His Conquering Sword (32 page)

They rode out through the suburbs. Here, beyond reach of the Karkand catapults, siege towers rose, built by conscripted laborers marched in from the countryside and from as far away as Gangana and guarded by the Farisa auxiliaries who hated their former Habakar masters and who had been overjoyed to throw in their lot with the jaran. The wheels of the towers rose almost twice Aleksi’s height and were as thick as the length of his arm. Farther back, they built the scaffolding for the Habakar king.

At the gate of the outer wall, the grain marketplace did a brisk business, heavily guarded by jaran riders. Passing through the gate, they came to the huge churned-up field where once a portion of the jaran camp had lain. Much of the camp had moved a morning’s ride out from the city, having used up the forage and muddied the water beyond repair. Also, there were rumors that the King’s nephew had gathered an army and was even now marching north, to lift the siege. Aleksi knew that Bakhtiian fretted over Tess’s safety. Still, Sakhalin ought to stop the king’s nephew. And the governor of Karkand had not escaped to join the royal prince. Now and again riders slipped out from Karkand and eluded the jaran net, but such small parties could at best bring intelligence to the Habakar prince and none of them rode as fast as the jaran couriers.

At camp, Ursula left Aleksi to go to Soerensen’s encampment. Aleksi rode on past ambassador’s row and up to Tess’s tent. A council had gathered before the awning. Yesterday the clouds had cleared away, but the air still smelled of rain and the ground had only just begun to dry out. It was a bad time to mount a siege. Aleksi left his horse with his escort and walked around to listen in on the council.

“—despite Mother Hierakis’s directions, we’re seeing more fevers.”

“This rain makes fighting difficult.”

“Nevertheless,” said Bakhtiian, “it is time to take the city. We have the king, and I don’t want to winter here.” He glanced at Tess, and Aleksi felt sure that Bakhtiian also did not want his wife to bear their child here. Tess looked a little pale. Sonia sat next to her, and Mitya beyond Sonia. Josef sat next to Ilya, and next to Josef sat Kirill Zvertkov, who had been elevated rather quickly to such a place of honor.

Aleksi sank onto his haunches at the far edge of the awning and settled in to watch. A little later Ursula arrived, with David in tow, and the council shifted to accommodate them. They began to discuss how best to launch and sustain the assault on Karkand’s walls, and what to do with the Habakar king. Tess got to her feet and retreated back into her tent. Aleksi rose and circled around and slipped in the back entrance.

“Are you all right?” he asked, seeing that she was already resting on the pillows. Her paleness frightened him.

“Yes. Just tired. I’m just so tired today.”

“Shall I get the doctor?”

Tess shook her head. “You could get me something to drink. Cara’s at the hospital. She had a horrible argument with Ilya this morning over how many resources she ought to put into tending to the khaja laborers. Ilya wanted nothing done with them, but Cara told him that if he wanted to rule all people then he had to treat them all as his people. Gods, he was furious—spitting furious.” She smiled fleetingly at her memory of the scene. “But what could he do? She’s right.”

“She is?”

“Aleksi!” She sighed. “I hate it here. I just want to get away from here. I want to go back to the plains.” He brought her water and sat beside her. They listened as the council droned on outside. He felt comfortable with her, and he could tell that his presence, quiet and steady, comforted her. She shut her eyes and after a while she slept.

Aleksi ducked outside. Bakhtiian glanced back at him, and Aleksi nodded, to show that Tess was safe. Bakhtiian turned back to the discussion of scaling ladders and the assault on the towers, of shields and infantry, of mining and the vulnerability of mudbrick walls.

“As at Hazjan, we must bring the archers into firing range behind cover, and much of the early assault will be done on foot with some of our troops mixed in with the Farisa auxiliary behind the cover provided by the laborers. If we can get the gates open, then we can send squads in, but otherwise, as we’ve done before, we’ll use khaja warcraft to take the city. I see no point in further discussion. How soon will the mines be ready?”

“Oh, ah …” David glanced around and then, reluctantly, spoke. “Certainly in two days I can—”

“One day. Tomorrow we will roll the king out on the scaffolding onto the ground before the main gates of the city. He’ll be left there until we kill him or he dies by other means. They’ll have one day to consider him. We’ll start the assault at dawn, day after next.” Bakhtiian rose. “Excuse me, Josef. Kirill, Mitya, attend me.” He strode off, Kirill at his side, Mitya two steps behind, leaving the council sitting in silence for a moment before they all burst into talk and rose themselves, hurrying off, some after Bakhtiian, some to their own commands.

Sonia paused beside Aleksi. “He’s moody,” she observed.

“Bakhtiian?”

“Yes. He’s worried about the reports from the south. He doesn’t like sitting here in one place. He knows the army is better off in the field. Anyway, they’re going to wheel the khaja king out on a cart in front of the walls and offer to kill him quickly if Karkand will surrender.”

“And if the city won’t surrender?”

She shrugged. “He doesn’t deserve a merciful death for what he did to our envoys and to Josef.” She looked past Aleksi toward Josef Raevsky, who sat patiently, waiting for Ivan to come help him away. “Do you think I should marry him?”

“Marry who? The Habakar king? That wouldn’t be very merciful for him, would it?”

“Aleksi!” She laughed. “No, Josef.”

“Josef!”

“It would mean less work for us, if he slept in my tent, since he’s with us most of the time anyway. And a fair reward, for all he’s given, to marry into Ilya’s family.”

“Do you love him, Sonia?”

“No, but I like him very well, and the children do, too. When are you going to mark Raysia Grekov, Aleksi?”

His heart skipped a beat. “Never. I’m not going to marry.” He paused to catch his breath and had a sudden intuition that he ought to be honest with her. “You must know I don’t want to leave the Orzhekov tribe.”

Sonia considered him. “True enough. And we already have one of the Grekovs in our camp now. Two would be too many.”

He grabbed hold of this distraction. “Don’t you like the Grekovs?”

“They’ve gotten a little above themselves since Feodor married Nadine. Haven’t you noticed it?” Aleksi shrugged. “Well, I’ll look and see if I can find a young woman who might come to our tribe. Maybe one who’s lost her husband.”

It took him a moment to understand what she meant. “Sonia!” Why should she do this for him? Not just to make him happy, surely. “Is there some other reason you want me to marry?” he asked suspiciously.

“Yes. I need more help. Another woman in camp would be welcome.”

Stung by her honesty, he snapped at her. “Get servants!”

“Tess won’t have them,” she said reasonably.

“But you have authority over camp, through your mother.”

“That is true, but all the same, if Tess doesn’t want a thing to happen, it does not happen. She told me once she finds them too much like slaves to be comfortable with having any about. Aleksi, you might trust me that I do this for you as well as for the tribe.”

It was hard to stay angry at Sonia. And it was true that she had always treated him well. “You could use more help,” he agreed, placated by her even tone. He hesitated. “And it’s true I wouldn’t mind being married.” She accepted his confession equably. “If you can find someone, and I like her, then I’ll mark her.”

“Thank you.” Sonia kissed him on the cheek and, seeing Ivan crouch beside Josef, went over to them.

An unfamiliar emotion settled on him as he watched Sonia kneel beside Josef and solicitously help the blind man to his feet. Josef did not need her help to stand, of course, but what man would refuse it? It took Aleksi a moment to name the feeling: Envy. He envied Josef the simple kindness Sonia showed him now. Gods, it hurt, like his heart had cracked. He fought to seal it up. He forced himself to watch them dispassionately.

Sonia guided Josef around to the square tent, set back behind the two great tents, where Josef and Tess conducted their jahar of envoys and accepted petitions from khaja supplicants. Josef was a good man, still dignified, and only a few years older than Bakhtiian, and he had been a brilliant general, every bit Yaroslav Sakhalin’s equal, until the expedition to Habakar. Sonia was right. The Habakar king didn’t deserve a merciful death. Ursula had suggested that they pour molten silver down his throat until he died. In fact, Tess had left the council right after Ursula had made that suggestion. Would Tess try to talk Bakhtiian out of killing the king? And yet, Bakhtiian had to show the khaja that they could not kill his envoys, and he had to show the jaran that such an insult would not go unpunished. Even if Tess urged him to show mercy, even if he wanted to, he could not.

If Tess was appalled enough by the sight, would she leave with her brother and go back to Jeds? No, not to Jeds; to Erthe. Jeds was a khaja place. Erthe—
Earth
—was in the heavens. Soerensen meant to leave soon; how soon, Aleksi did not know. Perhaps no one knew but Soerensen himself. Certainly, Bakhtiian did not know. Aleksi supposed that Soerensen could not really leave until Karkand had fallen, since Bakhtiian had no troops to spare him for an escort. Except, if Earth lay in the heavens, then maybe the prince did not travel there by horse or by ship. Maybe he did not want an escort.

Aleksi ducked back inside the tent and checked on Tess, but she still slept. He lingered there, reaching out to touch her hair the way Anastasia had touched his hair all those years ago, soothing him to sleep. Tears stung his eyes. He blinked them back and wrenched himself away. And went to see the doctor.

The tall woman with skin the color of riverbank mud greeted him. “Oh. Aleksi. I’ll see if Dr. Hierakis can come out.” She returned a moment later and showed him all the way in to the inner chamber.

Dr. Hierakis glanced up from the counter. She smiled, and her smile warmed him. “Hello, Aleksi.” The machine that made pictures was on. It showed a strange spiraling pattern, doubled, like the spirals embroidered onto pillows and woven into tent walls. “Jo, can you finish these measurements? We’ll do the correlation later, but I think we’ve reached an endpoint here. I’m not getting any results I haven’t gotten before. We need something altogether new, and I don’t think we’re going to get it from this pool. Aleksi, how is Tess?”

He started, jerking his gaze away from the spirals. “Tired.”

“Hmm. In a bad way, or do you judge her just tired?”

“I think she didn’t like to hear the talk about how the king will be killed.”

“Ah. No doubt.” She stepped away from the counter, leaving room for Joanna Singh to take her place. “Why did you come by?”

He hesitated. She felt his hesitation and, kindly, she placed a hand on his sleeve. Embarrassed, he eased his arm away and yet he stood as close to her as he dared. And in any case, she held the answers to his questions. “Doctor. I know you’re leaving soon—”

“I’m leaving when Tess is safely delivered of a healthy child.”

“But the prince—”

“May leave sooner if he has to, it’s true.”

“But how will he go? How do you travel, in the heavens?”

Dr. Hierakis chuckled, and Jo Singh cast a glance back over her shoulder, looking surprised at his question. Then she turned back to her work. “Here, come with me, Aleksi.” They went into the outer chamber, and she gestured to the table. He sat, though he still did not like sitting in chairs. “If you traveled from Karkand to Jeds, you could travel by horse, or you could travel by horse to a port and then travel by sea. If you traveled to, say, the Gray Eminence’s lands, that they call Tadesh, you would have to sail in a ship because there’s a great ocean between his lands and these lands.”

Aleksi nodded. “Yes. I’ve seen a map that Tess drew. It showed a great sea as broad as the land itself. But Earth is in the heavens.”

“Well, think of the stars as lands. Well, no. Think of the stars as lanterns, and around some of these bright lanterns worlds like this one orbit. Earth is such a world, like Rhui, with lands and seas on it. We sail in ships from world to world.”

“Is there water out there? Vast seas? Is that what the ships sail on?”

“Think of it as an ocean of night. If I had time, I’d show you some programs, a stellar map. But I don’t. I’m due at the hospital. Do you know how soon Bakhtiian intends to start the main assault?”

“Oh, yes. It was just decided this afternoon. Day after next, at dawn.”

“Ah. Then we’ve much to prepare for. Well, Aleksi, keep an eye on Tess for me. Keep well.” She hesitated and then, to his astonishment, she kissed him on either cheek, in the formal way, and left. He sat for a moment, just staring. She had left some of her warmth with him. Surely Dr. Hierakis had no reason to be nice to him except simple kindness. Unless by winning him to her side she hoped to win Tess back to the prince. He sighed, gazing at the lantern that wasn’t a lantern—was that how the sun looked?—and wished mightily that he knew how to see these maps for himself, to understand what kind of ship might sail the ocean between the worlds.

Outside, twilight had lowered down over camp. At last, he strolled back to the Orzhekov encampment, wondering what kind of a woman Sonia would find for him to marry.

The assault began as the first hint of light paled the eastern horizon. Aleksi stood beside Tess on the ramparts of the outer wall and watched as, far away along the inner walls, flaming arrows arched into Karkand. He watched as the artillery flung trails of fire and sparks over the walls. As the sun breached the horizon, the siege towers rumbled forward and battering rams rolled into place, their crews sheltered by stiff screens of hide.

“Oh, God.” Tess sank into the chair that Mitya, who now stood up to the left in the height of a watchtower, had carried up onto the wall for her. Since the parapets on the outer walls faced outward, to protect the suburbs from an outside attack, these walls served as a good vantage point from which to observe the jaran attack on the inner city.