Authors: Chris Bunch
At first the war went well for Numantia, as our huge armies swept south through the Wild Country and the developing farmlands.
It was hard to determine how well the Maisirians fought. Of course the tales were of incredible heroisms, but certain formations would be touted for a while, then never be mentioned again. I was grateful for my memory, because the penalty for keeping a diary would no doubt have been awful.
Karjan was told casualties were enormous on both sides, but more terrible for Maisir. Sometimes their soldiers fought like demons; sometimes it needed but one Numantian soldier on the horizon to make them throw down their arms in surrender. Of war magic, I heard nothing and could find out nothing.
Jarrah went into mourning when Penda, a district capital, fell. It had been a brutal battle with no quarter on either side, and the Maisirians were slowly driven back through the streets. But driven back they were, and then the city was ours.
Some Numantians rejoiced, but I didn’t, for our army was moving far too slowly. No one — not the emperor, not my fellow tribunes, not the generals — seemed aware that the greatest enemy was the terrible Maisirian weather. The army held in Penda for too long. Perhaps the bitter fighting had taken something out of it. Then we heard that the emperor himself had taken command, and Numantia was on the march again. But this country was different from anything they were used to. Beyond Penda the new farmlands ended, and the
suebi
began.
The summer heat broke, and the Time of Rains began. Numantia floundered in the mire as the Maisirians counterattacked. Our army fell back on Penda, was surrounded on three sides, and the Octagon became a place of complete despair. I was more angry than depressed. The emperor must attack, for there was only one time left before winter. But Numantia stayed in Penda, fighting bloody but inconclusive battles around the broken city’s perimeter.
• • •
The first Numantian to die was Lord Susa Boconnoc. He did not die well, but then, a politician isn’t expected to have the same fearlessness as a soldier. Boconnoc had withdrawn, turned grayer and aged. When I tried to cheer him, when we walked in the courtyard, all he talked about was his estate in the Latane Delta and his plans for renovating it when the war ended.
The drumroll started at dawn and thundered for hours. Anything out of the ordinary in the Octagon was never good. As the midday flag was raised over the prison, a portable scaffold was rolled into the courtyard. Two warders came in behind it, one bent under a heavy wooden block, the other carrying a black case. A man wearing a red cloak and a black half-mask strode in and stopped at the scaffold steps, standing utterly motionless.
The windows of the cells had been full since the drums started, everyone waiting to see what terror would come next. I faintly heard shouts and protests from outside my cell, from my corridor. A Numantian was doomed. A courtyard door slammed open below, and a pair of warders dragged out Lord Boconnoc. He was limp with fear, hardly able to walk. He saw the headsman and keened wordlessly, tried to struggle, but the warders held him firmly. They half-carried him up the steps and threw him across the block.
The executioner opened the case and took out a great, evilly horned single-bitted ax. He went slowly up the steps. Boconnoc pled for mercy, but there was none this day.
A warder grabbed Boconnoc’s hair, pulled it hard, and stretched his neck across the block. The ax came up, and Boconnoc squirmed frantically as it fell. The blade missed its mark, and thudded into Boconnoc’s skull with the dull sound of a melon being hacked open. The ambassador’s body writhed, and the headsman jerked his ax free and smashed it down again. This time his aim was true, and Boconnoc’s mutilated head fell away, blood fountaining.
There had been no trial, no proclamation of sentence. Just death. I would be next.
• • •
But I wasn’t. The next, for reasons I do not know, was Captain Athelny Lasta, my aide, and commander of my Red Lancers. He died a hero. Not the way an aristocrat would “die well,” with a noble speech to ring down the ages, but as a warrior.
Again, two warders brought in the scaffold; again the headsman waited. The door to our wing banged open, and Lasta came out, arms bound above his waist, two more guards flanking him. But he walked proudly, as a brave man should.
He broke away from the warders and bounded up the scaffold steps like a man eager to embrace his doom. He boomed “Long live the emperor!” and the prison walls shook with our cheering. The purpling warders started up the steps to pin him to the block. The first one, instead of facing a meek victim, was met with a head-butt that sent him sprawling. Lasta knelt, fumbled the warder’s dagger from his belt, and awkwardly drove it into the man’s throat.
One.
The second warder jumped toward Lasta, drawing his own blade. But he was facing a well-trained soldier, and Lasta dropped to his side, spun his legs like sweeps, and tumbled the warder from the scaffold to crash headfirst against the cobbles and lie motionless.
Two.
The executioner, bellowing like the bull he was, grabbed his case and tore it open. Ax ready, he started toward the steps, looked up, and shrieked in horror. Lasta had cut away his ropes, and his dagger was ready. The ax clanged to the cobbles, and the executioner stepped back, mewling fear, hands trying to push away death.
I’ve never been able to throw a knife well, but Lasta used to amuse himself and others by tossing almost any edged weapon at almost any distance to thunk precisely on the named mark. The warder’s dagger flipped once in the air and buried itself to the hilt in the headsman’s gut where his cloak came open, just below his ribs. The man howled agony, and pulled the dagger free. His guts spilled, reddish-gray coils falling to the cobbles. Writhing, the executioner went down in his own gore and moved no more.
Three.
Lasta leapt from the scaffold and had the murderer’s ax in his hand as the other two warders ran for the barred gate. They were shouting for assistance, scrabbling at the locked panels, and Lasta pitilessly cut them down from behind.
Four and Five.
The door smashed open, and ten or more jailers crashed into the courtyard, armed with spears and swords. Lasta brushed a spear aside, smashed a man’s side in, parried, and rolled another’s head across the stones.
Six and Seven.
I was bellowing cheers, unfelt tears runneling down my face as Lasta dropped an eighth victim, then cried out as a swordsman slashed his thigh open.
The ninth man died as another blade lanced into Lasta’s chest. He stumbled back, pulling the sword out of his attacker’s hands, found the strength to pitch his ax full into that man’s face, then went to his knees. Then the warders were on him, and we saw nothing but swords rising and falling in a frenzy.
An officer ran into the courtyard, yelling for order, and slowly his men pulled themselves away from the roiling mass.
Lasta’s body sprawled on the body of his ninth victim, and his hands were clawed in the throat of a tenth. That man tore himself up and staggered away. Shikao was in the courtyard, screaming, out of control, making no sense at all.
Our cheers died away. Karjan turned to me. “Nine of ‘em,” he said harshly. “Th’ man’s set us a hard goal.”
But a goal it was, and I resolved I’d die no more readily than had Captain Lasta, and vowed that if I ever bore a son, he’d carry the captain’s name.
• • •
They came for me at dawn. I woke, rolling out of my bunk, and there were a dozen black-clad men in my cell. Two rushed me, and I smashed them down. Karjan came awake fighting as well. I heard blows land, grunts of pain, then a truncheon hit with a thud, and I heard Karjan fall.
I thrust my thumb into one’s eye, another struck me hard in the stomach, and I bent for a moment, but managed to kick his kneecap into fragments, and he yelped and hopped away. A club smashed across my shoulders, and I almost went down, but then turned, and tore the club out of my assailant’s hands.
I drove its butt into his groin, and started to slash it up across another’s face, but then a knotted fist took me on the base of the neck and I knew nothing.
• • •
I groggily came back to myself, had a moment to realize I was lashed in a chair, then vomited rackingly all over myself, head spinning. A bucket of water smashed over me, and I heaved once more, and again I was drenched. The world, and my stomach, slowly ceased turning, and I forced my eyes open. There was a heavy wooden table across the room. Behind it, lit by two white wax tapers in floor stands, sat the
azaz.
On the floor between us were chalked symbols, and braziers sent smoke coiling into the dank air. It felt as if we were underground, far underground.
The
azaz
looked at me unblinkingly, no expression whatever on his face. “There has been considerable discussion, Damastes á Cimabue, between the king and myself as to what your punishment might be.”
“Punishment for what?” I managed. “For serving my emperor?”
There was certainly no way I’d ever tell an enemy of my ruler’s dishonesty and betrayal.
“For causing the deaths of many thousands, perhaps a million, Maisirians,” the
azaz
replied. “Common murder, if you like.”
“By that rule, any of your soldiers, any of your generals, might be guilty of the same ‘crime.’ ”
“Perhaps,” the
azaz
said. “However, there is a difference. You are in our hands, and therefore we’re permitted to make the rules.”
“Enough debate,” a voice rumbled, and King Bairan stepped from behind me. “It’s enough to know this bastard did evil to Maisir, and that he must pay for that evil.”
“My apologies, Your Majesty. Of course.” The king walked to the table and stood with his arms folded. He wore dark robes and had a dagger sheathed at his waist.
“A simple death would be far too easy,” the
azaz
said. “Of course we could give you a death by torture that would be so protracted men would whisper of its horror for a thousand years.”
He was speaking foolishly. A man can only be tortured until he gains the courage — or hopelessness — to bite through his tongue and bleed to death quietly.
“But that,” King Bairan put in, “would accomplish nothing except to make me feel a bit better.”
“We therefore devised a more … interesting fate,” the
azaz
said. “Prepare him!”
Two men, wearing cowled robes so I couldn’t make out their faces — if they were men at all — tore my tunic open and held me motionless. The
azaz
picked up an odd instrument from the table and came toward me. It looked like a small, thin knife, but one made of glass. He whipped it suddenly across my chest from shoulder to thigh, then again, so blood welled in an X shape.
The
azaz
moved the knife over the cut, its point but touching me, and it was as if he held a burning torch. I tried to keep from writhing, but failed. He showed no interest in my pain, but concentrated on keeping the knife’s edge on the cut. As he moved the blade, it became red, until the entire weapon was blood-scarlet. He stepped back, but the burning agony remained.
“Your Majesty,” the
azaz
said. “It would be better for the kingdom if you removed yourself for a moment. I don’t think there’s much risk, but there’s some. And we could hardly do without you in these times.”
The king walked past me, and a door opened, then closed.
The
azaz
moved around the room to tall tapers of multicolored waxes in wall mounts. He reached up with that strange knife, and the taper would light. Five flamed when he had finished. He walked to the center of the room and spoke a phrase. The tapers boiled smoke — white, blue, green, black, red — but the chamber never filled, nor did I choke on the fumes.
Again the
azaz
spoke, and the world changed. Everything became gray or black, and what was the blackest should have been the lightest. Now the
azaz
began chanting, but I couldn’t make out his words. His words droned on.
The
azaz
touched that odd knife to the stone floor, and blood, my blood, pooled out. A fire blazed where the
azaz
was, reaching almost to the ceiling. He stepped out of the flames, unharmed, and moved to one side. He said a single word, and the flames gathered themselves and reached toward me. As they came, the flames changed from red and yellow to the purest black.
A finger of fire touched my slashes, and pain roared through me again. The finger traced my wounds twice, and I almost passed out from the agony.
Now I could understand the
azaz
’s words:
“Now you are his
Now you are mine
Like clay
Like putty
I command
You obey
I command
You obey”
Those last two sentences were repeated over and over, growing louder, until they filled my universe, became my universe, then faded down, echoing into silence. I was cast in glass, a fly in amber. There was a distance between me and everything else, though I still looked through my own eyes. But I was also looking at myself from a distance at the same time. Noises, smells, came, but remotely.
“Stand, Damastes,” he said, and the bonds were gone and I obeyed. I felt as if I were under water, moving slowly through a clear mire.
“Very good,” the
azaz
said. “Summon the king.”
Again, a door opened and closed, and King Bairan was in front of me. He came very close, inspecting me as if I were a rare specimen. “Did it take?”
“It did.”
“I would like a demonstration.”
“Certainly.” The
azaz
thought. “What about that Dalriada you gave him?”
The king snorted. “That would mean nothing. No man values a whore, especially when she’s nothing but a slave.”
I felt rage, but it was distant, almost as if another’s emotion were being described to me.
“I have it,” the
azaz
said. He beckoned, and one of the robed men came. The
azaz
spoke quietly, and the man nodded and went out. The three of us stood for some time. I felt nothing, not worried, not bored. I could have been stone.