The Forgotten (The Lost Words: Volume 3) (77 page)

She maintained a passive face, ignoring the lance of pain climbing up her back. She wanted to collapse and sleep. “What is the situation at the front?”

Xavier raked his hair, and it came red in answer. “We won. We lost nine thousand soldiers, Your Highness. Two out of every three men are wounded. We are still gathering the numbers.”

Amalia looked at the warlord hard, her own unblinking eyes against his nervous pair.
He does not know yet
, she thought.

“Are you loyal to my brother?” she inquired.

“Definitely.” He managed to look ever so slightly offended when he answered.

“And will you maintain that same loyalty to me?”

He was beginning to suspect something was wrong. He swallowed hard. “What is it?”

Amalia did not like being so close to this killer, but she forced herself to bring her lips close to his hair, drenched in blood and dripping. “Name your price.”

There it was, an inkling of understanding in those piggy orbs. It was a paradox, really. If he refused her offer, he would leave her no choice but to kill him. But if he accepted it, he would have all the freedom to bargain. His lack of choice was anything he wanted.

Xavier grinned. “Marriage,” he said.

Amalia looked him up and down. He was not an ugly man, but he was disgusting. She loathed him. But she understood her duty, her commitment, and then, there was her white-hot passion to live. There would be time to handle the problem much later. Now, she had to survive, just like him.

“So be it. My brother is dead. You are
mine
now.”

He nodded slowly, carefully. “Your Highness.”

Amalia felt something lurch in her stomach. It was not relief, but it was as if she had earned herself a few more precious moments of life.

“Emperor James died earlier. He gave his life bravely defending our people. He will be remembered as a hero.” As she said the words, she knew they would become legend.

Warlord Xavier swiped a fresh dew of blood from his neat hair spikes. “What do you command, Your Highness?”

“I want absolute loyalty,” she ordered. “Now, Warlord, find a healer and ask him to bind your wound. You are bleeding.”

He shrugged. “Just a little nick.”

That day, four hundred and twenty senior and junior officers and soldiers were hanged from the tree branches around Ecol on the charges of high treason. The day after, another one hundred and eighty-nine died. She had no one to spare, but
the purge was necessary. She could not afford strife and discord amid her ranks.

The men called it Amalia’s Spring Cleaning.

Two thousand men succumbed to their wounds in the coming week, even as the picture of the battle began to form. So many had died. Staggering numbers, entire companies wiped out to the last men. Commander Nicholas was among the fallen. Major Landon, the chubby officer who had once tried to strike up a conversation with her while she had still been Jerrica the washerwoman, was dead, too. Adrian was wounded. The tough old sergeant had been injured, but he seemed to ignore his pain.

It turned out her half brother had been a real hero after all.

His selfless dash into combat had given the defenders at the southern end of the battlefield enough time to repel the Parusites and take back the fort. Then, they had joined forces with the beleaguered units near the mining camp and defeated the surprise attack too.

In his death, James had saved her father’s realm. Something she had continuously failed to do.

As promised by her late brother, Amalia had given out fifty gold coins to two archers who could claim their arrows had pierced the eyes of those gray monsters. The army had killed seventeen olifaunts, and even now, soldiers and citizens were busy cutting them to pieces and marveling at their sheer size. Men were prancing around wearing olifaunt-hide cloaks. One had claimed it could stop sword cuts until a comrade felled him down with a blow to his ribs. Amalia had refused the gift of severed feet and those long horns.

Xavier continued his thorough reordering of the army ranks, demoting those he deemed unimportant and sending to the gallows those he thought could lead the opposition against her.
A band of Caytoreans was caught trying to head back to their realm, tired and disillusioned of the war’s glory. They had been branded as traitors, but Amalia had spared their lives. She had also doubled the pay of those loyal to her, cementing the sentiment.

Amalia knew this was only the beginning of her long struggle to remain the nation’s empress. She would have to contend with the High Council; she would have to strike a peace deal with the Parusites, as she had promised Jarman. And then, there was Xavier. But there would be time for that much, much later. At the moment, her only concern was to keep the army intact.

The day after the battle, James’s body had been brought on a simple stretcher, carried by his squire, a limping Master Hector and two other soldiers. They had snapped off the arrow, but she remembered the tiny puncture in the polished plate that had been his bane. Someone had wiped his face, but the grime had remained in his ears.

The little details one remembered.

The funeral had been quiet, morose, nothing like the grand event she had planned for her father. Instead, she had given her half brother a soldier’s ceremony, solemn and empty of emotions, just like men liked it so no one would think any less of them. Later on, they wept while drinking themselves senseless.

Amalia remembered feeling detached, as if she had been reading a story about some young man. In a way, she had never really gotten to know James. She would lie if she said she didn’t feel relieved by his death. But there was a tiny bit of her that wished to have known him better, as himself.

Her father’s firstborn. His love child.

By the second week, the battle had a name and a dozen songs.

They called it James’s Last Stand.

Three weeks since the battle, seven hundred more men had died of their injuries, and Xavier killed another ninety. Jarman would glare at her as if every one of them was her personal fault, as if his own conscience was weighed with their deaths. Perhaps it was.

Amalia cringed at each loss, knowing it meant one less sword to fight the Parusites. Oh yes, she had promised Jarman peace, but her desire had nothing to do with what Princess Sasha might decide. Mercifully, the Red Caps seemed to have been bloodied even more heavily than her legions. At least, the two legions that still survived, patched up from the various units. The losses were so grand she had been forced to promote men two and three ranks to maintain the hierarchy.

But luck was on her side. The enemy had retreated far and was licking its wounds.

It seemed as if she might endure this. Her ugly fate in Roalas would not be repeated.

She did everything she had once thought foolish or despicable. She bribed and threatened men and used favor and gold to garner their cooperation.
This is what my father meant
, she began to realize.
This is real leadership. Ruthlessness, malice, being ahead of your foes at all times
. She did not like it at all, but that was the burden of her duty.

There was one promotion that she truly relished, though. Timothy had become a captain, the youngest in the entire army. But the boy had well deserved it. Through his quick action, he might have saved her life—and possibly the realm.

As the month turned, she knew she would live. Athesia was weak and scarred, but it survived, against all odds. With her opponents gone, she was beginning to believe she could get used to her new rule, the second chance at amending the wrongs from Roalas.

There was only one thing missing.

The one thing she truly dreaded, the one thing she had postponed all that time, as if its very mention would undermine her struggle for survival. Now she could afford herself the luxury of facing her
other
enemy.

She summoned Warlord Xavier to her. “Lady Rheanna,” she stated simply.

He rubbed his nose, and the cartilage crunched wetly. “As we agreed, I have her detained in Pain Daye. She does not know about her husband yet, Your Highness.”

There’s such a simple solution to this problem
, Amalia thought. But no, James’s widow was more useful alive. Instead, she nodded at her pig-eyed savior.

“Assemble a party of your most disciplined men and send them to the mansion. I want them to bring Lady Rheanna to me. Discreetly. She must not be harmed. No one must know about this.”

Xavier smiled. “I like your style, Amalia.”

She did not share in his amusement. “Get it done.”

He sobered. “Yes, Your Highness.” But she could not ignore the lewd look in those piggish eyes as he turned and sauntered away.

He would get what he deserved, too, she knew. One day. If there was one thing her life as a common girl in the camp had taught her, it was patience. There would be time to reckon with her decisions to make peace with King Sergei, marry this butcher, and find courage to muster her army against the magical threat of the White Witch. But she knew those were future worries.

Right now, she had to be Father’s daughter and save her empire.

Properly this time.

CHAPTER 57

T
he Namsue were not fleeing any longer. They were going to fight.

Since the Crap Charge, the nomads had avoided a direct confrontation with the Eracians. Mali had tried to engage them on four different occasions, and each time, they would simply retreat, refusing her challenges.

Now, their host was camped on the slopes of the Emorok Hills, waiting. It was composed of three different bodies of nomad forces, all of which had traveled all the way from Somar to this remote region, each one pursued by the Eracians. The enemy counted perhaps fifteen thousand men. Colonel Finley, Colonel Alan detached from Commander Velten’s army in the west, Major Donal of Elfast, and her own battalion fielded twenty-three thousand souls. The odds were in their favor, but the enemy had higher ground and was well rested.

Why have they led us here?
Mali wondered.
Was it chance, or strategy?
They had probably intended to draw as many Eracians as they could away from Somar to make the siege more difficult. But to continue this pursuit for so long?

The Emorok Hills were rich in metals and precious minerals. Half the Somar court wore jewelry adorned with stones mined in the pits underneath these hills. It was also one of the
farthest vestiges of the Eracian realm. Beyond the wreath of knolls and fat, stunted ridges, the vast expanse of the north began, with only a few villages and trading posts. After that, nothing much really. The stories had it the desolate steppe continued forever. No explorer venturing north had ever returned.

Mali thought the Namsue might want to get hold of the mines. It would provide them with a valuable source of wealth they could use. They could use the gems to buy mercenary armies or bribe people, maybe even enlist support from other realms. But that alone did not sound like a plan to her.

She was fearing a trap.

However, after so many months on the road, even her sense of caution was well eroded. She wished she had better information on the surrounding terrain. Most of the mining towns had been abandoned, the people fleeing before the tribesmen. The fate of those few who had remained was unknown. As it was, the empty north was even emptier than usual.

The Sapphire Road ran like an arrow, due east, toward Windpoint. Its southern branch, the Path of Gold, had not seen a single peddler’s cart in a week now. Fresh chokeweed was beginning to creep up the sides of the dust trails and onto the road tracks. Nature was in full bloom, and it would not let human scarring stop it.

Mali had never been in this region before, but it did resemble Windpoint. The land was mostly flat, endless fields of wild grass and flowers, with a few trees here and there. She remembered the winters in her little refuge, the shrieking, icy breath from the north that wheezed unchallenged across the land, making the air so much colder than it truly was. You could stand out in the yellow sun and watch windowpanes frost over when the winds came. Unwary men had lost their sight to sharp gusts.

She was standing on the road with Finley and Alan, trying to determine the best attack route. The problem was, the hills were the only elevation in sight. The enemy had a superior position and would see any movement of Eracian troops well in advance.

Perhaps they could sneak their troops closer under the cover of night. But then, she had no idea what to expect inside those hills. She could see pale lines of wagon tracks crossing the murky slopes. She could see the scattered houses of a mining community here and there, gorges, twists, crags, hundreds of them. Any of those gullies could hide an enemy patrol or an ambush team. There was no knowing if the land was hard or soft, if some of the possible attack routes were covered in grass or thorny bushes. Were the Namsue hiding in the mines? She could only guess what the enemy was planning.

The only way to really know what was waiting for them in those precious hills was to send a bunch of brave, mad volunteers into enemy territory.