The Sacred Band

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

It all went horribly wrong, and it was her fault. Mena knew it was. She should not have slept. How stupid of her to think she could sleep through a night while others risked their lives. At Perrin’s urging, she had left the task of receiving the incoming slave deserters to him. “Greet them in the morning, personally, with all the sincerity of feeling you want,” he had said, “but get some rest first.” He reasoned that Rialus Neptos had crossed back and forth three times. Surely these slaves-who were cunning if Fingel was anything to judge by-could manage it as well.

Thinking this made it easier for Mena to acquiesce. Sleep she did, harder and longer than she intended. And dream she did as well: of being held tight by Perrin. He clung to her and sought to kiss her mouth. She would not let him. Instead, she placed her lips against his closed eyes. She felt the feather touches of his eyelashes, and there was something wonderful about the ripe curve of his eyeball. That, in her dream state, was permitted. Nothing else.

When she woke to the flute notes that announced the predawn hour, Mena felt in the pit of her stomach that something had gone wrong. She should not have slept so deeply. She should not have dreamed the things she had. Melio’s eyes were the only ones she had kissed that way-and that was how it ever should be. The fact that she had slept and dreamed prompted her to kick off her blankets and dress hurriedly.

Perrin collided with her as she came out of her tent. It was dark yet and windy. He was hooded and mittened. She knew him by his stature, though, and his shape.

“What happened?”

“We don’t know, Princess. I mean… nothing happened. They didn’t come. We even had lookouts posted out beyond the barricade. They saw nothing, until just now. Come and see.”

Standing atop a sled with her officers, just behind the barricade of wooden spikes, sleds, and other supplies that served as their makeshift protective wall, Mena peered toward the Auldek camp. A barren, rocky expanse separated the two armies, but through a spyglass she could see the enemy’s stations steaming in the distance. Something was happening over there. Torches lit the area in front of their camp. In the crimson light Mena could make out shapes moving, structures being shifted, construction work, it seemed, but even through her spyglass she could not figure out what they were building.

“Do you think the deserters were discovered?” Perrin asked.

Mena inhaled, the night air so cold it froze the hair in her nostrils. “Perhaps, but there’s something more going on.”

A n hour later the light of dawn, as it finally began to creep in fits and starts across the frozen land’s contours, gave her a better idea of what. The structures they had built took on a familiar shape. Simple, solid, tall, and long necked, they reminded Mena of foulthings made of stout wooden beams. “Catapults.” She pulled the spyglass from her eye and offered it to Perrin. “They’ve erected catapults. Big ones.”

“About time,” Gandrel said. To spite the cold, as he liked to put it, he stood with his hood thrown back, sniffing defiantly to keep his scarred nose from dripping. “I’ve found these Auldek a bit slow on the uptake, is what I mean. If you’d been on their side, Mena, you’d’ve finished us by now.”

“Let’s hope they’re not thinking that way.” Mena took the spyglass back and lifted it.

“But catapults?” Edell asked. He took off his gloves and tried to rub warmth into his cheeks. “We’re not exactly a fortress here. What are they going to…”

Through the distorted, circular clarity of the spyglass’ view, Mena saw the arm of one of the catapults lever forward abruptly. It looked odd, the silent jerk of motion so far away. “They’ve shot,” she said. The object that surged up from it seemed to come apart as it rose. It broke into pieces that fanned out. She lost sight of them, pulled away the spyglass, and watched like the others, with her naked eyes.

“What are those?” Perrin asked.

Mena realized the answer just before they hit the hard earth. Something in the way each projectile somersaulted and contorted in the air, many limbed and limp as the dead… for they were the dead. Bodies. Naked bodies. They hit the ground about a hundred paces out, smacking down with sickening thuds. All that long arc of motion ended in an instant. Some of them split apart and sprayed red mist into the air. Most just landed. The sounds of the impacts followed one another in a quick, dull staccato.

“The deserters were found out,” Edell said.

“And this is their punishment?” Perrin asked. “Monsters. They’re monsters!” He whispered it first, and then he shouted it. As if in answer, a second rain of falling forms crashed down. Again the staccato of thuds.

A scream yanked Mena around.

Fingel. The woman stood a little distance away, with Rialus beside her. She dropped to her knees, pointing with one arm at the thing they had all already seen. She emitted a sound from somewhere in the tormented center of her. It carried a misleadingly rising tenor, as if she were about to scream or moan, but kept having the foundation of it pulled from under her.

A third catapult hurled its grisly load, ten or so bodies.

“Why are they doing this?” Perrin asked.

The first catapult launched again.

Rialus’s voice answered. “They’re sending us a message.”

The second catapult snapped forward again.

“What message?”

Mena answered, “They would rather be without servants than be betrayed by them.”

The Auldek kept it up throughout the day, building scattered piles of hundreds and hundreds of broken, exploded, naked bodies. A battlefield’s worth of carnage lofted through the air as a sickening gift. It was as Rialus said: a statement, not an attack.

T he attack came that night.

Lookouts sounded the alarm when the Auldek were still out beyond the piles of corpses, riding in atop antoks. Mena-awake this time-jumped out of her cot fully clothed, snatching up the King’s Trust. Hearing the alarm horns, the Auldek responded as well. They discarded stealth. They spurred the beasts forward. As Mena reached the barricade, the antoks rushed toward them, bellowing. They plowed through the bodies. They sent the white bears that had come to feast on the frozen meat running, roaring their anger as they did so.

Perceven shouted for archers to man the barricade. Perrin directed the foot soldiers into ranks. Bledas sprinted past, his sword drawn, rallying the confused and groggy. Mena connected with Elya, telling her to stay put, sheltered and hidden.

When the attackers were just a few hundred yards out, the catapults, still in front of their encampment, lobbed balls of flaming pitch instead of bodies. The orbs hurtled upward like shooting stars, bent with the earth’s pull, and then plummeted. The catapults this time had been calibrated to send their missiles farther. The first one hit near enough to Mena that the impact knocked her from her feet. The impact area became an instant inferno.

Fly, Elya, Mena thought, hoping the bombardment at least meant the freketes had been held back. Get high and stay safe. Out loud, she shouted, “Ignore them. Ignore the fireballs. Distractions! You can’t run from them, so forget them. Look at what else comes!”

Once into the crimson highlights of the fire’s glow, the antok riders pulled up their mounts. The beasts halted, churning the turf with their hooves, raking their heads about, impatient for the living blood on the other side of the barricade. The Auldek clinging to them began to leap off. They hit the frozen ground and came up, drawing their weapons. They proceeded forward, leaving the mounts fuming. In their arrogance, Mena realized, the Auldek wanted to do the killing themselves. As far as they were concerned, they did not need the monsters to do it for them.

They were just as tall and fierce as ever, long limbed and fast. They wore dark body suits that covered them entirely, with hoods over their heads, but no obvious armor on them, none of the encumbering bulk of her own troops’ thick layers. The Auldek batted away the arrows that hit them as if they were troublesome insects. Even the arrows that struck them in the chest did not stick. Mena saw a heart shot knock an Auldek back. It caused a hitch in his step, but did little more than that. The arrow hung there until he ripped it away. It had not penetrated at all. It had just caught on his clothing.

“Aim for their faces!” Mena yelled to the archers around her, and then stood on her toes and passed the order over to Perceven on one side and Bledas on the other. “Everyone, aim for their faces!”

Another fireball exploded nearby, flinging out a molten wave of pitch. A man near her got splashed with the stuff, one arm so drenched that it liquefied while he was still on his feet. Other pitch balls landed with powerful whoomps, followed by the horrible splatter of flying liquid and the screams of the burning. They fell everywhere, igniting tents and supplies. The animals worked themselves into a grunting, squealing frenzy. The air, a moment ago ice pure and gelid, filled with the stench of burning pitch, flesh and hair and wood and fabric.

The Auldek reached the Acacians’ barricade. The wall, put up and taken down hastily each time they moved their camp, was more a visual gesture than a true fortification. A delay and a nuisance, although for the Auldek it was barely even that. They leaped over it, chopped into it, shoved their way through it. Mena was right there in the front of her troops, yelling for them to attack them as the Auldek came through, while they were encumbered. She hacked at the arm of an Auldek whose feet were caught in a crosshatch of timbers. The man yowled, but the arm did not get sliced through, as she envisioned. She struck again, on his helmet, shoulder, slashing up in the hopes of reaching his face. None of the blows bit. She hacked down on his shoulder with enough force to sever it. In response he buckled beneath the blow for a moment, then surged upright, spouting what must have been Auldek curses.

He was through-and others were through. Instant chaos, at a frantic level immediately different from just moments before. Her troops behind her surged forward. They became a squirming, struggling press of bodies into which the Auldek cut bloody paths. Mena got shoved away from the Auldek she had been fighting, and had to watch as he waded into the soldiers next to her. Slashing and shouting, the sound of metal striking metal, shouts of agony and rage and fear, guttural Auldek punching its way through their Acacian. For a time the battle was such utter confusion that Mena had no control over anything. She struck at any Auldek she neared, but she was too hemmed in. Her own soldiers pushed her into the jumble of the barricade so that she struggled even to stay upright. This burned away any trace of fear and left her red hot with anger.

Seeing an opening, she dove for it. With the King’s Trust clenched in her sword hand, she scrambled on all fours beneath a lattice of wooden beams, along an overturned sled, and then over another into the clear. Outside the camp now, she ran along the barricade, trying to work out what they should do. The Auldek had all passed through already, which meant there were not so many of them. Only Auldek, and only a small group of them. She had the sickening thought that they must have drawn lots or something to win the privilege of this slaughter.

Think, Mena!

They had taken control of the moment, but was fight and die all that she could respond with? She would not accept that. She found a clearer section of the barricade, climbed on a wagon, and got a view. The Auldek rampaged through the camp. They did not stick to any formation, but ran where they pleased, swinging their massive swords and axes with a blurred rapidity that horrified her. They looked like dancers working through a practiced choreography, except that they were slicing off limbs and sending arcs of blood into the air with every move. Another sickening thought: that this might be the night the war ends for her and her army. Had they done enough? Had they delayed and hurt them enough for Corinn and Aliver to be able to defeat them?

Think!

She was just about to call Elya to her when she saw Perrin and another soldier fighting with an Auldek. The monster bore down on them, stepping through the bodies he had already cut down. He slashed and spun. He tossed his sword from one hand to the other and slashed and spun again.

A game, Mena thought. It’s a game to him.

It was not a game to Perrin and the young soldier. They barely managed to fend off the Auldek’s blows. They kept trying to round the brute, but the Auldek herded them, kept them backing. Perrin tripped once and only avoided getting cut in half because he rolled away, then gained his feet again. In the blurred moment that followed, the young soldier went down. Mena did not see how, but his body fell to the ground, twisted without dignity in a way that only the dead permit. The Auldek celebrated by pumping his fist in the air.

Something in the gesture shot Mena through with recognition. The warrior she thought to be an Auldek-dressed as they were, of the same stature and seemingly just as deadly-was actually a Numrek. Calrach! Mena could not leap down from the wagon fast enough.

She reached Perrin at a sprint, just as he managed to get off an attack. He swung high. Calrach blocked likewise. Mena came around her officer, holding her sword in two hands at midheight, her left shoulder so near him that she touched his hip. The King’s Trust hissed around her and landed exactly where she wanted it, with the full energy of her swing. She expected it to slice into the Numrek’s side as far as his spine. Then she would have kicked him with her left foot as she yanked back on the blade, carving it to the side as she did so to maximize the damage. She would have fallen against Perrin and the two of them would have danced back as Calrach followed his guts in their spill to the earth. She saw all this in the rapid screen of her mind’s eye. She had seen such visions a thousand times in battle, always able to shape her rage sight so that the reality of it followed. Not so this time.

The sword kicked back against her, torquing her wrists so badly she nearly lost her grip. Damn their armor! Mena thought. I keep forgetting it.

Calrach stumbled back, clutching his side and cursing in a guttural barrage. He frowned at Mena and then grimaced whatever pain the blow had caused into hiding. His sharp features contorted for a moment, then settled. Composed again, Calrach twinned his tongue around Acacian words as if he only wanted to release them after he had strangled them. “Ah, the princess comes to this boy’s rescue? Do you hold his thing for him when he pees? I think he would like that.”

“I’ll happily hold yours,” Mena said, “before I slice it off.”

Calrach’s mouth cracked open, full of mirth and large, even teeth. “None of that, little girl. I have too many uses for my manhood. I have sons to make. Many sons to make. When they are still but babes I will tell them how I killed Princess Mena Akaran with a naked blade. They will like the tale. I know it.”

“You’d be dead already if you weren’t dressed in that suit,” Mena said. “What sort of thing is that for Numrek to wear? I thought you were warriors not afraid to die.”

“Warriors enjoy slaughter. Warriors bring pain to others. Warriors find a war. I have done this. All this I will do, and bring joy to myself.”

“Fine. Please yourself.”

Calrach plucked the devil’s forks from his belt, a short, three-pronged metal weapon. Mena knew the weapons from her practice of the Third Form. Calrach was no Bethenri, though, and the King’s Trust no normal sword. He stepped forward, brushing back black hair as long and flowing as any Mein’s. He gestured casually that he would fight them both at once.

Mena could feel Elya in the air above her, watching, begging to come to her, but she held her back. “I killed Greduc, you know.”

“I have heard this but don’t believe it.”

“I enjoyed it. He and the other Numrek cried like girls.”

“I don’t think so. But anyway, that doesn’t matter. You killed Greduc, but I am not him. I’m Calrach. Calrraaacccchhhhh!” He bellowed the name, then added in a softer, matter-of-fact voice, “Come, let’s fight.”

Mena and Perrin moved without speaking. They circled to opposite sides of the giant. Calrach turned sideways to them, offering a weapon to each. The princess attacked first. She snapped her sword out. It was a quick motion, intended to catch him off guard, but her blade had hardly moved before he caught it with his devil’s forks. He twisted his wrist, pinching her blade between one of the tines and the main stem. He made it look casual, but Mena could feel the strength of his forearm. He released the tension a moment and slid the fork up her blade, testing it even as he looked the other way and parried Perrin’s flurry of swordplay.

Savagely, Mena yanked the King’s Trust free. She hated the touch of those metal fingers on her sword. She came in again. Calrach called out as he blocked her and Perrin, as he shifted and dodged, high and then low. He spoke Auldek, sounding like he was praising them or teasing them, commenting on their technique like an adult taunting a child. It was infuriating, but he was too fast, too aware of what she or Perrin was going to try next. Mena varied her attacks. She searched for weaknesses. She fought against her instincts and did things surprising even to her. None of it worked, save to amuse the warrior. So frustrated, she forgot that she and Perrin were still living along with him, fighting him-though it took two of them-a draw.

A glob of pitch landed near them. It broke their dance as they all jumped back. Its mother whoomped down a second later, far enough away that they were safe from the splash. The Numrek stepped over the edge of the flaming puddle with a disdainful glance at it, as if it were animal dung. He said something, gesturing with the fingers of his sword hand. He seemed to be explaining that the falling pitch was not his fault. Mena and Perrin circled, keeping him between them.

I’ve killed Numrek, she said to herself. Don’t forget that. “Perrin-I’ve killed Numrek. This is no Auldek. He has only one life.”

“Let’s take it, then,” Perrin replied.

Calrach did not make that easy for them. “I’m my clan leader!” he shouted. “You know what that means? It means I’m not Greduc. Not Crannog. Who am I?”

A smug bastard who needs to die, Mena thought. And then-why not-she repeated the answer out loud. This was all taking too long, the two of them stuck here fighting one man, when there were so many others. I want you dead, bastard. It should be possible. It should happen right now! So thinking, she swung low, hoping to take out his legs, at least to break them or injure them. Calrach jumped over her blade like a child over a rope. In midair, he caught Perrin’s sword in his forks. His toes touched down for a moment, but he leaped again, spinning and landing a kick on Mena’s head. Though the force of the blow sent her reeling, she watched Calrach bring his sword down on the flat of Perrin’s trapped blade. With a resonant crack, the tip of it twirled away.

Released, Perrin sprawled backward. He landed beside the puddle of burning pitch. He did not rise immediately, and Mena feinted to draw the Numrek’s attention. It worked, but it made her head swim. She tried not to show it, but she saw two Calrachs. One stepped out of the other and both of them spoke to her in Auldek. She heard that arrogant, boulder-grinding voice doubled. She watched him set two pairs of fists, weapons clenched in them, on his two waists. Two grins.

“Calrach,” she said. She had something else to follow it, but forgot it in effort not to stumble. “Calrach…”

Behind him two versions of Perrin rose. Calrach noticed them. Both of him turned and rushed toward them. Both of them dropped their devil’s forks and cocked their swords far back, two-handed.

“Cal…”

The two Perrins turned, both of them holding flaming swords. They snapped out their blades at exactly the same time, in a manner that sent two lines of pitch from the sword through the air, scorching a path right into both Calrachs’ faces. They howled, and in howling merged into one. Calrach dropped his sword and wiped at his face, but that only made his hand come away flaming as well. Perrin stared at him, horrified by what he had done, his sword still on fire.

Mena walked forward. She raised her sword and thrust it with both arms and the full weight of her body. The blade pierced Calrach’s flaming face, into his skull cavity, and beyond. His head flew back as the point hit the back of his skull. Mena, still dizzy, clamped her gloved hand over the naked blade just in front of his face. She yanked it back and forth, cutting whatever was inside his skull to scrambled ribbons. He toppled, arms thrashing. Mena went with him, riding his chest all the way to the ground.

She rolled away and lay for a moment on her back. Through panting breaths, she said what she had started to before, without knowing that she would finish it: “I killed Greduc. And… I killed… Calrach.”

“Are you hurt?” Perrin asked, as she rose. He still held his broken sword, smoking now and blackened. He looked strangely sheepish, considering the carnage they had just lived through.

Mena shook her head. Regretted it. Flexed her jaw instead. She wiped sweat from her forehead, and then realized too late that she had smeared her face with blood. “Perrin, we’re overrun. We must organize a retreat. We’ll have to get everyone to head for the stashes we left for the return. Everybody who can make it and all the wounded who…”

That was as far as she got before another Auldek strode into view. Mena recognized her immediately. She groaned inside.

Sabeer.