The Warrior's Tale (The Far Kingdoms, Book 2) Read online

  As I sprinted forward I saw Maranonia’s spear lying whole upon the ground. It was made of stone, like the rest of the statue and the gold was only paint. But something made me scoop it up as I ran.

  Instead of clumsy, too-heavy stone, the Goddess’s spear felt as light as a javelin, and as I shifted my grip it found its balance in my fist as if the weapon was made for it by a master smith.

  The demon reached and I let it take me, lifting me up and up. Then it screamed in pain as Corais’s blade — the bastard was mortal — slashed. But the pain only made it tighten its hold and it pulled me toward its gaping maw.

  Its breath was a privy hole of foulness and its three red eyes fixed on me — side-slit pupils narrow with hate.

  Then it gave another shriek and tried to paw at something clinging to its right shoulder. I hung, suspended, struggling to cast my spear.

  I saw what the clinging something was — Polillo. She dodged the demon’s strike, then leaped forward onto the back of its neck, long strong legs locking. Her ax was gone, but she wouldn’t have used it if she’d still had it — Polillo was intent on grappling with the demon, muscle against muscle.

  She grabbed those flat ears and strained back. The demon roared and tried to slap her away, but still she kept pulling . . . and pulling . . . until the beast’s snout was forced upward.

  It tried to fling me away to free another paw, but I hung on and as its paw reflexed back to begin another shake, I was carried with it.

  I heard Polillo bellow for Maranonia to give her more strength and I heard my friend’s tendons crack with effort and then the demon’s throat was exposed.

  I flung myself forward, thrusting with the spear. It sank into soft flesh, going in and in and in. The demon’s body rippled with pain, then foul air, mixed with blood, sprayed from the wound.

  The demon opened its maw for a final roar, then its whole body folded in on itself and I was leaping away, twisting as the ground rushed up. I landed and rolled as the demon fell, its body narrowly missing mine as it crashed onto the floor of the arena.

  I grabbed someone’s sword and ran to finish it off. But there was no need — the body was quite still.

  The demon lay dead, with our Goddess’s spear buried in its throat.

  I turned in a daze, then laughed as first Polillo, then Corais engulfed me in their embrace. I heard my other sisters shouting with joy and they all crowded about us, hugging and cheering and, yes, crying.

  We were heroes that night. And the next. And the next. Another legend was enshrined in the history of the Maranon Guard.

  But while the city celebrated the first victory over the Archons, we buried our dead, tended our wounded, and mended the tools of our trade.

  It’s good to be praised and admired. But any warrior who thinks the cheers of a grateful and worshipping public will stick longer than a too early snow-fall, is in for a sad and bitter reckoning.

  On the fourth day, Amalric sent a message, asking me to meet him at the main port. I hurried to the docks, knowing he was about to leave for Irayas and his mission with King Domas.

  The ship was in its final loading stages when I arrived and I found Amalric pacing back and forth on the dock. As soon as he spotted me he shouted like a boy and ran to hug me. We clung together — brother and sister — for a long moment, then drew apart for the farewell.

  But instead of a sad frown, his smile was as white as any glad smile of greetings. "I have good news, big sister."

  I waited. Rali means hope, I thought. Rali means hope.

  Amalric said: "The Magistrates have had a change a heart. And since I have a special interest, I wanted to tell you before the official announcement.

  “You have won. The Maranon Guard will march out with others."

  I laughed. He hugged me again.

  Then: "That was quite a thing you did the other night."

  I shrugged. "I had help. Besides, that was just a skirmish."

  "Then I won’t bother lying and claim it will get easier as it goes," he said.

  "Did it ever get easier," I asked, "when you and Janos went after the Far Kingdoms?"

  "No," Amalric said. "There was always another, bigger hill to climb; horde to dodge; and desert to cross. I learned it never gets easier. In fact, it gets harder, but you just keep going . . . until it’s done."

  "I hope more people than you and I know that," I said.

  "A few might," he said. "Some of the Evocators, in fact, thought the demon was the Archons’ rumored secret weapon. They were ecstatic you’d destroyed it. But Gamelan set them straight. It was powerful magic, he said. But — "

  "It was just a demon," I broke.

  "Yes," Amalric said. "It was just a demon."

  The ship’s bell rang a warning. We embraced and kissed a final time. Amalric boarded and the crew cast off.

  I stood on the dock until the ship tacked at the bend in the river and sailed out of sight.

  The last thing I saw was Amalric’s scarlet hair, blazing in the sunlight.

  And it was many a year before I saw my brother again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE SIEGE OF LYCANTH

  Not two months ago I was invited to the Citadel of the Magistrates for the blessing of a great frieze. There I wielded the holy knife and sacrificed a white bullock to dedicate the ornate carving — which runs the full circumference of the Central Dome. It was a rare honor; especially for a woman. But each time I looked at that frieze — which claims to be a history of the Second Lycanthian War — I had to alternately hide either a smile or a flash of anger. The ceremony was actually a re-dedication, since it’d been necessary to drastically alter the sculptor’s first version after I finally returned home from my adventures — and certain tales could no longer be told as before.

  My little scribe, who I’m now seeing as less a wharf rat than a sometimes-annoying chipmunk chattering for more nutmeats, is alarmed, frightened I’ll ruin my tale by detailing just how, and why, the first frieze became so embarrassing to the Magistrates and Evocators. You may rest easy, chipmunk. I’m too experienced at bellowing war ballads and telling lies of battle, beer and bed to equally deceitful comrades-in-drink to reveal anything in my story before its proper time.

  I thought of the frieze because the sculptor’s vision — like most tales of war, whether pictured, sung, read or told — is still as big a lie as any hasty stammer a parent fumbles up when her child first wonders how babies came to be. The carving begins with a few panels showing the horrible outrages of the Lycanthians, ending with that demonic attack in the Amphitheater. The next panel shows the Orissan Army, proudly arrayed, marching off to war. Then we see the assault on Lycanth’s peninsular wall, followed by a boring series of scenes showing Orissans cutting, shooting, spearing and otherwise bashing our enemies — ending with the last battle.

  Perhaps I ought to be more polite about this molding, since it now prominently features my women of the Maranon Guard — including an impossibly beautiful warrior woman intended to be me. But I swore I’d tell the truth in this tale and that truth must include my thoughts and opinions. Else I’m no different than any drunken old soldier, whose creaking boasts serve only to send the tavern’s drinkers rushing eagerly out into the heart of a winter storm.

  I remember well when we set off on that sharp spring morning, splendid in our ceremonial armor and marching in perfect unison like we were hung from strings controlled by a master puppeteer. As we marched, we sang some thankfully-forgotten ballad about how we were going to fuddle ourselves on Lycanthian blood and banquet on their guts. I’ve noticed that such gory hymns never last beyond the first fighting; and then the old songs of home, the past, plenty and peace are called for.

  I won’t suggest the frieze should next show the army as we halted an hour after the last well-wisher turned back to Orissa and hastily changed out of our heavy, blister-causing, eye-blinding, but glamorous dress uniforms, hurled them into the quartermasters’ carts not to see them again until the campa
ign ended or we were slid into them for burial and then shambled off in easy route step and field garb. What I am objecting to is the jump to the breaching of the wall — as if nothing happened in between.

  We did break through — but only after we’d fought for a full year. And when we first marched up our enemy was waiting on the parapets to fire a deadly stream of missiles — from catapults to crossbows.

  During that year all too many Orissans died. Almost a third of my Guardswomen became casualties and I learned a duty never mentioned in the epics — constantly begging my superiors and anyone who seemed to have a speck of authority for more; more weapons to replace those lost; more supplies to replace those consumed or spoiled; but most of all replacements for my poor wounded, crippled, invalided or slain comrades.

  New recruits arrived, but they never seemed to be as good as the sisters we’d marched out with — no matter how thoroughly we tried to train them before they were awarded the crested helmet of a Guardswoman.

  I also became skilled at writing letters to the bereaved — letters in which I invariably assured the mother, father or lover their beloved had been struck down in the midst of some heroic act, dying instantly and without pain. Those lies didn’t bother me then nor do they now. The only reason to show a civilian the bloody mask of real war would be if that might somehow put an end to solving problems with a sword, but no one but a fool or a romantic can dwell on her people’s history for more than a moment and keep that dream alive.

  Once we’d formed battle-lines at the Lycanthian wall, the killing began. We attacked and were driven back. We assaulted once more, with the same result. We cut down the forests on the mainland behind us to build siege engines, then attacked again. Again we were sent reeling away from that scarred stone face as impervious as any mountain cliff. Sometimes we would reach the parapets, but be unable to hold them; and men and women were butchered or hurled to their deaths if they could not retreat in time. Still, we kept up the pressure, and the Lycanthians were thoroughly trapped.

  When they first erected their city, time before memory, it was cleverly conceived as a fortress. They built at the tip of a narrow peninsula, where a volcano had bellowed fire at the heavens and then the sea had breached its crater — creating an enormous high-walled harbor. The Lycanthians mounted an immense chain across the harbor’s mouth to guard it from enemies such as ourselves. Just at the tip of that crater was the Archons’ monstrous sea-castle, where my brother had been imprisoned. Around the crater and down the peninsula, the city itself was built. The Lycanthians preferred to build upward in great street-long tenements, rather than sprawl outward, like Orissa. At the narrowest part of that peninsula was the wall. Beyond it began the wilderness, with not even a Lycanthian hovel to mark the forest.

  Our army had them sealed by land, but Lycanth’s huge fleet was still a threat. We river-dwellers had only recently realized the necessity for Orissa to be strong on the sea, so our warships were few and their reinforcements were still a-building — many of them in the Antero yards Amalric had constructed when he returned from the Far Kingdoms.

  We could not allow Lycanthian warships the freedom of the seas, for fear they might attack Orissa, or land soldiers behind our lines. At the very least their ships might bring in enough supplies and reinforcements to lift the siege. Once they realized the Lycanthian navy must be confronted, our Magistrates and Evocators made a hard decision — they hired seaborne mercenaries: by the sailor, by the ship, by the squadron, by the fleet. No one was under any illusion a mercenary fights for other than immediate loot; and not very fiercely even then if his opponent is battle-worthy or offers payment for the gallowglass to change sides.

  But no one saw other options and so the Orissan banner was hoisted on craft that a few weeks earlier were privateers and freebooters sailing under anarchy’s black flag. They were commanded, after a riotously drunken "election," by "Admiral" Cholla Yi, a great hulk who — from his ostentatiously-waxed hair worn in a double row of spikes, to his always-spotless silks to the three, some said four, daggers he kept secreted about his body, to his laced, tightly-fitting rainbow-colored boots — was the very image of a merchant-eating corsair.

  I’ll admit, grudgingly because of later events, Cholla Yi at least seemed to keep his rogues under control. He began his reign by erecting gibbets on either side of the beach encampment and saw to it those gibbets were always creaking with the fresh bodies of miscreants. He also struck fast and bloodily, driving the Lycanthian ships back into their harbor — sinking or capturing those who were slow in their flight.

  That huge chain — which hung from the Archons’ sea-castle across the harbor entrance to a watch tower on the far promontory — served its purpose well and kept our warships from attacking the harbor, or sending in fire ships or cutting-out parties. It was a stalemate, but the Lycanthians were now sealed by sea as well as by land.

  The battles for the wall went on. Sorcery rebuilt that great wall before the war began, but as I’d promised Amalric, it finally fell to hard steel, only slightly assisted by magic. A particularly alert subaltern with the Frontier Scouts, a unit that’d become nearly as elite a fighting force as my Guards, noted a section of the wall was lightly manned.

  For a week thereafter our heaviest trebuchets hurled boulders in the sector, only occasionally loosing a "wild shot" that happened to strike just at that nearly-deserted section. When the stonework was deemed sufficiently weakened, but not so obviously one of the Archons or their underlings cast a reinforcing spell, the assault troops were told off.

  General Jinnah assigned the Scouts the honor of being first up the ropes, although I argued long and hard for my Guardswomen.

  Gamelan was in Jinnah’s tent during my protest, which grew quite heated. He’d chosen to leave Orissa’s comforts to lead the expedition’s Evocators. At the time his decision was praised as a great patriotic deed — or, murmured by the cynical, that our Evocators were most worried about the rumored secret weaponry the Archons might be developing from Prince Raveline’s knowledge.

  As I learned, and you shall in time, there were other reasons for Gamelan’s seeming selflessness.

  He stepped in when the argument became loud enough to alert the sentries outside and calmed us both. I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but he probably kept me from being relieved and sent home in disgrace, since I was about to call Jinnah an incompetent lizard fart whose only ability in war stopped at the sand-table.

  He offered a compromise — once the parapets were taken by the Scouts, my Guard would make up the second wave. I grudged agreement, forced myself to knuckle my brow in respect and stamped out, angrily pulling my helmet on. Gamelan followed and once beyond earshot of the sentries, touched my sleeve. I almost snapped at him as well, before remembering not only my politeness but this sorcerer was quite capable of casting a bedeviling spell of, say, invisible pubic lice to suggest the virtues of courtesy.

  Since we’d arrived at the wall, Gamelan had visited the Guard and my own tent several times. No one knew why and not even Corais chanced a bawdy theory. Personally, I thought it might be an odd sort of apology for his having taken so long to openly support Amalric in his struggle against the corruption in the Evocators’ Guild; or even, perhaps, because he remembered my long-dead brother, Halab, who’d been destroyed by the Guild working as the unknowing catspaw to Prince Raveline. But these theories, thoroughly considered, made as little sense as a Guardswoman explaining the real injustice of why she was chosen to dig a privy.

  In the light from a nearby fire I saw Gamelan had a bit of a smile on his face. "I understand your disappointment, Captain Antero," he said. "But have you considered that, because of General Jinnah’s obstinacy, it’s not unlikely more of your Guardswomen shall be alive to see tomorrow’s sunrise than would be otherwise?"

  I must have blinked in astonishment, but before I could formulate a more politic response I blurted — "What of it? A soldier’s final duty is to die. Why else would she serve if she d
idn’t understand that?"

  I heard a ghost of a chuckle. "Most straightforward, Captain. Just the answer I would prize from a brave soldier. But . . . perhaps I might have expected more from an Antero. After all, a mirror need not reflect a single image."

  "I don’t understand."

  There was no response and Gamelan was gone, having slipped away into the darkness as silently as if he’d used magic. I puzzled briefly, then put the matter away. Evocators always behaved like that, I thought. As much of their powers came from deliberate confusion and fumadiddle as from magic itself. Another thought caught me and this deserved more attention: Gamelan, that severe brooding eagle, had not only smiled, but actually laughed — unless I’d been listening to the wind.

  Perhaps, sometime in the distant past, back in the days when fish had legs, Gamelan had known human concerns? Had laughed, had loved, had joked, had even, perhaps, drunk a flagon too many or even winked at a pretty girl or boy? Impossible, I thought and hurried to issue orders for the after-midnight attack.

  The attack went perfectly, to the surprise of all veterans, since war’s characteristic is as much confusion as blood. The Evocators, under Gamelan’s direction, cast a subtle spell that merely covered the sky with black clouds, and sent a wind from the sea whistling across the peninsula, a wind gusty enough to mask a soldier’s clumsiness if he happened to slip noisily as he crept forward. Padded grapnels were cast and the Scouts went up the wall handily and silenced the Lycanthians on the parapet with their favored weapon, a leather-bound, sand-padded slung shot. They signaled for the next wave. Ladders were rushed forward, steadied and my Guard went up and over. Torches flared and the shouting and slaying began, but there was no more need for silence, as below us the sappers brought forward their rams and the rhythmic crashing began.

  Before the Lycanthians could do more than rush in the closest reinforcements, the wall was breached and the army poured through, into the peninsula and then Lycanth itself — first the low buildings on the outskirts, then through the city streets and the towering stone tenements.