The False Martyr (45 page)

Chapter 27

The 29 –
30
^th
Day of Summer

“
We’ll camp here,” Jaret
declared as they came to the top of the ridge. Lius did not hear
him from where he struggled half-way up the hill, panting and
gasping, legs straining and burning, heart hammering. The sight of
the legionnaires pulling to a stop and removing their packs was
enough. He fell immediately to his knees, rolled to sit, and placed
his head between his knees to catch his breath. His robe, as filthy
as it had been before the farm, clung to him, soaked with his
sweat. Rings of salt marked it, standing out even from the dirt,
where his sweat had dried day-after-day like the rings of a tree
marking his days of hardship like years.

From his perch, Lius
watched a hundred riders, the setting sun sparkling off their
helms, emerge from a copse of trees and start cautiously across the
plain that separated them from the hill where Lius sat. They
stopped almost as soon as they emerged. A blinding light rose like
a beacon off the glass that their commander used to watch the
progress of his quarry. The first evening away from the farm, this
scene had nearly sent Lius into a palsy. The cavalry could take
them at any time. They had them hopelessly outnumbered, were
mounted, well-armed, and armored. On the plains they’d traversed
the past few days, it wouldn’t have even been a challenge. But just
as that first night – and all of the previous three – the riders
kept their distance. They never got closer than a mile, stopped
whenever Jaret did, set-up and broke camp within minutes of the
legionnaires. They never attacked, did not even send out scouts or
raiders to test Jaret’s strength. They just followed, and Jaret did
not seem concerned about them in the slightest.

“
Are you going to join
us?” Jaret asked, voice low. Lius had sensed his presence, had felt
the distortions in the Order that the commander caused.

“
Eventual,” Lius sighed.
Jaret sat down next to him. He had not spoken with the commander
since their departure three days hence, but after the grueling
day’s they’d endured, he hadn’t felt much like talking.

“
Is the Order still
guiding me?” Jaret asked after a long pause. The question surprised
Lius enough that he actually looked at the strands of possibility
around them as if he didn’t already know the answer. Every strand
ran through Jaret, was consumed by the black pit of unreadable
destiny that was the former warlord. Lius could find no way to
predict where they would lead or how to change them.

After the time he’d spent
reading at the farm, Lius had thought he had a better grasp of his
powers. He was now able to see farther, to expand his reach, and to
almost lay the lines of possibility over what his eyes saw rather
than switching between the two as he had done before. Yet, for all
that, he could manage only the smallest changes to the world around
him – just enough to allow him to keep the legionnaires’ impossible
pace. Even if he weren’t too exhausted, too focused simply on
keeping up, there was always the unreadable blot that was Jaret
Rammeriz absorbing his changes and creating his own as if Lius did
not even exist.

“
It is the same,” Lius
answered. “Why do you ask? Do you not feel it guiding
you?”

“
No,” Jaret admitted with
as much doubt as had entered his voice since Lius had met him.
“Before it was like I was a prisoner in my own mind, like I wasn’t
controlling anything I did or said. But that feeling is different
now. I . . . .” The commander looked back toward his men, preparing
their camp. “I just keep driving us toward the forest, and the
cavalry just keeps following, because I don’t know what else to do.
I keep expecting the Order to step in as it did all those times
before and push us toward some bit of . . . insanity that will
somehow save us. I keep expecting that, looking for it, waiting for
it, but there’s nothing.”

Lius considered. “Maybe
the Order doesn’t need to guide you because you are already
following Its plan.”

Jaret shook his head and
eyed the men in the field below as they picketed their horses and
prepared their camp. “Have you ever been hunting, Lius?”

“
A few times,” Lius
answered cautiously, wondering where this was going. “My older
brothers enjoyed it, but my father was not much for it, and I could
never kill anything.”

“
I never had much time for
it,” Jaret barely allowed Lius to finish, “but it is a necessity
with many of the nobles. It always surprised me how little sport
there was to it. We would ride out to a well-appointed camp, have a
lunch, some wine and conversation. Then a number of fellows – I
probably would have been one of them if my life had gone another
way – would come beating through the brush pushing animals to us.
We’d pop out with bows, make easy work of whatever happened to be
there, then congratulate each other as if we’d done something more
complicated than target practice.”

“
We were never so rich as
that,” Lius admitted, feeling almost nostalgic for the older
brothers who had largely ignored him through his childhood. “One of
my uncles owned a stretch of forest to the west of Ca’ Einir. He’d
let us walk through it with bows and shoot whatever we found. We
saw deer occasionally, but never hit any. My brothers got a few
birds, some rabbits, but that was about all.”

“
So you see what we
face?”

Lius did not. He had no
idea how his childhood hunting trips had anything to do with their
current situation.

Jaret must have read his
doubt. “We are only a day or two from the edge of the Great
Northern Forest. Have you ever visited it?”

“
No, but I have heard the
stories.”

“
Do you believe
them?”

“
I believe in the Order.
Ghosts and monsters are for . . . .” Lius realized what he was
saying and stopped himself.

“
For children,” Jaret
finished with a humorless laugh. “I used to think so as well, but
it is true of that forest. There are no ghosts or monsters, but
there is a camp, a secret place where members of the Legion are
trained. The Camp is there because it is the only place in the
whole of the Empire where it could not possibly be discovered or
disturbed. The forest is dark and dense and deep. The terrain is
treacherous, development, even logging, is almost impossible. If we
reach it, the Emperor will never find us. He knows it, his men know
it, so why does he let us run toward it with such
abandon?”

“
Because it’s a
trap?”

Jaret nodded and looked on
toward the riders in the distance. “Those men are the beaters,
driving us toward their masters who are waiting to receive us. Once
we arrive, we’ll be smashed between them. Not even the Order will
be able to save us.”

“
What are you going to
do?” Lius felt suddenly panicked. Jaret was right of course. Lius
knew it without even referencing the strands of the Order around
him. It was the only possible explanation.

“
I was hoping you could
tell me,” Jaret admitted. “As I said, I cannot feel the Order
guiding me. I feel like I should be able to think of something,
some maneuver, feint, or trick. That is what I do, but my mind is
blank. The only thing I can think to do is keep going, to keep
running into the trap I know is waiting. How can that be what the
Order wants? After all this, how can that be the
answer?”

Lius did not say anything.
He focused on the possibilities around him, tried to trace all the
lines and patterns. He stretched his mind out and out, following
strand after strand until he found the anomalies that could only be
hundreds of people. Within the Order, it looked like a small city.
It was all the confirmation he needed. It was an army, and they
were heading right at it. He turned his attention to Jaret, to the
lines of possibility that flowed from him, tried to see how those
changed the world around them, tried to predict how their actions
might end. It was an overwhelming task. Even if he could trace
those strands all the way to the army, the intersections were too
many. This far out, with so much time, so many possibilities, Lius
could not hope to find a path that might save them.

“
The Order is often
mysterious, but it is not our place to question.” Lius settled for
platitudes when he could think of no more comforting words. “It is
the will of Hileil. If we trust It, It will never betray us.” Even
as he said the words, Lius felt the lie in them.
If the Order is the will of Hileil, then how is
it that I, a lowly monk ordained less than a year, can change
it?

Jaret scoffed. “It betrays
us all the time. It picks winners and losers every day. Whatever
Hileil’s plan may be, we have no reason to believe that it includes
our success. What if we have played our part, and the Order is done
with us?”

Lius gulped. He could not
believe that was true. He had seen what the Order had done over the
past weeks. He had felt its power, had seen it guide them, had seen
it deliver them time and again. Why would it abandon them
now?
Why does It do anything?
a voice answered.
Why
grow a forest over generations only to destroy it with fire? Why
create life only to see disease take it away? Why build an empire,
protect it through every foible, only to see it fall to
revolution?
To think that you are the
center of the Order is like a fly that thinks he is king, a vanity
that will end as quickly as a slap.
“Then
that is how it will be, and there is nothing we can do about it,”
Lius said, but he no longer believed it was true.

#

If he could still feel
emotion, Jaret would have been lost between curses and laughs,
between rage and revelry. The Order had played him perfectly. If
not for the irony, he would have been irate. It had turned his most
shining moment against him, had used him exactly as he had used the
Pindarian mercenaries twenty years ago. It had convince him that it
was protecting him, that he was special, that he could not fail,
just as he had convinced the mercenaries. He had allowed them to
march uncontested across the Empire, had allowed towns and
fortresses to fall with the barest resistance, had retreated every
time they grew near, had allowed them to feel invincible. Because
the invincible are sloppy. They don’t secure their river crossings,
they don’t watch the terrain, they don’t worry that none of their
scouts have returned. They believe they cannot fail and allow
themselves to be herded right into the trap.

And that was exactly what
the Order had done to him. Even though he had known it was coming,
he’d allowed it to happen because he thought the Order was with
him. Now, he looked down on the army waiting before them – standing
right at the line of trees that was their deliverance, blocking
them from it as thoroughly as a wall of steel – then at the mounted
men behind – pushing them constantly toward that wall – and he knew
that the Order had come calling on its debt, had played him every
bit the same way he had played those mercenaries, had left him with
only questions that were too painful to answer. Why had they stayed
at the farm so long? Why had they allowed the cavalry to follow
them so easy? Why had they taken this course? Why hadn’t they acted
sooner? Why, why, why? Curses upon curses upon curses.

“
Make camp!” he yelled in
way of order. “We attack at dawn.” Even as he said the words, he
wanted them back. Why had he even said that? Their only chance in
the world was to make their move at night. If they went quickly, in
the tiny hours after the moon was down and the sentries were least
alert, they might make it to the trees.
A
fantasy
, he chastised. Both armies –
before and behind – knew that they were there. They would not be
surprised no matter the time. Maybe if he had a hundred men, but
with twenty, not even his opponent’s collective blindness would
provide an escape.
As well to die in the
light of the sun
, he decided as he strode
to the center of the grove and sat on a fallen log to watch his men
prepare the camp.

“
Sir, the cavalry are
close.” Lieutenant Caspar, the highest ranking of the legionnaires,
approached from the side and spoke in a voice for only his
commander. “This hill separates them from the rest of the army. If
we move quickly, quietly in the night, we might create enough
confusion to steal some horses. We could use them to . . .
.”

Jaret cut him off with a
raised hand then looked at that hand wondering why it was up. The
idea was the best he’d heard in a long time. The riders were closer
than they’d ever allowed themselves to be. Coming down the hill in
the cover of the trees with the help of Lius’ powers, they might
actually manage exactly what the lieutenant suggested. Though
almost all of his men would likely die, it might be enough for
Jaret, Lius, and a few others to escape. And as awful as it
sounded, the commander that Jaret used to be knew that revolutions
lasted only as long as their leaders. At this point, it was as good
an offer as they were going to receive.

“
We attack tomorrow at
dawn,” he heard himself say. “Those are my orders. Get some food
and sleep. We’re safe tonight.”

The lieutenant managed to
look shocked for only the briefest second before he saluted and
returned to supervising his men as they prepared the camp. Jaret
cursed himself again. The lieutenant was a tall, lanky fellow
younger than most of the men he commanded. In the rest of the
Imperial army it would have meant that he had connections, in the
Legion, it meant he was a prodigy. If the reports were correct, he
was a better tactician than even Jaret, and he was being used as
little more than a sergeant, someone to convey order and ensure
they were followed. But was it even Jaret giving those orders? For
all that he thought he’d regained some control over his own body
and mind, it seemed that was an illusion. Or was he just losing his
ability to tell the difference?