The Betrayed (24 page)

“You’re an interesting person, a phenomenon,” she said.

His perfectly cool composure melted slightly as he concentrated on his hostess and let the image of her wash his eyes. She had that aura of power about her that unnerved him. Most people would probably not call her beautiful, but that was the special part of her beauty. Maybe it was his weakness as a whore, to be attracted to powerful women.

“Life’s a tree, and we’re fruit,” he chimed.

“I do not wish to talk to you about military affairs tonight,” she told him.

Adam picked at a chicken wing. “Good.”

They ate for a while in silence. A soldier waited on them, pouring wine and clumsily handling the platters, his big hands unsuited for the gentle task. Mali dismissed him before dinner was over.

They finished eating. Adam folded his hands in his lap, ruminating. Mali drank wine, her eyes sparkling, alcohol taking effect, a veil of mischief wrapped about her.

“Well, shall we?” she said, stretching.

Adam made a blank face. “What?”

“Fuck,” she said, as if stating the obvious.

“Why do you think I would want to do that?” Adam played along.

“Come on, everyone wants me,” Mali said, her eyes agleam.

Ah. He rose from the table. “Well, in that case, I will retire.” He turned and started to walk away. Something hard and metallic hit him in the back of the head. A well-aimed goblet.

“Ow. What are you doing?” He turned.

“Cheeky bastard! Where do you think you’re going?” she fumed.

“To sleep.” He rubbed his scalp. A welt was swelling under his fingers. He had survived weeks of war without a scratch. Women.

“You will stay here and fuck me. That’s an order, Major!”

Adam snorted. “You cannot force me. You presume too much, Commander.”

She sniffed. “Come on, everyone wants me!”

The former whore wagged a finger. “No, everyone wants me.” They came closer. His heart raced. He could smell her skin. Gently, he tackled her legs and lowered her onto the cool ground.

“Here, put on one of these,” she said, handing him something soft and filmy.

“No, these things are horrible. It’s like humping a hole in a wall,” Adam protested. He hated the frogskin sheaths. “I’ll come on your belly,” he pleaded.

She chortled. “Oh sure, that’s what all of you say. Now, stop fretting, and put it on.”

For the first time in a long time, Adam smiled genuinely. “Yes, Commander.”

CHAPTER 21

G
eneral-Patriarch Davar watched a horde of men dismantle the Grand Monastery. It was not very different from watching ants shred a dead beetle.

Oxen pulled giant ropes, trying to dislodge the tall columns. Stone groaned and creaked. Men hammered with sledges against wall corners, trying to help the effort. Sapping was a dangerous business, Davar noted. Quite a few soldiers had been killed when pieces of masonry toppled on their heads.

Burning the monastery was not enough. It had to be destroyed. Any gold and valuables had long been stolen.

Talmath was his, a sweet victory. After the conflagration had died, his forces had stormed the city and captured it. Now, there was the grueling task of killing everyone. His troops had hoped to have the women spared so they could rape them. But he would not let them. Women were insidious. They could easily subvert the minds of men. All worshippers of the false gods had to be destroyed, even if they might prove useful for a while.

He was differently inclined toward the Outsiders. These rabid dogs could serve a purpose, perhaps even convert truly.

A ragged cheer broke as one of the columns cracked and shattered. A cloud of dust and splinters billowed out of the shattered doors of the monastery.

Talmath still burned, but it was a controlled destruction. The Feorans were marching the streets, looting and burning houses. It would probably take them an entire week to scour the city clean, but it was necessary.

Most of the patriarchs had escaped before the final assault. They had found a few, hiding like rats in cellars. Others had donned civil clothes, hoping they would be missed and spared. But no heathen soul was to live.

His troops were killing people, a slow and exhausting task. Davar intended to repopulate Talmath in the future, so leaving the bodies inside the city was out of the question. The executions were being carried far from the city, in the fields.

Only the false clergy had been put to death and on display in Talmath, as an example. The general-patriarch had had all of them nailed to big logs and placed in squares and junctions, where everyone would witness the glory and wrath of Feor. To his utter disgust, the patriarchs had wept and begged far more than ordinary people. Maybe because they knew their false gods would not help them, while the deluded masses still clung to some hope.

But even this great victory could not bring a smile to his face. Feor was continuously testing the strength of his conviction. While he won battles in the west, his armies were losing in the east, near the border. A creature that called himself Adam the Godless was inflicting heavy losses on Davar’s Feorans.

He did not know much about this strange, frightening character. His spies knew the names and faces of most of the Eracian high command by heart, but they had never heard of this Adam. He had appeared suddenly, out of nowhere.

It was a test, he knew.

Rumors about the man’s savageness were outrageous. Davar did not try to dismiss them as nonsense; it would only heighten the fear among his troops. But for all their zeal, the news about Adam the Godless wore on their morale like a toothless dog, slowly, persistently. It worried him.

The best he could do was match the man’s alleged cruelty. The Eracians were not known to defile the bodies of the dead. It was against the religion of their false gods. Still, they had all seen the wagons full of severed heads. No one could deny those. And there was the letter.

Feor was testing him, that’s all.

Maybe Adam was not an Eracian at all? It would explain a lot of things.

“Holy one, we have found some more heathens,” one of his officers reported.

A band of soldiers was leading a ragged lot of children out of a semiruined house. Their eyes, wide and glassy with fear, stood out like pebbles on their soot-smeared, emaciated faces.

“Gut them like the rest, holy one?”

Davar was silent for a moment, then nodded. “But do have their heads cut off and sent to Eracians. I wish their commander to receive them as a personal gift.” His eyes rolled over the scrawny lot. “Wait.” He pointed. “That one. No. Yes. Spare her. I want her in my collection.”

Even Feor had to have a weak spot for beauty.

A wing of the monastery came crashing down, an avalanche of huge blocks. Men screamed. More victims of careless architecture destruction, he thought.

The day was drab and cold. Livid clouds threatened with rain. Davar prayed for a storm. It would cleanse the city of the stench of war. A solid, almost living miasma of blood, death, and smoke veiled the city, refusing to leave.

Adam. His thoughts strayed back to the godless bastard. Whoever he was, he was a menace, a threat to the Movement. Even if only a tenth of the rumors and reports were true, he’d managed to win battles despite overwhelming odds, gained advantage through treachery and brutality. He had to be stopped.

At his side stood the solution to his problem.

Like always, his great friend, the cofounder of the Movement, had been more than ready to provide help. This time it was in the form of a Pum’be assassin. These were extremely difficult to hire. There were so few of them left, they were impossibly expensive, they were overworked, and worst of all, they often turned down assignments that did not intrigue them.

But he had one at his disposal.

The creature had arrived that morning, slipping unseen past every sentry. He had said nothing so far, merely watched passively the comings and goings of a freshly captured city.

“How do you like Talmath so far?” he asked.

The assassin said nothing.

Davar started walking away from the monastery, his interest in seeing it topple having worn off. He followed a cobbled street, past bodies still not cleared, past husks and hissing skeletons of houses and shops. The Pum’be walked after him with the curious gait of a dwarf.

All around, Feorans were busy flushing city folk out of their hiding, separating men from women, armed men from civilians. Despite his order, his soldiers raped with wild abandon. Well, rape was all right, as long as they killed the victims afterward. Bringing along a den of vipers would be a disaster.

They passed a squad of his warriors dragging a bloodied man behind them. A drop of blood hit the assassin’s cloak. He hissed something in a foreign language. It sounded like a curse.

The general-patriarch had not yet told the little man about his assignment, although he suspected he already knew it. Otherwise, he would never have come. Pum’be did not travel thousands of miles to hear they needed to kill some old woman or similar nonsense.

Still, Davar did have his doubts. He wanted to meet Adam in combat, face-to-face, and defeat him. Despite the string of victories, the Eracians were outnumbered. Their streak of luck would run out sooner or later.

Yet, this Adam was a frightening phenomenon. He was the inspiration of wild horror stories. Adult men shook with fear when they talked about him. This worried him a lot. Feorans feared no one.

Not far from the hilltop, in one of the squares, a horde of Outsiders was being given the choice. They could forsake their old gods and join the Movement—or die. It was so simple. Davar’s smile widened when he saw the bulk of the prisoners step forward. A few romantic fools remained in the back.

“I want you to kill a very special man,” Davar told the assassin. Adam had to die, and soon.

The Pum’be grunted.

“He is…a commander of Eracian forces, stationed near the Bakler Hills in the east. He may have advanced his troops after us in the recent days. The man is an apt leader and most likely a very cruel and merciless man. He must die.”

The assassin nodded, a twitch of his hood. No one really knew what the Pum’be looked like. They always wore those absurd cloaks and hoods, day and night, summer and winter. The only thing that marked them was the height. All of their assassins were quite short.

When he looked down again, the Pum’be was gone, vanished as mysteriously as he had come. Davar smiled. Well, if the little bugger was half as good as the legends said, Adam was a dead man, enjoying his last hours in the world.

General-Patriarch Davar felt excited by the ordeal. He wanted to go back to his tent and play with his new toy.

Talmath was a sweet victory. But it was only a beginning.

He reached into a pocket and pulled out a small, folded map, written on hard, oily paper that resisted the elements with surprising stubbornness. Another gift from his friend. It was a map of the Safe Territories. But it was different from all the other maps ever made.

On it was sketched a place that showed on no other map.

The City of Gods, his ultimate target.

CHAPTER 22

F
oolish pride. He wished he had not thrown away the purse with the coins. He had not eaten in four days. He was weak and famished.

Ewan was not really sure where he was, but he followed a road. Roads led somewhere. He meandered east, where he felt he must go.

He had lost track of time, but it was about two weeks since he had been banished from the convent. The days were getting shorter, and the nights were getting colder. He spent them curled into a ball, shivering, sleeping in bogs or bushes.

Today, it rained, an earnest autumn downpour. The world had the color of slate. His shoes sludged, making sucking noises as they parted from a lane of mud. Ewan walked mechanically, step by step. There was nothing else he could do. He was alone and lost in the big, cruel world.

He believed he was in Caytor somewhere, having crossed the border more than a week ago. He had not met anyone on the road he followed, so he was not really sure. In fact, he did not even know what a Caytorean was supposed to look like. Did they talk like him, the same language? But they must. There were many Outsiders from Caytor in the Territories.