Servant of the Empire (91 page)

Kevin blinked bemusedly at the overturned litter. Acoma dead lay crushed like so many impaled beetles underneath.

‘Light of Heaven, not under there!’ Lujan called another order that to Kevin’s ears sounded like noise. Then many hands were reaching down and dragging his battered body out from under the splinters.

‘Don’t,’ Kevin, protested weakly. ‘I want to know if Mara …’ Words were hard; the air burned his lungs.

Still protesting, he was pushed supine on the ground, and darkness closed over his ears just before the shouts of amazed discovery from the warriors who righted the litter; they sorted the tangle of dead and injured and found a bloodstained, crumpled figure who was not conscious but had no wound beyond a purple bruise on her head.

Mara was laid on the soft, dry moss by the spring. Surrounded by a hundred soldiers, her head pillowed in Lujan’s lap, she roused as a rag that dripped icy water bathed the lump on her brow. ‘Keyoke?’ she murmured as her eyes first flickered open.

‘No,’ her Force Commander answered gently. ‘Lujan, mistress. But Keyoke was the one who sent me here. He thought you might run into trouble.’

Mara stirred, faintly reproving. ‘He’s not your commander, but my Adviser for War.’

Lujan stroked the hair from his mistress’s face and gave her his most insolent smile. Old habits die hard. When my old commander says jump, I jump.’

Mara shifted painfully. She seemed battered and sore in a hundred places. ‘I should have listened.’ Her eyes clouded. ‘Kevin,’ she said. ‘Where is he?’

Lujan inclined his head toward his field healer, who crouched over a second figure lying on the moss. ‘He survived. In a loincloth, without armour, and with a hero’s complement of wounds. Ayee, what a warrior that man is.’

‘Wounds!’ Mara shoved up in distress, and Lujan required a surprising amount of strength to keep her quiet.

‘Lady, be still. He will live, though he’ll have a pretty set of scars. He might limp, and he will be a long time regaining full use of his left hand. The muscles were badly slashed.’

‘Brave Kevin.’ Mara’s voice shook. ‘He saved me. My foolishness almost killed him.’

Her Force Commander touched her again, almost
tenderly. ‘It is a pity the man is a slave,’ he commiserated. ‘Such courage deserves only the highest honour.’

The air suddenly hurt to breathe; Mara turned her face into Lujan’s shoulder and shivered. Perhaps she wept, soundless in misery; if she did, the officer who comforted her would never expose her shame. Somehow he understood that her agony did not stem from her narrow escape in the glen alone. And his abiding love and devotion would never permit him to acknowledge his Lady had betrayed herself in a moment of public weakness. The surrounding soldiers quickly found tasks to occupy themselves, allowing Mara her moment of release.

The Lady of the Acoma wept for Kevin, whose bold spirit had captured hers, and whose actions had finally made her understand beyond denial that he was not, and never would be, a slave.

She would have to set him free, and that could not be done within the borders of the Empire of Tsuranuanni. To give him his due, to acknowlege him as a man, she was going to lose him forever. Following through that realization was going to be the hardest thing she had ever undertaken.

Regrouping from the ambush in the forest took the better part of the day. The bodies of the slain warriors had to be gathered up onto makeshift litters for rites and cremation at home; the enemy dead were left as food for jagunas and other carrion eaters. Lujan sent out scouts, who returned from the appointed place of rendezvous with reports that the Hanqu were nowhere in evidence.

Mara took this news badly: that her proposed meeting with Lord Xaltepo was unequivocally fiction and more probably a Minwanabi plot. She fretted, too tired to keep still even in the heat, and worried now for more than Kevin’s hurts.

‘Tasaio does not strike just once,’ she complained to
Lujan, as the gloom of twilight fell around the firelit encampment of warriors. ‘Though our wounded will suffer for being moved, we must return home tonight.’

Her Force Commander did not argue the necessity, but strode off and mustered his warriors and efficiently made arrangements to depart. Battle-weary and bandaged, the three survivors from Mara’s original guard were given places of honour at the head of the march. Kevin and two litter-borne wounded were carried next, and after them, the honourably slain. Mara insisted on staying afoot. Her bearers lived, but with their trained ability to manage burdens without jostling, they were assigned to carry the injured. The Lady of the Acoma walked beside her unconscious body slave. Kevin had been given a draught for his pain that left him deeply asleep. She held his unbandaged hand and alternated between aching sorrow and fury.

She had not heeded warnings that Tasaio might have compromised Arakasi’s network. She had seen only her growing power, had been lured into thinking that because she was now Clan Warchief, it was her natural due that lesser families should clamour for her favour. Nacoya had cautioned her; Keyoke had most pointedly avoided a confrontation with her, precisely that he could be free to forestall the disaster of the trap she had foolishly conceded to Tasaio.

Twenty-seven good warriors from her honour guard were dead. Lujan had lost another twelve in the course of her rescue, and Kevin might never walk again without a limp.

The price was far too high.

Mara clenched her hand, then belatedly relaxed her grip; she squeezed only Kevin, who had stood as staunchly as any of her warriors. She did not feel the stones under her feet, or notice the occasional hand on her elbow as Lujan steadied her over the gullies. She barely noticed the coming and going of the scout patrols, as they repeatedly swept the surrounding
woods for enemies; she thought only upon the shame of her own false pride; and she wondered, over and over, what she would say to Arakasi.

The moon set. The darkness under the trees matched the darkness in Mara’s heart as she marched numbly, dwelling long and hard on recriminations until she reached the borders of her estate.

Another patrol of soldiers awaited her there, armed and carrying torches. Mara was weary enough that it took her a moment to realize the anomaly of this added company’s presence. Lujan was speaking with the Patrol Leader, and as she heard Ayaki’s name, a chill washed over her, fright jolting her alert.

She pushed away from Kevin’s litter and hurried to her Force Commander’s side. ‘What has happened to my son?’

Lujan caught her shoulders firmly. ‘He is alive, my Lady.’

That reassurance did not blunt the edge of Mara’s urgency. Even in the wind-caught flicker of the torch light, the reporting Patrol Leader’s face showed strain. Terrified that the disaster that had overtaken her might not have been confined to the glen, Mara demanded, ‘Has there been an attack upon my house?’

‘My Lady, an assassin was sent.’ The Patrol Leader tersely bowed. Trained by Keyoke to be concise, he delivered the news like a battle report. ‘Ayaki suffered a minor cut, but is otherwise unharmed. Two nurses died, and Nacoya, First Adviser, was killed in the child’s defence. The estate grounds have been searched, with no sign of other enemies found. The assassin apparently stole in alone. Keyoke reinforced all border patrols and sent us to bolster your escort.’

But Mara heard none of the details, past knowledge that Ayaki had suffered hurt and that Nacoya, who had been a mother to her since childhood, was dead. Her knees felt weak, and her mind was shocked past thinking. She did not feel the arm that Lujan slipped under her elbow to steady
her. She heard but did not comprehend the words her Force Commander said to the Patrol Leader, dispatching a runner to fetch a replacement litter.

Nacoya was dead, and Ayaki injured. She needed Kevin’s arms around her, and the comfort of his love through this nightmare; but he lay bandaged in a litter, unconscious from a healing draught.

Mara stumbled forward. The night felt bitterly desolate. Trouble seemed to roost unseen in the dark, and the road through her own prayer gate seemed menacing with unnamed danger.

‘I must go home,’ she said blankly.

‘Lady, we shall take you there with all haste.’ Lujan snapped orders to his company, and the patrol integrated with the guard already surrounding the Lady and her wounded and dead. Then, without awaiting the runner’s return with the litter, the warriors marched for the estate house.

Mara hurried in a numb haze of disbelief. Nacoya was dead; that fact seemed incomprehensible. The Lady felt she ought to be crying. Instead, she could not see past placing one stumbling foot in front of the other. She was aware of the Patrol Leader giving the details of the assassin’s raid to Lujan, but inside her head she could hear only Nacoya’s voice, scolding and scolding her for folly, vanity, and headstrong actions.

Ayaki had been injured.

Her heart cried out in outrage, anger, and grief, that one so little should ever be threatened by the machinations of the Great Game. She thought blasphemies: Kevin was right; deaths for political gains were a senseless, cruel waste. Her sense of family honour warred outright with her pain. How narrowly Tasaio had missed ending the Acoma line in the passage of a single day!

Keyoke’s wisdom, Nacoya’s courage, a slave’s disregard
of propriety: those had been all that stood between her house and total destruction. Almost, Minwanabi had fulfilled his blood oath to Turakamu. Chills chased over Mara’s flesh. She remembered the rain of arrows that had hissed over her head, even as Kevin’s weight had knocked her down, out of the way. She hurried faster, and did not protest when the litter at last arrived and Lujan caught her up in his arms and bundled her inside without pause to break his stride.

These bearer slaves were fresh. Mara signalled Lujan to appoint an honour guard and let the other soldiers escorting the wounded and dead proceed more slowly. Distraught beyond restraint, she screamed for the slaves to sprint the last quarter mile to the lighted hall of the estate house.

Keyoke met her there, grim and wearing armour from the waist up. He had donned his old helm, shorn of plumes, and his sword was strapped to his side, prepared for the worst if word came back that his mistress had been killed in the forest.

Mara stumbled out of her litter before Lujan could catch her hand. She flung herself into the arms of the old warrior, and with her cheek against his hard breastplate, she fought to hold back tears.

Keyoke stood staunch on his crutch, and his free hand stroked her hair. ‘Mara-anni,’ he said in his deep voice, using the diminutive as a father might address a beloved daughter. ‘Nacoya died most bravely. She will be sung into the halls of Turakamu with all of the honours of a warrior and make proud the Acoma name.’

Mara repressed a deep, shuddering sob. ‘My son,’ she gasped. ‘How is he?’

Over her bent head, the Adviser for War and Lujan exchanged a quick look. Needing no words, the Force Commander gently took Mara’s elbow and eased her weight off Keyoke.

‘We shall go at once to see Ayaki,’ the older adviser said. He pointedly did not ask after her crumpled appearance, or the evidence of bloodstains on her robe. ‘Your son sleeps, attended by Jican. The cut on his neck was attended to promptly, but he lost a lot of blood. He will be well enough in time, but you should know; we could not stop his crying. He has had a terrible shock.’

Mara froze, resisting all attempts to lead her away. ‘Kevin,’ she said frantically. ‘I want him brought to my chambers and tended there.’

‘Lady,’ Lujan said firmly. ‘I already presumed to give orders to that end.’ He caught her more firmly around the waist and propelled her into the corridor that led to her chambers. Someone thoughtful, probably Jican, had ordered every lamp lit, so no step she took was in shadow.

Again the eyes of Force Commander and Adviser for War met. Keyoke knew that Mara’s party had suffered ambush; he was impatient to hear the details. Lujan nodded in wordless indication that he would relate the event, but out of Mara’s hearing. She had grief enough in her heart without being made to endure a repetition of the day’s unpleasantness.

They reached her private apartments. The screens were opened wide and attended by a dozen armed warriors. Inside, half-lost in a sea of cushions, a small figure lay with white bandages wrapped around his neck. Someone sat with him; Mara did not look to see whom, but pulled herself out of Lujan’s hold and fell to her knees by her child. She touched him, transparently surprised by his warmth. Then, tenderly cautious of his hurts, she gathered him into her arms. She wept then, beyond all control, and her tears rinsed Ayaki’s cheek.

Her officers averted their faces in staunch disregard of her shame, and the person sitting on the cushions tactfully rose to leave.

Mara glanced through brimming eyes and identified Jican. ‘Stay,’ she said shakily. ‘All of you, stay. I don’t want to be here alone.’

For a very long time the lanterns burned, while she sat and rocked her young son.

Later in the night, after Kevin had been placed on a mat by Ayaki’s side, Mara ordered the lights put out. She dismissed Keyoke, Jican, and Lujan to their long-deserved rest, and, guarded by a relief watch of warriors at every entrance to the house, she sat in silent vigil over her loved ones. She thought, and saw too clearly where selfishness had steered her near to ruin. Her arrogant assumption of the Clan Warchief’s seat now seemed the act of an idiot.