Empire of Grass

by Tad Williams

  By midday Miri was hungry again. She knew she could not reach the nearest safe seaport without a little money, so she stopped in a good-sized market town called Arbris Sacra and made her way to the street near the square where gems and jewelry were sold. She chose an establishment that looked prosperous but also somewhat discreet, a shop beneath a family dwelling, and tied Orn outside.

  The owner, a small, round man with dark jowls, inspected her carefully as she entered. He clearly decided that the tattered hem of her dress and the disarray of her hair was less important than the quality of her gown, and treated her with cautious courtesy.

  She put her items on a table—an enameled brooch in the shape of a Holy Tree, studded with polished emeralds, and beside it one of her remaining rings, a small circlet of chased gold. An interval of bargaining ensued that, though perfectly ordinary, seemed to Miriamele to last hours. She knew it was not impossible that even this far outside the city someone would recognize her, and the longer she stayed in one place the more likely that became.

  At last, and with a great show of magnanimity, the jeweler acceded to her price. Miri was hungry, but as soon as the jeweler had paid her and she was back in the saddle she decided she would spend the money elsewhere. The town of Bellidan was only a short ride away, and Miriamele wanted to travel faster than any news about strange noblewomen; she could ignore her stomach for a while longer. As she guided Orn out of town it felt as though hostile faces watched her from every doorway and window.

  At last, in the middle of an overcast gray day, hot and moist, she reached Bellidan, a good-sized settlement she had visited in her youth. She bought a dark blue hooded cloak at the market and as much food as she could expect to eat before any of it went bad, then returned to the road again.

  Last time I was here, she thought as she left the town gates behind, I was with Father Dinivan and Cadrach. Both dead now. An impossible yearning flooded through her. Ah, Elysia God’s gentle mother, how I wish I were back in Erkynland right now. How I wish I were in my bed with Simon. How I wish . . . !

  But wishes were pointless things. Prayers might be answered, though, so she offered fervent entreaties to Elysia, God’s mother, and also to Elysia’s son, the Sacred Ransomer.

  Let me reach my home and my family, O Lord. Help me find my way out of this terrible danger.

  * * *

  • • •

  Several more days riding, several more nights snatching sleep in unguarded barns or in hillside copses, only her cloak for a blanket against the chilly autumn air, found Miriamele in the hills of northeastern Nabban. She knew that soon she would reach the place where the broad Vea Petranis crossed the Anitullean Road and she would have to decide whether to head west toward the coast and a ship that might take her to Erkynland, or continue to ride north.

  As Orn carried her up the winding road into the hills she stopped from time to time in high places to observe the lands around her. During one such halt, she spotted something on the road she had traveled that, though distant, made the hairs stand up on her neck. A large party of riders had joined the Anitullean Road, perhaps two dozen in all, though she could only guess from this distance. She felt sure that they had been sent by Turia or someone else, and that their quarry was either Miriamele herself, Duchess Canthia, or both. She had never caught a glimpse of the royal carriage since fleeing the Sancellan Mahistrevis, and could only hope that the duchess and her children were far, far ahead and nearing the Erkynlandish border. Miriamele, on the other hand, was scarcely half a league ahead of the mounted company she had spotted, and she had been riding for days. Orn was weary; it was hard to make him gallop for more than a short distance.

  Just ahead she saw a road that she knew had once led east to the Vea Orentem, an old thoroughfare considered less safe in these days of violent conflict with the Thrithings-men, but which still would eventually bring her to the North Coast Road on the other side of the Commeis Valley. She had only a short while to think before she reached the crossroads nestled between the hills. Since the riders she had seen were coming from the south, there seemed little chance they would be indifferent to her, and she knew she had little hope of outrunning them all the way to the border, even with a horse as strong as poor Jurgen’s.

  She guided her mount onto the road leading east, which once had been a fine, wide thoroughfare, but now was little more than a dirt track incised with wheel-ruts, surrounded on both sides by encroaching trees and brush. A good place to be unnoticed, she thought, but also a good spot for an ambush. The sky was darkening and she thought she could hear a purr of thunder in the distance. She pulled up her hood and urged her horse onward.

  * * *

  • • •

  She was right to worry about an ambush, but wrong about the place.

  Miri reached the Vea Orentem by mid-afternoon and turned onto the old track, once one of the chief avenues of the old imperial system, now little more than a trade road winding along the outskirts of the Lake Thrithing. She passed a few wagons and folk traveling on foot, but otherwise it seemed as if she had left the world of cities and people entirely. The old road followed the eastern slope of the Commeian Hills, and was set high above the plain because of the flooding that inundated it during rainy years. As the road climbed higher and the trees changed from oaks to pine, she could look down across the vastness of the grasslands below her.

  Hard to believe so much trouble could be caused over this place, she thought as she nibbled on a piece of dried mutton. This part of the Thrithings looks as empty as the surface of the ocean. It had a strange beauty, the leagues of grass gone to gold, the distant waterways and lakes gleaming silver in the slanting light as the sun moved across the sky toward the top of the hills.

  The sun at last dipped behind the hills. The air was still hot and damp with the feel of an approaching storm, the sky a uniform stony gray. As she neared the summit, where a small forest of pine and rosemary filled the air with their tangy scents, the bandits were waiting.

  She saw them step out of the trees as she approached, and as quickly as she realized what was happening and started to pull on Orn’s reins to turn him, several more men stepped out from their hiding places behind her, cutting off her escape. These were not the riders she had seen following on the Anitullean Road, at least—they were too few, too ill-armed, and without horses. Ordinary bandits, she decided, criminals who had fled justice for a lawless life in the wild. Half a dozen of them had now blocked the road ahead of her, several holding bows. She let Orn pace to a halt a few yards from the one who seemed to be the leader. He was a tall fellow wearing a makeshift mask, a cloth tied over his face with holes for his eyes. He had an arrow on his bowstring and was pointing it at her.

  “What do you want?” she demanded in Nabbanai.

  “What do you think?” the man with the mask and bow said. “Get down. Give over your purse.”

  They looked a ragged lot, and Miri tried to calm her racing heartbeat to consider the situation. She did not dismount, but urged Orn forward a few steps, though he did not like the smell of the bandits and shied a little before obeying. “You may have my purse,” she told them. There was not much left in it, but the idea still made her very angry indeed. “If you get out of my way, I will throw it to you.”

  The man in the mask laughed. A couple of his fellows joined him, though a moment later. “Do you think we are fools, m’lady? You will get off the horse. We are taking him too. He looks a good piece of horseflesh.”

  Miri did not dare to give up Jurgen’s horse, not here so far from home. And that was if they did no worse than rob her. She looked around the desolate hillside, the clumps of wind-stunted trees and knew that nothing whatsoever could keep these men from raping her and murdering her if they chose.

  “You would not harm a woman, would you?” She made her voice small and fearful, which was not that far from how she actually felt. “A lone traveler, with no pr
otection but God’s?”

  “God sent you on the wrong road, woman,” the leader said. “Now get down before we kill you where you sit.”

  Instead, Miri threw herself against the horse’s neck and shouted, “Orn— forward!” kicking at his flanks with her heels. He reared, and his iron-shod forefoot took the leader in the chest. The man’s arrow flew up into the air as he fell back, then Orn was trampling him underfoot as he bolted through the bandits and up the road with Miri hanging on for dear life.

  Arrows flew past them as Orn charged toward the top of the hill, one buzzing through her cloak and scraping her arm, but within a few moments they were clear and galloping full out. They reached the crest and started down the other side, Miri still clinging to the horse’s mane, the reins bunched uselessly in her fist. She had gambled that if the bandits had horses of their own, they had left them some distance away. When she looked back she seemed to have guessed correctly: there was no sign of pursuit. Still, she dared not ease off, even when she slid into a better position on the saddle: she kept her heels drumming against Orn’s ribs as he raced down the winding hill road. Thunder cracked overhead and a few drops of warm rain began to fall.

  Only after a very long time with no sign of pursuit did Miri dare to pull up on the reins and let Orn drop into a walk. The rain was falling harder now, making dark spots on the dirt of the road that overlapped in places to form small puddles. She turned in the saddle and looked behind her, examining as much of the hillside as she could see, as well as the empty curve of the road, but saw no sign of pursuit. Orn was exhausted, she could tell, almost staggering beneath her, and she knew she must find a place soon to hide and let him rest.

  Just before she turned back, though, she saw something else. A drizzle of something wet had left a broken line on the road behind her, something more regular than the rain drops. The nearest streaks were bright red.

  Her throat suddenly tight with fear, she reined up and clambered down from the saddle as fast as she could, holding tight to the reins. An arrow dangled loosely in Orn’s belly just behind the stirrup, and he was streaming blood. Miri was horrified—how far had she ridden, how fast had she driven him with a wound like that? Would he even survive it? As she stared in shock, the horse suddenly stumbled a few steps toward the outside of the path and the steep slope below it. Miri tried to let go of the reins, but they had become wound around her wrist and she could not free herself.

  An instant later Orn took another step and then, with a rattling groan, slipped off the path and over the edge. Before she knew what was happening, Miri was yanked off her feet.

  Orn’s huge, tumbling weight whipped her back and forth like hammer blows until her hand finally slid free of the reins. They slid into a copse of pines. The horse struck the trees like a catapult stone, then Miri was rolling free, brown and green flashing past her like a lightning storm, as she bounced and skidded through grass and stones and underbrush. She struck her head, once, twice, and then hardest of all a third time, like the blow of an angry giant.

  * * *

  “All will be well,” Duchess Canthia kept saying, and even though she was only trying to calm young Blasis, who cried because he wanted to go home, hearing her say it over and over made Jesa want to scream with rage. All would not be well. Everything the old Wran woman had said had come true. The palace was in flames and its people, servants and nobles alike, had been killed. Jesa could only clutch little Serasina in her arms as the carriage jolted and bounced over the cobblestones at terrifying speed, and pray to He Who Always Steps On Sand not to let it overturn.

  I do not want to die here, was all she could think. I should have listened to the katulo-woman. I should have run away!

  But she would have had to leave the baby in her arms behind. How could she have done that? The little one was not to blame, no more than Jesa herself.

  “By Usires and all the saints,” the duchess said, “I pray that Queen Miriamele will be well.”

  “No one will hurt her,” said Jesa. “No one would hurt the queen.”

  Canthia shook her head, clinging to the handle of the carriage door with one hand as the coach rattled around a turn of the road. “I thought no one would harm us, either. I do not know what has happened. They were like animals!”

  Men are like animals, Jesa thought but didn’t say, knowing it would only make things worse. It only takes a little for them to turn on each other, to bite and claw like beasts. She had seen it during the terrible floods when she was a child, had watched a man in a boat push away drowning swimmers with his oar, and had seen another man kill a woman with a hand ax for trying to steal some of the food he had hoarded. Jesa knew that men were only as good as the world allowed them to be. But we have guards and a driver, she told herself. They are sworn to the duke and his family. They will protect us from the worst of the others. All the same, she held Serasina so closely that the child moaned a little in her arms.

  * * *

  • • •

  They had no choice but to take the Anitullean Road—no other would have been wide enough for the royal carriage. Canthia did not seem to mind, but it made Jesa feel like a frog cowering beneath the shadow of a black kite. The road was so open, and though traffic in this autumn rain was light, there were still riders, walkers, and wagon drivers passing them many times in each hour. Almost all of them moved off the road to let the great carriage pass, and most removed their hats or at least bowed their heads, but Jesa felt certain that more than a few of them were wondering what a carriage with the royal arms of Erkynland’s High Throne was doing so far south of that land’s borders.

  Still, two more days passed without incident, and most of a third. Darkness was falling, and the coach driver had just told them that they had only a short way to go before reaching Chasu Rutilli, where they could stop for the night. Even Jesa was beginning to think that they truly might have escaped the disaster that had taken the Sancellan Mahistrevis, when one of the guards on the back of the carriage began pounding on the roof with his fist, startling Canthia out of a doze and making little Serasina wail.

  “What?” shouted the driver. “Who is making that noise?”

  “Riders!” cried the guard. “Behind us!”

  Jesa could not see out the back window of the carriage, which was covered with oiled parchment to let more light into the dark interior, but she handed the baby to the duchess and clambered up onto her seat so that she could put her head out the window.

  A good-sized troop of men on horses were following them, perhaps half a league behind, mounting the base of the hill the royal carriage was climbing. When she told the duchess, Canthia cried out to the coach driver, “We are being pursued! Drive faster!”

  The driver cursed, but Jesa heard him plying the whip; the horses surged forward, though the weight of the coach and the uphill slope meant they did not move a great deal faster. The sudden movement bounced Blasis against the seat and he slid onto the floor of the carriage, where he lay complaining loudly, still only half-awake.

  As they neared the top of the hill the carriage swayed dangerously at each curve of the road. A man walking with a donkey barely had time to leap aside—Jesa saw him flail past the window, his donkey scrambling away up the hillside. Jesa took Serasina back from her mother so the duchess could pull Blasis up from where he had tumbled. Canthia got him back onto the padded bench and set him between herself and the outer wall of the carriage so he would not fall again.

  Time seemed to pass with nightmarish slowness as the driver whipped the horses on toward the hilltop. With Serasina clutched tightly against her chest, Jesa finally risked another look out the window. She could see only a little of the road behind her where it curved, but the nearest of the riders was close enough now for her to see him clearly, a bearded man in hides waving a curved sword.

  “Grass-men are chasing us!” she told the duchess. “Men from the grasslands!”

&
nbsp; “Thrithings-men?” Canthia sounded terrified, as if one group of men hunting them could be worse than another. “Faster!” she shouted to the carriage driver. “They will kill us all!”

  Either the carriage driver did not hear her or he was already coaxing all that he could from his team. They reached the top of the hill and for a few moments raced across almost level ground. Something thumped against the back of the carriage; Jesa heard one of the guards cry out. When she leaned out again she saw him lying in the road, an arrow in his back, and now there were at least half a dozen of the riders in sight, loosing arrows at the carriage. Several of them carried torches, and in the growing darkness the horsemen seemed to float above the road in a ball of flame-colored light, like thunder demons.

  A foot pushed through the parchmented window at the back of the carriage. It was the other guard trying to climb up to a safer place, but even as she stared in astonishment Jesa heard him grunt, then he slid back past torn window cover and fell away.

  Something bright and hissing burst through the back window and smacked into the front carriage wall, streaming flames. It was a burning arrow, and fire quickly raced up the coach’s padded wall. The painted roof began to turn black above it. Canthia screamed.

  “Stop!” she cried. “It is on fire! The carriage is on fire!”

  But the driver did not stop. They crossed the top of the hill and sped downward. Jesa could hear the cries of their pursuers, harsh shouts that sounded like joy. Another blazing arrow crashed through the back wall but stopped partway through, still blazing. The front wall of the carriage was engulfed in flames now. Smoke was everywhere.

  Someone else was scrambling across the roof of the carriage, but this time going from front to back. She felt the wheels dip as whoever it was leaped off. She could not help looking out again, and saw that fully a dozen or more riders were now just behind them. Even as she watched, the lone remaining guard who had just jumped down from the carriage in a fit of madness or bravery climbed to his feet, but before he could even lift his sword the bearded horsemen ran him down.