Grudgebearer (5 page)

It looks like Ghaiattri work
, Bloodmane's echoing voice rang in Kholster's mind. Demon fire could make a mark like that, one Eldrennai healing could not erase. A Ghaiattri's fire had even been known to burn an Aern through the connection he shared with his armor.

They must have tried to open a Port Gate
, Kholster thought.
Why would they do that?

They are Oathbreakers
, several Aern thought at him at once, as if that were all the explanation needed to explain any rash action committed by an Eldrennai.

True
, Kholster thought back grimly,
but even Oathbreakers tend to have their reasons . . . wrong-headed though they may be.

Kholster and the other Aern looked on as humans set their warsuits in displays chalked out by the stump-eared princes. A larger display stood empty in the center of the chamber. He and the other Armored were full of speculation about what might be intended to go there.

Wylant stood off to the side, slightly out of step with and behind Rivvek. Dolvek did not seem at all pleased to see her. While the princes both wore multilayered robes with gilt embroidery, Wylant dressed in a black leather doublet with matching pants and boots. Her rank insignia, a golden crown with two golden bars beneath it, adorned her left shoulder, the only bright touch of color on her uniform Kholster could see through Bloodmane's eyes. A blade hung from a belted scabbard at her waist, its hilt wrapped in a dark-blue material that could have been dyed leather, though Kholster couldn't tell based on visual evidence alone.

Why did she cut her hair?
Bloodmane asked.

I do not know
, Kholster answered. Wylant stood bare-headed and bald in the magic illumination, her blue eyes staring daggers at Dolvek. Her eyes.

With a thought, Kholster had Bloodmane increase the magnification of his vision, focusing on Wylant's face. He studied her eyes for a long moment, ignoring what the two princes said to one another. The veins in Wylant's eyes were partially enlarged and the skin around them puffy, mildly irritated.

Zaur?
he asked Bloodmane.

I think so, Maker.
Bloodmane answered.
They are the only things to which she is allergic . . . as far as I know.

Show me where you are exactly . . . based on the old barracks.

A map unfurled in the mind's eye of the Aernese leader. As best he could tell, the humans had carried the warsuits to the Royal Museum. There had once been stuffed and mounted Zaur on exhibit there, but those displays had long since been burned, buried, or otherwise disposed of both to accommodate General Wylant's legendary allergy to the reptilian menace, but also because enlightened Oathbreakers had, over time, come to object to the idea of having the corpses of sentient beings stuffed, mounted, and put on display.

There are Zaur somewhere
, he thought to Vander.

What? Where?

I don't know, could be miles away. Probably just scouts.

Hunh
, Vander thought noncommittally.
Are you listening to this?

Kholster redirected his attention to the Oathbreaker princes.

“I was at the last Conjunction, brother,” Rivvek was saying. “I met the Aern and I'm telling you now, that after spending three nights out at that cursed monument under the statues of the gods with no one but Kholster and one of the Vaelsilyn—”

“Vael,” Wylant corrected. Both princes glared at her, but she didn't seem to mind or care. “They are called Vael now. Assuming Dolvek hasn't gotten us all killed with his foolishness, it's only a handful of years to the next Grand Conjunction. Dolvek must learn to call them by their proper names, or he'll have more trouble with my ex-husband than he's already likely to have.”

“
Ex
-husband?” Kholster asked himself quietly, his words lost in the sounds of grinding gears, sloshing water, and steam.

“Like it matters,” Dolvek put in, gesturing agitatedly with his hands. “He's just one man. You two act as if he is a specter of death looming in the shadows and waiting to destroy us all if we say the wrong words behind his back.”

He's tracking you there
, Vander teased.

“Brother,” Rivvek entreated, “I know it is difficult for you to comprehend, but the Aern, Kholster in particular—”

“He is not one Aern, Prince Dolvek,” Wylant interrupted. “He is, at the last count, approximately three hundred thousand Aern, assuming that the Aernese birthrate is as low as our informants claim. They will march where he tells him to march and kill who he tells them to kill. Every last one of them. They will die for him, those who are capable of dying, without hesitation.”

Wylant's voice grew in volume. As she stepped closer to the prince, Kholster's breath caught in his throat at the design embroidered on the back of her doublet. “They will not argue. If they discuss it in committee, it will only be because he decides he wants other opinions.”

“I
do
understand that your former . . . 
lover
 . . . is a dictator, General,” Dolvek began.

“Then you are mistaken,” Wylant sighed. “In a common dictatorship, there are dissenters. There are none among the Aern. Not,” she held up a single finger, “one Aern questions his decisions once they are made. If he says, ‘The Oathbreakers must die. We march tomorrow, every male, female, and infant,' then within a week, news will start spreading of three hundred thousand Aern moving en masse toward Barrony then across the Junland Bridge and then for Castleguard and on through to the Great Forests, where The Parliament of Ages and Queen Kari of the Vael would welcome them with open arms.”

That's silly
, Vander thought at Kholster.
You'd never leave the Dwarves undefended.

And for that matter
, Kholster answered cheerfully,
I'd been planning to go by boat.

“You've never met one, brother,” Rivvek began. “Believe me—”

“Enough!” Dolvek growled. He reached out and placed a palm on Bloodmane's breastplate.

Must I kill him now?
the armor's voice echoed in Kholster's mind.
Lest you be Foresworn?

Hold
, Kholster answered.
Technically he hasn't actually moved you. Maybe Wylant can still—

“This is simply armor. Magic? No.” He drew back and rapped the breastplate with his knuckles hard enough for the contact to echo hollowly within. “It's empty metal. That's all it is. Kholster is not watching us, like some nosy Long Speaker in a Hulsite school. The Aern,” he rapped the armor again, “have no,” he rapped it harder, “magic!” And with that final word he shoved the warsuit with increasing strength.

Ought I let him—?

Yes
, Kholster thought back.
Let him think he pushed you over.

Bloodmane clattered to the stone floor, half on and half off the royal purple carpeting Dolvek had only recently had laid out in the room.

Kholster felt all five thousand of the Armored waiting for him to react, could sense their minds reaching out for his. He imagined them asking, Do we kill them now? Do we march?

Get back up
, Kholster told Bloodmane.
But do not yet attack.

The armor stood.

Go back to where you were when he knocked you down, as if you are simply resuming your position.

Of course, Kholster.

Rivvek shook his head, but Wylant turned on her heel and left. “You are all dead,” she said without looking back. “If you'll excuse me, I need to arrange for patrols to find the Zaur before my planned departure.”

“What Zaur?” Rivvek asked numbly.

“My allergies are acting up, and that means there are Zaur on Eldrennai land . . . somewhere. My . . . gift . . . from the god of war.”

“What do you mean ‘
you
are all dead'?” Dolvek asked. “Assuming that was anything more than a basic maintenance charm, the armor simply resuming its position. . . . If the Aern set out to kill all Eldrennai, they would surely include you!”

“No,” Wylant answered, “for I wear Kholster's scars on my back. I fought him and beat him at the Sundering, just as I vowed I would. To him, that makes me Aiannai, an Oathkeeper. His vengeance comes only for the Eldrennai, the Oathbreakers.”

The pattern on the back of Wylant's black doublet was worked in light-colored leather, almost white. Two symmetrical right-angled wedges, a finger's length each, angled inward near her shoulder blades. Between them, a thumb-width line ran along her spine, stopping two fingers short of the fist-sized leather diamond appliquéd over the small of her back with two parallel lines thickly embroidered along each of its four sides.

Must we attack them?
Bloodmane asked.

No. Not yet. The oath I swore did not specify the time of their death. I must think first. How far back have they gone searching through the warsuits?

They stopped when they found the ten they wanted
, Bloodmane answered.

Good
, Kholster thought for a moment.
Have Hunter, Eye Spike, Wind Song, and Scout each take a unit of thirty out through the old sewer access without being seen. Even if they have to tunnel their way out, I want them to range out to Fort Sunder and see if it has been left abandoned as we instructed.

And then?

Let's just start with that. I have also sworn that I or my representative would attend the next Grand Conjunction. I must do so, but after that . . . 
Kholster let his words stop. When he opened his eyes, he saw the laundry room, just as he'd left it, but he couldn't get the thought of Wylant wearing his scars on her doublet out of his head. He wondered if she would manage to beat him a second time. She would, of course, aid the Eldrennai, but after that . . . after they were all dead . . . when only the Aiannai remained . . .

He sighed. Either way, he looked forward to their meeting. Six hundred years was a long time between . . . meetings.

CHAPTER 5

WYLANT'S WISDOM

Wylant cut an imposing figure as she threw open the doors of the Royal Museum exiting the new Aernese exhibit and walking out into the main hall, where the bones of Ivory, the Great Dragon, dominated the space. Behind her, the twelve-foot banded iron doors slipped silently closed when what she really wanted out of them was a good strong slam. She kept her composure, however. It would have been acceptable for a male in her situation to leave the room cursing and hurling invectives at the top of his lungs, but a female who did the same . . .

She clamped down that line of thought, labeled it pointless, and filed it away in the recesses of her mind in the area reserved for thoughts she would explore when she didn't have anything urgent to do. A list she intended to get started on a few candlemarks after her death, hopefully sometime before the Harvester came to collect her soul and take it to the afterworld.

With a frown, she added talking with the king to the same set of files. Talking with King Grivek would be pointless; Wylant knew that as certainly as she knew the patrols she was about to dispatch to search for the Zaur wouldn't find them yet. Why Dienox, the god of war, couldn't have blessed her with a magic map which displayed a giant glowing X over the site of each new incursion by the Zaur, she had no clue . . .

That was a lie.

She did know.

There would have been no sport in that for Dienox.

At times she felt the god deliberately withheld information from her until the reptilian invaders were sufficiently embedded to make the fight a glorious one. Not that he didn't have every right, she supposed. After all, it had been over six hundred years since she'd prayed to him. . . . She'd had nothing to say to Dienox since she'd watched her husband—EX-husband, she reminded herself—go into exile.

The memory of Kholster and the exiles marching away from Port Ammond rose unbidden in her mind's eye. Her husband's last words to her still rang in her head like the remnants of a fireball. “My congratulations, General. Dienox chose well, when he chose you. I'm proud of you.”

“Proud?” she'd stammered.

“Of course.” He'd grinned that wolfish grin of his and kissed her on the cheek. “You promised to do whatever you could to protect your people. And you did.”

“But I killed millions,” she had replied, truly grieved. “Millions.”

“Don't brag,” he'd said as he turned away from her. “From this day forth, you are Aiannai. An Oathkeeper. Any oaths I have sworn against the Oathbreakers do not apply to you. Fight well, First Wife. If you ever tire of your life with the Oathbreakers, come and find me.” She'd almost run after him.

Almost.

Her . . . sword, Vax, stirred in his scabbard and Wylant placed a hand on the pommel to quiet him. She had beaten the Aern, had been the mighty general responsible for the deaths of all those who could be killed. Only the five thousand Armored, the Undying Aern, who could only truly die if they surrendered to death, had survived. Those five thousand Aern would yet have won, destroying her people in their wrath, had not the Vael stopped the fighting, convinced the Armored and the Eldrennai to come to terms. All that blood remained on Wylant's hands.