The Bloodstained God (Book 2) (47 page)

Skal spurred forwards again, attacking, but what he was really doing was putting himself and those men that followed him between the Telan archers and a small party of Seth Yarra. Those were his messengers, the ones who would take the word north. The attack encircled the majority of the enemy that remained. He turned himself and his men inwards, pressing into the melee, ignoring the few behind him. It was not without danger. Though only about twenty strong they could attack from behind, but he knew what their duty should be as soldiers: to get word of this attack to their commander in chief, to let him know that his rear was no longer secure.

The battle was over quickly. The Seth Yarra followed their usual pattern. They fought until only a handful remained, and then they threw their weapons down and surrendered. Skal looked around. The men he had cut off were gone. They had seen their duty and done it, just as he had hoped.

Now it was just a matter of time until the messengers reached their general, until he sent a good portion of his force south again, weakening the attack on Cain’s wall. By Skal’s own calculation the survivors would barely have time to reach the force before battle was joined, but even then their commander would know the threat and feel compelled to do something about it. It was well done.

He rode across to where the Telan command had gathered. He wanted to talk to Terresh, to discuss what might happen next. After all, they were now a combined force of five thousand men, the gate was open, and Seth Yarra was vulnerable for the first time.  A mad idea had entered his head.

As he approached he could see that something was wrong. The Telans were not the boisterous mob he would have expected in victory. Indeed, they seemed sombre and silent. A large group stood around, turned inward. His first thought was that Terresh had been killed or injured. He pushed rode through them, using the strength of his horse to part them, and dismounted.

Terresh was unhurt. He knelt on the ground, and he knelt at Hestia’s side. Skal stopped and stared. The queen had taken part in the battle. That much was obvious because she wore a mail shirt and her arm bore an archer’s leathers. A bow lay beside her, and he could see blood. There was blood on her hands, her face, her throat. There was a lot of blood.

She was still alive. Her eyes were open and she was looking at the king, though she did not try to speak.

Dying, Skal thought. It certainly looked like a mortal wound. There was too much blood. He was impressed, though. Hestia had donned armour and gone into battle with her soldiers, risked her life to fight along side her husband. He hadn’t thought of her as a warrior queen. It was a pity that it had come to such a bad end.

Hestia had seen him. He could tell because her eyes now studied him, recognised him for what he was. She reached a hand towards him and Terresh looked round.

“Colonel Skal?”

He nodded and was waved forwards. He was reluctant, partially because this was a private moment between Hestia and Terresh, but also because he wasn’t very good with dying people. He didn’t like to be around them.

He stood next to her, then changed his mind and knelt. She seemed to be trying to say something to him, but she couldn’t speak. It looked like she was drowning in her own blood and every time she tried to get a word out all that emerged was blood. It was a terrible sight. This close he could see the wound. Something had torn through the mail just to the right of her breast bone, and the metal was slick and wet and red. The lung was damaged, too. He could see bubbles in the blood. She gripped his hand. He could see from her face that she wanted something from him, but not what it was.

He was pushed aside, lifted out of the way, and Passerina took his place. He was surprised by her strength. It was stupid of him. He knew that she was a god, like Narak, but she was slight, a head shorter than him, and she brushed him aside like a butterfly. He was glad, though. She seemed to know what she was doing.

She knelt, her head close to Hestia’s, her hand supporting the dying queen’s head. Skal was close enough to hear the words that she spoke.

“I’ll protect them,” she said.

Hestia closed her eyes, and for a moment Skal thought that she was gone, but she opened them again and looked at Terresh.

“What shall I do without you?” the king asked. The six words were tragedy enough for Skal. These people had been his enemies until a few short weeks ago, but he saw that they had something he did not. They had each other, and that bond was being torn asunder before his eyes. He looked away. Terresh was dying, too. In a very real way his life was seeping out of Hestia’s wounds.

“Pick her up. Bring her.”

Terresh looked at Passerina, not seeming to understand the command.

“Can we not let her die in peace?” he asked.

The sparrow seized Terresh by the arm. “Do as I say,” she said. Skal couldn’t see her face, but her voice sounded different, almost excited. It looked for a moment as though Terresh would refuse, and that would have been interesting, but Hestia gripped his hand. Skal saw her nod. She didn’t have long. He guessed an hour perhaps. It would probably be less if they moved her, and Terresh knew that.

The king acquiesced. Men rushed at once to bring a stretcher, which was actually a couple of boards. He guessed it was a table top from somewhere in the camp, but they brought it quickly and the queen was eased onto it. It caused her pain. There was no helping it. She spat blood and her face clenched about her eyes, but in a moment she was on the boards and they were carrying her away.

He followed. Something in Passerina’s manner made him follow. The men followed, too. They trailed the stretcher and the king back to the big tent in the middle of the Telan camp. At the flap of the tent the sparrow stopped them. The stretcher went inside, and so did Terresh, and after a moment’s consideration she nodded Skal through as well, but she stopped everyone else outside. She pointed to a group of men. Skal saw that they wore the red sash of Terresh’s personal guard.

“Stand here,” she said. “Let nobody enter.”

They were soldiers, and an order is an order. They were willing to accept orders from Passerina, it seemed. They formed up in a line across the entrance.

Inside the tent Hestia’s stretcher had been placed on the ground. The sparrow indicated that the bearers were to leave, and they did. She turned to Terresh.

“I would ask you to leave, Terresh, but I know that you would not go.”

“She is my queen,” he said. He knelt beside her again, ignoring Passerina. The sparrow turned to Skal.

“There are some things that men are not meant to see, Lord Skal,” she said. “This is one of them.”

“If you ask me, I will go,” he said.

She spoke in a low voice, but he was sure that if Terresh had been listening to her he would have heard. “I will not. If I fail it will make no difference, but if I succeed you will have a tale to tell your grandchildren. Keep quiet. If Terresh tries to interfere, hold him back as best you can.” Skal wondered what she was talking about

She lifted the king almost bodily from where he knelt by the queen’s side and stood him beside Skal, almost as though he were a child’s doll. The king did not protest. He seemed quite broken, entirely robbed of the resolve that generally marked out men of his station.

Passerina sat on the ground next to Hestia. She took the queen’s hand in hers and looked her in the eye. Hestia was still conscious, still able to meet the sparrow’s eye and understand the words that she spoke.

“This is not a good time for you to die, Queen Hestia,” she said.

*              *              *              *

Pascha was afraid of what was happening in her own mind. When she had come down from her high perch after the battle and seen Hestia she had known, just known, that she could save the queen’s life. It was a very unsettling thing. The Benetheon were not healers. None of them could give life, repair injuries, or remake human bodies. Narak could not even do it with his wolves. Yet she knew. She felt the power within her, and could name it. It was the life that she had taken from the Seth Yarra officers, the power she had drained from the guards in Telas Alt. She had become a bank of life force where the deposit of one man’s life might be used to pay off a debt to death.

The question that exercised her was whether she should.

There was a danger in revealing such a talent. She knew the common folk of the six kingdoms more than any other Benetheon god. She had lived among them for centuries. She had been distant, it was true, aloof in her godhood among the perishable goods of humanity. So much she recognised, but even so she had seen them about their business, watched them. She knew them. If they knew that she could heal illness they would come flocking to her like bees to honey, bringing their insistent sickness and corruption wherever she tried to hide.

She didn’t want that, not at all. Apart from anything else there was the price that must be paid – the balance. To give life she must take life. It was the kind of cruel mathematics that could drive a person insane.

Yet Pascha did want to save Hestia. She did not doubt that the queen had been a fool to pick up a bow and put herself in danger, but she could not help but admire the spirit of the gesture. In a way the two of them, Terresh and Hestia, reminded her of herself and Alaran. Alaran, like Terresh, had made a bargain with the Seth Yarra, and like Terresh he had paid for the mistake, though Alaran’s price had been higher.

She saw the bond between them. Theirs was not a mere marriage of state, though it may have begun that way. They were one person, like she and Alaran had been – like she had wished they had been.

Pascha had decided to help. She knew that she could, but she did not really know how. Whatever power she possessed it seemed to answer to her will, and so she would will Hestia to be made whole. She didn’t want to do it in public, though.

She had them carry Hestia to the queen’s tent. She posted guards. She allowed only Terresh and Skal to enter, to be present. Terresh because she did not think she could prevent him without doing him some harm, and Skal because she trusted him. Skal had proven a solid ally and she remembered well enough that Terresh had already stabbed her in the back both metaphorically and literally.

She sat beside the queen. Hestia was in great pain, and it was difficult for her to draw breath. Every time she tried it made a terrible sound, bubbling and rasping. There was no hope in her eyes.

She thinks I’m going to kill her, Pascha realised, release her from her pain.

It was a common thing to do in such circumstances, and considered an act of mercy. She glanced across at Terresh, and saw the same thing in his eyes

They’ve already said goodbye.

Now was the difficult part. She had no idea how to do this. She could feel the power moving within her, but she didn’t know how to use it. Was contact necessary? Should she hold the queen’s hand? She took Hestia’s hand in hers. It was cool and damp, not at all as she had expected.

She closed her eyes and looked at the guttering fire that was Hestia’s life. The shapes and colours appeared sickly, but she did not know what to do to restore it. She concentrated. She reached out with her mind, like a hand, she thought of it as a hand, and touched Hestia. To her surprise she felt the energy running down her imagined hand like water, a warm flood. It burned faintly as it left her.

The effect was extraordinary. It was like throwing oil on a real fire, only there were no flames in the Sirash. Hestia seemed to blaze with colours akin to gold, yellow, blue and silver. Pascha felt the queen’s hand clench in her own, heard Terresh cry out somewhere in the distance.

Enough. She snatched her hand away and opened her eyes. Hestia was still looking at her, but now there was something else in her eyes. She had passed from despair through hope and into the realisation of what Pascha had done, all in that brief time. Pascha recognised the look. She had seen it a very long time ago in the eyes of soldiers by the sea in Afael, by the light of burning ships, and those eyes had been looking at Narak.

Terresh, suddenly released by Skal, rushed to kneel by his queen, but at the same time seemed torn by the desire to kneel to Pascha. He did both. He tried to speak, but seemed incapable of putting two words together. Skal stood open mouthed, staring.