Blood Road

by Amanda McCrina

  Torien said, “You asked me to tell you where you were wrong, Highness.”

  “Yes?”

  “You were wrong to think you’ve any more sense of justice than your father has. You were wrong to think it somehow proves your conviction that you can deal death and judgment without a second thought. You were wrong to think I’d stand at your side as your executioner. You were wrong to think we’ve any modicum of the same mind between us. If we do, I pray God he purges me of it. I pray he takes my life before I give it to you willingly. I pray—”

  A Guardsman had jerked him up by the arms and shoved him face-down to the floor before he could finish it. For a moment, he lay stunned and blinking, his cheek against the cool tile, the blood beating in his ears. Then, from delayed reflex, he curled up to shield his head and groin, hugging his knees to his chest. The blows came swiftly and silently. Booted feet pummeled his shoulders and back and arms and legs. He heard rather than felt the crunch of bone as hobnailed toes collided squarely with his face. He heard the Prince say, lazily from above, “Enough.” Hands dragged him up to his knees. Someone was whimpering like a kicked dog. He realized the sound was coming from his own throat. He swallowed and was silent.

  The Prince knelt in front of him. “I could answer your prayers,” he said. Holding Torien’s head between his hands, he wiped the blood from Torien’s face with his fingers. “I could put you on the Wall with the rest. But I’d regret it. You were wrong about that. I would regret the waste. You’re far more use to me alive, willing or no. If it won’t be at my side, then it will be at my feet. I’ll have my use of you either way, I promise you.” He let go Torien’s face and sat back on his heels. He jerked his chin. The hands pushed Torien back down to the floor. The Prince stood. “My apologies to the surgeon for your face,” he said.

  Torien lay still and listened, eyes shut, while they went out from the room. He heard the snap of the curtain closing and the tramp of booted feet going away down the corridor. He was alone in the room, and there was no other sound than the blood roaring in his head. He tested his weight on his palms and tried to push himself up. He held himself trembling on his wrists, realized there was no use in it, and eased himself back to the floor, letting out a puff of breath. He turned himself carefully onto his side, then onto his back. He lay beside the mat, watching the shadows stretch across the ceiling, feeling blood spread slowly over his face from his nose.

  After an eternity, he heard someone coming up the corridor. The slave boy came in through the curtain. He had bread and cheese and a wine jug in his arms. He came up short just inside the doorway. For a moment, he stood frozen. Then his arms swung loose. Bread and cheese went flying. The jug dropped straight to the floor and broke apart with a crack on the tiles. The boy bolted through the curtain, and Torien heard his footsteps pounding away at a run.

  A little while later, he heard two sets of footsteps coming up the corridor. The boy came into the room with the surgeon at his heels. Between them they moved Torien onto the mat. While the boy picked up the pottery shards in the doorway, wiping up the wine and blood with wads of linen spill-cloth from the surgery, the surgeon sat on his knees beside the mat and spread salve on Torien’s bruises. He was a stolid, gray-haired veteran, and his leather-brown face was blank as he worked. He finished with the salve and set about cleaning the blood from Torien’s face with a towel. “Whatever it was, Commander,” he said, “it was foolish to say.”

  “Necessary to say,” Torien said. It came out thickly. Fresh blood dribbled over his lips.

  The surgeon wiped the blood expressionlessly. “Maybe. In any case, you’re both lucky you were confined to bed, Commander, and without weapons. You can thank me for that.”

  “I can thank you for the broken nose?”

  “For it being only a broken nose. His Highness can thank me he isn’t dead at your damn-fool hand, and you can thank me you’re not hanging with the rest on the Traitors’ Wall.” The surgeon put the towel in Torien’s hand. “I’ll set it when the swelling has gone down,” he said.

  The morning muster was done and dawn just breaking over the eastern hills. Early heat hung in a haze over the spelt fields. Torien made his way up the gate street from the infirmary. Soldiers in intermittent groups of four or five, walking back from the parade ground to their barrack blocks, saluted him as they passed. No one spoke. The fort had the gray, gutted feeling of a battlefield when the fighting is done and nothing left but the dead.

  He turned down the main cross street and went up the headquarters steps. There was a lingering soreness under his ribs which he had labored to conceal from the surgeon. There was a remnant twinge of pain up his spine from the beating. He was sweating under his armor and holding his tongue in his teeth by the time he reached the top of the steps.

  The vestibule was mercifully cool and dark. He accepted the salute of the sentry and was halfway to the atrium before he saw the familiar forlorn marble face gazing down at him from a tall pedestal across the room. He paused. He looked back over his shoulder to the doorway and found the sentry watching him almost curiously. The sentry looked away quickly. “Soldier,” Torien said.

  The sentry grimaced. “Yes, sir.”

  “I haven’t wandered into a Guard barracks by accident?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Explain to me why this is here.”

  “By senatorial decree, sir. His Majesty’s image is to be displayed in every Imperial military installment.”

  “The Senate ordered this?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Are the Senate aware they just decreed their own capitulation?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I guess they’ll find out, sir.”

  The atrium was empty, and his footsteps echoed loudly on marble as he walked. Fiere had heard him coming and opened the door for him and was back across to his desk before Torien had ducked in through the doorway. “Come in,” Fiere said. “Close the door.” He was copying lines onto papyrus, and he did not look up. Torien shut the door. In the absence of light and air from the atrium, the office was close and dark and smoky. Fiere’s face was thrown into sharp relief by the lamp flame dancing at his elbow. There were deep shadows under his eyes and spidery lines at the corners of his mouth that had not been there five months ago. Torien wondered how long it had been since he had slept.

  Fiere wiped his pen and laid it in its case. He snapped his tablet shut. He left the papyrus unrolled to dry and beckoned with one hand. Torien handed his medical discharge over the desk. Fiere took it and tossed it aside without looking at it. “You can stop hiding the limp now,” he said.

  “The surgeon observed me himself and will testify to my soundness, sir.”

  “Yes, I’ve spoken with the surgeon. You’ve no business walking to the latrines in your present condition, much less resuming active duty on the frontier. The surgeon wrote you a discharge because otherwise it would take an armed guard to keep you confined to quarters, and my men have more productive things to do with their time.” He glanced up at Torien’s face. He said, more quietly, “Also because I want you out of Choiro before you lose your damn-fool head. It was not wise to anger him—not with twelve bodies already on the Wall.”

  “Wisdom is groveling before his father’s image each morning in the vestibule?”

  “Prudence is groveling. Wisdom is holding your tongue until this passes over and we can all of us act on reason, not impulse.”

  “And if we’re so very wise that it doesn’t pass over?”

  “We decimated Montegne’s column,” Fiere said, “before we brought him back to hang. The survivors have been reassigned as signi. I picked the punitive details sent to deal with his family and the families of his officers. Believe me when I say I’ve had enough of ducking my head and taking orders without question. But I can do nothing when I’m dead. Martyrdom is never practical.”

  “Does it ease your conscience to tell yourself that, sir?”

  Fiere look
ed at him. “Twenty years ago, I would have killed you for that. As it is, I have no difficulty understanding His Highness’s urge to put a fist in your face.”

  “It was a Guardsman’s foot. I might have damaged His Highness’s fingers.”

  “In answer to your question—no. It doesn’t. But it’s the truth.” Fiere turned the papyrus around with his fingertips and slid it to him across the desktop. “Your orders,” he said, coldly. “Allow me to congratulate you, Commander.”

  Torien picked up the papyrus and read aloud: “Commander Torien Berio Risto will assume command at once of the Imperial garrison at Tasso. His objective is to establish direct Imperial control over the salt mines. He will engage and subdue any native resistance. He will execute any local leaders found to be complicit in acts of treason and sedition against the Empire, and will appoint in their places new, loyal leaders per his own judgment. One column of cavalry is assigned his use to this end. Commander Risto is furthermore given specific instruction concerning the Imperial garrison at Tasso: officers will be executed, regular units decimated. Signi will be decimated to the last man. Lieutenant Pallo Espere will be returned under guard to Vione for sentencing before a court martial.”

  He looked up. He could not feel the papyrus in his hands. “It can be appealed?”

  “I’ve tried. When they refused me the first time, I asked if it might at least be amended—if the decimations would be enough. The orders stand.”

  “If I refuse them?”

  “Do you need me to tell you what will happen?”

  “This is the Prince’s doing. They know what he did to Senna. They’re afraid for their own skins. Right now, they’ll fall over each other to prove themselves loyal. If it were any other—”

  “The fact remains they ordered it, and you swore an oath to obey. As did I.”

  “This is murder. Besides which it’s stupid. Espere’s officers were prepared to risk their lives to reveal him to the Senate. His regulars and his signi did what they did because he was in the habit of summarily torturing and executing anyone who looked at him sidelong.”

  “It’s necessity. Refuse it, and you leave me no choice. I will arrest you, Risto, and I will convene a court martial, and I will see the sentence carried out, because I must. Explain to me what that will change of any of this.”

  “None of it but my estimation of you, sir.”

  “We can all be thankful the Empire does not stand or fall on your estimation of me. Shut up and take the orders, Risto, before you say something I can’t ignore.”

  He scrolled the papyrus around his forefinger and tapped the end twice against his palm to straighten it. He turned on his heel. He wanted suddenly to be out of that room. He needed to clear his head. He needed to think.

  “Risto,” Fiere said.

  He stopped in the doorway. Not looking back, he said, “Sir.”

  “His Highness requests you pay him a visit at the Palace before you leave Choiro. I was instructed to inform you.”

  “The reason?”

  “I don’t know. I doubt it’s to apologize for your nose.”

  “Maybe to congratulate me on my commission? My chance to serve Imperial justice?”

  “Listen to me. Hold your idiot tongue just this once. He knows he has only to make you open your mouth. Don’t let him bait you so easily.”

  “If fewer of us had held our idiot tongues, there would not be twelve bodies on the Traitors’ Wall.”

  “If I can’t order it of you, then I ask it of you as a friend.”

  “That doesn’t mean much to me as an appeal. I’ll be executing friends in Tasso.”

  “Whatever you must do in Tasso,” Fiere said, “will be best done quietly. Hold your tongue, Risto. Let him gloat. Let him think he has won.”

  He glanced back at the desk. “Whatever I must do, sir?”

  Fiere did not look at him. “Carry my regards to His Highness,” he said.

  There were two indigo-crested Guardsmen waiting for him in the Palace stable yard. The junior of them took Torien’s weapons off to the guardhouse while the senior led him wordlessly down the portico to the terrace garden on the western end of the Palace grounds. Past the garden wall, the Hill dropped away steeply. From the terrace steps, he could see across the River Quarter and the river to the wide, flat grain land that was the belly of Varen. It was mid-morning, and the garden was cool under the shade of cypresses and tall potted laurels, but it would be hot later. There was a haze over the River Quarter and a twanging chorus of cicadas carrying on the humid breeze up from the water.

  The Prince was taking his lunch beside the fountain pool at the far end of the terrace. He was in a plain linen tunic and sandals and had apparently just finished at the throwing post, because a slave was oiling the spears and bundling them together on a leather mat. There was a middle-aged man in white senator’s robes sitting with the Prince. He was facing the walkway, and he saw Torien and the Guardsman first. He had been speaking but fell silent as they approached. His eyes took in Torien curiously. They were striking eyes—as bright blue as ice, and just as cold. He was a northerner of the old blood. His people had fought and lost their war with Choiro a millennium before Choiro had first sent an army eastward over the mountains to Cesin.

  The Prince followed the senator’s gaze down the walkway. His face brightened. “Here he is, Lucho—the man who turned down command of the Guard so he could finish his term on the frontier.”

  The name sparked a memory: Lucho Marro, who had written so vehemently against antiquated nepotistic patronage in Cesin. The ancient blue eyes ran Torien up and down and settled on his face. “The Empire could use more of such men,” Marro said. His voice was bland.

  “You look much improved since I last saw you,” the Prince said to Torien. “The surgeon is to be commended.”

  “Commander Fiere sends his regards. He told me you wished to see me.”

  “We needn’t proceed directly to business. Sit and wet your throat, Risto.”

  Torien bowed. He sat down facing them across the low table. He unbuckled his helmet while the Prince poured for him. Setting the helmet on the table, he took the brimming bowl in his hands and lifted it briefly to the Prince. “Your health and your father’s,” he said.

  “Unprecedented,” the Prince said, dryly, “for so staunch a republican. Do you drink my health, Lucho?”

  “At least as often as you drink mine, Highness.”

  “Very politic of you.”

  “It is surprising to me that you should have republican sympathies, Commander,” Marro said to Torien. “I’d have taken you for an emperor’s man, considering your family’s history and your relationship with the imperial household.”

  “Senator Marro imagines himself something of a historian,” the Prince said.

  “A student, nothing more,” Marro said.

  Torien swallowed a mouthful of wine. “It complicates your thesis if I am republican, Senator?”

  The blue eyes bored into his face. “My thesis?”

  “‘On the Administration of the Imperial Province of Cesin.’ You argue very effectively that my family has imperial aspirations of our own.”

  “Yes—well.” Marro smiled slightly. “I apologize, Commander. I didn’t realize you had read it.”

  “I don’t think anyone is bound by history. My father’s choices are his own, not his forefather’s. My choices are mine.”

  “A man who speaks highly of choice is not, in my experience, a man who speaks highly of duty—to his emperor or his senate.”

  Irritation licked over him. “A man who spends his days sipping wine in gardens in Choiro has no right to preach duty to me.”

  “Perhaps it’s different in Cesin, among jumped-up slave stock.” Marro’s voice was cold. “In Varen, we teach boys to mind their tongues before their elders and betters.”

  The Prince said, smoothly, “I don’t question your devotion to duty, Risto. Nor does Senato
r Marro, beyond mere rhetorical exercise.”

  Marro hesitated. Then he drew himself up a little and bowed. “Your Highness.”

  “Anyway, you’re under a misapprehension,” the Prince said. “The Senator is from Puoli. He happens to be in Choiro on business.”

  Torien said, “Puoli?”

  Marro caught the edge in his voice. “You know Puoli, Commander?”

  He looked down into his wine bowl. “I know Civiparro. There’s good hunting in those hills.”

  “The Senator is quite a huntsman himself,” the Prince said. “Quite a spearman, specifically, as he has just reconfirmed to me. You should have been here, Risto. I imagine you’d have enjoyed seeing me soundly beaten.”

  Marro was looking at him. “You care to hunt, Commander?”

  “When I have the time.”

  “Your people were renowned as spearmen historically, of course.”

  “Before we were slave stock. Yes.”

  “You are familiar with an all-iron spear?”

  “The Brycigi use them. Some of the other mountain tribes—the ones who have resisted assimilation.”

  “You’ve thrown one?”

  “I hadn’t,” the Prince explained to Torien. “I’d never seen one before.”

  “I brought one from Puoli, if you’d care to try it,” Marro said. “Brycigo. I think it could make an effective boar spear. I’d like to know what you think.”

  “I haven’t done much boar hunting.”

  “Never mind boar hunting,” the Prince said. “Try to throw it. The post is there. The Senator swears to me the Brycigi can throw it at twenty paces. I wouldn’t have believed him except he did it himself.”

  The slave brought Torien the spear. He held it on his lap, turning it in his hands. It was a short, heavy, barbed spear, the shank as thick as his forefinger and middle finger together, the grip as thick as his wrist and grooved to prevent slippage. He picked it up and held it between thumb and forefinger, bracing it on three fingers, testing the weight. Marro watched him. “What do you say to a wager, Commander? To make things more interesting.”