The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1) (92 page)

“Imperial Ashbow,” he said softly, powerfully regretting the necessity that made him have to dismount and grab it. 

They began to see how the troops must have been laid out, or at least how they
’d been at their end, little clumps of Merranics with their colossal destriers, or an uneven line of Northern archers, or, further west,  great swathes of hundreds of Imperial Foot, forever silenced, ghostly and burnt on that great, quiet plain.

And then one day they saw smoke on the horizon ahead of them.  It was midday, but the fog had just lifted enough off the Daroe that there was finally decent visibility.  Ari always hated the mornings the worst, when that fog clung in damp, clammy closeness around his shoulders, when the heaps of dead were nightmare piles of specters, when the drear, eerie mist filled his vision and crept into his mind like some pervasive, inimical smoke. 

“Selah,” he alerted her, and she said, “I just noticed it.”

He didn
’t think they were that far off.  He urged Spirit into a smooth canter, a rolling gait that he managed with so little jar that even two people bareback had no trouble hanging on.  Within the hour, they noticed trees growing, bare but unburnt.  Brownish grass appeared in patches on the scorched ground.  And ahead the smoke grew thicker, separating into a multitude of small columns near the ground.

And then, they noticed someone standing in the road.  An upright body—someone alive!  Eagerly, Ari urged the stallion to a touch more speed, lifting a hand and waving.  But though they were pounding toward him, the person made no move, not even in acknowledgment.  When they slowed, Spirit coming to a stop and blowing out his breath in a rush, he still didn
’t move.

“Hey, what happened here?” Ari said urgently.

The man looked up in brief disinterest, then returned to gazing past them, eyes sliding uneasily over the Daroe.  He didn’t say a word.  His tattered, mud-stained uniform had only vestiges of red offering a clue to his affiliation.  One whole side of his face was an angry, blistered red, the haunted, empty eyes deep in their sockets.  He had a wad of bandaging peeking out of a bulge on his side, and old blood was in his hair and in a big stain on one shoulder and sleeve.  The hand coming out of that sleeve toyed nervously with the sword hilt at his hip.

A hundred questions pushed at Ari
’s lips, wanting out, but all he said was, “Is that the main camp ahead?”  No answer, though he moved his head in a spasm that may have been a nod.

Ari urged the stallion on, anxiety a roiling emptiness in his belly.

There was another sentry in a moment or so, staring fixedly out over the Daroe.  He barely glanced at them as they galloped by.  And then the dirty white shape of tents became visible, then individuals walking slowly around, campfires, the smell of coffee and the rank odor of latrines.  Some at least had survived!

But when they finally drew up at the edge of camp, no one even looked at them.  Stunned, Ari walked the stallion through the orderly rows of tents, hailing everybody they met.  Most wouldn
’t even glance at him.  It was unreal, like they were invisible.  Everybody, to the man, was bandaged or burned or both, and everybody had the same haunted look on their face as that first sentry.

Suddenly, Selah
’s breath hissed in his ear.  “Melkin,” she whispered and pointed.  Ari’s eyes widened and he was somehow off Spirit and racing—well, hobbling—to the man resting wearily on a barrel at the corner of a tent.  His grey head was bowed, his hand clutching a walking stick, his trousers bulging with bandage around one leg, but it was definitely Melkin.

“Master Melkin!” Ari cried.  “Master Melkin!”

He looked up just as Ari came up to him, scowling for all the world like he was in his black Master’s robes and Ari was late for class.

“What
’s all the squalling for?” he snapped.  “Shut your trap.  Can’t you see you’re outside a hospital tent?”

Ari
’s face broke into a relieved grin and he sensed Selah come up beside him.  “What happened?  Where is everybody?  Is everybody all right?”

Melkin
’s lip curled in a look he’d seen a hundred times, but the words that came out of his mouth wiped away any pleasure at the familiarity.  “We had a war, that’s what happened,” he grated out.  “And everybody’s
dead
.”

Ari felt like he couldn
’t breathe.  “Not everybody,” he whispered, willing it so.

Melkin glared at him.  “Kai, fallen.  Banion, fallen.  Traive fallen.  Kyr, fallen.  Kane, fallen.  Khrieg, fallen—” his voice ground out the names in a bitter chant, eyes dark and wrathful.

“Wolfmaster,” Selah said, her voice rolling over his like a flood of clean water over the jagged pain and anger.  “It is not Ari’s fault…” she said gently, “and not all those you’ve named are gone.”

“Where are they?” Ari whispered brokenly, hardly knowing who he was referring to.

Melkin looked at him, face twisted with his rancor, for several moments before he finally said, “The boys are at the northern end of camp.”  He gestured at a road, a wide, trampled path of mud several wagon-widths wide that could be seen around the tent next to them.  “They leave tomorrow for the north.”

Without another word, Ari rose from his crouch and ran awkwardly off, to the road and to find his friends and to fan the flicker of hope that refused to stop burning inside of him.

Melkin looked coldly up at Selah, distant and angry and implacable.  “Well,” he said harshly.

She looked down at him, compassion shining from her cool eyes.  But she said only, “The gods are gone…the Realms will stand alone from here on out, to develop or regress or stray or blossom as they will.”

He narrowed his eyes, some of the deep lines entrenched in that weathered face lightening a little.  “Even Raemon?”

“Raemon was first.  There in the Hall.”

He nodded, eyes shrewd and calculating again, fury abated.

“Did you reach the Armies in time?” she asked.

He nodded.  “Androssan had them here already.  In fact, the defense came together, improbable as it might seem…it just didn’t make any difference in the end.”  The vicious sarcasm was back in his voice.

“But you are not completely overrun,” she noted.  “Did you defeat them?”

He snorted contemptuously at the idea.  “They were like ants.  Covered the entire plain south of the Daroe…no,” he said slowly.  “No, we survive only because they…stopped.  Turned back.”  Their eyes met.

“Tarq do not stop their attack until all
have perished, from either one side or the other,” she said, very low and even.

“No,” he rasped, holding her eyes.  “From everything I
’ve heard and read…they don’t.”  A few seconds passed, then he said quietly, “Looks like a New Age is upon us.”

She found General Androssan in his command tent, bent over his report.  The young, pale, bandaged adjutant standing guard gave her one startled look when she told him who she was and asked firmly for admittance, then pushed in the tent flap and said in an awed voice:

“The…Empress, Sir.”

They looked at each other for a long moment, the General and the Legend.  Waves of exhaustion radiated from him and Karmine suspected he didn’t have the energy to waste on disbelief.

The tide had broken but a few days ago, the Army now stunned and crippled as it tended its wounded and tried to gather itself together again.  As he ran down the list of swordslain, a mind-boggling, heart-rending roll call of the forever absent, she bowed her head.   The detail was far beyond what was needed for tactical decisions, but she let him talk it out anyway…there was healing in talking.

All the Realms had been hit hard, many leaders down or gone.  Worst was the psychological trauma, which he wrapped up in militarily correct terminology of ‘morale’ and such—he had a tendency to wander off topic.  But then, whom else did the General of the Imperial Armies have to talk to?  It was well over an hour before she could gently lead him to the reason she’d come.

“Are there any Council here?” she asked him firmly, when he finally trailed off, sitting slumped in a camp chair, staring at the packed earth of the tent floor.  He straightened immediately with a soldier
’s discipline, replying crisply, “No.  The closest are up in Eldoreth, two days’ ride to the north.”

“The Queen
’s with them?” she asked, scanning quickly through the report of the battle spread over his tilting campaign desk.

“No,” he said quietly, a funny note in his voice.  “She
’s here…”

“Is she?” Karmine said in surprise, flipping a page.

There was a pause, then the General said, even lower, “The Rachar Stood yesterday.”

Slowly, she raised her eyes, putting down the sheet of parchment. 
“Kyr is dead then…”

“Close enough….she won
’t leave his side.”

And she wouldn
’t.  Karmine had to go to her.  She’d no sooner gained entrance past the subdued Rach standing guard at the entrance than Sable was on her knees before her, imploring with ravaged eyes what she couldn’t speak.  The tent reeked of infection, overwarm with the fire in the grate, and taken up in its entirety by the low cot where the lean, vibrant body of the Rach lay unnaturally still amongst the rumpled bed linens.  Sweat stood out on the tanned face and the bandages covering his chest and shoulder were sodden with seepage, discolored a nasty green and yellow.

“Get him into the sun, outside,” Karmine said immediately to the white-clothed attendant at his side.

It was a Northern healer and he frowned at her.  “He will freeze out there, and it’s filthy—”

“Do it!” Sable snapped in a tear-rent voice, jumping to her feet.  Only once he
’d been taken into the fresh air, the wound vigorously cleansed and the pus-soaked bandages thrown out, would Sable leave his warmly wrapped, fevered body.

They talked long into the night, the Empress and the Queen and the General.  Karmine was no stranger to battle, nor great tragedy, nor the rebuilding of a people and an Army after both…she did most of the talking.   It was inarguable, her conclusions, and there was no fight from either one of them.  Sable, for one, looked almost relieved as Karmine and Androssan made plans to head to Eldoreth the next morning.

When Karmine left them, the sun was just coming up, and it
was
the next morning.  Pushing out of the tent into the wan, watery rays of sunrise, she took a deep breath.  There were just a couple little things that needed attending to, and there, coming toward her out of the dawn, was one of them.

Ari
’s face lit with delight when he saw her.  He’d filched some breakfast and they walked companionably, eating together for the last time, neither saying anything.  They’d done this so often over the past months, they didn’t need to.  Without discussing it, they both headed for the little copse of trees that stood close to the command tent.  It provided privacy for the officers’ latrines, so the occasional breeze wasn’t particularly pleasant, but they hadn’t exactly been wandering through rose beds for the past week or so.

Ari told her, once amongst the scant privacy of the bushy greenery, of his night.  He
’d been up for most of it, too, catching up, searching frantically for friends among all the dull, benumbed soldiers wandering around.

“Loren and Rodge are different,” he said quietly.  “I feel like I hardly know them…I was going to go back with them…but then I ran into Traive.”  His voice took on a little lighter tone.  Karmine, looking at him through the glass of many lives
’ worth of pain and healing, saw the flickering in those brilliant eyes and knew that his life would take him on a far different road from his friends’.

He stopped in his recital of all those he
’d found alive, voice trailing off as he caught her looking quietly at him, a slight smile on her face.  The peach-colored rays of the long dawn suffused her face with glowing light, her eyes warm and steady and so suddenly beautiful that he had to clench his fists to keep from reaching out to stroke the curve of her cheek.  He stopped walking and they turned to face each other.

She shook her dark head at him, still smiling.  “When I joined you on that raft to Merrani, I was on a mission…determined to protect you.”  Wry laughter bubbled just beneath the surface of her words.  “I did not expect to find a friend.”

He groaned inside.  The f-word.  What every young man dreaded to hear from the lips of the woman that made his heart pound in his chest.  But, gazing at her now, in the fresh light of a new dawn, with inevitable separation before them, he realized he’d been a fool all these months.  The intimacy of those weeks in the tunnels beneath the Sheel, the bonding of everything they’d been through…it had led to nothing but the illusion that there would ever be more.  She had, what, 100 generations on him?  What could he possibly be to her?  Despair, pain like a hot knife, slashed through him. 

She was shaking her head at him, still smiling.  He knew vaguely that she had said she was going north, back to Archemounte, and now she said ruefully, “Ari…so young to be so Dra-faced.”  For a minute they looked into each other
’s eyes, until Ari thought for sure his heart would break, then she carefully reached up on tiptoe and brushed his cheek with her soft lips.