Acacia,War with the Mein

CHAPTER

From Cathgergen several messenger birds of a short-winged northern variety progressed across the Mein in small bites. Each found waypoints that were little more than rock outcroppings amid the sea of ice and snow, low hovels inside which lone men huddled beside wire cages, cooing and stroking the pigeons they tended, long-haired hermits connected to the world of other humans only by the birds themselves. This route was an old one, established long ago and known only to the few living souls that made it function. It worked with surprising dependability. Because of this an avian courier arrived in Tahalian only four days after being dispatched from the mild climes of Acacia, a fraction of what it would have taken a human to travel the same distance.

As the bird landed in one part of Tahalian, folded its wings, curled its trembling feet around its perch, and offered up its burden to yet another handler, the intended recipient of the message rose from a three-legged stool in a sunken arena carved into the fields behind the stronghold, a space called the Calathrock. The structure was the work of hundreds of men over scores of years. Constructed of massive hardwood trunks, the beams of the arena interlocked to arching effect, jointed with iron cuffs, suspended above an area five hundred yards square. It was high and wide enough to host military maneuvers, marching drills, and weapons training. Even full battles were replicated undercover, hidden from prying eyes, protected from the weather. It was a functional monument to a military cause. And also it was a secret pride of a race of people no longer officially permitted either secrets or pride. Grand as it was, on this occasion the Calathrock hosted a contest between just two men.

Hanish Mein stepped to the center of the circle left open for him. He bowed to the man sworn to kill him and nodded that he was ready to begin the Maseret dance. Hanish was of medium stature, slimly formed, in a short skirt and thalba, a garment made of a single sheet of thin, tanned leather that had been wrapped around his torso with the aid of servants, leaving his arms unencumbered. He wore his hair shorter than most men of the Mein, clipped close to the sides and under the rear curve of the skull. Only his braids dropped down to his shoulder, three in total, two of them woven with caribou hide, one with green silk. His features seemed sculpted with the objective of focusing attention on his eyes: wide forehead lined with hair-thin creases, tilted cheekbones, an aquiline nose that was somewhat shallow at the bridge. One of his nostrils bore a tiny scar. His skin had a smooth milkiness to it, nowhere more so than in the flesh just below his lower eyelids. These, when caught in the right light, positively glowed, highlighting the gray orbs above them, giving them a quality that strangers often mistook for dreaminess.

The soldier facing Hanish was taller than the chieftain by a head, a long-limbed man who bore his size well. He was stiffly muscled, with hair the brilliant blond so loved by his race. He wore two braids woven with green silk, indicating that he had danced these steps before and lived to tell of it. He was a well-respected warrior who had sat beside Hanish during the years of slow germination of their plans. He had overseen the training of the secret army under Hanish’s direction. Only now, on the eve of the onslaught, did his ambition drive him to challenge his chieftain.

Arrayed around the two figures in a crescent stood a handful of attendants, officers of the Mein; the chief Maseret instructor; a surgeon; and a ring of Punisari, the special forces here serving as royal bodyguards. Also among them were two hooded priests of the Tunishnevre. One of them waited to spirit the body of whichever dancer was slain into the sacred chamber, so that he might immediately join his ancestors. The other stood prepared to say rites of royalty if the challenger prevailed and therefore stepped in to fill Hanish’s place as chieftain. Haleeven, Hanish’s closest adviser, stood just at the edge of the group. He was a short man by Mein standards, but thick and powerful in a bearlike way, with a prominent, frost-pocked nose and a crimson lace of blood vessels etched across his upper cheeks. He was the young leader’s uncle.

Beyond this inner circle the Calathrock thronged with fighting men. Thousands of soldiers stood armored for battle, their weapons in hand or strapped on their backs, a good ten thousand pairs of blue-gray eyes. Each of them had flaxen hair that almost to a man they wore in the traditional, matted style of Meinish warriors. This was not a particularly unusual event, but it never failed to stir the blood of each and every man fortunate enough to watch. Hanish held his arms up in answer to their calls. He knew why they yelled so loudly, and he wished them to see that he foremost among them believed in the Maseret. A strong people deserved a strong leader, one not afraid to be tested. He asked himself to let slip his love of life, to let slip fear, to let slip desire. He released everything that made lesser men prey to errors so that he might function better and be blessed to remember these things later.

As the two men stepped to within striking distance, they moved in a slow, arcing dance, one stepping toward the other, then retreating, then slipping from side to side. To eyes that did not know the Maseret, the early portion of the dance would have seemed a slow tedium, almost effeminate. First Hanish and then his opponent offered the other a view of his profile, and then took it back. Legs crossed each other. A foot slid forward just a few inches. They rotated from the hips as if the lower and upper portions of their bodies were of different minds. Though neither man made undue show of it, they were each armed with a single weapon, a short dagger sheathed across the abdomen. The narrow blade was about six inches long. It was shaped like a knife for filleting river trout, although of an altogether higher quality of metal.

The chieftain had mastered the well-established moves so completely that a lower portion of his awareness oversaw them. He sought to present a faзade suggestive of tranquil amusement, kept empty of any indication of how or when or where he might strike. At the same time he searched his opponent for any weakness he could exploit. He willed into quickness the highest level of his consciousness. He freed it from the thousand irrelevant details of the world so that he could focus on the few things now important to his survival. His Maseret instructor had once told him to envision two cobras meeting on the jungle floor. They conduct a strange ballet, moving slowly for a time, neither making the least false move. And when it comes, the fatal blow happens in the blink of an eye. Though he had never seen a living cobra, Hanish never forgot this image. He had used it before, and each time his first strike had come as quickly as a spark between two flints, so immediate from conception to action that he realized what he had done only afterward.

The two men made first contact with their palms. They leaned toward each other and met with their necks pressed side by side, chins clamped atop the other’s shoulder, arms and fingers searching for purchase. They circled, pushing from the ankles through the legs and torso, measuring each other’s weight and strength. In terms of pure muscle mass and power Hanish was dwarfed, but within a few moves he knew that the other man favored his right leg. It might have borne an old wound, one that left the limb hesitant when the leg swung free from the knee. The man’s joints moved more smoothly when stepping forward than when retreating. He was not a creature who felt comfortable backing up. Despite his efforts to hide it, this man preferred to strike first. He hungered for the first moment to launch himself, especially a moment at which he would be stepping forward, with his right leg in the lead…

The chieftain broke the embrace, twirled away. With his chin pointing out toward the crowd he drew his dagger. The soldier did the same. Hanish was not surprised when his opponent bunched the muscles of his forward right leg, twisted from the torso, flipped his blade to a backhanded grip, and flung his arm in a sweeping diagonal with the full strength of his body. He had, indeed, hungered to strike first.

Alarm showed on the soldier’s face before he had even completed the motion. The moment came when he should have struck Hanish high on the right breast, but instead he touched nothing at all. Hanish had sunk low enough to avoid the strike. He spun around once, rose to full height, and slammed his dagger into the exposed center of the man’s upper back. He knew by the way the steel sunk in all the way to his balled fist that the blade had slipped between the man’s ribs without sticking in the bone. He angled the blade and yanked it in line with the narrow gap between the bones. He sliced a portion of the heart, through the back of a lung, and pulled the dagger through the dense tissue of the man’s back muscles.

The man dropped. The gathered soldiers erupted in cheers, and a deafening, reverberating cacophony set the snow on the roof vibrating. They chanted Hanish’s name. They beat their fists against their chests. A portion of the army surged forward like a wave rushing toward him, barely held back by the Punisari, who cracked men savagely over the head and jabbed them with the butts of their spears. Even as a child Hanish had had a tremendous effect on his people. They seemed to see in him a resurrection of heroes of old, underscored again by the sudden, deadly precision of his kill.

Hanish closed his eyes and silently asked the ancestors to accept this man for the worthy being that he was. Let him now be a warrior among you, he thought. He whispered inside himself the words he had been taught for such moments. Let his sword be the wind at night and his fist the hammer that pounds the earth to trembling. May his toes in stretching drive the seas before them and his seed fall from the heavens upon fair women’s bellies… Unbidden the man’s name sounded in his head and with it an image of the boy he had once been, a memory of laughter shared between them: these thoughts Hanish pressed back into their place.

Opening his eyes again, he turned to the priests. Both of the holy men reached up and drew their hoods back, revealing heads of ghastly golden hair, most of the strands plucked out so that pale scalp shone beneath. This quieted the soldiers to hushed whispers and sharp calls to silence. “So wills the Tunishnevre,” one of the priests said. He spoke softly, but his voice carried on the energized air. “May you not fail them, my lord, on the next occasion when you are tested.” With that, they bowed from the waist and withdrew, moving in their shuffling slide, their fur-lined slippers skating across the wood as if it were ice.

Hanish raised his arms again to the crowd, who resumed their enthusiasm of a moment before. He moved in near them, reaching out over his guards and grasping men by the arms, punching them playfully, reminding them of the great things to come and of the ageless power of the Tunishnevre. They were strong only together, he said. He was no different than they; they were no less than he. Any man among them could test him to verify the truth of this. No one life mattered unless it was committed to the whole of the Mein nation. In this-as in so many other ways-they were different from their Akaran enemies.

“We Meins live with the past,” he cried. “It breathes around us and cannot be denied. Is this not so?”

The crowd answered that it was so.

“And, in truth, we have done little that shames us. It is the Akarans who rewrite the past to suit them. It is they who wish to forget that Edifus had not one son but three. They cannot name them, but we can. Thalaran, the eldest; Praythos, the youngest, with Tinhadin between them.”

Each of these was met with groans of disgust, with curses and saliva spat at the floor.

“Calm, calm,” Hanish said. He soothed them toward a hush, speaking more softly now so that they had to crane their heads to hear him. “Both of these brothers fought beside Tinhadin to secure and expand their father’s dominion. This they did with Meinish aid. We were their allies. And how were we repaid? I will tell you. Shortly after Edifus’s death Tinhadin murdered his brothers. He butchered their families and all the women and children of the factions that supported them. Then he slaughtered most of the Mein’s royal class when they objected. You know this to be true. We of the Mein, who had been such fast allies of Edifus, were branded as traitors to the realm. But the heart of the dispute was that Hauchmeinish-”

A roar burst from the army at the mention of the ancient’s name.

“Yes,” Hanish continued, “our beloved ancestor abhorred the notion of trading in slaves with the Lothan Aklun. He decried the League of Vessels as pirates and waged war against them. It was for this that we were slaughtered and cursed. It was our ancestors’ nobility and justness that Tinhadin betrayed. It was in punishment for our virtues that we were exiled to this frigid plateau. But that exile will soon be ended, brothers, and you will see freedom with your own eyes!”

Outside the arena, walking through a dim passageway, Haleeven spoke to his nephew. “You do know how to stir the blood. But still, these matches unnerve me, Hanish. They are ill advised, considering the moment we face. I might just as easily have been looking on your corpse.”

“It was imperative,” Hanish replied, “especially considering the moment we face. If I cannot live by the ancestors’ codes, what value does my life have? It is the old ones who bless our bodies in battle, who approve of our skills or reject them. You know this, Haleeven. How else but in this could I be sure the Tunishnevre still blessed me? You surprise me sometimes, Uncle. No one man’s life is important; only the goal is.”

The other man smiled with one side of his mouth. “But each man has his place within the goal. Manleith was no friend of yours. He wanted the glory that will soon be yours, that’s all. He should not have challenged you right now, especially you, the twenty-second generation-”

“I am not the only son of this generation,” Hanish countered. “My role is to lead them by example. That is why I danced with Manleith. He was a friend from my youth. Think of the men in that chamber. Think of how they march now, how they practice for the war to come. Clear-eyed, physically fit, not one of them tainted by the mist. Think of that! Compare our men to the millions in the world who are slaves to deception. If you think I can keep them loyal to me without proving my loyalty to them, you are mistaken.”

With those words Hanish left his uncle to oversee the training. He pushed through the pinewood doors and climbed the stairs out of the Calathrock and up into the open air. A savage wind smacked him with enough force that he had to pause a moment, legs wide, one hand shielding his face from the tiny splinters of ice that peppered his cheeks and eyes. Though he had endured it all of his twenty-nine years, the harshness of the Mein winter never failed to amaze him, especially when stepping out of the massive shelter of the Calathrock or the warmth of the inner hold. It felt as if the winter night was a living, raging creature. The more they entrenched themselves and made life livable on the plateau, the more the snow tried to blanket them from existence; the more the wind sought to push them against the stones of the mountain, the more the cold found ways to enter their defenses. Hanish leaned forward and started the short walk across the frozen ground, the low-huddled mass of shadow that was Tahalian just visible through the storm.

An aide, Arsay, met him inside the hold. He held the tiny scroll out for him to take. “A message from Maeander,” he said. “Thasren has touched Leodan. He walked and slept and ate unnoticed by the enemy, and then came upon him at a banquet and pierced him with an Ilhach blade. The king’s time of idyll has ended.”

Hanish took the note in his fingers but did not read it. He had thought of his brother’s mission every day since Thasren had departed, and yet with the mention of his name he felt a tinge of shame that he had passed even a few hours not thinking of him. Thasren, weeks now alone in a foreign land, the vile treachery that was Acacia all around him, his life daily in a sort of danger very different from the Maseret. Hanish knew that Thasren had always felt himself the lesser sibling. The youngest, the least skilled in war, the farthest away from a claim to his father’s patriarchal lineage. To be a third son among the Mein was not easy. But such a thorn twisting in one’s side can be a boon if it drives one to action. That was what Meinish wisdom said.

“And my brother?”

Arsay averted his eyes at the question and answered in an ancient formula used to indicate an honorable death. “He asks to be praised.”

“He will be,” Hanish said swiftly. He instructed Arsay to call a council of generals in the morning. He said to send two messengers, one into the mountains alerting the army hidden there that the time had come, another to Maeander in Cathgergen, telling him to unleash the Numrek. And he was to rouse the mercenary naval officers so long guests in this ice-bound land. They had drunk enough grog, slept long enough wrapped in what pleasures the Mein could offer. It was time for them to earn their commissions. They were a thousand miles from the sea, but a fleet was ready, yet another secret project long years in construction. It would soon be afloat and pressing forward through a frozen ocean.

“I will meet with them all tomorrow,” Hanish said. “And alert my scribe that I will call on him tomorrow as well. Tonight I sit vigil with the ancestors. They will be anxious to understand Thasren’s fate. I should explain it to them. And I must cleanse myself of my opponent’s blood. It will be a long evening.”

Arsay had bowed his head at the mention of the elders and did not lift it again. As he walked away Hanish read the fear in the tension in the man’s neck and the cant of his head. Though he was critical of it-none should fear their ancestors, even if they were a ghostly embodiment of wrath-he had to acknowledge the tightness in his own throat, the tension high in his upper chest. None should fear the Tunishnevre, but all did. Inside their sacred chamber he felt the pulse of their undead energy as tangibly as he sensed heat or cold on his skin, joy or fear in his heart. They were the old ones of his people, preserved in timeless suspension. Such enmity as they contained within their ancient memory was a chilling thing to face.

He waited alone for some time, gathering strength, feeling the alignment of forces so long out of sync. The twenty-third generation since the Retribution…that’s what he was. If the Tunishnevre were right-and certainly they were-everything in the world was about to change.