Shadows of Prophecy

by Rachel Lee

“I raged, Tess. When I permit it, I rage still. Against the gods. Against myself. Against all that I have lost, all I have yet to lose. But that is a luxury I cannot afford in this time. Nor can you.”

  “No,” she said. A strength was building in her eyes. “I cannot. Not for long. Tomorrow we march. But for this night, let me rage.”

  Slowly, he nodded. “Yes, m’Lady. I will let you be.”

  “Thank you,” she said, for the first time returning the squeeze of his hand. “I will be better tomorrow.”

  “I understand,” he said. “As for me, I must make the last preparations for our march. We will move quickly.”

  He just hoped they could move quickly enough.

  29

  The march began at first light, before the sun had risen over the eastern horizon. Jenah’s group marched to the southwest, toward a pass along the road from the Bozandari encampment in the mountain, to Anahar. For Jenah, it would be something of a homecoming, returning to the lands of Gewindi-Tel.

  Giri remained behind with the prisoners, taking a few extra days to reorganize his battered column before marching north to the frontier to release the prisoners and deploy patrols along the likely routes of march for the Bozandari reinforcements that would doubtless come. He did not like the idea of releasing the prisoners, but the simple fact was that he did not have enough men to guard them and retain a fighting force. Archer would not let him put them to the sword. All that was left was to set them free. His would be a dangerous job, for until he was certain of their route of approach, he could not concentrate his own force to help steer them in the direction Archer needed them to go.

  Ratha, at the head of Archer’s group, led his small army toward the shores of the Great South Sea to intercept the Bozandari column moving along that route.

  Tess, Archer and Tom rode with them. Tess was surrounded by a very determined phalanx of Bozandari, who seemed unwilling to let anyone near her. Archer raised a finger to his forehead in a kind of salute; then he and Tom rode a little ahead.

  Tess would need to talk with Otteda about this. She could not spend the rest of the march separated from her companions. She felt alone enough as it was. She signaled to him, and he rode over to her.

  “Your courage and fealty are beyond question,” she said. “But I am no glass doll, and I have need to speak with my friends. They are no less vital to our mission than I, and much is our wisdom increased by the sharing of our thoughts. Please make arrangements that they can ride with me.”

  “Of course, my Lady,” he said, dipping his head. “I will see to it at once.”

  True to his word, he worked through the column and retrieved Archer, Tom and Ratha, spreading the guard around them all, at a respectful distance that permitted them privacy to talk. Tom’s face bore a look of worry.

  “You are troubled,” she said.

  “It is three days’ march to the Bozandari camp,” Tom said, “and yet already they ride for Anahar. Apparently the servant of the darkness, he whom Lady Tess touched, was part of an enemy hive.”

  “What do they know of our plans?” Tess asked. “If they know we march—and where—our plans of ambush are a shambles. It will be we who march into ambush.”

  “Our plans are our own,” Tom said. “At least for the present. Who knows what Giri may let slip to his lieutenants, and they in turn to their men, and thence to the Bozandari prisoners among them. If word gets back to the spy, then yes, the Enemy will know.”

  “Then we must see that word does not get back to him,” Archer said. “Tess, you can tell Cilla to warn Giri, yes?”

  “I already have,” Tess said. “But it strikes me that if this spy can betray our intentions, perhaps he may also be useful to us.”

  “Yes,” Archer said, immediately understanding her intent. “For the Enemy cannot see more than this spy sees and cannot know more than he knows. If the spy cannot judge the truth of what he hears, then he is helpless to warn the Enemy of a lie.”

  “And if my brother lets slip only what we want the spy to know,” Ratha said, “then we may increase the Enemy’s disorder at the moment of battle.”

  Tess nodded. A fleeting snippet of her mother’s voice passed through her conscious: make lemonade. She let her thoughts go silent while she listened for the rest of the echo, but it was nowhere to be found. Doubtless the words were part of one of her mother’s proverbs. Tess had only a vague memory of the wisdom that had lain in the countless such sayings her mother had repeated to her in childhood. It was one thing to lose one’s mother. But to lose even the memory of her…

  She will come back in time, sister. The voice was Sara’s, now fully a day’s march away. I did not mean to pry. Your thoughts shifted quickly.

  Tess agreed. She had grown accustomed to the presence of her sisters in her thoughts. More and more often they had taken to conversing this way, even when they were in each others’ presence, with no movement beyond a knowing look or a quiet smile.

  Thank you for calling Tom over, Sara continued. If I cannot look upon him with my own eyes, at least I can with yours, and know he is safe.

  For a time, yes, Tess thought. The cruel twist, of course, was that when the danger was greatest, Tess would be least able to keep an eye on Tom and Sara least able to pause to look at him. This war had cleaved so many.

  ’Tis but a passing time, Cilla thought, joining in the conversation. Let Ratha worry not for his brother. I will look after him. I would that it were Ratha with whom I rode, but if I can look after his brother, perhaps I serve him in the best way I can.

  Oh, really? Tess thought. She had barely noticed the sparks between Cilla and Ratha, or had been too busy with her own thoughts to pay attention to them.

  Yes, sister, Sara thought. You had worries enough of your own, and that troubles us. You bear not this burden alone. All of us have lost much to become who we are. Perhaps that is the way of things for everyone. But know, sister, that we stand beside you.

  Tess knew that, and felt selfish for her moment of rage last night. But neither would her sisters permit that, for both quickly scolded her back into the present. For better or for worse, she had done last night what she thought she had needed to do at the time. That time was past, and in the present there were plans to be made, battles to be fought and countless leagues of dry, dusty marching to be done. And two sisters who would doubtless keep watch over her darkest thoughts, lest such thoughts distract her at a critical moment.

  Of course, Sara thought. You would do no less for us.

  All too soon, Sara watched in horror as the battle unfolded beneath her. The past three days had been a flurry of perpetual motion, for Jenah had barely given his men time to eat in his haste to cut off the Bozandari column. Events had proved him right, for they had barely caught the column before it emerged into the rolling foothills, where the Bozandari tactics might have given them a hope of victory. They were no match for the Anari in the jagged mountain crevasses, however, and the issue had been decided almost from the moment of contact.

  Of course, in the way of armies, this fact alone was not enough to end the carnage. Instead, it was proved out through blood and death. Anari archers had struck the first blows, arrows whistling through the air to strike the breasts and backs and throats of leaders first, and then to rain upon the surprised troops. Many had fallen in the first moments, yet still those who remained insisted on doing their duty. That their duty was only to die under a remorseless Anari threshing line, with no hope of turning the battle to their favor, meant nothing. Courage and honor demanded the final sacrifice, and the Bozandari troops had both those awful virtues in abundance, even if their leaders did not.

  The Anari, too, had learned those virtues and were further buoyed by the prospect of victory, of winning their homeland. So they, too, obliged the gods of war, killing and dying in a battle that could have but one outcome. Perhaps in a more civilized time, in a more mature world, men would not need to rend limbs and shed blood in so futile an exercise. But in this
world, in this time, what she could see as obvious had yet to be worked out in the minds that drove the surging, swirling, screaming mass below. Only blood could say so be it.

  And so blood was shed, and she began to move among the wounded, doing what she could for those who could be spared, crying for those who could not, wishing she could do more and wishing there were no more to do.

  Men deserved better than this. Perhaps, someday, they would demand it.

  It was a nice thought, Tess agreed, although if the fragments of her past were any sign, it seemed unlikely that men would ever learn the folly of war. In the plain before her, with the sparkling emerald waters of the Great South Sea beyond, the Bozandari were setting up camp in an open field dotted with scrub sage. Soon their cooking fires would start, and soon after that the songs of home and love, hope and despair. One by one they would fall asleep, some in their tents, others preferring the sandy shore, where they would listen to the waves roll in and slip away into dreams.

  And once they had, the Anari would fall upon them. Ratha had split his column into two strike forces. One would engage them from the south, the other from the north. His soldiers had unloaded all their belongings save for their swords, the faster to move through the camp and perform the business of slaughter.

  Tess felt a pang of sorrow for the Bozandari column. Men who had done no wrong save to swear fealty to their king, in the manner of young men everywhere, would die in their sleep or wake to the horror of a sword plunging toward them. Yet she permitted herself only a moment to indulge that sorrow, for while the bulk of these men had done no more than follow the orders of their officers, those orders had included the abduction of Anari boys and girls, the murder of Anari men and women. And those Anari had been no less innocent.

  It was the way of the world that young men’s lives should be sacrificed in the pursuit of old men’s ambitions. And if that be so, Tess thought, then let it be Bozandari lives that were sacrificed on this night, not Anari.

  They had already paid enough in stolen lives for the battles to come.

  Giri moved his column earlier than planned. Cilla was keeping him apprised of Jenah’s battle and Ratha’s approach to the final Bozandari encampment. He felt it was absolutely necessary for him to cut around behind Ratha’s northern wing to prevent it from being attacked from the rear, and to be sure of that, he marched early.

  Cilla cautioned him. “The man whom Lady Tess burned is part of the Enemy’s hive. We must be careful what we say of our movements and intentions, for whatever he hears, the Enemy will know.”

  She stared at the scrubby desert before them, noting how the shadows deepened and lengthened with the late afternoon. In those shadows nearly anything could be hiding, so she cast her senses out as far as she could, seeking any threat.

  There seemed to be none. But the world was full of threats, and at some level, even as she turned her attention elsewhere, she kept seeking a hint of shadow.

  After speaking with his lieutenants about the need for secrecy, Giri again fell in beside Cilla. “Why is Archer so certain about a spy?”

  Cilla quickly related the incident with the Bozandari, and what Tom had told Tess on the march.

  “Likely there is more than one, then,” he agreed.

  Cilla was quiet for a while as they continued riding northeast into the deepening evening. Blue shadows became reddish, then darkened almost to black.

  “Giri?”

  “Aye, cousin?”

  “Ratha spoke to you of his retreat?”

  “Aye.” He sounded reluctant, as if he did not wish to continue in this direction.

  “Then you know he has set aside his anger.”

  “Aye.” This time his answer was short.

  Cilla looked at him. “My beloved cousin, while the shadow does not sit in you the way it did in Ratha, your anger gives it a place to enter and lodge. You must find a way to let it go.”

  He snorted. “You were not enslaved, cousin. You did not see what I saw, nor endure what I endured. My anger gives me the fire to do what must be done.”

  “Anger is not necessary for this fight. Love of your fellow Anari alone should be enough.”

  Giri fell silent. The evening deepened into night, and still he kept his troop moving, as if the stars alone were enough to guide him. And perhaps they were.

  Cilla sighed deeply, sensing her cousin’s desperate need for peace and healing but unable to force it upon him.

  They were miles farther along their way before Giri addressed her again. “I understand,” he said, “the concern you and my brother hold for me. Do not think I am ungrateful.”

  “Never would I have thought such a thing, cousin.”

  “I am aware of the dangers of which you speak. But I need my anger, cousin. I need it to hone myself to steel. I need to remember the things that make this march and these battles necessary. Nor do I fear the shadow or the hives. I know their evil and will not fall before it.”

  “I know your strength, too, Giri Monabi,” she said. “But I think you misunderstand something.”

  “What is that?”

  “The way the sorcerers draw their hives to them. I do not believe they force these people to become their minions. I think they find a weakness that works to their advantage and use it to gain control.”

  Again Giri rode in silence for a long time. “Then I must be more on guard.”

  Cilla nearly sighed aloud, for she loved her cousin and feared for his soul. “Do nothing out of blind anger, Giri,” she said finally. “But most of all, do nothing out of hatred.”

  “I feel no hatred,” he said firmly. “None at all. But I will free my people.”

  She believed that he would free his people. She wished she were nearly so certain about his lack of hatred.

  “The waiting is always the worst part,” Archer remarked to Ratha. They sat behind a dune together with Tom and Tess, hiding from view of any alert scout or sentry. They were still quite a distance from the camp, but as they drew closer to the Great South Sea, cover grew sparser. There were still pockets of brush and even trees in some places, but this side of the sea was a desert for the most part. Foothills and, closer to the water, dunes provided most of the cover they could find.

  In theory the Bozandari would not be looking for attacks from the north and south, but from the west and the direction of the Anari capital. If they looked for an attack at all. The difficulty was that they had no idea if this encampment had received word of the attack a few days past. Archer assumed they must have and thus would expect the Anari to come directly from the field of battle. In that expectation they would be disappointed.

  Suddenly Tess stiffened. Archer turned at once. “Is something wrong?”

  She shook her head. “I just heard from Sara. Jenah has defeated the Bozandari at the pass.”

  “Then why do you stiffen?” Ratha asked.

  “Because I feel my sister’s pain. She tries to heal all, but many are past saving.”

  With that she edged away from them and put her head on her knees. There would be more, she thought. There would be more, and she did not know how much of this dying she could bear.

  30

  As the night deepened, Archer and Ratha split up. Archer went to lead the southern column in its attack and Ratha to lead the northern column. Tess, Tom and her new bodyguards stayed to the west, presumably safely out of harm’s way, but ready to report instantly if the Bozandari attempted to escape the pincers by running to the west.

  Since the west held only Anahar and the Anari, it would probably be the last direction in which they would choose to flee. But Archer’s plan had taken all that into account, and still he was prepared to block any western movement.

  The soldiers guarding Tess and Tom, among them a handful of Anari, grew restive as they waited. Finally Tess spoke to Otteda. “Your companions are worried.”

  He shook his head. “We know what we have pledged to you. It is only the warrior’s restlessness when he is forbid
den to take part in the battle.”

  “But you would not wish to fight this battle—against your fellows.”

  He looked at her, his face stern. “They are no longer our fellows. We have made that choice.”

  Tess nodded. “I still puzzle over that, Otteda.”

  He looked around, as if making sure that all was well; then he sat beside her on a rock. “When I was young, my father bought a young Anari slave girl. She was to look after me and be something of a companion, for my parents were busy with their duties. She was a gentle girl, kind to me at all times, and I tried to be as kind to her.”

  Tess nodded, listening.

  “I don’t know what happened, but as I grew older and thought about it, I decided my mother must have feared my attachment to the girl, for one day she ordered the girl to be killed. And made me watch her death.”

  “How awful!”

  “When I complained to my mother and tried to prevent the killing, my mother said, ‘It is only a slave. I will buy you a better one.’”

  Otteda looked up at the stars. “Everyone around me held the same attitude, so I was forced to accept it. But I never forgot…and…Frankly, my Lady, the older I get the more it troubles me. Bozandari treat curs as well as slaves. And Luca, my young friend, taught me something very important: even slaves have families and friends. And feelings. They are not dogs. They are human beings, just like us.”

  “So these years with the army must have troubled you.”

  “More and more with the passage of time. When I was on the northern frontier, my duties made sense to me. But here, on this duty…no. It makes no sense. I finally sickened enough of it that I had requested a new post, not something a rearmark should do if he wishes to advance. I am glad you came along, Lady. Perhaps before all is done I will be able to atone and regain my self-respect.”

  Impulsively Tess reached out to touch his shoulder and willed him to feel better. “You are a good man, Rearmark.”