The Hand of the Sun King

by J. T. Greathouse

  “Alright then,” he said, and nodded to his sergeant. “We’ll be off.”

  “We look forward to your report,” I said, and rode on.

  * * *

  That night, while I lay on my cot and watched the shadows play on the wall of my tent by the light of the sentry fire, my mind swam with the frustrations and indignities of the day. Staying behind had been the right choice. Our roles needed to be defined--Oriole was my advisor, and a soldier. It was proper for him to gather intelligence, while it was my role to receive what information he gleaned and decide how it ought to be used.

  At last sleep crept up on me and pulled low the lids of my eyes. It delivered me to the path before the Temple of the Flame, to that awful night my mind loved to revisit when I felt contorted and afraid.

  But I was not trapped in the abominable body my ill-cast magic had made. I was myself. Hale and whole. Strangest of all, my left hand was marked with the glittering silver lines of the tetragram. I looked at that mark and felt a gnawing guilt, as though I had betrayed a secret, or brought a contaminant into sacred space.

  The forest around me seemed real, the leaves sharp, the bark rough, the breeze rustling through the canopy and gently brushing my cheek. An owl cried. A fox yowled, then scurried through the underbrush. The moon and stars were out in their fullness. The stone eyes of Okara--youngest and cleverest of the wolf gods--burned with an awful fire while they studied me. They alone seemed the stuff of nightmares.

  “You waste your attention on him,” a low, rumbling voice rolled from Ateri’s jaws. She stood sentinel between her children, as I remembered her, yet something was strange about the carving. There were new patterns in the fur around her neck, like raised hackles--like fear.

  “He could have been a witch of the old sort,” said another voice--masculine, but thin. Okara’s eyes flashed. “Am I a fool, that I would let Tenet possess such a weapon, and pay no mind?”

  “He is bound by pact, now,” said Ateri. “He is no different from any of Tenet’s other tools.”

  “Perhaps,” Okara said. “Yet he returns here, to the night he touched the pattern, unmediated. To the night he revealed himself, and all our eyes should have fixed upon him. He might be as a coin tossed onto a stones board--scattering the pieces, disrupting the rhythm of play.”

  “A game in which no player has made a move in a thousand years.”

  “Tenet has made moves.”

  “His little conquests?” Ateri scoffed. “He will rule over mortals, for we denied him the dominion he desired. Let him. What care wolves for the lives of ants?”

  “Ants who once worshipped us, as fewer and fewer do each day. You underestimate Tenet, as you underestimate this one.”

  I realized with the slow, sleepy rhythm of dreaming thought that I was this coin, this weapon, this witch of the old sort.

  “What do you mean?” I said, a strange panic setting in. These were the wolf gods of Nayen, and they were talking--about me. “And who is Tenet?”

  Okara’s eyes flashed. “You see?” he said.

  Ateri snarled, and I felt a sudden cramping in my arms, my legs, down my back, across my chest. Every muscle spasmed, as though to contract at once and twist me into something other than what I was, and in the same moment my nose filled with the scent of burnt cinnamon.

  “You must realize what you are,” Okara said--

  --and I woke, drenched in sweat, my arms and legs quivering and cramping. A groan bubbled in my throat as the dream shattered into shock and pain. Then another cramp seized me--weaker than the last, and radiating from my left shoulder, which--my sleepy mind noted, piecing the puzzle together--was pointed toward Iron Town.

  No mere cramps. A wake of magic, like I had not felt since my childhood. A witch had veered.

  I scrambled from my cot, threw my cloak over my shoulders, and ran for Usher’s tent. I found him outside, standing in his bedclothes, staring at the walls of Iron Town. His eyes were hard in the moonlight.

  “You felt it--” I said.

  Another faint breath of cinnamon, and then a flush of warmth spread up from my toes and over my shins. The witch had conjured fire. This was no Naynei scout arriving and returning to human form; someone fought in Iron Town.

  No. Beneath it. I followed the angle of the wake, as I had done when seeking Usher in the garden. It led not only toward the walls, but downward.

  “Oriole,” I murmured.

  “We don’t know that,” Usher said.

  “They were found,” I said. “What else could it be?”

  “We can’t know,” Usher said. “Not yet.”

  “Usher, he’s fighting a witch,” I said. “If we hurry, we can--”

  “Nothing of strategic significance has changed,” Usher said. “Even if what you fear is true, it means only that Frothing Wolf will be more on her guard.”

  “You value killing her over saving Oriole’s life?” I said, stunned.

  “I do,” Usher said. We waited in silence--for another wake of magic; for Usher to say more, to put me at ease, to assure me that we would do whatever we could to save my friend.

  “We will know tomorrow,” Usher said, and returned to his tent. “Whether or not the scouting party returns.”

  * * *

  Dawn broke, with no sign of Oriole nor any of his men. I had not slept again after feeling the wake of witchcraft and would have lingered in the main camp waiting for any word of Oriole’s fate all day, but Usher insisted that I traverse the siege line and monitor the progress of our fortifications.

  I made the round as quickly as I could, approving whatever my captains proposed with hardly a moment’s hesitation. It didn’t matter how well entrenched we were, nor how porous our sentry lines. Oriole might have been killed, and my mind could manage nothing, only fret over that possibility.

  He had to be alive. Either he had escaped or been captured. It seemed impossible that he had been struck down by a burst of flame, to die screaming, or that a witch had torn out his throat with the jaws of a wolf. I, nevertheless, imagined such scenes in all their awful detail, though I refused to believe them. Not when my last words to him had been so callous.

  If not for me, he would be at home in Eastern Fortress, studying for his examinations, out of danger. If I had gone with him to explore the mines, I might have felt some small wake of magic, given him enough warning to run before the witch attacked.

  As I approached the main camp, I heard shouts, and saw soldiers milling about in excited conversation. A fire lit in my veins, and I kicked my horse to as quick a trot as I dared through the camp.

  I found Usher at the medical tent, standing over a soldier whose right arm had been bandaged and hung in a sling. The man had been speaking but fell silent as I dropped from the saddle and tossed my reigns to a sentry.

  “What happened?” I demanded, first of Usher, then the wounded man. “Where is Oriole?”

  The soldier looked to Usher, who gestured for him to speak.

  “They took us by surprise,” the soldier said. “We followed the mine shafts north, toward the city. Then another tunnel, newer, freshly dug, forked off from the main shaft to the east. A few of us wanted to go back--we’d found what we set out to. Master Oriole wanted to press on, to gauge where in the city the tunnels would open. We did so, and were careful with our lanterns, keeping their hoods drawn shut but for a sliver…” he took a deep breath, grimaced, and rubbed his bandaged shoulder. “Something gave us away. A boar charged out of the darkness, gored two of us, then changed into a woman and filled the tunnel with fire and I…I ran.”

  “The information you brought back is valuable, and at any rate your sword arm was badly burned,” Usher said. “There is no shame in survival.”

  The soldier nodded, but the haunted expression did not leave his face.

  “And Master Oriole?” I said, my throat dry and head swimming with disbelief. “Did you see him die?”

  “No,” the soldier said. “The whole tunnel was filled with fir
e.”

  “You made it out alive, he might have too,” I said, and turned to Usher. “If we attack, we can save him.”

  “Or Frothing Wolf will kill him--along with any other prisoners--before fleeing,” Usher said. “Assuming he still lives.”

  “I won’t assume that he is dead,” I snapped.

  “And I assume nothing,” Usher said. “Our priority must be to eliminate Frothing Wolf--”

  “Then I’ll kill her.” A chill ran through me as I realized what I had said. Yet, even as my thoughts reeled with terror on Oriole’s behalf, a plan had formed in the dark corners of my mind.

  Usher narrowed his eyes. “How?”

  I pulled down my sleeve to show the reddish tint of my skin. “I am half Nayeni. I look like one of them. I can talk my way into Iron Town, find Oriole, then find Frothing Wolf and kill her with battle-sorcery. When you feel the wake of my magic, you can attack the city. We can save Oriole’s life.”

  Usher took a deep breath. “You speak their language?”

  “My grandmother taught me,” I said, only realizing after speaking that I had revealed more than I should have. Before, Usher had known nothing of my illicit education. Now, unfettered by urgency and the threat to Oriole’s life, I had given him a hint--assuming he had the presence of mind to note it.

  He nodded, slowly, his fingers playing in the wisps of his beard. “And when they see your tetragram?”

  “Give me a bandage,” I said to one of the medics lingering nearby. He handed me a length of linen.

  “You see?” I said, as I wound the linen around my left hand and wrist. “I’ll dress as a peasant and claim I’ve come to join them. I can go through the mines.”

  “This is bold, Alder,” Hand Usher said. “If you are caught--”

  “Frothing Wolf will likely escape,” I said. “But I can fight my way out while you rush in. Do you have a better plan?”

  His gaze narrowed. “No,” he admitted. “Not yet.”

  “Then I leave at dusk.”

  * * *

  I would approach from the south, I decided. There were villages in that direction, several of which had not been raided. It was plausible that a young man from one of them might have visited Iron Town before and known about the mine shafts. At any rate, such a story felt more likely than my stumbling upon the mines by sheer happenstance.

  Dressed in a tattered cloak, mud stained trousers, an old shirt, and a pair of peasant’s sandals, I made my way through the undergrowth, swinging far south and west and circling back toward where the mines ought to be, my path lit by the narrow beam of a battered lantern. In the gloom of dusk and the constant drizzle of the rain I navigated by topography and my own sense of direction. The latter was often disoriented by the churning of my stomach and the nervous pulse of blood behind my ears.

  After doubling back twice, I at last found the rutted road the scout had told would lead to the mines. I began to trudge uphill, rehearsing again and again the story that would see me past the guards. Once past them, I would find Oriole. Only then would I seek out Frothing Wolf and kill her, though I had never killed before. When she was dead, I would return to Oriole and protect him while Usher and our forces breached the wall.

  The mouth of the mine opened in the face of a cliff, the rutted path its unfurled tongue, the wooden supports its jagged teeth. I sought silhouettes in the shadows of the nearby trees and in the dark recess of the mine--and saw none. Neither did my muscles cramp in the wake of a veered witch lurking in the boughs above. If the mine was guarded, the guards had concealed themselves further in.

  The floor of the shaft was angled downward, but without reference to trees or the sky I had only my sense of weight to tell me that I descended. My racing heart and the stiffening terror that crept down my limbs distorted my sense of time. How long I walked I cannot say; only that I gasped with relief at the sight of freshly wounded earth and the branching tunnel the surviving scout had said I would find.

  This was it, then. If my presence had not yet been noted by the Nayeni, it would be soon if I pressed any further on. One last time I recalled the lie I would tell, the Nayeni words I would need. That language was dull to me, and heavy, like rusted steel too long sheathed.

  With a deep breath--as though to begin the Iron Dance--I entered the tunnel.

  It was narrow and cramped, and the uneven floor sloped uphill. The air was thick, heavy, and hot. I imagined the Nayeni bandits trudging single-file, armed and armored. Had they, too, fought down panic while they traversed this crushing space? Or had the promise of looming battle focused their fear into fury, readying them for violence? I found it better to imagine them like me; small, terrified of the weight of earth piled above their heads and of the danger they would find at the tunnel’s end.

  A breeze wafted over me. The promise of the surface and fresh air was a relief, until I caught the scent it carried. Scorched flesh. Blood and ichor. The stink of recent death.

  The light of my lantern swept across a blackened mass, curled like a man in pain. Then a skull, with strips of charred flesh clinging to the orbitals. I took a sharp breath, and gagged, yet could not tear my gaze from the corpses as I pressed on, skirting wide around them. Was Oriole there, reduced to nothing but a pile of ash and bones?

  “Show your hands,” a harsh voice sounded from the darkness, speaking Nayeni. “Unless you want to join the dead.”

  Startled, I dropped the lantern. It clattered and rolled behind me, coming to rest with its hood jostled open. The pool of light touched the man ahead of me, glinting off the head of his arrow and bathing his eyes in shadow.

  I held up my hands and spoke around a thick tongue and dry mouth.

  “My name is Nimble Cat,” I said. “I heard rumor of your rebellion and came to join you.”

  “Turn around!” said another voice.

  I did so, and the moment my back was turned toward them I heard movement, then felt a sharp blow to the back of my legs. With a grunt I fell to my knees. Rough hands grabbed my elbows and wrenched my arms behind my back.

  “Toad, lookit his palm,” the second voice said.

  Had the bandage slipped, or been torn? I fought the urge to crane my neck and look, even as a rough cord tightened around my wrists.

  “He’s fire-named,” the second voice went on, with notes of reverence and surprise. “And witch-carved. Who are you?”

  I cursed myself for a fool. All my precaution, and I had overlooked this most obvious thing--the Sienese had never recognized my witch-marks, but Nayeni rebels in service to a witch surely would.

  “You must have keen eyes, to see such thin scars in this darkness,” I said, my mind scrambling to build new layers to my lie. It wasn’t impossible that a village child might have been brought up to be a witch--though it stood to reason that Frothing Wolf would be familiar with any who still dwelt in the north of Nayen.

  “Who carved you?” the first voice said.

  “My grandmother. She was a temple witch before the Sienese came. Her great regret was that she did not fight them. A regret I’ll not die with, as she did.”

  Shouldn’t the arrival of another witch, no matter how unexpected, have been cause for excitement and celebration? Yet the cord around my wrist only tightened further, and when it was tied the soldiers hauled me to my feet, spun me around, and shoved me further into the tunnel. Which told me something unexpected--not all witches of Nayen were allies.

  The tunnel, which had been gradually sloping uphill, became suddenly steeper. It ended in a ladder, which I had to climb like a steep staircase, boosted from below by one of my captors. We emerged in an alley just inside the southern wall, where three more guards waited. One of them--a young woman--carried no weapons but a dagger at her hip. Toad nodded to her in deference, but her sharp, dark eyes never left me.

  “What’ve you found, Toad?” she said. “Another imperial bastard for my sister to bleed for information?”

  I suppressed a mingled jolt of relief and dread. They
had a prisoner. Oriole, I hoped, even if he was being tortured. Better in agony than already dead.

  “He says he’s a witch,” Toad said.

  The young woman’s eyes widened. “Well, well,” she said, then stepped behind me and grabbed my right hand. She twisted it roughly. Her finger brushed the thick scar I had carved in the heel of my thumb.

  “Whoever carved you did a shoddy job,” she said. “What’s your name, boy?”

  “Nimble Cat.”

  “Mine’s Burning Dog,” she said. “Daughter of Frothing Wolf. You’ve come to Iron Town why? Because you want a glorious death?”

  I told her the story I’d constructed. She seemed to weigh it, and at last let go of my hand before rounding on Toad.

  “What are you lingering for?” she said. “A Sienese battalion might be marching up our asses.”

  Toad bobbed his head and slunk back into the tunnel.

  “Please,” I said. “When I heard that Frothing Wolf had taken Iron Town, I felt my grandmother’s spirit pulling me to join you.”

  “Your grandmother, eh?” Burning Dog said. “What did you say her name was?”

  Words died in my throat. How well would the truth serve me? I had no idea what relationship existed--if any--between Frothing Wolf and my uncle and grandmother.

  “What?” Burning Dog said, stepping close to me. “Can’t remember?”

  She gave me no chance to answer. I crumpled around her fist and gagged for breath. She knelt over me, grabbed a handful of my hair, and pulled my head off the ground.

  “Those sloppy witch-marks couldn’t have convinced a drunken fool,” she said. “Try to come up with a more convincing story before I see you again.”

  * * *

  Two of Burning Dog’s guards hauled me to my feet. They half-carried me, sore and gasping for breath, through the streets of Iron Town. Every wall they led me past had been etched with sword-strokes or pierced with arrows. Those buildings that were not scarred were reduced to skeletal cinders. Piles of corpses rotted in alleyways, some partly burned, filling the air with a sickening scent.

  Almost as sickening was the state of Iron Town’s denizens. Wraith-thin children, their eyes bright and feverish in deep sockets, hid from patrolling soldiers in the ruins of burnt-out homes. Those men and women who had not been given weapons worked into the night dragging corpses or building shoddy barricades in the streets. They moved with sluggish exhaustion, their limbs leaden and weak.