Monday, January 13, 2014

Chapter 14: Allies

The third night, the Ultor followed Bragg out when he left. His feet still hadn’t entirely recovered from the frostbite—he’d had to amputate two of the toes on his left foot. Even still, and even with the child’s tall tale, he didn’t trust Bragg to wait much longer. He didn’t trust Bragg at all.

So he followed him, slipping quietly behind him in the dark. He’d deliberately made noise when they came in, letting their guide think he was clumsier than he was. Bragg must have heard about it; he never even looked back to see if anyone was behind him.

Bragg lead him directly to the mines. The Boss hadn’t lied, exactly, there were a few men panning the river for gold. But by far the greater number worked, in the glow of wan torches, with pickaxes, chipping away at the cave walls. The Ultor counted: no more than half a dozen swordsmen patrolled the cavern and at least twenty villagers wielded sharp picks. But the Boss had his insurance: the pickmen were all chained together at the ankle with heavy iron chains, and judging by their withered, boney looks they got no more food than it took to keep them swinging. Even the axes looked dull. The Ultor curled his lip in the shadows, watching all these wretched specimens of men—the cowards who would rather die slowly of starvation and pain than strike out at their tormentors, and the jackals who lived off the workers’ labor and gave nothing, neither peace nor prosperity, in return. The whole village was blighted.

The villagers rarely spoke, but the swordsmen chattered back and forth in their own language. They seemed on edge; they kept their hands on their swords and their eyes on the shadows. Did they know he was in the caves, or did they just share children’s and primitives’ usual fear of the dark? The Ultor wondered if he could safely bring the girl out to listen to them. He would very much like to know what they were saying when they thought no one could understand. Regardless, whether they suspected or not, they never sent any search parties, or even patrolled the perimeter of the cavern. The Ultor sat entirely undisturbed for hours, watching and waiting. But the scene never varied.

When he’d finally had his fill of monotonous misery, he returned to his own secret cavern. The girl was waiting there, sitting at a deliberate distance from the cranny where he knew she’d been hiding some of the food he gave her. She was very good, actually; she never gave herself away by compulsively looking at the area, but she didn’t avoid looking at it either. She ate slowly in a way that seemed natural, and never hid anything until well after he fell asleep. If he weren’t such a very light sleeper, and if he hadn’t trained for years to wake up without seeming to—keeping his eyes shut and his breathing steady—he might never have caught her at it. She was a clearly creature of stealth and deception, but seeing the kinds of men who ruled her life, he found somehow he rather admired than abhorred her.

She waited until he sat and nodded a greeting to speak.

“Did you kill any of them?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“You want them dead so much?”

She shrugged. “They’re going to die, aren’t they? So?”

“But do you want them to die?”

She sighed a tremendous sigh and shrugged, turning away from him.

“You won’t answer?” he asked.

She muttered something in the swordsmen’s language. He waited, watching her. Finally she turned back and spat, “What?”

“I’m still waiting for your answer.”

She shrugged again, but then she did answer: “They die, they don’t die. It has nothing to do with me. I can’t make anyone live or die. So I don’t care. I worry about me. That’s enough.”

He chuckled. “You sound like follower of Baswat.”

“What’s Baswat?”

“A philosopher.”

“I don’t know that word.”

“A person who has ideas about how life works and how best to live it.”

She looked at him like he was a fool. “Doesn’t everybody have those ideas?”

He laughed. “A philosopher does nothing but dream up these kinds of ideas, and tell everyone else they ought to agree with him.”

“I know a drunk just like that.”

“He may have been that too. Baswat taught that self-interest was the only reliable motive. The self-interested man will be charitable because the well-fed poor give him no trouble, generous because the well-paid servant serves well and loyally, and magnanimous because he knows that today’s shame becomes tomorrow’s spite. The enlightened self-interested man is the best member of society, because he understands society. He worries about himself. That’s enough.”

She stared at him. “Hey, are you … Are you really a soldier? You don’t sound like any soldier I know.”

“I’m the kind of soldier …” He sighed. “I used to be the kind of soldier who had to understand the things queens and bureaucrats talked about. Some threats are made with swords; some threats are made with literary allusions and smiles.”

“With what and smiles?”

“Words from old poems and stories. The ruling classes all learn the same ones as children, and they use the words they remember as a kind of code language, meanings behind meanings. It’s like a game they play.”

She mulled that over a moment. “I thought you were one of them. You said the warriors rule in your land.”

“I said the warrior class ruled in my land. I’m not that kind of warrior.”

She nodded and sprawled out flat, muttering to herself. He just caught the words she was saying: philosopher … Baswat … literary allsions … “Allusions,” he said, “literary allusions.” Literary allusions … philosopher …

“How long can you sit perfectly still and silent?” he asked.

She cocked her head up, frowning. “I’m not a little kid. If you want me to be quiet, just say, ‘be quiet.’”

“Sit up, be quiet, and stay perfectly still,” he said. “I’m going to train you a little.”

She sat up. “Why?”

He felt his foot throbbing from the frostbite and the amputated toes, his arms and legs still trembling from the exertion of crawling through the caves in perfect, muscle-straining stealth, the lightness in his head from too many nights without deep sleep … He needed a month of real convalescence to recover from his trip over the mountains, but all he had left was perhaps three, at most four more days of poor sleep and poorer food before the villagers ran out of food to send him, or Bragg lost patience and betrayed him for a reward. He needed an edge—reliable information, an element of surprise. He needed—

“Ally. You know what that word means?”

“Like friend,” she answered.

“That’s right. A friend who fights with you. I’m asking you: will you be my ally?”

She looked him up and down. “Why? Why do you need me?”

“Because you’re clever. And capable. And I have no one else.”

She laughed. “I guess that’s all true. So … OK. Allies.”

“Come here, then.” He held out his hand. She frowned at it a moment, and seemed on the verge of bolting in the other direction, but finally she crept toward him and reached out her own hand. He grasped her wrist. “Like this.” She curled her tiny fingers around his wrist. “Firm grasp,” he said, and she obeyed.

“Until this mission is done,” he said, “and you are safe and I am free, we are allies.”

“Until I’m safe?”

“Of course.”

“OK,” she smiled, and her grip tightened. “Until that—allies.”

“Good. Now sit still and be perfectly silent.”

Sunday, December 15, 2013

Chapter 13: Bragg

“Ask him his plan,” Bragg demanded when he returned several hours later with a brace of roast ptarmigans and a bag of kumis. In the sunless, lantern-lit cave Reen couldn’t tell the time exactly, but she thought it was probably evening.

Reen had been itching to ask the Ultor just that question, but experience made her cautious. Men didn’t like to be questioned, especially by girls. After last night’s long-winded history, she’d assumed he’d start chatting on his own anyway, that he’d have questions for her at least. But he’d been completely silent since the elders left. She’d decided to wait him out, but Bragg solved her problem nicely.

“He wants to know what your plan is.”

“Wait,” the Ultor rumbled. “Rebuild my strength.”

“Tell him I’ll return tomorrow morning,” Bragg said after she’d translated, “and lead him out. He can attack then, starting with the guards in the cave.”

“No,” was all the Ultor replied to her translation.

“Just … no? You don’t want to tell him anything else?”

“I’ll tell him when I’m ready to attack. In the meantime, I need three meals a day. Much more meat. Beer. Wheat cakes with honey. And fresh fruit, as much as they can find.”

She hesitated.

“What’s wrong, girl?” the Ultor asked.

“What’s wheat cakes?”

“You grind wheat up fine, like sand, and bake it into a cake, like so.” He held his hands close together.

“What’s wheat?”

“A grain. Cereal… A kind of grass with seeds on it?” He sighed. “What do you eat in this village?”

“What’s he saying?” Bragg asked.

“Just a minute.” To the Ultor: “Goat. Kumis. Chicken, on special occasions.” She thought a moment. “I don’t know the words in Ugasic. A kind of yellow flower? Anyway, some plants. Not that many this time of year. And—are nuts fruit?”

“No, not really.”

“Oh. Then no fruit.”

“Not even dried?”

She shrugged. “Long gone.”

“How do your people survive on the mountain on so little?”

Bragg tried to interrupt again and she ignored him.

“They’re not my people. And they don’t usually live on the mountain year-round. That’s Morrigan’s doing.”

“Morrigan is the man in charge, the man with the tooth?”

“That’s him.”

Bragg got up in a huff. “Fine, talk amongst yourselves. I’ll be back in the morning. Tell him to be ready.”

“He says no.”

“What?”

“He says he’ll tell you when he’s ready to attack, and until then he needs a lot more food.”

“So that’s his game,” Bragg scowled. “Suck us dry with promises of freedom.”

“He came over the mountain. Most men would be dead. He’s only hungry.”

“That’s not really my problem. Even if it’s true.”

“It’s your problem if you want him to kill Morrigan and his men.”

Bragg smiled. “I could just wait for him and die and take that sword.”

“And do what with it? You’d die the first time you tried to point it at one of Morrigan’s men.”

Bragg curled his lip at her. “What do you know about it, you little cunt?”

She’d heard the word a million times, but she still felt her face flush red. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the Ultor watching them both, waiting, one hand casually near the sword. She wished she could say a word and the Ultor would spring up and slash Bragg’s stupid, ugly throat. She wished he would die right there on the cave floor, gagging, sorry he’d ever been mean to her.

“Does he know,” Bragg went, “that you’re a traitor to your people? Does he care?”

“None of you are my people,” she hissed.

“Tell him he follows me out of the cave tomorrow, or he dies in here.”

“He can’t die,” she said, with a sudden rush of inspiration. “If he dies, his curse will fall on you.”

“What?”

“See his skin? Why do you think he’s so black? He’s got a curse.”

“What kind of curse?”

“His priests cursed him so he has to wander the earth until he kills his enemy. They burned him all over to make him black, and his skin keeps on burning until he kills the man. Just burning and burning, torturing him all the time.” Bragg looked uncertain. “Remember how he threw fire at Morrigan’s men? He just picked up the fire and threw it at them, and it didn’t hurt him because he’s already burning, all the time.”

Bragg was staring openly at the Ultor now. The Ultor obliged by scowling at him.

“And if he dies before he kills his man, he comes back as a ghost and finds whoever killed him—or let him die—and he touches their skin, and they burn up too.

The Ultor—he couldn’t have understood a word she was saying, but Bragg’s fear was pretty readable—he got up and stretched himself to his full height, a full head taller than Bragg, and stood absolutely still, sword in front of him, staring down his nose at the smaller man. His scaly armor glimmered in the lantern light. It didn’t take much imagination to see fire sparking on his body. Reen could have kissed him.

“And if we help him?” Bragg asked, voice cracking a little.

“He takes his curse away with him, and the whole village will be blessed.”

“How do you know all this? Did he tell you?”

Give Bragg credit, he was trying to hold onto his skepticism. “No, he didn’t have to. I recognized him. My mom told me all about Ultors. They’re terrible famous all around the world. That’s why I freed him. I didn’t want the curse to fall on us all.”

Bragg nodded, leaning away from the Ultor as far as he could without actually stepping back. “Fine. It’s good you warned us. Tell him … Tell him we’ll feed him, and we want him gone as soon as possible. Just make sure he kills Morrigan’s gang first.”

“He’s agreed to, hasn’t he? An Ultor’s word is unbreakable.”

“Fine. Fine.”

“Meals three times a day, as much as you can feed him.”

“I’ll do what I can.” And with that Bragg scurried away out of the cavern.

“What did you tell him?” the Ultor asked.

It suddenly occurred to her that he might not appreciate her story. She considered lying, but he was a lot smarter than Bragg, and she didn’t want him turning against her. She told him the truth.

He burst out laughing.

“Child, one day your lying is going to get you in trouble.” He took a swig out of the bag and nearly choked. “What is this?”

“Kumis? It’s milk that … I don’t know the word.”

“I can guess. You like this?”

She took the bag from him.

“No wheat, so no beer,” he mused. “You have wine in this village?”

She nodded, gulping from the bag.

“Next time, tell them I want wine.”

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Chapter 12: The Arrangement

Reen woke to a sharp kick in the ribs.

“Wake up, girlie. And wake up your thief.”

It was the village elders, three stooped old men whose large beards did not hide their pickled expressions. Their lapdog Bragg was with them; he was the one who had kicked her. They were all standing a safe distance away from the Ultor.

“I’m awake,” the Ultor rumbled.

“What’s that? What does he say?” chirped one of the elders, the one she privately called Bagneck for the huge wattle that seemed to prop up his chin.

“He says what do you want?” Reen answered.

“What do we want? What do we want?” Bagneck sputtered. “We want what he owes us. We saved his life, didn’t we?”

I saved his life.”

“Nonsense! Don’t exaggerate,” Longbeard rumbled.

“You’re safe in this cave,” chimed in Bagneck. “They’ve been beating us all night, trying to find this man. We kept him safe! All of us!”

“What are they saying?” the Ultor asked.

“A lot of nonsense and whining,” Reen answered.

“Is he injured?” asked Longbeard. “Can he fight?”

“He’s hungry,” Reen said.

“We’re not asking you, brat,” said Bagneck. “Ask him. Can he fight?”

“They want to know if you’ll fight.”

“Them?”

Reen laughed. “No, these sacks of day-old mash wouldn’t fight a sick child. They want you to fight off the Boss and his men. Free the tribe, so they can be in charge again.”

“Tell him he can have the gold,” Longbeard interrupted.

“Not all the gold,” Bagneck said, “A fistful of gold. Tell him just a fistful.”

“What do we need with gold?” Longbeard demanded. “We never needed it before.”

“Well, we need it now,” Bagneck said. “It’s ours. Go on, tell him.”

“They’re offering you gold—and handful of gold—to fight off the Boss and –”

“No.”

“I’ll ask for more gold, and a goat.”

“No gold, no goats. I’m not a perfuga.

“I don’t know what that is.”

“What’s he saying, child?” hissed Bagneck.

“A mercenary. A fallen warrior. I don’t hire out my services for money.”

“I know about money,” Reen assured him. “Little pieces of metal you trade for food and stuff.”

The Ultor stared at her a moment, and she felt a terrible pang of uncertainty. “Is that not right?”

“No, that’s right,” the Ultor said. “They don’t use money in this village?”

She considered a moment. “You can trade metal pans or spoons for things.”

“I see,” was all he said.

What is he saying, child!” Bagneck actually stomped his foot.

“He won’t fight for metal.” She almost mentioned that he didn’t want a goat, either, but then she thought better of it. Probably he didn’t realize how important goats were on the mountain. None of the Boss’s men cared about them either. This Ultor seemed smarter than them, but he was an outsider, from a valley. Food practically fell out of the sky in valleys. She’d see if she could get him a goat after all, and he’d be glad later. And if her plan went right, so would she.

“What does he want, then?”

“What do you want?” she asked him.

“Tell them my story.”

“The … whole thing?” She had a sudden moment of panic. She hadn’t wanted to interrupt last night, but she wasn’t totally sure she’d understood all the words he’d said. And it had been a very long story.

“Tell them I am an Ultor, commissioned by the old gods and the New, to avenge the murder of a queen. If they help me, they will be blessed.”

Well, he had seemed smart last night. Maybe it was all the strange words. “I don’t think they’re going to help you just because you’ve got an important job. I think they’re pretty set on you killing the Boss.”

“I cannot delay my quest.”

“At all? Even by a day?”

She got another kick, this time from Longbeard. “You’re supposed to be translating, child, not having a conversation.”

“I’m trying to help you,” she hissed. “He doesn’t want to help you at all.”

“Not help us?” Longbeard thundered. “What else can he do? Starve in this cave?”

Longbeard was an arrogant old fool, but sometimes, by accident, he could stumble on a true thing.

“You have to do whatever it takes to finish your mission and kill this guy Komfo, right?”

“He’s not Komfo!”

“Right, but, the other guy, the –”

“Pseudo-Komfo.”

“Right, Pseudo-Komfo.” She still couldn’t tell if Pseudo was a name or some kind of insult, but it didn’t seem like the time to ask. “You have to do whatever it takes, no matter what, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, these guys will totally help you on your quest. They’ll give you food and water, and a goat and a horse, and gold. But they can’t do that until the Boss is dead. They’re not paying you or anything, they just want to make a donation to your quest. In honor of your queen. But to do that, they need the Boss and his men dead. So … they would need a little help from you first. And since you need their help to get out of this cave and down the mountain to finish your quest …”

He smiled at her. “You’re a very clever little girl.”

She wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so she didn’t.

After a very, very long pause, during which she began to be concerned that this foreigner was going to turn out as foolish and the fools she already had to deal with—he nodded.

“He’ll do it,” she told the elders. “If you meet his price.”

“That’s more like it,” Bagneck crowed. “What’s he asking?”

Reen knew Bagneck was a mean haggler, so for safety’s sake she demanded three times what the two of them would need. Bagneck immediately started moaning about the exorbitance of the demand, but before he could make a counter-offer, the last elder, the eldest elder, finally spoke.

“Give it to him.”

“What?” Bagneck demanded.

“Give it to him,” Old Gamnon repeated, “All of it. As a price for our freedom, the freedom of our children and our children’s children, it’s really very modest.” And with that Gamnon limped away, allowing Bragg to hand him down out of the little cavern.

“Well, then …” Bagneck seemed baffled—but he wasn’t about to disagree with Gamnon in front of a pair of foreigners like Reen and the Ultor. “Well, then, just you be grateful for our generosity.”

“Very grateful,” Reen agreed, feeling grateful indeed, and a few other feelings as well: confusion and worry, chiefly. Old Gamnon was a better sort than either of his fellow elders, but this sudden generosity seemed entirely too good to be true. It bothered her. It was wrong at a moment when nothing could be allowed to go wrong.

Then Bragg, at Longbeard’s parting signal, brought out a basket and uncovered two beautiful roast chickens. The smell filled the cavern and Reen’s stomach rumbled, distracting her from all thought of anything else. She handed the basket over to the Ultor and prepared to wait until he was done. To her surprise, he broke a chicken in half and gave one half to her.

“For your efforts,” he said, biting into his own half.

She was too hungry to even make a polite protest. She sunk her teeth in. Still warm. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gotten to eat while the bird was still warm.

Everything was working out perfectly, she thought. And then she caught sight of Bragg out of the corner of her eye. The expression in his eyes, as he watched the Ultor toss away the bare bones of the first fowl and tear into the second, made her shiver. She checked surreptitiously to make sure her knife was still in her boot. Everything was working out perfectly. As long as she stayed smart—and kept a blade handy.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Chapter 11: Death of a Queen

“The Queen’s advisors told her to call her last loyal army to the city. The capital’s walls are tall and strong; Psuedo-Komfo’s mob had arrived, but they could only lay siege and wait. If the Southern Army marched north immediately, they could reach capital before they worst of the starvation set in. With the bugs mysteriously vanished, there was no reason to leave our best chance at survival in the badlands.

“But then one final spy returned. He snuck past the army surrounding the city, and he barely made it in with his life, but the word he brought changed everything. The bugs hadn’t vanished; they’d gone underground. He’d found them hibernating in caves, stuck to the walls, cased in amber and piled on top of each other like bubbles on soap. He used an axe to break through the amber and killed a dozen of them without even waking them. The bugs could be destroyed—they could all be destroyed, wiped utterly from the earth. But only if we reached them before they woke.

“Since they’d disappeared about the time of the first hard freeze, we thought they must be hibernating for the winter—and winter was already half over. If the queen sent the Southern Army across the badlands into the southeastern lands and the hill country, they might barely have enough time to destroy all the nests before spring broke. But in the time that took, the capital would starve.

“I accompanied my queen to the Court of Widows and Orphans. It was crowded with refugees from the infested lands, living in tents and surviving off the charity of the Temple. As she walked among them, blessing children, settling arguments, I urged her to call the army back. These people around her, the displaced and destitute, would be the first to die in this siege. And because of the demands they’d already made on the royal storehouses, there was no surplus to feed even the palace and its retainers through a month-long siege, which Pseudo-Komfo’s horde could easily wage before they began to starve themselves. She was risking her own life if she did not call the army back, and she had no right to do that. Our nation needed her leadership now more than ever. No devastation the Scarabs could wreak would be worse than losing her.

“I remember she knelt down to give an apple to a little girl, orphaned by the Scarabs—and told me she’d already ordered the army into the south. Their orders were not to return until every bug in every corner of the land was destroyed.

“She was brave. Her enemies never gave her enough credit for that. She was soft, but she had steel in her.

“I realized she’d come to the refugee camp to face the people her decision had condemned to death—but that wasn’t it either. She’d come to brace herself for her own death.

“Pseudo-Komfo was at the gate, with all his mob. Refugees from the infested lands had been streaming into the capital since the crisis began, and most of the survivors from the south were living there now. Between the mob and the refugees and the capital’s own population, at least half the population of Freya was here, ready to starve or be starved. The bugs would be destroyed, our queen had seen to that. But to what avail, if there weren’t enough people left to live in it after? For whom would she have saved the country, if we all destroyed each other in the meantime?

“So she resolved to save us even from ourselves. I begged—I begged her not to go. But she was … She was a queen. She gave all her guard permission not to follow her to His camp; she pleaded with us, as much as a queen ever pleads, to stay behind. But she didn’t order us. She understood the heart of a warrior better than that. And we, who knew her so well, who saw her every day, in all her moods and in her every temper—not one of us would consent to leave her side. As always, her fate would be ours.

“We flew the flag of parlay, and he flew his. She opened the gates and we marched out. He received us in the goat hide tent he called a headquarters, and she explained everything to him: where the bugs were, how they would be gone soon. How she had chosen to use her army to fight our mutual enemy instead of slaying him and his acolytes. He thanked her for all of it. Then he cut her down in front of my eyes.

“I struck down eighteen of them before one of them ran me through, from behind. I fell near my queen. She was still alive. My name was the last thing she ever said.

“I found out what happened next later, after the priests revived me. HE took the city as soon as she was dead. He burned the temple and everyone in it to the ground, starting with her beloved Court of Orphans—but the city, the rest of the city, survived. With that madman as king.

“But the madman underestimated her. He always underestimated her. He took the capital with an army of pagan Gajafaris. Which left Gajafar, and the river delta it guarded, barely protected. When Pseudo-Komfo had first announced himself, Queen Danafreya had sent an envoy, not south to the false prophet, but north, all the way across the Great World Sea to the Emperor of Suzer. The envoy conveyed an invitation, and a scroll—with a list of the fire signals Freya’s navy used to pass the fort of Gajafar in the night.

“There was a messenger waiting at the gate that day we went to meet Pseudo-Komfo. He had a simple order: if the false prophet surrendered and dispersed his mob, he would ride north and deliver an order to change the signal codes. But if that liar slew the queen, or took her captive—he would simply burn the order. And so he did.

“A month after Pseudo-Komfo took the throne, the Suzeri navy sailed right up to the capital and started bombarding the walls. They took the capital inside a week. Freya became a vassal state to the great Suzeri empire.

“They left just enough warships and legions to make sure the emperor would get his share, and took the ruler of Freya, Psuedo-Komfo, back to Suzer as an honored and indefinite guest. In the meantime, per their usual policy, the Suzeri appointed locals to administer the country. After all the lies he told, and all the people he slaughtered to put himself on the throne, he ruled less than two months. Less than two months, and then they took him away.

“That’s why I’m here, on these godforsaken mountains. For Him. After the priests revived me, and made me the Ultor—the Avenger—they sent me to find him. The Suzeri navy will have to sail around these mountains, but I—I crossed over them. Before he can reach the Suzeri capital, before he becomes a pampered hostage the rest of his life, I will find him. I will find him and I will kill him. And her name … her name will be the last word he ever says.”

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Chapter 10: The Calamity

Previously: A man calling himself the Ultor (it means avenger) came over the impassible mountains, starving and half-dead. He fought a man who wanted to turn him away from his last chance of survival, the tiny mountain village of Govan, and killed him. He managed to sneak in by night and get some food, but he was less successful sneaking back out. The Boss of Govan, the man hoarding all the gold coming out of the mountain, ordered him put to death, but a young girl, one of the few villagers who understood the language the Ultor spoke, intervened. She demanded the right, as the dead man’s step-daughter, to execute the stranger herself—but instead she helped him escape. A sympathetic villager led both the girl, Reen, and the Ultor to a hiding place deep in the mines.

There, while they wait in the darkness, the Ultor tells Reen his story, starting with the caste conflict in his own country, Freya, between the warriors and the priestesses. Traditionally the two castes trade off ruling the land, but an ambitious warrior, Komfo, not content to wait his turn, attempted a coup. He was defeated when the old queen challenged him to a religious test, his foreign sun god against her own. She survived the 30-day fast; he did not. Afterwards, the old queen refused to name another warrior as her successor, and chose instead the priestess who administered the Widow’s and Orphan’s Court of the Temple, Danafreya. The Ultor, a warrior who had been her bodyguard for years, followed her to the palace. Despite the warriors’ discontent, she reigned well—until the Calamity …


“It started as rumor, from the hill tribes in the east. Monsters—swarms of them. They overran villages in the dark, taking the cattle, then the crops, and finally even the villagers themselves. They kept coming back until nothing living was left. Nothing edible was left.

“By the time they sent to us for help, half the tribes were gone, completely blotted from the earth. I had a friend who went with that first battalion dispatched into the interior to investigate. He told us about wood huts ripped open like anthills, and stone idols untouched in their shrines.

“My warrior brethren advised our Queen to leave the hill tribes to their own devices. The jungle there was too thick and close to defend, they said, and the hill tribes too primitive and treacherous to trust. Like as  not they were killing each other, and blaming monsters.

“Queen Danafreya would have none of it. The Mother of Orphans insisted that all subjects of her realm should depend on her for protection—and that her brave warriors, however they disliked her orders, would obey them.

“The Eastern Army marched into hills, as ordered. They were decimated, mowed down by strange, magical weapons of light and power.

“The survivors retreated to Preva, a trade city on the hill country border. The monsters spilled out of the hills after them. The walls of Preva are tall and strong, but the monsters climbed right over them. They overwhelmed the city in a day, and ate everything and everyone inside. Once they only raided villages in the night; now they overwhelmed walled cities by day. The more they devoured, the more their numbers seemed to grow.

“Survivors from Preva brought a monster’s corpse to the capital. I saw it, when they brought it to the queen. It was like an insect of the gods, head and shoulders taller than a man, thick black armor all over its body … We called them Scarabs, like the old insect god. But old Scarab only ate the dead. These things ate … everything.”

“They spread like locusts, devouring cities in the south and east. Nothing seemed to stop them. People called it a judgment on the country, punishment from God upon the priestesses for usurping the throne. Half the country was overwhelmed, and the other half rose up, rioting, demanding protection, answers, warrior rule, Sun rule, a return to the old gods or no gods at all. It was … It was the end.

“And then HE appeared.

“He was a warrior who was supposed to have been lost at Preva. He showed up, wandering the countryside, preaching repentance, asceticism, caste upheaval—anything to promote his own rise to power. Those who blamed the queen, those who just wanted someone to blame, they flocked to him. They were farmers and drudges, though, most of them refugees. A mob. None of it was anything more than a nuisance, a distraction from the all-out war we were facing—the all-out war we were losing—in the southeast.

“But he was cleverer, and more ambitious, than any of us could have imagined. During the Feast of Offerings that year, he led his mob into the old capital, Trevalar, and announced what he called his ‘true name’: Komfo.

“He said the man whose body he was using had actually died in Preva, and the Sun God had sent his beloved Komfo to take over his body and deliver the kingdom from this scourge. Of course the bugs were a judgment on the priests, and of course the Sun God had allowed Komfo to die until a time when the kingdom was ready to turn to him. This was all part of a divine plan, all the destruction, all the death. And people believed. They … the whole Northern Army, those inbred Gajafarites, they turned. They turned and joined that liar. They left their posts—by this time we only had two armies left, and both of them were stationed along the border of the badlands, praying the desert would kill a few of the Scarabs before their hordes crossed into the north. And the Northern Army, almost to a man, turned and abandoned their posts, because HE, because this Pseudo-Komfo, promised his god would deliver them from the bugs if they came to him. He said he had a plan.

“His plan was to slaughter the entire priestly caste.

“Pseudo-Komfo’s brigands fanned out across the country, cutting down priests at their altars, children in their cribs … It was genocide. We didn’t need the bugs to kill us anymore; our own warriors did it for them.

“And then something terrible happened, something … The bugs didn’t come. The Southern Army, the last army standing, waited at the badlands border, but the Scarabs just never came. At first we thought maybe they were done, maybe they were finally, finally sated. We knew what HE would say had happened, but we hoped … And then the spies from the infested lands returned and we learned the horrible truth: the bugs were gone. Komfo had struck down the priests, and the Scarabs had simply … They had completely disappeared.”

Monday, September 9, 2013

Chapter 9: The Other Story

Her name rang out  in the little chamber. “The Mother of Orphans, Danafreya.” The Ultor pronounced it like a talisman of power, and for a moment he seemed to swell with new life, his chest punched out, his eyes bright, his cracked lips opened wide. Reen shivered so hard her spine snapped straight. She waited, listening to the silence that lay over them like a blanket. But nothing happened. The Ultor exhaled, and collapsed against the stone wall again, just as he had been before—just a man.

Well, maybe a man, but not like the men she knew. The little lamp, which she’d turned down as low as it would go without sputtering out, barely threw light enough to reach him. With his dark skin and dark cloak, he looked like a collection of small parts of a man, as if the darkness itself had grown a face and strong arms and legs, but forgotten to connect them with a body, so that the parts only floated near each other, jumbled and unreal.

“Do you understand what I’m saying, child?” he asked.

“Yes. I think so.”

“Your Ugasic is very good.”

“My mother taught me. That’s all she spoke at home with me, Ugasic. She wanted me to get a place waiting on a lady someday, or maybe even marry a merchant.”

“Your mother was a drudge?”

“What’s a drudge?”

“She worked in someone else’s home, cleaning and caring for the family.”

“Oh. She worked in our home, mostly. And she dyed cloth, when I was little. Before we came here.”

“Your father was a warrior, though?”

“Yeah. He fought for Sagash, in the Hagannahs. You now about that?”

“I’ve heard,” was all he answered.

She sighed, and eyed the blade in his hand. “That was his,” she said softly. “His sword. Barsow took it after he died.”

“Barsow?”

“The man you—the dead man. The man who had the sword.”

The Ultor looked the sword over. “I thought they said the dead man was your father.”

She sighed again. “My mom married him when I was a little kid. He brought my dad’s sword home, and she married him. And brought us here.”

For a few moments, he said nothing. Then: “I’m glad he wasn’t your father.”

She nodded.

“I’ll return it to you, when I can.”

“Really?” she asked.

“It’s your father’s sword.” He shifted, easing his joints into a new arrangement. “Your mother is dead?”

“Yes.”

“Why did she want you to be a drudge? If your father was a warrior?”

She frowned. “Because a lady’s maid always knows where her next meal is coming from.”

“And a warrior doesn’t?”

“Not the ones I know.”

He made no reply to that. After a moment she asked, “What happened to Danafreya?”

He didn’t answer right away, and for a moment she was afraid he wouldn’t go on.

“What’s the last thing I told you?”

“Danafreya got to be queen instead of a warrior.”

“Yes. Danafreya, Empress of Lasting Peace. That was her regnal seal—”

“Her what?”

“The name she took as queen. Her will for the kingdom. After mighty Komfo, Danafreya, Empress of Lasting Peace. And that was what she brought—until the Calamity.”

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Chapter 8: In the Land of Freya

“Once upon a time, my queen would have been worshiped as a goddess. Even in these enlightened times, people loved her almost as one. But she was a woman. The greatest woman I ever knew. Maybe the greatest woman the world ever saw. And she was murdered by a traitor and a cur.

“But to understand all that, you have to understand how she got to be queen. 

“The old queen, Disidaya, when she ascended the throne after King Ganafa passed beyond, she chose as her successor, her spiritual son, a warrior, according to tradition. After every priestess a warrior, and after every warrior a priestess. The successor rules by the emperor’s side, and the succession is peaceful. In this way our kingdom stays secure, and balanced, age by age.

“Prince Komfo, Lord of Sage Virtue, as the new successor styled himself, seemed a good choice. He’d tamed the hill tribes of east, made them orderly vassals. He’d broken the revolt in the delta and persuaded the traitors to surrender their leaders without firing single arrow. My father was there, a foot soldier, at the walls of Gajafar. He said only Komfo would dream of marching in with three armies, and marching away an avowed friend of the city. Only Komfo.

“That campaign made him—and that campaign undid him. It marked him in every eye as a man worthy to rule. His name rose higher than even Disidaya’s that year. But he hadn’t just bargained with Gajafar as general of three armies and a worthy friend. He came to them as one of them, as a follower of the cult of the Western Sun. That detail was suppressed back in the capital. No one wanted to call the nation’s hero an infidel. Maybe some people hoped it was a fad, a passion of youth. Some of the generals, I know, harbored Sun sympathies of their own. Regardless, at Komfo’s coronation Queen Disidaya led him in the Prayer of the Faithful, and he repeated every word, in sight of the whole nation. She adopted him her son, and crowned him emperor-elect.

“But Disidaya must have known what he was. By the time I joined the Capital Legion, it was an open secret among them. He took a wife from the Gajafar, and the Sun clerics visited her in his home. Before long they walked openly in the palace itself.

“At that time my uncle, my mother’s brother, gained his seniority, and he secured a spot for me in the Temple Guard. It was a life’s ambition of my mother’s to see me there. They posted me at the Widow’s Court—and that was where I first laid eyes on Her Holiness, Danafreya. I knew her for my future queen the moment I saw her.

“She had a light in her. Of course every priestess should receive the Light on her ordination; but in Danafreya you could actually see it shining out of her. She walked like a queen, but she was a mother to every widow and orphan who came to the Temple. Farmer or merchant or warrior or drudge, it made no difference. She was young for a minister of such an important partition, and such a difficult one, always better honored than funded. The other councilors praised her for doing it with such ease. But I knew how late she worked every night, and how early every morning she rose to prayers. I have known many a petty priestess, many an venal priest in my time as a fighting man. But Danafreya was a true instrument of the Great Good. Her faith was so great … she made me believe.

“By this time Prince Komfo’s paganism was public knowledge. There was no hiding it, when he was funding missionaries to spread his ancient folly all over the land. Warriors who idolized the emperor-elect converted to his faith. Farmers who still loved the People’s Hero allowed rock altars to be piled on their hilltops, and their sons to wear the Sun men’s white sash to market. Queen Disidaya could turn a blind eye no longer. Not for the sake of the kingdom, and not for the sake of the faith. She called Komfo to the palace altar room, threw the windows open to the sun, and locked the two of them inside. It was a challenge: the two of them would stay in that room and pray, day and night, with no food, no allies, only their faith and whatever succor their gods could provide. The would stay until one relented—or until one died.

“By nightfall half the leading warriors were calling on all soldiers to retreat from the palace, and from the temple. A lot of them obeyed, out of loyalty, or out of fear. We faithful remained. And Disidaya and Komfo kept to their vigil.

“Days passed—weeks. According to tradition, Disidaya and Komfo refused all food, allowing only water and weak wine into the chamber. There were rumors everywhere: Old Disidaya is weakening and strong Komfo would prevail. Disidaya’s faith preserves her and Komfo had begun to faint. The Warriors cried that Disidaya had betrayed her son and tried to rile the people against her. But the farmers have long memories for rain and plenty, and they called her Wise Mother, and stayed at home. The craftsmen care nothing for the sun, or warrior pride. The merchants will offend no one who might enrich them. Only the northern delta declared for the mighty Sun King. But alas, their sea vessels draw too great a draft to reach the capital. So the warriors had to wait, to see who would emerge triumphant, sure that it must be Komfo the brave at last.

“Thirty days passed, and no one entered the chamber, and no one left. The faithful flooded the temple, offering prayers for the nation. The loyalists paraded through, to be seen showing support. Finally, on the thirty-first day, a cry rose up from palace quarter, and spread through the whole city. Disidaya had emerged. Disidaya lived. Long live Disidaya.

“Komfo’s body was delivered to his people that very night, in view of the whole capital. There was no injury on him, though he had withered to half his once-great size. Many whispered afterward that he had a dark spot on his chest, in the shape of a blackened sun. About that, I don’t know. I didn’t see him. I was at the temple.

“The warriors’ opposition, of course, collapsed. The Sun cult retreated back to the delta, and for two weeks the nation celebrated our queen’s great honor and victory.

“At the end of the festival, the warriors brought new candidates before the queen. They were the most pious men from among our tribe, and women too, every one loyal throughout the crisis. But she spurned them all. She declared that Komfo had polluted the kingdom with his heresy, and that only a ruler of supreme holiness could set our land aright. She declared that rule must pass back to the priestesses another term—for the sake of the nation’s soul.

“In my father’s day it would have meant nothing short of civil war. But Komfo’s collapse had gelded the warriors. The farmers and the lower classes loved nothing and no one but Disidaya, and against them all the warriors dared not stir. So Disidaya chose a priestess for her new successor: the most holy from among the holy class, the Mother of Orphans, Danafreya.”