The melee was a mess, twisting stamping horses, threshing swords above it, dust and bits of grass rising up and wounded humans and horses threshing or crawling on the ground, and Hotblood’s unearthly squeal over it all, as he grabbed a wounded Arkan by the back of the neck and shook him like a rat; Shkai’ra could feel the quasi-sexual rush of pleasure he felt as the bone snap. No one was obeying fast enough. “Retreat, Zaikdammit!” she screamed. Bukangkt was there, a cut across one cheek of his half-Lakan face; between them they got the others to pull back.
The Hyeme went loping among the Slaughterers, some with enough energy left to whoop and leap, others hanging grimly onto stirrup-leathers or lowered hands. The wounded came draped over cavalry horses, some on spare Arkan mounts if a friend had had time to grab the reins; the Hyerne carried some on chair-hands, running despite their burdens. Anyone too badly hurt to get up or call for help was just out of luck. Suddenly there was time to notice the dryness in her mouth, the way her armor squeezed at her ribs ... she forced her breathing slow and deep, hawked and spat.
The remnants of the Imperial horse were pulling back too, but she could see light infantry moving in the bush, sun twinkling on their barbed javelins. Sova and her Yeoli were too far back, a wounded rider between them, his feet dragging and their swordhands under his armpits. She reined in, swearing. Good riding, though. They handed him over to someone with an extra horse—and wheeled back for the bloodied field.
Shit ...! It looked safe, the Arkan cavalry were all gone; some friend of Sneeze-name was lying on the field, no doubt. Nobody knows the difference between courage and stupidity at that age. She stood in the stirrups and shouted at them—too far. Though not too far to hear the trumpeter blowing “retreat”; it wasn’t just stupidity, but disobedience in the face of the enemy. Cold anger grew in her.
“Rally them a hundred meters further back,” she said to Bukangkt, then spurred toward the two. Sova was going to hug the post for this, and Sneeze-name beside her ... if they lived. Zaik and Baiwun hear me, she thought. I’ll keep her alive, if I have to kill her myself to do it.
The pair had another body slung over Sova’s horse, and cantered back towards the Alliance cavalry, glancing over their shoulders now and then, zteafakaz casual. Shkai’ra shouted and waved, seeing what they hadn’t: the barbed javelin arching high from the woods, plunging down.
A horse sacrifice to you, Victory-Begetter, she prayed, helpless, as she rocked into a gallop toward them. “Heads up, heads up!” Zaik, or Glitch, godlet of mischance, heard her even if they didn’t; the weapon plunged over Sova’s shoulder and into Sneeze-name’s horse, just behind the saddle. It gave a huge buck; he was thrown, landed badly, lay still.
And Sova actually started to dismount.
“Keep moving—I’ll get him!” Shkai’ra shouted, close enough now to clout the girl on the side of the helmet. She passed at a gallop, down with one foot out of the stirrups, snatched the Yeoli’s collar. “Uhnnn.” Heavy. He was dead weight. She heaved him over her saddlehorn and Sova fell in beside her as they galloped back to the rest, face full of shock.
“Is he all right? Khyd-hird, is he all right?”
The Kommanza could see movement beyond her troop as it formed up, pike-points and helmets and dust. A Yeoli heavy-foot regiment, coming up at the double and deploying at the run. Impressive. Their pike-points came down with a long ripple, and the archers fanned out to either side. There was another regiment double-timing up behind them, Schvait in black armor and tunics, and a pair of springalds bumping along in the vanguard; light catapults with horizontal throwing-arms powered by skeins of twisted ox-sinew. The Alliance foot halted just out of crossbow range, staying motionless as Arkan points came down, the Imperials spitting on their hands and bracing their pikes. Waiting for the arrow-storm from longbows that outranged their own missile-troops’ weapons.
Whack. A vicious sound, as the first of the springalds was swiveled around and cut loose. It threw a glass sphere that caught fire in mid-flight, then arched down to draw a streak of inextinguishable flame through the Arkan ranks. Clingfire, naphtha and tar, sulphur and phosphorus and pitch. Whack: the other springald fired, and trumpet and drums brayed from the group around the eagle-standard. The Arkans gave a deep guttural shout, loud enough to drown the screams of men being roasted alive in their armor, and charged.
The Yeolis charged to meet them, giving their war-cry, “Ai-yae-ohhhhhh! The flat snap of crossbows resounded under the musical massed thrum-and-whistle of longbow fire, javelins rattling through the air, the Imperials screaming out “Kellin, kellin.” The impact was a massive rolling sound, thudding in chest and stomach as eighteen-foot polearms struck with both sides at a dead run, thousands behind them. Both front ranks just disappeared, and the ripple threw warriors off their feet for scores of meters back into each formation; then they were locked, a giant tumbling street-brawl under the bristling pikes of the rear ranks. File-closers and decurions moved in with halberds and two-handed swords; warriors with shortswords and daggers clenched in their teeth crawled and rolled under the ranks too tightly locked to move, and stabbed and sliced from below.
Another Imperial rejin was moving down the road from where it had waited concealed, as the Schvait formed to deploy on the Yeoli’s right flank. The springalds kept up their steady bucking whack-whack, clingfire globes making smoky tracks through the arching grey storm of missiles that sped both ways above the packed fight.
We re safe for the moment. Even Gold-bottom Chevenga wasn’t going to be able to finesse a meeting engagement; this dance would last for a while. Those lancers weren’t coming down to mix it in, either. Two many had lost their mounts, or their lives; the survivors would stay up on the hills, now, and keep the Yeoli foot from pursuing too hard when the Imperial infantry pulled back. The Arkans are learning how to retreat, I think. She had more immediate business.
“You insubordinate little shit!” She struck Sova across the side of the helmet again, harder, making a sound like a cracked bell; the girl kept her silence, and backed her horse out of reach. But her eyes went wide; now she realized what she’d done. I’ve never campaigned with a child before, it’s enough to turn your hair white. “I know you’re sheep-fucking brave, now show some brains. It’s the trickster god’s own miracle you weren’t killed! Gods-dammit, I want you at my funeral twenty years from now, not me at yours tomorrow!”
“Ve couldn’t leave him, he’s one of Echera-e’s childhood friends!” The girl’s Thanish accent always came out more, when she was excited. Now she’ll change the subject; Shkai’ra was getting to know Sova well. “Khud-hird, is he all right? Ve ve got to get him to a Haian!”
Shkai’ra looked down at the Yeoli, still lying across her saddle. Bleeding from the nose, big graze across the side of his face, but probably no broken bones from the way his body moved. She peeled back an eyelid, then the other. The pupils reacted, but one was a little bigger than the other.
“Concussion,” she said. “Not too bad.” Her voice dropped, steady and just loud enough to carry a few feet over the enormous noise of combat from the road. She fixed the girl’s eyes with hers. “What did I tell you when you arrived, about discipline?”
Sova’s lips thinned. “I know. I’m under army law.”
“Correct, military apprentice. And the punishment for disobeying a clear order in the face of the enemy is flogging. In this army, flogging up to falling at the discretion of the commander.” Sova blinked; no doubt she’d heard tales of what that felt like, from Yeolis. Shkai’ra waited,expression bleak. “Given your youth, the circumstances and whatever, I’ll commute it to fifteen strokes. Consider yourself on report, trooper. Now take that one—” she jerked a thumb at the casualty across Sova’s saddlebow, the cause of the trouble, “—and Sneeze-name doesn’t-take-orders number two here back to the Haians. When he wakes up, you can decide whether you’d rather have your strokes right away or beside him when he’s fit, because he’s getting the same. Dismissed!”
&
nbsp; Sova found her hands shaking, as she helped lift Echera-e, who was still limp, onto a litter. He’s so pale. Suddenly she wanted to throw up. Wake up, wake up, love ... The cool sense in her wondered why the fear. He might die. I’m going to get flogged. He’s going to get flogged if he doesn’t die. I just fought—the feeling was utterly divorced from thoughts or the truth of the present, that it was over and she was safe—all of the above. Wake up, livling. If he dies I want to say I carried him, she thought, and tried to keep her arms steady on the litter-grips. No. Khyd-hird said it wasn’t too bad.
There was always a rolling infirmary near the head of the great column now, since the harassment had increased. She scanned for the cart with the double white-striped flag. A moan came from the litter. “Mamaiyana, Tyizil ...” The name of his horse. “Sovee.” The litter moved as his weight shifted; she looked over her shoulder to see him lean over its edge, and throw up onto the ground. “Kyuzai, escuse me, ohhhhhhhh ...” He fell back.
“Keep still, Echerry,” she said. “I’m here. You’ll be all right and so will Ansena and we won and we’re almost at the infirmary.” She wondered how much he understood.
The Alliance army had a good hundred Haians, unheard of for a military force. Because the Arkans broke the Compact and invaded them. This is their way of fighting for their freedom; if we take the Empire, Chenga will give Haiu Menshir back its independence. Gentle Haian hands lifted the two litters, quickly examined, touching necks, pressing wrists.
Ansena would need surgery; they took him straight into the cart. Echera-e they checked as Shkai’ra had, But more tenderly. “Concussion,” the healer, a woman said. “Must stay lying; we put heem in cart and look efter heem today. He ken stay een hees own bed tonight, probebly, but should have someone weeth heem to keep heem still, end quiet. Come beck when we set camp.”
“Their names and unit?” the Yeoli clerk with the wax-board said briskly, as the healer moved on, busy. Sova told him, and then opened her mouth, but he cut her off with a chop of his pen. “Healers and wounded only in the carts on march,” he said, as if reading her mind. “They’ll be fine, you’ve done what you can, off with you now.” She wanted to argue, the pull on her heart like a claw to stay here, but the clerk looked annoyed. She’d be in more trouble if she disobeyed here, too.
I’m going to be in the infirmary next, she thought, dejectedly. At least the gut-fear of fighting was gone, faded while her mind had been on other things. Fifteen strokes. I have to choose, now or later, with him ... later. I’m going to see him again before he’s fit, so if I get it done now he’ll know what he’s in for.
Now what? She’d been dismissed; no more fighting. I don’t want to any more today, anyway, she thought. Though there’s no way I’ll admit that to anyone. She examined the feeling, turned it over in her mind. The memories came back, so fresh as to be barely memories, yet suddenly distant and changed, as if from a dream or another life: feeling through the grip of her sword the Arkan’s throat muscles clamp on the blade; the wounded, clasping hands to bloody spots, knowing they were Arkans meat if they weren’t carried off, calling to her or screaming incoherently; Echera-e landing wrong as his horse threw him ... Does this mean I’m a coward? But I’m just fourteen. In Yeola-e people don’t fight until they’re sixteen. I’m not a coward, Shkai’ra said I’m sheep-fucking brave; I’m just young. I’ll get tougher and it’ll get easier. She wheeled away from the cart to find the Elite section, and zhymata.
Well, thought Megan, as she prepared to bed down. Clear ground we march. Obstructed, we march through them. She counted off days in her head as she unpinned her braids and brushed out her calf-long hair. At the rate we’re going, we’ll be there in two and a half months or so. Then, remembering the frequent fate of the best-laid plans: at the rate we’re going. Many things could change that.
Shkai’ra was off partying with her unit; Sova was preparing her own bed. The Thane-girl had been silent and gaunt-eyed all evening as she did the chores, worrying about her Yeoli lover and being flogged.
“Good night, Sovee.” She crouched to slip inside her tent. The girl answered the same quietly. I hope Shkai’ra isn’t too long ... what in Holy a is that?
A patch of white clung to the inside of the tent-flap. Careful, mindful of plots and tricks, she looked before touching. A bit of paper, pinned to the canvas: holding it only with her claws, not the pads of her fingers, she unpinned and unfolded it.
The words were written in a tidy Arkan hand, superior-to-inferior inflection.
Whitlock: Meet me in the copse downwind of the Enchian Elite latrine, tonight when the moon is straight above. I have your son, Lixand called Rasas, with the four moles in a square on his right shoulder-blade. His life and my cover are as twined vines, sworn upon my poison tooth. Let us chat.
Book II:
Venture
XII
“Raise yeh full copper,” said the one-armed man. “Hey, boy of gold! Put my bet in for me.”
He must have a really good hand, Rasas thought, as he moved the copper chain from the man’s pile to the center of the table, if he isn’t even willing to let go of it to put his money in himself. Still, I didn’t think a hand where none of the cards look like any of the others either in numbers of spots or color was any good ... maybe it’s because I’m not good enough at telling the symbols.
Rasas wasn’t sure where exactly they were, except that it was the basement of a decrepit country house, the foundation-stones seeping water, and out-city. He was supposed to stay in the basement, but sometimes they let him come upstairs where it was dry and warm. He could even sleep there, as long as it was in one of their beds—and he’d peeked out a crack in a shutter. Huge wide fields, such as he’d never seen before in his life, except in his dreams.
“You know why we call you boy of gold?” one of the others said. There were five around the table, solas and fessas gone to seed and fat, with uncombed beards and stained jerkins. Watching them play, Rasas suspected they’d never had other skills, though when he thought about it he realized they must have. Patappas, for instance, would still be fighting if he had two arms.
“Because you’re going to make us all boys of gold!” All five burst out into guffawing, their loudness enhanced by the wine they were drinking. It was almost a ritual, the joke. The first time they’d said it, he’d had the sudden image of five gilt statues; then he’d understood, they meant rich.
He’d heard stories of kidnappings before, of a favorite boy being snatched and held until his owner, pining for him, coughed up a huge ransom. He’d always thought it would be an adventure, imagining a handsome highwayman in satin and gold heaving him up over his noble destrier and galloping off into the country. While they were in hiding, the highwayman, struck by Rasas’s plight, would change his mind and refuse to return him to Nuninibas, even when the lord, desperate, offered a million gold chains. The highwayman, who had dark eyes as well, would adopt Rasas as his son, kidnap and adopt Ardas as well so they really were brothers, and take them to his secret estate in Kassabria or Korsardiana. He’d teach them how to use a sword, and they’d raid evil Aitzas and give the money to poor okas, like the green-dressed gang in the old story, and he’d be able to dress in suave satin instead of pleasure boy’s lace. No one would ever smother him or Ardas again, and they’d live happily ever after.
So he’d imagined it, at any rate. None of these men quite fit the part; for one thing, they had no noble destrier, only a bow-backed old pony with a tangled ragged mane. And they smelled, no surprise, since the house didn’t have a bath. They’d go off somewhere to bathe only every few days, and he thought it must be in a river or lake nearby, like the lowest of the poor. He only bathed every few days too, when they brought him water, which made his hair itch and him feel base and worthless, but at least he didn’t have that rank grown-up smell.
Nor did they look about to refuse the ransom; rather, they slavered over the prospect of getting it, constantly. No matter; he’d just go home then a
nd things would be as they’d been before. They hadn’t hurt him much taking him. It had just been a big hand waking him up, torchlight in his eyes, and then arms hefting him up over a shoulder, though they had knocked out the dancing boys’ quarters guards; he noticed them lying sprawled as he passed. He’d wanted to ask politely, “Sirs, will you take Ardas too, if you please? He doesn’t weigh much, less than me,” but they d threaten to slit his throat if he said anything (part of the whole tradition of kidnapping, he knew), so he hadn’t. They’d put him in a flour-sack to get him up the cliff-lift. “Give your oath you won’t move or make a sound, or we’ll sap you,” they’d said, so he had given his oath, and then kept it as he felt the lift raise him smoothly up.
Now, he wasn’t suffering unduly; they fed him enough that he wasn’t hungry, played with him, taught him card tricks, and didn’t make him serve them any more than Master’s guests had; in fact, being lower-born, they were more gentle, never smothering him. The worst trouble he’d ever got into was when, standing behind Glikasonas at the card-table, he’d blurted, “Four cards that all have one spot, that’s good, isn’t it?”, and there was good reason, he understood now, for that. He missed Ardas, sometimes desperately; but perhaps it was for the better, since, because the kidnappers weren’t dashing highwaymen, the smaller boy might be frightened. I’ll see him again, and O my Humble Serving God, will I have a story, heh heh! And these fellows would be rich; he didn’t mind that, really. They all looked as if they’d been poor longer than anyone should have to be.
* * *
XIII
She read it four times, disbelieving.
Shadow’s Son Page 19
