Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (47 page)

"Captain?"

"The riders," Duarte said softly, treating the rise of the second syllable of his rank as the command it was, "are Callestan."

"One of his Tors?"

Duarte's smile was brief and sharp. "No. They're Callestan. And they're his personal men. Tyran," he added.

Valedan frowned.

"They fly the sun rising, with eight distinct rays. Only the Tyr'agnate's clan would dare to fly that flag, and at that, only those directly responsible to him, or directly responsible for him."

"The fact that they fly it now is significant?"

He nodded. "Ramiro di'Callesta does not choose to wear the sun rising, or to fly it, when he ventures North. Nor does he do so often when he travels in the South. In the North, he does not wish to remind those he deals with of his status as foreign dignitary, and in the South—in the South he expects to be known on sight by anyone he cares to deal with."

"I… see. And the men who are approaching?"

"At a guess? They carry word; they wish immediate obedience from those they happen to encounter on the road, if they followed the road at all. There is not a Tor that would dare to disgrace his clan by ignoring that flag without near certainty that its use was fraudulent."

"And fraudulent use of such a flag occurs often?"

"Not often," Auralis said. Valedan did not like the look of the smile that transformed his expression. But it was brief.

"I'm not a horseman," The Captain of the Ospreys said quietly, as he signaled his own forward in a small circle around the man they had chosen to protect. "But I'd guess that they've ridden a horse or two into the ground to carry whatever message it is they're delivering."

A cry of dismay, lifted by several voices, echoed back across the road.

Valedan held the reins and pressed his horse forward with a quick, strong tightening of knees; the horse responded instantly.

"Valedan!"

The kai Leonne cursed; the road banked steeply down with very little warning. He had thought the mountains beautiful at a distance; they were both serene and majestic as they broke—or made—the line of the sky conform to their white caps, their stone faces, their treed breadth.

But the foothills through which the path to Callesta ran were not nearly as lovely at a distance as the mountains had been, and the word itself—foothill—failed to describe the height of the rise and the depth of the fall of the lands to either side.

His horse took the sudden shift in height in perfect stride, slowing to descend.

"A good horse," Ser Anton said. "But I think it best to dismount, kai Leonne. There are stones in the middle of the path that are difficult to navigate."

There was no shame in taking either advice or lead from a man of Ser Anton's stature; Valedan was grateful. They made their way down in silence; the Tyr's men were still as trees on a windless, hot day.

"Ser Baredan?" Valedan said, as the General came to stand behind him in the oppressive silence.

"The eight men you see on the road before us are Tyran from the heart of Callesta, the capital of Averda. But what—" He stopped speaking as one of the eight returned to a clearly exhausted horse and unstrapped something from the side of its saddle.

It was a sword.

"Baredan?"

. The General closed his eyes and looked away. "I do not know what occurred, but I believe I recognize the sheath and the sword it contains."

Valedan waited.

But Baredan merely dismounted, and urged his horse forward, where he might meet the Tyr'agnate on even ground. Valedan followed his lead, watching carefully, aware that the eyes of the Callestan Tyran were narrowed and reddened. The General left his horse by the roadside near the grass that was abundant in the foothills at this time of year; he walked quietly, his shoulders slightly bowed, toward Ramiro kai di'Callesta, the Tyr'agnate of Averda. The Tyr'agnate was completely silent; he failed to notice the General when the General at last reached his destination. Nor did the General seem surprised or offended.

The Callestan Tyran had gathered around the man who carried the sword from horse to Tyr. Their hands found the hilts of their own swords; their heads, as if pushed by the Lord's hand toward the ground, hung, casting shadows that were at odds with the crisp and perfect discipline the Tyran were famed for.

Ramiro di'Callesta offered them nothing at all. He simply waited for the sword to reach him, and when it did, he stared at it, his hands behind his back.

"When?" he said at last.

"Two days ago."

"Was he alone?"

"No. He was with four of the Tyran. They were engaged in drills within the city itself."

"And the four?"

"There were no survivors."

General Baredan di'Navarre bowed deeply.

"Your son's sword," he said quietly. But quiet or no, the words carried. Valedan heard them clearly and each syllable cut.

"My son's sword," the Tyr replied. He reached out, suddenly, and pulled it free of its sheath. It was unblooded; the flat caught sunlight and made of it silent lightning across the expression on Ramiro di'Callesta's face.

"Who?"

"We cannot say for certain," the oldest of the Tyran replied. But his eyes were dark and his jaw stiff. "But we found this, and this, when we were called." He held out a hand.

The Tyran gave him two flimsy swatches of cloth.

The fabric itself was red, brown, and orange—although how much of that was due to blood and how much dyes, Valedan could not say at this distance. The distinction was important, for across both of these ragged pieces, in miniature, flashed the golden markings that graced the flag of the Callestan Tyr: the sun rising, and shedding, as it did, eight distinct rays.

Ramiro took the cloth in a hand; the hand became a fist. "
Lamberto
."

24th of Misteral, 427 AA

Terrean of Averda, Callesta

They rode in silence through the fields at the outskirts of
Callesta
, the only city in any of the five Terreans named after the family that ruled. Valedan kai di'Leonne would remember two things about the ancestral city of the Callestan Tyrs. The first: that it was green. For as far as the eye could see, life had taken the earth and wrested out of it shoots of green, gold, and white. Delicate blue flowers became obvious as the horses approached, and in the shade of the trees that seemed to crowd together in huddles, mushrooms, moss and other growths that were less amenable to open sun.

It was not that Valedan was not used to a profusion of life; he was. But in his childhood memories, this would have been an obscene display of a land's wealth. In the streets of the Tor Leonne, dust and heat were as common as foliage was here.

The Tyran unfurled the Tyr'agar's banner three days from the capital, although they journeyed in the haste of necessity and grim silence. From a distance, the serafs who toiled in the Averdan fields made their way to the roadsides wherever that banner was visible. The only place in which greenery was not evident was in the strips of empty soil that lay between trees; harvest had come and gone, and if this was the planting season—and Valedan did not understand farming well enough to know—it had not yet borne fruit. He knew enough of farming to understand that the seasons dictated the course of the wars fought between Averda and Mancorvo.

And he knew enough of people to know that the serafs who came to plant themselves against the dust and wildness of the roadside both feared their Tyr—which was wise— and admired him. They held themselves in the subservient posture, but their backs were straight, and their arms curved in a way that spoke not of abject fear but of respect. They paid him his due.

He rode on.

But Valedan lingered a moment to watch them. They rose only when the banners had passed them by; when the shadows of the riders could no longer be seen against the road.

"What do you watch?"

Three men waited for him in the road; three men and one boy. It was the oldest man who spoke.

Valedan lifted a hand, asking by gesture alone for silence. Words receded, like wave or tide, as the serafs reached for the wide, stiff hats they had removed before they knelt to the passing shadows of the Tyr'agnate of Averda.

Their hands and arms were stiff, their faces stiffer. The oldest of them—skin cracked and folded by sun, rippled like sand dune by wind—held his hat a moment across his chest, the flat weave of dry bamboo against his open palms. His movements were not graceful; they were not even certain and sure.

But there was about the fold of elbow and the steady bend of neck a dignity that Valedan had rarely seen. The younger men, who were broader of shoulder and straighter of back, were more supple. They turned to the field in silence.

But the children were like small children anywhere. Held down by the threats—or arms—of their parents, they were freed from gravity by the passing of the Tyr; they ran into tall grass and wild growth and ran out again, weaving across the empty stretch of road to disappear and reappear beneath the bower of standing trees. They were laughing in the shadows and beneath the face of the open sky, too young to be of value in the fields. Valedan could not remember the last time he had laughed so carelessly beneath the Lord's gaze.

The older women came to herd them away; the older men watched, faces impassive.

Or not impassive. Some of them were crying. Not weeping; that would have been beneath them. But water caught the light as they turned beneath the sun, and the cracks and suppurations of aged skin tunneled that wet glimmer.

Valedan watched until they had retreated from the road, bearing witness as they had done.

"What do I watch?" he said, as he nudged his horse forward.

Ser Anton did not acknowledge the question he had asked; he merely waited. Andaro di'Corsarro looked over his shoulder and back, but he, too, was silent. The third man, Duarte AKalakar did not look back; he looked forward to the dust on the empty road.

Aidan, sitting astride Ser Anton's horse, asked, "What were you looking for?"

"I don't know. When I was a child in my father's harem, his serafs were nothing like village serafs. They produced comfort for my father and his retinue. They served my father's court. But I think there were very, very few among them who would have wept at the passage of the Tyr'agar."

"It is not for the Tyr that they weep," Andaro said quietly.

"Oh, but it is." Ser Anton seldom corrected Andaro outside of the drill circle. The younger man's silence was stiff and sharp. "The dead are dead; they know no pain. It is the living who feel the passage."

"His son?"

"Yes. His kai," Ser Anton added softly. "If indeed Mareo di'Lamberto is responsible for the death, we will never see peace between the Terreans."

"Unfortunate." Duarte's observation was dispassionate. Distant. "The kai Lamberto died twelve years ago, yes?"

"Yes. He was… young. Headstrong."

"We killed him."

Ser Anton bowed his head. "Yes."

Duarte nodded. "Is this vengeance?"

"Perhaps," Ser Anton conceded. "Or perhaps it was the only way that Mareo di'Lamberto could release his son to the Winds and come with naked blade to the blocks at which we might fashion oaths.

"He is no fool; he is not flexible, but he is no fool. He must know that the Terrean of Mancorvo will not stand for long once the Terrean of Averda is taken."

Valedan kai di'Leonne looked at the empty road behind him, and then he looked ahead. "I think the lands will not be so easily taken," he said softly, "if they care enough for the Tyr'agnate that they offer what he will not shed for his own."

"Ramiro di'Callesta has long been considered the most dangerous of the Tyr'agnati. You have witnessed the reason for it today, and you understand its significance."

He was to witness it again and again as they approached
Callesta
. Fewer children were brought to the roadside as the roadside grew crowded, and intermingled among the farming serafs were the clansmen whose lives were inextricably linked with servitude. Although they were not required to perform full obeisance—were, by rank, allowed the privilege of standing while the Tyr rode by—some of them looked so uncomfortable being surrounded by those whose simple posture brought them in touch with the ground, Valedan almost smiled.

But they wore white bands across their foreheads, and those bands, some edged in gold and some in blue, were the colors of mourning outside of the court.
They value family. They value blood. They value loyalty. Remember these things, Valedan. None of The Ten would exist for more than a generation within the Dominion
.

At the echo of her voice, Valedan looked up, but the palanquin that carried the Serra Alina di'Lamberto was nowhere to be seen.

And that was wise. He had detailed the Ospreys—if they could still be called that—to guard her, but it had proved unnecessary. The crest that would have marked her as Lamberto was gone the moment she heard about the death of the kai Callesta. So, too, was all mention of her name. She was a woman; she was guarded. It was enough.

Unfortunately, the Ospreys—he really did have to force Duarte to find a different name for them—were not that simple. Alexis, Fiara, the others—they attracted attention immediately. It was not attention he wished to attract, but he had little choice. Women in the South did not join the armies, such as they were; they did not go to war. They did not become guards.

There was no better way to mark themselves as foreigners. And that, of course, meant Imperial soldiers. The five kingdoms and the free towns meant nothing to the Southerners; only the Empire existed in the space north of the boundaries of Annagar.

It had been delicately suggested—and briefly—that the women be separated from the men. In the Ospreys, there were only a handful after all. But the delicate suggestion was discarded as impractical, regardless of the difficulty their obvious origin would otherwise cause. Kiriel di'Ashaf was arguably the finest of their number, and unarguably the best at dealing with the demonic, and in the end neither Valedan nor Baredan di'Navarre wished to have her hampered by the guise of palanquin and pretty servitude.