by Tim Stead
When she came to herself again the pain was still there, but dulled. She did not worry about her injuries. The gods of the Benetheon healed quickly, and there would be no infection, no scarring. She picked up the arrow from where she had dropped it and examined the head. It was not Avilian, not Telan, not Berashi; that much she could say for certain. She did not know the look of other kingdom’s weapons, but surely this was a Seth Yarra point. Narak would know.
She reflected for a moment. She did not trust Narak, or so she had thought. He was too close to men, to their interests, but of all the Benetheon Gods she knew that he would protect her, he would stand by his word if he gave it, and he would know what to do. Their interests did not coincide, and he was close mouthed, but she had no choice but to go to him now.
She closed her eyes and dropped into the Sirash. It was like a dream for Sithmaree. She had noticed before that there was no pain here, and that healing flowed from the transparent darkness. She allowed herself to drift for a moment. Here she had no shoulder and no leg. She was pure, possessed of nothing but her mind. It was one of the things that set the Benetheon apart from men, the purity, the possession of self.
She found Narak, touched him.
“Sithmaree?” He seemed surprised; she had a sense of trees, the sound of horses.
“Somebody tried to kill me,” she told him.
“Who?”
She described her attacker; the black clothes, the green cloak, the metal head. Narak listened, and for a while after she finished he said nothing.
“Narak, he killed Fashmanion. I saw the body.”
“You saw it?”
“Yes, just before he attacked me I found the body. It was badly cut about.”
There was another long pause, but she could still feel the connection. Narak was there, but he was thinking or doing something else. She waited.
“Did you look for anyone else?” he asked eventually.
“No,” she replied. “I touched only you.”
“There is no one else,” he said. It was almost a whisper, and suddenly his voice seemed tired, almost beyond endurance.
“No one else?” she asked. “What do you mean?” She was frightened by the change in him. Narak seemed defeated, resigned. She had never heard that in his voice before; not in fifteen hundred years. He was the confident one, the quick minded, irritating purveyor of confidence and certainty. The change was even more apparent in the Sirash where there was no sound, where his voice was somehow clearer and more direct. He did not answer for a long time, and when he did there was a sharp bitterness to his voice, riding through the weary tone.
“I am no more than a stone falling, it seems.” Narak paused again, as though searching for words. “The lords of the sea are safe, of the rest only you, I, Jiddian and Passerina remain. The others are gone, killed, murdered by whatever attacked you.”
“It is not possible…”
“Our kind cannot hide in the Sirash. Look for yourself. They are all gone. I have been outwitted on every level. I fall like a stone, dragged down into the traps of my enemy as though I had no will of my own. I have failed you all. I have been watching men while gods have been slaughtered.”
Sithmaree felt anger rising in her. Someone had tried to kill her, and that was something she was not prepared to accept. There must be justice, and justice was Narak. He was the one who would avenge her. She thought of Fashmanion, of Melas, Leef, Kanterrel, all the other who had been her friends and fellow immortals.
“You could have killed him, if you had been there,” she said.
“I was not.”
“You will find him, then. You will find him and outwit him, and kill him.”
Narak seemed not to hear her. “Where are you now?” he asked.
“On the plains, somewhere close to the Dragon’s Back.”
“You should go to either Jiddian or Passerina,” Narak told her. “They are safe because they are with people, and so you should do the same. Jiddian rides west with the army, and Passerina is at the green road with Arbak’s force.”
It looked like a choice, but it sounded like a test. Was it a test? Arbak was fighting Seth Yarra, and Jiddian was in the midst of a marching army a thousand miles from the enemy. It was no choice at all for Sithmaree.
“I will go to Jiddian,” she said.
“Good. Now tell me where this happened. Where did you see Fashmanion’s body? Where were you attacked?”
“Hellaree.”
“That place? Why were you there?”
“Does it matter?” She sounded defensive even to herself.
“No. No, it doesn’t.”
“Are you going to go there?”
“Yes. I have to.”
“Why?”
“To see what you saw.”
She didn’t say anything else. There was nothing to say. If the man, the thing that had attacked her was still there, then Narak would kill it. He was good at killing. If it had been Narak waiting for her at Hellaree she would have been dead. She did not doubt it. She left Narak, wherever he was, and searched for Jiddian.
* * * *
This had to be quick. Time was important now, and Narak didn’t have much to spare – a few hours and then he had to return. There had been no wolves near Hellaree; there was not much for them to hunt on those bleak, cold slopes. He had sent them running, a pack that had been ten miles away, down on the plains.
He had been cautious. The pack of wolves, a small pack of no more than seven animals, had climbed the slope and scattered around the towers, run in and out of all the holes, scented the air, and he had been with them, looking through their eyes, listening with their ears, scenting the place.
They found nothing.
Narak translocated, and stood for a moment on the overgrown paving where Sithmaree had been standing. He scented the air himself, confirming what he had taken from the wolves. She had been here. That was clear enough, and Fashmanion’s scent was here, too, and the iron smell of blood.
He walked between the remaining towers and found blood on the stones. Some of it was Sithmaree, and some of it was Fashmanion. He could see where the body had lain, the blood marks, a couple of black feathers glued to the stones with dried blood, but the body was gone. The cloak was gone, too. He stepped across into the space behind the wall where Sithmaree had said she’d hidden and found more blood.
It all checked out. Things had happened just as she had described them. She had been surprised. There had been two arrows shot at her. She had received two wounds. He stepped out into the open again and searched for the arrow that had passed through her leg. It should have been somewhere up slope from where she had stood, unless her attacker had taken it. He thought that was likely, since the body and cloak had been moved.
He found the arrow. It surprised him, but it also told him little. It was Seth Yarra, and it was blood silver, but neither of those things shed new light. It had been difficult to find, lodged between two large rocks, half hidden.
If this had been Seth Yarra, the man claiming to be the god, then Narak was reassured, at least a little. The bow was a sign of weakness. To shoot from a distance was uncertain, even for one of the lords of the air, and especially when shooting at one of the Benetheon. If Narak had been planning to kill one of his peers he would use a blade, use his familiarity with them to get close enough. He concluded that Seth Yarra, for want of a better name, was afraid to go toe to toe with Sithmaree, and that made him less than frightening to Narak himself. He would never have considered the Snake a threat.
Yet despite that apparent limitation he had killed eight of the Benetheon, and that feat made him a man to fear.
Narak walked slowly back over the stones and the paved area, scenting everything, looking for anything. He could find no clue. He scented Sithmaree, and he scented Fashmanion, but there was no unknown odour. Somewhere there was a hint of something, brass, perhaps, and a faint trace of the sort of wools and dyes he’d been aware of when around Seth Yarra priso
ners, but nothing he could pin down as the killer. He held the arrow up to his nose and inhaled. The man had to have held this in his hand, and even a glove could not hide a scent completely, but there was nothing. A man with no scent? Not a man then, or not as he knew them.
He looked up at the sun and saw that time was becoming short. It was time to go. He looked around the place one last time. It was a ruin steeped in lost history, a remnant of a time before the Benetheon, before Pelion’s intervention and the five kingdoms. It was a remnant of Karim and the King of Swords, of the great empire and the age of magic. It was a lesson to all those who would reach too far and desire too much.
He released the wolves.
Just as he was about to shift away he caught a movement high above, a shape in the air. An eagle? No, it was smaller. A dark shape turning on the rising air above the mountains. A crow?
Of course a crow, an orphaned crow, one sent ahead of Fashmanion to inspect the ruin before he came himself, just as Narak had sent wolves.
He closed his eyes. The bleak slopes and the pale light went away and he was beneath trees again, rich with the scent of horses and men, bark and loam.
“Deus, you have returned.”
He opened his eyes and saw a young man on horseback. The young man held another horse by the reins, and these he passed over to Narak.
“How far is it now?” he asked.
“Less than an hour,” the youth said. “My father has sent scouts ahead and ordered the horses’ hooves muffled, for all the good it will do.”
Narak swung up into the saddle. He did not ride often, but he was better than competent in the saddle, and now he had no choice.
“Then let us be about it,” he said.
50. Aftermath
Skal woke up with a start, wrenching his upper body and grasping for a sword that was no longer there. It took him a moment to realise he was no longer on the wall, no longer fighting for his life against Telan soldiers.
“You’re awake then.”
He turned his head. There was a man sitting on a cot next to him, a cot like the one he was sitting on. Then the pain hit him, his leg hurt like poison and his upper body was a mass of bruises and wrenches. He fell back onto the bed with a grunt.
He was in a tent, a large tent with lines of cots and wounded men. Some of the men looked like they were dying, full of fever and bad colour, and others, like the man next to him, looked almost whole. He studied the man, a Berashi by his accent, a young man, but a few years older than Skal. He had a dark face, a young beard, and intelligent eyes. His right arm was bandaged, held close to his chest by a linen sling.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Feran,” the man said. “Lieutenant, regiment of the Iron Fist.”
“Skal Hebberd,” Skal said, “Regiment of …”
“I know who you are,” Feran said.
“Did we hold the wall?”
The Berashi officer grinned. “Do you think we’d be alive if the wall had fallen?” he asked.
He supposed not. Seth Yarra soldiers were not known for taking prisoners or extending mercy to their injured enemy. An old man bustled over. Skal had been aware of him, moving between cots in the background. He was grey rather than white haired, and quite portly. He put a hand on Skal’s chest and bent down, peering into his eyes, lifting the lids and moving his head from side to side.
Skal slapped his hand away. “Don’t prod me,” he said.
“I am your physic,” the man said.
“I don’t care if you’re the mage emperor raised,” Skal said. “Don’t prod me.”
“I am examining you to see if the blows you took to the head have addled your brain,” the physic replied.
“Well, they haven’t,” Skal said.
“So it seems.” The physic was not at all put out by Skal’s attitude. “How does the leg feel? Is there much pain?”
“Some.”
“Describe it.”
“Pain.” Skal said. “It’s pain. How do you describe pain?”
The physic sighed. “Sharp, dull, burning, aching, confined, spreading, unbearable, intense, slight, raw, must I go on?”
“Why do you need to know?”
“I am your physic, Colonel Hebberd,” he said. “I am trying to determine if the wound is healing well, or if more treatment is needed. If it becomes infected and I do not treat it I fear I will later be put to the trouble of cutting it off to save your life.”
Skal swallowed. “A burning pain,” he said. “Confined to the wound.” He winced. “The whole leg hurts when I try to move it.”
“Thank you, colonel. That is what I hoped to hear. Your leg seems to be healing well.”
“How long have I been here?” Skal asked.
“Several hours.”
“What happened at dawn, on the wall?”
The physic shrugged. “More fighting, I suppose.” He sounded aggrieved. “More work for me.”
“The physic is a man of peace,” Feran said from the next cot. “Or so he says. He takes no interest in fighting.”
“As you say,” the portly man confirmed. He moved away.
“Do you know? Did Seth Yarra attack?”
“So I was told, but the wall was held. The Telan assault was defeated before dawn, and Seth Yarra came too late.”
Skal closed his eyes. It had been worth it, he told himself. He had done the right thing. Yet here he was in a cot in a sick room, disarmed and robbed of the chance of further glory, further advancement. He hoped that the war would go on long enough for him to regain his feet, a command, and win greater glory.
“Are you hungry?” Feran asked.
Skal thought about it for a moment. “Yes,” he said. “Thirsty, too.”
Feran offered him a skin of water and a piece of fruit, both of which he gladly took with thanks.
“Arbak said we owe the wall to you,” Feran said.
Skal coughed on the water in his throat. He shook his head. “I was one of many,” he said. “We all fought. Many died.”
“The general is not given to exaggeration,” Feran said. “You held the stair. Without that we could not have regained the wall in time.”
“Anyone would have done the same, Feran,” Skal said.
“Most men would have hacked at the enemy and held their position. Take the compliment, take the honour. There’ll be no more for you this side of winter,” the lieutenant urged him. “And take my thanks. It’s my country that stands before the gate, my people that will be the first to die if they break the wall.”
“I accept your thanks,” Skal said.
They sat in silence for a while, Skal eating and Feran watching him. Skal was thinking. Modesty was admired, especially in Berash, but he had done the right thing. He had made the right decision on the wall, and he felt pleased with that. There was a chance that it would bring him more honours, and he needed that to ascend the tricky ladder of nobility. The question in his mind now was the wall itself. They had taken grievous losses during the night, and the enemy had merely lost a force with which he believed they were willing to part. He did not know the numbers, but was troubled by the thought that they might not have enough men to hold the wall until the army came from the east. They had been caught off guard. They had been foolish. They had paid for that.
It was an easy thought to blame Arbak. The innkeeper had not seen the danger. But Skal knew that he had fallen into the same trap, that he was no better. The Telans had not been bound by the Seth Yarra prohibition on fighting at night. He had thought they would be. After all, the Telans were aligning themselves with Seth Yarra, and Seth Yarra saw everything that was not themselves as tainted. The Telans had behaved in a tainted way, proved to Seth Yarra that they were different. Politically it was a stupid move, but militarily it was brilliant. It had nearly won the war. If the Seth Yarra soldiers had been sent to the wall an hour before dawn the war would be over. They would even now be flooding through the pass into Berash.
He glanced a
cross at Feran, and saw that the lieutenant was looking at him.
“Your sort doesn’t usually last long in battle,” Feran said.
“My sort?”
“Duellists. You’re a duellist. Sword and dagger.”
Skal looked at him. It sounded like an insult, but Feran’s tone wasn’t dismissive, not insulting. He sounded curious.
