Ebrai strode along the marble floor of the gallery and was met by the Sovereign and her retinue, as they were leaving the parade balcony chamber.
As always, the sight of her struck him painfully, so that it was almost a physical sensation, an impact of tangible presence upon his senses, a displacement of the ether. Ebrai forced himself into the “casual yet humble yet despair-ridden” complex mask that he cultivated in her company.
In a few long strides he stopped before her, then bowed deeply yet with a twinge of pride—it was in the controlled movement of his head, the aloof clarity of his blank gaze. It was required that he show it, together with the rest of his mask “ensemble,” else there would be insufficient dignity and reserve left in him to retain her interest. She would see it and interpret as she saw fit.
“Your Brilliance, I am here.”
“My dear Ebrai,” she said, and her sky-blue eyes were upon him, full force, devastating in their clarity. “I have a task for you.”
“I am a humble servant of Your Brilliance.”
“You will prepare yourself to travel. You will take whatever you need.”
He wondered then, seeing the Field Marshals’ steady watchful eyes, as each one looked at him with an unreadable expression.
“Am I to take it that I will not be traveling with Your Brilliance upon this campaign?”
“No. You will be heading north on your own, into the Realm—where you are a hunted man and must take every precaution, since regrettably you will not have my forces at your side—and your one task of paramount importance is to locate one somewhat extraordinary young girl.”
“I see,” he said, indeed not seeing at all, and for that reason thoughts were racing madly in his mind. “And who is this young girl?”
“We do not have her name, only that she is from some remote northern village in Lethe. She is young, hardly a woman, and she has the ability to kill the dead.”
Ebrai’s mind was churning, clicking into place. “Ah, I do recall now. The so-called Death’s Champion. She is the one who is rumored to have put to rest her own grandmother.”
“Yes, and now she has done the same thing for the old Queen of Lethe. And a few hundred of Duke Ian Chidair’s very much dead men.”
“Ah. . . .”
“We cannot have her continue in this manner. Your task, therefore, is to locate her, discreetly, and bring her to me, unharmed. She must remain living, for I have need of her. And you—you too must stay alive in the process, for as a dead man you will be vulnerable to her.”
Ebrai bowed deeply. “It is done. Where does Your Brilliance want her delivered?”
The Sovereign’s soft laughter followed.
“I can see, Ebrai, that you are eager to demonstrate both your loyalty and your ability. Well then, we shall see how good you really are! Bring the girl to me wherever I might be at that moment—The Silver Court, Letheburg, or even farther north. Find me!”
And Ebrai Fiomarre met her gaze with his own very direct, slightly-mocking-yet-humble perverse combination of looks that kept her engaged in him every moment he spent before her. “It will be done precisely as Your Brilliance desires.”
“I know,” she said, the gaze of her blue eyes caressing him. “Now, go, and leave within the hour, no later than our armies begin the march.”
With a swift bow, he was gone.
The Sovereign watched his receding elegant shape, a raven gone to hunt, and then she resumed walking swiftly, followed by her retinue, on her way out of the Palace.
Rumanar Avalais had changed from the ceremonial war dress of ancient queens to a modern riding habit. Only the color remained, rich pomegranate, the formal military hue of the Domain. Her headdress was replaced by a small platinum powdered wig designed to support a hat of sable fur trimmed with gold, suitable for the northern climes, which was to be worn later. An ermine lined hooded cloak would also later be fastened at her neck once the temperature called for it. For the moment, the cloak and hat were borne behind her by a maidservant who would be traveling with her for the duration of the campaign—the only other woman beside herself, on this campaign.
The Sovereign walked from the Palace and into the square, where an open parade curricle was awaiting her. She was assisted into the gilded seat upholstered in burgundy velvet by two Ladies-in-Attendance who then immediately curtsied and retreated, while her tiny maidservant, named Graccia perched in the back of the equipage with the essentials for the trip. The rest of the trunks and supplies would follow separately in carts, wagons, and sleeping carriages, together with the army supplies and heavy artillery.
“Proceed!” Rumanar raised one fine, sable-gloved hand, and the curricle, driven by a liveried officer and a pair of brilliant white geldings, burst forward, making a round at the Palace driveway to approach the heart of the square.
Here, the Sovereign told the driver to stop.
The Trovadii army stood before her at attention. An ocean of steel-wielding pikemen infantry in endless formations, at least a hundred separate companies of plated cavalry knights from all the four Kingdoms of the Domain, and flanks of heavy musketeers interspersed with light arquebusiers and long-bowmen.
The Field Marshals were already in the square, mounted on their chargers and in full armored uniform except for the battle breastplates, with distinctive epaulets and crest markings over surcoats. If she glanced closely, she could see each of the three men watching her, wise astute eyes, brilliant and clear in determination, exquisitely perfect in their loyalty. Three hero veterans, each in charge of one portion of the Trovadii.
In the center, grim Field Marshal Claude Maetra was in charge of the First Army under the banner of the Spiked Sun, the bulk and heart of the heavy pike infantry and cavalry forces. To the right, Field Marshal Matteas Quara with his distinctive eye-patch, was to lead the Second Army under the banner of a bristling Coiled Serpent, including the bulk of musketeers and artillery. To the left, Field Marshal Edmunde Vaccio, the handsome Moor, headed the Third Army under the banner of a Black Rose that had most of the bowmen and sword-and-buckler corps.
The Sovereign raised one gloved hand, and each man of the many thousands, from the lowest infantry soldier to the highest knight, attended her in rapt immediate silence.
“Trovadii!” she cried. “My Trovadii! Are you ready to fight?”
The square shook with the roar of their reply.
“Trovadii! Are you ready to die for me?”
They roared as one man, and the remote sun, rising higher now, set their metal to a sea of cold liquid fire.
“Then die for me!” cried the Sovereign. “Each one among you, take up your sword or dagger! Lift your armor upon your breast and find your heart! Strike your own beating heart, or your throat!”
There was one impossible pause of silence.
The wind blew audibly in the square, so silent it had become.
And in the next instant, three loud, booming masculine voices were heard. Field Marshal Claude Maetra roared a command in an icy voice of precision, and many feet away to his left and right, the same command issued from the mouths of Field Marshal Quara and Field Marshal Vaccio. Each general had his sword out and reversed, pointing at their own bodies, and their chests were free of chainmail or breastplate—now the reasons became clear. . . .
“Remove sword! Strike!”
And each general demonstrated by example, by plunging their swords directly into their own hearts.
They made brief grunts, but remained standing, while red blood surged out of their chests, same color as their pomegranate uniforms.
As their hearts stilled, there was but a moment to transition to the undeath, no time to get accustomed, no time to acknowledge agony and that inevitable moment of blackout, and immediate weakness, and spiraling distance, and. . . .
No time.
“Remove . . . sword! Strike!”
Field Marshal Maetra was the first to regain his voice, and it sounded broken at first, as his mechanical gears slip
ped into place and his lungs billowed like dragging sails.
Knights all across the ranks started moving, reacting. Breastplates were moved aside whenever possible, or helms shifted and throats exposed. Swords and daggers were plunged into healthy living flesh, leathered and weatherbeaten, smooth and virile, white or olive or black as ebony. One after another they moved, striking with all their force, filled with sudden focus born of realization—born of madness—taking last breaths, crying out, or fading in silence.
“Remove . . . sword!”
Some of them hesitated. In quite a few spots, sudden skirmishes took place, quickly quelled by others around them. As men staggered, stood or sat on their horses, bleeding, they turned to those neighbors who hesitated, and daggers or sharp pike ends were plunged into chests and exposed throats.
“Strike!”
One by one, lesser commanding officers picked up the call, as sergeants-at-arms commanded their companies. Some soldiers had to be held down by their fellow members of battalions and troops while they wept and prayed.
Blood rained down upon Trova Square. It had turned pomegranate, cobblestones soggy with dark red juices of once living men.
Horses staggered and slipped. They were slain also, carefully so as not to damage fine limbs or muscles that might interfere with the march. A few of the knights wept then, not for themselves or the men around them, but in the moments they realized they had to take the lives of their own loyal beasts.
“Strike!”
Field Marshal Edmunde Vaccio heard the sound around him as though through ears plugged with cotton, while the last of his pomegranate blood trickled out of his wound in the chest, mingling with his crisp uniform surcoat, staining his gambeson and undershirt below. For the first time in his memory he heard no reliable drumbeat pulse in his temples, and thought of his young wife in Solemnis, imagining her lithe soft body gently swollen with their first child that will be their last.
“Strike!”
In the back of the square, soldiers stationed at the most outlying positions, hearing the orders, looked at each other in suspended disbelief, forced into moments of utmost choice. Others prayed in silence before removing their steel and performing their final living act. “Help me!” a few of them mouthed.
Help me. . . .
In the middle of the First Army, a formation of pikemen had come down on their knees, each one down to a man, refusing to take their own life. Heads bowed, they knelt in silence, mouthing prayers to God in Heaven, while their sergeants-at-arms came around striking them in the chests and throats, followed by benedictions from hooded priests who had emerged in many places around the square, to deliver Last Rites to the most faithful among them.
“Strike!”
Many of the musketeers corps, unable to turn the muskets upon themselves due to length of nozzle, discharged their long weapons into each other, and gunfire came in slow grim bursts, measured like pops, as they received the steel balls into their chests.
“Fire!”
Mother of God, help us all.
It took no more than a quarter of an hour to accomplish the deed.
The Sovereign sat watching them, motionless and serene. Behind her, little Graccia cowered, trembling, holding her white-knuckled hands against her mouth, silent tears streaming down her face.
At last, Trova Square contained only an army of the dead.
Rumanar Avalais, Sovereign of the Domain, lifted her gloved hand and spoke in her ringing voice, painted with pomegranate tongues of invisible fire, which was now all in the mind.
“Trovadii! You are mine now, unto Eternity! And now we march! Our way lies north!”
A blast of trumpets sounded, chill and pristine, powered by no living breath. Everywhere around the square it was picked up by echoes and amplified by powerful acoustics, and new trumpet blasts flared from the remote flanks. Next came the beat of drums, the only heartbeat to serve them all. And then, like a giant beast awaking, a creaking arose . . . the sound of metal striking metal . . . the soft squish of thick pomegranate-hued liquid upon the once-mauve cobblestones. . . .
There was no other sound.
Trovadii were on the move.
Chapter 12
Percy trembled in the embrace of a man whom she knew as the black knight, a man whose nude upper body surrounded her in a blanket of fiery warmth. He was crushing her between his muscular arms and his scalding chest, bronze and copper skin, smooth to the touch and hard underneath, covered with a bristling of fine hairs.
Percy could not breathe. She was constricted, but not enough to be so breathless. Rather, it was the reality of his presence, the strange proximity, the overwhelming warmth of him, pressed full body against all parts of her, that made her want to jump out of her own skin and at the same time to stay in place and just dissolve.
And then, his voice. . . .
“Percy . . .” he had spoken harshly, strangely, while pressed so hard and warm against her, his jaw prickling her neck.
“I am warm now,” she told him in a soft voice, as if it made any sense, then remembered that yes, it was supposed to make sense; that she had been cold as ice, emptied of reason, falling in and out of consciousness as they rode, not even remotely clear on where they were now—and her mind had been tolling with all the bells in the world after the dark killing power had receded—
And yet, all she could think now was that she was warm—so warm! And he was all around her, and he was burning her—or she was melting, soft and malleable and non-existent in the circle of his body.
However, the next instant, before she could squirm or press her hands against his chest yet again because she did not know what to do with herself, with her body or with her hands, and where to place them—the next instant Beltain suddenly released her.
With a strange grunting sound he sharply moved away, making the straw mattress buckle underneath his greater weight. And he lay on his back momentarily, then with a sharp movement got up and backed away from her, wearing only his lower body woolens.
Still trembling, this time with some confusion, she was suddenly presented with the sight of his beautifully shaped upper body—torso bruised in places, but muscular and overwhelming with its comely proportions. Comely, yes—because the few times that she had seen a man’s bare chest in Oarclaven during summer fieldwork, and could compare, she knew this one was the most well-fashioned. He stood before the bed, silhouetted in part against the ruddy light of the fireplace that played along the masculine planes and concavities of his chest and abdomen.
“Forgive me, Persephone . . .” he said in a newly remote and very cold voice. His expression was equally cold and indeed blank, as he then leaned forward again, and took hold of the black velvet cloak that had served as a blanket for them, and pulled it back up and around Percy, adjusting it with his large capable hands around her neck, and pulling the fabric over her still somewhat cool bare feet.
“You are indeed better now,” he added. “I was unsure what was to be done, and I am sorry if I had imposed—upon you. But now, I will find us something to drink.”
“Thank you . . .” she said again, not knowing what else to say, and holding the velvet folds of the cloak around her to cover her ugly old cotton nightshirt.
As if he hadn’t seen it already.
“Rest now,” he added. “And I will find water to heat. A kettle maybe—” And he turned and went to look around the room near the pantry. There was indeed a small pot of sorts, and he took it up and then headed directly for the door.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said, pausing just for a moment. “I will be just outside. Now, rest!”
And she watched him, her pulse still racing in her temples, her body entirely warm—more warm that she had any right to be—and yet groggy now, and filled with something that was either a general ache or the remainder of churning power. And it occurred to Percy that, as he exited outside, he wore no shirt on his upper body—nothing at all—and yet he did not appear to feel the blast of cold th
at came at him as he opened the door to the winter night.
Beltain returned shortly, carrying a pot filled with snow. It had started to snow outside, coming down thick and fast, and the wind turned the flurries into spinning funnels. Snowflakes had sprinkled with whiteness the tops of his shoulders and the dark brown, lightly curling hair on his head, and some had caught lightly against his fine chest hairs in crystalline points that started to melt immediately in the warmth inside.
He shook his head of hair off lightly, swept hands against his chest with absentminded motions, not appearing to be bothered by the cold, and put the pot on the fire to melt and boil. Then he found his linen undershirt and put it on, no doubt covering himself against her gaze.
Percy continued to stare at him.
“Well,” he said. “It is a good thing I found this house to shelter for the night. We could not have ridden through this snow. How do you feel?”
“I am fine, thank you, My Lord.”
He turned away and for the next few moments fumbled looking around at the pantry shelves. “Nothing to eat here. No tea, not even bark scrapings. Just a couple of rotten potatoes and turnips on the bottom of the sack, unfit for the pig trough.”
“I am not hungry.”
He looked around at her, scraped the stubble of his jaw with his hand. “After what you went through, you need to eat, and drink well.”
“Hot water is plenty.”
He shook his head.
“Truly, My Lord,” she said. “Whatever has happened since I made the dead fall, I am well now. It has passed.”
It occurred to her that indeed her recovery this time had been much faster than the previous time—when she put to rest only three soldiers on the road and nearly fainted.
“So, Percy, Death’s Champion, what exactly can you do?” He stood, looking at her with very serious eyes, having forgotten for the moment the search for something edible. “You managed to take out dozens, nay, at least a hundred men as we rode, and you did not touch any of them!”