“You’re not returning?” Rodion asked.
“Nyet, I am not.”
“And where will you go?”
“I and as many desyatni as can be spared will go east into Yrstanla.”
Galeb was stone-faced and silent. Behind his eyes, though, Styophan could see an unspeakable fear. Edik’s face, however, turned immediately sour. “Komodor”—Edik stabbed his finger southward—“our brothers died here. Those fucking savages killed them. You saw it yourself. We heard their screams all through the night. And you would send us home?”
“I wish for Our Lord Duke to know what happened, and he should hear it firsthand.”
The three soldiers exchanged glances. Galeb seemed confused, but Rodion looked angry, and Edik looked as though he would spit upon Styophan’s black boots.
“You would take others and leave us?” Edik said.
These were the reactions Styophan had been expecting. Edik was a devil of a fighter and smart in battle. Rodion was cool. Men followed him easily. But Galeb. Young Galeb. Was not made for this. He’d been brave when they’d arrived. He’d stood tall when they’d been taken to Skolohalla. But something in him had broken three nights ago when the other men had died at the hands of the wodjana.
“I need but one to go home.” All three, even Galeb, seemed ready to object until Styophan raised his hand. “Hold your peace. Those who go to Alekeşir do not go to battle. We go with the Haelish, and like a spear thrust at the heart of the Empire, we go to Alekeşir itself, to kill the Kamarisi.”
Rodion laughed. “The Kamarisi?”
“Just so.”
“We’ll be killed, well before we reach Alekeşir.”
“The Haelish know the way to the city.”
Edik stabbed a finger at Styophan’s chest. “You now place trust in them?”
Styophan stared down calmly at Edik’s finger, and Edik, though his face didn’t soften, slowly pulled his hand back.
“If you dare challenge me or another officer in such a way again, Edik, I’ll have that finger.”
Finally some of the bile left Edik’s face, but not the pent-up hatred. That he seemed to bottle up inside, and Styophan wondered if he weren’t making a mistake. “Da, Komodor.”
Perhaps he should send Edik home instead of Galeb. But one look at Galeb showed him the error in that thinking.
“In this I trust them,” Styophan said. “Their blood is up, but they are no fools. They know ancient ways into Yrstanla. We will not be found until we reach the city. And then we will find our way into Irabahce itself. And then…” Styophan searched for the right words, but there was only one way to say it. “The queens confessed to me what their wodjana found that night.”
Edik’s eyes grew confused, and then his lips curled, as if he could hardly stomach the thought. “With Oleg and Vyagos?”
“Those who go to Alekeşir—all of us—will die.”
“Komodor—”
“Speak no more, Edik. Whether or not the wodjana are right isn’t the point. We have a chance to give Yrstanla pause, and the Haelish are with us in this. If Bahett and the Kamarisi and the Kaymakam who kiss his boots think the Haelish will soon attack in force, they will pull men back from their eastern front. And if we do not join them, it may be that the wodjana will lose confidence in their vision. And if they lose confidence, so will the queens and kings. All of our plans have been turned inside out since we arrived, but this is a chance for us to make a difference, a chance to do what we came to do, a chance—and you’ll know this as well as I if you stop to think about it—granted by the ancients themselves. It’s something we must do. But one of you will go home to tell our Duke of it.” He looked over each of them in turn, giving them a proper amount of consideration, enough that Galeb wouldn’t be insulted. He saved Galeb for last. “Come, strelet. Let us speak.”
Galeb looked to Rodion and Edik. When he turned back to Styophan there was an expression of forced indignance, but there was also relief in the way his shoulders relaxed, the way he leaned forward like a man who’d received news that he would live after a long bout with the black cough.
To the north, the flock of leaves were little more than a dark twinkling against the light blue sky. As Styophan and Galeb fell into step with one another and walked down the snow-covered hill, Styophan put his hand on Galeb’s shoulder. “You have a wife, do you not?”
Galeb nodded. “Avita.”
Styophan squeezed his shoulder. “Tell me about her.”
Wearing the uniform of a janissary commander, Styophan ran through a field of tall grass. The clothes were easy enough to adjust to, but the turban still felt strange on his head, and he hated the fact that the bright green plume attached by a brooch to the front of it marked him so conspicuously.
Ahead of Styophan—running two-by-two—were twenty men of Anuskaya, two desyatni, and behind him three desyatni more. Fifty streltsi running with one hundred of the Haelish leading them through Yrstanlan lands. The Zhostova had not been manned with so many, but the ancients had been smiling on them the day the Haelish had attacked with their cannons. Two skiffs had managed to escape the damaged ships before they’d fallen. Nearly seventy men had been saved, and Styophan had taken nearly all of them, leaving only enough to head to the coast and around the great northeastern shoulder of Yrstanla before heading south to Trevitze or Galahesh, where many of the Grand Duchy’s ships were now moored.
Like Styophan, his men wore the uniform of janissaries as well. They’d been culled from among the collected effects of the Haelish. Surely they’d kept them for a purpose such as this. The uniforms were all large—large enough to fit the frames of the Haelish men—so they’d needed some adjusting before they’d headed into the lands of the Empire, but they fit well enough, particularly Styophan’s and those of his men he might present for inspection to the soldiers of Yrstanla. Datha said they wouldn’t be needed for days yet, perhaps weeks, but there was no sense in taking a chance. The element of surprise was one of the few advantages they had.
To their right stood the long line of mountains that marked the traditional border between Hael and Yrstanla—the very mountains that had provided his wing of ships with the ley lines they’d needed to fly south from the Great Northern Sea all the way down to Haelish lands. That range had been crossed many times by the forces of Yrstanla. They had taken land. Forts and outposts had been stood. Even villages and one small city had been erected over the decades that Hael had been held at bay, but eventually Hael had returned to the lands they considered their own, pushing Yrstanla back, sometimes butchering those who had come to build a life.
The rhythmic sound of soldiers running in time and the rattle of their gear—muskets and bandoliers and kilijs at their sides—were the only sounds that filled the air. They’d been running for three days. His men were well trained, some of the best Khalakovo had to offer. They could march double-time for weeks, keep a jogging pace for days at a time, but these Haelish warriors were tall—nearly all of them a head taller than his streltsi—and their stride was difficult to keep pace with. Plus they were used to overland travel. The Haelish had horses, but most were saved for the transport of their yurts and for their royalty. So though his men were ready, the dawn-to-dusk days and the grueling pace were taking their toll.
Still, despite the long days, it felt good to be among his men, to be in control—as much as one ever was.
Datha marched at the very head of the Haelish column. He was nearing a rise that marked the southern end of the vale they’d been marching toward all day, the place—if what the Haelish told him was true—where a small Yrstanlan fort stood. It was one of many such fortifications the Empire had built along their long border with Hael. Styophan wondered if they’d received word of what had happened to Bahett at Skolohalla. In all likelihood they had—the Empire was careful about such things, sending messages by pigeon—but this was what King Brechan was counting on. The forts along the border would be on alert, and this attack, along with four
others being conducted this very same day, would make Yrstanla think that a full-on assault was underway. In some ways, it wasn’t far from the truth. Brechan had decided it was time for as many of the forts and settlements within a hundred miles of Hael to be burned to the ground. Today brought the first of those attacks, and if Yrstanla thought the larger western cities threatened as well, then so be it.
When Datha reached the top of the rise he held his fist high and in one sharp motion brought it low. Immediately, the warriors behind him slowed and moved forward at a crouch. They split into two groups, kneeling in the snow-topped grass and awaiting further orders. Datha waved Styophan forward. The Haelish warrior was not a man easily rattled, but there was a tightness to his wave, an urgency that made Styophan wonder just what he’d seen in the vale below.
Styophan motioned for Rodion and Edik to join him, and together the three of them approached Datha’s position.
They crawled the last handful of yards until they reached Datha’s side. The vale opened up before them. Below, situated near a dark, stream-fed pool, was a fort with four wooden towers at its corners and a massive stone keep at its center. There was a massive gap in the wall. It had clearly been burned, for much of the remaining wall around the gap was blackened. The gate to the fort’s interior—which faced their position—was still in the raised position. The entrance to the keep could be seen, but instead of a fortified gate of some kind, it was little more than a dark, open maw.
“A keep like that would have had a reinforced door,” Rodion said.
Styophan nodded. “Look at the char above the door. It would have taken a long time to burn through.”
“Not if a hezhan had crossed,” Edik said. “An elder could burn through it like tinder.”
They watched for a time, waiting for any sign of life, but there was none.
“We should go before it gets dark,” Styophan said.
They were going to wait until shortly after dusk for their attack, but things had changed, and Styophan wanted to inspect this place in the daylight if they could.
Datha nodded and together, their band of men marched down. As they neared the fort, weapons were readied. Styophan held his musket, pulling it to his shoulder and staring with his good left eye along the wall and up to the tower. His men did the same, but they were not met with resistance. They did not, in fact, see a single sign that anyone still resided within this place.
They reached the gap in the western wall. There was a large area where the snow around it had melted, revealing matted, winterdead grass—part of a nearby field—and the brown, singed remains closer to the wall itself. The air smelled strongly of cardamom and myrrh. Just inside were the blackened remains of a dozen men. Some had been burned down to their bones. Others had cracked and charred skin over much of their bodies. Beyond, in the courtyard there were more. They lay scattered here and there. There was little grass to mark the passage of the suurahezhan—for by now it was clear that one had crossed over and attacked the fort—but there were places where the earth was cracked and split like a mud puddle drying in the summer sun. Styophan walked the very same path the suurahezhan had. The remains of the dead lay along its path. Sometimes in ones and twos, and in one case eight men had died together.
To a man, they clutched things in their arms. A few bore muskets, others tools from the smithy, but all were proper pieces of iron. One even held an old wooden shield banded with iron. Only one had a proper dousing rod. They’d been trying to stop the suurahezhan from entering the keep.
Styophan glanced to his left as Datha joined him. “Do you see?”
Datha looked more closely, for he hadn’t recognized what had truly happened. “They were trying to stop it.”
“They should have been able to.” This was from Edik, who knelt and picked up the blackened shield. It crumbled in his hands. “Unless it was an elder, this should have been able to stop it, at least force it to take a different path. But look”—Edik stood and pointed—“its path never wavered.”
He was right. The hezhan’s path continued straight and up to the keep doors. He locked eyes with Styophan, both of them immediately understanding the importance.
Datha glanced between the two of them. “Speak, Styophan son of Andrasha.”
“It’s a symptom of the change. Things have been growing worse, but even among the islands, I would have thought this much iron would have stopped the hezhan.”
“Yet it didn’t,” Datha said.
“Even here, the rifts have grown wide. I would never have thought… This far from Ghayavand…” Styophan looked over these men. They’d wanted desperately to prevent the hezhan from reaching the keep. “Come.”
They continued past the burned wreckage of the doors where the smell of cardamom became almost overpowering. Beyond, in the great room, they found a large charred circle where the suurahezhan must have crossed back to Adhiya. More of the dead—another twenty, both men and women—lay scattered about the room like forgotten toys. There was one near the back of the room, however, that drew Styophan’s attention. It was a man who wore black boots and baggy pants and armor of hardened leather.
Styophan almost thought he recognized the man by his shape alone. It was one of the Kiliç Şaik. One of Bahett’s men.
They’d come here, then. After fleeing Hael, they’d come to this keep, and they’d been here—Bahett included—when the suurahezhan had attacked.
“You think we’ll find him?” Edik asked in Anuskayan.
Styophan stood and looked more closely at the remains of the other bodies. None had the same leather armor. “Something tells me our friend from Galahesh escaped.”
“Bahett?” Edik said as he crouched and looked impassively at the Kiliç Şaik. “Why?”
They continued up to the second floor. At the back of the keep near an open window was the body of a man who’d been burned badly along his right side. He was face down, and he wore red robes of a cut and style Styophan had never seen before.
Styophan kneeled down by him. He had swarthy skin. He looked like a young man, but the deep wrinkles around his eyes marked him as a man from the desert. A man from the Gaji, perhaps, which made a strange sort of sense. It was where Nikandr and Atiana had gone searching for Kaleh and Nasim and the Atalayina. There were no others they’d seen—Aramahn or Maharraht—that might have summoned the suurahezhan. It was possible that the qiram had left with Bahett and the other survivors of the attack, but Styophan had the distinct impression that this man had summoned the spirit. Why he wasn’t sure. Nor did he understand why he now lay dead. Perhaps he’d tried to send the spirit back. Perhaps he’d wished to send it into the land of Hael at the behest of Bahett and had lost control.
Styophan would probably never know, but he did know this: the world was beginning to fall apart at the seams. He’d felt it in his heart already, but to see such strange things before his very eyes… It made him feel as though they were already too late, that no matter what they did the rifts would continue to spread and bring about the end of the world after all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Rare clouds hid the moon, plunging the chill desert night into total darkness, but Nasim could still feel the tomb ahead. He’d opened his mind to Adhiya to draw upon a vanahezhan, and he could feel the earth beneath his feet, the immensity of the peak above him. The lay of the land was open to him, its twists and turns, its hills and valleys. He’d drawn upon a dhoshahezhan as well, and he used it to feel the life around him—the towering spruce and the moss and small ferns that grew upon the forest floor. The sweet smell of the sap that seeped through the bark was heightened, as were the dried pine needles, and the pungent odor of the tiny mushrooms that lay hidden among them. He took the time to draw upon more hezhan. He’d not done so until now for the fear that Sariya would sense him, but he could wait no longer. He was too near the next tomb, and he refused to allow Sariya to catch him off-guard.
First, he called upon a jalahezhan, a spirit of water—difficult
to reach in these places but easier now that he had two others to help draw it near. Through it he felt the pathways of water as they slipped down mountain streams and through cracks in this great mountain.
Next, a havahezhan. He called upon one—not the nearest, but the eldest. It came easily. Willingly. The touch of it made Nasim want to soar among the dark clouds above.
Last was a suurahezhan. This was the most difficult. There were few here among the valley. Years ago he might have forced one closer. But he’d changed. He’d grown, in no small part due to the Atalayina; the stone had opened secrets to him that he’d never have found on his own. He stood resolute, beckoning. Not demanding, nor begging, but urging—a simple call to an equal. The eldest among them, an old spirit indeed, was intrigued. It drifted closer. Nasim offered himself to the spirit, and for a moment it scoffed. What need have you of me, it seemed to say, when you’ve called on so many others.
Nasim shared his need, his will to right the world. Even the spirits knew how unbalanced the world had become, he was sure. Still, it retreated, perhaps ready to move on, to go wherever it is that hezhan go in their ephemeral world, but then it paused. It reconsidered, perhaps sensing something in Nasim it had not seen before, something it would like to taste of. Or perhaps its hunger outweighed its better judgment. Who knew the minds of the spirits?
It reached out.
And Nasim took it.
Suddenly it stormed over Nasim. Tried to consume him.
Nasim fought, but did not push the suurahezhan away. Instead, he embraced it. He allowed the hezhan to feed on him, to feel what the world of Erahm was like. It raged against him, but he refused to allow it thought, instead feeding it the dark sights of the forest around him, the smells, the solidity of the earth beneath his feet, and the touch of the wind that sighed through the needles of the spruce.
Like a child in a world filled with wonder and delight, the suurahezhan lost itself. It struggled only once more. A swirl of flame lit the forest. It twisted and churned, lights of yellow and orange twisting like a flock of starlings, and then it was gone, its energy snuffed as it gave itself to Nasim at last.
The Flames of Shadam Khoreh (The Lays of Anuskaya) Page 25
