by J. S. Bangs
“And then the city will be his to take. If you wish to remain king of Virnas, you will not turn over the Heir of Manjur to his enemies.”
“And if I don’t turn the Heir of Manjur over to his enemies, I still lose the city to the Uluriya, it seems to me. Tell Sadja that his threats are meaningless and that he is no longer welcome on my lands. Ruyam and I will see to the rest.”
“As you wish, my lord,” the emissary said and bowed. He backed out of the pavilion and walked quickly over the rise to the east, towards Sadja’s tents.
So far so good, Navran thought. But the riskiest part of the plan was yet to come.
Thudra stroked his beard and glanced back at the city. “Chalika,” he said to the captain at the front of the pavilion, “send a man to the city and tell half the garrison to accompany me on the fields. Have them take up positions around the pavilion.”
The captain nodded and left. Navran watched him march towards the city walls, praying Wind-speed, messenger. Bring as many militia as you can. Then he heard Mandhi’s gasp. Her eyes were to the north, and one by one every man in the pavilion turned and watched the northern road, where the Red Men were coming over the ridge.
Their force was massive, marching six abreast on the rutted, muddy road, and spilling off the pounded clay where the path narrowed. As soon as they crested the last ridge before Virnas, a runner separated from the front-most company and sprinted down the hill towards Thudra’s pavilion. Behind him, the force kept coming, an endless line of dusty red sashes and ash-colored dhotis, glittering with bronze on their chests and spear points. After some hundred rows had marched over the hill a red palanquin appeared. Gold shone on its corners, and black smoke leaked from behind its curtains as if an oily fire burned within.
Navran’s stomach lurched, and a band of sweat broke out on his forehead. Ruyam. But now, of all times, he couldn’t show fear.
The runner that had sprinted ahead of the imperial guard approached Thudra’s tent. Panting, he bowed to Thudra and took a moment doubled over to regain his breath. Then he straightened and said, “Thudra-dar, your offer is heard and accepted. If you have the Heir of Manjur, then Ruyam will accept him and spare Virnas from the fire which consumed Jaitha.”
“Accepted,” Thudra said. He pointed to Navran. “The supposed Heir is with me. I’ll be happy to turn him over as soon as Ruyam reaches me. And I offer him my congratulations and well-wishes on his reign. Once we have finished our business, perhaps he’ll join me in my palace—”
“Ruyam will take no visitors,” the runner said. “You will turn over the Heir then he will return to Majasravi. That is all.” He turned on a heel and ran back to Ruyam’s troops.
Navran glanced at the city. A large force of Thudra’s militia were marching out of the gates towards Thudra’s pavilion. Mandhi, too, was looking that way, and she skewered Navran with a look of anger and despair. “What are we doing?” she whispered to him.
“Waiting,” he said.
She pointed to the east. “I noticed Sadja-dar’s men started marching up from the valley. Should I assume that was your doing?”
He nodded. “I told Paidacha to get that message from Sadja-dar.”
“And why? Sadja-dar’s force isn’t large enough to take Thudra’s in open battle.”
“He doesn’t need to. Wait”
Thudra’s additional militia reached them before the crawling serpent of Red Men got to the valley floor. “Form up!” the captain shouted, and for a few minutes there was a ruckus of soldiers marching and bronze spear points clicking together in the sunlight. They kicked up a thin dust that momentarily obscured the city. Navran watched the gates. Now, he thought. They would only have a few minutes. The dust began to thin, and he heard Mandhi gasp before he could make it out.
There was chaos at the north gate of Virnas. From this distance, it appeared merely a mass of bodies churning around the outer gate, and it was impossible to tell who fought with whom, and for what. But soon enough the meaning behind the chaos became clear. Thudra’s banner over the gate fell to the ground, and a bolt of bleached cotton tumbled from the other rampart and unfurled in the wind. Mandhi drew her breath, and a murmur of shock rippled through the ranks.
The banner was painted with a pentacle, with the name of Manjur scrawled beneath it in hasty calligraphy.
“You fool,” Mandhi said.
Ignore her. He needed a clear mind now, and Mandhi’s disparagement would only cloud his thoughts. His palms were suddenly sweaty. He glanced at the soldiers on either side of them.
“What is this idiocy,” Thudra spat as he looked towards the gate. He glowered at Navran through the curtain with his lips pulled back in a snarl of contempt. “Did you have your Uluriya seize the gates?”
He shrugged and said nothing.
“And what do you hope to accomplish with this? Do you think they’ll be able to hold the gates against me? Against my militia and the Red Men both?”
“Thudra-dar,” Chalika said, “Sadja-dar’s men are marching.”
And indeed they were, not towards the massed formation of Thudra’s men, but towards the gates of the city, placing themselves on the road between Thudra and the gate. They did not molest the remnants of the gate guard who were fleeing along the road, but rather turned the points of their spears towards Thudra as they occupied the route to the city.
Thudra cursed. He glanced up the road at the trickle of Red Men still advancing. The head of the army had reached the bottom of the valley. Navran guessed how long it would be before they met. Enough time? It would have to be.
“Dastha,” he whispered. The guard next to him blinked and looked over. “You still bad at dice?”
The guard squinted at Navran then grinned. “I thought I recognized you.”
“It’s been a while since we tossed dice over at Sapma’s, hasn’t it?”
“I’m still down there, but we haven’t seen you for a while.” He glanced at Navran then around them at the rest of Thudra’s pavilion as if he suddenly realized where they were and added, “For good reason. I guess.”
“Not sure how good it was.” He did his best to look glum, which did not take great effort, and shrugged again.
“Does your wife still shriek like a falcon at you for it?”
“Like wives do.” He smiled.
Navran paused a moment and peered through the curtain at Thudra and Chalika watching Ruyam’s forces approach. Dastha looked as well, following Navran’s cue. “What do you think Ruyam will do with the city?” Navran said.
Dastha flinched a little. “I don’t know. Not my business, really.”
“Of course it’s yours. He burned Jaitha. Could do the same to Virnas.”
“But we’re handing the Heir—you, I mean—handing you over.”
“Ah, don’t worry about me,” Navran said and allowed himself a slight grin. “But the Uluriya already took the gates. There’ll be fighting nonetheless. Ruyam won’t like it.”
Dastha pressed his lips together and looked around nervously. “Maybe.”
He pointed to Kalishni clinging to Mandhi’s neck. “And what about Kalishni?”
“What about her?”
“Will you give her to Ruyam?”
“Ruyam won’t hurt her.” His tone was plaintive, as if he begged with the Powers to make his statement true.
“I’m not sure. You know, I was a prisoner with Ruyam for a few months and saw him up close. He might not take the life of a girl for much.”
Dastha shook his head and swallowed. His distress was written on his face. “I hope not.”
“Do you know what I want, Dastha?” The man shook his head. Navran leaned in and whispered, “I want you to let her go. Never mind about me and Mandhi. We can handle our own dhaur. But the girl, she’s separated from her mother—did you know that Mandhi isn’t the girl’s mother? She’s innocent. When you march us to meet with Ruyam, let the girl go.”
Dastha bit his lower lip and looked to both sides again, as if he
worried they had been overheard. His knuckles had turned white where he gripped his spear.
“Just her,” Navran repeated. “She’ll run for Sadja-dar’s line. After that, she’s not your problem.”
Dastha examined Mandhi and the girl and said, “I’ll talk to the others.”
The advance of the Red Men halted. The palanquin leaking black smoke moved to the head of the line and stopped. No messengers or heralds appeared. The guards at the front of the line simply watched Thudra’s forces and waited.
“I suppose that means it’s time,” grumbled Thudra from across the partition. “The mad thikratta doesn’t keep with formalities.” He gestured to Dastha. “Bring out the prisoners.”
With a glance at Navran, Dastha led the three of them from their curtained alcove and onto the road. Three other men formed up around them, two ahead and two behind. Dastha whispered something into the ear of the other man in front, then turned back for a moment and spoke to the two behind in a voice too quiet to hear.
Fear and despair mingled on Mandhi’s face. They marched towards Ruyam. Navran grabbed her shoulder and whispered into her ear, “Run when I do.”
Her look at him suggested that she understood but had no hope to succeed. Fair enough. His stomach was twisted up like a rag being wrung. If this all went wrong, he and Mandhi would be the first to die.
Two hundred paces between Thudra’s encampment and Ruyam’s palanquin. The beaten clay path ran a straight line between shallow fields, just now greening with bristles of rice. At a hundred paces, Navran stopped.
“Now,” he said.
Dastha swallowed and nodded with his jaws clenched in a nervous smile. “Just the girl,” he said.
“No. All of us.” He pointed to the four guards. “Thudra will have you whipped and possibly killed if even one of us gets away. So we all go together.”
“But—” Dastha started.
Navran didn’t wait. He scooped Kalishni into his arms and sprinted into the fields.
There was a burst of noise behind him, and twin roars erupted from Thudra’s and Ruyam’s forces. The rills of the rice field pounded beneath his feet and the sprouted plants scratched at his ankles. Sadja’s men held their line, shouting and waving for them to run. He heard Mandhi’s panting beside him, and in the corner of his eyes he saw her with the skirt of her sari held above her knees, fear and determination glowing in her eyes. A look over his shoulder showed the four soldiers running a few paces behind him, and the armies of Thudra and Ruyam starting to charge across the field.
But he, Mandhi, and the others had started quickly enough. His lungs burned, and his legs ached when he and Kalishni crashed through the front line of Sadja’s forces. A chaos of shouting and running engulfed them—Into the city, close the gates, run, spears forward, hold the rear line. One of Sadja’s captains took his hand, and a soldier took Kalishni from his arms and led both of them towards the open gate of Virnas. Mandhi followed. He heard Dastha and the others crashing into Sadja’s forces, shouting Take us in! We surrender! But he ran ahead, beneath the arch of the gate, and across the stone threshold of Virnas.
Behind him soldiers poured through the gate, shouting and screaming as they retreated from the advance of the two armies. Arrows hailed down from the tower above the gate. His guide pulled him aside and into a shaded alcove next to the gate. Someone cried out, and then Paidacha was there, prying Kalishni from the arms of the soldier and weeping into her hair. The gates of the city creaked and grumbled closed.
Navran grabbed the shoulder of the nearest man who looked like a commander. “Are we in? Do we hold the gates?”
The man staggered back with a look of shock. “We do,” he said. “Are you the one this is for?”
“All of them?”
The man laughed. “You must be him. Yes, all of them. The Uluriya rioted and overwhelmed Thudra’s forces, and we now hold all of Virnas under Sadja’s militia.”
Navran collapsed onto the stone floor, his legs suddenly weak with the exhaustion and terror of their run. “We did it,” he said. He began to laugh. “I can’t believe it worked. I can’t believe it actually worked.”
Mandhi
Mandhi sat on a cushion in the antechamber of Veshta’s estate, watching the men argue and wishing they would finish so she could get into the ablution chamber.
“It was a near thing, and it’ll continue to be close.” Sadja said with a glance upward and a gesture of supplication to Chaludra. “We’ll be lucky if we can hold the city for more than a few weeks.”
“That little?” Navran said. He paced at the far end of the antechamber, studying the green marble of the inner wall as if hoping to find a secret in its veins.
Veshta sat on a cushion near Sadja, his hands folded tightly, watching all of them with wariness. “The city’s stores are low,” he said. “The monsoon has only just passed, harvest is far off, and no one was expecting a siege.”
“Can we possibly break out of the siege?”
Sadja scowled. “What army do we have? The Uluriya were able to overrun the gate militia with the advantage of surprise, but I wouldn’t send them into actual battle, especially not against the imperial guard. And I only brought a few hundred with me. We can hold the walls, but we can’t actually take the field in open battle.”
Navran sighed and slumped forward. “And Ruyam may send down his fire.”
Sadja cocked his head. “Fire?”
“You haven’t heard?” Navran raised an eyebrow. “He burned Jaitha from across the Amsadhu, sending down meteors of flame.”
Sadja crossed his arms. “I had heard one version of that, but not details. Is it the kind of thing we can defend against?”
Navran shook his head. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Then we don’t worry about it.” Sadja grimaced a little as he said it. “You defend against the things you can defend against. The things against which you have no defense… you hope they don’t happen.”
This was why Navran should not have been Heir, Mandhi thought. She admitted a certain respect for the ingenuity with which he had contrived to take the city, but that was hardly the end of it. The Uluriya had held Virnas before, and still the Kingdom of Manjur had fallen. By all signs this history would repeat itself now.
The important thing was for her and her child to get out alive. Navran, left to his own devices, would destroy himself quickly enough. She had to make sure the line of the Heirs did not perish with him. So she posed an innocent question. “What about the rest of the city, the two thirds who are not Uluriya? Will they acquiesce to us holding the city?”
Veshta raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Perhaps we can convince them,” Sadja said. “Thudra will have his partisans, but we can simply expel them or silence them. So long as the larger mass doesn’t turn against us. A riot in Thudra’s favor would end the siege in a matter of hours.”
A matter of hours, Mandhi thought. Enough time for her to escape. “We need a show of legitimacy, Sadja-dar,” she said. “Give the Uluriya a reason to support their new Heir, and give the rest a reason to go along.”
“What does the Heir do?” Navran asked quietly.
“What do you mean?” Veshta asked.
“Once chosen. Is there a coronation?”
“Ah,” Veshta said. “There is an acclamation. The saghada of the city gather in secret to bless the new Heir with ram’s blood. But it’s a private ceremony, known only to the saghada who attend—”
“We’ll make it public. Bring the whole city. Involve the dhorsha somehow.” He gestured at Sadja.
Mandhi snorted. “Does the Heir of Manjur need the approval of the dhorsha?”
“No, but the rest of the city does. Sadja-dar, I beg you to speak to them.”
Sadja nodded. “Mandhi is right about the show of legitimacy, and Navran is right about the dhorsha. I have two of the Ashtya dhorsha in my retinue, and I will seek out the leaders of the Chaludriya dhorsha from this city. How long
will this take? Veshta?”
Veshta shrugged. “I wasn’t alive when Cauratha was acclaimed. The books of Ghuptashya have the rites. It’ll be days, at least.”
“We can hold the city that long,” Sadja said.
“Good,” Navran said and sagged against the wall of the antechamber. “Now, if you will, please let me be cleansed and enter. I have not slept in a bed in months.”
For once, Navran was speaking the words of Mandhi’s own heart. She rose to her feet and took a step towards the door of the women’s ablution chamber. “I, too, would like to enter the estate. If I may take your leave.”
“Yes,” Sadja said, rising with a little nod. “Don’t wait for me. We can meet again tomorrow.”
Mandhi bowed to him and slipped through the heavy curtain into the women’s purification chamber, feeling like she was entering the pool at the gate of paradise. The darkness, the cool water, the quiet, the moment to sit down and wash her dusty, aching feet. To be free from traveling, from the crowds and discomfort of the road, and from Thudra’s prison.
“I will wash my hands in purity,” she said, dipping her hands into the laver. A groan escaped her lips, interrupting her prayer. It felt so good. Not just the clean water, though that was much of it. The chance to be pure again, and to be in a house where she no longer had to worry about how the food was prepared and consider what the debt of purity would be when she returned to the Uluriya. Her last full ablution had been in Majasravi. So long ago.
The bottom fell out of her gut with that memory. Taleg. Taleg. And mingled with that grief was a growing anticipation. She touched her stomach, and a bewildering tumult of joy and pain and bitterness washed over her. She had to talk to someone. She needed to see Srithi.
She said the rest of the prayers slowly and luxuriously, taking extra time to wash the grime of the road from the bottoms of her feet and her hair. When she finally finished, she noticed the little maid Kidri peeking through the curtain of the inner doorway.
“Srithi waits for you in her chamber,” Kidri said, bowing from the waist.
