The Wanderer's Mark: Book Three of Imirillia (The Books of Imirillia 3) (26 page)

Someone shouted an Imirillian curse Eleanor had once heard Basaal use.

Rushing forward to aid Hastian, Eleanor tripped on the hem of her dress and fell against the hard stone, her sword clattering on the ground with a terrifying noise. Eleanor reached for the blade, picked it up, and continued forward. She gritted her teeth and yelled as she swung the blade towards the assassin. He blocked it as easily as if he were redirecting a child’s blow. The man laughed in the process. But it was enough, for Hastian sank his sword deep into the Vestan’s robe, and the assassin’s hand shook as his scimitar dropped to the ground.

Zanntal screamed as the scimitar of his opponent found its mark in his arm. He stumbled back and reset himself, sweat running down his face, which was filled with pain. Eleanor stepped behind Hastian, who was now engaging the remaining Vestan. But, in a quick movement, filled with sounds and agony, Eleanor felt herself being jerked backwards. Her breath stopped as an arrow was pressed hard against her cheek. The first Vestan, who had fallen from Zanntal’s arrow, had pulled himself up to grab her. His breathing echoed the sound of blood siphoning into his lungs—a hellish sluice.

A knife was at her throat, and, in his attempts to breathe, the arrow’s shaft moved back and forth against her cheek. He pulled harder, and Eleanor dropped her sword. Hastian turned back towards Eleanor, dropping his weapon to the ground, holding his hands up, his face still, his mouth set. He stepped over the fallen Vestan at his feet and bent his knees slightly, pleading with the assassin as the knife began to split open the skin of Eleanor’s throat.

Zanntal had stumbled back from his opponent, but the Vestan he was fighting turned and, in a singularly powerful movement, cut through Hastian’s back with a sickening sound. Hastian’s mouth opened, a spasm rattling through the muscles around his spine, causing his chest to fly forward in an ungraceful contortion as Hastian tried to remain on his feet.

His blue eyes looked for Eleanor’s, and she screamed, trying to fling herself towards him. But the Vestan pulled her back. Hastian dropped to a knee as the assassin behind him flung a knife that thudded into his back.

The Queen’s Own shuddered and fell forward, catching himself with his arms, scrambling desperately towards his queen. With a sickening cough, Hastian left blood on the stones before him. and when the Vestan stepped forward to finish the job, Zanntal, from behind, ran the assassin through with a scimitar.

“No—” Eleanor tried to say, but she could not swallow as her captor pulled her another step backward. She could feel a line of blood running down her throat. Hastian was still trying to come to her, his fingers veined from the pain.

Zanntal retrieved his bow—his face pained from injury—notched an arrow, and sent it flying at Eleanor’s face. It sank into the throat of the Vestan behind her with a spray of blood, and Eleanor could taste the metallic zing of it on her lips. As he fell, Eleanor fell with him. Zanntal was upon them, tearing the man’s arm from around Eleanor’s neck, throwing the knife away.

She did not watch what Zanntal then did to the Vestan, for Eleanor could see only Hastian, her Queen’s Own, stretched out before her. She crawled over the blood-covered stones, reaching her hand towards his face. Pushing against his shoulder, Eleanor turned his body to face her. Hastian’s head rolled carelessly to the side, his eyes blank, his back still sending spasms through his muscles.

He was dead.

***

Emperor Shaamil made an impatient noise, and Ammar looked up from where he was preparing a drink for each of them. They sat alone in the luxurious pavilion of the emperor—a flap rolled up on one side—and watched from comfortable chairs the progress of the battle. Shaamil’s tent had been far enough away from the camp’s destruction that his private luxury remained intact.

Shaamil sighed. “We are advancing but not as quickly as I would like.”

Ammar gave no response as he walked towards his father, handing him a drink while taking his own, and sitting in an adjacent cushioned chair. Shaamil’s generals had directed the soldiers to push the fighting down into the plain, away from the Imirillian camp. But the battle had now traveled farther away on its own accord, and it was difficult to see much of the fighting, if any.

The Aemogens, despite their attack of the night before, were still outnumbered by two to one at least. Ammar considered this as he rolled his cup between his fingers and then took a long sip. They would fall in only a few hours’ time.

Shaamil sat patiently, watching the waves of death play out in the valley before him. He also took a drink. He set the cup down and folded his fingers together.

“Not much longer now,” Ammar said.

The emperor looked towards his son but said nothing.

Ammar finished the contents of his drink in one long movement and set the empty cup aside. “I am sorry it had to be this way,” Ammar stated. “But this needed to come to an end at some point.”

Shaamil looked at Ammar’s empty cup and then at the contents of his own. He stared at Ammar’s face. “You’ve poisoned me.”

“Yes,” Ammar said, touching one of the two gold bands around his wrist. “I have.”

Fury filled Shaamil’s eyes, and he tensed as if he would move, call a guard, or take out his own dagger and end Ammar’s life. Either of these the physician knew could happen. He sat coolly, watching the many avenues of his fate play out on his father’s face. Then a private realization touched the emperor’s mind. His body relaxed, and his shaking mouth steadied into the hint of a peaceful expression.

“Well done,” Shaamil said, clutching the scrolled ends of his chair’s armrests. “Can I expect much pain?”

“
I
am no barbarian,” Ammar replied. “If you go into your sleeping quarters and lie down, you will find it no harder than falling into sleep. I would imagine a quarter hour, no more, is what you have left in this world.”

Shaamil grunted and looked out over the plane, his jaw working back and forth as he was thinking. “You have broken your physician’s covenant. You have given up the right to practice medicine. Was I worth it?”

“Physician’s make two covenants, Father. One is to never take a life. The other is to uphold life and to uphold Imirillia—” Ammar paused and moved his fingers across his chin. “I desecrate the first to consecrate the second.”

Shaamil’s laugh, when it came, was full of irony. “The only pleasure this gives me is the thought of what your brothers must do with you now. A physician willing to kill—that is far more terrifying than anything I could have become.”

Ammar almost smiled. “Pity Emir.”

Shaamil’s face sobered as he looked down on the plain. “And what is your plan? Get me out of the way and signal the trumpet for retreat?”

“Yes,” Ammar answered.

The emperor coughed, and turned his dark eyes on Ammar, victorious. “I did not bring it.”

Ammar frowned, fingering the base of his empty cup. “I had anticipated that, which is why I brought it myself.”

Shaamil was pale, whether from the surprise or the poison, Ammar could not know. As the emperor laughed, his breathing already sounded labored. “You always were the smartest of my sons, perhaps even the best.”

“No,” Ammar disagreed. “The best was always Basaal.”

Shaamil gave no response, and he began to try to stand.

“Would you like me to help you?” Ammar asked dispassionately.

The emperor stood. “I desire to be left in peace,” he said. He studied the face of his son, looked out across the plain at the mountains of Aemogen, and the warm shadows of a spent day, and then disappeared behind a curtain.

Ammar studied his fingernails, pensive and thoughtful, before he stood, retrieved the trumpet from his trunk, and called on the guard outside the tent.

***

They were losing. The Aemogens were falling under the relentless Imirillian attack. And Basaal, heavy-limbed, tired, could find no thought to describe the horrors transpiring there. The Aemogen right flank was decimated, but not without leaving a trail of Imirillian blood in its wake. The center company, where Basaal found himself, had the advantage of falling farther south, but it was disorganized and desperate. No captains led the field. Basaal could not stop to call out any order. The left flank was isolated towards the west and would soon fall.

Basaal pulled back as another wave of Imirillians came down upon them. He stumbled over a body and did not look down to see if he knew whose it was. Basaal felt as if he were drowning.

Someone called out to him.

Clutching his sword, he twisted. Seeing only a flash of metal, Basaal’s movements went before his sight. He swung, only to be fended off and sworn at as somebody grabbed his shoulder and shook him.

Annan. It was Annan. Before Basaal could speak, a man in purple came down upon him. Swinging his sword, Basaal fended off a blow, losing his footing as he did. The Imirillian soldier moved to strike Basaal, but Annan was there, eliminating the man in one motion, just as an officer in the emperor’s army swung his scimitar, slicing through Annan’s stomach. In the time it took Basaal’s world to go silent, a dagger was plunged into Annan’s heart.

“Annan!” Basaal screamed, his own voice ringing in his ears.

The motion of the battle around him disappeared.

Basaal threw his weapon to the ground and tried to catch his stumbling friend. Annan’s eyes were frozen with inexplicable pain as he slumped from Basaal’s grasp, falling, clutching his hand to the death wound.

“Annan! Annan!” Dropping to his knees, Basaal flung an arm beneath Annan’s back, pulling his friend up towards him. Annan’s eyes locked onto his. “No, no, Annan, I didn’t see—Annan!”

The last flow of Annan’s blood soaked between Basaal’s fingers. Annan’s eyes rolled, his chest making a sucking sound of lungs fighting liquid cut short. His eyes were staring at Basaal’s face in stunned terror, then their focus was lost completely. Annan went limp.

“No! Annan!” Basaal cried. “Please, please come back. I didn’t see! I’m so sorry! No, God, please!” Basaal jerked his face towards the sky, pleading. “No!”

A wail of grief fought its way into Basaal’s words, and he gave into it as he clutched Annan’s motionless body to his chest. Basaal kissed Annan’s cheeks, bent over the body, overwrought, drowning in the blood of the day.

The movements of an approaching figure did not dissuade Basaal from his grief. He paid the man no mind, even as the shadow of a raised scimitar stretched out across the ground before him. Basaal wished for annihilation—he waited for it.

Then, another figure wearing red rushed forward, engaging the soldier of Shaamil, cutting him down with a cry. Too dazed to care, Basaal continued stumbling over words of apology to his friend, hardly even looking as another soldier in red, then another, rushed about him. Men who had sworn to Basaal unto death began to form a loose circle around him, preventing any of Shaamil’s soldiers from reaching their prince.

The perimeter grew, a circle of red extending out from him, railing against the purple waves. Basaal bent his face into Annan’s still chest, the tunic saturated with blood, disoriented by the ringing across the battlefield where bodies lay, torn, bloodied, discarded.

***

A sound, a low horn rising across the sacrificial earth, caused Eleanor to turn her head, looking away from where she sat cradling Hastian’s limp head. The late afternoon sun, preparing to flee behind the western hills, blinded her eyes.

“The trumpet,” Zanntal cried as he motioned towards Eleanor with his uninjured arm. “It is the sound of retreat. The emperor has called for a retreat.”

“Impossible,” Eleanor muttered as she stared at Hastian’s dead face.

The trumpet sounded again, in three quick successions. “The men are separating out! Running back toward the Imirillian camp. Right on the edge of their victory, Shaamil has called a retreat.” Zanntal’s voice was incredulous.

Eleanor finally stumbled to her feet, shielding her eyes, her hands stiff with dried blood. There, on the plain, a wave of purple was breaking away in groups, disengaging from the fight. Some pockets and shapes seemed to rush after the retreating Imirillians, but the remaining figures on the field stood still. Eleanor could make out a contingent of Basaal’s soldiers, dressed in red, standing near what appeared to be the men of Aemogen. But there was no movement, no shouting, no fighting amongst them.

“We must go down,” Eleanor said, but the sight of the Vestan and of Hastian’s body seemed impossible to leave. Eleanor reached for the floor as her knees gave way, and she crumbled, numb, looking at the fallen men around her. Suddenly, the battle crown felt very heavy indeed. Lifting a shaking hand, Eleanor clutched the metal crown, now smeared in blood, and pulled it away. It slipped, clanging against the stone, sounding like the strike of a dull sword. It spun to a nervous stop and remained still. Eleanor did not move to pick it back up.

***

Someone was clutching Basaal’s shoulders, pulling him up, coaxing him to release the still corpse he held in his arms. The sound had been terrible—and merciful—the trumpet calling Imirillia into retreat. Basaal thought it had sounded distant, as if coming from across the world.

Numb, stiff, and covered in death, Basaal felt the blood of his own countryman caked into the garments he wore, stained into his skin. The trumpet sounded again and someone was determined to set Basaal on his feet, patiently prying him from Annan. His friend’s body was already going stiff, Basaal realized, and his eyes were still open.