Heir of Iron (The Powers of Amur Book 1) (28 page)

“Are you that stubborn? Don’t be a fool. I won’t carry that message for you.”

“Then I’ll tell them myself.” He took three swift steps towards the door. Mandhi shrank back and gave him a black glare, her eyes narrowed with a cunning thought that he couldn’t interpret.

“What will you tell them?” she said.

“They want to see the Heir, don’t they? Then they’ll see me, and I’ll tell them we’re leaving. Ruyam is crossing the Amsadhu, and we have to fly to Virnas ahead of him. They’ll listen.”

Mandhi examined him for a moment with a cold, embittered expression, then her eyes widened and her lips loosened into a soft, exhausted smile. “Fine. We’ll go. And we’ll see what happens in Virnas.”

The hills of Virnas appeared as a sliver of gray rock on the lip of greening fields of rice. The walls themselves could not yet be discerned, but the sight of the stony shoulders put relief in Mandhi’s chest. The sun glimmered on the crowns of the hills in the east. Behind Mandhi and Navran the trail of fleeing Uluriya stretched like a dog’s tail, caked with dust and drooping into the earth at the end of a day of heat and hard travel.

Paidacha looked at Navran and asked in a tone of weary hopefulness, “Will we wait here?”

“Yes,” Mandhi answered. A half day’s march remained before they would reach the gates of the city, and it would be closed by that time. Navran flinched a little that she had presumed to answer for him, but he nodded. With a sigh of relief Paidacha shouted to Tashya and the rest of their band to stop and prepare a camp beside the road. Ten yards behind them, the next group in the chain saw their gesture and did likewise, and the halt rippled back through the line of refugees.

Mandhi muttered under her breath. Another night sleeping on a cotton blanket on the ground. She’d had enough of that when they were fleeing with Gocam, and she’d hoped to spend some time in guest-houses now. And guest-houses there were, plenty of them between Jaitha and Virnas. But none that could accommodate a flood of Uluriya two thousand strong in a line that stretched to the northern horizon and beyond. She actually didn’t know how far back their followers reached, because at some point they began to bleed into the general exodus from Jaitha. The rumors from the city propagated up the line, and when they reached Mandhi and Navran they confirmed Navran’s fear.

Ruyam lived. He and the Red Men had crossed the Amsadhu in boats, had crushed the remnants of the King’s militia, and followed them to Virnas.

They made a hurried camp, making a small fire of dung in the middle of their circle. Paidacha passed out roti and dried figs. Mandhi crouched next to the fire and ate in silence, while Paidacha and Tashya chatted quietly in grim tones. Navran took his food and went off alone, staring to the north with an expression that suggested an inner torment. The evening sank into gloom.

Voices sounded along the road, coming from the north. A wail of dismay carried through the night from the next group behind them. Navran started down the road to meet two gray figures hurrying along the clay path. Mandhi got up and followed.

“We bring news for the Heir!” one of the men shouted.

“That’s me,” Navran said, stepping into the path in front of them. The men were taken aback for a moment, but they bowed to Navran and kissed his hand, which he endured with a stiff expression. He glanced back to see Mandhi following him.

“I am Kurgitu your servant,” the first man said. “And this is my brother Daushana. We have dire news. The Red Men have been spotted on the road behind us.”

“What?” Mandhi said. “How far back?”

The man glanced from Navran to Mandhi in confusion, but Navran raised his hand and said, “She’s my sister.”

Not your sister,
Mandhi thought, but she couldn’t correct him now.

“A few miles behind the last of us. The word was passed up from behind us. They saw the Red Men on the road, marching quickly and overtaking many that they saw behind us. And they said—” Kurgitu looked around with a suspicious glance and made the sign of the pentacle on himself “–they said that Ruyam had been transformed into a demon.”

“What?” Mandhi said.

Navran sighed. “I heard the rumor a few days ago,” he said quietly. “A spirit of fire and smoke.”

Kurgitu and Daushana nodded their heads gravely. Mandhi snorted. “Do we believe that?”

Navran gave her a scornful glance. Evidently he believed it, at least. Then he turned to the two men and said, “The refugees the Red Men passed,” Navran said. “Were they harmed?”

Kurgitu looked back at the other man following him, who shrugged. “We don’t know. We took the word from those who first saw, but they were exhausted by the time they reached us. My brother and I agreed to run forward carrying the news until we found the Heir.”

“We’ve moved too slowly,” Mandhi muttered. “But we’re within sight of the city. We can reach it tomorrow before the Red Men reach us.”

“Not all of us,” Navran said. “Not those who lagged.”

“Can you do anything for them?”

Navran grimaced. “Probably not.”

Kurgitu ducked his head and asked, “What should my brother and I do?”

“Stay with us,” Mandhi said. “You have the Heir’s thanks. We’ll share our food with you. And at dawn we’ll make for the city gates.”

At dawn they marched.

The camp stirred with the earliest brushes of light on the eastern horizon, and they gathered their goods with grim, silent efficiency. Their feet hit the clay road while the morning mist still hovered over the rice paddies. The city of Virnas ahead of them lay obscured by haze.

By midmorning the mist had dissipated. At first Mandhi thought she saw a long-lasting patch of fog in the valley east of Virnas. But with a longer look she saw there was a large encampment of some sort just outside of Virnas. The road passed over a small ridge, letting her make out the distant flecks of green and gray fabric covering the brown, unplanted fields to the left of the road. She pointed it out to Navran.

“Do you know what it is?” he asked.

“I don’t,” she said. “That makes me nervous.”

He shrugged wearily. “Could it be worse than the Red Men?”

“How could I know?” She chewed her lip for a moment. “The north road enters the city well to the west of their encampment, so they won’t threaten us. I hope.”

“Then we go for the city.” He plodded ahead without another glance.

How did he continue so doggedly? She had learned better than to take his taciturn stubbornness for stupidity, but it made her teeth grind nonetheless. If the strange encampment around Virnas
did
represent a threat, then they needed a plan. Did he have one? Did he think she would invent one on the spot? She’d get no good answers from him and had no desire to try to wring something from his stony lips.

The road slid down from the crest of the ridge and dropped between the little mud terraces sectioning the hill into rice paddies. The hill on which the city perched hulked over the landscape, and the gray stone walls showed like teeth.

As they passed through villages and hamlets, eyes peered at them from windows, as if the inhabitants were frightened by the sight of their march and hoped they would pass on without disturbing them further. Many of these were Uluriya villages, pentacles dangling from the eaves of their houses and nailed above their doors, and they must have recognized those marching. But they maintained silence, and Mandhi respected it. She glanced backwards at the clumped line of Uluriya following them down the ridge, thought of the Red Men trailing them beyond, and prayed for the safety of the village.

A stone tower hulked over the road, an outpost of the militia of Virnas. As they came within sight of it, a ram’s horn blew from its crown, and a few minutes later an answer sounded as a faint echo from the walls of Virnas. But no one sallied out from the tower, and they passed beneath it unharmed. Mandhi glanced up and saw the militiamen as silhouettes under the covered roof, watching them with their hands gripping the hafts of their spears.

“What does the horn mean?” Navran whispered to her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “We’ll find out.”

It didn’t take long. Before they had walked beyond the sight of the tower a company of the Virnas militia issued from the north gate and marched towards them on the road.

As soon as the foremost of the militia glimpsed, he called out, “Halt, Uluriya! Thudra-dar of Virnas has need of you.”

Paidacha, Sumi, and their daughters walked a few paces ahead of Mandhi and Navran. They stopped in the road and glanced back at Mandhi and Navran. Paidacha raised his hand in a silent question.

“I don’t know,” Mandhi said.

“We go to them,” Navran said.

“Why? Do you know something I don’t?”

Navran smiled. “Hardly. But can we get past them to Virnas? Maybe Thudra-dar will be our ally.”

They stood beside Paidacha and his family. The militia ahead of them advanced quickly. Mandhi glanced backwards and saw with a lurch of terror that the garrison of the tower had moved onto the road behind them and was closing the gap.

“We should run,” she said so that everyone in their group could hear. “We scatter into the fields. They won’t find us.”

“No,” Navran said. “I’m done running.”

“They’ll capture us! We don’t know what they plan on doing.”

“I’ve been captured before.” He shrugged and looked to the north. A fool, Mandhi thought. Where did he gather this insane confidence? Or perhaps he was so terrified of the threat of Ruyam and the Red Men that he disregarded every other danger. She tensed and nearly ran away on her own, but it was already too late. The militia surrounded them with a hedge of bronze spearheads, and their captain stepped forward to examine them.

“Thudra-dar of Virnas has given us orders to capture all Uluriya coming to the city from the north,” the captain said. “You will be escorted directly to his palace.”

“I hope he has a big palace,” Navran said. “Because there are another two thousand following behind us.”

The captain snickered. “Not my problem. You were the first, and you’ll come to Thudra-dar.” He glanced up the road at the following line, which was now stuttering and halting at the sight of the soldiers on the road. “Are they all coming into the city?”

“We hope so,” Mandhi said. “We would beg the sufferance of Thudra-dar—”

“Leave it alone,” the captain said. “If you have things to say, tell it to the king himself when you get to him.”

They marched Mandhi, Navran, and Paidacha’s family together towards Virnas with quick, military steps.

Paidacha sidled up next to Mandhi carrying little Kalishni. “Are we in danger?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Paidacha’s shoulders slumped. “Ulaur save us. The Heir protect us.”

Mandhi stifled a laugh. Navran wouldn’t protect anybody. He seemed mostly determined to march them into the maw of danger.

As they ascended the stony hill to the city wall, Mandhi craned her neck to catch a glimpse of the tents in the valley. The soldiers to her left blocked the way and gave her no time to stop and stare, but she caught one glance of a green flag with a sea eagle blazoned on it.
Sadja?

But if Sadja were here, then he knew Navran was coming, which probably meant that Thudra knew as well. Did they already know what had transpired in Jaitha? And had Thudra captured them as friend or foe? Her heart raced. Sadja’s presence meant their chances of passing as innocent Uluriya commoners had vanished.

They passed beneath the grim arch of the city’s gates and into the crowded streets. Mandhi felt a pang of homesickness upon reaching familiar streets again. There was an Uluriya silversmith, and there the weaver where she and Srithi shopped. They shot along the north street towards the palace, a dark green bulk built into the north wall of the city. The domes and leaf-shaped crenellations of the palace walls rose above the mud-brick homes, and the black-painted gates swallowed them.

The interior of the palace was cool, with green marble underfoot and the symbols of Chaludra, Am, and Ashti carved into the walls. The sickle emblem of Thudra’s house was blazoned on banners that hung over the doors. Navran glanced at the stonework and the images painted on the walls with an expression of amused detachment.

The smugness irritated her. “Don’t smile like a half-wit,” she hissed.

“I was just thinking,” he said," that a year ago the palace of Virnas would have been the most beautiful and terrifying place on the earth for me. But now that I’ve lived in the Ushpanditya…." He shook his head.

A set of silver-inlaid inner doors parted and admitted them to the throne room. It was a modest chamber, only a little larger than Mandhi’s bed-chamber at home, with padded cushions along the walls and a raised dais at the far end with a mahogany chair atop it. A few courtiers sat on the cushions or stood near the walls, while on the dais stood a young man with a thin mustache and a narrow, crooked nose, talking to a pair of courtiers in blue silks. The chatter around the chamber raised a notch in pitch as they entered the room. The militia leader rushed forward and bowed to the man standing on the dais, who raised his hand and quieted the courtiers talking to him.

“Well?” he asked.

“Thudra-dar, your will has been carried out,” the militia captain said.

“And these are the Uluriya approaching from Jaitha?” He glanced across their little group with an expression of severity and distaste.

“They are. They came at the head of a great column, as predicted.”

Thudra’s lips pursed and he scratched at the corner of his mustache. “So they did. You and yours are dismissed.” He pointed to the militia captain and the blue-clad courtiers which had been supplicating him a moment earlier. “My personal guard will take the door.”

The captain bowed and walked away, as did the men in blue with disappointed expressions on their faces. The doors closed behind them, shutting with a sound of finality that made Mandhi wince. Thudra stepped off the dais and raked his gaze across them, holding his nose aloft and narrowing his eyes with an expression of anger.

“Which one of you is the Heir of Manjur?” he said after a moment.

Mandhi suppressed her own gasp, and she heard Paidacha mince an oath. It must be a lucky guess. There was no way for him to know.

“The Heir is not among us,” she said quickly, before any of the others could say something rasher.

He paced around their group until he stood a foot away from Mandhi, where his gaze coldly evaluated her face and clothing. “A woman answers. Interesting. And what’s your name?”

Could she use her real name? Could he have discovered that Cauratha was the Heir? “Mandhi daughter of Ghauna Aptu,” she said before she had time to rethink her lie.

“Do you speak for this little band of yours that I’ve captured?”

She hesitated just a moment. “Yes.”