Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles (3 page)

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Authors: Katya Reimann

BOOK: Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles
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V
idryas hardly slept. Last night, just barely, they had outrun the thunderclouds. Ochsan had brought them to the protection of a shallow inclined cleft, moments before the lightning came stabbing up the valley. The last yards of running, of slipping on the wet rock, had been sheer panic.
Ochsan had them up before sunrise. There was a queer restlessness to him. Though their mission lay completely in ruins, Ochsan behaved not at all like a beaten man. But neither did he address his troops, and this odd aloofness much demoralized them. They had rallied to him the night before—and they needed him once again to rouse them.
Morning stretched into a misery of wet equipment, harsh sun, and a relentless march, ever upward. They crossed a broad, empty bowl of limestone, heat rising off the white stone with eyestraining intensity.
At noon, they came to the edge of a vast gorge, a breathtaking chasm between two towering mountain massifs. Down below—far, far down below—a thread of green marked a river’s course, cascading along the gorge’s bottom, giving the harsh land brief, vivid life. Through the heat, across the vast descending distance, the land seemed to shiver, the river to twist.
Vidryas and Advey were trailing at the back of the line, when Ochsan called a halt. Half the men threw off their packs and went for a closer look at the chasm.
“Look.” Advey pointed. Within the gorge, toward the horizon, the mountain river from the gorge’s floor ascended a series of cascades, like giant’s steps of running water. At the top was a jeweled V of green. “Llara in me, who could have dreamed it! There’s Ochsan’s plan! Viddy—do you see it? That’s the Lanaya High Pastures.”
Vidryas’s stomach almost turned over.
The entire Imperial army dreamed of the Lanai’s mountain stronghold, the hidden pastures where the tribesmen’s cattle were kept safe while their warriors descended to war. The High Pastures lay at the top of the great Fini-Koina valley, with Lanai tribesman dug in all the way down to the piedmont, and the Bissanty battle camps. The pastures themselves were unguarded. With such natural protections, there was no need.
“Imagine us, up there,” Advey said. “Forty Dramaya cattlemen, and a thousand head of Lanaya cattle. What do you suppose we could do?”
His eyes lit with enthusiasm. Vidryas could see what he was thinking: Cattlemen knew how to start a stampede. Starting it would be simple. Keeping it going, simpler still. Animals, especially in panic, instinctively move for the easiest course. Vidryas could not help but picture it: The cattle, moving slowly at first, would gain speed—and increase in panic—as they descended onto the steep slopes of the Fini-Koina. They would reach the first Lanai outpost. They would flatten it. And then the next, and the next, all the way down to the rear guard of the main Lanai force.
The Lanai warriors would not know whether to kill their own cattle or to run onto the waiting Bissanty spears.
Vidryas took a step back from the sheer cliff. “Imagine it—certainly. Do it—never. We’re not birds,” he said bitterly. “How would Ochsan propose we get over there? It’s impossible.” Taking another step back, he looked to see what the others were doing.
Ochsan had scrambled out onto a spur of rock and pulled out his surveying scrips.
“I don’t see why he’s bothering.” Vidryas picked up his pack and readjusted its laces. “What’s the point? We’re above the Lanai watchtowers, and we’d never make it across to those pastures.”
“What would you have him do?” Advey asked dryly. “Sit down and die in the sun?”
“What can we do?” Vidryas said bitterly. “There’s nothing we can bring the Guarda now.”
Advey shot him a curious look. “You think your uncle brought us all this way for some skinny Bissanty Guarda’s sake?”
“If we want to bring Bissanty glory—”
“Screw Bissanty.” Advey spat. “We’re Dramaya cattlemen. Do you imagine Ochsan’s putting us through this for Empire’s glory? Not likely, by Llara’s grace. And as for you—if Bissanty had ever truly wanted you, half-breed, they would have had you long before now.”
Vidryas glanced around, half-frightened, to see who had been near
enough to overhear Advey’s treason. “What do you mean, Ochsan brought us here? The Guarda sent us.”
Advey laughed. “I’m sure that’s what the Guarda thinks.”
Vidryas’s mind reeled. “Ochsan wanted this? Wanted us to lose ourselves in the mountains? You knew that, and you volunteered?”
Advey shook his head. “I’d like to be at home with my stock,” he said, “in my own mountains. But when Ochsan spoke, I knew I would go with him.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What’s to understand?” Advey said. “Bissanty holds Dramcampagna for her riches, but what does it offer in return? We’ve suffered a Bissanty Prince on the Dramaya throne too long, with too little care returned to us. Ochsan’s going to remind the Bissanty what Dramaya men are made of.”
“But—but the Emperor is Llara’s Heart-on-Earth,” Vidryas protested. “Gracious Sciuttarus’s line traces to her directly. His Princes on our throne—that puts Llara over us.”
“He’s an Emperor, not a god,” Advey said, amused. “And not even Sciuttarus takes the Princely thrones seriously. Look how he plays with them, popping one man on, then pulling him off again. No one even pretends Llara’s hand is in that.”
Vidryas went silent. He knew the matter to which Advey referred—at just the last hustings, the Emperor had deposed his half-wit brother and raised an upstart cousin in his place. Rumor had it that the new prince, Tullirius Caviedo, had not even been formally presented at the Imperial court. “It’s a game, then?” he asked, his voice almost quivering.
Advey shook his head. “For them it’s a game. For us it’s our lives.”
“’Ware!” a man called. “Something’s coming.”
On the spur of rock, Ochsan bundled the survey scrip back in his pack.
“Close up,” Markal hissed. “Advance to me and follow Ochsan.”
The uneven terrain made it impossible to form ranks. Vidryas, near the back, had to reach the spur’s crest before he could see anything.
Ahead lay more shattered white stone, leading away to a short white peak. Between the spur and the peak, on a craggy dome of rock, a single figure emerged from the waves of heat.
It was a woman. It was, Vidryas had no doubt, a witch.
A tall, lean witch, with ragged grey robes that streamed down her lank body. Her face was weathered teak. “Little black bull!” she greeted Ochsan, raising wide her hands. “How far you have come to find me!”
Around her, the rocky dome shimmered with movement. Hairy shapes, at first invisibly merged to the color of the rock, gaining form as cloven hooves struck stone. “A goat-herder,” Vidryas whispered.
All around him, men sketched Llara’s god-sign for protection.
Ochsan pushed forward, his hand at his hilt. “Woman!” he called boldly. “What is your business here?”
The woman smiled. Her teeth were a grim bridge of yellow ivory in the sun-dark skin of her face. “I think you already know, my little black bull. You have seen it in your dreams. What do you think my business might be?”
“We have come far to find this place.” Ochsan pointed across the impossible distance of air to the cascades that led down from the green notch. “There lie the Lanaya Pastures. But the passage over to them—it is closed to us. We need the key to open it.”
Vidryas shivered. It would never happen. The cascades—perhaps they were climbable, but there was no possible way to reach the valley floor. This back door, if such it was, was bolted and locked.
“A key?” her tone mocked him. “Perhaps better a sacrifice to the gods, that they should show you the way forward.”
“I sacrifice only to Llara,” Ochsan answered.
“Very well,” the old woman replied, as if that had been what she’d expected. “Then my business here today must be to provide you with a sacrifice.” Darting down among her goats, she kicked them aside in her impatience. No definable stiffness or fragility betrayed her age, but watching her, Vidryas could not help but think she was very old.
Passing many animals, she paused before a black nanny, a lean old thing with a bulging milk bag that sagged below its scabby knees. Trapped under the woman’s scrutiny, the nanny bleated and tried to back away, but the old witch, swooping down, was too quick. When she turned back to Ochsan, she clutched a pair of tiny goatlings, one to each hand.
“Choose, black bull,” the witch said. “Choose your sacrifice, and make your future.”
One of the kids was pale orange, the other mottled black and grey. Both were tiny, perhaps prematurely delivered. Behind the witch, the old nanny bleated in protest.
“Will you have Beleaguer?” the witch asked. She held up the orangefurred kid. It fought her, tiny hooves dancing in the air. “Or will you have Demstar?” The black and grey was gentle, even passive. Its bulging yellow eyes were mournful, as if it had accepted the inevitability of fate.
Ochsan made Llara’s sign. “I will not choose for my men,” he said. “My choice is only for myself.”
The witch let out a harsh laugh. “Then you are more stupid than I believed. A man who leads soldiers to battle never chooses for himself only.”
“I am no fool,” Ochsan said coolly. “Whether I die or live, I see that the choice with which you tempt me will far outlast this battle. I know those names, witch; they call upon an ancient magic, and dangerous. Beleaguer and glory, or Demstar and peace. What if I won’t choose, woman? You are here alone, and I see others in your flock that might please Llara better.”
One old woman, thin enough for the winds to dash into the gorge, against two score men. She should have been more frightened, but she was not.
“If you are no fool,” she said dryly, “you will gladly seize on that which will be offered to you but once.”
“Beleaguer, then,” Ochsan said, casting aside hesitation. “For Dramaya’s glory, and for mine.”
“He is yours—if you can catch him.”
Before Ochsan could prevent her, she flung the orange-colored kid away, down the dome of rock. It landed, in a sprawl of legs, at the top of a rocky chute. By some miracle, it was uninjured. Recovering, it gave an angry bleat.
Markal cursed and raised his bow to drop it, but Ochsan called him to hold. “Not that way,” he said. “Llara will not accept a sacrifice cut down like hunter’s quarry. I must kill it with my own hands. Fetch it to me, and we will light the goddess fire together.”
Ochsan’s daggerman glanced doubtfully toward the little goat, perched so precariously at the top of the rocky chute, and then at his master.
Firming his mouth, he made Llara’s sign and started after it.
The kid, suspicious, would not let Markal approach. Emboldened by its distrust, it darted downward onto the skree. The breath of every Dramaya caught as it slid, bleating, toward the brink, but it gave a scrambling hop at the very limit of the edge and scampered sideways, its delicate feet finding footholds on an unlikely slanted ledge. Markal, once again making the goddess’s sign, gave a last unhappy glance at the impossible gulf of the chasm, then stepped after in pursuit.
When he had almost reached it, it once again skipped beyond him.
Already Markal was forty feet below the edge of the cliff, trending downward on a previously invisible line of footholds across an otherwise featureless stone wall. The goat was another twenty feet below, safe—for the moment—on a small flat place on the rock.
Markal, unnerved, turned back to Ochsan. “I’ll never catch it,” he said. “One step more, and I’ll not be able to come back, either.”
Ochsan stroked his beard. He surveyed his men. Then he looked again at the witch.
“It is a long way to the bottom.” Doubt colored his voice.
She laughed. “Where is your faith, black bull? You seek the key, and that animal will be your sacrifice to lead you to it. Have you not planned all your life for this moment? You want success—but what are you willing to risk to attain it?”
“I am willing,” Ochsan said fiercely. He rounded on his troops. “Glory on the head of the man whose hand first holds that kidling!” He loosed a cry that echoed out into the gulf.
The little goat, already agitated, fled. Miraculously, it ran, but did not fall, trending always downward. Markal, clinging to a narrow rock edge, shouted in dismay, cut short as Ochsan descended the skree chute and aggressively pushed past him.
For a moment, no one but Ochsan and the goat moved. Then Advey, breaking the stillness, pushed his way to the front. “Glory on my head!” he cried, striding to the chute. “I call to Llara for it!” Scarcely minding where he put his feet, he flung himself downward.
Vidryas could barely contain his horror. His uncle intended to chase the little kid until he caught it, or until he lost his footing and fell to his death. Already Ochsan had passed the safe flat where the kid had stood to look back. He was traversing an even unlikelier thread, down and across the rock, the kid always keeping a little ahead of him. Advey, above him, was fast closing on Markal’s narrow perch.
“The trail will close!” Markal shouted urgently to those who remained safely above. It was clear he meant to move on rather than risk letting Advey pass him. “Swear yourselves to Llara and follow! This madness will not stay to help us long!” His face a picture of frightened concentration, he turned to follow Ochsan’s line, out onto the pure white rock.

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