Dark Forge

by Miles Cameron

  “Aranthur?” Ansu said.

  Aranthur could only collapse outside his tent, mind empty of anything but a creeping feeling of despair and the pain in his arm. Ansu sat by him, silent. His knees were drawn up to his chest, and he rocked back and forth slightly, like a child in great sorrow. Dahlia came, and sat, and Sasan, who seemed better off than the other three. There were campfires; the smell of a rich fish stew penetrated Aranthur’s head.

  He made himself rise.

  “I need food,” he managed. “We need food, and water,” he croaked, when Ansu didn’t respond.

  Dahlia struggled to get to her feet. Aranthur could see that she was utterly spent; the dark circles under her eyes made her look as if she’d been beaten.

  Sasan pushed her down.

  “I’ll get things,” he said kindly. “You stay here.”

  The two of them went to the Nomadi fires and literally begged bowls and food. There was Dekark Lemnas, alive; she found them bowls.

  “Staff whallahs,” she said with a smile. “Nay, brother, I know you had a hard day. I can see it in your face.”

  As soon as the food hit his mouth, he needed more; it was as if his body wouldn’t allow him any other action but eating.

  “I saw your charge,” Aranthur said, between his first and second bowl of stew. “I didn’t see you and I feared…”

  She shrugged, as if death was something one couldn’t be worried about.

  “Which time? We charged six times. I lost two horses.” She shrugged again. “And six friends.”

  “You saved us,” a voice said.

  The General materialised out of the darkness, with Centark Equus and the Masran Magos, Qna Liras.

  “Everyone saved us, really,” she said agreeably.

  Aranthur thought that Myr Tribane was perhaps a little drunk.

  The Dekark smiled. “Nomadi! General Tribane is at your fire.”

  Men and women stood up, wherever they were. They rattled their spoons on their bowls.

  Sasan took the bowl out of Aranthur’s hands.

  “I’m going to feed Dahlia,” he said gruffly.

  Aranthur turned to go with his friend, but the General took his arm.

  “Stay a little. I know what you did,” she added, almost as an accusation. “You fought the Exalted, and you put a pistol ball in the Disciple.”

  Aranthur shrugged. “Maybe.”

  The General swayed.

  “Know what you did,” she said agreeably. “Eh, Nomadi? This boy went sword to sword with one of the Scarlets.”

  Lemnas smiled. A few of the Nomadi rattled their spoons on bowls.

  “Always knew you was a bahadur,” Centark Equus said.

  “But my question,” said the General, “is how your sword survived.”

  Not so drunk.

  “My question, actually,” said the man Aranthur knew as Harlequin. “May I see your sword, young hero?”

  Aranthur turned to get it. It was wrapped in his sword-belt, on his sleeping pallet.

  “Never mind,” the General said. “Time for that tomorrow. Have some wine.”

  She poured an abundance into the silver cup in her hand and gave it to him. Equus was handing a full flagon to Lemnas, and she was sharing it out.

  Aranthur drank his off without a qualm.

  “More?” the General said.

  She made a circuit of the Nomadi, talking to them, listening. After a few minutes she turned to Aranthur.

  “Take me to your friends.”

  Aranthur led her through the tangle of tents and tent pegs to where his friends were eating fish stew.

  Sasan had saved him a bowl. He devoured his third while the General—with her own hands—poured a cup of wine for them and shared it around.

  “What happened?” Dahlia asked. “By the Lady, Alis! Why did we have such poor magikal support? Where is Roaris?”

  A servant opened a camp stool and Tribane all but fell into it. The servant produced a second bottle of wine.

  “I have no fucking idea what happened,” Tribane said wearily. “In early spring, when we decided to support Masr by attacking Antioke, I think we sent too many of our Magi and Imoters that way. We had no idea back then what we were up against.” She blinked. “But today… I had tactical and strategic surprise, I had a better army, far better infantry, and the numbers were equal, and ten thousand hells, I almost fucked it away.” She had poured a cup of wine for Dahlia, but without thinking she knocked it back herself. “Thanks,” she said to Dahlia, giving her the empty cup. “I am perfectly aware that without you and the prince, I’d have been burned to a crisp ten times.”

  Sasan took the bottle and poured the cup full. He took a long pull at the wine.

  “Milady, you are a fine Magas yourself…”

  Aranthur knew the answer to that one.

  “It’s a matter of concentration.”

  Tribane shrugged.

  “I have some saar,” she agreed. “But I’ve never trained enough and I lose concentration too easily—especially when everyone is looking at me…” She shook her head. “Fuck,” she muttered.

  Ansu raised his head. “At your service, ma’am.” He smiled a certain way.

  The General laughed.

  The two of them crossed eyes; Aranthur knew they had been lovers. It occurred to him, then, that this was how life was—a tangle. He imagined being in an army studded with his loves, and how that might be.

  “Now what?” Dahlia asked. “If a mere volunteer can ask the Pru Vanaxa?”

  The General sighed.

  “The pasha mounted something of a pursuit, but all those Pindaris escaped, and I fear that they will explode out into Armea and even Atti, burning, raping, looting. It’s what they do. They come in brotherhoods, like societies of assassins—they rank themselves by their atrocities.” She shook her head. “I shouldn’t be telling you any of this, but I want to advance into Safi, if only to let the survivors of the Pure know that they can be beaten. But I cannot let the Attian heartland be plundered.”

  She drank more.

  “You know,” she said, as if they were talking about love poetry, “I have spent my entire life studying war.”

  They all drank.

  Out in the valley, hyaenas fed noisily, and the raucous sounds of carrion birds filled the night with horror.

  “There was a general—a Qin general. Qin was the empire before Zhou… yes? I digress. I cannot remember his name.” She shrugged. “I’m drunk. But he said the only thing worse than winning a great battle was losing it.” She stood, unsteadily. “I worry that I know nothing, and that our adversary is as pleased by today’s outcome as by any alternative in which we’re all dead and the Disciple is drinking the wine. I have no idea what drives a mind that enslaves starving peasants and uses them as a shield. This…thing… didn’t need to fight. It should have slipped away.”

  She turned to Aranthur.

  “Walk me to my tent. Goodnight, good people. I will see all of you are rewarded. I will find Roaris and kill him with my bare hands. I promise it on the corpses of every dead man and woman in the valley.”

  “Some of the reserve came forward without orders,” Qna Liras said.

  “Yes,” the General said. “Yes, most of the reserve cavalry came back.”

  She shook her head. And then caught Aranthur’s eye and smiled.

  Prince Ansu put a hand on Aranthur’s arm.

  “She is looking for a lover. Is that what you want? It’s what she does when she is nervous, or upset.”

  Aranthur thought of Lecne and the General, and then of his own relationships.

  “That I… understand,” he said.

  But he took the General’s arm and walked off into the darkness.

  She was in no particular hurry to reach her pavilion. In fact, a train of servants waited in the darkness with a stool, more wine, more cups. And they went from fire to fire, along the lines. Aranthur watched her sit at a fire with the silent survivors of the Third City, and s
aw her laugh with the Attian Sipahis, who were dancing, their gold-laced yellow boots slapping the hard ground in time to a drum and a tamboura.

  Aranthur stood by while she and the Capitan Pasha embraced.

  Ulgat Kartal emerged from the firelight and threw his arms around Aranthur.

  “Now we are battle-brothers,” he said.

  The embrace felt good.

  Aranthur introduced his Attian friend to the Masran Magos.

  He bowed. “I’m afraid that I only know you as Harlequin,” he said. “I have heard that you have a name…”

  The Masran Magos smiled.

  “I am Harlequin, in your tongue. In my tongue, I am called Qna Liras.” He bowed. “I confess that is only a use name. But I am a priest of the Secret Fire—I do not have a name, as you know names. Indeed, that is all that kept me alive today.”

  Ulgat looked at the tall black Lightbringer.

  “You fought?” he asked.

  It was difficult to believe, as the man was immaculately clad in unrumpled silk.

  “He defeated the Disciple,” Aranthur said.

  “Now, by the Twelve, by Coryn’s beard and the seven sacred swords!” Ulgat bowed deeply.

  “It is possible that it was you who defeated the Disciple,” Qna Liras said. “He had a pistol ball in his back when I reached him.”

  “Hah, I share my fire with a Lightbringer!” Ulgat shouted.

  Almost instantly they were surrounded by Sipahis. Even the Capitan Pasha strode over, scattering lesser men, to embrace “Harlequin.”

  “I think you may be the first Lightbringer I have ever touched.”

  The pasha’s henna-dyed beard was red as blood in the firelight. His silk khaftan deceived the eye; his gold lace glittered like stars.

  Qna Liras received the praise with unbreakable humility, bowing, and refusing to accept that he was the hero of the hour.

  “I have never been in this position,” Qna Liras admitted in an aside to Aranthur. “We do not work like this, on battlefields. We work in secret.” He shook his head. “Kurvenos said that we must…” He glanced at Aranthur. “He said you desired to be a Lightbringer. Or that you spoke of it.”

  Aranthur was wishing that someone would pour some arak for him. The tamboura player was as good as Tiy Drako.

  “I did,” he admitted. “I admire… you—all of you.”

  “You kill very easily,” Qna Liras said. “But I feel your power. You have the…baraka.”

  “How does a person become a Lightbringer?” Aranthur asked.

  “By making choices,” Qna Liras said, enigmatically.

  Aranthur wondered if he was being mocked.

  “Oh, really?”

  Qna Liras handed him a flask.

  “Here, drink with me. Listen, you make me feel so young I don’t know how to talk to you. Have you ever… reached a point… where you knew that you could not do something? That to do that thing would change you?”

  “Many times.”

  Aranthur was thinking of the duel in the courtyard, and then of the frenzied, enhanced women he hadn’t been willing to kill while he was himself enhanced.

  He had no idea how much time passed, but the Magos passed his hand over Aranthur’s eyes.

  “Tell me,” he ordered. But it was not a compulsion.

  Aranthur drank some of the liquid in the flask. It was marvellous, light and sweet and very alcoholic. He drank more.

  “I have an enhancement. It is Safian in origin…” he began.

  “I know,” said the Masran.

  “I used it in the battle—when the first line was… falling.”

  Aranthur was suddenly there, lying on his back in the sand.

  He spoke for a little, describing. And then he came to the women.

  “I couldn’t kill them any more. I… can’t explain. They had no chance. It was not war. It was merely murder.”

  There was a silence, punctuated by the wild notes of the tamboura and the pounding feet of the dance.

  “Mayhap it is all murder,” Qna Liras said. “Mayhap you perceive some difference between killing in a contest and killing in cold blood, but you must admit that both are killing.”

  Aranthur shook his head. “I admit it, but…”

  Qna Liras smiled. “I killed today. I have killed before. Perhaps I will again.” He shook his head. “I prefer it to be the very last choice, the final resort. Listen. As you grow, you will make choices. No one makes you a Lightbringer. There is no school, no training camp. One day, you find yourself on the edge of a precipice.”

  “And if you don’t jump, you are a Lightbringer?”

  Aranthur was almost unbelieving that he was having this conversation, and he drank more of the wonderful cordial.

  “Must you drink all my wine?” the Masran said with a smile, taking the flask. He looked at Aranthur, his face almost as close as a lover’s. “No, my young friend. If you elect to spend the rest of your life teetering on the edge of the abyss, then you are a Lightbringer. Some jump. Some retreat. Only a few stay.” He drank deeply. “Few stay long…”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Qna Liras shrugged. “Who am I to teach you? But listen. When you are ready to make choices, when you learn that there is never a simple answer, when you know no nation or race or clan is better… When you see so clearly that the despair can choke you, and yet you choose to act for the best in a dirty grey world, then you are a Lightbringer. But the other side of the cliff beckons—if you ever think you truly know better, you instantly become the enemy.”

  “I don’t understand,” Aranthur said again.

  “Bah, neither do I.”

  Aranthur had a thousand questions, but then the General came and dragged him to where the Sipahis and a dozen Imperial soldiers were dancing. There were more tambouras and some drums and an oud. The oud player was Sasan, and he lay with his back against a saddle and Dahlia’s head on his shoulder. There were also hundreds of soldiers dancing, both Imperial and Attian. The music almost drowned out the sounds of the battlefield, the thin cries and the hyaenas’ madness.

  Aranthur ate again, a full meal at an Attian campfire—a rich lamb stew with raisins and saffron—and then he allowed himself to be pulled into the dance. He was drunk enough to move easily, and not yet ready to fall over, although his hips and knees protested at the additional effort after a day of near exhaustion.

  He followed the General.

  The dances were not any more elaborate than village dances in Soulis; indeed, many of them were identical, or close enough. He whirled through an all-male dance well enough, and then found himself partnered with a musketeer from the regulars with no memory of asking her to dance. They managed well enough, and he caught her leap and turned her sufficiently well as to get a smile from her and a burst of applause from the drunken onlookers.

  Now there was a line of fires, all along the slope, and the dance wound between them. Fifty musicians were playing a raucous sound with no clear leader, but with a driving beat provided by a bass drummer from one of the infantry regiments and echoed by a pair of Yaniceri.

  Prince Ansu whirled by with the General, doing some Zhouian dance of labyrinthine complexity. Aranthur went back to his musketeer, only to find that she was now dancing with Syr Klinos, who bowed to him but whirled off with his friend.

  Ulgat Kartal stumbled up.

  “Didn’t you say you wanted arak?” he asked. “I got you some, but then I drank it, and then I got you more…”

  Aranthur took the cup. He drank deep, and the stuff burned like fire.

  “Ahh,” he said.

  He asked Ulgat what dance they were doing.

  “It is a Steppe dance, and I’m not sober enough,” Ulgat confessed, but then he began to dance, the cup in his hand.

  Aranthur followed his movements, and Vilna and Lemnas materialised out of the darkness and took charge, teaching them the movements. Sasan came to their group and brought a drummer. Gradually the nomad music began to fill th
e air, and the intricate beat began to filter through the fumes of wine and make sense to Aranthur, and he danced, leapt, and danced again. It was an ungendered dance, and he went around the circle once with Ulgat, who was delighted to have recaptured something of his own youth, and then with Lemnas.

  He landed with her by Sasan, who grinned.

  He bowed, like a Byzas noble, to kiss the Nomadi officer’s hand. In the firelight, he could see that she had blood under her nails, and her right cuff was soaked in it.

  As was his own.

  His gorge rose. But he kissed her hand and stumbled away, suddenly drunk despite his success at the dance, or because of it.

  He wandered away from the fires and pissed into the darkness, but away from the dancing, he could hear the horror of the battlefield down in the valley. He paused, and prayed for the first time in a long time, although he couldn’t have said whether he prayed to the Eagle or to the Lady.

  Let them all be dead and at peace.

  Because being left on a battlefield and eaten alive had become his new nightmare. He thought of all the enslaved women and children used as fodder. His gorge rose again.

  And he vomited.

  Empty, he felt better, and when he went back to the fires he found water, clean drinking water, and swallowed a pint or two. He felt much better, and he found a handful of troopers at the Nomadi fires. A Steppe woman offered him more fish stew and he ate again.

  “There you are,” the General said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  “Call me Alis.” Her voice was very slightly slurred. “I thought you’d gone off and left me. I don’t order people into my bed. Although I suppose in the end I will.” She shrugged elaborately. “What’s a girl to do?”

  She handed him a cup which was, as it transpired, full of mead.

  He drank some, looking at her over the top of the cup. She made no effort to be beautiful: she dressed in military clothes and never wore make-up; her hair was always tied back in a queue so severe that it stretched her skin; she wore a high white stock that hid her neck. He had no idea how old she might be; people said she was well past forty.

  For some reason he thought of Alfia Topaza. It was a strange juxtaposition, but there it was—Alfia did have something of the General’s absolute self-assurance. And Dahlia did too, for that matter.