Demon King (69 page)

I got up and dressed. I’d washed and shaved before I lay down, and put on clean, almost dry underclothing I’d scrubbed out myself the afternoon before. I remembered the vast wardrobes I’d once had, and ruefully looked at my possessions. I donned the cleaner of my two shirts, this one as red as my Lancers’ tunics, laced on a boiled leather vest battle-stained almost black, and tucked that into tight black breeches that matched the boots someone had polished until they almost glowed, as if they were new, and the worn-through soles wouldn’t be seen. For armor I wore only a breastplate and my helmet, whose roached plume was beginning to shed.

I buckled on my sword belt, a straight blade on one side and Yonge’s silver dagger on the other.

I went to my command tent and once more went over the map. I studied the latest patrol reports on the enemy dispositions. There were no changes, so the Maisirians had not been alerted. I hoped.

It was close to dawn when Domina Othman rushed into the tent, and for the first time since I’d known the always-calm, always-prescient aide, he was clearly rattled. He stammered that the emperor wanted me, must see me immediately! I must come at once!

What could have happened? Had the Maisirians learned of his spell? Or perhaps, magic being what it was, would he be unable to summon that dreadful thing from wherever it laired?

A terrified captain of the Lower Half, his uniform torn and travel-stained, stumbled out of the emperor’s tent as I approached.

As I came in, Tenedos sent a brazier spinning, its smoldering incenses scattering unheeded. Another brazier, a single broad flame rising motionless from its center, sat in the middle of an elaborately inscribed figure drawn in blood-red chalk. I remembered that figure — I’d drawn a simpler version of it again and again before I climbed the walls of Chardin Sher’s stronghold, chalked it one final time on the stone inside, then poured a potion and fled for my life as the demon came into our world.

The emperor’s field desk and chair were overturned, and ancient scrolls and musty books thrown about, hurled in blind rage.

I clapped my boot heels, snapped as perfect a salute as I’d ever managed as a prospective legate at the lycée. “Sir! First Tribune Damastes á Cimabue.”

“Those bastards! Shitheels! Traitors! Back-stabbers!” he raved.

I held my silence, and looked at Othman, who was as broken as the emperor. Tenedos went to a sideboard and picked up a crystal decanter of brandy. He found a glass, unstoppered the decanter, then, rage boiling once more, hurled it against a map cabinet. The crystal shattered, brandy sprayed into the brazier, and perfumed flames shot up.

He fought for control, found it, and turned to me. “That man who left,” he said, quite calmly, “is a brave officer. He’s ridden all the way from Amur, from the Guard’s depot. Killed three horses on the way. How he managed to snake through the Maisirian positions I don’t know. But thank Saionji he did. We’ve been betrayed, Damastes, betrayed by those we’re fighting for!”

Scopas and Barthou had learned from their first failure. Somewhere outside Nicias, they’d made careful plans that included real soldiery. They’d used any and all troops they could rally, units evidently terrified they’d be sent south to be torn apart in the grinder.

They’d marched on Nicias, and there wasn’t a Guard Corps at hand to save the day. Trusted units garrisoning the capital mutinied and joined the revolt. The final blow, Tenedos said, was that this time the commoners had listened to the simple message Scopas and Barthou were preaching: Peace now, peace at any price. Surrender to the Maisirians, give them what they want so they’ll leave Numantia. Bring down the usurper Tenedos and his people, for they’ve ruined Numantia with their insane war against a former good neighbor. Peace now, peace forever!

This had happened a week ago. Somehow the traitors had sealed off the river, and no word of the catastrophe came south. In that time they’d sent heliographs to other province capitals.

“Who knows what else they promised, what they threatened, what they said,” Tenedos said. “By the time the news reached Amur, half my provinces were in open revolt. I suppose more have joined by now.”

I was appalled. To be so betrayed was inconceivable. Without asking permission, I picked up Tenedos’s chair and slumped into it.

“What now?” I finally managed.

The emperor and I stared at each other. Again I saw the corner of his mouth twitch. “I know what to do,” he said, his voice a bit shaky. Then it firmed. “In fact, what just happened makes the decision even easier.

“Othman!”

“Sir!”

“Make sure my Brethren are aroused and ready! I shall be needing their services within the hour. Now leave us. There are still some secrets I can’t share even with you.” Othman saluted, and hurried out.

Tenedos smiled, a smile that was purely evil. “I have all of the devices, spells, herbs assembled to summon the demon that brought doom to Chardin Sher. All I need do is call the Chare Brethren, give them certain parts of the spell that’ll prepare the ground, and I’ll perform the rest of the ceremony.

“This day we’ll destroy not one, but two of Numantia’s enemies — one who attacks from without, the other who bores from within. The demon shall be called, and given permission to savage the Maisirians, as I’d planned. Then I’ll grant him greater pleasure, and give him Nicias.

“I mentioned the cost of this summoning. What Scopas and Barthou have done is make it far cheaper, at least cheaper for honest Numantians.

“I shall give the demon Nicias,” he repeated. “Let him do to that great city what he did to Chardin Sher’s rocky citadel. Tear stone from stone until the City of Light explodes! Let him take everyone — men, women, babes — for his own, and let the raging fire consume anyone or anything he scorns. Let him tear the land so no one can live there again and it becomes a swamp darker than any in the Maisirian wilderness.

“Let Nicias become an example for future generations, who’ll pass by the wasteland, home only to monsters and decay, and know what the price is to stand against the Seer Tenedos, the Emperor Tenedos!”

The emperor’s voice had risen and gone shrill, and his eyes glazed as he raved. He calmed himself. “Yes. That is what we’ll do. I know how to keep the demon from returning to his own plane. Before, I was worried about losing control, and so arranged that blue lightning that sent him back to his home of dark flames.

“Not now. Not this time. This time, I’ll keep him here, and woe to anyone who stands against me, for they’ll meet the same fate as the Maisirians, as the scum traitors of Nicias!

“After he destroys Nicias, we’ll reach out once more. We’ll retake Numantia, Maisir, then on, seizing lands no Numantian has known. We’ll let the demon, and others I’ll learn about, become our assault divisions, and few Numantian lives will be spent. The creature’s pay will be the souls of those conquered, and when the land is empty, we’ll resettle it with our own!

“Then, Damastes, we’ll have
real
power. There’ll be no need for altars, for prayers to fickle goddesses who betray you when they wish. I promised once, my friend, you and I would bestride the world.

“Thanks to Bairan, thanks to the
azaz
, full thanks to those bastards in Nicias, for they’ve opened a new way for me — for us — a way it perhaps would have taken us years to see, more years to have the courage to grasp.

“Desperate times breed desperate measures, don’t they? They also breed greatness.

“They breed gods!”

His face was glowing, and the years had dropped away, and he looked as he had the day we met, long ago, in Sulem Pass, surrounded by bodies.

But now his eyes carried the fires of madness, not power.

He held out his hands, to seal the bargain. I rose, held out mine, and he came forward.

I hit him once, very hard, just below the chin. He dropped without a sound.

I made sure he was unconscious, then rummaged through his magical chests until I found strong cord. I tied the emperor’s hands and feet, gagged and blindfolded him, then hid his body in the rear of the tent, in his private sleeping area, pulling sleeping furs over him. I was crying soundlessly all the while, nearly blinded by my tears.

I fed the books piled near the symbol into the flaming brazier, and it ate without a flare the dark knowledge Tenedos had worked so hard to obtain. Then the set out herbs and materials were cast into the fire. I scrubbed at the red chalked symbol until it was gone.

I saw a flagon, uncorked it, and the stench of that same potion I’d poured out in Chardin Sher’s castle came back. I put the flagon in my sabertache and left the tent.

I ran to my horse, pulled myself into the saddle, and kicked my mount into a hard gallop. Somewhere in the gray dawn, I uncorked the flagon and hurled it as far away from me as I could.

Captain Balkh was waiting outside my tent.

“Alert the buglers,” I ordered. “Sound the attack!”

• • •

We rode out from our lines at the trot, bugles singing bright songs of death. Drums thundered, and the infantry, crouched in their positions, came to their feet and charged into the open, cheering.

I signaled, and the bugles called again, and we went to the gallop, Red Lancers in the fore, behind me all that was left of the proud host that had ridden across the border so long ago, a steel-tipped lance now aimed for the heart of Maisir.

Our banners, all the colors of Numantia, rippled in the morning breeze as we rode, and the thunder of our horses’ hooves was louder than drums.

I looked back, and my vision blurred, seeing the great army of Numantia I’d spent my life serving, building, and commanding go forward — never hesitating, terrible under its banners — into its last battle.

I felt blood rage, let it build.

We smashed through the Maisirian lines as if there were no one against us, going hard for the center of their army. Men rose in front of me and were cut down screaming, and we smashed on, killing everything in our way.

I felt a flicker of foolish hope that there was a chance we might carry the day, that the Maisirians might break and run. We crushed their second and third lines, and before us was their headquarters.

Then we were hit from the flank by line after line of elite infantry, to whom a man on a horse was an easy target, not a figure of terror. They ducked under our lances and went for our horses. Other soldiers were in front, holding firm, and our charge was broken, and all was a swirling whirlwind of stabbing, slashing, killing, dying men.

Ahead of me, not a hundred yards away, were huge, lavishly colored tents, flags floating over them. Here was the king, and I shouted to the Lancers to follow me, and we pushed on, foot by bloody foot.

Then the demons came from nowhere. They were horrible insects, scarabs perhaps, larger than a horse. But, terribly, they bore above their slashing mandibles the faces of men, and I gasped, recognizing, even through the bloody eyes of battle, one.

Myrus Le Balafre.

I heard someone else scream, as he knew another monster’s countenance, and then I saw Mercia Petre’s solemn face. I hope in the name of all the gods that these were just devices the
azaz
had summoned to terrify us, and he’d not been able to call the souls of these men back from the Wheel. I cannot believe Saionji would let anyone usurp her domain so.

One horror slashed at my horse, nearly severing its head, and it reared and sent me sprawling. I rolled to my feet, and the horror loomed over me, snapping with its scissorslike jaws, and I lunged, burying my sword in its body. It collapsed, snapping at the wound as I pulled my blade free, and howled, an eerie high screech, and green ichor sprayed me, and then it was motionless.

“They can be killed,” I shouted, and saw one rip Captain Balkh nearly in half as Curti sent an arrow into the center of its human face.

The
azaz
’s magic was almost as deadly for his own soldiers, striking as much terror into them as it did us, and they were yelling in panic and running. Another monster came, and Svalbard cut two legs from under it, drove his long sword through its carapace, and it, too, died.

Three men attacked, one armed with an ax, and I opened his guts for him, ducked the sword thrust of the second, and hacked his side open. The third screamed and ran.

There was no one close then except a pair of wounded, dying demons, and I ran for the flag-draped tents, hearing my breath rasp in my lungs, hardly realizing I was muttering that childish prayer to Tanis.

I saw a man standing in the doorway to a tent. He wore dark robes and held a strange wand, not solid as every other one I’d seen, but made of twisted silver, woven like tree branches.

The
azaz.

Everything in the world vanished, and I was moving toward him, and all was very slow, very blurry. His wand moved, and a demon came from nowhere, and it had Alegria’s face. But I was beyond life, beyond caring, and my sword had come back for a thrust, when one of Curd’s arrows thudded into the demon’s body and it snapped at the shaft, and was gone.

Again the
azaz
’s wand moved, but I was closer, still not within sword striking distance. I think I was still running, but perhaps not.

My free hand, without my willing it, fumbled at my belt, and Yonge’s wedding gift, the silver dagger that had killed far more than its share, came out of its sheath, and I hurled it underhand. The blade turned lazily in midair, then took the
azaz
just under his ribs, and he contorted, screaming, and his scream filled my life, my world, with joy, and I thought I could hear Karjan laugh as well, from wherever Saionji had cast him. The wizard’s face was agonized, and my sword went into his open mouth and he was dead.

Again hope shot through me, and I turned.

“Now the king,” I bellowed, but there were only three men behind me. I saw Curti down with a spear through his thigh, not moving, and a scatter of dead or dying Lancers amid a welter of bodies.

But there was Bikaner, Svalbard, and another man, a Lancer I didn’t know. All were blood- and ichor-drenched, but all bore that same twisted death-giving, death-embracing smile I knew was on my own face.