His Conquering Sword (47 page)

“Barbarians!” he said with a grunt of disgust. “Leaving their own children to die.”

“Take it back to the hospital,” said Nadine. “I’ll pass the orders on down the line.”

A troop of horsemen clattered past. Refugees streamed in the other direction, ducking away from the jaran riders, running, stumbling, and sobbing, dropping wooden chests and cloth bundles in their haste. A jeweled necklace lay spilled in the dirt. A rider picked the necklace up with the point of his spear and let it slide down the haft into his hands. He glanced over to see Nadine and the messenger watching him, then shook the necklace free and tossed it to the men loading the wagon.

“Take that horse!” shouted Nadine, seeing a Habakar woman leading a fine mare, and her riders summarily took the horse away. The woman was wise enough not to protest. The messenger left, riding with the infant in the crook of his arm. Nadine headed on into the city.

By now it was midafternoon and the resistance had worn away almost to nothing. Fires rose on all sides, and auxiliaries and archers stripped houses and loaded purloined wagons high with the riches of Karkand. It was time to press on quickly. She called in her jahar, pleased to see that she had almost four hundreds still with her, the others wounded or scattered behind. They formed up and rode on up the hill to the great square that fronted the citadel. This close, the walls looked thick and forbidding, impregnable.

To her surprise, all was quiet here, except for the constant growling noise of the conflagration in the city.

She found Anatoly Sakhalin with about fifty riders. “What’s going on?”

“Bakhtiian is by the outer gates of the citadel, negotiating with the commander. On the other side of us.”

“Negotiating with him?”

“He’s agreed to spare the women and children if the garrison will surrender.”

“Ah,” said Nadine. “But surely from those walls they can see the refugees leaving the city. They must know that some are being spared in any case.”

Anatoly shrugged. “How can we know what khaja think like? They make no sense to me.” Then he looked abruptly guilty for saying it. As if to draw attention away from the comment, he glanced back. From this height, halfway up the hill on which the citadel lay massed, the city spread out in a maze of spirals and circling streets beneath them, all the way down to the great walls and over to the height where the royal palace lay sprawled across the sister hill. The city burned. A third of it was already obscured by smoke.

Nadine stared, realizing all at once how huge Karkand really was, how elaborate. Minarets thrust up into the sky, ornamented with delicate lacework that slowly disappeared into smoke and flame. The royal palace bore tiles all along its western front, gleaming in the late afternoon sun, but even as she watched, smoke began to curl up from its environs. Gardens lay green under the light of day. A colonnaded avenue led in pale splendor to a vast temple inscribed with tilework that formed huge letters, the words of their god. People milled in clumps, as small as insects, scattered everywhere she could make out from her vantage point. At a distant gate, she saw a steady stream of refugees leaving the city. Farther, the suburbs ringed the inner city, hazed now by the dust and the smoke, obscuring their white villas and verdant parks. Metal flashed against the sun as riders moved in the far distance, and here and there on the walls, where some skirmish fought itself to an end. No city she had ever seen, not even Jeds, was as beautiful as Karkand as it died.

Anatoly shrugged, turning his gaze back to the citadel, where the blue lion flag of the Habakar royal family still fluttered in the wind. “It’s going to take a long time to burn,” he said.

At the height of the citadel, the blue lion flag shuddered and began to descend. Nadine caught in her breath. A man appeared on the parapet, high above, and in his right hand he bore Bakhtiian’s gold standard.

Anatoly swore under his breath and urged his horse forward. Just as he reached the thick gates, they swung open. Nadine was shocked to see her uncle ride through them, Konstans Barshai and Kirill Zvertkov on his left and Mitya on his right. On foot, in front of him, walked three Habakar priests and a soldier in a fine nobleman’s surcoat and rich armor, heads bared to the sun.

Bakhtiian saw Nadine, and he beckoned to her. She rode up to him and fell in beside Mitya. They rode out of the square, paced by their prisoners, and down the great colonnaded avenue until they came at last to the huge temple that lay between the citadel and the palace.

It was a glorious thing, the temple of the Habakar god, so profusely tiled along its walls and up its minareted sides that Nadine wondered how long it had taken to build and decorate. Arches filigreed with elaborate screens gave access onto the inner grounds, and through the arches she saw a green courtyard bordered by slender columns, their capitals wreathed in leaves. She wished suddenly, fiercely, that David could be here to survey it, to draw it, to keep its memory alive.

In the square in front of the temple lay a fountain built so cunningly that the play of the water splashing down level to level raised rainbows in the air. An unveiled, white-robed woman sat, head bowed, on the edge of the pool at the base of the fountain, a ceramic pitcher and two shallow wooden bowls resting beside her.

Their party came to a halt before the fountain. Bakhtiian looked on the huge temple with an expression that Nadine could not read. He did not look triumphant to her, though his victory that day had been momentous.

Stiff with fright, the priestess dipped a bowl into the pool, rose from her seat, and brought the water to Bakhtiian. Her hands trembled as she lifted the bowl up, cupped in her pale delicate fingers, offering it to him. He accepted it, took three sips, and handed the bowl to Mitya, who drank off the rest. Then Bakhtiian urged his horse forward to the pool and let it drink. The white-robed woman went as pale as death, watching the stallion drink from her fountain, and a moment later she collapsed to the ground in a faint. The Habakar priests wrung their hands, terrified and distraught, but they did not object to this impiety.

Bakhtiian pulled his horse away and motioned to the rest to water their own mounts. He moved up beside his prisoners. Shadows drew out across the courtyard, thrown by the minarets and the ring of tall columns. The horses drank noisily from the pool, serenaded by the pleasant murmur of the fountain and the muted dissonance of the bedlam in the city beyond. Plumes of smoke clouded the sky. The sun sank toward the western hills in a haze of red fire.

“You may leave,” Bakhtiian said. “That much mercy I will grant you and your people.” His expression remained fixed and distant.

“But, Lord,” protested one of the priests, the eldest of them, “the holy books of the Everlasting God, which reside in the temple…” He bent his head over his hands. Nadine saw tears in his eyes and a look of bitter despair on his face. The others whispered fiercely to him. The nobleman knelt and bowed his head, not to Bakhtiian, but to the temple itself, as if saying farewell to it.

“Books!” Bakhtiian’s gaze jumped back to the priests for an instant. “Konstans. Give these priests wagons, so that they may save their books. Take five hundred men and strip everything else that is valuable from the building.”

“But, Lord, our temple took years beyond counting to build. And the palace—” The others hissed at him, but the old man set his mouth and continued. “Let him kill me if he wills. I am old enough to die without fear. Lord, surely once you have taken what you wish, we can return to our homes. Surely you or the young prince—” He glanced up at Mitya and away, as if he feared his impudence in looking directly upon the young prince might be punished, “—will wish to rule from here.”

“Karkand is no more,” said Bakhtiian in a quiet voice, deceptively quiet, Nadine understood now, seeing in his face the depths of his rage and of his anguish. “Nothing will be left of her once I am through. No one will live here, no thing will grow here, where I lost my son.”

A
LEKSI KNEW HOW TO
get places without being seen. Charles Soerensen knew how to be seen. Once they had ridden far enough in toward the battle, once the prince had been recognized and waved forward by enough people, Aleksi got them lost and brought them out on a different side of Karkand, three jaran riders of no particular importance headed out on patrol. He did not find it difficult to avoid jaran patrols. But the khaja who had been driven from the outlying districts of Karkand flooded every path and road and least byway, and in the end they cut up into the hills early and wound a laborious way through the scrub until they came at last to a small defile hidden between two ridges.

“Here,” said Charles, and they dismounted and led the horses down the steep hillside to the flat grassy floor. It was midafternoon by now, and already shadows covered the western flank of the little valley. They stood there, resting while they watched the horses graze.

“We’re only about eight kilometers from camp,” said Marco, “had we ridden straight here, but we rode over twice that. Goddess, what a lot of refugees.”

“Let’s hope,” said Soerensen quietly, regarding the sky pensively, “that none of them decide to hide in the hills until we’re gone. Or at least, in these hills.”

Marco sighed. “Just think of all the people still left inside the city. I wonder what will happen to them.”

The prince folded his arms on his chest and regarded the other man. A breeze slid through the grass. Here, in this peaceful valley, it was hard to remember that a battle raged a short ride away.

Marco clenched his hands. “Or what will happen to the people in camp if Bakhtiian loses.” He looked white.

“I’m sorry, Marco,” said Soerensen, more quietly still.

“You’re sorry!” demanded Marco. “You’re the one who abandoned Tess!”

“And Cara and David and all the rest of them, true. But I have faith that Bakhtiian will win. Hell, I have to believe it. And in any case, that’s not really who we’re talking about.”

Marco swore and stalked off to talk to the horses who were, no doubt, more soothing company.

“Romance,” said the prince, looking after him,” is vastly overrated.” He sat down and reclined on one elbow.

Aleksi crouched down beside him. “Is Erthe really such a place as this?” he asked, waving toward the ridges and the silent stretch of grass and brush lying within the valley walls. “Or is it like the plains? And if it lies up in the heavens, why can’t we see it?”

Soerensen smiled. “You remind me of Tess,” he said. “Hell, you remind me of me.”

The simple words provoked a sudden flush of happiness in Aleksi. By this, he was acknowledged. He could not help himself. He smiled back.

The prince chuckled. “Well, we have about two hours until the shuttle is due in. Let me see.” He settled into a more comfortable position. “I’m not a very good storyteller, and I don’t have any visual aids …”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” said Aleksi hastily. “Tell me a simple story first. Tell me about—” He hesitated, stunned for a moment by his own audacity. But Tess was his sister and, by some measure, Charles Soerensen his brother. “Tell me about your mother and your father and your tribe.”

“My mother and my father and my tribe,” mused the prince. “Well, then, let me start with the story of how they met—or at least, how they told it to me. I heard a different story from my mother’s sister, which I’m afraid I believe more.” But by his grin as he spoke, Aleksi saw that both these stories rose from love. Content, Aleksi settled in to listen.

The sun had fallen below the western ridge and twilight cloaked the valley when Marco left the horses suddenly and ran over to them, interrupting Soerensen right as he was getting to the part where Tess was born.

“Perimeter alert,” said Marco. “We’ve got two riders approaching.” He had a huge black stone attached to his wrist, and he stared into it now as a Singer might stare into feathers and bones to read omens.

“Refugees?” the prince asked, climbing to his feet. “Damn.”

“I don’t—No. They’ve got homing equipment. Must be ours.”

Aleksi heard the horses before he saw them, picking their way down the western ridge. Soon enough he could make out their riders as well: One person walked, leading both horses, and a second clung to the saddle of her fine mare.

“Tess!” Aleksi said her name on the same breath the prince did. Then Marco said, “Maggie! What the hell—?” They all stared.

Zhashi looked no worse for wear, although not surprisingly she wasn’t happy about going down an unfamiliar slope at twilight, but Tess looked awful. They reached the valley floor and Aleksi ran to help Tess down off the mare.

She collapsed into his arms and just hung against him while Maggie took the horses out to the others and hobbled them.

“And what the hell,” Tess demanded of her brother as he hurried up to her, “do you think you’re doing?” Her voice was strong, but still she clung to Aleksi. He wondered if she could even stand by herself.

“I might ask the same of you,” Soerensen said, looking shocked, but he did not move to take her out of Aleksi’s grasp. “Are you trying to kill yourself?”

“What? You don’t want me to? You still have too many uses for me?”

“I’m
asking
because I care, damn it!” he exclaimed, and Aleksi was astonished to hear how hurt he sounded.

She did not reply immediately. Instead, she tested her feet on the ground and Aleksi helped her to sit down. Her face shone gray in the dusk. She still had to lean against him, even then. “Oh, God,” she said. “It just happened so fast. God, I’m exhausted.”

“As well you should be,” interjected Marco. “Goddess, Tess, it’s hard enough to leave without worrying that
you
might—” He broke off and knelt down beside her, hugging her, and Aleksi let her go. “Why did you come after us?”

“That’s a stupid question,” said Tess. “I receive a note that states that urgent news from Odys forces Charles to leave Rhui at once, and you don’t think I’d—” She paused for breath. Marco let go of her and stood up. “I need something to drink.” Aleksi offered her water from his flask. She drank and gave the flask back to him. “If you’re leaving this way, you must be leaving for good. Forever. It doesn’t take any great brilliance to read your mind, Charles.”