Song of Unmaking

by Caitlin Brennan

  “And his safety?” she asked. “What happens to him?”

  “The hard truth,” Master Nikos said, “is that his destiny is of less importance to us than yours. If we lose him forever, we won’t all die. If we lose you…”

  Valeria hissed in frustration. “You need us both. He needs me. I have to go.”

  “Child,” he said, “you will not. Your place is here.”

  She bit her tongue until she tasted blood. All her life, her elders had done their best to keep her from doing what she was called to do. She should have known Master Nikos would forbid her—everyone else had.

  She should have kept quiet and simply gone when it was time. But she had fought so hard to be a rider, and suffered so much to win it. If she did this against the Master’s wishes, she would lose her place among the riders.

  There was no budging him. He might have done a bit of thinking and he might be considering the uses of flexibility, but he was still a stiff-necked old man. He could only see that Valeria would be safer here and that Kerrec was safer elsewhere. One of which happened to be true, but one of which was not.

  No wonder the gods were threatening to break the school apart. All the riders needed a good shaking—every last one of them.

  Sabata roared up to the fence and skidded to a halt in a stinging spray of sand. He danced in place, tossing his mane and snorting.

  The absolute simplicity of him brought her nearly to tears. He was a pure being. Doubt never stained him. Hesitation never sullied his spirit. He knew what he was and why, always.

  He was the best of all diversions. She watched the patterns shift around the Master. Sabata was shaping them in ways Valeria could just begin to understand.

  Nikos might be aware of it, somewhere deep inside, but Sabata’s presence was blurring his memory. When he looked for the seeds of his argument with Valeria, he found a shimmer of white and an eye so deep a man could drown in it. There were stars there, and world upon world vanishing into the dark.

  Valeria shook herself free of the vision. When she bent her head in respect and began to retreat, Nikos waved her away with an air of distraction. He was enspelled, fixed on the stallion’s beauty and power.

  It was hard not to feel guilty, but Sabata was losing patience. If she would not go, he would break down the fence and carry her off.

  That would break the spell. For all her guilt, she did not want that. For once she had a free path ahead of her, and white gods guarding it. She would be a fool if she failed to take it.

  Eighteen

  The emperor’s legions had camped for close on a month at the ford the imperials called Tragante. Except for dispatches of scouts, they had made no move to cross the river.

  “You think they’re building a city?” Cyllan asked.

  Euan Rohe glanced at him. They were crouched with the rest of the warband in a fernbrake on the far side of the river, watching the little dark men come and go from their fort. It did look like a city, with its massive palisade and squat square watchtowers, but he said, “That’s just a war camp. If it was a city, they’d be building in stone instead of wood.”

  “So why aren’t they moving?” Donal demanded. “They can’t just sit there until the snow flies.”

  “They certainly can,” said Euan, “and they will, if they think they can gain something by it.”

  “What would that be? Months of wasted time and no battle worth the name?”

  Euan shrugged. “They don’t think like us. If our raiding across the river everywhere but here hasn’t brought them out, I don’t know what will. They’re waiting for something—an alignment of the stars, a signal we’re not aware of…who knows?”

  “Maybe they’re waiting for us to surrender,” Conory said.

  “Or to attack them,” said Donal.

  “We will,” Euan said, “when the high king is ready.” He pushed himself from his belly to his knees. “Come on. We’re wasting daylight.”

  None of them argued with that. There was a herd of cattle coming in from one of the towns farther inland, and they had a hankering for the taste of imperial beef.

  Conory led—he was the best tracker. Euan brought up the rear. Half a dozen Calletani against two eights of legionaries and a pack of drovers—they reckoned that fair odds.

  This was good country to hunt in. Much of it was thick woodland. The legions had made a road through it, eight man-widths broad and paved with stone, and cut back the trees for a furlong on either side.

  There was still plenty of cover for a raiding party. Euan and his kinsmen ghosted through the trees, staying just within sight of the road.

  The shadows grew longer as the sun sank. Under the trees it was already dark. Conory led them by smell and feel more than sight.

  With this many cattle to slow them down, the supply train would have to stop for the night where the woods opened into a rough-hewn field. But when the warband reached it, they were not there. The field was empty and the stream that ran through it was undisturbed since the last time a supply train had camped there.

  The others wanted to continue down the road until they found the cattle, but Euan stopped them. “They’ll be here,” he said.

  “What if they aren’t?” said Strahan.

  “They will be,” Euan said.

  They were not all convinced, and Strahan least of all, but Euan stared them down. Finally Strahan muttered, “It’s on your head if you’re wrong.” He made himself comfortable in the undergrowth beyond the earthworks that marked every legionary camp, past or present.

  They had a clear view from where they were, and ferns to lie on and water to drink from a brook that fed into the larger stream. As ambushes went, it was rather pleasant.

  When the others were settled, Euan indicated a full bladder and slipped away. He did not go far, and he did not go out of sight of the clearing. If he peered around a tree, he could see the shadows in shadow that were his warband.

  His excuse had been true enough. When he had taken care of that, he made sure he was well out of sight of the others. Then he slipped a packet wrapped in linen from the bottom of his traveling pack.

  Carefully he uncovered the seeing-stone that Gothard had given him. One way and another, he had never got around to telling anyone that he had it. It seemed a useful secret to keep.

  It was black dark where he was, though the last of the sunset light still glimmered in the clearing. The short summer night was finally falling. Yet even in the dark, and as black as the stone seemed in daylight, he could see it lying in its wrappings.

  The longer he had it, the easier it was to make it work. He thought of legionaries and drovers and cattle, and the stone’s surface stirred and shimmered. He looked down as if from a height onto the twilit road.

  As he had expected, a herd of cattle plodded along the paving and spilled into the cleared space on either side, driven by men on horseback. The legionaries marched on foot, eight in front of the herd and eight behind.

  They were moving slowly. It was late and they had been traveling for two days. Some of the cows had calves that needed to stop and nurse.

  The fall of night did not urge them to greater speed. There was a moon, a few days from the full, bright enough to see by. And they had a mage.

  Euan had seen mages in the stone before when he spied on the emperor’s camp. He had learned to recognize the signs. There was a glimmer over the cattle like a drift of mist and moonlight. Those were wards, protections against just such a raid as Euan was contemplating.

  The mage was riding with the drovers. He looked and dressed and acted exactly like them, but the moonlight glimmer flowed out of him and then back into him in a steady, circular stream.

  Euan took note of the horse he was riding and the clothes he wore. Neither had any distinction. Still, it would help a little when the time came.

  They were close to the camp. Euan bade the stone show the road laid out like a map. The cattle were a few furlongs down from the camp, drawing slowly closer.
/>   He covered the stone and paused to take a deep breath. No matter how often he used the stone or how well he justified it, he still felt a sickness in the pit of his stomach. Magic was magic, whatever he wanted to call it.

  This was worth it. It had saved his neck a time or two, and won him more than a few raids.

  He had not led a raid against a mage before. The stone let him see, but it did not make him a mage. He had only his wits and his weapons to rely on.

  Mages were mortal. Their powers had limits. They could be wounded and killed.

  He rounded the tree and went back to the warband. They were lying so low that some of them were asleep.

  He would sleep when the raid was over. He propped himself against a tree where he could see the camp, covered his face with his dark hunting plaid, and waited.

  He could feel the mage coming. It was like a torch drawing closer to his face, first the light, then the heat. Then the cattle came jostling and lowing into the palisade, with the drovers behind and around them and the legionaries scattering to make camp.

  The rest of the warband had roused. He heard the change in their breathing. Conory crawled on his belly to the edge of the fernbrake.

  Euan followed suit, laying a hand on his arm. “Wait,” he breathed.

  Conory nodded, a shifting of shadow against shadow and a faint jingle of the rings he wore in his ears. Euan felt the others come up behind them.

  They waited until the camp was made and the fires lit, dinner cooked—that made Euan’s stomach growl in sympathy—and men bedded down for the night. There were guards, but they were out in the open where they could be watched.

  With his own eyes, Euan could not see the wards that were on the camp—but he could smell them. They smelled like hot metal.

  He followed his gut. The camp was quiet. The cattle had settled down. The mage was sleeping with the drovers outside the cattle pen.

  Conory and the rest knew what to do. With a soft trilling whistle like a night bird’s call, he sent them to it.

  He knew from the quality of silence when the sentries fell. The mage slept on, trusting in his magic to keep the cattle safe.

  Mages never seemed to remember that they were mortal. Another mage would go for the spell. Euan went for the mage.

  The fool had never thought to ward himself. He trusted in legionaries and barbarian ignorance—false faith on both sides. Euan slit his throat in one swift, practiced cut.

  The wards collapsed with a sound like feathers falling. Their stink lingered, but it was fading fast.

  He dispatched the rest of the drovers while his warband disposed of sleeping legionaries. Strahan and Donal were the first to get to the cattle. Euan rounded up the horses.

  They could all ride—thanks to the emperor who had sent them as hostages to the School of War on the Mountain. Tonight it was a useful skill. The horses were trained to drive cattle, and the cattle were used to these horses.

  They left the dead as a message for the emperor. The cattle did not object too strongly to being herded off the road and into the wood. There were ways a hunter knew, that proved wide enough for one or two cows abreast.

  The legions could not watch every ford, here at midsummer with the river running low. The cattle crossed in starlight a few bends upriver of Tragante, slipped through the water and up the bank and out of the empire.

  Nineteen

  The raiders came thundering into the high king’s war camp in the hot bright morning, whooping and laughing and driving a herd of imperial cattle. Clansmen tumbled out of tents and ran from the practice grounds. Even the high king, the Ard Ri, stood up in the council circle to see what had come to disturb his peace.

  Eight horses, eighty cattle—that was a fair night’s work. Euan sent most of the cattle to the Calletani, but he and Conory between them herded a dozen into the high king’s circle.

  Old men and priests scattered, squawking in dismay. The king had to step aside briskly to keep from being run down by a spotted cow.

  The people had been raiding cattle since the dawn time. They moved by instinct, inborn, to pen the cattle in the king’s circle.

  Euan sat on the stocky brown horse that had belonged to the mage, and grinned at the high king. “Here’s a gift from the Calletani,” he said. “They’re fine eating, these imperial cattle.”

  The Ard Ri was a big man, bigger than Euan, and broad as a bull. His strength was legendary. He had broken twelve men’s backs over his knee to take the high king’s torque.

  Euan wondered how many backs he had stabbed and priests he had bribed to get that far. He looked as brainless as a bull, but there was more than muscle between those gold-ringed ears.

  Euan had no doubt that he knew what his brother king dreamed of. Every king of the people did. They all wanted the torque that clasped that massive throat.

  It lent a certain edge to the high king’s smile as he said, “You’ve raided well. Was there much pursuit?”

  “None at all,” Euan said.

  The Ard Ri hawked and spat. “They’re soft. They think a line of forts and a few thousand men in armor will keep us from bleeding them dry.”

  “Indeed,” said Euan sweetly. “You’ll be leading us to battle soon, then?”

  “That will come in due time,” the high king said.

  “I’m sure,” said Euan. He wheeled his horse about—not waiting to be dismissed—and left the king to enjoy his new cattle.

  “Rudeness can be an asset in a king,” Gothard observed. He had been nowhere in sight while Euan faced the Ard Ri, but that was hardly an obstacle to a mage.

  He was sitting in front of Euan’s tent in the middle of the Calletani camp, playing a game or more likely working a divination with a handful of smoothly polished stones. Euan’s eye slid over the patterns, refusing to try to make sense of them. If any of them was a seeing-stone, he did not want to know it.

  Gothard’s usual following of priests was absent for once. They had long since stopped pretending to guard him. The stone he carried was an incarnation of the One, and he was its master. They would never worship him or any mortal man, but they bowed before the starstone.

  Euan bowed to nothing—and that included the high king. He squatted beside Gothard, reaching for the jar of ale that lay between them. It was good ale, well brewed, and welcome after the night and morning he had had.

  “You only gave the Ard Ri a dozen cattle,” Gothard said. “He can count, you know—at least when it comes to reckoning what he thinks is due him.”

  “He got more than his due,” Euan said. “There were eighty cattle. I gave him twelve. That’s more than a tenth part.”

  “He’ll reckon you owe him twice that,” said Gothard. “You’re his vassal, after all.”

  There was no such word in the language of the people—he had to say it in Aurelian. Euan bared his teeth at the insult. “I could have declined to give him any at all. He’s been squatting on his arse up here for a solid month, while the imperials lock up the river and the people lose their edge. What’s he waiting for? The same sign the emperor is?”

  “His courage, probably,” Gothard said. He scooped up the stones and cast them in a new pattern. It made him frown. “He says he wants all of the people to come in before he makes his move. You know that. You’ve heard him.”

  “Most of war is waiting,” Euan said. It had been an axiom of his father’s. “We’re not barred from raiding, at least. The more we tweak the imperials’ noses, the more likely they’ll be to lose their tempers. Then we’ll get a real war in spite of the Ard Ri.”

  Gothard shifted one stone, then another. He was still frowning. He slanted a glance at Euan. “What if you were the Ard Ri?”

  “Oh, no,” said Euan. “Not yet. I’ve power to build first, and allies to win. The five tribes will get cattle, with one of my own warband to give the gift. Then we’ll see who comes calling.”

  “I could make them want to come,” Gothard said, “and you wouldn’t have to give up your cattle
.”

  Sometimes, Euan thought, Gothard lost his grip on the half of him that was Calletani and turned into a complete imperial courtier. It usually happened when his magic came into it.

  Euan decided to be patient—yet again. “Let them come on their own. There will be plenty for you to do once they get here.”

  Gothard’s lip curled. “Oh? Such as? Do you want me to fetch them ices from the south and shellfish from the sea, and make them an emperor’s feast?”

  “You’re not a servant,” Euan said.

  “Then what am I?” Gothard demanded. “I’m not a priest. They’ve made that all too clear, even if I could stomach the life they live. I’m not one of your stouthearted clansmen. No one is calling me prince in my mother’s right, either. What am I, then? Your pet sorcerer?”

  “What do you want to be?”

  That gave Gothard pause. Imperials never asked that question—and as far as Euan could see, in spite of plaids and mustaches, this was an imperial nobleman first and foremost.

  Gothard took a long time to answer. Euan waited for it. While he waited, he eyed the stones.

  They were ordinary pebbles from the river, smooth and rounded. Most were grey or white. One was red, and one had bands of black and red and pale grey.

  The white ones made him think of the gods on the Mountain. The banded one was like Valeria—all things in one, woman and horse mage and lover of princes. The white ones lay in a circle around it. A grey one had fallen against it. Euan stretched out a finger to separate them.

  “Don’t do that,” Gothard said. His voice was so mild that it was frightening.

  Euan drew his hand back carefully.

  “I want,” said Gothard, “to be emperor. In the end, and to the end.”

  “I know that,” said Euan. “What do you want to be here, while you wait for your stars to align?”

  Gothard raised the grey stone that Euan had wanted to touch, turning it slowly in the light. “The stars have aligned. It’s begun. The One will come, and the world will be Unmade.”