251 - Someone saying the whole city is dead

I called a parlay with Abatzas—a rest-day surely allowed talking, even by Kaninjer’s standards—and told him that if he didn’t surrender all his warriors’ weapons to us and begin force-marching them out of Yeola-e today, not even slowing down until they were over the border, they would be visited by the flying demons of Hayel tonight. I made sure I had Filias beside me, though I noticed Abatzas’s Pages man, Lesas Amanas, was not there. I pitched my voice so that Abatzas’s escort would all hear.

“A ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaaw!” he brayed, from astride his new horse, another sleek and shining-muscled Marsaean that looked every bit as much a racehorse as the last. “You are such a joker, Shefen-kas! Visited by the flying demons of Hayel! Hahahahahaaaaaaaw!!”

“Choose as you will,” I said. “I’m just informing you what will be.” His answer was to wheel the horse and trot away, with the rest of his party, still roaring.

A moyawa can be dressed with a trailing edge with points like a bat’s wing, so it looks like a giant bat at night, and the A-niah know how to join three voices together to make an inhuman screech. My flying demons of Hayel visited Abatzas’s army several times during the night, emptying buckets of fire and blood, dropping parts of Arkan corpses made to look as if they’d been torn with giant claws, and so forth.

Arkans boast of their civilization, but solas are as superstitious as warriors anywhere, perhaps more so than many if you speak to them of Hayel, since it is such a terrifying notion. It had been my hope that Abatzas wouldn’t think to forbid his party to tell anyone what I’d threatened, but, my spies in their camp let me know, he did even better in stupidity, guffawing contemptuously about it to everyone in the camp who was within earshot, so that by nightfall his whole army knew. Somehow, though, I suspected I would not read about this in the Pages.

Once my demons had unharnessed and settled into their bedrolls, I slipped out before Kaninjer could press his finger into that spot beside my nose again, and attacked at dawn with my warriors. The Arkan commanders had reassured their men all night that Aras was stronger than any demons and would protect them, but they’d all slept badly, if at all, anyway, and stood against us more afraid that they would allow to admit themselves, as we could tell the moment we engaged.

I had decided to fight on horse-back this time. I’d practiced it as part of my training, though not as much as on foot, I hadn’t practiced it at all in the Mezem, of course, and I’d drilled and sparred with the Yeoli and Enchian horse both since I’d come home. But because I’d always been with foot units in the Lakan war, my first taste of a real fight on horseback had been bareback with a terrified Haian slung across in front of me, and unplanned. Both he and I had come out of it in one piece mostly because it had been equally unplanned for those who faced me, and they’d been on foot. Akaznakir and I needed to taste true combat together. He had more experience than me.

I generally planned battles to spread the burden, and the glory, as equally as I could; I’d put a section I’d passed over last time into a place where it could shine this time. It was the allies’ turn today, I’d decided. Their generals liked it, of course, but Hurai said, “I don’t know, Chevenga. What if the Yeolis feel you are punishing them, or spurning them worse?”

“I will explain after, when I do decorations,” I said. “I will remind them that these evil outsiders are fighting in Yeola-e, for Yeola-e.”

So I rode with Chiraha and the Yeoli horse, on point with most of the Enchian horse (which was not a slight to them since I was there) on the sword-side wing, with the rest of them on the shield-side in case the Arkan horse tried to flank. Since we outnumbered them, there wasn’t any great sophistication to it, just horse against foot, since we far outnumbered them in horse, for the strength against weakness. But I did it as an oblique, with the Enchian foot backing the Enchian horse, the Hyerne next to them, the Lakans next, the Yeolis making up most of the shield-side wing, and the Schvait and other mercenaries in reserve. What that meant was that the Yeolis, except for those of us riding, didn’t get into the fight at all, and were not close enough even to chase when the Arkans routed.

Akaznakir and I did well enough as lancer and steed, though pairs of Arkan horsemen kept lining me up, and a few more threw spears at me. I had the good suit of armour by then, and they’d come to know it. One of them got me glancing on the hip, but not badly enough to slow me down chasing once they’d broken. Better to have just Chirel then, so I stuck my lance in a back and left it there, and rode in among the fleeing foot-solas, striking sword-side and shield-side alternating, each stroke a man’s death. I went until my arm was tired, and it takes a long time for my arm to get tired.

When they were too sparse to be worth chasing, I called a halt, at least to the Yeoli horse. When the enemy is in such disarray, your own cohesion ceases to matter, so you can let your army do what it wills.

Of course the decorations, not that I awarded that many, all went to foreigners. No Yeoli said anything, their mood too jubilant, perhaps, but I made the point anyway, that the deeds for which they were being lauded, they’d done for Yeola-e. Then we settled down to celebrate—we’d break camp and go tomorrow night—and the petitioners started right up again, though Krero blessedly struck his name off, which slowed the anti-association petition down more.

All-Spirit—why now when we’re all losing our sense in drunkenness? Why doesn’t Esora-e talk sanity into them? Sure enough, as the sun went down and the fires were lit, the debate got wild enough that lips were bloodied and eyes blacked. But I couldn’t command a halt, as that would be interfering with a petition. I threw up my hands, and drank, though Kaninjer, as he stitched me, had ordered me not to.

To make it up to him, I went to bed at the death-hour, much earlier than most everyone else. At dawn I woke up out of some agonized dream to find my body glowing with heat all over, and the wound feeling as if the lance had been stuck back into it, this time with vitriol. It had festered, as wounds closed by Haians almost never do, even though he’d washed it well beforehand.

“It’s because your vital force is depleted,” Kaninjer said. “Stay in bed the day and let me give you medicines often enough, and it will improve by evening.” Just as well; I did not feel like getting up. He stayed with me, giving me something every tenth-bead. The pain and fever ebbed and flowed with the medicine, and it was light enough by noon or so that I felt like eating, and getting up. He would only let me eat. Afterwards I dozed, half-sleeping through each time he said, “Under the tongue, Chivinga.” Niku was there some of the time, stroking my face. What was happening with the petitions, I didn’t know. Perhaps everyone was too hung over to wave their arms.

Then I heard voices calling my name, urgently. I hadn’t thought there were any Arkans left in any shape to attack. I heard Sishana’s voice and then Kaninjer’s, saying, “He is wounded, he needs to be left alone!”

“Unless he’s half-dead, he’s got to—”

The woman was cut off by a man’s scream, like a death-cry. “Aaaaiiiigghh, Shakora! Shakora, all Shakora, Chevenga, aaaaiiiigh!!” I didn’t know what he could mean, but something made me leap up unthinking and limp out.

Two other people had his arms over their shoulders, as if he were wounded; he was in rags and looked half-starved, and his eyes stared at me as if he’d been chased days by the most horrific of his nightmares. He pulled away from them and fell on his knees, grabbing and pressing his face into my legs. “Chevenga! My semanakraseye! You are your people, you can stand for Shakora! Forgive me! Forgive me for living, Shakora! Forgive me!”

I lifted him gently, took him inside my tent under my arm, and fed him a swallow of Saekrberk. “Tell me,” I said. “I don’t mind if you cling to me.”

The worst atrocities of war will happen when an occupied land begins to win back. The conquered get heartened and restless, the conquerors, anxious and so inclined to be harsh. All through the lines of the shadow-sibs, I’d sent my advice: stay cautious, don’t let hope make you take foolish risks. Not that Shakora, which I knew as having thirty-thousand people, did not listen; there had always been much shadow-sib work there, its people being the proud kind. Some high-ranked Arkan decided it should be made an example of.

They had put to the sword every woman and child, even newborn babies, then all the men but ten thousand, whom they forced to burn and tear down every building in the city at arrow-point until not one stone was standing on another. They’d killed everything living they could find: dogs, cats, horses, the birds in the trees, the trees themselves, flowers in window-boxes, house-ants. They sowed all the land around the city that had fed it with salt, so nothing would ever grow again. Then they killed all the men but one hundred, who were freed so as to spread the news across Yeola-e.

Shakora! I see someone saying the whole city is dead. I closed my eyes for a bit; let people think it was grief or horror, when in truth it was the dizziness of seeing prophecy play out true again. Jinai had said that, in the reading I’d had him do the year before I’d become semanakraseye.

All-Spirit… was there ever really so innocent a time, in truth, as before this war? It seemed like an impossible dream. It was almost more bearable to think we’d never had it, than that we had lost it.

“My wife, my other wife, my husband, our kids, with the stepkids we had six, our youngest just three, all gone, all slaughtered, all dead… the screams, then the silence… all over the city, the screams, then the silence… you almost wanted the screams to start up again, rather than hear that silence. Everything painted with blood… dried and flaking in our hands as we broke down all the stones… filled the cellars with those we’d loved and threw the rubble on them… looking back over my shoulder and there is flatness where a city should be, as if it was some other place far away, but at least I was not smelling corpses… they were all living so recently, now just memories, screaming in my mind…

“Chevenga,” he said, his broken voice dropped to a whisper. “When I learned they would leave some men alive to wreck, I prayed I would not be one of them, but I was. When I learned they would leave alive some men to free to spread the news, I prayed I would not be one of them, but I was. I have brought it to you now. That was the only purpose left for my life. May I die now?”

I opened my mouth, and no words came out. My life these days was hearing trouble people brought to me, and giving them something to do about it. Always I had an answer, if not instantly, then soon. Now I didn’t. I could think of nothing. I just stood there with him in my arms, while helpless pain wrapped all around me like a flock of flies settling on a corpse. The familiar blade of regret twisted in my heart: I was there, not here. It was as if I could smell the air of Arko again, beefy and thick and hot. I could do nothing. I can do nothing. All-Spirit, I’m only twenty-two; I’ve only been a man for two years. I never learned to deal with anything like this.

But here it is, and no one can deal with it but you. It was as if I heard the voice in my ears, though it was inside my head. All-Spirit… how… the flash was gentle and subtle, but enough. I tightened my arms around him. “No,” I said. He flinched, with a trace of an aiigh in his throat. “Don’t die. Because if the last hundred die, Shakora dies with them.” He stared at me, in desperate horror. “Who else will remember what your home was, who you were, your tales, your ways, your worth?” He started to turn from me, his eyes going a little glazed; I heard the singing wind, and it made me shake him. “Strength. You are not alone. We are with you in your grief, and your anger is not helpless. That’s why you came here; to give it to us, who can put it into our sword-strokes. We will free Yeola-e. We will win it all back. But that’s a long fight. Anger can inspire us, and carry us.” I knew that I was tired and sick and my sword-arm ached from killing what had to be more than a hundred Arkans, but my heart burned to kill another hundred, right now.

“Stay with my army. You are not war-trained”—I could tell by his build—“but you can fight for us. Your tongue is deadlier to Arko than a hundred swords, by what you can remind my warriors of when they are flagging.”

His eyes stared disbelieving for a moment, then caught fire, seeing a path where before they’d only seen an end. His hands on my arms gained firmness. “You are right,” he said. “I will do that. But…” Now they tightened enough to hurt, and his voice gained an edge. “If there were ever a time we should go beyond our own borders and destroy another nation, this is it. They should feel what they have made us feel!” He came nose-to-nose with me, and gripped my elbows, his fingers happening on Mana’s arm-ring. “You could, Fourth Chevenga. You could lead that.”

I said what I must. “I will do what I am mandated, no matter how hard it is. But whether it is what you say is a matter of a vote.”

“And only the living vote,” he said between his teeth. “May the dead, this time, my semanakraseye? Will you listen and remember? I can tell you what all of Shakora would vote, if they were alive—the adults, the babies, the dogs, the birds, if they could. Chalk, to swarm into Arko! Chalk, to do to Arko the City what was done to Shakora! Chalk, to make them suffer what we have!” With tears streaming down his cheeks again, he looked me in the face for my answer.

“I hear,” I said. “I will remember, and when the time comes to count, I will pass this on.” That satisfied him. He half-fell against me, his head in my neck, and I had Sishana and Iperaiga prepare a meal and a bath and a bed for him, as my guest. When he had fallen asleep, Kaninjer chased me into my bed to do the same.

Closing my eyes, I saw in my mind his tear-drenched and contorted face again, and heard his words echoed. But I also saw Kallijas’s, likewise tear-drenched and contorted, and further back, ragged with the haze of madness, Mana’s. What, I wondered, is the expression on my own?