Theara was screaming, inside the tent…. Danica stepped heedlessly on the man she had felled as she rushed inside.
Dimness, laced with rosy shadow, shadow swirling into indistinct shapes—a blade flashed like the track of a comet, and the screams stopped. No, they continued, suspended in the air beyond hearing, ululating with terror, ripping Danica’s senses into quivering shreds.
The shield burned. Its light defined a man, stocky form, dark face—a staring, gaping mask, bestial madness. He rushed out the other end of the tent and into the night. The image of that face remained branded behind Danica’s eyes. Aveyron inhaled sharply at her back but said nothing.
Danica raised the shield like a torch, praying. Mother, no, please no…. Theara lay half across Lyris, her manicured hands outspread. Blood welled from a gaping wound in her breast. Her eyes were averted, her lips curled back; death had come upon her an unwelcome lover.
Danica heard her own voice swearing, vicious oaths condemning Adrastes to the nethermost pits of hell. And she was answered; Lyris twitched, heaving weakly at Theara’s body.
I tried to stop him,” she croaked, “but he had no eyes for me. Even when I cut him, still he came at her. Why not me, Ashtar? …”
“You … did well,” Danica told her. I did miserably, she thought, not anticipating, not preventing this. And why not me? Because Adrastes does not yet dare to attack me openly. Theara died for me, because of me … I glory in my power, but I am powerless.
The shouts from outside began to take on a certain rhythm, the bellows of centurions calling their troops to order. So the set was over. It was time to count the pieces expended. To be strong again.
Shandir staggered in, her hair singed, her clothing soot-blackened; she began cleaning her dagger on a handful of grass, and then she saw Theara. The dagger fell from her hand; she dropped to her knees beside the body of the courtesan, groping for pulse points. “Monsters,” she said. “Foul monsters in the guise of men.”
Lyris began crying, her thin body heaving with great, dry sobs. Would it help, Danica asked herself numbly, if I could cry?
A hand ripped away the tent flap. A streak of lightning cut the darkness. Solifrax, and a glowering Bellasteros clad only in a short chiton. His eyes reflected twofold the light of the blade.
Shandir looked up, saw the king, and wordlessly hoisted Lyris up and bore her away. For a moment Danica and Bellasteros were alone, surrounded by thin fabric, flames, and blood. “Are you proud of this work your colleagues have done?” Danica asked. Her shield snapped lightning back to the sword.
“Unfair,” he told her. “Unfair …” He lowered the blade and knelt by Theara’s body. His exhaled breath became a moan; he arranged an ebony curl on her cheek. “Ashtar,” he murmured. “Her crime was in loving you?”
“Of course,” said Danica. “Her preventing Adrastes’s taking you by surprise is hardly worth her life.”
“But it called her to his attention, did it not?” His eyes darted upward, his brows knotted with an incredulous surmise. “I was just speaking of her, of how she was safe here …”
His inference leapt from mind to mind. Instinctively Danica clutched the star-shield closer to her, absorbing its gleam back into herself. “If the priest is that powerful, Marcos, the game is already forfeit.”
“We cannot believe that,” he replied. He rose and laid Solifrax across the shield; their individual lights ebbed, becoming one soft, shaded gleam. “We must play it to the end, Danica.”
“At least we no longer play alone,” she told him. They allowed themselves a moment’s tender regard, then turned back to their respective roles.
*
Bellasteros left Patros in charge of cleaning up the battleground in the Sabazian camp and stalked back to the main encampment. The starlight touched his face, and a cold night breeze rippled moaning through his hair, but his thoughts were blood-red, blood-warm.
He plunged in through the doorway of Adrastes’s tent, shedding attendants like drops of water. Mardoc and the priest sat comfortably with cups of wine in their hands. The general started at this apparition of his king, but Adrastes bowed graciously and gestured to a chair. “Please to join us, my lord.”
Solifrax hissed like a striking snake. “General Mardoc,” Bellasteros growled. Mardoc rose warily to his feet, eyeing the sword. “General, are you or are you not in charge of my army?”
“I am,” Mardoc replied.
“Then how do you allow soldiers to become drunk, to abandon the dignity of the men of Sardis? Where were you, when the sounds of battle rose from outside our gates?”
“They are only women, my lord,” protested Mardoc.
“They are our allies and deserve respect as such! But no, five of our soldiers are dead, five, who would be alive now if you attended to your duties instead of …” Bellasteros grimaced. His body quivered, every muscle straining taut against the skin. “Surely,” he said, very quietly, “Bogazkar’s scouts speed back to him, laughing at us.”
Adrastes turned his cup in his hands; his topaz ring glinted. Bellasteros’s eye glinted in return. For this you will let Mardoc take the blame, as you let his daughter take the blame for another of your plots; hypocrite, to do this night what you condemned her for this day …
Adrastes smiled silkily, expression hooded.
But I cannot touch you! Bellasteros shouted to himself. To believe I once thought you the model of righteousness. I once thought you spoke for the god. Surely your pride will turn on you someday … He choked down his rage and forced his attention back to the general. “Mardoc, I am sorely disappointed. Would you seek to take my kingship? Would you rule in my stead?”
“No, my lord.” Mardoc’s injured air was not assumed but genuine.
Once I could talk to you, Bellasteros groaned silently. Once we understood each other, and our desires were the same. Gods! Why do you trust him now instead of me! But all he said was, “Then stop taking so much on yourself. Save our soldiers for battle.”
Adrastes was watching him, still smiling, as slimy as some soft creature pulled from beneath a rock. He said nothing, but Bellasteros had the sick feeling that he heard every nuance, every implication, that he knew how much Bellasteros had changed and that he lay in wait to snare him with it. He complacently believed that he knew the mind of Harus.
The army of Sardis believed it, too. And what was a conqueror without an army?
“Good evening, then, gentlemen,” Bellasteros said between his teeth. “I hope to have your cooperation by the time we move out tomorrow.” Another flash of the sword and he vanished as abruptly as he had arrived.
Mardoc and Adrastes exchanged a long, thoughtful look. “He has the spirit to rule,” the general said. “He carries the sword of Daimion.”
“He has been touched by the gods,” agreed the priest.
Mardoc sat wearily into his chair and lifted his cup. “By the talons of Harus, Your Eminence, he is in danger. My poor lad …”
“We must save him from himself,” Adrastes murmured.
My poor Theara, Bellasteros thought, gaining his tent. I condemned you with my own words—and I cannot even mourn you or ask vengeance for your death, for you were only a woman and said to be of little account in the world.
He slipped Solifrax into its sheath, laid it down, and kicked a ewer viciously across the tent.
Adrastes is powerful indeed, he thought. And my power is hemmed tightly, tightly … I condemned Theara with my own words. Danica, can you avenge her when I condemn you as well? His anger died with a shudder; pale and cold, he grabbed for the ewer and was wrenchingly sick.
*
Theara’s funeral pyre lit the dawn sky, driving away the midwinter chill. Flames licked insatiably toward the sun; smoke spread in slow whorls down a discordant breeze, shaping itself into ringlets, into draped gowns, into the curves of a woman’s body, and then dissipated, gone forever.
The Companions saluted, a triple row of greedy swords offered to the sky.
<
br /> The Sardians returning from burying their colleagues had the sense to hold their tongues about such barbarous customs. The king sat his warhorse atop the embankment, his eyes as clear and hard as the falcon’s.
The fire was hot on Danica’s tight, still face. Atalia, Lyris. Ilanit, Shandir shot strained glances from pyre to queen and back again. It was impossible to tell which burned the brighter.
Chapter Twelve
The army of Sardis crept across a damp, stony plain, following the Royal Road. It seemed as if the soldiers, the carts, the animals stayed in the same place and the sky turned above them; the horizon ahead was the same hazy nothingness as the horizon behind. The cold, sharp wind promised rain.
Promised sleet, perhaps, Bellasteros thought. Only I would move south in the winter. He squinted upward. The sun was a ghostly disc behind a shroud of clouds, just large enough to hold in the hand, like the disc Mari had given to Daimion, that he had held as he died…. The conqueror shivered. He was small, an insect in a horde of insects, stubbornly moving a handsbreadth across the great expanse of the world.
His senses, questing like an insect’s antennae, felt rather than heard the grumbling of his soldiers—a deserted land around them, and Sardis far away … Soldiers always grumbled; it was good for them. Just let them obey.
Patros rode beside him, silent, holding upright one of the falcon standards. The bronze image of the god rode the wind proudly, unblinking. Its talons were ready to seize the world … Bellasteros straightened his back and spurred his horse, moving through his personal guard so that he alone led the army. And the nothingness ahead wavered, growing darker; hills, rocky hills, the road leading through a wide valley.
He gestured, and scouts galloped ahead.
Mardoc rode on the far flank with the cavalry. Adrastes, Chryse, Declan rode in the center of the army in the baggage train. Aveyron walked beside Hern, not commenting on the fresh sword wound across his arm. Bellasteros himself led the infantry that snaked in a crescent of trudging feet from the vanguard, down the opposite flank, to the rear.
And the rearguard was also cavalry, Sabazian cavalry, Danica and her warriors eating the men’s dust. Bellasteros did not look back. She had skulked there ever since that night when Theara had died. Lyris, sent defiantly as messenger, asked that he punish the men who had raided her camp. No, he replied. I shall not punish them, and I shall not punish you for killing five of them, as my centurions request; let it go, Danica, let it go.
It was as if he felt Mardoc’s baleful glare on the back of his neck. It was as if he felt the piercing eyes of Adrastes cutting away his pretenses. Danica, he cried silently, what can I do?
His thoughts pummeled his mind. Galloping hooves pounded his ears. She was there, followed only by the faithful Atalia, cutting through the ranks of infantry and sending his guard veering aside. “Harus,” the conqueror swore.
Patros looked around, his eyes widening, and he deftly turned his horse into Atalia’s so that she had to remain with him just out of earshot. He ventured a pleasantry; she returned it as if it were an epithet.
The army plodded on. Danica looked not at Bellasteros but at the valley opening before them. “You refused my request?”
“I had no choice but to refuse.”
“You hear what the soldiers are saying? That we lured them to our tents, that we lay with them and killed them for sport?”
“I hear. Women have always endured such lies.”
She turned to him with a toss of her head, eyes glinting like cut and polished emeralds. “Then stop it. Show the truth. Punish those who attacked us and punish those who spread such vile lies about us.”
“Then I would have to punish Mardoc and Adrastes,” he told her. “The men who attacked you were drugged, enspelled to do the deed. Few Sardians are the monsters you think, my lady.”
Her reply was short and coarse.
Testily, he went on. “You ask justice, as do I. But justice is a rare and dear commodity. One that I cannot afford—that we cannot afford now. My kingship rests on a sword’s edge.”
“And if that sword turns, we both perish. True?”
“True. We and our people with us.” Bellasteros allowed himself a long look at her stony profile, willing her to bend. “Danica,” he said softly, “you feel that you should have prevented the attack, do you not? But Adrastes is strong. If we quarrel over this, will he not gloat? Is he worth it, Danica?”
“You jolly me along like a child,” she returned sharply. “You tell me the obvious.”
“Then why confront me with demands you know I cannot grant?”
For a time she did not reply. Their horses walked forward, side by side. Her hands clenched and unclenched on the reins. He eyed sideways the careful draping of her cloak, filling in the curve underneath. I condemn you, too, my son. With my own mouth I condemn you, and I am helpless, helpless …
“It gnaws me,” said Danica. “What good is the power, what good knowing the mind of Ashtar, of Harus, if we remain helpless?”
“You know me too well.” He laughed, quietly, from the corner of his mouth. “You hear my thoughts.”
“And you mine.” She lifted her shield in the briefest of salutes. “Doubt, I think, is another commodity we cannot afford.”
Bellasteros touched the hilt of Solifrax in reply and then glanced exaggeratedly behind him. “And neither must our adversary doubt …”
She was quick, so very quick. Her brows tilted, her mouth crumpled. “You name yourself king!” she shouted, jerking her horse away, circling back. “You cannot even control your rabble!”
“If you seek an alliance with me,” he bellowed in return, “you will control your own rabble and leave my soldiers alone!”
“By the blue eyes of Ashtar …”
“You dare use that name in the presence of the falcon, woman? You will buy this alliance with your respect!”
Danica spurred her horse away, plunging through the ranks of infantry and scattering them like a disturbed covey of partridge. Atalia spun and followed, shooting an evil if somewhat puzzled look at Bellasteros. Patros hastened up; the king was shaking in rage. No, the king was shaking in an attempt to contain his mirth.
“A dangerous game you play, Marcos.” Patros said. “The high priest will see through your ploy as easily as we saw through his.”
“But the army watches, and the game turns on their strength. Adrastes needs me to play, as I need him. Has it ever been safe?”
“No. But I wonder at times …”
Bellasteros regained his breath and arranged his face in stern lines. “Speak your mind, my friend.”
“I wonder if you—if we pursue the right course. Perhaps Ashtar mocks us for falling so easily to her snare. She could still betray us.”
“Spoken like a true minion of Adrastes Falco.”
“But do you not ever doubt?” persisted Patros.
Bellasteros turned a dark, annoyed glance on his colleague. “And do you never dream of the full moon, Sabazel and the peace of Ilanit’s embrace?”
Patros flushed. “I spoke too hastily, my lord. I—did not think.”
“No, you did think. And I think. Too much, perhaps. We never used to question the wisdom of the gods or of their self-appointed mouthpieces.”
The soldiers of Sardis entered the passage of the valley. The thin metallic disc of the sun followed them, but they cast no shadow on the bare branches, the tumbled rocks that surrounded them.
I like not the smell of this place, Bellasteros thought. Acrid, the stale blood of the battlefield.
He grimaced at the importunities of his own mind.
*
It was late afternoon. One last shaft of sunlight cut between massed clouds, gilding the thin veil of dust that hung over the army. The centurions prepared to make camp.
A distant rumble disturbed the wind—thunder and rain—no, not thunder. A deep cry from the throats of many men. Scouts came pounding across the floor of the valley, leaning low over the n
ecks of their horses, shouting urgently of imperial cavalry and of imminent attack.
The army swirled, glittered with drawn blades. Bellasteros and his guard fell back into the main body of the infantry; messengers went scurrying toward Mardoc, toward Danica. Trumpets blared.
A darkness on the horizon, wavering smoke in the glare of sunlight, gloom spangled with the bright points of weapons— a shimmering mirage of horsemen pouring across the valley floor.
Danica heard the distant shout and rose in her stirrups. Her eye saw as clearly as that of a falcon spiraling high above the valley; two groups of horsemen, one large, one small. Raiding parties only, designed to damage and dishearten. She had given her own orders by the time a messenger reached her.
The Sardian infantry formed a shield wall bristling with spears. The falcon standard fluttered its wings above them. On the far flank Mardoc swore at the cleverness of Bogazkar, attacking from the eye of the sun when the Sardians were at their weariest.
The baggage train circled in on itself, oxen bellowing protests and women shrieking. Chryse looked out, gasped, fell back into her soft carpets. Declan leaped out and grabbed the harness of the lead ox, yanking it around. Adrastes glanced out of his own wagon, pulling a long dagger from his robes.
A shower of arrows, and the imperial horsemen crashed into the shield wall. Their animals plunged, screamed, fell in a tangle of thrashing legs. The riders leaped down and battled the Sardians face-to-face.
Bellasteros’s horse reared. He raised Solifrax toward the sun. It shone, clear, blinding—the soldiers of the Empire quailed. With a shout the Sardians drove forward, over the crumpled bodies of horses and men.
And another wave of cavalry broke through the line, throwing men down, trampling them. Bellasteros, his guard, and Patros bearing the falcon leaped into the struggle. Solifrax rose and fell, flaming, blood-red fire licking the astounded faces of the imperial soldiers. The king’s warhorse pranced among them, smashing them with its powerful hooves.
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