Acacia, The War with the Mein

by David Anthony Durham

  That night, camped at the edge of the Eilavan Woodlands, Hanish pondered this question at some length. He searched in the generations of Meinish warriors for any whom he considered his equal. He had once viewed them all with awe, but now, as he ticked them off one by one, he found each of them lacking in one way or another. Only Hauchmeinish seemed a man of undeniable greatness. The times had been so tumultuous that Hauchmeinish was born into war and lived his entire life in the center of a whirlwind. He had certainly been a fierce fighter, a gifted leader upon whom fell great trials to test his mettle. Who else could have led the Meins as they had marched, desolate and beaten, into a frigid exile meant to destroy them? Hauchmeinish had made sure they persevered, but in the end his was a story of defeat. What would Hanish say to him when he looked him in the face? Should he bow before such an ancestor? Or should he bend his knee before him?

  Hanish knew what they would expect: him with head bowed to them, humble, grateful. They had always spoken to him in whispers that said he was nothing without them. He was simply the product of their labors. All his achievements were owned by the collective. No single man mattered compared to the force they embodied together. He had lived his life by just this credo, and it had not failed him. So why did his mind seem to buck against his old certainties now, when he was so close to finishing his work?

  It troubled him to realize that it was Acacian heroes he most respected. Edifus might have been his equal. Tinhadin surely was. Had he warred with them, he was not at all sure that he would have prevailed. Edifus had fought so doggedly, without flagging, scrapping with any and all who stood against him. He had not been a man of guile or cunning, but he had fought in the front ranks of every major battle of his career. Tinhadin had been a different sort, all treachery and betrayal, a model for cutthroat duplicity, a man willing to embrace the horrors of a vision so broad few others would even have conceived it. It struck Hanish that he had learned from these founders of Acacia. In a way, he revered them, even though they had been his people’s greatest foes. He fell asleep wrapped around the comforting—and disappointing—thought that there were no men such as those two to face him now.

  Later, his eyes snapped open on the creamy splash of stars painted on the night sky. He cast around a moment, his senses screaming alertness throughout his body. He spotted the guards standing at eight points around him and others sleeping on the ground, the horses nearby. Everything quiet, just as peaceful as when he had drifted off, the air filled with cricket calls. It was not anything happening around him that had woken him. He had been dreaming of an Akaran female, a woman who looked exactly like Corinn. But she was not Corinn, and it had not been an amorous encounter. It had to have been…Mena. Sword-wielding Mena. A wrathful goddess: that was how she had described herself in the dream. She had raised her weapon to show it to him. The blade was drenched in blood. It dripped the stuff as if the metal were a spring of red liquid. It was the sight of that weapon and her woman’s hands on the hilt that had thrust him up from slumber. But why dream of her? Wasn’t Aliver the one leading the rebellion? Why awake fearing someone who in daylight hours he still considered a girl?

  He knew little of Mena except that she had killed Larken with his own sword, slain several Punisari afterward, and stirred the crew into revolt. The last part was probably the easiest. It was an unfortunate reality of imperial life that each Mein had to depend upon a host of conquered peoples to keep the world functioning, to man ships and cook meals and build roads. Still, it should not have been possible for petite Mena to so completely elude them.

  Hanish decided that if the opportunity presented itself, he would sacrifice Mena during the ceremony. Better to have her out of the way. Perhaps Corinn would even manage to forgive him. Perhaps at the end of it all they could have a life together. Hanish rolled to one side, feeling the contours of the ground beneath him. He shut his eyes and tried to sleep and tried not to think of Corinn. He achieved neither.

  The next day, sitting on a rise that provided a view of the winding path of the road through the Eilavan Woodlands, Hanish caught sight of the approaching caravan. Cavalry rode in the fore and off through the woods along the flanks. Then followed units of Punisari, marching in tight formation, hemmed in by the narrow lane. Beyond them stretched a snaking length of wagons and laborers and priests, ox-drawn contraptions loaded with hundreds of sarcophagi. In each, Hanish knew, resided one of his ancestors. He heard the crack of the drivers’ whips carried to him on the breeze. It was actually happening, he thought. It was really going to happen.

  Riding closer, through the cavalry and foot soldiers and on toward the body of the procession, he could not imagine how they had managed to traverse the rutted, abused, and sodden tundra of the Mein Plateau. In summer it would have been a jolting journey through a fetid landscape of bog land spread thinly over a rocky underlayer, with so many opportunities to tip to either side and spill their loads, such mires to get stuck in. Perhaps they would not have been able to do it at all without the aid of Numrek technology. It was they who had taught the Meins how to make wagons of such size, with those enormous wheels and with flexible undercarriages that did not snap under pressure. Still, the thought of these great contraptions negotiating the steep, switchback trail down from the Rim set tingles of trepidation through him. He would have to question Haleeven about it later, after thanking him, congratulating him. It was a feat he would have a poet write a ballad about.

  Hanish’s uncle grinned like a madman when he saw his nephew. The two men greeted each other by crashing their heads together. Forehead impacted against forehead. They pressed skin to skin, each with their hands wrapped around the other’s skull. It was an old greeting, reserved for close relatives and for times of great emotion. It was meant to hurt. But the pain of it was nothing compared to the impact of Haleeven’s appearance. Hanish had never seen a man so haggard, save the beggars that roamed the back alleys of Alecia: unkempt of clothes, speckled with grime, lips chapped from his tongue that darted, darted, darted out to moisten them. His eyes hid behind low-hanging brows, and the skin of his face sagged, as if the tissue itself had been fatigued by the recent weeks’ work. His hair was shockingly white. Hanish tried to remember if it had been so before, even a little. He did not think so. It stood up from his scalp as if each hair were a tendril of silver thread frozen by an icy breeze.

  Pulling back from him, Hanish said, “You look well.”

  The lie was out of his mouth before he realized it. Haleeven let him know what he thought of it with a frown but was merry again the next moment. “No, you look well. I—I’m not so well. This is some mission you sent me on, Nephew. Some task…”

  “But you’ve done it.”

  Haleeven studied him a moment, then nodded. “Come, let me show you everything.”

  At Haleeven’s side, Hanish visited each of the ancestors. He climbed upon the great wagons, touching the sarcophagi with his hands, whispering his greetings, invoking old prayers of praise. He felt the life within the containers palpably. They pulsed with an undeniable, ferocious energy. It lashed at the world in muted silence, as if each of them were screaming bloody murder inside a sound- and motion-proof chamber. Hanish noted the fatigue and unease in the laborers’ every gesture. They were hollow eyed with fear, wrung more by the emotional toll of their duties than by the physical labor. Even the oxen, usually calm creatures, were skittish and needed to be tightly controlled.

  Haleeven’s description of the journey was a long tale of hardship and setbacks, told through the afternoon and continued that evening over supper in camp. When he was finished, the two men sat in silence, the night settling around them. Hanish could not see the stars for the trees blocking them, the undersides of the foliage glowing with firelight. Haleeven lit a pipe full of hemp leaf and drew on it, a habit Hanish had not known he had taken to. He almost said something disparaging. But it wasn’t as if Haleeven were smoking mist. Perhaps he’d earned a vice. Hanish had just begun to think of Corinn again, when
his uncle broke the silence.

  “They are so impatient,” Haleeven said.

  Hanish didn’t need to ask whom he meant. “I know.”

  “They are angry.”

  “I know. I’ve made—”

  The uncle snapped forward from his reclined position, shot out a hand, and grabbed his nephew by the wrist. He waited until Hanish met his eyes and then pegged them to his with a burning intensity. “You don’t know! You haven’t felt them like I have these many days. They’re fully awake now. They seethe with animus. They want revenge so badly they tremble with the nearness of it. I fear them, Hanish. I fear them like I’ve never feared anything on earth.”

  Hanish pulled his wrist away, slowly but with a twist that broke the man’s grip. He spoke with the conviction he knew he should feel, trying to believe his own words. “Their anger is not directed at you, Uncle. We have nothing to fear from our own.”

  “That’s what they have always told us,” Haleeven said. “What have you told the princess?”

  “About what will happen to the Tunishnevre? I told her that she could help me release them. A drop of her blood, I said, and her blessing was all we needed to break the curse. She has not offered to give it, though. And I haven’t pressed her. She thinks I can do it without her blessing.”

  “You can,” Haleeven said. “And did you tell her what breaking the curse means? Or that there are two different ways to do it, each with a very different outcome?”

  “I said that it would free the ancestors so that they could escape to true death and finally rest. I said they just wanted peace and release.”

  “That’s all you told her?”

  Hanish nodded.

  Haleeven was quiet a moment, and then he said, “So by omission you lied to her.”

  “Yes, I did. She believes the ancestors want peace, when in fact what they truly want is to walk the earth again—”

  “With swords drawn—”

  “Wreaking bloody vengeance.”

  The two sat for a time after this, nothing more to say now that they had shared what they both knew and had known all along. Hanish extended his hand and motioned for the pipe. Haleeven turned it and slipped it into his hands.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Maeander had thought it before, but he knew now that it was true beyond a doubt: nothing stirred his blood as much as the promise of warfare. Carnal conquests, games of physical prowess, acquisition of riches, hunts of animal and/or human quarry, and skirmishes: all of these paled to insignificance compared to the promise of carnage on a massive scale. He had thrived on the bloodshed of the first war and had largely been bored since. On several occasions he had tried to convince Hanish to let him make war on one people or another, but his brother always dismissed him as a joker. Now, finally, after nine years of peace, he felt his heart quicken again. Aliver Akaran had returned, and he had brought enough friends with him to make it interesting.

  As Maeander disembarked his troops at points along the central Talayan coast and marched them a short distance inland, he thought of the coming conflict as a grand diversion. He could not spot within himself any tendril of fear or concern or worry that fate might have some unpleasant outcome in store for him. He could not lose. He knew that much. He had never met another person with a mind as suited to slaughter as his. Perhaps the fabled Tinhadin might have rivaled him, but few others could. His troops were honed and ready. Hanish had made sure they did not luxuriate in their military victory too much and grow soft, like the Acacians had. It had not been easy to manage this, as most of them had become wealthy men overnight. But Hanish had sworn them to a strict level of discipline. With a few exceptions, they’d lived up to it.

  They were a more formidable force than they had been in the first war: fitter, better provisioned, broader of outlook and training, and just as proud. They were not hungry the way they’d been in that earlier conflict, but they were determined to preserve what they had won. The younger men craved glory similar to their father’s, uncle’s, and older brother’s. They had obtained weapons that Aliver would be entirely unprepared for, surprises that might prove more dramatic than even the Numrek had been.

  In addition to the faith he had in himself and his troops, the Tunishnevre had promised him that he would triumph over the Akaran. Aliver’s blood would spill at his hand; they had assured him of this. They had given him permission to kill the young man himself, if need be. Corinn would suffice in the ceremony to free them of their curse, but Aliver could not be allowed to live on as a danger to them.

  Watching the upstart prince’s thronging army from atop a ridgeline overlooking what would be the battlefield, Maeander was as excited as a boy who imagines such scenes inside his head. He spent a few days arranging his troops into camps from which they could be deployed. If Aliver believed the revolts throughout the empire would leave the Meins with scant allies, he would be disappointed. Hanish had called upon the entrenched leadership in each province, those who had grown rich by supporting Meinish causes, those who so enjoyed being elevated above their peers that they would fight to preserve their status. These groups had worked to put down the rebellions at home and answered Maeander’s call for troops. The Numrek had yet to arrive. Word was that they were but a couple of days away. They would miss out only on a little of the action. He wasn’t sure he would need them anyway.

  Talay might be largely out of his hands, but he did hold Bocoum and most of the coastline, with infinite resources for seaborne resupply. League vessels dotted the sea in the thousands, waiting to fulfill whatever need might arise. His forces numbered a solid thirty thousand. Each of this number was a fighting man, trained and selected for this battle. His army, he believed, was a steel blade that would cut through Aliver’s bloated forces. It would have been nice to still have Larken as his right hand, but that was not possible thanks to Mena, a strange, deceitful creature.

  Because of this, he hoped that Aliver would accept his invitation to parlay. He would like to look Mena in the face again and search for signs of her martial skills that he had missed during their first meeting. He wondered what Aliver might look like in person. He worried that his appearance would be disappointing—it was better to imagine a gallant, skilled foe—but still he was curious and knew that Aliver would likely be deceased before another opportunity presented itself.

  The Akarans, however, declined. They sent a message to remind him that during the last war the Meins had used the honored tradition of parlay only to unleash a foul weapon. This would not, Aliver said, be allowed to happen again. If Maeander wished to surrender himself, his brother, and every Mein who had fought against or profited from the fall of the Akaran Empire, then they might have something to talk about. Otherwise, they should decide the matter on the field.

  Maeander answered that this was fine with him. He had nothing much to say to the prince either. This was not exactly true, as became clear from the further message he sent back. At this point, he said, he would not even have accepted Aliver’s unconditional surrender. Maeander believed the prince had cast his lot on the day he chose to come out of hiding. From that day to this, his life was ticking down toward its conclusion. Considering this, there was no possibility that talking would do either of them any good, and this simple exchange of messages served the purposes of parlay reasonably well. He would never have sent such a wordy message before the first war, but it felt natural enough now. Perhaps the cultured life available on Acacia was having an effect on him, making him more verbose.

  Before dawn the next morning he sent conscripted laborers far out onto the plains to clear the field of debris. He had the catapults wheeled into place. The sun rose on the assembling troops. Between the two armies stretched a wide, flat expanse of open ground, dotted here and there by shrubs and a few acacia trees. Aliver’s troops outnumbered his nearly two to one. They formed up into ordered rows, divided into units that must have had autonomous leaders, but this did not hide the polyglot diversity of them. Maeander called
them Acacians, but in truth they were mostly Talayans, with all manner of other peoples mixed in among them. A great many of them wore Akaran orange. Some had shirts or trousers in the color; others tied strips of cloth around their foreheads or on their arms or made belts from material of that hue. The Balbara troops—who went about nearly naked—marked their chests with ochre paint. All in all, they made for a most colorful display. Maeander had particular reason to be pleased by this. They would be crippled, he believed, by language barriers, by differing customs, by such a range of skill and bravery and battle preparedness that all he needed to do was stir chaos into their midst and slaughter them as they imploded.

  He opened with two simultaneous maneuvers intended to deny Aliver any opportunity to grasp the initiative. He set his troops marching, and he had the catapults begin to lob boulders of flaming pitch at either wing of Aliver’s forces. His army was tightly formed, disciplined. They progressed forward with a steady pace that could not be ignored. The front lines of the Acacians would have heard their chants and the rhythmic tromping of their feet and the bursts of sound as different clans shouted in answer to prompts of their family names. All frightening enough.

  Add to it the tremendous snapping motions of the catapults as they shot searing paths into the sky, arcing, arcing, falling before a tail of black smoke. They had modified the weapons from the ones the Numrek had first brought into the Known World. These were larger, improved versions of the originals, with massive gear works and the capacity to hurl missiles twice as far as before. With help from league engineers, they had managed to make the pitch into stable spheres that they could roll onto the cocked catapult arm before lighting them. Once airborne, they held their shape and burned undiminished until they smashed back to earth. Embedded within them were small, pronged iron tripods. On impact they dispersed across the ground, their sharpened, barbed points almost always ended sticking straight up. They were small weapons, but he was sure they would lame men and horses by the hundreds. Aliver had no weapon like this, nor would he be prepared for its devastating power. In response, his troops offered up timed barrages of arrows that—though they inflicted some damage—seemed of little more consequence than a swarm of gnats.