worse than what we were facing.

  “The guards retreated into the cells, and some said they should hold us as hostages. Ygerne thought that was a great idea. But before any of the cells could be unlocked, a wave of men burst in, killing, cutting.

  “Ygerne pled for mercy, but we shouted what a monster he was, and he was killed, as was every other guard, even a few that had been passing human.”

  “That wasn’t a day when anybody showed mercy,” I said.

  “No. The cells were opened, both in the block I was in, which was for political prisoners, and in the other areas for common criminals.

  “Two men shouted for silence, said they were Tovieti, and anyone who wished to join them would be taken care of.

  “I’d never known any of the Tovieti, although I’m sure my father, and perhaps my brother, had. But I had nowhere to go, and so I said I’d go with them.

  “When they found out who I was, they immediately detailed three men to get me out of the castle.

  “I was hurried out through the courtyard, and everything was madness. I don’t know where you were.”

  “In the far wing, getting ready to counterattack,” I said.

  “I didn’t want to stay there. Men were doing things I didn’t want to see.” She shuddered. “There were women … sometimes girls younger than I was, being, being …”

  “Never mind,” I said. “I know what was done. So you fled down into the streets of Polycittara.”

  “And rode out that same night, just as the battle was at its fiercest. I wanted to stay in the city, wait for my father. Even if he was what he was, he was who he was. But they said no, that it appeared the emperor’s dogs, sorry Damastes, that slipped out, were winning.

  “They
took me to a farm somewhere outside the city, and we hid for three days.

  “I heard of my father’s death then.”

  She sat up in her blankets.

  “I’ve heard that sometimes, when people have a whole line of shocks hit them, they turn cold. True?”

  “True,” I said. “I think it’s a gift from the gods, to keep us from completely falling apart.”

  “That’s what happened to me,” Cymea said. “I felt bad for the deaths, for the ending of the life I’d had, and worried, scared of the unknown.

  “But I knew I was going to live, not only live, but become strong, and one day find vengeance.

  “The Tovieti spirited me out of Kallio within the week, and I was passed from family to family. Something you … or Kutulu … no doubt already know is there are various levels in the sect. First are the believers, the storekeeper you buy from, the drover on the road, the farmer or the clerk, the quiet soldier in the ranks, people who accept the teachings, but practice them quietly, the ones the warders and the noblemen never know about. They’re our strength, our spies, our shelter, and our treasury. Then there are what we call the Gray Men, the ones who, either by choice or circumstances, are the people of action.”

  “The stranglers,” I said, feeling anger in my voice.

  “Yes. Or the ones who sell the contraband the men with the silk cords bring. Cell leaders frequently don’t have time for a double life, and so they become gray.

  “The last group are what we call the Ones Who Are Sought, those the warders have found out, the ones who face prison or worse, the ones who can’t show their face by day in any familiar place.

  “I was one of them, passed from home to home, from believer to believer, until I came to Khurram.

  “To my new home.”

  She looked at me and smiled, her smile just a bit on the wry side.

  “You really won’t like this. I was taken in by the head of a lycee, whose school taught the sons and daughters of the rich men of Khurram, many of them vintners and merchants.”

  I didn’t like that — a subtle poisoner from within.

  “No one ever caught on to what he was doing?”