Acacia,War with the Mein

CHAPTER

Hanish had not enjoyed his last parting with Corinn. He’d looked her square in the face as he took his leave, unsure of how she would respond, prepared for a petulant show of emotion. Perhaps he even craved some such outpouring. Instead, she had been strangely reserved. She had not protested his leaving to meet Haleeven and the caravan transporting the Tunishnevre. Nor had she asked to come with him, which he’d anticipated. Though she wished him success and speed, her lips had no vigor during their final kisses. She had not pressed her body to his as she usually did. She gave him nothing but polite indifference. He half wondered if she’d started to tire of him already, but it was a silly thought that he brushed aside. The truth, he thought, was simply that she’d grown more adept at hiding her feelings, more like a Meinish woman.

As he sailed from the island toward Aos he convinced himself of this. She had been full of emotion she wished to hide, he decided: a trembling at the edges of her lips, an intensity in her eyes, something betrayed by the annoyed way she flicked at a lock of hair that fell over her forehead. Yes, it was all there. He could not pin it down in exact terms, but she was not so different from the fragile girl who’d experienced the loss of her family. She’d been abandoned and the shadow of it hung over her still. She did not like parting, though she’d tried stoically not to betray this. Ironic, he thought, considering that it was his return she needed to fear.

He also suspected she had heard about Aliver’s emergence in Talay. Perhaps she’d even heard rumors that Mena and Dariel were alive as well. He wasn’t sure how that would affect her. In truth, he struggled with the news himself. How was it possible that all the search parties over the years had not found them? Why had nobody betrayed them for the riches he would have gladly paid them? It had been a lasting frustration, and now it was an untimely annoyance. At least he had Maeander to rely upon. He and his love of mayhem, with his weapons of war and those warped creatures he was so enthusiastic about: he would take care of the Akarans.

Having ordered this in his mind, he did his best to box away any emotions he had for Corinn. He had ordered the Punisari to shadow her closely. He drew out clear boundaries beyond which she was not allowed to pass. The guards were not to make this obvious to her, of course. Let her feel as free as she pleased, but keep her caged within the safety of the palace. That was all she needed to do to be in place to fulfill her role. If none of the other Akarans could be made to stand in her place, Corinn would have to die upon the altar to release his ancestors. This would grieve him, yes, but he would reckon with that later. He was strong enough, full enough of purpose, that he could and would do what was necessary.

That was the purpose of this trip, after all. He was going to help Haleeven bear the Tunishnevre on the last leg of their journey to Acacia, to the chamber he had built especially for them. There was no greater responsibility now. There never had been and never would be after this work was complete. Even the pending war with Aliver and his growing hordes did not compare. Maeander was more than capable of handling that. He trusted his brother’s martial skills completely. Success in defeating Aliver was of crucial importance, certainly. That was why he had given Maeander leave to use all the resources he needed, including unveiling the antoks, creatures never used in battle in the Known World. But still, a poor outcome on the fields of Talay would not decide this contest. Releasing the Tunishnevre would.

He disembarked at Aos and walked up from the docks without pausing to take in the resplendent grandeur of the place. Under Acacian rule, the port town had been developed as a prosperous settlement. But that was before the war. Now a handful of Meinish nobles and quite a few elite Punisari resided here, ensconced in wealth and beauty unimagined back when they had huddled against the cold in Tahalian. Perhaps the memory of that was what kept Hanish moving without raising his eyes. His people had come so far, but they’d yet to transform themselves into a true imperial nation. They were still, in many ways, occupiers parading in the skins of those they’d conquered, adorned with their trappings. He hoped to change that soon with the aid of his liberated ancestors.

Fresh horses awaited him and his contingent of Punisari. They mounted and rode away from the city without pause, ignoring the magistrates waiting to greet them. For two days they rode through the patchwork of farmland that provided the empire so much of its food resources. They camped simply each night, not even erecting tents, as the summer weather was so fair, the skies so very blue and cloudless. On the third and fourth days they cut through the rolling grass country, riding past flocks of sheep and cattle tended by young men and women who stared at the Meins as if they were wolves in disguise.

It amazed Hanish-as it still always did-to ramble across the great expanse of riches he now controlled. It was all his, he reminded himself. All rightfully his and his people’s. The world belonged to those bold enough to take it, and who had ever been bolder than he?

That night, camped at the edge of the Eilavan Woodlands, Hanish pondered this question at some length. He searched in the generations of Meinish warriors for any whom he considered his equal. He had once viewed them all with awe, but now, as he ticked them off one by one, he found each of them lacking in one way or another. Only Hauchmeinish seemed a man of undeniable greatness. The times had been so tumultuous that Hauchmeinish was born into war and lived his entire life in the center of a whirlwind. He had certainly been a fierce fighter, a gifted leader upon whom fell great trials to test his mettle. Who else could have led the Meins as they had marched, desolate and beaten, into a frigid exile meant to destroy them? Hauchmeinish had made sure they persevered, but in the end his was a story of defeat. What would Hanish say to him when he looked him in the face? Should he bow before such an ancestor? Or should he bend his knee before him?

Hanish knew what they would expect: him with head bowed to them, humble, grateful. They had always spoken to him in whispers that said he was nothing without them. He was simply the product of their labors. All his achievements were owned by the collective. No single man mattered compared to the force they embodied together. He had lived his life by just this credo, and it had not failed him. So why did his mind seem to buck against his old certainties now, when he was so close to finishing his work?

It troubled him to realize that it was Acacian heroes he most respected. Edifus might have been his equal. Tinhadin surely was. Had he warred with them, he was not at all sure that he would have prevailed. Edifus had fought so doggedly, without flagging, scrapping with any and all who stood against him. He had not been a man of guile or cunning, but he had fought in the front ranks of every major battle of his career. Tinhadin had been a different sort, all treachery and betrayal, a model for cutthroat duplicity, a man willing to embrace the horrors of a vision so broad few others would even have conceived it. It struck Hanish that he had learned from these founders of Acacia. In a way, he revered them, even though they had been his people’s greatest foes. He fell asleep wrapped around the comforting-and disappointing-thought that there were no men such as those two to face him now.

Later, his eyes snapped open on the creamy splash of stars painted on the night sky. He cast around a moment, his senses screaming alertness throughout his body. He spotted the guards standing at eight points around him and others sleeping on the ground, the horses nearby. Everything quiet, just as peaceful as when he had drifted off, the air filled with cricket calls. It was not anything happening around him that had woken him. He had been dreaming of an Akaran female, a woman who looked exactly like Corinn. But she was not Corinn, and it had not been an amorous encounter. It had to have been…Mena. Sword-wielding Mena. A wrathful goddess: that was how she had described herself in the dream. She had raised her weapon to show it to him. The blade was drenched in blood. It dripped the stuff as if the metal were a spring of red liquid. It was the sight of that weapon and her woman’s hands on the hilt that had thrust him up from slumber. But why dream of her? Wasn’t Aliver the one leading the rebellion? Why awake fearing someone who in daylight hours he still considered a girl?

He knew little of Mena except that she had killed Larken with his own sword, slain several Punisari afterward, and stirred the crew into revolt. The last part was probably the easiest. It was an unfortunate reality of imperial life that each Mein had to depend upon a host of conquered peoples to keep the world functioning, to man ships and cook meals and build roads. Still, it should not have been possible for petite Mena to so completely elude them.

Hanish decided that if the opportunity presented itself, he would sacrifice Mena during the ceremony. Better to have her out of the way. Perhaps Corinn would even manage to forgive him. Perhaps at the end of it all they could have a life together. Hanish rolled to one side, feeling the contours of the ground beneath him. He shut his eyes and tried to sleep and tried not to think of Corinn. He achieved neither.

The next day, sitting on a rise that provided a view of the winding path of the road through the Eilavan Woodlands, Hanish caught sight of the approaching caravan. Cavalry rode in the fore and off through the woods along the flanks. Then followed units of Punisari, marching in tight formation, hemmed in by the narrow lane. Beyond them stretched a snaking length of wagons and laborers and priests, ox-drawn contraptions loaded with hundreds of sarcophagi. In each, Hanish knew, resided one of his ancestors. He heard the crack of the drivers’ whips carried to him on the breeze. It was actually happening, he thought. It was really going to happen.

Riding closer, through the cavalry and foot soldiers and on toward the body of the procession, he could not imagine how they had managed to traverse the rutted, abused, and sodden tundra of the Mein Plateau. In summer it would have been a jolting journey through a fetid landscape of bog land spread thinly over a rocky underlayer, with so many opportunities to tip to either side and spill their loads, such mires to get stuck in. Perhaps they would not have been able to do it at all without the aid of Numrek technology. It was they who had taught the Meins how to make wagons of such size, with those enormous wheels and with flexible undercarriages that did not snap under pressure. Still, the thought of these great contraptions negotiating the steep, switchback trail down from the Rim set tingles of trepidation through him. He would have to question Haleeven about it later, after thanking him, congratulating him. It was a feat he would have a poet write a ballad about.

Hanish’s uncle grinned like a madman when he saw his nephew. The two men greeted each other by crashing their heads together. Forehead impacted against forehead. They pressed skin to skin, each with their hands wrapped around the other’s skull. It was an old greeting, reserved for close relatives and for times of great emotion. It was meant to hurt. But the pain of it was nothing compared to the impact of Haleeven’s appearance. Hanish had never seen a man so haggard, save the beggars that roamed the back alleys of Alecia: unkempt of clothes, speckled with grime, lips chapped from his tongue that darted, darted, darted out to moisten them. His eyes hid behind low-hanging brows, and the skin of his face sagged, as if the tissue itself had been fatigued by the recent weeks’ work. His hair was shockingly white. Hanish tried to remember if it had been so before, even a little. He did not think so. It stood up from his scalp as if each hair were a tendril of silver thread frozen by an icy breeze.

Pulling back from him, Hanish said, “You look well.”

The lie was out of his mouth before he realized it. Haleeven let him know what he thought of it with a frown but was merry again the next moment. “No, you look well. I-I’m not so well. This is some mission you sent me on, Nephew. Some task…”

“But you’ve done it.”

Haleeven studied him a moment, then nodded. “Come, let me show you everything.”

At Haleeven’s side, Hanish visited each of the ancestors. He climbed upon the great wagons, touching the sarcophagi with his hands, whispering his greetings, invoking old prayers of praise. He felt the life within the containers palpably. They pulsed with an undeniable, ferocious energy. It lashed at the world in muted silence, as if each of them were screaming bloody murder inside a sound- and motion-proof chamber. Hanish noted the fatigue and unease in the laborers’ every gesture. They were hollow eyed with fear, wrung more by the emotional toll of their duties than by the physical labor. Even the oxen, usually calm creatures, were skittish and needed to be tightly controlled.

Haleeven’s description of the journey was a long tale of hardship and setbacks, told through the afternoon and continued that evening over supper in camp. When he was finished, the two men sat in silence, the night settling around them. Hanish could not see the stars for the trees blocking them, the undersides of the foliage glowing with firelight. Haleeven lit a pipe full of hemp leaf and drew on it, a habit Hanish had not known he had taken to. He almost said something disparaging. But it wasn’t as if Haleeven were smoking mist. Perhaps he’d earned a vice. Hanish had just begun to think of Corinn again, when his uncle broke the silence.

“They are so impatient,” Haleeven said.

Hanish didn’t need to ask whom he meant. “I know.”

“They are angry.”

“I know. I’ve made-”

The uncle snapped forward from his reclined position, shot out a hand, and grabbed his nephew by the wrist. He waited until Hanish met his eyes and then pegged them to his with a burning intensity. “You don’t know! You haven’t felt them like I have these many days. They’re fully awake now. They seethe with animus. They want revenge so badly they tremble with the nearness of it. I fear them, Hanish. I fear them like I’ve never feared anything on earth.”

Hanish pulled his wrist away, slowly but with a twist that broke the man’s grip. He spoke with the conviction he knew he should feel, trying to believe his own words. “Their anger is not directed at you, Uncle. We have nothing to fear from our own.”

“That’s what they have always told us,” Haleeven said. “What have you told the princess?”

“About what will happen to the Tunishnevre? I told her that she could help me release them. A drop of her blood, I said, and her blessing was all we needed to break the curse. She has not offered to give it, though. And I haven’t pressed her. She thinks I can do it without her blessing.”

“You can,” Haleeven said. “And did you tell her what breaking the curse means? Or that there are two different ways to do it, each with a very different outcome?”

“I said that it would free the ancestors so that they could escape to true death and finally rest. I said they just wanted peace and release.”

“That’s all you told her?”

Hanish nodded.

Haleeven was quiet a moment, and then he said, “So by omission you lied to her.”

“Yes, I did. She believes the ancestors want peace, when in fact what they truly want is to walk the earth again-”

“With swords drawn-”

“Wreaking bloody vengeance.”

The two sat for a time after this, nothing more to say now that they had shared what they both knew and had known all along. Hanish extended his hand and motioned for the pipe. Haleeven turned it and slipped it into his hands.