Haven atobas-4

by Joel Shepherd

  “You come from the town back there?” Markan asked, pointing back the way they'd ridden.

  The horseman nodded. “Weird place, yes? Too many damn weird places in this land, I'll be happy to get home to Meraine, myself.” He looked at them with some suspicion. “I bet you Lenays don't find it so weird, though? Men say you folks don't mind the serrin?”

  “In Isfayen we've had little to do with them,” said Markan.

  “Ah,” said the horseman. “Isfayen.” Clearly he had no idea where that was. In most of the lowlands, a Lenay barbarian was a Lenay barbarian, no matter what region.

  “What manner of soldiers are you?” Markan asked, with clear disdain.

  “Men-at-arms,” came the reply. “Tasked with foraging.”

  “Foraging what?” Sasha asked.

  The horseman stared at her, only now seeming to notice her presence. He blinked rapidly, perhaps realising who she was.

  “Things,” he said defensively. “Food. Supplies.”

  “Mind if I look?” Sasha asked.

  “It's ours!” scowled the horseman. He backed up his horse, clearly worried. His reaction made her cold. If he recognised her, Sasha reckoned, he no doubt knew something of her conflicted allegiances.

  Like stone, she told herself. Like the hard granite of the looming cliffs.

  The crossbowmen in the back of the wagon were readying their weapons, as horsemen along the column grasped at the hilts of their blades.

  “There are a handful of you,” Markan said contemptuously. “There are many of us. We are the Isfayen, the bloodwarriors of the western mountains, and all Lenayin has feared us since we first walked in the world. I think it best that you let us look.”

  The horseman thought about it. A nervous shifting passed along the wagon column. Then the horseman backed up, and crossbowmen leaped from the back of the wagon.

  “There was a bounty,” the horseman explained nervously. “A gold piece each. We just wanted to bring something back to our families.”

  Sasha dismounted, strode to the back of the wagon, and threw open the rear flap.

  The wagon was filled with small bodies. Little shapes, arms and legs askew, entangled in dreadful heaps. She saw little faces, and widened eyes. Saw a flash of inhuman colour, the gleam of serrin sight. Crossbred children. Part human, part serrin, like her good friend Aisha. Like she and Errollyn would have had, given the chance, and the assurance that their offspring would not end up like this, piled in some forager's cart like…

  The wagon floor was awash with blood. The smell was dreadful.

  Sasha did not know how she hit the ground, but suddenly her knees were gone, and she was curled against the wagon wheel, her body torn with sobs. From the Isfayen behind her, there was consternation. Markan dismounted and peered into the wagon. And cursed in shock.

  Then Yasmyn, who said nothing when she looked, but her grip on Sasha's arm when she crouched at her side was painfully tight. Other Isfayen lords came to look, now guessing the wagon's contents, but horrified all the same.

  “Sasha,” said Yasmyn, perhaps as distressed to see the great Synnich-ahn curled and sobbing like a child as she was at the wagon itself. She put a hand to Sasha's face, eyes pleading her to stop. Sasha barely noticed. She had tried to make herself like stone, but stone was not her nature. She was water, free and wild, and she could not bear this weight.

  She could not be a party to this. Her land and her people were all she had that remained, and she marched with them into the very gates of Loth…but she could not be a party to this. She would rather die. She had to die. She had no other choices left.

  A time passed, and Sasha was barely aware that the men of the column had been rounded up, and the other wagons searched. Men about her muttered of an orphanage, a special place for abandoned children of mixed blood. They must have been late to leave, they said, and taken refuge in the temple, praying that their gods would save them. Sasha sat against the rear wheel, face in her hands, and wished the world would end.

  “Sasha,” came Markan's voice at her side, more gentle than she'd ever heard him. “Synnich-ahn. We have found one alive.”

  Sasha raised her tear-streaked face and looked at him. Then another lord came, carrying a bundle that he placed on the road beside her. It was a little boy, perhaps six years old. His face was pale, yet his eyes were sharp, emerald green. Like Errollyn's.

  Sasha gazed at him. The boy seemed sightless, and Sasha wondered if he were blind. But she passed a hand before his face, and he blinked, and moved back a little.

  “Hello there,” she murmured, in Torovan. “What's your name?” There was no reply. Torovan was a tongue learned at later ages, if at all. Most likely the boy spoke Rhodaani…and perhaps one other. “What is your name?” Sasha tried again, this time in Saalsi, the language of the serrin.

  The boy blinked at her, as though noticing her for the first time. Sasha nodded.

  “I do speak that tongue,” she told him quietly. “I see you know a little.”

  The boy's green eyes shimmered with tears. Sasha hugged him before the sight of his face could make her lose control again. She held him tight, as Isfayen about them wondered at the location of a grave and what to do for a ceremony.

  “What do we do with the prisoners?” one man asked Markan. Markan made a gesture of thumb across throat, as careless as a man might decide to cast away food gone bad. The other nodded, and left to do that.

  “Ask them who demands the bounty,” Yasmyn called after that man. “If he will not answer, make it slow.”

  Sasha picked up the boy, and carried him away from the wagons. He was not going to watch this, nor the burial of his friends.

  “Will you tell me your name?” she tried again as she walked.

  “Tomli,” came a faint murmur against her ear.

  “Well, Tomli,” she said, still in Saalsi, “I have an idea. Likely it will get all of us killed, and destroy the Army of Lenayin. But it's the best idea I have, because it is the only thing I'm still certain is right.”

  The more she thought about it, the more certain she became. She climbed the slope off the road, to gain a view of the cliffs, and wait for her party to ride once more.

  FOUR

  Burying even little bodies took time, when one took proper care. By the time the Isfayen returned to the column, dusk was falling, and the Army of Lenayin had halted to prepare its nighttime defences, and distribute the day's foraged food.

  Sasha carried Tomli before her on the saddle, and cared not how many men stared at the pair of them in passing. She left her horse at the stable of the farmhouse commandeered for the night's lordly retreat, and took Tomli inside to the washroom. There she booted out several lords, and set about seeing Tomli washed, well aware of the building commotion outside the washroom door. She emerged only once to ask if anyone had clean children's clothes, and a search of the farmhouse did bring a clean pair of breeches and a shirt down to the washroom door. They were a little too big, but Sasha rolled up the pants, made cuffs of the sleeves, and wondered if some skill in much-despised needlework might not be useful after all.

  Then she emerged, ushering Tomli before her, into a main room full of Lenay captains, lords, two princes, and one king. Lamps lit the wooden floors and smooth stone walls, and food lay arrayed upon a long table. The men were all in sombre conversation, knowing what lay within the washroom, and awaiting its emergence.

  Koenyg now rose from an armchair, and conversation trailed away to silence.

  “Markan told me,” said Koenyg. Markan stood nearby. “How is the boy?”

  “Traumatised,” said Sasha. “His name is Tomli. He is five, and he speaks Rhodaani and some Saalsi. He was born to a single mother who gave him to an orphanage. Saalshen keeps them well funded, Tomli seemed happy enough there.”

  The horror of it nearly stole her sanity once more. She swallowed hard.

  “A Verenthane orphanage?” asked the Great Lord of Rayen, curiously.

  “I think,�
�� said Sasha, nodding. “He said he was cared for by priests. He called them all Papa.”

  “Those men you found did a grave crime,” Koenyg said grimly, “and their punishment was just. But from now on, all Lenays shall stay within the column. We cannot be enforcing our laws onto every criminal act. Enmities between the Free and the Saalshen Bacosh are two centuries old, and there will be many crimes. It cannot be our place to intervene, and strain the allegiance further.”

  “The Black Order of Larosa placed a bounty upon the heads of all serrin and half-breed children,” Sasha said quietly. “Word passes across the land. What we saw was not a crime. It was policy.”

  Koenyg's stare darkened. “Sister, I will not have you sow dissension against our Verenthane allies….”

  “I state only fact,” said Sasha. “Ask Markan to deny it.” No one looked at Markan. To question the Great Lord of Isfayen's honesty was not wise. “And brother, I cannot be party to any army that supports such acts. These are our allies, and they murder children by the wagonload. Little girls and little boys like Tomli.” Her hand was firm on Tomli's shoulder. Even in the face of this fearsome gathering of strangers, Tomli did not flinch or shake. He had seen far worse than this. “I do not appeal to your sympathy. I appeal to your honour. There is honour in victory against warriors in battle. To murder small children for gold…”

  She gazed at each of them in turn. Men met her eyes for a moment, then looked aside. Others would not look at all. She did not complete that last sentence. She could not. For even the rough men of Lenayin, there were no words.

  Save for the northerners. The Hadryn, the Ranash, and the Banneryd stood to their own, separate side of the room, and stared with unflinching calm. With them stood Myklas, frowning.

  “I recall that you have played this game before,” said the Great Lord Heryd of Hadryn. He was a wall of a man, blond, tall, and undecorated. Pure, in the image of his faith. “In the rebellion, you used orphan children to tug at the hearts of nobles and ladies in Baen-Tar.”

  “Not orphan children, Lord Heryd,” Sasha told him, unblinkingly. “They currently reside with their parents in the Udalyn Valley. Their parents live, thanks to me, and your glorious defeat at my hands.”

  Lord Heryd steamed. Great Lord Rydysh of Ranash muttered an insult in his native tongue that Sasha did not understand.

  “We do not speak of past conflicts,” Koenyg said sharply. “Each part of Lenayin has fought each other part of Lenayin so many times in history, and our losses and grievances outnumber the stars. Here we are one army, and we will not sacrifice future glories on the altar of past hatreds.”

  There was nothing “past” about this hatred, and they all knew it. The north was not merely Verenthane-they were devout, and pure. Most Lenay provinces rode in this battle for the allegiance of the great Verenthane lowland powers, and the promised future glory of Lenayin. But the north rode for the sheer religious pleasure of smiting evil, and in northern opinion, that evil had gleaming eyes and oddly coloured hair. They did not care if ten thousand half-breed children were murdered, they were going to heaven, climbing on the piled corpses of the serrin race.

  “She has sung this tune before,” Lord Heryd repeated. “One orphan child proves nothing, save that she has few new ideas for luring strong men with women's cowardice.”

  “Every time the likes of you go to war,” Sasha told him, “helpless children escape your slaughter to fall into my hands. The only thing proved is that you lot would rather kill children than warriors.”

  Koenyg had to intervene, physically, as Lord Heryd stepped forward quickly, a hand to his hilt.

  “Do it,” Sasha invited him. “Draw the blade. I've killed so many of you northern lords. Let's make it one more. See if your gods punish me worse than they did when I killed the others.”

  Silence followed in the room. The northerners hated her, but they were no longer stupid enough to challenge her. They knew her to be a hothead, prone to shouting and rash displays of temper. Now, she did not shout. Her words were clipped, firm, and calculated.

  Amongst the nobility of Lenayin, it was occurring to Sasha, an unchallengeable duellist possessed a frightening advantage not merely in blades, but in debate as well. One dared not push her too hard, for duelling was the law, and cowardice as fatal as death itself. The men in the room feared not for their lives; they feared for their honour, and that of their families. They feared that here was a girl who could twist them to her will and, if they retaliated in anger, issue a challenge they could not win.

  Such a woman could become a queen. A terrible one.

  Sasha had no doubt they'd kill her first, honourably or not.

  “I will take the boy,” said Koenyg. He came to Sasha. “I will see that he is…”

  Sasha drew her sword, and took her opening stance, blade at quarter check behind her head, raised for the strike. Koenyg stopped.

  “Any man,” said Sasha, “who attempts to remove this boy from me shall die. Tomorrow, I shall demand before this army that the priests of the Black Order be brought to account for their actions, and their bounty upon the heads of half-castes be withdrawn. Selith'en to tamathy, elish'an so valth'mal rae, y'seth lan as'far.” Evil grows in the dark, while good men lie, and snuff out the light. It was a saying well known in Saalsi. None present understood it, yet the mere fact of Saalsi spoken proudly in this room caused more eyes to widen.

  Sasha grasped Tomli's hand and strode from the room, out into the night. Markan followed.

  “Well that you bed with the Isfayen tonight,” he said. “Even the great Synnich-ahn cannot defeat foes in her sleep.”

  “Very well,” Sasha agreed, following Markan's lead to the Isfayen camp.

  “And better still should you bed with me tonight,” Markan added.

  Sasha glanced at him in surprise. Then smiled. “I shall be the death of us all, Markan.”

  “I know,” said Markan, a gleam in his eye. “It is arousing.”

  Sasha sighed, and grasped little Tomli's hand more firmly.

  She was awoken that night by a kick at her boot. Her eye flicked that way, unalarmed, despite the sudden grasp of her hand for the knife beneath the bundled cloak she used for a pillow. It was the safe way to wake a warrior, when nerves were on edge in the constant nighttime harassment of the serrin.

  A dark figure crouched by her boots, backlit by the orange glow of coals.

  “Sasha,” Damon murmured. Sasha turned to look and found Tomli, sleeping soundly alongside. She did not know how he slept. Perhaps it was exhaustion, or shock.

  Sasha patted the thin bedroll, and shifted over for Damon. He slid in alongside her, an arm about her shoulders. It was no longer just affection between them, but habit. They had not been close for most of their lives, Sasha and Prince Damon, but lately that had changed. It was nice to have family, that was all. And Sasha thought of her sister Alythia, murdered in Tracato. She embraced her brother, and put her head on his chest.

  “I know what you're doing,” Damon said quietly.

  “I'm glad one of us does,” said Sasha.

  “Don't play the fool with me,” Damon replied, but there was no anger in his words. “This is very dangerous, Sasha. Koenyg will not allow it. Nor will the northerners, nor most of the lords.”

  “I know,” said Sasha. What was left of the fire crackled, and about it men snored. The camp seemed calm, and Sasha did not think they had been attacked tonight. “It's this or die, Damon. By my own hand. I can't live with this, and I don't think much of this column can either, once they know what's happening.”

  “Koenyg is trying to stop them from learning,” said Damon.

  “I know. But the king's power to prevent the men of Lenayin from knowing what they know has always been limited.” Sasha looked up at him. “Can you live with it?”

  Damon said nothing for a moment, staring at the stars. Then he shook his head. Sasha guessed his thoughts, and what remained unsaid-however much he hated the situation, he did not kno
w that he could stand up to Koenyg either.

  “Sasha,” Damon murmured finally. “What would you have us do?”

  “Switch sides,” said Sasha. From Damon's sigh beneath her cheek, she registered his unhappiness.

  “It's always that simple with you,” he murmured with exasperation.

  “I'm only interested in the destination, Damon. You worry too much for the state of the road.”

  “If all you watch is your destination,” said Damon, “you may fail to notice the ravine that has opened between you and it.”

  “Build a bridge,” said Sasha.

  Damon pinched her ear. Sasha jabbed his ribs.

  “It'll tear the Army of Lenayin apart,” said Damon.

  Sasha raised herself from his chest and stared at him. “Damon,” she said firmly, “who fucking cares?” Damon gazed at her. Dumbly. “Who would take their side, if all who share our sympathies come with us?”

  Damon thought about it. The north. The nobility…or many of them. He nodded, slowly. They were not people Damon wanted on his side any more than Sasha did. But…

  “Koenyg,” he said. “And our father's memory. His spirit. This was his war….”

  “It was Koenyg's,” Sasha snorted. “Father believed that the fates would show him the way, and the gods watch over us. All the actual decision making he left to Koenyg.”

  “The purpose of this war was to unite all of Lenayin within a common cause,” Damon said stubbornly. “We've fought each other for all history, this is the first time we've fought all together, on a foreign campaign….”

  “Aye, for the glory of a faith less than half the population shares,” Sasha interrupted. “Damon, you're arguing like Sofy-she always thinks it's better to make peace and bring people together. What about the men who murdered those children? Would you like to make peace with them? Forge a common destiny? Me, I say any common destiny with people like that is a destiny not worth having. I'd rather see their heads on pikes.”

  “Or yours on one,” Damon warned.

  “Yes,” Sasha agreed, adamantly. “Better that, too.”