The Queen of Crows

by Myke Cole

  They were a tiny force, all exhausted, most wounded in some way or another. But the enemy had their backs to them now, were out of all semblance of order. Heloise felt her heart rising in her chest, all sense of fatigue slipping away. Her strides lengthened, the machine roaring as it matched her steps, metal legs an extension of her own frantic pace. She was shrieking now, a high keening bubbling up out of her throat on its own. Her heart pounded, with rage, with excitement, with the bone-shaking relief that all was not lost, that there was suddenly a chance.

  She reached the first of the Pilgrims, just as he was raising his flail to strike at one of the Red Lords’ infantrymen. She didn’t bother with the shield this time, swiping her knife-hand sideways, the point biting into the man’s side and launching him from his saddle. He knocked into the Pilgrim beside him and both went tumbling to the ground. Barnard barely paused in his run to crack their skulls with his hammer, the first on the upswing, the second as the hammer came back down, sweeping back up to settle on his shoulder as he charged on.

  “Leave the knights!” Heloise shouted, unsure if her people could hear her. “Break the Order!”

  The enemy were turning now, wheeling their horses to face Heloise. A Pilgrim dug in his spurs and whirled his flail about his head, but no sooner had the animal moved toward her than two flat-bladed knives holed his face and he dropped his flail, slumping in the saddle. Xilyka raced past, flashing Heloise a smile that made her knees weak despite the heat of the battle.

  “Keep up, your eminence!” Somehow Xilyka made it both a term of respect and endearment. Heloise found herself smiling back, her belly doing somersaults at the madness of it.

  The Pilgrims were frozen now, heads sawing left and right, unable to decide whether they should face the armored infantry in their red tabards, or the wizard-blighted girl in the tinker-made machine and her band of Kipti and peasants.

  Heloise reached a Pilgrim and he lashed out with his flail, the iron head screeching across her shield. Two of the red-coated infantrymen behind him reached out with their glaives, tangling the blades in his gray cloak and yanking him from his horse. Another Pilgrim turned to charge the footmen, his mount rearing, lashing out with its sharp front hooves. Samson reached Heloise’s side and speared the creature in the rump, so deep that the animal looked as if it had sprouted a second tail. The horse’s rearing turned into a shrieking backward somersault, the Pilgrim’s own shout cut short as the horse’s bulk fell across him, pinning his limp body to the ground.

  Heloise scanned the swirling gray cloaks, desperately seeking Tone’s blazing blue eyes, straining to hear his voice. But she might as well have tried to pick a single ripple out from the midst of a ranging torrent. A hundred shouting voices ran together, gray cloaks swirled like storm clouds. Any of them could have been Tone. If she were to have vengeance, then there was only one thing to be done.

  “Kill them all!” she shouted. Because she would have vengeance, realized she would have done anything to have it.

  She lowered herself behind her shield and charged into the midst of them, not even bothering to strike now, relying solely on the machine’s weight and momentum to bring her enemy low. Most of the Pilgrims didn’t even try to swing at her, and she could feel their bones breaking against the edge of her shield as she ran them down. A glance over the shield’s rim told her why. The red-coated infantry had pulled back, locking their shields together in an ordered wall. Riding around their flanks came the knights of the red banners, all the more terrible for the simplicity of their armor, their plain shields and lack of wings. They slammed into the Pilgrims, thrown back once again onto Heloise and her small force.

  It was the Imperial knights that gave way first. Heloise saw their false wings shaking as the battlefield shrank, slowly hemmed in by the Red Lords’ infantry on the one side, and Heloise and her troops on the other. They mixed with the Pilgrims, increasing the chaos as the horses squeezed together, traces tangling, lances intertwining with flails.

  At last, one of the knights turned his mount and spurred it at Wolfun. The Town Wall dodged aside, but the knight’s lance still took one of the Sindi knife-dancers through the gut, pinning him to the ground. The knight made no attempt to free his weapon. Instead, he left it to quiver in the dirt and bolted for the hole he had made. The horse plunged through, and his comrades followed, turning to a steady stream of armored men, many of them throwing down their lances to get a better grip on their reins, leaning low over their animal’s necks and savaging them with their spurs.

  Heloise watched them, disbelieving. “Where are they going?”

  “Away.” Her father’s voice was exultant. “Anywhere but here.”

  The Pilgrims were sustained by their zeal. They drew into a circle, back-to-back, baring their teeth. Heloise made to charge, but stopped at another sound of the Red Lords’ horn, long and low, the growl of some foreign beast. The red banners of the knights wheeled off, the riders slowing their horses to a trot as they moved behind the line of infantry, the shield wall breaking apart to admit a cloud of skirmishers, all clad in the same red tabard worn by every warrior, high or low, in the army.

  Archers. The Pilgrims could never close the distance in time. The men made a show of taking their time to knock their arrows, drawing the strings back to their ears.

  The Pilgrims’ eyes widened as they saw what was about to happen.

  The first of them slid from the saddle, falling to his knees, his hands raised in supplication. “No! Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

  One of the Pilgrims shouted at him, cursed him for a traitor and a coward, but two more joined him on the ground. The Pilgrim cursed them again, nudged his horse forward, raising his flail to strike them, and fell from the saddle an instant later, at least a dozen arrows riddling his chest.

  After that, the rest of them dismounted en masse, dropping their flails, raising their hands. Heloise could see the shame in their eyes, all of them oathbound to give their lives rather than submit to the corruption of heresy. But they were men, in the end, and the urge to live was stronger than their faith. Heloise was shocked to feel a tremor of sympathy for them. No, she pushed the sentiment away, this is how we felt at Hammersdown. Acting against everything they knew to be right, surrendering to the desire to live.

  Heloise doubted that Tone was among them. She’d always seen him riding with commanders rather than the rank-and-file Pilgrims. Still, she would have to check. She started toward the kneeling men, when a flash of gold made her stop. She turned to her left and realized with a start that the battle had taken her out of the town and out into the road beyond. From here, she had an open view of the low rise where the enemy had pitched their camp. The black tent was slouching now, one of the poles knocked over. There were men running and shouting, and from her quick glance, she couldn’t tell if they were friend or foe.

  The golden flicker came again. She couldn’t identify exactly where it came from, but only one man wore armor bright enough to catch her eye from across a battlefield.

  Heloise didn’t realize she had started running until she heard her father shouting her name. Xilyka and Onas came with her, and she heard her father take a few puffing steps before fatigue forced him to stop. She heard Barnard cursing at him to run faster, and then it was just the three of them, running hard for the enemy camp.

  It was a shambles. The men she had seen from the distance were mostly levy, but a few Imperial soldiers as well. They were stuffing supplies into sacks: food and arrows, sheaves of paper and bolts of cloth. More than one had the treasures of the nobles in his hands, gold chains of office or silver drinking cups.

  Looting their own camp. Most of them fled at the sight of Heloise’s machine. The braver ones ignored her and bent to their tasks, cutting down silk banners, or yanking pieces of armor off their stands. None moved to interfere with Heloise’s progress toward the commander’s tent.

  What had looked small from the wall was gigantic up close. The canvas towered, striped red and
white, a tiny pennant fluttering from the top bearing the sigil of the golden throne. The flaps were untied, and they rustled with the movement of someone inside. She could hear cursing from within, though she couldn’t make out the voice.

  “Why,” Xilyka was panting, “are we here?”

  “Because,” Heloise said, “the bastard who took my eye is here. I hope.”

  “You said he was a Pilgrim,” Onas said. “The Pilgrims are all back there.”

  “He’s beloved of the leaders,” she reached for the flap with her knife-hand, turning the blade to bat the flap aside, “probably because he’s the vilest and cruelest of his sort.”

  But before she could touch the canvas, the flap was slapped aside from within and a man emerged cradling a chest, flowing over with coins.

  “Come on, you damned fool,” the Song was shouting over his shoulder, his voice still sweet, but so much softer without whatever wizardry he had used to amplify it. His helmet was off now, revealing the face that had been behind the golden sun, as beautiful as his voice, as arrogant. His eyes were the same blue as Tone’s, but irritated rather than zealous, as if the sudden defeat of his army were a terrible inconvenience that he had to sort out so he could have his lunch in peace. Heloise marveled at that look, stunned for the moment by the thought of the kind of life he must have led to be able to wear it.

  The Song dropped the chest and stumbled back, fumbling for his sword, making a sound somewhere between a scream and squeak. Heloise lunged, sweeping him up with her shield arm, bringing the forearm of her knife-arm to his neck, pressing the metal in. The Song braced his feet against the machine’s chest, first pushing, and when that failed, kicking. His boots drummed helplessly against the metal plate, his human strength useless against the might of the engine.

  Another man emerged from the tent, a servant by his simpler clothing, but the softest-looking servant Heloise had ever seen, as plump-lipped and beautiful as his master. The man shook with terror, holding out his hands in front of him. “Please, no.”

  “Go.” Heloise jerked her head, and Onas kicked the man in his ass, sending him running through the crowd of looters. She turned, still cradling the Song like a babe in arms, his back crushed against the inside of her shield, his throat slowly yielding to the pressure of the machine’s metal arm.

  She glanced up briefly, saw her father and Barnard now, Wolfun and Giorgi, and the rest of what remained of her people breathing hard from the long run to reach her. So few. Even if all of them, villagers and Traveling People alike, returned to Lutet together, they would not be enough to populate it. Surrounding them were the knights in red tabards, dismounted now. A few of them wore their chains of office, marking them as lords. They were simple things of gray iron, enameled in the same rusted red as their armor.

  “Don’t kill him,” one of them said. “Do you know who that is?”

  But while Heloise heard the words, she didn’t understand them. The anger had boiled over once again. She knew he was not Tone, but he was here. She had him. And in a way, he was the same. He had the same arrogance, he killed good people with the same casual disregard. He claimed to own the Emperor, the same as the Pilgrims. But she knew all of this was an excuse. What mattered was that the rage was a hearthfire in her gut, and that if she didn’t quench it somehow, she knew it would consume her, that she would burst into flame and all that would be left inside the tinker-engine would be ash.

  No, he wasn’t Tone, but he was the man with his throat beneath her arm.

  “You are the Song,” she whispered to him, “so sing. Sing so that the Emperor may hear.”

  And with that she pressed her arm home, pressed with all she had, and felt the tinker-engine take up the motion and translate it into the metal arm. The Song’s gurgle softened and finally stopped, replaced by a wheeze and finally by nothing at all. At last Heloise heard a crunching, and blood bubbled from his mouth.

  In the end, the Song’s voice was not so beautiful after all.

  EPILOGUE

  DISTANT THUNDER

  The Emperor took up His hammer and mounted the stairs. When He saw none had come with Him, He turned and they trembled that He should name them cowards. But He only laughed. “What is it thou fearest?” He asked. “Is it death? It shall surely find thee here!” “How, then, shall we live?” they asked Him, “when the enemy is all about us, so terrible and so numerous.” The Emperor laughed again, and his voice was as the ringing of the dawn. “Wouldst thou live? There is but one way!” “Tell it to us!” they called to Him, hungry for His answer. “Follow me!” He said, and turned once more, unto the fray.

  —Writ. Ere. LX. 17

  Heloise wasn’t sure what she’d expected to feel. The Song’s broken body looked like so many others she had seen since all this had started. The dead were paler, smaller, more straw dolls than people, as if their life had inflated them the way a wind fills a sail. Even the Song’s fine armor seemed … less, somehow. It had shrunk with him, filthy and streaked with thickening blood.

  Heloise felt no sense of triumph, not even relief at having survived. She only felt a kind of numb exhaustion. She heard no cheering, no victory trumpets. The only sounds were the scrabbling of the looters in the remains of the camp, and the shouts of the Red Lords’ horsemen, riding down those fleeing enemy not rich or lucky enough to have horses. At last, she tore her eyes away from the corpse, looked around her. Barnard had knelt, clasping the haft of his hammer, lips moving in a silent prayer. Her father had simply sat down where he was, letting his spear lie in the grass. He blinked, eyes wide. “Sacred Throne,” he muttered over and over again, running his hand through his hair. “Emperor be praised.”

  Onas and Xilyka still stood, fanned out protectively before her, blades in their hands. Their posture snapped her out of her reverie and she looked around, noticing the armored men for the first time. There were three of them, all of an age with her father, yet with their faces shorn in the manner of young men. Their hair was cropped so close that the strands prickled like thorns, flashing silver and white in the afternoon sun. All wore chains of office and the same, simple red tabards of every soldier in their army. The only other indication of their rank was a strip of cloth wound around their upper arms. It was white, striped with red. Two stripes for the men on the left and right, and three for the man in the center. A standard bearer stood behind them, the plain red cloth fluttering from the top of his spear.

  Beside them all stood Sald Grower, his face pale and his cheeks pinched, dressed in rags, hands bound behind his back.

  “Sald?” Heloise asked. “Are you all right?”

  “He is fine,” the man with the three stripes said. “We caught him stealing—”

  “To feed myself!” Sald said, his voice weak. “Can’t be no crime to steal when you’re starving—”

  “—from the People’s Preserve. He is our guest for now, but he told us an interesting story of a girl staring down the Empire on her own. It confirmed some of what our scouts had been saying, and we thought it worthwhile to have a look.”

  “And who are you?” Heloise asked.

  The man with the three stripes stepped forward. He did not bow, but his posture stiffened as he inclined his head. “I am Steven, son of Roger, First Sword to the Senate of the Free Peoples of the Gold Coast.”

  “What is a senate?” Heloise asked. She knew she should introduce herself or thank him for his help, but the fatigue had drained her of every shred of formality.

  A smile tugged at the corner of Steven’s mouth. “It is a group of people who rule, together, in place of a king.”

  “I thought Ludhuige the Red was your king?”

  The smile widened. “Ludhuige has been gone a long time, young lady. And our war against your false Emperor has taught us the importance of living free from the yoke of men.”

  Barnard rose slowly to his feet. His anger was plain, but he swayed on his feet, and Heloise could see that he lacked the strength to summon more than hard words. “Our
Emperor is not false, and he is no man.”

  Steven ignored him, addressing Heloise. “You would be Heloise Factor, yes? I have heard many titles for you. Some call you ‘the Queen of Crows,’ others ‘the Armored Saint.’ I have even heard you called ‘the Knife-Handed Devil.’ They say you lead here.”

  “I am neither queen, nor saint, nor devil,” Heloise said, “but it is true that I am knife-handed, and I do lead here.”

  She realized that it was true. With Sigir gone, there was no one else for the village to turn to. She supposed they could choose a new Maior, but who would certify him? Would they send to the capital for an Imperial Legate? And even then, the Traveling People were here for her.

  “That man,” Heloise pointed to Sald, “is one of mine.”

  Steven’s smile was thin. “That is not what he said, when we caught him in our gardens. He said that he had quit your company, as his people had gone mad, and followed a girl they had set up as a saint. He said that he was willing to do penance for his crime and put his plea before the Senate to take up residence among the Free Peoples. His first service was to accompany us here, to prove that his story was true.”

  Steven turned back to Sald, and smiled wider. “I’d say that part of his bargain is fulfilled.”

  Sald met Heloise’s eyes briefly before looking away. “Can’t believe it,” he muttered. “Didn’t think you’d … it’s impossible.”

  Steven turned back to her. “He is our man now. But the Free Peoples are truly free. Once he has completed his contrition, he can make his own choice to rejoin you or no, as he will.”