“Because you weren’t one of them?” Martaina asked, and felt the dryness in her mouth as she said it, the humiliation of her exposure.
“No,” J’anda said with a dismissive wave, “because you could have been sporting and saved one of the men for me, at least. Two if you were feeling charitable.”
She blinked at him, and he was gone down the slope in the moment after that before she had a chance to respond. She followed after, hoping the illusion worked hand in hand with the stir of dirt she was causing on the slope. She came to the end of it, the red dust of her descent caught up with her and overtook her for a minute, but she kept moving until it was cleared and she entered the edge of the tent city of Actaluere’s encampment. She saw the man who she knew was J’anda, just ahead of her, but could only tell him by the dust of the slide on his illusory surcoat. Aisling, ahead, was not only dusty but walked with a slight, almost unnoticeable sway.
“Playing games, soldier?” One of the men she passed, stirring a pot of stew over a fire, shook his head at her. “This is how you know you’ve been too long idle; men start playing like bloody children.”
She didn’t answer, afraid of what the response would sound like, feminine or not. Instead, she followed J’anda, the trailing blue of his stained surcoat, and they walked on past the small tents of the army, toward the larger ones ahead, the tents of the commanders and even one, the largest-for the King, surely-which stood higher than all the rest and was crowned with a circle of pennants atop it.
The smell of food was present, all manner of it, and the latrines, too, as she snaked her way through the camp. Her bow was still on her shoulder, she could feel it with a touch, but it was invisible, no sign that it was there at all. She felt the weight of it too, though, slung where it was. The aisles between tents were clear enough, though men lingered outside in the summer sun, laughing, slouching, aimless in most cases.
The ground between tents grew wider as they drew closer to the King’s tent. The gaps grew between them, the tents got bigger, and the spaces where men sat around fires were broader. Fewer men around these fires, she thought. More elite. There were no fires burning now, though, and few men, now that she thought about it. There was sound in the distance, though the sound of cheers or jeers, she couldn’t tell.
Aisling had slowed her pace, and now Martaina and J’anda caught her, walking as a triad down the quiet, abandoned pathways between tents. “Where did they all go?” J’anda asked, casting his gaze left, then right.
“To wherever that cheering comes from,” Aisling said, and the tension bled in her voice. “And likely where the head of our illustrious general is, too.”
They came out of a cluster of tents and the sound grew louder. There was a gathering in front of the King’s tent, where a wide space was cleared. Their view was obstructed though, and only the top of the massive tent was visible behind the last few large tents in the way. “Think they’re having a party around it?” J’anda asked.
“If so, the celebration will be short-lived,” Martaina said, and ran her hand onto her bow, checking to be sure it was still there even though she couldn’t see it. There was blood in the air again, fighting now to be scented over the camp smells.
They emerged from between two tents and found the source of the cheering and catcalls. There was a courtyard of sorts constructed before the King’s tent. A throne sat to one side, unoccupied, all done in brass but with places for poles to be threaded through so it could be carried on the shoulders of strong men, or placed atop a wagon.
It was not the empty throne that the crowd of soldiers of Actaluere were cheering, Martaina realized quickly. It was the woman stripped naked and tied to a post in the middle of it all, and the head on the top of the post. A flash of brown hair was obvious and visible, though it had been cut short, roughly-by a sword, she suspected-and the back was lashed and red with fresh blood from the shoulders to the buttocks and down the back of her thighs. The woman was on her knees, and the only proof Martaina could find that she was still alive was the steady, slow heave of her shoulders up and down with each breath, the rise and fall of her shoulder blades that put the lie to the idea that a human body could not take the punishment revealed on her skin.
“The head,” J’anda said under his breath. “It’s atop that pillar, where that woman is being … ugh.” He made a sound in the back of his throat, such utter disgust professed that aligned perfectly with Martaina’s sentiments. She had seen worse tortures but few enough. Crimson stained the dirt all around the post, the ground ran red with the woman’s blood.
“She’s still alive, whoever she is,” Aisling said. “Look at her-”
“I see,” Martaina said tightly. “They’ve cut her hair, but you can see the old scarring; it’s Baroness Hoygraf.”
“Dear gods,” J’anda said, staring as the woman turned her shorn scalp and revealed a face battered and bruised but still recognizable. “She was safe at Enrant Monge; how did they-”
“It matters not,” Aisling said, and her tone was hard and uninviting for further talk. “We need the head.”
“While we’re here, we might consider freeing her as a kindness,” Martaina said. “I, for one, wouldn’t wish to experience another moment of what she’s endured, not any of it.”
“Where is-” J’anda started but cut himself off. “There he is.”
From behind the crowd to their left, where he had been obscured from their view, came Grand Duke Hoygraf, his face waxy pale, and his limp pronounced with the cane he leaned on for guidance. His every step looked as though his abdomen caused him pain, though his face was already cut cruel enough into a scowl that it might not have mattered to his expression. He limped his way across the dirt, back to the pillar and his wife, the head of Cyrus perched atop, the lifeless eyes of their general bearing silent witness to everything that happened around them.
“If he starts to launch into a soliloquy, I’m begging you to send an arrow through his eye,” Aisling said.
“If he does,” J’anda said, “I might send an arrow to his eye myself. Hell, I might do it without him speaking. This is an atrocity. How a man could do such a thing to an enemy is beyond me, but his own wife?”
“Love and war are a thin line,” Aisling said, “and thinner here in Luukessia than anywhere else I’ve seen.” They stood at a distant edge of the crowd where it was less populous, but there were at least a hundred in attendance around the spectacle, and all armed with swords. “Can we win this fight?”
“Not by numbers,” J’anda said, “nor by easy deception. My spells would be of limited use with this large of a crowd. I could sow discord, perhaps by charming some of them, having them attack others, but it would be a small few, say fifty or so. There is no chance I could mesmerize this many of them, nor that I could divert all their attention from the center long enough or with enough guarantee that we wouldn’t be caught.” He shrugged. “I don’t think even an army marching into their midst right now would guarantee we wouldn’t be discovered while freeing her, gathering the head and making our escape.” He shook his head. “By the numbers, we need our army to finish this. Unless we all want to die in the process, in which case we might as well go now as later.”
“No deaths,” Aisling said. “Defeats the purpose. There has to be another way, and we only have a few minutes left, now. We need an opening, something to give us an out.” The grand duke hefted a whip in his hand and lashed his wife twice across the back in quick succession, opening fresh lines just above her buttocks. “Killing him before we die would be awfully satisfying, though.”
There was a stir in the crowd, something other than the ordinary jeers, and the grand duke stopped, and spoke. “See what happens? See what comes your way when you are wicked, deceptive, conniving, deceitful, and treat with our enemies?” He opened his arms wide in grand gesture, as if encompassing all with his motion, though he was careful to shift his weight so much of it still rested on the cane he leaned on with his left hand. “Be as
sured, we are a faithful enemy, and repayment of what is owed comes to all who give us cause.” He gestured to the head on the pole with his right hand, and the sneer on his face might have been mistaken for happiness in another man, Martaina thought, but not on his.
“You … promised …” Martaina heard Cattrine speak, low, low enough that she was likely the only one other than the Grand Duke who heard. She caught the look on Hoygraf’s face that told her she had assumed correctly, as the man hobbled over to where his wife lay on her knees, still bound to the pole, totally exposed, bleeding. The Grand Duke leaned down, as if to listen. “You promised,” Cattrine said, gasping the words out in a low, guttural whisper, “if I submitted … you would return his … remains to his guildmates …”
“So I did,” the Grand Duke said, sotto voce; Martaina strained to listen, though the crowd had grown quieter, watching the Grand Duke in a seeming conversation with his battered and humiliated wife. “And so I shall.” A knife appeared from the leather of his belt and cut her bonds. Cattrine dropped to all fours when released, unable to hold her own weight. The Grand Duke reached up and grasped Cyrus’s head by the hair and lifted it off the pole, suspending it slightly over her, appearing to look it in the eyes for a moment before he dropped it onto her ravaged back, causing her to cry out from the pain of the impact. It rolled off and came to rest by her side. “Go on, then. I return him to you now, and you may carry him back to his fellows.” Martaina could see the grin form on Hoygraf’s face, beneath the dark, scraggly beard. “I think you have a few minutes left, so you might wish to hurry. If you can.” He stood and the grin on his face told Martaina everything she needed to know. He thinks there’s no chance for her to make it in time.
“He’s letting her go,” Martaina said, “with the head, to return it to Sanctuary.”
“Why?” J’anda breathed.
“Some sort of bargain between them,” Martaina said, and her fingers twitched, desirous to hold her bow, to feel the arrow knotted between her fingers, to let it fly and see it run through Hoygraf’s skull. “Doesn’t seem likely he intends her to actually be able to save him, though, does it?”
“We have minutes,” Aisling said. “Barely time enough, if that. Every moment we wait brings him closer to permanent death.”
“There is mercy in us, though, is there not?” Grand Duke Hoygraf had begun to speak again. “For a man of Actaluere, our superiority is nothing but obvious, and we can find it in ourselves to allow the fallen enemies to go back to their brethren, can we not?” He placed a boot on Cattrine’s cut and bleeding rump and rested his weight on it, causing her to cry out. “Once we show someone their place, and they are convinced of it, is there any reason not to be a little generous? When they know the price of betrayal, can we do any less than reassure them of their place in the order of things?”
He pressed on her again with his hard-soled leather shoe, and Cattrine, who had been trying to get to all fours to crawl was forced to the ground again, and her screams of pain were almost too much for Martaina to bear; the bow was in her hand and an arrow ready to fly before she felt J’anda’s hand on her wrist. “Hold,” J’anda said.
“No time,” Aisling said, and Martaina could hear the agitation in her voice. “He means to let the sands run through the hourglass before he lets her go, if even he does so then.”
“WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?” A voice crackled through the air as though a thunder spell had been unleashed into the midst of the gathering, and all the heads turned. A phalanx of soldiers emerged to their right from the main road through the camp, their armored boots slapping the dirt into a cloud, their deep-blue armor and surcoats those of Actaluere, but different than the Grand Duke’s livery. In their midst was a man Martaina had not seen before, yet whose station was obvious by the amount of bodyguards surrounding him-
“Milos Tiernan,” J’anda said, “the King of Actaluere.”
“I figured that one out all by myself,” Martaina said, and let the bow dip downward; the illusion made it look as though she were doing nothing more than holding a sword over her shoulder.
Tiernan made his way through his crowd of bodyguards to Hoygraf, who waited with an air of patient expectation, seemingly unworried. In truth, Martaina could smell the fear on him; the man had begun to perspire the moment Tiernan had spoken. Tiernan closed to feet from Hoygraf, who stood between the King and Cattrine, who was now up on all fours, one of her hands clutching Cyrus’s hair tightly. “You mean to force us into a war?” Tiernan said under his breath, standing only two feet from Hoygraf now.
“No war,” Hoygraf said. “You heard them; the Westerners mean to go to Syloreas’s aid. And no war with Galbadien, either; my dear wife has pledged to return to me and has accepted her punishment-and more to come.”
“Has she now?” Martaina heard a distinct frosting on Tiernan’s inflection as it cooled. “I am certain she enjoyed your lash with all enthusiasm; but tell me, Hoygraf, what possessed her to accept your punishment, seeing that she was well free of your loving touch?”
“You would have to ask her,” Hoygraf said, with a minimal shrug. “Love of her husband, perhaps.”
“Trying to save my homeland, more like,” Cattrine said from her hands and knees.
“We all have our own reasons,” Hoygraf said with a further shrug. “She has received what she was promised and shall receive more in the bargain. Now she will return the head of Sanctuary’s General to them, then come back to me, and war will be averted with Galbadien because of it.” Hoygraf’s teeth showed, evenly, far too polished for Martaina’s taste, too white for the blackness of the man’s soul. “And you can send your forces north to Syloreas to counter this threat that has everyone so worried.”
“You know very damned well that western magic works to revive the dead for only so long after they’ve been killed.” Milos Tiernan appeared to shake with this pronouncement, as he stared down Hoygraf, but still he kept his voice low enough that none of the crowd could hear. “You have killed him, which I would suspect would be an act of war in the view of the westerners, and stripped him of his head, and now you sit here, torturing my sister and letting time pass idly by. How long ago did he die, Hoygraf?”
“I hardly know,” Hoygraf said. “An hour, perhaps? Perhaps less, perhaps a little more. It is hard to be worried about such things when you are striving to enforce richly deserved justice.” He broke a little smile again toothily and pretended to wipe a bead of perspiration from his brow that was not even there.
“Now you expect my sister to return him to his people, in the condition you have rendered her to, before the allotted time runs out?” Tiernan’s voice was steady, surprising Martaina. There was an edge of restrained fury in it, she could hear, but it was not raised at all. “You want this war, want to fight the westerners, want your revenge, do you?”
“I fear no westerner,” Hoygraf said, and leaned heavier, both hands on his cane, but the smile was gone. “And certainly no silliness of the north from the Syloreans. Let them come, and we will break these western fools. Let Syloreas fall to whatever chews at it, and the army of Actaluere will deal with that as well.”
“I need a courier.” Milos Tiernan raised his voice now, so that the entire crowd could hear. Martaina had set foot forward before she even realized she had, stepping out of the circle of observers, crossing the ground between her and the post, where Tiernan stood facing Hoygraf and Cattrine. The voice went low again, but Martaina followed it as she approached them, the lone person who did so. “You are a fool, Tematy, and your war is direly timed. You are twice the fool if you think that whatever afflicts Syloreas will be easier to defeat without their aid as with it. You may have dominion over my sister now-to my eternal shame and dismay-but you do not rule my Kingdom. You do not declare war for me or take action that will cause me to have to fight after you provoke others into them.” Martaina arrived at his side, then, and the King of Actaluere looked to her without any sign of recognition. “Please take my
sister and her … accompanying package … to the Sanctuary camp to the southeast. Ensure that she is able to return their general’s head to them, but give them no further message.” His face twitched. “Stay with her while she is there, and perhaps one of their healers will find it in them to ease her pain. Do you understand?” Martaina nodded, and Tiernan waved her off. “Be on with it, then, with all alacrity. Hurry.”
Martaina knelt next to the Baroness, whose head snapped back at her approach and again as she wrapped an arm around Cattrine and pulled her to her feet. The Baroness’s legs did not work, not at all, and she was dead weight as Martaina carried her along, half-dragging her to the edge of the crowd, which watched her. There was silence from behind her as Tiernan and Hoygraf continued to stare at each other, or possibly at her, and she could almost taste the bitter conflict between the men, burning hotter than the summer day around them, and with none of the occasional idle breeze to break it up. The quiet was oppressive in its own way, and every step she could feel the Baroness sag against her and the slippery, bloody, naked skin of Cattrine was slick within her grasp.
They made their way past the circled crowd, and J’anda and Aisling joined them as they passed. “I’ll take this,” Aisling said, and laid a hand on Cyrus’s head. “I’ll run ahead.”
“No,” Cattrine said, halting, her words choked with pain. “I need to get it to … Curatio. To the Sanctuary guild members.”
“You have,” Aisling said quietly, and Cattrine cocked her head. Her eyelids fluttered. “Let me take it, so that I can get it there in time.”
“All right,” Cattrine said, weakly, and relinquished her hold. Aisling, for her part, did not waste a moment-she ran, no stealth, no guile, and faster than Martaina would have thought the little dark elf could have moved, disappearing between the tents ahead of them in a flat-out sprint in the direction of the Sanctuary camp.
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