Acacia,War with the Mein

CHAPTER

Hanish awoke from his dream conversation with the chancellor with a host of plans to see to. His fleet rode the River Ask until it spat them out into the Inner Sea. Though he longed to turn toward Acacia itself, he knew he must wait for that, take it only in due course. He gathered his remaining vessels near the river’s mouth. They drifted together as they took stock, waiting for stragglers and giving one another what aid they could. He found his army to be in no worse state than he had imagined-even better, perhaps, because his men were champing at the bit, wanting nothing more than to get to land and commence the slaughter. They were a devout people and yearned to prove it by the sword.

Hanish kept them afloat as news flew in to him. There he learned that the first great battle in the war between Hanish Mein and the Akarans involved neither Meinish nor Acacian troops. The Aushenian prince, Igguldan, commanded an army that met the Numrek at Aushenguk Fell. Warriors, farmers, merchants, and priests from every corner of the kingdom gathered on the rocky field to defend their nation. Igguldan fielded an army of nearly thirteen thousand souls. The enemy, on the other hand, did not number more than six thousand.

But in every aspect of their appearance the Numrek were frightening. They were a shouting, raucous horde reminiscent of humanity but grotesquely different as well, utterly baffling to the Aushenians who watched them approach. Their infamous mounts had been shaved of their woolly fur to suit the weather. Patches of fur clung to them in portions; scars from the shears marred their gray flesh in other areas. They looked like diseased creatures, and yet for all the motley look of them they trod with a haughty air, so completely muscled that they seemed to bounce with the spring and pull of their strength.

Beyond this the Numrek put into use a weapon they had thus far not revealed: catapults. They were awkward contraptions that tossed flaming balls half a man’s height tall. When the arms snapped forward the spheres shot out just above the ground, bouncing in great arcs, gouging divots with each impact. The force of them was such that they cut swathes through the Aushenian troops. They flattened men hit head-on, broke apart bodies struck partially, tore heads from shoulders. All of this caught the young prince off guard, as did the flaming orb that carried his torso away, wrapped around the sphere in a fiery embrace. With him flew his nation’s effort at resistance, ended in one mere afternoon. Tragic for him, yes, but music sweet and perfectly timed to Hanish’s ears.

Maeander’s arrival in Candovia was just as effective. As they had planned, Maeander had pounced on clan after clan, coercing them into active rebellion or beating them into submission. They had sown the seeds of this invasion for years now, sending agents among them to ferret out allies and whisper the people into shared discontent. The Candovians were fierce fighters, quick-tempered and proud, not unlike the Meins. They were also fractious and easily exploited. The Acacians had wanted them so, choosing to favor first one clan and then another, fomenting discord among them so that in their bickering they never fixed their animus on their real foe. Maeander had all the skills of persuasion, martial and otherwise, to take advantage of this. He promised via his messenger to bring all of Candovia through the mountains of Senival with him, a force that would treble the number he arrived in their territory with. They might need to be chastened after the war, but for the time being he preferred to think of them as allies.

Even Acacia imploded from within. Hanish had not been sure just how the Mein soldiers serving the Acacians far from home would react to his declaration of war. He had his hopes, yes. Did not every Meinish soldier secretly swear to answer his nation’s call to war, whenever and wherever it might come? Still, he worried that years removed from the homeland might have weakened their resolve. The Tunishnevre never doubted, though. They assured him that their hold on all soldiers of the Mein was as firm as ever. They were correct. Meinish soldiers throughout the empire rose in rebellion as soon as word reached them. They lashed out at enemies they had called companions minutes before.

On Acacia all thirty-three Meinish soldiers in the Acacian regiment and four newly arrived from Alecia drew their swords and cut down half the Acacian officers on the island, easy work for the first few surprised seconds. At Aos a band of five Mein painted their faces red with blood and raged through the town’s weekly market, slaying everyone in their path. Others poisoned the drinking fountains in the resort towns east of Alecia. And a lone soldier stationed at one of the Mainland outposts turned himself into an assassin, killing his superior officers and several local officials in their beds before he was captured. They all sacrificed themselves, for not one of these rebels wished to be taken alive. No doubt the Tunishnevre spurred them on, demanding that they redeem through their deaths the infamy of having served the Akarans.

Only in Talay was the uprising thwarted before it began. Cautionary Acacian orders reached Bocoum at almost the same time as the news of war. Thus the Mein soldiers were thrown into chains before they had thought to take up arms. Unfortunate, but no great matter. All told, Hanish’s people had made him proud. If estimates were to be believed, the revolts reduced the empire’s army by almost a quarter: both in lives they took by the blade and by simply removing themselves from service. The Acacians stumbled from the start, with little in the way of decisive action. So much for a great nation! Just a few weeks after Leodan Akaran’s death triggered this war, the Meinish chieftain had no reason to believe he had been mistaken in beginning it. And he still had his greatest weapon to unleash.

The main contest was to take place on the vast fields stretching from the east of Alecia. The soil there was as yet unplanted in the turmoil of the times. The Acacians mustered what they hoped would be a great army. Their means of transport had been crippled when the League of Vessels sailed their ships away without warning or explanation, but others had come to the empire’s aid with fishing boats and ferries, barges and pleasure yachts, skiffs and dugouts. On land, merchants and traders lent their carts and horses and mules. By these means and by the simple service of their feet, soldiers converged on Alecia. To whose leadership all these forces rallied was not clear. Grandiose declarations issued forth in Prince Aliver Akaran’s name, but the young whelp himself was sequestered away, as suited Hanish.

“How courteous of whomever instructs them,” Haleeven said, “to gather so many into one place so that we can treat with them all at once. Perhaps, in due consideration, we should allow them more time to gather.”

“Courtesy demands it,” Hanish said.

When the Mein forces disembarked a few days’ march from the enemy, they did not proceed toward them immediately. They made a great camp. Once they were as ready as they could be, they relaxed and amused themselves. It was so temperate a climate that men stripped off their garments and felt the touch of the air on portions of their body that had not done so in months. They were ghostly pale, crusted with dead skin, and quick to turn pink under the warmth of the Mainland spring. They held games of physical prowess: foot races and wrestling matches, sword and spear practice, tugging contests wherein the grip of two men served in place of rope. Ten or sometimes more men lifted each of the chosen men and leaned back, their legs straining to unseat the other team before the grip was broken. It was, in many ways, like one of their high-summer festivals, for the weather was as mild as it ever got around Tahalian. Several men even danced the Maseret. They drank wine and beer and cordials procured from the nearby villages. Though at times they became raging drunk, they always awoke more clear-eyed and lively than mist addicts.

These events proved most elevating to morale, and when they did march toward the enemy, song propelled them. Hanish, riding a deep-chested mount next to his uncle, had never felt more central to the workings of the world. Behind him, a sea of men trod the earth, with their legends issuing from their lips, each of them straw haired, most tall and perfect of form, wrapped in tight bands of leather for protection. So many helmets and spear points glinted in the sun, so many pairs of blue-gray eyes. They still wore the bells and chimes the Tunishnevre had demanded, the sound of them a grand music in and of itself. Hanish could scarcely look back at them without flooding with emotion. Nor was his elation any less on first beholding his enemy.

What a host these Acacians had gathered! Forty, fifty thousand, standing on the turned soil like some strange, newly sprouted crop. They were more than three times his number. They were many hued, male and female both, representatives of Acacia’s far-flung and varied subjects. Hanish’s gaze soared above and beyond them to the great wall of stone that stretched north to south from one edge of the world to the other. Alecia was several miles farther in, but behind the Acacian army stood the first barrier thrown up years ago against enemies such as himself. There was an irregular beauty in the wall’s construction, built as it was of blocks of differing sizes and colors. It might have been a rough mosaic without order, and yet there was something about the vast array of hues and quality of stone and size and shape of the blocks that drew the eye from one place to another.

Hanish knew the story of the wall’s creation. Edifus had first ordered it constructed despite the fact that suitable stone was hard to come by in the area. In answer, nation after nation of the myriad peoples suddenly subservient to him had sent emissaries to him, along with them quarried stone and masons to work it. Word of this spread and before long even the farthest flung regions of the empire, even the smallest of tribes, sent an offering of stone and labor to build the wall. Thus the sight before him represented the first, symbolic acceptance of the world order Hanish now fought to overturn.

He could not have said at that moment if the wall was more or less impressive than he imagined. It seemed both at once. He knew that somewhere along it there was a black stone in it, a giant basalt block carved from the base of the mountains near Scatevith. He would know it when he saw it. Hauchmeinish’s name was carved in some corner of it. He would search it out and have masons cut it free. It was not an offering the Mein had ever given freely, and he’d happily reclaim the stone.

It had always been custom for leaders to meet before engaging in battle, to speak face-to-face in the event that their differences could be resolved even at that late stage. Perhaps they had misunderstood each other. Perhaps one side had newfound regrets or misgivings. Hanish did not deny the Acacians this ceremony when they demanded that he parlay.

Haleeven found him sitting on a stool in an area enclosed by four sheet walls strung between upright spears in their new camp. It was what sufficed as a private space for the chieftain, a cubicle for prayer and communion with the Tunishnevre, although in truth Hanish had felt far removed from his ancestors since floating south down the River Ask. He sensed them like a distant scent of food carried to a hungry man on the breeze, but this was nothing compared to the potent immediacy of their presence when in Tahalian. He missed the palpable certainty of them, especially now that he was so close to unleashing hell on earth.

His uncle parted the material with two hands and stepped in. “Are you prepared?”

“I am,” Hanish said, controlling his voice so that there was no uncertainty in it. “I was just listening to that songbird. Have you heard it? It sings in the morning and then again in the evening. Its call is…like crystal shattering. By that I mean it has the purity, the crisp-edged beauty of crystal shattering, but captured in birdsong and let loose in the air. I’ve never heard anything like it.”

“Our birds do not have much to sing about,” Haleeven said.

Hanish was dressed in a fashion much like that for the Maseret. A white thalba wrapped his torso, adding rigidity to his posture. His braids had been pulled back from his face and shoulders and wrapped in a twine of ox leather. He wore his knife-as did Haleeven-sheathed horizontally at his belt. Neither of their thoughts were on the blade, however, nor upon any other standard device of war. Haleeven bore the weapon of the day with him. He carried it pinched between his thumb and fingers, a silver case no larger than a finger.

“Shall I open this?” Haleeven asked. As he received no negative answer, he flipped the tiny latch of the case and cracked it open. He tilted it toward his nephew. Inside, a small swatch of cloth lay framed against the metal. It was a length long, folded over once or twice. It was a rough weave of thick strands, much like the material of a Meinish noble’s robe. There was the faint remainder of a pattern on it, but liquids had crusted into it, making designs of their own. Hanish was a long time in studying it.

“This thing killed my grandfather,” Hanish said.

“Let it now slay your enemy,” Haleeven responded.

Hanish reached out, pinched the fabric between his fingers, and drew it toward his breast. He shoved it under a wrap of his thalba, in the hollow beneath the muscle of his right breast.

“Remember to hold the battle off for two days,” Haleeven said. “Do not forget to arrange it so.”

A short time later Hanish stood before a crescent of dark-eyed Acacians, each of them dressed in their nation’s finery, shades of orange fringed in red, with vests of armor like polished silver fish scales. One of the Acacians began the meeting in a ceremonial manner, calling for the Giver’s presence and invoking names of ancient Acacians. Hanish had no stomach for it.

“Who among you speaks for the Akarans?” he interrupted.

“I do,” a young man said, stepping forward. He was a fine-looking noble with a strong physique and the loose posture of a swordsman. “Hephron Anthalar.”

“Anthalar? So you are not an Akaran? I thought I would meet Aliver Akaran himself today. Why is he not here?”

Hephron seemed uncomfortable with the question, angry with it. He could not help but finger the hilt of his sword. “I have the honor of speaking for-for the king. We have assured him you are not worthy to be in his presence.”

Hanish had expected the prince himself. He had imagined seeing him with his own eyes and placing his touch on the young man with his own fingers. He glanced at Haleeven briefly, such a passing gesture that none would know that the two men communicated with it. Clearly, his uncle thought he should proceed as planned. Perhaps this was fortuitous in a way…

Looking back at Hephron, Hanish tilted his lips with derisive humor. “So, in the place of your cowardly monarch you are here to answer for Akaran sins? What a strange people you are, led by men who don’t even lead.”

“I do not answer for Akaran sins. I’m here to see that you’re punished for yours. Don’t grin at me! I’ll see that grin sewn shut with wire before tomorrow is done.”

Hanish gestured toward his face with his fingers, a motion of innocence that denied the expression on his face was mirthful at all.

Another of the Acacians introduced himself as Relos, the military head of the Acacian forces. He was tall and angular, his short-cropped hair dusted with gray. He spoke for a moment about the military power they had mustered. Hanish was vastly outnumbered, he said, and even this force was only a portion of the army still at the empire’s disposal. “So what have you to offer? You have led us to this moment. Must we do battle, or are you ready to concede and to suffer the consequences?”

“Concede? Oh, no such thought troubles me.”

“I am Carver, of the family Dervan,” another Acacian said. “I led our army against the Candovian Discord a few years ago. I know battle, and I know how our troops perform when tested. You cannot hope to win against us.”

Hanish shrugged. “I assess the situation differently, and you have my declaration of war. Let us do battle two days from this one.”

“Two days?” Hephron asked. He glanced at Relos and around at the other generals. None of them protested.

Hanish shrugged. “Yes, we thought that would suit you. You should not object to that, as your numbers grow daily. I will gain no fresh troops in that time, but I will prepare my men with prayer. You would not deny us that?”

“So be it,” Hephron said. “It will be in two days.” The other Acacians turned to go, but Hephron stood without moving. He held Hanish’s gaze, unwilling to let him go but not sure how to proceed. He finally said, “Leodan was a fine king. You made a disastrous mistake in harming him.”

“Did I?” Hanish stepped a bit closer to Hephron. “Let me explain a thing to you. My ancestor Hauchmeinish was a noble man. He stood for right when your Tinhadin burned with a madness for power. Hauchmeinish spoke in Tinhadin’s ears, as a friend, as a brother might.”

Before Hephron could counter the motion, Hanish pulled the hand from his breast and draped his palm gently over the bones and muscles of the young man’s shoulder. Hephron flinched, coiled and ready. Hanish gestured with his fingers, pursed his lips, and somehow conveyed through the entirety of his body that he was no threat. This proximity, he conveyed, was necessary so that his message be understood.

“Hauchmeinish told Tinhadin he had been possessed by demons. He asked him to see that he had slain his brothers and driven magic from the world and sold everyone into bondage. But your king would have none of this. He turned on Hauchmeinish and cut his head from his shoulders. He cursed his people-my people-and drove us up onto the plateau, where we have lived ever since. What I am telling you is the truth. Hauchmeinish was right. Yours is an evil empire that for all these years has thrived on the suffering of masses of people. I come to end your reign, and-believe me-many will praise me for it. Can you not hear that these things are all true?”

The muscles and tendons of Hephron’s neck stood out as if the bulk of his body was at some great exertion. “No, I do not know them to be true.”

Hanish did not move for a moment. He studied the young man, his gray eyes wistful, sad in the manner of one who recognizes the only way to face tragedy is with humor. “I respect your anger. Believe me, I do. We will face each other soon, but I will try and remember you as I see you now.” He plucked his hand from Hephron’s shoulder blades and swiped it in a quick caress across his jawline. Hephron yanked his chin away, but not before Hanish’s fingers brushed the corner of his lips and glanced across the enamel of his teeth. Hephron nearly drew his sword, but Hanish had already turned his back on him.

“I will slay you myself!” Hephron shouted. “Find me in the battle. If you are man enough!”

The poor child, Hanish thought as he walked away. He has no idea of the power of a touch, no idea what he’s in for.

At dawn two mornings later Hanish walked at the spear point of his troops. They moved across ground laced with mist. The pale, bluish vapor vanished swiftly as the eye of the sun peeped over the horizon and lit the scene of the coming slaughter. There was no army ranked to meet them, as he’d known there would not be. Instead, they walked unopposed across the fields and turned furrows, over the geometric squares that would have been the battlefield. They crossed all of this and trudged without halting up to the edge of the Acacian camp. No one met them, no lines of soldiers, no missiles, no shimmering armor, nothing of the great host they’d all looked upon two days earlier.

Instead, the camp lay in smoldering desolation. The cook fires of the night before had burned out and oozed thin tendrils of smoke. Crows, always attracted by the stench and waste of so many persons gathered together, had alighted in great numbers on the ground and on tent roofs and various objects. Higher up, vultures drew circles in the air, patient and slow and confident. All this had a gloomy aspect, but it was the human forms that defined the horror of the scene.

Around the fires and in the lanes between the tents and across every open space bodies lay squirming in the dirt. So many bodies. Soldiers, camp attendants-any and all of the myriad persons who made the Acacian host what it was. They rolled on the ground. They lay prostrate in writhing intimacy with the earth or stared up at the sky, mouths agape, faces glistening with sweat and contorted with anguish, most of them streaked with ruby blotches the size and shape of tadpoles.

Hanish halted to take it all in. The hush over the camp was eerie, but it was not silence. The air was full of sound. It was just that it was such an unusual, subdued cacophony that it was difficult to make sense of. The Acacians panted and gasped. They moaned and whimpered and sucked on the air with gaping ovals of hunger. They were in the throes of an all-encompassing suffering. Very few of them could see beyond their misery to consider the approaching army. For the most part they did not respond to them at all. Hanish understood their torment well, and at that moment it would have been hard for him to say whether he took joy or shame in having presented it to them.

The Meinish troops could contain themselves no longer. They swarmed past Hanish, swords drawn, spear arms pumping as they ran. The bulk of the Acacians lay like thousands of fish tossed to earth and helpless. This was too much for them to resist. Meinish soldiers moved among them, jabbing them with spears or yanking back their heads to slice their throats. Some took sport in chasing down the Acacians still on their feet, but these were few. Hanish himself spilt no blood. He just walked amid the butchery, observed his men’s blood thirst with coolness in his gray eyes. He put out word that he searched for one particular Acacian, one whom he did not want killed before he spoke to him. A soldier eventually brought him the information he wished for. Hanish found him inside a large, elaborate Acacian tent.

Hephron had made it no more than a few feet from his cot. He was not even fully dressed. He lay with wide, unblinking eyes, wet with moisture that had left myriad tracks across his cheeks. His forehead was marbled with sweat, puddled so that the flies alighting on him did so carefully.

“Oh, Hephron…I really would choose to remember you as you were, not as you are now. I did not fail to note your strength. Nor your anger. I bow to both these things and honor you. That is why I want to explain to you what has happened. You understand none of this, do you?”

Hanish knelt beside him. He shooed the insects into flight. “Do you know the tale of Elenet and his first attempt to create with the Giver’s tongue? When the Giver came for him and found him in the orchard, Elenet was huddled over his newest miscreation. The old tales don’t tell us what this was, but I have come to my own opinion. I believe that the first thing Elenet sought for himself was eternal life. There is no mention of death before Elenet became a Speaker. But he feared that if he had once not existed, he might come to not exist again. So he tried to arm himself against the Giver’s wrath. But in trying to make himself immortal he instead unleashed the diseases that take life. He created illness that day, and we have paid for it ever since. You are paying for it now. You see, that was the problem with humans speaking the Giver’s tongue. They were not gods and never could be. They had not the complete ability to form the words accurately. The corruptions of their mouths and hearts and mistaken intent always twisted the magic toward something foul. It is such a thing that burns within you now.”

Hephron seemed to notice him just then. His eyes moved over toward him. His pupils were dilated to nearly the size of his irises, but something in the frantic intensity of them showed that he was trying to focus on Hanish. There was a tint of red in his sweat now. Hanish found a cloth in a basin beside the bed and dabbed Hephron’s forehead clean with it. Almost instantly the pink stain seeped back up into the creases of his skin.

“Some years back-before I was even born but when my mother lived-my people first made contact with the Numrek and through them with the Lothan Aklun. Those pioneering men all suffered this illness. The first party to return from across the Ice Fields infected nearly all of Tahalian. The whole fortress was racked as you are now. Thousands died. But those that lived, we learned, never got the illness again. Nor did we stay in a contagious state long after mending. At first we kept this illness a secret out of shame; only later, through my father’s genius, did we recognize it as a weapon as well. Your people never knew of it. We never reported our numbers accurately anyway. After the fever we were glad for it. We learned that it was possible to give a taste of the illness pricked on a needle, just enough so that a person once pricked would not succumb to the full wrath of it. Later still we discovered that the spirit of the illness can live on long after fever has passed. The touch I placed on you, young Hephron, came directly from a swatch of a garment my grandfather died in.”

Hanish slipped a hand into the fabric of his thalba-just as he had before touching Hephron two days before-but this time he drew out the square of fabric pinched between his fingers. “This is the thing that defeated you here today. It carries the contagion somehow trapped in it. Impossible to believe, isn’t it? I wouldn’t believe it myself if I hadn’t learned of its truth through suffering. You did not slay me after all, Hephron Anthalar. That possibility was never within your grasp. It is I who have slain you, with nothing more than a touch. Many people, with time, recover from this, but not without days in the throes you now feel and then a period of weakness afterward. So what will happen is this: this fever will travel like a wave through your people. And behind the wave we will come reaping. Be thankful your role in this is concluded. The Akarans’ idyll is over; as it dies a new age begins. Better for you that you do not live to see it. I doubt very much you would like the shape of things to come.”

When Hanish stepped out of the tent a moment later he carried his knife unsheathed in one hand. It was wet with the marbled pattern of blood. All around him his army kept at the butchery. He raised his eyes and looked at the wall of Alecia. He would have to find the Scatevith stone before proceeding past this wall. He would lay his cheek upon it. That is what he must do. He wanted very badly to lay his skin against that stone and have it whisper to him that all of this was as it should be. All of this was just and right. It began before him and would go on after him. He was simply an instrument of a greater purpose.