Fall of a Kingdom (The Farsala Trilogy) (26 page)

J
IAAN NEVER KNEW
how long he lay, weeping, before the gentle touch on the back of his neck sent him spinning around—to stare up into Rakesh’s bony face.

The horse jerked back at Jiaan’s sudden movement, then he lowered his neck and lipped Jiaan’s hair.
Pay attention to me.

“Go away.” Jiaan’s voice was thick with anger and grief.

Rakesh didn’t move, except to shift more weight off his injured leg. Caring for his father’s horses had been part of Jiaan’s duty for most of his life. He sat up and looked at the wound. The Hrum lance had struck Rakesh’s shoulder. Even from the ground, Jiaan could see splinters sticking out of the torn flesh. The lance head might still be embedded there. The Hrum were infantry. They’d have no use for a lame horse, even one as fine as Rakesh. They’d put him down.

Jiaan didn’t much care if the Hrum killed him, but he couldn’t let them do that to Rakesh. “Come on, old friend. We’ll help each other.”

Jiaan half crawled, half slid to the bottom of the slope. Only by clinging to Rakesh’s good shoulder did he manage to haul himself to his feet. They walked together, at the same slow pace. Jiaan wasn’t certain which of them chose the direction, deeper and deeper into the low hills, away from the battlefield, from the Farsalan camp with the deghans’ golden bathtubs and the deghans’ families.

The Hrum would sack the camp, Jiaan knew, but there was no one there he cared about. The only living creature he cared about walked beside him.

By dusk they had reached a shallow ravine, with a small creek flowing down the bottom. It was evidently popular with the local horses and cattle—Jiaan gathered dried dung, awkward with one hand, and built a fire. Peasant fuel, but there was little wood in the plains, and he was a peasant. He’d proved that. If the light attracted the Hrum, so be it; he needed light to tend Rakesh, and the horse would need the warmth. Jiaan wrapped Rakesh’s reins around the base of a sturdy bush, unsaddled him, and set to work.

The lance head wasn’t embedded, Azura be praised, and the long slivers that had lodged in the wound were easily extracted. Rakesh flinched when Jiaan pulled the splinters, but he didn’t try to move away, and he barely stirred when Jiaan washed his shoulder with water from the stream. The exhausted gelding stood with his head lowered, too tired to graze. Jiaan wished he had a pail of oats and a warm stall or even a blanket.

He scrubbed his hands and arms in the stream, then he led Rakesh over to drink. After some thought he removed the horse’s bridle. Rakesh would be more comfortable without it, and in the end, he might fare better if he did run off.

But the gelding stayed—perhaps the warmth of the fire felt good to him. Jiaan kept the fire going, even though bending over to collect more fuel made his head throb. Its light wasn’t strong enough to draw the Hrum from their looting, but it did bring in others. First came a man who leaned on a broken javelin, limping on a knee swollen to twice its normal size. Then a horse whickered, and Rakesh answered, summoning an archer, unharmed, seated on a sound horse. He had his camp pack strapped to the cantle of his saddle, and he made a pot of tea.

Perhaps a dozen others straggled in as the night wore on. Jiaan didn’t speak to them, even when one offered to try to set his collarbone, but he listened as they talked to one another.

The archers, circling around the Hrum’s flanks, had met with massed arrow fire from the Hrum lines, fire thicker than they’d encountered at the front. It killed enough of them to drive them back, and then arrows started raining down from the hills behind them as well. But they’d still held position, firing into the distant army…until they saw what happened to the charge.

Most of the survivors were archers. Men Jiaan knew. Peasant-born men, who had fled, just as he had. The deghans were right, it seemed; peasants weren’t suited for combat. Jiaan saw his own guilt in their eyes and looked away.

It was very late when Fasal staggered into the camp. One side of his armor was torn open—by one of the Hrum’s big lances, Jiaan guessed. It would have lifted him off his horse like a spitted cock. The blood on his ribs was dark and dry. A bruise on his temple, the exact shape and size of a Hrum boot heel, told how he had finished the battle. The line had probably passed over him, just as it had over Jiaan.

The Hrum had been ready for them.

Those lances weren’t thrown together in some last-minute plan, not in these grasslands. They had been made weeks, probably months, ago and brought here for the sole purpose of breaking the Farsalan charge. With the pitiless clarity of exhaustion, Jiaan saw that his father had been wrong. It didn’t matter how strong your arms or how courageous you were, or even how well-organized, if your enemy was smarter.

It wouldn’t have mattered if their swords hadn’t broken. Once those lances destroyed the Farsalan charge, the end had been as inevitable as sunrise.

The sun would rise in just a few marks. Jiaan shivered. Someone would have to do something then. But for now he could sit, with his mind as blank as he could make it, and watch Fasal start to reach for a mug of tea with his right hand, then wince at the pain from his ribs and switch to his left.

Images flashed behind Jiaan’s eyes. The spy, reaching for his pay and changing hands. The peddler, reaching for his mule’s bridle, a piece of firewood, a knife from his pack, and changing hands. Jiaan telling that same peddler, who hardly seemed to be listening, so casual had his questions been, that the commander was concerned about the deghans’ lack of flexibility, that he meant to use the archers…

He moaned and covered his face with his hands. Was it all his fault? The lances, the shattered charge, his father’s—No. Jiaan drew a shaky breath. No, those lances were the result of months of planning. The peddler—the traitor—visited the camp for the first time just a few weeks before the battle. No, the lances weren’t Jiaan’s fault.
But the ambush lying in wait for the archers was.

He had traveled with that peddler for days. How could he have failed to recognize that mannerism when he saw it? His father would have recognized it.

His father had wanted to hold off the Hrum army for a year. He hadn’t held it for a day. Was that why he had drawn that circle in the earth, knowing he would die?

Jiaan hugged himself, weeping again. None of the men seemed to notice. Many had wept this night. Besides, they were listening to Fasal, who had put down his mug.

“…hit them tonight.” His young voice was low and intense. “They’ll be exhausted, and the guards will be careless. Maybe even asleep.”

Was he talking about attacking the Hrum camp? With what? There were hardly more than a dozen men gathered around the fire.

“Those of us on foot will take the guards,” Fasal went on. Despite his obvious exhaustion, his voice held the authority of generations of deghans. The men around the fire looked at one another, but no one spoke. “Those who have horses will go straight for the slave pens. I think they’re in the center of the camp…”

But what if he was wrong?

“…but no matter. Wherever they are, we’ll find them. All our survivors are there. The horses can break down the pens, then the survivors can take the guards’ weapons…”

Unarmed, probably wounded, they’d take weapons from armed men?

“…and they’ll fight their way out. Then we’ll all retreat into the hills and prepare for the next…”

None of the others spoke. Their eyes were on the fire, on their clenched hands. It was guilt that kept them silent, Jiaan realized, even in the face of this insanity. Guilt that they’d run to save their lives, while their comrades died. It was probably the same guilt that led Fasal to come up with this stupid plan. Jiaan felt it himself. It would be easy, right now, to die. Easier than living to face the sunrise. But it wouldn’t be smart.

Jiaan’s father hadn’t been a fool. But for all his intelligence, for all his courage, he had fought by the old rules, the deghans’ rules. And they had killed him. Jiaan was done with deghans’ rules.

“No.” It was the first time he’d spoken since Rakesh found him, and his voice creaked. It wasn’t at all commanding, but Jiaan no longer cared how he sounded. It was what he said that mattered.

“What?” Fasal blinked, astonished at the interruption.

“No. We’re not going to attack the Hrum camp with a handful of exhausted, wounded men, with swords that break. A camp on a hill, in the dark, that we’ve never even scouted.”

“Then what do you propose…peasant?” Fasal rose to his feet, sneering, though Jiaan could see that it cost him.

Jiaan thought about rising too, but he decided not to bother. Every man seated around this fire was a peasant, a fact that seemed to have escaped Fasal’s attention. The rules had changed. Jiaan’s job was to make them rules that would let the Farsalans win.

“We’re going to wait till morning,” said Jiaan. “Then those with horses will scout through the hills, gathering survivors. First we’ll retreat to Sindosh, but only till we’re all together. Then we’ll retreat to a place I know in the mountains, a hidden place, where we’ll gather more men if we can. Then we’re going to figure out some place in this djinn-accursed land that we can hold for one solid year. And we’re going to hold it.”

“
You’re
giving orders?” Fasal’s voice rang with outrage. “Who do you think you are? Sorahb reborn?”

“No, I’m no Sorahb. I don’t have to be. I’m Commander Merahb’s son, and I’m going to finish what he started.”

It wouldn’t be easy. Fasal’s glare, as the men around the fire smiled in relieved acceptance, warned Jiaan what his first battle would probably be. But if Jiaan could do this, it would be enough. Almost enough. Once the Hrum were gone from Farsala, Jiaan would track down the peddler and kill him. That would finish it. That would make him free. But he still wasn’t looking forward to sunrise.

K
AVI WANDERED THROUGH
the Hrum camp unescorted, free to go wherever he willed, now that the Hrum had won.

The soldiers were celebrating, wild with wine and victory. But they weren’t half so wild as deghans would likely have been. Kavi had been paid in full, since the deghans had fought exactly as he’d claimed they would. He’d left the small fortune in his tent without a qualm. Lawful people, these Hrum. They’d make good rulers—despite Garren! And they had no reason to wreak vengeance on Farsala, either.

Kavi had already peered into the surgeons’ tent—so few casualties they’d taken, inflicting so many.

The paregius, the long lances that had once occupied the carts beside the armory, had broken the deghans’ charge like a flawed blade. The remains of the Farsalan army sat in the slave pens now, their high-born bitches and whelps with them. There was no more Farsalan army. No more deghans. Well, that was fine with him.

He didn’t particularly want to see them. It was just that the slave pens were beside the corral where Duckie and the other mules were kept. He certainly didn’t care who had survived or not.

The clerks, with their bright lanterns, were still processing the slaves. The Hrum were great ones for keeping records. Sacking the camp had taken almost as long as the battle—not because there was any fighting, but because there was so much loot. Gold dishes, glass goblets, even the tents were made of silk—how many poor, desperate men had died in the swamps, harvesting the silk that made those tents?

No, Kavi had no regrets. And the Hrum hadn’t raped the women, either—a claim the deghans probably couldn’t have made if their positions had been reversed. The women’s faces were dirty and swollen with weeping. A few were bruised. But their glares were unbroken and full of hate. One glare in particular, which seemed to be directed at him…

He knew that face. But who…? Of course, it was that Soraya she-bitch’s friend; the taller, not so pretty one.

She obviously remembered Kavi. As she took in his freedom, his lack of escort, a grimace that made her downright ugly twisted her expression. She spat at him.

Kavi shrugged and turned away. Let her hate. It wasn’t as if she’d be doing him any harm, not as a slave-servant in some far-off country. That’s what she’d be now.

He reached the mule corral. Not many torches here. He slipped through the bars and called softly, and after a moment Duckie came to him, sniffing his hands for a treat. “Not tonight, lass. But then, I’m not packing you up tonight either, so that’s fair.”

Despite her disappointment, she remained. Kavi combed his fingers through the coarse brush of her mane and stroked her smooth neck.

Soon he’d be free to pack up and get on with his life. A better life for everyone now, with no deghans lying in wait to take an honest man’s goods or his labor.

The deghans might not keep slaves themselves, but they’d treated Kavi’s people nearly as bad. The ones like that she-bitch, hidden in the mountains, didn’t even regard peasants as people—just livestock, a bit brighter than their horses but less valuable.

No regrets,
Kavi told himself firmly. How many of his people had died in the battle today because the deghans had spent less on their servants’ armor than on their chargers’ barding?

Kavi went to the tack box beside the pen, borrowed a brush, and began to groom Duckie, who assumed a look of idiotic bliss.

No, he had no regrets. No need for any. It wasn’t like the deghans deserved better than they were getting. Not like they were his people. They weren’t his people!

Kavi brushed harder, and the mule snorted.
They’re not my people.
They meant less to him than Duckie did. Why should he care that they’d be hauled off as slaves. That was just how…

Just how they treated his people.

He was thinking like a deghan. As though the fact that they weren’t his friends and kinsmen made them less than human. As though the fact that he cared more about Duckie than about them made them less valuable than Duckie in other ways.

And maybe they were right that peasants were different, deep down. For if he wasn’t different, why should thinking like a deghan leave him leaning against Duckie’s neck with tears running down his face and a cold hollow where his heart had been?

He couldn’t do this. The battle, yes. Give the country to the Hrum to govern, gladly. But he couldn’t allow anyone, even deghans, to be dragged off as slaves. The deghans didn’t keep slaves, and if Kavi condoned it, if he allowed it, if he brought it about, then he had become one of them. The worst of them. And it wouldn’t matter if they all died, for their essence, their ruthless indifference, would have survived in him. He had to stop this. He had to save them. But how?

The slave pens were closely guarded. Even if he could free a handful, what about the others? Even if he freed all here tonight, what about the rest? The ones who’d be taken when the deghans’ undefended manors fell to the Hrum?

They’d take all the deghans’ families as slaves. The empire’s policy was to completely rid itself of the old government—though the Hrum army was still bitter about Garren’s refusal to let the Farsalans surrender once it was clear they were beaten. Garren said that if they slaughtered the army, no one else would dare to resist. He was probably right. Death was a more potent threat than slavery. So speed superseded mercy. And profit, too, for strong fighting men made valuable slaves. But the Hrum army would probably make up that lost profit soon, when the few surviving deghans and their families surrendered.

The only way to save the slaves, all the slaves, is to keep the Hrum from conquering the country.

Kavi started to laugh, but Duckie’s warm neck stifled the sound. All the risks he’d taken to give Farsala to the Hrum, and now he was thinking of trying to throw them out? But Patrius had told him that if the Hrum failed in their conquest within their time limit, one of the ways they convinced their erstwhile enemies to become allies was to return all they’d taken in the campaign. All their looted goods. And especially all the people.

But how? There was no Farsalan army left, and even if there were, the thought of him leading an army made him snort. Peasants didn’t fight, and Kavi was a peasant through and through. But Patrius had said that conquest involved more than fighting—so there must be other ways to resist. He’d find those ways. Make them, if he had to. Peasant ways.

Kavi finished grooming Duckie, checked her hooves, and made his way back to his own tent. He could face that bag of coins now, he thought. Maybe even count it. And then he would find a way to spin Time’s Wheel till it dumped the Hrum on their heads.

He had to. If he failed, if he sent these people into slavery and left them there, he would never possess his own soul, intact, again.