“I think we all know I wasn’t thinking of the prophecy, Sophos,” said the king. “Though I thank you for the excuse.”
There were a couple of small smiles.
“You were thinking of Kamet,” said Eddis sympathetically.
“You weren’t thinking at all,” snapped Attolia, less forgiving. “Did you hear Nahuseresh say a single word of Costis?”
“No?” the king said uncertainly.
“Nahuseresh said his men had killed Kamet. You can be sure they had to kill Costis first. Yet Nahuseresh never mentioned him. Tell me how you see Kamet captured and dead and Costis nowhere in his story?”
Feeling foolish, the king said humbly, “I . . . can’t actually see a way.”
“Indeed,” chided Attolia. “He taunted you with guesswork. Costis would not sit like a pigeon waiting for his neck to be wrung. We will wait for a message from Roa before we hold any funerals.”
She looked around at the other silent councilors. “We have enough to grieve over already, but not a defeat—not today. We have retaken the ground lost and established our front camps closer to the Leonyla. I believe the question before us, my king, is—do you fight tomorrow?”
The king looked at his father. Looked at his queen. “That is not my decision,” he said.
The queen nodded impassively and turned the question over to the councilors. They were interrupted in their deliberations by the sound of cheering.
“What is all that noise?” Trokides asked.
Hilarion, pleased with himself, said, “I think a man got his glove back.”
In a city of tents filled with exhausted men under the quiet stars, Eugenides lay in bed, listening to the muffled sounds of others who were still awake. He watched the shadows of torches that burned all night play across the canvas walls around him. It was late and his face hurt, but that was not why he couldn’t sleep.
“It is like being a sheepdog who suddenly turns on the sheep,” he said. “It feels utterly right in the moment, never afterward. That’s why I wouldn’t let someone else send me into battle. I never wanted to fight until I believed it was necessary. I do,” he said, as if he was trying to convince himself. “I do believe it is necessary.” He still sounded unsure.
“Your father will regret that slap to the head,” Attolia murmured into her pillow.
“Oh, that was just the final round of an old argument. It was so important to him that I not be the Thief, that I be a soldier instead, and now that I’m finally doing what he always wanted, he has to tell me to stop.”
“Maddening,” agreed Attolia in the voice of experience.
Eugenides sighed. “People should be more careful what they ask me for.”
Chapter Eight
The Peninsular armies had won the day because the men were rallying to their high king, all of them, Eddisians and Sounisians and Attolians alike. The royal councilors were in rare agreement: it would be foolish to undermine this new sense of unification. The king even prevailed in his desire to fight on foot, beside his Eddisians, and for the next three days our armies did not retreat. The Medes continued to send out only a portion of their forces, and the Peninsular armies fought bloody battles to hold their ground.
Philologos was wounded. It was only a slash to his shoulder, but enough to keep him out of the fighting for a while. Cleon the Eddisian died fighting at the king’s side, one of three of the king’s cousins who died in a single day. The king’s oldest brother, Temenus, came that evening and sat with the king alone before the two of them went off to observe the private rites sacred to the Eddisians.
It was his cousin who was Eddis who came slowly one evening, head down, to the Attolians’ tent with word of the explosion in the foundry that had killed Stenides, the king’s favorite brother. The body was far away in Eddis. There would be no rites to observe until they returned to the mountains, if they ever returned to the mountains.
“He should have been making watches,” said the king, holding the delicate green-and-gold timepiece Stenides had made him, opening the case and squeezing it closed again with a tight, precise snap, shrugging up one shoulder to wipe away his tears. Then he left to find his father and Temenus, his remaining brother, to bring them the news.
Perminder of Sounis distinguished himself, helping the king of Sounis off the field when he was thrown from his horse. We called Perminder the black sheep because of the tight curls in his hair, and that evening Eddis joked about the Lion being carried by the Lamb. She was not the only one to make jokes that sounded forced. Any levity was harder and harder to find. Sense was hard to find. A man was shot through the head by a bolt and lived to tell about it. My cousin, who’d been sent by my grandfather to command the men of Erondites, lost a single finger to a sword cut and died a few days later of an infection in the wound.
The Medes, like houseguests who don’t want to be impolite, rarely fought into the evening. When they withdrew from the field, the Peninsular armies did the same. As the sun set, the king and queen of Attolia would walk through the camp, between the long rows of tents, past regularly spaced cook fires and work sites. The ground that had been pasture a few weeks earlier was hard-packed dirt except where it was mixed with wastewater to a slippery, stinking mud. All around them, blacksmiths and barrel makers, fletchers, armorers, gunsmiths, and leatherworkers were engaged in making and remaking what was needed for an army of ten thousand men.
The king offered the queen his hand as she picked her way around a puddle. Because the Medes had not mustered to war that morning, the soldiers, at least, were having a day of rest. They slept through all the noise, most of them laid out in their tents, but some stretched out by the cold ashes of the fires they’d lain down by the night before.
When they reached the edge of the encampment, Attolia led the king into the open space beyond it. She did not intend to go out to the farthest pickets, just far enough that they could speak quietly without being overheard. There was a low stone wall. It had once served to divide one family’s land from another’s. Those property rights moot at the moment, it made an adequate bench.
He wanted to ask if she was tired, but didn’t. She knew it and was grateful.
“You’re quiet,” she said.
“You’re busy,” he said. He hadn’t wanted to interrupt her as she assessed her forces.
“I’ve seen what I needed to see. Eddis and I will talk later. What woke you last night?”
“The dead,” he said, and Attolia nodded. They woke her as well. The king toed the trampled and torn grass and said, “I thought it was wrong to sit back on a hillside watching men die and now . . . I am not sure. From above, I can see men on both sides trapped in a war over which they have no control. On the field, I care about nothing but striking down anyone who strikes at me.”
She took his hand. “Your morality up on the hillside is an illusion, no more real than the freedom you imagine you have from it in battle.” She had seen enough to know. “All wars make men monsters, all wars and all men.”
“And women?” he asked.
“Women, too,” Attolia confirmed.
Every day the priests and priestess with the army prayed for the arrival of the Brael ships at Stinos.
Some of the tactics used to delay the Medes worked well, some did not. “They seem so familiar with the terrain,” said Pegistus. “They must have sent scouts well ahead of their army.”
Sounis pointed to the campaign map. “We diked here to support the field guns.”
“We moved them back three days ago.”
“I know, but the dike diverts this streamlet, so it now runs into the flat here.” He pointed. Attolia and Eddis leaned over, along with Pegistus.
“Whoever has informed the Medes so well of the terrain might not know about this,” said Sounis. “If we lure their cavalry here, they will founder.”
Attolia and Eddis nodded and moved their markers, wrote out their orders, and the Medes lost an entire troop of their men and their horses.
&
nbsp; The king had sent Fordad to the harbor at Stinos, but instead of troops he returned with the worst possible news. The Etisians, the late summer windstorms, had come early. The winds from the north would drive the Brael ships back, delaying their arrival.
Fordad’s words were a body blow. I saw men stagger, clutching their heads. The Medes, committing only part of their forces every day, were as strong as they’d been when they first passed through the Leonyla. Our army was exhausted. We might have lost ground all the way back to Stinos in the next few days but for the encouragement of those who went again from fireside to fireside—the kings and queens, the officers of the army, the barons who went to their sons and their cousins and stirred them to give everything they had. Instead of losing ground, step by bitter step, we advanced.
“Bu-seneth has an army of conscripts,” said the magus cynically, warning the council against false hope. “He uses us to train his soldiers for war.”
Whatever the cause, overconfidence or poor training, the Medes left an opening in their lines and Attolia, in spite of fears that it was a trap, ordered her forces forward. We had a day of glory. Moving our encampments, we took over the fortifications the Medes themselves had constructed and were still outside the range of the barrel guns.
After that, Bu-seneth did not take the field for several days. Perhaps he was licking his wounds, or perhaps reinforcing the motivation of his unwilling soldiers.
Only the king failed to appreciate the reprieve. After a morning of his fruitless pacing, Yorn Fordad suggested his energy might be better spent on horseback in the afternoon. “The men in your outposts would be cheered to see you,” he pointed out.
The Peninsular armies had been pushed all the way back to the fields east of Lartia and then had advanced again to the top of the ridge that separated the valley of the Pinosh River above the Leonyla from the watershed to the east, running down toward Stinos. The ridge was long and open, and small companies of men had been posted far out from the main camp to warn us if the Medes made an attempt to encircle our forces. Those soldiers had not had the benefit of royal encouragement, and so it was agreed that the king would ride out in the afternoon to visit them.
We followed a road that was really no more than a wagon track through the thin trees. The king was laughing at something Philologos had said as we neared a cairn of stones, a kind of grave marker not uncommon this far north. I saw a man standing near it and my heart leapt into my mouth. I was certain he meant the king no good. The king must have seen him too. He pulled up, making Fryst throw his head. When I looked again, the man at the cairn had disappeared.
“Your Majesty?” Philologos asked.
“I thought I saw a dead man. . . .”
The king eased up on the reins, Fryst took a step, there was a flash of light and a sound so loud that I didn’t hear it with my ears but felt it crash through my chest.
Then I was on my back, blue sky overhead, and my heart pounding. The air was full of smoke and muffled sounds. I heard, “To the king!” as if from far away and I rolled over, dragging my arms underneath me, too weak to push myself up from the ground. I lay like a baby, my feet scrabbling in the dirt.
Just ahead was the king—I knew him by the coat Hilarion had made him wear—lying partly under Fryst, the horse just as still as he was. There were men on horseback coming through the smoke in the air. They dismounted and walked through the bodies, looking right and left, killing as they came. When they reached Fryst, they tried to pull the king free, but had to lift the horse off him first. I saw Hilarion stagger up, his face covered in blood, shouting something—I couldn’t hear what. I saw a Mede drive a sword through his chest. Then they tied the body of the king over a horse and led it away.
By the time I made it to my feet, there were others up, and they too were holding their heads, stumbling in pain and confusion. Many of the horses had run away, but not Snap. I called her with my fingers, but I couldn’t hear any sound and obviously neither could she. She looked as puzzle-headed as I felt. I reeled toward her and she shied a little. Unlike the other horses, who were dodging their staggering, injured riders, Snap was used to my awkward gait and swinging arms. If I was even more unsteady than usual, she didn’t back away, and I was able to catch her reins in my good hand. With that contact, we both were steadier. Snap’s eyes rolled, but she let me pull her to the body of the king’s horse. I climbed on top of poor Fryst and from there onto Snap’s back.
I hadn’t checked her for any injuries, but she gamely started off. I could feel some unevenness in her gait at first. Her hooves made no sound, or rather I heard none, only a roaring of wind in my ears. I couldn’t guide her; I could only cling with my good hand to the saddle, hunched over with all my weight in one stirrup. I hung on, tears streaming down my face, wailing, I’m sure, like a shade escaped from the underworld. The Medes looked back over their shoulders and mocked me.
The explosion had been heard for miles, and the Medes were racing away ahead of any pursuers. Snap couldn’t keep up, but she hammered on as best she could. Her gait got steadier as she recovered from the shock of the explosion, and I was able to pull myself better into my saddle and tighten the strap across my leg. I had no illusions that I would be of any use to the king. I only knew that I must reach his side if I could.
The Mede encampment, a city of tents ten times the size of our own, was well prepared to repel any attempt at a rescue. The men at the barricades saw me. They could have shot at me, they could have taken poor Snap’s feet out from under her; they did neither. They snatched at Snap’s reins, but she was having none of that. She galloped through the pickets, dodging and weaving as I clung to the saddle. It was no more than a game to the Mede soldiers, and once we were past, they returned to their positions.
Snap took me to the center of the camp, where I slid off her back and frantically made my way between the stamping horses to where the king lay on the ground. I dropped over him as if I could somehow protect him, only to be dragged up and tossed aside.
The king lived, it seemed, for they patted his cheeks and tipped a pitcher of water on his face. He didn’t move as a man bent over him, tugging at his hook. The man fell back, clutching his hand and swearing. Someone else brought a broad leather strap, and they buckled the king’s arms to his chest. I heard him groan as they rolled him over. When they lifted him to his feet, one of his legs couldn’t bear weight. As they walked him forward, his head hanging down, it buckled under him.
I tried to follow, meaning to stay with him no matter what, to be his support to the bitterest end, but just as we reached the open doorway of a tent, someone pushed me hard from behind and I fell heavily. The muffled uproar in my ears had faded, and as I lay on the ground struggling for breath, I heard it quite clearly when my grandfather who was Erondites said, “Welcome, Eugenides,” from inside the tent.
There was a stack of campaign trunks just inside the doorway of the tent. While there were still men standing between me and my grandfather, I scrambled toward them, fleeing like a mouse into the space between the trunks and the curving side of the tent. I hid myself there. I abandoned my king.
“You must be surprised to see me.” My grandfather sounded smug.
“What?” said the king, evidently still deaf.
My grandfather repeated himself, louder.
“No,” said the king. “You are no surprise, Erondites. You,” he said to someone else, “are Ion Nomenus?”
“Yes,” someone said softly.
“Yes?”
“Yes!”
“You are a surprise,” admitted the king.
Nahuseresh, impatient at being ignored, said, “Enough introductions, Thief.”
“King.”
“Bastard,” said Nahuseresh. “A sneaking Thief who has stolen a throne.”
“It was never yours,” said the king mildly.
“Why does he still have this?” Nahuseresh said, his voice as sharp as the blade on the inside edge of the king’s hook.
&nbs
p; “Don’t!” one of the guards shouted from outside the open doorway. I heard Nahuseresh hiss.
The king mocked him. “The last man who tried that is missing a finger,” he said.
I hoped Nahuseresh’s fingers were gone, but he probably would not have remained in the tent if he’d been seriously injured.
Bu-seneth said, “You’ll sign a surrender and take an oath of loyalty to our emperor. You will accept Nahuseresh as your prime minister, and when your people have disbanded their armies, you will be returned to them.”
“What?”
Bu-seneth had to repeat himself.
“I will not,” said the king.
I cannot bring myself to describe what happened next. Crouching, head pounding, I listened to treason, torture, and betrayal. I would have fled then, giving myself away as I tried to escape the sound and the choking, sickening smell of irons heated in the fire. I would have left my king all alone. I know it and I have never forgiven myself.
All that saved me was the unexpected kindness of the traitor Ion Nomenus. I crept out from behind the trunk and locked eyes with him—a slim, serious-looking man standing on the far side of the tent. He had been waiting for me to appear, and with a glance at the men bent over the king, he gave a tiny shake of his head. With the slightest motion of his fingers, he waved me back.
So I stayed. I listened to Bu-seneth’s frustration growing as they could get nothing from the king, not even a sound. Peering out from my hiding place, I saw Nahuseresh bear down with all his weight on the king’s injured knee.
“Tell me again that you are king,” he said, lording over him.
The king broke his silence to oblige, saying in a conversational tone, “Annux, if you prefer.”
“Annux?” Nahuseresh said contemptuously. “You are a puppet, dancing for the queen. She will know her place when I rule over her.”
“When I am dead,” the king said, his voice breathy, “you will still have to fight my armies. And the Braels. And the Gants.”
At his words, Bu-seneth and my grandfather and Nahuseresh all straightened to share a smile with each other.
Return of the Thief Page 23
