Demon King (63 page)

“Sir, you really didn’t answer my question. What do
we
do?”

“All we can do is move as quickly as we can,” Tenedos said. “As soon as possible, I’ll have to leave the army and get to Nicias. I can’t fight a war if my kingdom is slipping from under me. You’ll have to take charge of holding the Maisirians at the frontier, if they’re foolish enough to follow us through Kait.”

I barely understood his last words. Abandon the army? How could he even think that? Didn’t the oath all of us had sworn require an equal duty from the emperor?

Tenedos must have read my face.

“There are no good decisions, Tribune. Not when everything is falling apart around us. This is the best that I can devise. Perhaps
you
have a better plan, not just for your so-loved army, but for all Numantia?” He waited, lip curling a bit.

I didn’t.

“Very well,” he said. “This is some time away. You’re forbidden to speak of this to anyone, including your woman. That’s all.”

I think I managed a salute. I stormed outside the tent for an hour, rage seething, paying no heed to the storm, or the curious glances of staff officers, before I was capable of riding back to my post.

This would be the emperor’s second betrayal of his army.

• • •

I wonder, if I’d not been in such a black mood at the emperor’s unbelievable callousness, if I would have behaved in another manner to Herne, and if I had, if that would have changed anything? Probably not, for Herne always had an eye out for his own welfare.

We were pushing our way back through the darkness when we came to a roadblock. Six freight wagons made up a small caravan before us, with an enormous carriage in front. Two horses on the first wagon had gone down, creating a cursing, shouting jam. Infantrymen were pushing past on either side, still far from wherever their officers had planned to stop for the night.

Imperial orders were very clear.

“Captain Balkh! Find this infantry column’s officer and, with my compliments, have him detail men to strip that wreck and push it off the road!”

Before Balkh could answer, there came a scream of rage from inside the carriage: “In a pig’s arse! This is a tribune’s property, and there’ll be no interference! Lend a hand, you big-mouthed shit out there, instead of playing like you’re a god!”

I slid from the saddle, went to the carriage, and saw Tribune Herne, fuming and mud-covered. He recognized me in the dim light from the carriage’s sidelamps. “Oh,” he said weakly.

“Oh, my ass,” I snapped, giving rein to my temper. “What the hells is going on?”

“This is my … my staff’s supplies,” he said. “I’ll send one of my officers down the column and commandeer a pair of horses. We’ll be moving as soon as possible.”

“Captain Balkh,” I said. “Follow my orders!”

“Sir!”

“You cannot do this, á Cimabue,” Herne snarled. “I have my rights!”

“Sir, you will stand at attention when you speak to me,” I half-shouted. “You may be a tribune, but I am general of the armies, am I not? Do you wish to be placed under close arrest?”

I dimly realized this was a threat I was using a lot these days.

“This is absurd,” Herne said, his face reddening to match his elaborately worked uniform.

“Two men,” I ordered. Svalbard and Curti were beside me, fighting to keep their faces expressionless. “Tear the canvas off that first wagon.”

“Sir!”

“Dammit, Tribune …” Herne said, then fell silent.

My two men were atop the wagon, daggers out. Ropes were slashed, and the heavy canvas dragged away. Of course the “staff supplies” were barrels of wine, hams, bags of bread, sides of beef well frozen by the cold, and other fineries. The marchers had stopped, and were staring at these goods they hadn’t seen for weeks. I heard a low growl, as an unfed tiger makes.

There was an officer beside me. “Sir, Captain of the Upper Half Newent. At your command.”

“I want this wagon off the road,” I ordered. I thought of propriety, then red rage made me discard it. “Here are my orders. I want them followed precisely. This man is Tribune Herne.”

“I know, sir. We’re part of his corps.”

“Very well. He is to be allowed to fill one wagon, and one wagon only, with whatever he wishes from this wreck and from the others. Then he is to go on his way. Everything else — horses, wagons, and what they hold — are now the property of your unit. They are to be shared out equally between officers and men. Use them well, use them fairly. If I hear of any favoritism, I vow I’ll have you hanged, and when I return to Nicias, your family will be notified of your having shamed your uniform.”

“You won’t have any cause for that,” Captain Newent said flatly.

“I hope not. If Tribune Herne attempts to interfere, I want him held here until my rear guard reaches this point. At that time, I’ll take charge of the prisoner and deal with him as necessary.”

“Yes, sir.”

Herne was glaring at both of us.

“Tribune,” I told him, “those are my orders. You are to obey them absolutely or face imperial justice. Do you understand?” Herne muttered something. I used an old drill instructor’s trick, and spoke to Herne again, my face almost against his, but as if he were across a parade ground. “I said, do you understand?”

Herne opened his mouth to bluster, finally had brains enough to realize my mood, and said only, “Yes.”

“Sir!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well,” I said. “Further, if I hear of any attempts to revenge yourself on this officer or on his unit, I’ll have you relieved and your entire staff and servants assigned elsewhere.” His face whitened, for this would be a death sentence. He’d be no better than the crookedest sutler, regardless of his high rank.

“That’s all!” I strode back to my horse, remounted, and we forced our way through the mass of soldiers. As we rode off, there came cheers and, for the first time in recent memory, laughter.

• • •

Captain Balkh drew my attention to a corpse beside the road.

It was a giant of a man, perhaps in his fifties. His right hand had been amputated earlier, and the bandages had come away from the stump. His features were hard and lined, and he wore the insignia of a regimental guide. An old soldier, but the bodies of old soldiers weren’t uncommon. Then I noted what had made Balkh point. The man’s coat had come open, and there was a flag wrapped around the warrant’s stomach.

The guide was the last of his regiment, and had torn the colors from the staff, and tried to carry on, tried to carry them back to Numantia.

I thought the flight from Kait had been terrible enough, but this was worse. This was the slow death of my army, my emperor, my country.

• • •

There were soldiers without units, and officers as well. Tenedos ordered all officers who had no command to his headquarters, established a “Sacred Squadron,” and ordered them to concern themselves with only one thing — his safety.

He already had bodyguards, but at least this gave these men something to worry about, something to occupy their minds on the march. That was good enough for some, but not others, who were beyond even his reach.

One was Tribune Myrus Le Balafre. Curti told me he was riding with the Twentieth, without servants, guards, or staff, no more than a common soldier. I sent one of my officers to find him and ask him to join my staff. The officer returned saying he couldn’t find Myrus.

I sent again, and once more the tribune couldn’t be found. I would have to go myself, winkle him out and kick him until he was ready to try to stay alive again. But before I could find the time, his troop was sent out against some Negaret.

The enemy turned out to be stronger than anticipated — two full companies, almost two hundred men. The cavalrymen reined in, ready to pull back to our lines for reinforcements.

Le Balafre shouted something, someone said a battle cry from a regiment twenty years disbanded, spurred his horse, and, at a full gallop, charged the two hundred. They sat befuddled as this madman came, saber pointed, standing in his stirrups.

Then he was among them, and his blade flashed, and there was a frenzy and they lost sight of him. Seconds later the Negaret rode away, as if fleeing a regiment. They left six dead or dying in the snow.

Next to them sprawled Le Balafre. His body had more than a dozen wounds. When they turned his corpse over, there was a contented smile on his face.

I remembered what he’d said when Mercia Petre’s body was burned: “A good death. Our kind of death.”

I hope Saionji granted him the greatest boon, and released him from his debt to the Wheel. For I cannot conceive there could ever be another warrior like him.

• • •

The day was clear for once, and the way was straight and level, the
suebi
reaching to the horizon. If there were any Negaret about, they were harrying another part of the army. If it hadn’t been for the solid, dark mass of staggering, dying humanity, and the scatter of bodies for three miles on either side of the main road, the day might have been almost enjoyable.

Brigstock stumbled and went down, pitching me into a snowbank. He tried to get up, failed, then tried to find his legs. He looked at me, expression infinitely apologetic.

I looked at this ruin of a magnificent stallion, ribs showing, mane and tail scraggly and long, his coat mangy, only rough-groomed. His tack, once so splendid in many-colored leather, was cracked and rotting. His eyes were dull, his gums dark and diseased-looking when he tried to nicker and managed only a faint wheeze.

I should have found a quartermaster and given him up, but I couldn’t.

There was a narrow draw about a quarter mile away, and I took Brigstock’s bridle and gently, slowly, led him to it. The draw was only about fifty feet long, and the snow was thigh-deep, but anything in it would be hidden from the road.

Brigstock followed me into it and stood dumbly, as if waiting for what he knew would happen.

I scrabbled in one saddlebag, found a few scraps of sugar at the bottom, and let the horse lick it from my glove.

I held his eyes with mine so he wouldn’t see what my right hand was drawing; caressed and lifted his head gently with my left. I slashed his throat cleanly with Yonge’s gift dagger, and blood spurted.

Brigstock tried to rear, but couldn’t. He fell to his side, quivered once, and was dead. I sheathed the knife, turned, and stumbled back toward the column.

The sun was dark and the sky was the deepest black.

• • •

The Seventeenth had found a tent for Alegria and myself. It was a gaily colored thing, intended for a baron’s summer lawn, perhaps so his children could pretend they were explorers in distant lands. A soldier talented with a needle sewed blankets inside for a lining, so it was cozy in spite of its summer look. We’d laid canvas for floor, had our sleeping furs, and were warm. Normally we slept fully clothed and I only allowed myself one luxury — slipping out of my boots before I moved in next to Alegria.

She hadn’t gotten any better, but rather had grown paler, and her coughing fits made her shudder in pain. I was about to come to bed, thinking she was already asleep, when Alegria opened her eyes.

“Damastes. Please make love to me.”

I didn’t know if I could, being utterly fatigued, but I didn’t protest; I slipped out of my clothes.

Alegria was naked under the furs, and I took her in my arms, kissed her deeply, stroked her, trying not to notice how thin she’d gotten, how coarse her always silken hair had become. Surprisingly, as her breathing came faster, I found myself hard, and then she rolled onto her back and raised and parted her legs. I moved over her, and slid my cock into her, moving gently, rhythmically, to her sighs of pleasure.

Alegria’s body shuddered under mine, and then I spasmed for a moment. “There,” she said, when her breathing slowed. “Thank you.”

“Thank
you.
”

“I love you.”

“And I’ll always love you,” I said.

“There’s a better place,” she whispered. “Isn’t there?”

“Of course,” I said, although in truth I doubted it.

“We’ll be very happy there,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

She didn’t answer, but her breathing became regular, and she slept. Thank whatever gods there are, gods I’m no longer able to worship, I didn’t follow her into sleep. Instead I lay there, holding her close, still inside her, trying to keep from crying.

Sometime during the night, without outcry, without any sign at all, Alegria stopped breathing.

And my life came to an end.

Yet I lived on. If Saionji had taken everything I had, then I would become truly hers. I would go in harm’s way until she allowed me relief and forgetfulness in my return to the Wheel.

My Red Lancers found wood for a pyre, and Tenedos himself held the ceremony, a great honor that was, like all else to me, totally meaningless.

The retreat continued. The gods should have had mercy on any Negaret, any partisan, any Maisirian regular who came within range of my rear guard, for I had none. We struck hard, and stayed on their trail until we brought them to bay, and then killed them to a man.

We lost soldiers, but what of that? All men die, and all of us would perish in this vast desert, and it was better to die with a sword in your hand, spitting blood, than to slowly freeze in your filth.

Prisoners said the Negaret called me a demon and unkillable, and so it seemed, for men were brought down on my left and right, but I never received a scratch. Svalbard and Curti fought on either side of me, and they, too, remained unscathed.

The army plodded on, leaving bodies, wagons, horses in the snow. The Time of Storms had ended, and the Time of Dews begun, but the weather did not break.

Yet slowly a bit of hope came. The city of Oswy could not be far, and beyond that was the border. At last we’d be quit of this hellish country. There was no reason King Bairan would pursue the shattered remains of the army into Numantia, or so they hoped.