Lonen's War (11 page)

Lonen nodded. “Yes, my king. Princess Oria
approached us and offered peace if we would allow her people
outside the walls to return within, with no further fighting or
fatalities.”

“Oria?” The other, slighter masked man
sounded incredulous and young enough that his voice cracked a
little. “Our sister outside the gates, offering terms? I find this
so unlikely as to be impossible.”

Lonen bristled at the dismissal in the boy’s
tone. He hadn’t much cared for the witch, but she’d met him with
bare-faced bravery. “She recognized the gravity of your defeat and
conducted herself with honor in an attempt to salvage what she
could—including your cowardly lives. She accompanied me here, gave
the order, and then was…overcome by some sort of fainting spell.
Her man carried her back within. All here witnessed it. You can ask
your own guard.”

“It’s true, Prince Nat,” the lieutenant
confirmed, addressing the older man. “The Princess Oria, in the
flesh, rode to the gate under banner of surrender. She asked that
you take over negotiations.” The words he didn’t speak, of what
occurred after, rang with quiet significance.

The featureless mask seemed to glare, the
man’s bony shoulders stark lines beneath the draping robe. Not a
lot of muscle there. Not a warrior then, not like the Destrye. No
wonder they relied upon magic and the golems to fight their
battles.

“We do not honor the promises of a girl made
under duress,” he said. “There shall be no surrender.”

The younger sorcerer started, glancing at
him.

King Archimago, surprising them all,
laughed, the harsh, hoarse sound that rattled in his voice ever
since Nolan was lost. “And I do not negotiate with a mere prince.
Where is your king?”

They both lost their bluster at that, the
formerly brash boy turning his masked face down in apparent grief,
the one called Nat going slack before regaining himself. “I am the
king now. As my father’s heir, I step into his place.”

A murmur ran through the people, a sound of
further defeat, and—surprise? Another moment that should have been
triumphant and fell far short of the mark.

“Very well,” King Archimago said. “You have
two choices, boy. You can honor the terms of the surrender offered
by the Princess Oria or we can finish the job of killing you, your
family, your leaders, and any of your people still wishing to
fight, until we reach a true surrender. I have no wish to destroy
your people, but I will if you force my hand.”

“No wish to destroy!” the younger man burst
out. “
You
attacked
us
—unprovoked!”

Oria had said much the same thing. A strange
defense, this protestation of innocence. One that the heir did not
echo, however.

“You think you can defeat us so easily,”
Prince Nat snarled.

“Look about you! We
have
defeated
you,” Lonen put in, surprising his father and Ion, judging by their
sidelong glances. But he’d had enough of it all. Had since the dark
hours of the harrowing night. “Your sister nearly killed herself to
make this truce. I don’t pretend to understand your ways, but she
and I agreed to terms at some cost to her. Would you throw that
away?”

“She had no right.” By the sound, the young
Prince Nat spoke through gritted teeth. “It’s not my fault the
idiot left her tower.”

“Your family politics are nothing to us.”
King Archimago gave Lonen a quelling stare. “Choose, heir to
nothing. You agree to Princess Oria’s surrender of your city and we
negotiate terms, or we recommence battle. Before you answer, you
may have a moment to speak to your lieutenant. So your
understanding may rule, rather than your pride.”

Leaving the enemy prince no choice, King
Archimago turned his back. A deliberate insult that the Destrye, at
least, would understand. Their forces had—against all
probability—seized victory over the dreaded golems and sorcerers,
and they deserved to know it.

“Lonen.” His father beckoned Ion and him
closer, for a low-voiced conversation. “What is your relationship
to this Oria?”

The question took him by surprise. “None at
all. I met her not an hour ago when she rode up to offer
surrender.” He left out the previous sighting as not relevant.

Ion gave him a strange look. “Why are you
defending this woman then?”

The king dipped his chin at Ion, confirming
the question.

The sun beat way too hot on Lonen’s scalp,
the blood drying and drawing the skin tight, an irritating harmony
behind the growing chorus of aches and pains from various wounds.
“I found her bravery in the face of defeat admirable. And…there’s
been enough death this night and day. But for a vain princelet
blinded by his pride, we could be done.”

His father clapped his shoulder, squeezing.
“You did well, my son, breaching the wall. I won’t ask what you had
to do, for I see the shadow of it in your eyes, but we know you won
this battle for us. Much as I do not wish to censure you in this
moment, I must caution you to harden your heart against this
princess.”

Lonen gaped at him, scrambling for a
reply.

“It happens,” his father said in a softer
voice. “Some part of you thinks that by saving her you can expiate
this guilt you carry for whatever dark deeds haunt you. But she is
the enemy as much as any of them. When we are done here, you can
make sacrifice to Arill. The goddess will lighten your heart.”

“My king, I don’t—”

Ion, who’d been leaning in, trying to
overhear, broke in. “He means don’t let a bit of foreign pussy make
you think with the little head instead of the big one.” Ion grinned
at him. “There. That manned you up again.”

“That is not what—”

“We have a decision,” Prince Nat called out,
sounding considerably less arrogant. “If you will, King
Archimago.”

They returned to face the two sorcerers. “We
agree to the surrender,” Prince Nat said, defeat and sullen anger
manifest in his voice and shrouded form. “What now?”

“Now, I will send men to occupy the city,”
King Archimago said, “to ensure continuing peace. My son, Prince
Ion, will accompany them and remain in charge of the Destrye forces
within the walls. Your men may reenter the city and see to your
dead and injured. We shall do the same, camped outside the walls.
We shall agree to meet just after dawn tomorrow morning, to discuss
terms going forward. The least hint of hostility toward my men will
result in immediate cessation of the truce. We’ll finish what we
started and there will be no further pause for mercy. Tell me you
understand.”

They didn’t like it, the desire to protest
clear in the tense lines of the princes’ shoulders. Lonen himself
barely squashed the urge to speak against Ion’s assignment to
command the occupying warriors. After all, he’d been the one to
establish diplomatic relations with…with Oria.
Don’t let a bit
of foreign pussy make you think with the little head instead of the
big one.
Ion was wrong on that. Oria might be exotically
fascinating, but the strange witch held no attraction for him. Not
like his lovely Natly. He simply wished to—what? Be assured of the
princess’s well-being, perhaps.

As if by making certain that he hadn’t
harmed her irreparably, he could wash the blood of all the others
from his hands.

His father, always wise, was right. He
needed to purify himself and make sacrifice to the goddess to begin
to shed this terrible guilt. The sooner away from this place the
better. Somewhere out there, even at that moment, Natly and his
real life, the normal peaceful one, moved step by step away from
him.

Perhaps he could take solace in that aspect
of victory. They’d nearly reached the end of their consuming quest
to free the Destrye of the golem incursions. With this crushing
defeat of the enemy, they could return to the fertile forests and
meadows of home. The place he’d marched away from, certain he’d
never see it again. Suddenly, it seemed he might.

The prospect gave him unexpected hope.
Enough to banish the unfortunate Oria from his thoughts and firmly
replace her visage with Natly’s. As was good and right.

T
hough a bath wasn’t in the
stars for him in this sunbaked, goddess-forsaken land, Lonen
scrubbed away the worst of the bloodstains with sand, while a medic
cleansed his wounds with alcohol—a fiery purging he welcomed as the
beginning of his penance. He bore more injuries than he’d thought,
but far fewer than he deserved, having slaughtered so many.

The wide, wounded eyes of the first woman
he’d murdered hovered in his mind, overlapping with that long-ago
doe, then overwhelmed with Oria’s grief-dark copper ones.

But he didn’t speak of it. Not to Alby.
Certainly not to his father. Nor to Arnon, who had indeed survived
the gruesome battle. Odd that he didn’t want to say anything to
Arnon about meeting Oria, even when he shared a flask of hogshorn
with his younger brother. Arnon had listened many times to Lonen’s
trials with the elusive Natly, always offering a patient ear and
decent advice when asked. Though this…encounter—really only the
one, because the semi-vision didn’t count—had nothing to do with
pining as he’d done for Natly.

No, it was as his father had said—a product
of guilt and post-battle nightmares. It would remain between him
and Arill, all part and parcel of the peculiar shameful guilt he
carried, hopefully to be relieved in time. But even after he shoved
food into his aching belly and toppled onto his sleeping furs,
naked but for his many bandages, Oria’s eyes haunted his
dreams.

In fresh garments, his hair oiled and tied back, if
not particularly clean, Lonen, with Arnon and their father, made
the trek up the road to the city gates at dawn. Destrye guarded
them now, saluting and then bowing—acknowledging their commander
and king—following with broad, even jubilant, grins. Lonen wasn’t
the only one who hadn’t expected this day to come.

Within the city walls, a far more morose
atmosphere prevailed. Ion, who met them at the gates to escort them
in, had of course stationed Destrye throughout Bára, which looked
desolate otherwise. Most of the population must be keeping indoors.
Unless more had perished than he’d thought.

Occasional denizens observed their passage,
the lightly clad and slender people, mostly fair-haired, a clear
contrast to the occupying Destrye. With the leisure and daylight to
pay more attention to the city itself, Lonen found it surprisingly
attractive for a place constructed of so much stone.

Like the high rocks behind, the towers of
the city speared up in rounded shades of gold, rose, and gentle
browns. As if the people had taken the harsh colors of the desert
and blended them into something gentler, more forgiving. Window
openings laced every building, often giving glimpses of blue sky
beyond through yet more windows. White net fluttered in many of
them—some drawn across completely, some were tied to the sides.
Open-air balconies and terraces held all manner of plants and
trees, with flowering vines draping over the edges. Between the
towers, arched stone bridges traversed dizzying drops, both
spectacular and fearsome. And yet other paths that bordered the
canyons were studded with benches, presumably for people to sit and
enjoy the view.

Combined, it all gave an impression of
delicacy, verdancy, and peace at odds with the forbidding city
walls, deep chasms, and dry salt plain that encircled it.

They’d mentioned a tower in reference to
Oria, as if it were a specific and special one. Which seemed
unlikely, given that the lion’s share of buildings in Bára could be
called towers. Could it be the tallest among them? It wasn’t so
easy to judge relative height from below—rather like trying to pick
out the tallest tree from the forest floor—but one seemed to tower
above the others, fat in circumference, with a profusion of
balconies and what must be an extensive garden at the very top.

“Looking for someone?” Ion’s tone was snide,
his expression forbidding.

“Observing the city,” Lonen replied, as if
the question had been sincerely asked, not barbed with innuendo.
“It’s lovelier than I expected.”

“For the home of rapacious monsters? I
suppose it is.”

“Is this the behavior of my heirs?” King
Archimago asked in a mild tone. “Now that the enemy has fallen,
must you fight amongst yourselves?”

“I don’t even know what they’re poking at
each other about,” Arnon protested.

Ion didn’t comment, so neither did Lonen.
Odd how, with the battle crisis over, they so quickly reverted to
old roles and arguments. Except that Nolan should have been there
to act as peacemaker, cracking jokes instead of lying broken at the
bottom of one of those dramatic chasms. The thought brought grim
reality crashing back. They might be walking through a city that
could have been drawn from storybooks, but they traveled over the
corpses of too many people.