The Warrior King: Book Three of the Seer King Trilogy (12 page)

“I must ask one question,” I said. “Is either of you in the service of the man who was once emperor?”

Even in this isolated spot, I hesitated to speak his name and somehow draw his attention.

“No,” Kutulu said. “Not ever, not again. He came to me in a dream two months back and summoned me to him. But I refused his orders and determined I must … for what I owe Numantia, stand against him.” His voice was determined, hard. “And that is why we need you,” Kutulu began.

“Not now,” I said. “First, give me a time for just enjoying your company. Later, after we dine, after we talk about old times, then you can tell me your business.”

• • •

Again, we banqueted, but I’m afraid my family was a bit excluded from the conversation, although I tried to make sure we talked of matters they’d be interested in. But names would come up, and one or another of the three of us would ask what happened to him or her. All too often the answer was “dead in Maisir,” or “I don’t know,” or “I think taken by the Peace Guardians,” or just a simple shrug of ignorance. It would have been easy to turn the occasion into a wake, but soldiers must learn when not to mourn, even after a catastrophe as great as we’d lived through.

Eventually the three of us ended up in one of the house’s sitting rooms, and the family made its excuses. Elfric stationed himself outside the door, and I made sure Sinait had a bottle of our best estate wine at hand. Kutulu, like myself, was sipping at fresh fruit juices one of our cooks had concocted.

I sat back and waited.

“We need you,” Sinait began, “to help us destroy the former Emperor Laish Tenedos.”

I’d expected something like that, but not quite that baldly put. I looked at Kutulu.

“He has about half a million men now, massed in Bala Hissar and Darkot,” he said. “We have about one hundred and thirty thousand in Amur, living in the villages and cities.

“Some trained soldiers, some are Kallians who fought against us under Chardin Sher or in the guerrilla war afterward, and the rest are serving for excitement or because they hate tyrants or because the emperor did some wrong to them, or they imagine he did.

“The Grand Councilors — the Government, which I suppose is what we still have to call it — have recently increased their forces to about six hundred thousand men, either in Nicias or moving south on the Latane and forming up in Khurram, using the old Guards Training Depots as their bases, getting ready to attack either us or the emperor, whoever is closest and looks weakest.”

“The odds aren’t overwhelming me,” I said.

“Of course not,” Kutulu said. “Who do you think we have to lead our men? Who do we have to plan our strategy, our tactics? Who do you think we have to sit on a white horse with a sword in his hand and say the words that’ll make them willing to die to destroy tyranny? Me?” He snorted. “The seer? She tries, but …”

“We need
you,
Damastes,” Sinait said. “We need the man who was first tribune. You’re the only one we think could rally all Numantia to stand against Tenedos, and also destroy those damned Peace Guardians and their masters, the puppets of Maisir.”

“We’re probably coming at this the wrong way,” I said, “but let me ask this. Why must Tenedos be destroyed? Don’t any of you remember the oath I swore? Kutulu, you made the same vow.”

“No,” Kutulu said. “Oddly enough, he never asked me to swear to him personally. Perhaps he thought the oaths I’d already taken, as a warder of Nicias, were enough, and my …” Kutulu bit his lip, “… overweening devotion to what I thought he promised, redemption for our country.”

“What made you willing to renounce it?”

“I saw a change,” Kutulu went on, “day by day, year by year, after you crowned him emperor. It was as if there were two Tenedoses: the one I first served, who would be the greatest ruler Numantia had ever known, then the one who fell in love with wielding power for its own sake, a capricious, even evil man. Little by little, the one I’d known faded away, leaving the new emperor, the one who brought everything down with his foolish invasion of Maisir.

“Or,” Kutulu added, a bit forlornly, “perhaps I’m fooling myself. Perhaps there was only one Tenedos, and I put what I wanted to see, the king I wanted to have rule Numantia, in place of that reality. I don’t know.”

“I don’t know, either,” I said. “For I did the same thing.”

“Damastes,” Sinait broke in, “you’re dissembling. I’m a seer, certainly not as great as Tenedos, but I made certain spells, and I have a good idea that, at the last, at Cambiaso, he was willing to put all on a single cast of the die.

“I also found … echoes, might be the only word that is suitable, of a great spell that was broken in the casting, a spell of monstrous evil.

“Damastes, I’m going to ask you … as a patriotic Numantian, to tell us what happened at Cambiaso. What happened before the battle?”

I stared at her. “How could you know I know anything?” She stared, her gaze cutting into me, through me, forcing me back to the past.

I thought I’d never tell about Tenedos’s power being rooted in blood, nor that terrible spell of his I broke before Cambiaso, the spell that would again rouse the demon who destroyed Chardin Sher, all his people, and the huge castle they held.

But I did, and by the time I was finished, it was past midnight. My voice was hoarse, not so much from the amount of talking, but from the raw emotion that’d gushed out.

“Good,” Kutulu said firmly. “You did well.”

“You did very well,” Sinait agreed. “And I think I know what it cost you to do that to someone you’d sworn fealty to. But you didn’t destroy Tenedos.”

“No.”

“Don’t you have a duty to finish your task?” Anger swept me, and I was on my feet.

“Duty … honor … oaths,” I snarled. “Why in the hells is everyone so calm, so assured about what
my
gods-damned duties and vows are and how
I’m
supposed to honor them? I wish
I
was so certain about things!”

Sinait took a long breath. “You’re right. I apologize.”

“I don’t,” Kutulu said. “Damastes, don’t you think almost the same thing happened to me? Don’t you think my oath to Numantia tore at me when I realized the man I’d thought almost a god didn’t care a rap for his country? All he wanted was power, power to rule not just Numantia, but everyone, the whole world and beyond, gods and demons? How could I serve someone like that, do the bloody things some people thought evil, for someone who wants to make himself a dark godling, perhaps a manifestation of Saionji herself? Or maybe take her throne for himself? Doesn’t his evil automatically cancel anything I swore?”

I’d never seen passion in the man like this. I stared, and he ducked his head.

“You have the same problem I do, don’t you? You have all these nice, logical reasons, but what you did still eats at your guts, as it does mine.”

He nodded jerkily.

“All right,” I said, and I was breathing heavily. “I swore an oath to Tenedos, and I swore an oath before that to Numantia. And my family’s motto is
We Hold True.
” I laughed bitterly. “Maybe I haven’t done things all that well. Maybe Irisu is sitting up there somewhere laughing his ass off at my pretensions. So be it.

“I am not part of this great game anymore. Put one oath on one side, the other on the other. Let them balance each other out, and leave me the hell alone.

“There’re three armies in Numantia about to strike at one another, to rip the country apart again to see who sits the throne in Nicias, which’ll most likely bring the Maisirians back to further rend and tear.

“I can’t stop that from happening, and maybe I don’t want to.

“But understand one thing most clearly. I am not playing. I am not going with you. Nor am I going to serve Tenedos again.

“Let all of you burn and tear and rip the country until it’s nothing but ashes and corpses for all of me.

“I am not going to take part.

“I’ve killed enough, more than enough, sent how many million men to their deaths, been the cause of how many women, children being torn back to the Wheel?

“No more. I’m through.”

I slammed out the door, pushing past Elfric. I heard Kutulu start to say something, then stop.

I burst out of the house into the waning moonlight, went blindly to my cottage, barred the door, and slumped on my bed.

Perhaps I wanted someone to come to me, argue with me, change my mind, give me a rudder. But no one did.

In late morning, when I went again to the main house, Kutulu, Sinait, and their soldiers had gone.

The more I thought, the more firm my resolve became. The world could go spinning into whatever sewer it wished. I was done with great events and wished to be left alone.

But it might not be that simple. If two could find me, one, a far greater wizard, most likely could as well. I’d certainly talked enough about Cimabue to the emperor over the years.

Why he hadn’t sought me thus far, I had no idea. Perhaps, I thought hopefully, he’d realized I would certainly never support his enemies. But I still spent some time, preparing for future troubles.

A few days after Kutulu and Sinait had left, a runner panted up to the main house. A district overseer, in Belya, which is a finger of Cimabue bordered by the state of Hermonassa on the north and east, and Ticao on the west, had somehow heard of the man-eater that’d been slain in Atikim by a nameless great hunter and sent a messenger to Atikim after that hunter. The witch there had used scrapings from the mat I’d slept on and certain other residues I delicately didn’t inquire into and had divined I could be found within four days travel of Atikim.

This also gave me pause — first Sinait, then this witch had been able to scent me out, which suggested I was, in fact, trying to hide in an open plain.

The message was brief: Belya was cursed with a man-eating leopard, perhaps not even an animal but a demon. It had killed a dozen within two weeks, leaving the bodies uneaten as often as not, and the peasants had panicked, abandoning homes and farms to huddle in Belya’s few towns. Could I, whoever I was, help?

I hadn’t heard of this leopard, nor had Mangasha, but Daryal had, and what he’d heard made me wonder if this beast was, indeed, a demon. Over eight years, it had killed
at least
850 people, and Daryal said most likely more, since Belya was a deeply jungled district, and records weren’t carefully kept. That was about all he knew of Belya, other than it was studded with ancient stone temples built by the primitive tribesmen, which were still used by the hill people for worship. I’d never encountered these primitives, nor had anyone I knew, so naturally there were the wildest tales of their fierceness or gentleness, their ugliness or beauty, their friendliness or hostility. Supposedly, by worshiping these eldritch gods of nature, some of their more skilled magicians had learned how to change themselves into animals.

“Perhaps this leopard is one such were-creature,” Daryal suggested.

“Perhaps,” I said. I remembered the wedding dagger with hilt and pommel of silver that Yonge of the Hills had given me for a wedding present, how it had slain men and monsters, and how I could possibly use it now. But it was buried in the forgotten, rotting bones of the
azaz
I’d slain at Cambiaso.

This quest would give me a way to absent myself for a while, and perhaps the deep jungles would hide me from wizards.

I found the two men who’d gone hunting with me to Atikim and asked if they wished further sport. One turned pale and said his rice fields were particularly weed hung, and he was afraid to trust the work to his worthless wife and equally worthless sons, and … and I sent him away.

The other, a young man barely out of his teens named Perche, grinned and said why not. He’d as soon be devoured by a leopard as die of boredom or a broken back, pushing a plow.

I told him what we wanted to take and for him to assemble the items along with two good horses and better mules.

I then sought Mangasha and finally told him exactly what’d happened since I was taken from my island prison and what I’d been thinking. The seer Tenedos was a vindictive man, fully capable of obliterating an entire state like Cimabue if it displeased him, as he’d wanted to do to Nicias. If he came seeking me, either magically or in the flesh, he’d be most likely seeking vengeance for my having betrayed him.

Mangasha shivered.

“I guess I shouldn’t have returned here,” I said wryly.

“No,” he said somberly. “A family must stand together, even more than a nation must. If you hadn’t come back home and if we’d learned you didn’t, that would have shamed us for all time.

“So stand by you we must, now and in the future. Maybe there’s people in other parts of Numantia who can ignore the plight of a kin, but I don’t think many in Cimabue could.”

I turned aside for a moment, not wanting him to see me fight for control.

“Thank you.”

“Buffalo shit,” he said. “There’s nothing to thank or remark on when someone’s merely doing as he should. The question now, I’d guess, is what should we do to prepare ourselves for a visit from that gods-damned magician.”

Mangasha was ever the sergeant, pragmatic, letting his superiors get him into the pig wallow, and then he’d find a way out for everyone, including the bastards who got him into it in the first place.

“I’ll be leaving within a few hours,” I said. “I want you to quietly assemble the family and tell them what we’ve decided.” I took a deep breath. “All of them except Traptain … and Jeritza.”

Mangasha eyed me. “You trust him as little as I do.”

“Say, rather, I’m not sure of him, and these aren’t times to put trust in anyone you’re unsure of.”

“Jeritza as well, because she’s his wife,” Mangasha said wryly.

I nodded. “A wife who doesn’t stand with her husband isn’t much.”

“That’ll be hard for me to do.”

“Do the best you can,” I said, then gave further instructions to put together a work crew of the most reliable men and women he knew. Have them find a spot, deep in the jungle, one that could be defended. Build platforms there, and put hard stores on them. Get one of the village witches to put a spell on it, so animals wouldn’t raid the foodstuffs. If attacked, don’t try to fight either soldiers or demons, but flee. The attack, if it came, would probably be magical and shouldn’t last long, particularly once Tenedos realized I was absent. Hopefully, there wouldn’t be much damage.