DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) (190 page)

The ensuing frenzy was just the type of chaos favored by Ashwarawu and his warriors, and each Behrenese, soldier and driver, was quickly isolated from his kin, and quickly slashed, stabbed, or trampled.

It was over in a matter of moments, as fast as a passing avalanche. Only a couple of the Behrenese weren’t quite dead, lying bleeding in the snow, crying out in agony, crying out for mercy.

Brynn found Pagonel collecting one of the wayward wagons. She moved to help him, trying hard to ignore the cries of the wounded.

“It is not a pretty business,” the mystic remarked, seeing the distress on the young ranger’s face.

“I do not enjoy the killing,” Brynn admitted. She grabbed up the loose reins of one team then, and started to turn them about, but she stopped, noting that Pagonel was glancing at her and then to the side, silently motioning for her to take notice.

Brynn turned to see the To-gai-ru line reformed beside the bulk of the caravan, with Ashwarawu walking his horse slowly toward her.

“You fought well this day,” the leader observed. “As you have in the last encounters. As you did on the morning you were taken into my band.”

“I was well-trained,” Brynn replied. “And am To-gai-ru.” She managed a smile. “And none have ever found a better mount …” She stopped, realizing that the proud leader wasn’t even listening to her.

“You will move up seven places in the line, closer to me, I think,” Ashwarawu said offhandedly.

Brynn knew that she should be thrilled, but something about his tone and demeanor had her quite concerned.

“After you finish the task,” he said, and he slowly turned his head to regard one of the Behrenese soldiers lying upon the ground, writhing in pain.

Brynn looked at the man, understanding what was expected of her. But this task hit her hard, assaulting her sensibilities. It was one thing to do battle against an enemy, one she profoundly hated, but how could she view a man lying helpless upon the ground in such a light as that?

She looked back to Ashwarawu, to see him staring hard at her, not blinking, not flinching.

Brynn turned to Pagonel for support, for anything, and found him sitting there staring alternately at her and at the leader, as if weighing both.

The seconds slipped past.

“Finish the task,” Ashwarawu said slowly and deliberately.

Brynn found it hard to draw breath. She understood the depth of this trial, understood that if she was not strong, her place among the raiders, among all the To-gai-ru, would be forever diminished. She thought to argue about taking captives again, but knew that Ashwarawu was uncompromising on this point. The raider band did not have the resources to keep prisoners, to feed them or even to watch over them. And since no Behrenese soldiers or caravan drivers would offer any bargaining leverage whatsoever with any of the Yatol leaders, they were worthless to Ashwarawu.

Brynn scanned the leader and the others again, wishing that she had a way out,
but understanding that she most certainly did not. She slid down from her pony; she could have done the deed astride, but she didn’t want to include Runtly in the dirty business.

Her bloody sword in hand, Brynn walked up to a wounded Behrenese. She chose the most grievously wounded man first, one who could not plead to her, could not even look her in the eye. He gasped for breath, blood pouring from his mouth with each exhalation, and Brynn knew that even if Ashwarawu had agreed to taking prisoners, there was nothing that she and the others could do to help this one.

Juraviel’s warnings about the cruelty of war echoed in the woman’s mind.

She struck fast and cleanly, stabbing the man through the heart, stilling his body and ending his misery.

The next wounded man looked up at her as she stood over him, his eyes pleading for mercy. He even managed a slight shake of his head, begging her not to strike.

Brynn looked up, then closed her eyes. She remembered keenly the moment when her parents had been murdered, purposely replaying that awful scene in her head again.

She struck, imagining that she was stabbing the man who had killed her parents.

And then she walked away. She held her sword out to the side and called forth its fire, using the flames to burn away the bloodstains.

She heard the cries of encouragement, the cheers, from the To-gai-ru, though she did not feel much like a hero at that moment. She saw the approving look of Ashwarawu.

Or was it an approving look? She had to wonder, for somewhere in the leader’s powerful expression, Brynn saw something more, and something far less. He had chosen her to carry out the executions, under the rationalization of glory, that she had performed well and so deserved the task of finishing the battle. But in looking at him then, Brynn understood that Ashwarawu had just tested her, and perhaps, that he had just tried to diminish her, in her own eyes if in no one else’s. Had Ashwarawu just taken a bit more control over Brynn?

The woman looked to Pagonel, who sat astride his horse, holding Runtly’s reins. She saw a sadness there in his face, and a measure of sympathy that she had not expected.

She took the reins and pulled herself up onto Runtly’s strong back, the pony accepting her, as always. She took some comfort in that, for Runtly would not judge her, as she could not help but judge herself.

“T
hey were utterly overrun,” Wan Atenn reported to Yatol Grysh in the audience chamber of the great temple in Dharyan. “The dead of our people were left on the frozen ground and all but one destroyed wagon was taken.” The Chezhou-Lei warrior said it all matter-of-factly, as if the loss of a few soldiers and drivers was
no big event.

Yatol Grysh’s stern look melted away. “And the foodstuffs were prepared as I ordered?” he asked, grinning.

“They were.”

At Grysh’s side, Carwan Pestle shifted in his seat and put a curious look over the Yatol.

“The food was poisoned,” Grysh happily explained. “That caravan had to ride back and forth several times before the rebels even took notice of it!”

“You sent them out there to be sacrificed?” Pestle asked, in surprise and not in judgment.

“Ashwarawu is a fool, but a dangerous one,” Grysh replied. “Of course, he may well be a dead fool now.”

The Yatol nodded, trying very hard not to glance in the direction of any of the several slaves—To-gai-ru all—who were working in the temple. He had no doubt that word of the treachery would soon spread to the steppes, and to Ashwarawu’s ears, but that was part of the fun of it, was it not? He looked to the stunned Carwan Pestle, and was a bit disappointed that his protégé hadn’t caught on to all of this sooner. None of the outposter towns truly needed any supplies, after all, so why had Grysh sent out three separate caravans?

Pestle was too innocent, the Yatol reasoned, to understand the need of such sacrifices. The first two caravans were necessary predecessors to the third batch of poisoned supplies.

Of course, even the third was no more than a ruse. There were no poisons available in any quantities that could kill a large group of men after days and days of sitting in foodstuffs that would not be readily detectable by even casual observation.

No, this too was a ruse, designed to bolster Ashwarawu’s confidence—in his own forces, in the incompetence of his enemies, and in the spy network that was so obviously working for him out of Dharyan. No doubt one of the workers in the temple would pass the word of the poisoned food, and another wretched Ru would rush out in the dark of night to find the rebel leader.

Grysh was glad he didn’t have to try to hide his sly smile, because he doubted that he could at that time.

He was drawing the rebel fool in, and he had eight hundred trained, professional soldiers at his disposal.

“You are surprised that I take so bold and decisive a step against the fool rebels?” Grysh asked Pestle.

“No, Yatol.”

“Yes, you are,” Grysh corrected. “Why not wait until the spring, after all, when we could send the might of Jacintha’s army against the rabble and be done with them quickly and easily?” Grysh paused, studying the man, mocking him with a wry grin. “Yes, you are surprised, and so our next visitor this day should help you to understand.”

With that, he looked to Wan Atenn and nodded, and the Chezhou-Lei relayed
the signal to one of his guards by the great double doors. That man turned out to the hall and clapped his hands sharply, twice, and in walked Woh Lien and Dahmed Blie, the Chezhou-Lei leaders of the two visiting twenty-squares.

“Yatol,” Woh Lien said, snapping into a formal bow.

“Greetings to you, Chezhou-Lei.”

“We have come to inform you that our duties here are done. The supplies have been delivered and distributed. Your requested eight-square has been selected from among the finest of our warriors.”

“And so you plan to leave?”

“That is our command, Yatol.”

“To return to Jacintha, where you can chase birds from the fountains?” Grysh asked incredulously. “You are warriors, my friend, and here is a war for you to fight. You would turn from that to return to a city basking in peace and security?”

Chezhou-Lei Woh Lien glanced nervously over at his companion, who seemed equally ill-at-ease. “It is not our decision to make, Yatol.”

“Yet you are the commanders of your respective forces,” Grysh countered. “Surely you hold discretion in emergency situations.”

“True, Yatol. But there is no such emergency. Not at this time, at least, and the God-Voice has determined that we are to return, at the first break in the weather.”

He continued, but Grysh held up his hand, motioning for him to relent. “Go, then,” he said, looking from Carwan Pestle to Wan Atenn, his expression perfectly conveying a sense of worry—an emotion he certainly did not feel. “And let us pray that the wretch Ashwarawu was the first to taste of the last raid’s spoils!”

The Yatol, feigning anger and frustration, dismissed them all, then walked with a huff from the grand room, back to his private quarters, an honestly confused and concerned Carwan Pestle close behind.

But Yatol Grysh was not concerned. Not at all. He had a measure of this rebel, Ashwarawu, now. He was beginning to recognize the man’s patterns, and he knew that he was adding to the self-confidence that would ultimately bring the man down.

It would be an enjoyable spring in Dharyan.

“Y
ou are unnerved,” Pagonel remarked to Brynn the day after the caravan raid. Brynn was sitting off to the side of the camp cleaning her sword, alone and apparently calm and composed, but the perceptive mystic had seen through the façade. “It is one thing to kill a man in combat—the rush of fear and the need for self-defense allows for conscious justification. But it is quite another to kill a man lying helpless on the ground. Be relieved, my friend, that there were no uninjured Behrenese after the raid, no men who had just been knocked aside and captured.”

“You presume much.”

Pagonel gave a disarming smile. “A soldier invading your homeland deserves death, perhaps.”

“Any Behrenese entering To-gai uninvited deserves death,” Brynn said with as
much conviction as she could muster.

“Do they?” The question was spoken, again, with perfect calm and the appearance of sincere reasoning. “If you happened upon a settlement and found a young Behrenese mother with her child, would you kill them? Without guilt?”

Brynn stared hard at him.

“You would put them on the road to their own land, perhaps,” the mystic remarked. “And likely with enough supplies so that their road would not be dangerous.”

Brynn went back to her work on the sword, her expression intense. “You presume much.”

“Presumptions, perhaps, but based upon considerable observation,” the mystic explained, taking a seat beside the young ranger. “I watched you at your practice this morning.”

The statement froze Brynn in place. She had walked off far from the To-gai-ru encampment early that morning to practice her
bi’nelle dasada
, the elven sword dance, a ritual that she had been neglecting far too often of late. In the elven valley, Brynn had performed the dance nude, but since it was winter here on the steppes, with that constantly chill wind cutting across the iced grasses, she had worn a slight shift that morning. Still, Pagonel’s proclamation caught her off guard, and made her feel no less violated than if she had been dancing nude.
Bi’nelle dasada
was an intensely personal exercise, a disciplined series of elaborate motions designed to physically train the muscles in the motions of battle, but even more than that, to extend the consciousness, to heighten the bond between body and mind.

Slowly, the young woman looked up at Pagonel.

“We of Jhesta Tu have similar routines,” the mystic explained. “Quite similar, though we rarely fight or practice with weapons. The Chezhou-Lei warriors do, as well. As do certain factions of the Abellican Church to the north. I am curious as to how you came to learn such a dance, for yours, I believe, is quite extraordinary.”

“It is not your business,” Brynn said, with all the warnings of Dasslerond that
bi’nelle dasada
was a secret not to be shared echoing in her mind. She went back to her work on the sword again, pointedly.

“One day we will speak of it, I hope. But of course, the choice is yours. As for the events of yesterday, I am glad to see that you are troubled by them.”

Brynn looked back at him again, her expression skeptical, though Pagonel could not be sure if she was trying to deny the premise of his statement, that she was troubled, or if she was merely confused that he should be glad to witness her guilt.

“You trouble yourself needlessly,” he explained. “Those men were dead anyway—by Ashwarawu’s hand if not by the wounds they had already received. And you struck with mercy and compassion, which is more than most would have done, and is as much as the doomed soldiers could have expected. Our mighty leader would not allow his reputation to be diminished for the sake of Behrenese soldiers.”

“Should he?” Brynn asked, her tone making it fairly clear that she sided with Pagonel on this issue.