Sutler's Road, page 4
“You ass,” our youngest said, surprising us both, and she had more to say still. “Those were mother’s barges, and you owe every carriage you have ever made to the coins she earned.”
Sevat scowled darkly at the smile upon my face, but I ignored him. I was so proud of Pix. She’d spent too many years chasing after his approval. Employment had cured her childishness.
“Is this what Pikailia is learning down at the harbor?” Sevat asked. “How to talk like some escaped Bessradi wharf slave? What kind of a wife will she make? I thought we left in order to get her away from all of that.”
“Pix, leave daddy alone,” Amelia said before I could respond. “You’re just mad because he doesn’t want to spend time with you anymore.”
“Hold on a moment, girls,” I said, before anger got the better of any of them. “We will discuss this—”
“Oh? And how is your search for mangor coming?” Pix shot back but then went very quiet. I had not heard the horrible word since Bessradi. Eating the vile root would end a pregnancy.
We all looked to Sevat as he turned his horse and set his eyes upon Amelia. His face was bright red, and he yelled like I’d never heard before. “I told you to stay away from him.”
“Mother!” Pix screamed but much too loudly, and then the rest were screaming, too. A rock struck Pix’s horse on the rump, and the mare bolted up the road. Amelia was looking right into my eyes when the broken edge of a dark gray boulder smashed her open and sprayed her blood upon me.
“Amelia,” I shrieked but could do no more before a sheet of stone the size of a house smashed her and those behind her into the road. My horse reared, and I was thrown. I fell, all knees and elbows, and landed on my side. A storm of dust and grit engulfed me, and I gasped for breath.
My horse was there, its head crushed by an anvil of rock that was just coming to rest nearby. Another of equal size struck the pony’s chest. The sound was like the breaking of a hundred dry branches.
I struggled to my feet and stumbled toward my daughters. The sheet of stone had slid off the road. I could not make sense of what remained.
“Mother!” Pix cried.
I turned to see her still upon her horse, though it stumbled and bayed. One of its legs was badly broken. The rest of the procession was in chaos.
Sevat was there, then, and he plucked Pix out of the saddle before the pony pitched over and began to kick wildly.
I was a half step toward them when a great thunderous sound slammed me to my knees. It was like the dreadful pound of a heart, but too large, as though the entire cliff face was the chest of an angry god.
The strong sea breeze tugged at my clothes and chased away the swirling dust. My face and neck were damp. I wiped them with my hands and found them smeared with blood—Amelia’s blood. I looked down. My dress was splattered with it. I gasped but was struck again by the deep and terrible boom.
My eyes snapped up to a twist of black smoke, and I saw Prince Barok crawling toward me along the side of the road. Blood poured across his closed eyes and down his ashen face. A drop of it struck the torn earth.
The great drum hammered, and the spot of blood burst into bright flames as though it were a piece of fat flung onto a red hot skillet. The smoke washed over me. It smelled of fresh turned earth, boiling honey, and burnt leaves. I vomited in a great lurch. My eyes and nose burned, and it seemed for a moment that the earth itself was weeping for the prince—weeping for a dying son. I came awake like never before in my life. I leapt to my feet and sprinted toward him. His forehead was gashed to the bone, and his scalp was peeled back as though he was being skinned.
Gern appeared beside me, and we reached Barok together as two more heavy drops of blood struck the broken earth. The flash of the fire and the bite of the smoke—the event—drew painfully through my guts and head. The smoke stung my eyes and skin, and I felt again as though the whole earth was screaming for him to be saved. We took hold of him, tore cloth from sleeves and skirt, and pressed it all upon his gashed scalp. Gern kicked away the black circles of burnt earth.
“Barok, we must get you away from here. Can you ride?” Gern asked as we secured a tight wrap about his head. The prince nodded, and Gern hefted him up. “Rally! The prince is here. Rally to me. Horses!”
A rush of voices came at us. Selt appeared with a wicked hammer in one hand and a mangled shield aimed at the cliff face. “He is here,” he said and waved on the others with a terrible bellow, “Come on!”
Men in green with grim faces covered in dust and blood surrounded us. They aimed their great spears and shields up at the cliff. Many were badly wounded. One man’s foot was a paintbrush. He collapsed as I looked at him, and I was sure that he was dead.
I turned a quick circle in search of my family. Back down the road, Sevat and Pix sheltered behind the shoulder of a great boulder. I could not see any of my sons.
“You must come with us,” Gern said without explanation and hefted me up onto a pony.
From the saddle, I saw their mangled bodies—my boys ground into the road along with so many soldiers and horses.
My world became gray. The ponies started moving, and I was drawn along unthinkingly. The sound of it all mumbled in my ears—a distant thunder of hooves and screaming.
Sweat from my brow washed blood and honey-flavored ash into my mouth. The mixture went through me like a gulp of hot wine. The magic of it was a mystery I could not solve, but it kept me in the saddle. How Barok held on, I cannot imagine.
I woke from the long ride to the sight of Urnedi’s palisade and a host of greencoats riding out to us. Gern’s father led them. There was much shouting and confusion.
A ripple of alarm turned everyone west. A greencoat galloped in furiously. It was Anton Oklas, the mayor’s son and Amelia’s suitor.
Ohh, Amelia!
“Report,” Gern said.
His voice cracked and trembled. “I went up to search the cliff. I found boot prints and the mark of tools upon the stone. This was no accident.”
Gern said to his father, “That decides it. Gather together all of those that we want sworn and bring them to the barge landing. I want the loyalties of those that serve the prince, and I will have it now.”
“Captain, we should not separate,” Barok said with clear wisdom, but slumped out of the saddle. Four men caught hold of him. He was deathly pale. Gern said to an older officer, “Sergeant Horace, see the prince and the wounded to the keep. Sing to his wounds.”
“I don’t know that I am ready,” he replied. “Captain Sahin has learned the healing magic much better than I have.”
“Sahin is not here,” Gern replied. “Do not fail.”
The old sergeant saluted him, and Gern led us back west to the bridge.
“Twenty men here,” he ordered. “No one else crosses the bridge until we return. Whoever did this is still on the far side.”
A barge was made ready. Gern’s father arrived with a group of people who were as confused by what was going on as I was. We were loaded onto the barge, and it started away.
5
Madam Dia Yentif
Sergeant Horace
It was a cool and quiet evening. A soft breeze washed across the bed while the baby and I enjoyed the sweet cream and potato soup that warmed my belly. Despite the kicking and the nausea, I started to fall asleep.
The sudden raucous hollering of a group outside tore the calm.
Umera woke and began to curse. She had brought the soup, and it had had the same affect upon her. She thumped her empty bowl down upon the table, wrapped herself in a throw, and stomped her way out. Pregnancy had made her as particular as me.
I smiled a touch. She’d become an extension of my desires, and I felt sorry for whomever it was below that had disturbed us.
Forget about it, Dia. Forget all about it.
I worked to slow my breathing. I played with my emerald and onyx wedding bracelet and dreamt of the day when the matching green and black of Barok’s pennants would fly above the palace in Bessradi. I smiled and let the drowsiness take me.
“Oh no!” came a sharp cry from below, followed by a roll of voices. I was too awake after that and made my way down with angry words at the ready.
It was moments like those that I regretted the retirement of Dame Vala and Fana’s parents, Master and Madam Urs Sedauer. The Battle of Urnedi had been hard on them, and the posts did call for younger and stronger eyes and backs, but their replacements were nowhere near as good at keeping things quiet. Thell was the only one from Urnedi’s older generation that had stayed on, but he lived in Ojesti tending to his orchards.
I got a look into the hall below from the gallery landing. Greencoats and the keep’s staff crowded the space. Barok was with them, leaning upon Sergeant Horace. Another senior Chaukai needed the assistance of two of his men. Several had weapons at the ready.
“Barok,” I called. “What has happened? Are you hurt?”
He could not hear me over the many voices, and I rushed down.
Furstundish the Senior occupied the landing at the bottom of the tight spiral. “Hold a moment, Madam,” he said and motioned someone down the stairs. “All of you. Hurry now.”
The staff filed down, including Umera and even my young maid, Lilly. The old sergeant followed them down without offering an explanation.
I rushed into the hall to find Barok slouched into one of the stout oak dining chairs with a tangle of bloodstained bandages tied around his head. The Chaukai next to him was missing his right ear and cradled a misshapen and swollen forearm. Sergeant Horace seemed in command.
“Explain, please,” I pleaded.
“A rockslide was set on us as we rode up from the meeting with the Heneuran captain. Many were killed. The staff is being taken beneath the yew to be sworn. The event has multiplied the need.”
“Just like that and the Chaukai get to force their oath onto the entire staff?” I demanded. “The yew forest is too dangerous.”
“Madam,” he said in an effort to calm me. “The Chaukai can keep the ghosts at bay. The risks—”
“I took a single Zoviyan into those trees, and she was reduced to a bloody mist by Barok’s ancestors. Do not tell me about the risks. You have taken a pregnant woman and an eight-year-old girl out there. Their blood is on you.”
“Dia,” Barok said. “Someone from Urnedi tried to kill me today.”
“Not Fana, Umera, or Pemini, and sure as hell not Lilly.”
They could not look at me.
But I let the thoughts go. Barok was bleeding through his bandage.
I grabbed a chair, sat down before him, and swatted his hands away from the ugly wrappings. I waved over a greencoat who had wisely brought fresh water and bandages. We worked to remove the old ones, and Barok did not resist us until the very end. His cheeks lost their color and his hands began to tremble. Horace ordered him to sit still and helped me peel free the last bloody strip of sleeve. I gasped. A piece of his scalp the size of his large hand was askew. A wide gash at its base revealed a section of ragged bone. Fresh blood seeped around the edges, over his exposed skull, and down his forehead and cheek.
“Hold him,” Horace ordered, and the greencoats collected around him.
“No,” I said softly as I saw the panic in my young husband’s eyes. I set one hand softly upon his chest. “Hold still, love.”
He locked his dark blue eyes on mine and took hold of my arm with both hands as he fought to suppress the tremble that was spreading to his shoulders and thighs.
The sergeant was methodical. He poured a bit of water on the haggard flap of flesh and washed the hair, blood, and grit from the edges of the wound. Barok gasped and shook.
“Be still, Prince of Edonia,” I whispered. He suppressed his trembling, and I was impressed with his poise until I saw the change in his eyes. It had been a long time since I’d seen it. Barok was not alone inside his head, and he became increasingly detached from his pain as one of his ancestors possessed him.
He blinked with sudden and terrible confusion. “Avica?” he asked me.
“No, Prince Solon,” I replied to the ghost who had taken hold of him. “Avica’s spirit floats in the wind. I am Dia. I bear in my belly the heir to your father’s empty throne.”
Sadness tortured him. He blinked away tears and looked from my belly to the Chaukai who worked upon the terrible wound. “Brothers,” Solon whispered as his hold faded. “Blessed brothers, guard her well.”
“Hurry,” I hissed at Horace. “Hurry!”
A flicker of dim blue light stunned me, and I was at once exhilarated by the healing touch of Horace’s song. The verse tumbled haltingly from him, its words too foreign to catch—as if they were not words at all. He laid his hands upon Barok’s torn flesh, and all the tension went out of him. The old soldier’s halting song became a strained plea. The blue light ebbed and faded, but the torn scalp reattached and the ragged edges lost their swelling and closed. The blood evaporated like a thin layer of fast-boiling water.
Horace slumped onto the floor, and we were left in the mundane light of the hall’s bright lanterns.
Barok was asleep, his face wet with happy tears. I was almost as relaxed, my sore muscles and joints all well soothed by Her touch. My baby seemed to be smiling.
“Where did you learn that?” I asked Horace.
“Geart and Avin taught me. Sahin and a few others have real talent. I made quite a mess of it. Though, I must admit, it is easier than it seems.”
“Horace, you are on the floor.”
“Yes,” he chuckled and struggled up into a chair. “I mean it is easy because of how badly he was wounded. Hurt flesh wants to be healed. Today was the first time I’ve done anything but make my fingertips glow.”
I felt a dark twinge as the warmth faded. “The song brings the Shadow?”
“It does. All songs do. The nouns are Hers, but the verbs belong to Him.” The rest of the Chaukai shot him dark looks. “Rot. Sorry, Dia. It is nothing personal. We’re not supposed to talk about it anywhere but within the yew.”
I nearly commented on the Edict of the Renewal which prescribed that unlicensed healers be burned alive. But there was little point then.
My thoughts drifted. I imagined 10,000 Chaukai with horses, bows, and healing songs. Zoviya would tremble at their coming.
Someone said something.
Someone else carried me up to bed.
6
General Leger Mertone
New Year’s Eve, 1195
My officers met me in the tall timber carriage house. Captain Egbert Sahin had grown a beard and a collar of hair around his wide bald spot. Both had come in dark gray and gave him a commanding air. His eyes, though, were sunken and bloodshot. I had attributed it to his promotion, but Geart had told me it was hunger that kept him from sleeping. Once you started singing, he’d said, you do not want to stop.
That morning, he was the worst I’d seen him. One of the lads in his command had been thrown from his new Akal-Tak the previous evening, and Sahin had used his magic to repair the boy’s torn cheek and ear. Sahin looked miserable and had no patience for the gathering. I was glad I had no talent for magic.
“We did not plan for snow,” Avin said, adding a fresh concern to the rest of those we had discussed. All six of the Chaukai sergeants nodded. Sahin, Geart, and I rounded out the council of ten.
Sahin looked ready to call them all cowards. I almost called him by his first name in an effort to disarm him, but bit it back. Only his mother ever called him Egbert.
I spoke before he could. “I hear your concerns, gentlemen. The fact remains, however, that we killed ten Hessier last season. They are going to come for us. We have been over this. We must destroy them before they destroy us. I say we go.”
Sahin nodded, and Geart said, “We came all this way. The meeting is set. We cannot go home now.”
Their concerns were real, but the weight of our efforts convinced them. It was agreed.
“Then it begins,” I said, and the sergeants got their men moving.
I patted the thick doorpost of the carriage house as I stepped out for the last time. Our plan would not have been possible without it and the man who’d abandoned the estate. He was a carriagemaker of much renown who’d decided to try his luck in Enhedu, and in doing so, had vacated the riverside estate he had leased through the end of the year. Tucked deep on its forested back third, was the long row of isolated carriage houses and paddocks my company had used to prepare.
Captain Sahin led his two troops east, each man wearing a proper Hemari uniform and riding a fit Akal-Tak. The rest of the company was with me, though none of them looked like soldiers that day. Each man wore many layers against the cold, the outermost a mismatched assortment of undyed caps, overcoats, and breeches. Our hair was as unkempt as our boots. We left our Fell Ponies in the stables.
My master sergeant was the last out, and the rest of the men smirked at him. I’d called him Darmia again that morning. It was an unfortunate side effect of his proximity to me first thing in the morning. I tried very hard not to do it, but it couldn’t be helped. I could not wait to be back to my wife. Leaving her side was the one thing wrong with our plan.
He signaled to the line sergeants, and the company moved out.
Down at the river’s edge, we packed ourselves onto a pair of old barges and started upriver toward the capital. It began to snow again near midday, but the men were strong on the oars and delivered us ahead of schedule.
We tied on to one of the long piers near the Grand Mhedhil that was jammed with every manner of barge and boat. The river had always been Bessradi’s sewer, and the bargemen, drayers, and yardmen that moved its many goods were treated in kind. We fit right in, and the heavy weights of lamp oil and kindling we moved ashore and slung onto our backs was just another of a thousand such deliveries made to the capital each day. Avin did not make the most convincing prelature overseer, but Geart did. He aimed his deep barking voice and a wicked length of iron rod at the slightest offence. Every man upon the pier wilted away from him, and my men abandoned their erect postures and soldierly expressions. We stooped from the weight we bore and cast our eyes at our feet.
