The waking of storm and.., p.14
The Waking of Storm and Flame, page 14
She held up a finger to him and requested a moment. If she had to, Zahra would correct him as well.
“Is that what you think of me? Do you think I feel nothing from losing my own brother? Do you think I feel nothing from ordering our soldiers to their deaths!? No, sister, I have seen and felt the sting of more loss than I pray you will ever know. Don’t let this falsity blind you.”
Alira felt the chill of the cool air rush against the warm blood in her cheek where Zahra struck her. It did nothing to pull her out of the daze she slipped in to.
“Look at me,” Zahra commanded. “I said look at me!” She grabbed Alira’s face, but Alira still refused to look at her sister. “We can fight about Cael’s death when this is all over. If you plan to run away, that’s fine. You do whatever it is you think you need to do but you will not run today. You have a duty to your people, and you will fulfill it.” Zahra picked the doublet up. “Now, one arm at a time.”
Is this how you felt, Cael? When duty called, you had to answer before you were ready. Is this why you changed?
It took a moment, but Alira held up her arms and allowed Zahra to slip the green doublet over her torso. The rest of her armor was donned without issue while Alira’s mind fluctuated between moments of seeming calmness and emotional collapse. Each piece took her further from where she wanted to be and rooted her in the present moment from which she recoiled.
The last pieces to go on were Alira’s bracers. Zahra took them to Sayyed and shoved them into his stomach. “I know you help her put her armor on.” She took a breath, and a moment to collect herself before going out to her soldiers. “Traditions are destroyed far easier than they are built. She might need this one. Five minutes, no more,” Zahra said as she left the tent.
It was more than five minutes before Alira was born from the canvas. She bore an emotionless and hollow look as an overwhelmed silence fell over the ranks, save for a few hushed conversations. The soldiers saw their princess presented as their leader for the first time and were terrified of what might befall them. Where the strong and stalwart Cael Verbrandt had once stood, they now had the quiet and timid Princess Alira. Nonetheless, they were fortunate to have a true leader in Zahra, one who might just get them home alive.
Sayyed helped Alira on to her horse and then mounted his own. Zahra rode up next to her, ready to depart. “You have to be the one to give the order, Alira.”
She didn’t respond, and her eyes were on the ground. Worry beset her face as she looked to the mountains before her. Destiny. “Let’s.... Take us out, Zahra.”
Without giving her a moment to recant, Zahra raised her hand and dropped it forward. The thunderous march of two thousand of Namelle’s soldiers started up at once with the sound of their pipes and drums.
Every step brought Alira closer to that uncertain destiny on the other side of the mountains and took her further from Cael and everything she knew. Even still, she rode on with Zahra at her side.
* * *
The hours passed in silence. The windswept trees and the grind of marching feet against rock offered some auditory reprieve. Thick, morning fog hung in the air for a while and only dissipated when the sun rose higher into the sky. It receded high up on the mountains to the cool air at the top and awaited the weaning hours of the day to come again.
Every step they marched brought back memories of those loved and lost. Only days before they were filled with so much promise and purpose, and now felt an icy and pervasive coldness that clawed at the back of their minds.
As they turned to ascend into the pass, a commotion erupted from behind the front of the column. There were raised voices and a wild ruckus from within the ranks. It ground the entire force to a halt and Zahra rode back to investigate as the last of the king’ guard closed around Alira. One of Zahra’s conscripts was restrained by two other regulars, while a corporal lay bloodied on the ground and a sergeant knelt next to him. She dismounted her horse and handed over the reins to a lieutenant in the ranks.
“What is the meaning of this?! One of you best loose your tongue, else I’ll hold all of you accountable and every man here shall face punishment for those transgressions.”
“You think we fear your punishment more than what the Essean’s are capable of?” The restrained soldier asked. “And here we have the one soldier in Namelle touched by their same darkness come to punish me for what her people did to ours only days ago.”
Of course it’s one from the provinces.
“Insolent dog!” The sergeant raised his hand to strike the conscript, but Zahra raised hers to stop him.
She squatted down before the man and came to eye level. “Whether you think me a monster or not matters little, for I am your commanding officer. I’ll allow you one opportunity to speak before I bring resolution this matter.”
“You march us to our doom like you did before, only now there are thousands less of my brothers and sisters; our king included.” The soldier saw the last note had scratched a nerve. “I have every right to return home and prepare to defend it as I see fit. I fought and I lost, have I not earned that right? Have we not earned that right?”
Zahra saw a few other heads which nodded among her conscripted soldiers. No matter the reason for the battle, dissenters will always be present within your ranks. If it’s ten leagues away or on your doorstep, as an officer, you must never forget them. Your cares and concerns may not always be theirs, and though they wear our colors on the battlefield, their hearts and their minds will always be home. She never forgot Trystan’s words, so early in her life was she told them and now they were an echo from her past.
“What’s your name, soldier?”
“Serrin. What use do you have for it, commander?”
“Because I care for each of my soldiers. I need to know how each of them feels and how they think. Where their hearts are, and if they’re in this with us until the end.”
“Then my thoughts are that you release us. It is spring and we have crops to sew, homes to tend and families who need us.”
“More than your country needs you, then? Entertain me for a moment. You were among those who fought in Khuldir I presume? So you saw the Esseans firsthand. Their ferocity, their lack of empathy and their absolute desire to bury a sword in your chest.”
“Aye, your point?”
“Then what do you think will happen if we release you from these ranks? You get to go home and live your life for a few more days? Say the Esseans wash over us, breach the pass, and enter the lands of Aenne Aelle, how long do you think it will be before you are put to the sword? Until your family is enslaved and your home is razed? How long do you think you will last outside this army? Together we are stronger than trying to go it alone. Do you think the rest of your compatriots risk less than you do?”
“Commander, I-” her voice faltered.
“When we take this victory from Essea, that is glory we will share together. Only then can we lay down our arms, and we get to go home. When there is no enemy left to fight.” Serrin fell silent, Zahra’s words had gotten through to him. “Sergeant, tell me what happened here.”
“He attempted to foster distention and convince more to commit mutiny and desert the army. When no one bought in, he tried to run. He was caught by the corporal and fought back, bloodying his nose in the struggle. Only when restrained by two other soldiers was he subdued.”
“Thank you, sergeant.” She looked back to Alira who stared up at the mountain peaks of the Aelle Faene and seemed to show no interest in this. Probably for the best.
“What are you looking at her for?” Serrin piped up again. “She was useless to save her brother and got most of her guard killed. That bit-”
Zahra slammed the back of her metal gauntlet against Serrin’s face and left deep cuts that trickled blood. Zahra clenched her fists tight and felt boiled blood fill her veins. The sting of her eye increased as her contempt grew. The power of the sheyde was released into her body. It feels...good.
Serrin, who fell to the ground from the strike pressed a hand to his face to stop the flow of bright red blood that spattered on the ground. In an open circle, he knelt before Zahra and awaited her judgment.
“I ask you now, Serrin the Coward, what crime do you choose to be punished for? How is it that you want history to remember you? Striking a soldier of a rank superior to yours? Insubordination? or desertion?”
“Of my own free will, I choose to leave a fight that is not mine. I will not fight for her,” he said as he looked over her shoulder at Alira and spat on Zahra’s boots. “I fought for the king. I fought for his Namelle, and I refuse to give my life for his hopeless shadow of a sister. The Verbrandt line is finished. It died with her brother.”
There is only one crime for which to label your transgressions in the justice of man. “Then your choice is rescinded. Refusing to fight for Aenne Aelle against the empire is the crime of treason. One which carries a sentence of death.” She drew Talon from its sheath and saw Serrin’s eyes widened as he looked upon the blade. “Restrain him.”
The soldiers grabbed tight to Serrin, who struggled. They bound his hands in rope behind him. Zahra wiped the blade with her black cape, and noticed the way the pale, green color in her eye reflected on the sword’s surface. The sergeant pushed Serrin forward and exposed his neck. As Zahra outstretched her sword and rested the cold steel against it, she heard the sobs of the man beneath her blade and pronounced his sentence.
“Serrin the Treasonous, you are guilty of the crime for which you are now named. Your soul will wander, lost in the dark. You shall never know the light of the Embrace and will pass into the Abyss where you will contemplate your crimes for eternity.”
Zahra drew Talon back and with a heavy, downward swing Serrin’s head was separated from his body. She passed her sword to Sergeant-Major Dolin who wiped it down before it was placed back in its sheath. Zahra re-mounted her horse as the conscripts watched in disbelief, while her regulars felt that their honor had been defended.
“Corporal, as is customary, bury the body in a shallow grave with no marker. For slandering a member of the royal family, his head is to be buried separate from his body. Take two soldiers to help and catch up with us when the task is done. The last words prior to his burial are yours.”
“Aye, commander. I’ll see to it.” The corporal selected two soldiers who picked up the head and body, and drug them off the road. He grabbed a shovel from one of the carts and followed them into the woods beyond the field.
“Sergeant, reform your ranks. See to it I don’t have to come back here again.” Zahra looked to many of the conscripts who nodded in agreement with Serrin. “Let that be lesson to any who would dare echo the same rhetoric.”
The sergeant gave her a L’Cada salute as she rode back to the front of the column. As she waited for the ranks to re-form, Alira spoke. “Zahra... what have you done?”
“I did what had to be done. I upheld the honor of your house and fulfilled my responsibility to adhere to the laws by which the royal army is bound.” As the ranks reformed, she motioned for the march to continue. Zahra felt the sensation of the sheyde in her body retreat back into nothingness. “The day grows late, and we have a way to go.”
As their horses started to move, Zahra listened to Alira speak under her breath. “Free will,” she said. “The doom of humanity. We did to ourselves, didn’t we?”
* * *
Alira’s eyes crested the hill into the city, and she saw the rear gate of Khuldir wasn’t where it was supposed to be. In its place were empty support posts where the iron mass once stood.
“They must have moved it forward,” Zahra replied. “They’ve nothing to fear from the way we came except a deafening silence... and maybe bears.”
In the valley below the road, where so much happened only days before, the Khuldiri had erected many tall funeral pyres. There wasn’t enough cloth to cover each body, so only the ones on top were hidden. Alira and Zahra pulled their horses to the side of the road and allowed the army to march past them as they greeted the chieftain.
“It’s good to have you back princess, commander.” Dag walked up the gradual hill that led down to the gate. “Thanks to your soldiers, we’ll be able to have a proper funeral. As close as we can get, given the circumstances.”
“You’ve not separated them,” Zahra noted. “Esseans, mixed in with ours. Have they not customs of their own?”
“The old archives say that they release their spirits in a storm of fire, so I suppose it's fitting they burn where they are.” Alira had studied the scant information which was known about Illyria. A near mirror of Namellian funeral customs, so as far as Alira knew ‘released in a storm of fire’ was the same as burning on a pyre.
“We all come into this world the same, mays’well go out that way too. Afterall,” Dag said as his arms folded over his chest, “in death, there are no differences between us.”
“Well said,” Zahra replied.
“They never sent a party to collect, so we’ll send off the poor souls gracefully and be done with it.” The cheer that Dag exhibited each time he came to Namelle had vanished. “Come on, let’s find a spot to talk.” He led them up to his manor, part way up the mountain path. Dag’s home was carved into the side of Til Oron, the tallest mountain in the Aelle Faene. They left their horses with Dag’s stable master, and Alira ordered Sayyed to follow while the remainder waited outside.
Lit braziers lined the hallway and reflected on the gems inset in the walls. Vibrant reds and blues that wove throughout and terminated in Dag’s Great Hall.
“I think the last time one of your kind was in my hall it was your father. An enjoyable time that was, the last night I ever saw Trystan.” He settled himself down into an uncomfortable looking stone chair and put his feet up. “All filled with fire he was, off to do the king’s business. Couldn’t say the same for Rygar.”
“How did you fare Dag?” Alira asked, cutting out the pleasantries. “How are your people?”
“Oh.” He was surprised by her directness. “Right to it then. Well, it’s not bloody pretty, is it? They did a number on us, but my people are the dwellers in the shadow of the mountain. We’ll burn our dead, scatter the ashes on the wind, fix what we’ve lost and build ourselves up again.”
“If you’ll permit me to ask, how many lives were lost?” Alira felt wrong even having voiced the question, having already been told, but she wanted to show adequate reverence for the loss.
Dag upended the cup of ale he took from his side table. The little that remained he swirled around in the bottom, trying to muster the courage to tell her. “Let’s say there’ll be a lot of grievin’ being done this evening. The left flank held, the upper quarters were defended... The right flank was annihilated. We managed to pull a lucky few still breathin’ from among the dead, but they aren’t doing well. They might get back on their feet, but they won’t be the same again.”
Alira watched the right flank capitulate from the rear and saw the sea of blackness cut through the Namellian reinforcements sent into the valley. She knew that it was a total loss. Victory to be sure, albeit pyrrhic. It would have felt wrong not to ask.
“I see the old boy has sent up your reserve force at least.” Dag looked at Zahra, desperate to get off the subject of loss. “You think that’ll be enough, lass?” He would have known, as she did, there was no way only five hundred could conceivably reinforce the losses Namelle suffered.
“It’s... it’s all we have.” She swallowed loud enough for Alira to notice the angst stuck in her throat. “To make things worse, he held back the Lucian Company in Namelle. Rygar sent our last five hundred regulars, little more than half of what I hoped for.”
“Does he think you to be dead already? If he withheld some of the best, he must have good reason. He must be-”
“Preparing for Namelle’s defense. Yeah, that’s where his priorities are.” Zahra’s fists clenched at her side. “He never even had the guts to tell the queen that her husband lies dead in the crypt of Tirelle Castle.” Zahra pondered asking her next question, one she already knew the answer to but had to be sure of. “Dag, if you have any soldiers, you can spare...”
“I feared we’d get to that. I have little more than a hundred fighters here. We lost generations of families in that fight. If we don’t have enough to defend our home...”
“Worry on it no more,” Alira interjected. “We haven’t come to reap the rest of your fighters or ask of you the impossible. We only wish to remain in this pass, should Essea come ‘round again.”
“That’s what troubles me. If that battle was a demonstration of Essean ferocity, then it’s only a matter of time ‘til they return.” He might not have known when, but the next incursion would be worse.
“Our allies are spread too thin,” Alira replied. She held back telling him that none could have been called at such short notice. “As such, the only hope we’ll find is in ourselves.”
“If only the old Alliance of Massa still stood, now that would be something,” Dag said, excited and lost in an old memory. “Can you imagine it? Namelle, Khuldir, Shiun, and Reyvia alongside Talliers and Vockla. The power of Nemesia all standing together once again?”
“Too far gone are those bonds of friendship I’m afraid,” Zahra said. “I think it’s best to remain in the here and now, face down what’s in front of us.”
Out in the hall a door flew open, breaking up the conversation. A messenger hurried in, out of breath from having sprinted more than a short distance. “I got somethin’ you’re not going’ta believe Chief. There’s a great stirrin’ from down the gate. If I could speak with you in private for a wee moment.” He turned and bowed to Alira and Zahra.
“Anything you’ve got to say, you can say it in front of our friends. We ‘ave no time for secrets.”
The messenger straightened himself up, a worry was about him. “Three have come from up the pass. Two soldiers with another dressed up far too pretty to fight. Says he’s the envoy of–oh what was his name again? –Artim, the Viscount of Essea.”
