The Sacred Band

CHAPTER TWO

The Scav met Princess Mena Akaran on a desolate stretch of beach littered with whale bones and dotted with chunks of translucent sea ice. He stood shirtless despite a frigid wind, his scrawny chest exposed and his small, dense muscles pronounced beneath a thin membrane of white-blue skin. His flaxen hair hung limp and matted, plaited in several places with strips of hide. He did not look up as Mena leaped from the landing boat and kicked her way through the froth to the sand. He did not meet her eyes when Gandrel announced her or return the gazes of any of her party. He answered the questions Gandrel put to him in a rough dialect that Mena could not follow at all.

“He says this is where the Numrek came through,” Gandrel translated. He pointed at the man with one thickly ringed hand, while his other hovered near Mena, as if to keep her from stepping too close to him. He was like that, protective, large as a bear and with a jagged scar across his nose as if he had fought on equal terms with clawed creatures. “Where the Mountains Cry the Sea, he calls it. A narrow pass that leads to a route through the mountains.”

Mena glanced up at the sheer black rock that rose from the sand, cracked and fissured, marbled with veins of silver flaring here and there. Clouds hung low enough that the tops disappeared into them. Cascades of frothing water poured through numerous crevices, looking like they were draining the sky itself.

“His people are poets, then,” Mena said. “I wouldn’t have guessed it.”

“Hardly,” Gandrel said. “They just can’t say things right. He says a little south of here the mountains jut into the sea. Unpassable. The only way through is to go inland via this pass and eventually come down through the Ice Fields.”

“Can we believe him?” Mena asked.

Gandrel spoke to the man again, listened to the answer. “He claims his father died here and that many of their clan were killed when they confronted the Numrek. Burned by pitch, butchered.” Gandrel pointed at the man’s chest. “The bones on that necklace are from his father’s right hand. That’s what he says, at least.”

Mena did not look at the bones. An artery pulsed at the base of the man’s neck. Having noticed it, she found it hard to look away.

“They fought them?” Mena’s first officer, Perrin, asked. He stood beside the princess, tall and long limbed, nearly as rangy as a Numrek. He would have been imposing, save his face was so clean lined and pretty it seemed suited for an actor, not a soldier. His brown hair was perpetually tousled. This, too, managed to be endearing.

“So he claims. He comes here sometimes to listen for the ghosts of those who died here. That’s part of how they hunt: they claim the dead guide them.”

“And did he hear ghosts?” Mena asked.

After Gandrel translated the question, the Scav’s gaze lifted and touched her face a moment. His blue eyes might have been attractive were they not embedded in such a pale, weathered visage. He dropped them and mumbled his answer.

“He always kills,” Gandrel said, “because of the ghosts he captured there.” Aside, he added, “That’s why he’s so plump, I guess.”

“Can we believe him?” Mena asked again.

“No reason to do that. We can listen, though. And look. Judge for ourselves.”

“What’s his name?”

“His name is Kant. It doesn’t mean what it sounds like. It’s the name of a bird, one that dives into the swirls along rocky shores.” He tried to demonstrate with the edge of his hand. Gave up halfway through the motion.

“All right,” Mena said. “Tell Kant to show me the pass.”

F or the past fortnight Mena had sailed north aboard the only Acacian warship stationed on the west coast of the Known World. Hadin’s Resolve was paltry compared to the vast array of Ishtat crafts floated by the league, but she had three masts and was deep bellied and armor plated on the prow. She flew the flag of the empire: the black silhouette of an acacia tree across a brilliant yellow sunburst.

A hastily gathered fleet had flanked her, mostly made up of imperial soldiers stationed at bases along the Coastal Towns and of Candovian civilians conscripted for the empire’s protection. The ships were a hodgepodge collection. Some were Acacian naval vessels, but the armada contained Candovian merchant ships, brimming with supplies. A few of the larger fishing boats from the Coastal Towns carried contingents of troops while simultaneously trawling the waters for fish to salt and dry.

North along the Candovian coast, they pushed off the empire’s maps and into frigid waters. They threaded through mountains of ice that jutted from the water, slow-moving floating islands of white and blue and green, some carved into intricate shapes, ghostly to behold and ever changing with the slip of the sun across the sky. Never before had an Acacian army crossed seas like this. They did it on this occasion only because the league and Queen Corinn believed an Auldek army marched to invade them, following the land route the Numrek had stumbled upon during their years of exile.

Mena fought not to think too often of the two beings she loved most in the world. Melio had his own missions. It was better, she knew, that he not be here with her. This was war, not the hunting expedition that chasing the foulthings had been. She needed to make the right decisions. Many of those would send her soldiers to their deaths. Would she be able to do that to Melio? Or would she protect him unfairly? No, he wouldn’t allow that, which might mean he ended up in greater danger. Far better that he serve the empire elsewhere. Far better that she make her decisions without thinking of his crooked smile, the smell of his hair, or the time he held her in their tent on the Teh plains the night after Aliver was killed, or her promise that she would, one day, take his child inside her. What good was thinking of such things-of longing for the past or hoping for the future-when she had a war to fight? Better not to think about him or about Elya.

She had left the bird-lizard in Corinn’s care on Acacia, after a tearful parting that she had ended abruptly. Mena feared she had left Elya with the impression that she was angry with her. Nothing could have been further from the truth, but Mena had pushed her away, loving the kindness of her eyes too much. Mena tried not to think about Elya, lest the thoughts somehow reach her across the miles. This was no place for Elya. War was no task to set her.

Mena’s mood blackened with the passing of sea miles. The air became colder, the wind seemingly trying to shove them back from whence they came. But return was not an option. Queen Corinn had made that clear. Meet the Auldek horde, she had ordered, outside the Known World. Delay them, so that the empire had time to better prepare. Defeat them, if such a thing were possible. And in all this the implicit: be sacrificed for the good of the nation.

G andrel set his hands on his hips, listening as the Scav spoke and gestured. “This is where the Numrek first came through. The tracks from their carts are still deep in the ground, he says.”

They stood about a half mile from the coast on a buttress of rock thrust close to the ceiling of clouds. Below them, the jagged ridgelines on two sides sloped down, leaving a gap that headed toward the heart of the Ice Fields, a swath remarkable for its flatness and for the promise of ease of passage, as it veered off to the east and out of sight.

“They must come this way?” Perrin pressed. “If we invest everything here and then they go elsewhere…”

“Aye,” Gandrel translated Kant’s response. “It’s the only way. The mountains to the north stand like wolves’ fangs. Those to the south he calls Bear Teeth. Only here, between the two ranges, is navigable. He calls it the Breath Between.”

Perrin guffawed. “They’ve got a name like that for everything.”

Mena’s gaze drifted over the bleak landscape, from the sheer heights down to the flat tundra. No doubt about it. This was the place Corinn meant her to hold. This was where her sister wanted the invasion thwarted. Feeling cold to the core, Mena pulled her fur-lined robe tighter around her body.

“I want to go down and check these cart tracks he talks of,” Perrin said. “I can’t believe they’re still there all these years later. Should I send word for the ships to begin unloading camp supplies?”

“Not yet,” Mena said. “Come. Let’s all see these tracks. We should send a scouting party along the pass as well.” She began walking before any of the men had responded.

See the tracks they did. They were there, obvious once Kant pointed them out. The ruts were each a carriage-length wide, cut by massive wheels that had churned up the soil. Even covered with spongy moss and tough grass the slashes were knee-deep. According to the dispatches that chased them with new information from Acacia, the Auldek would come with vehicles with massive wheels like the ones that had scarred the land.

She listened to Perrin’s astonished rambling and Gandrel’s translations of Kant’s tales of how the Scavs had been the first in the Known World to face the monsters. She asked questions and made comments and ruminated on how they might use the terrain to their favor, speculated on where to place troops, set ambushes, where best to join battle. She acted as a royal war leader should, but in truth a question greater than all these details had settled in her mind.

That evening her officers dined with Mena on Hadin’s Resolve. Though cramped and simple by Acacian standards, the dining hall was quite comfortable. The table was one large slab of stained wood, beautifully grained and worked so that the contours of the edge seemed to fit each particular person, with resting places for each forearm and a modest concavity to accommodate expanding waistlines. Spiced pork and grilled vegetables sat on white-gold trays, with small dishes of relishes, pickled whitefish, and bowls of sliced fruit. The dark red wine was the same consumed on Acacia itself. To soldiers new to positions of command it must all have seemed quite grand.

By and large these soldiers were new to her, a very different lot from the Talayans with whom she had hunted the foulthings. Paler men and fewer women than she was used to, blue- and gray-eyed Candovians, some Senivalians, and even a few who might have claimed Meinish identity had that clan not been so defeated and scattered throughout the empire. They all seemed so very young. Few of them had fought against Hanish Mein. All of them wished for glory. They seemed to both relish the danger marching toward them and disbelieve in it.

When they all finally left to return to their vessels, Mena found herself alone with Perrin. They sat opposite each other, reclining in soft chairs near the small stove that heated the room. They sipped a liqueur made from yellow plums. Despite the warmth caged within the metal stove, a chill crept around the edges of the chamber through chinks in the woodwork. The portholes had begun to rim with ice.

Perrin propped his shiny leather boots on a footstool and set a hand on his abdomen, patting his stomach. “I’m going to miss meals like that. No matter how well we think we’ve provisioned, such bounty won’t last long. I had to laugh at how much the troops complained when we didn’t accept the casks of wine the league offered us. They acted like we were spoiling their planned holiday.”

“When the league comes bearing gifts, beware.” Melio had said those exact words before. Saying it herself, she heard his voice.

“Too right, Your Highness. The stuff wouldn’t have lasted long in any event. I know this from experience.”

“You trained on the Mein Plateau.”

Perrin nodded. His shoulder-length hair swayed with the motion. “Two years based in Cathgergen. Rather boring, really, considering that there weren’t actually any Meins to be worrying about anymore.”

“Did you see much of the plateau?”

“It’s mostly much of the same. Snow and trees and ice. Snow and trees and ice. Oh, there’s a mountain!” He feigned surprise. “That sort of thing. I went west as far as Scatevith. Wintered for three months in Hardith. Saw Mein Tahalian in the height of summer.”

“What was it like?”

“You’ve never been?”

Mena shook her head.

“In summer it was a misery of mosquitoes and biting flies. Place was deadly with them-we were bitten and the air was so thick with them, we could not help but breathe them in and choke. It wasn’t the winters that made the Meins so cranky. It was the summer wildlife.”

“Is what they say of Haleeven Mein true?”

“That he camps outside Mein Tahalian? Yes. That he is insane from grief and shame? That, too, perhaps. I think I saw him once, but he was so covered in furs that it was impossible to tell for sure. Not much of a life for a man who could have been chieftain of the Mein. I almost feel for him.”

Perrin drew back his legs to let a nervous servant through to the stove. The boy fed the fire with the thin shavings of hardwood. Watching him, the young officer continued, “Tahalian itself I saw only from outside. It was sealed shut by then. It huddled against the ground, pretending to be dead, waiting for you to come too close. Don’t laugh at me, but I used to dream that the Tahalian you could see-the wood beams and buttresses of it-was the headgear of a buried giant. I woke up sweating in my bedroll more than once to the image of the head rising, eyes opening, and the whole thing clawing up from the tundra. Am I embarrassing myself here?”

Just the opposite, Mena thought. He was diverting, pleasant to look at and to listen to. Rare to find a man so at home in his body, so easy with life and able to talk without self-importance or hidden meanings. Knowing well the conspiratorial world of court life on Acacia, Mena found this apparent naivete refreshing.

“Did you ever see the route from Tahalian to Port Grace?” she asked.

“No. It’s a well-established road, though. The ascent from the coast is gradual, wide. A fortnight’s march, if the weather isn’t troublesome.”

Mena glanced at the portholes again, even more rimmed with delicate lacings of frost now. The wind had picked up, gusting and setting up a sporadic clanking from the rigging. “Let me ask you something. Do you think we’ll survive a winter camped here?”

“Many will die, Princess Mena. Not even the Scav stay out here. Not exposed this way. We could travel inland a bit, find a sheltered spot along the pass, but still… it will be along, hard winter. Ice will lock us in. In a month we’ll be trapped here until the spring. And we’ll need every day of that month to prepare. Each day will be shorter, colder; before long there’ll be little daylight at all. We’ll need to divide our labors quickly. Some building the shelters, some bringing the ships to shore, some hunting and fishing. Kant says there are seal beaches just to the north. We should send as many ships as we can, fill them full of the blubber. We’ll need it.”

“You make it sound like the war is with the winter.”

Perrin looked at his wineglass again, studying it as if the act of doing so would be enough to refill it. “It will be. The other officers can think about slaying Auldek. I almost wish the Auldek would hurry up and get here so we could have this fight. Who knows? Maybe they will, but I’d wager we’re in for a wait.” He paused a moment, drained his glass, then rolled the stem between his fingers. “It’s what’s been ordered, though. The queen’s command. So we’ll do it.”

“You don’t think we should?”

“I won’t say a word against the queen’s wishes. I understand completely how the situation would look from Acacia. She’s right, of course. If we could stop the Auldek here… Even if we just weaken them, delay them, the empire could be that much better prepared to meet them if they ever stumble out of the Ice Fields. No, I see the advantage of this move very well. It’s just… we won’t be the ones that reap that benefit.”

Mena dropped her eyes when his met hers. “Good night, Perrin.”

T he next morning Mena met with her officers on the northern ridge along the pass and traversed its spine as it snaked inland. It afforded an even better view of the mountains stretching off to the north and the curve of the coastline as it vanished into the distant mist. Perrin and Edell, the Marah captain Bledas, and the Senivalian Perceven represented the military units at her command. Daley, the captain of Hadin’s Resolve and several others attended on the naval side. Gandrel was there for his knowledge of the Scav.

The princess waited as the men gathered around her, all of them taking in the view, desolate yet strangely beautiful to behold.

“Look,” Perceven said, “a chase.”

On a sloping stretch of rock-strewn tundra below them, two figures moved. They were tiny amid the vastness of the valleys and mountains, but their motion was easy to follow. A white hare leaped in a crazy, jolting, zagging line. Behind it a snow cat bounded.

Mena kept her eyes on the hunt but said loudly enough that all the men could hear, “We will die here.” None disputed it. They looked at her, at one another, then back to the pursuit that held Mena’s gaze. “The Auldek will arrive to find an army of ice sculptures waiting them.”

Gandrel said, “True. Or they’ll find us cut to pieces by the Scav. There are more of them around here, I tell you. Even if they’re hard to spot. I wouldn’t put anything past them. Not even jolly young Kant here.” Kant watched the hunt and made no sign that he heard or understood.

“There are too many ways our deaths here might be for naught,” Mena said. “If I knew what was coming-when and how-that would be one thing. But for all we know the Auldek might arrive six months from now. Or they may take a different route. Or they might never arrive. Considering all this, I cannot have us winter here.”

The snow cat slapped at the hare’s hind leg. For a moment the prey seemed frozen, its body tilted as it floated above the tundra. Then it landed hard. The cat fell upon it and the two rolled into one ball of motion. When they stopped, the cat had its jaws around the hare’s neck, patient now as it suffocated its prey.

Mena looked away, as unsatisfied with the outcome as she had been watching the pursuit. “That’s my decision,” she said.

“But the queen…” Perrin began.

“We leave here immediately,” Mena said. “Sail to Port Grace. From there we march inland to Tahalian. We’ll winter in the fortress and adjust to whatever challenges the thaw brings with it. Go and see to it.”

T he next afternoon Mena sent a ship south to alert the small settlement of Port Grace that they would soon be inundated with a passing army. On it she also sent a note to be flown by messenger bird, once they were far enough south to ensure the bird would know the landmarks. She had spent the previous night composing a long missive to explain the situation in all its complexity. In the morning, she ripped it to pieces. Instead the message she sent was terser.

Queen Corinn,

The plan to meet the enemy in the far north is untenable. I am moving the army to Mein Tahalian. We will winter there, training.

With your permission, I will lift Haleeven Mein’s exile and ask for his aid…