A Conspiracy of Kings (27 page)

It was a subtle and beautiful plan. If I had been even
moderately cooperative, they needn’t even have forced a
regent on me. I wouldn’t have lived a year after my heir was
born. A sudden illness or a hunting accident, and Hanaktos would
have had the long regency he dreamed of and a grandchild to inherit
the throne. The Mede would have had a dependable ally, because he
would have known the truth and could have threatened Hanaktos with
it at will. Comeneus had also escaped an early death, I thought,
and his brother was going to be disappointed.

“Mother says that now that you have killed my father, you
will have to marry me after all. Will you?”

“Gods, no, Berrone.”

“Oh.”

I sighed. “It will be all right, Berrone. I promise.
I’ll make sure you have pretty dresses, and we’ll get
Sylvie back.”

“No,” said Berrone firmly.

I was puzzled. “No?”

“That’s what men say to girls they don’t want
to marry, and I know because Sylvie told me—” She was
getting upset again.

“Men will tell you that they’ll find Sylvie?”
I asked quickly, and she was distracted.

“Noo,” she said slowly. “Sylvie said
they’ll promise me pretty dresses.”

“Well, I won’t promise you pretty dresses. But I
will get you Sylvie back. Tell me again, who said you were going to
be queen?”

“My mother, she—” I stopped her before she
repeated the entire scene again.

“That’s all I needed to know, Berrone. Thank
you.”

I handed Berrone out the door at the same time that I waved to
Hanaktos’s widow.

“A word, Lady Hanaktia.”

I summoned my victims to the largest room and had them wait for
me. One by one, I called them away, but these weren’t the
strained and circuitous interviews I’d sat through before. As
each baron entered the room, he saw Basrus sitting to one side of
me and Hanaktia on the other, as terrifying as any sphinx from a
fireside story. By the time I received word that Akretenesh wanted
to see me, I was well on my way to knowing what to do with my
barons, and they were well on their way toward full
cooperation.

All in all, it was not a profitable discussion with the Mede
ambassador. He refused to tell me anything that I didn’t
already know about his plans. I suggested that he might like to be
sent down to the port by litter to see his own doctors, because I
wanted him out of the way. He declined. He told me he would prefer
to wait until his army came to him.

“It might not,” I said.

“We’ll see, won’t we?” he answered.

“In the morning we will run for Oneia,” I said to my
private council, hastily selected.

They had wanted me—my father most strenuously—to
take what horse we had and to try to cross through Hanaktos’s
army on the capital road. If they could get me safely away, either
by convincing Hanaktos’s cousin, who commanded the men, to
let me pass, or by fighting our way through, I could ride for the
city of Sounis to try to hold it against the Medes. Unfortunately,
I would leave most of my barons behind to change sides yet again.
Those who didn’t change sides would bear the brunt of the
Medes’ revenge, as would the Attolians and the Eddisians I
would be abandoning. I refused.

I waited for someone to say the obvious. We didn’t have
enough men to stand against ten thousand Medes. We’d be cut
to pieces when we reached the dead end that was Oneia. No one said
a word.

“The magus, with his remaining men, will slow the Medes.
They won’t reach Elisa until noontime, and we will have time
to arrange the men on the Oneia Road. Then, when we reach Oneia and
turn to fight on the open ground, most of the Medes will still be
stuck on the roadway. If we fight well, they will still be there
when our armies make it across the hills behind Elisa and come down
on them from the rear.”

It was a plan that might see most of them dead by nightfall of
the next day, and they nodded agreeably and went to inform their
men. They didn’t ask, and I couldn’t say, why I thought
we should make our stand at Oneia. I had made my decision, and they
had made theirs.

It was well into the night before I was finished with plans and
staggered up to my rooms to find Nomenus waiting for me.

He was sitting on a stool not far from the fireplace. His hands
were clasped together on one knee, and he was miles away in his
thoughts, not even realizing at first that I had arrived. When he
saw me in the doorway, he stood. He looked me in the face briefly
before lowering his eyes.

“Your Majesty,” he said softly.

“I thought you would be long gone,” I said.

He shook his head.

“Nowhere to go?” I asked. “There are ten
thousand Mede soldiers in Tas-Elisa to welcome you.”

He nodded. “I know.”

“Brimedius won’t take you in?”

“I am not his man,” Nomenus replied. I knew whose
man he was.

“I killed Hanaktos,” I said.

“Yes.”

I walked closer to him. He was less calm than he appeared.
“You’re shaking.”

He shrugged again, the barest shift of a shoulder. “I
would kill me if I were you,” he said.

I didn’t know what else to do with him. I certainly
wasn’t going to let him walk away free and clear after
he’d served me with lies and deceit.

“Your Majesty, they have cells here,” he said,
“in the outbuildings. I might yet serve you if you
didn’t—if I wasn’t—” Finally he said
flatly, “Things might not go as you hope.”

“If Akretenesh wins?” I had to laugh. “If I am
installed as his puppet, you are saying that I could call you back
to lie to me?” I made no effort to hide my amazement.

“I could serve you. As well as—”

“As well as they’d let you?”

He gave up a shaky sigh and dropped to his knees. He bowed his
head, and then he just waited.

I’d had an entire day of whining, self-serving patronoi
denying their every transgression and vomiting up excuse after
excuse. This was a man who at least didn’t try to pretend to
stainless virtue. It was probably calculated, and if so, it was
well done. He knew me better, after all, than the barons did and
knew what was most likely to sway me. I found I had no desire to
see him die.

I called in the guards from beside my door and sent him off with
them to be locked up somewhere.

“See that he’s fed,” I called after them,
“and taken out occasionally for air.” At my words
Nomenus struggled briefly in their arms. As he looked back at me
over his shoulder, I saw the fear in his face. He didn’t say
anything, though, just stared at me as they led him away.

If Akretenesh did defeat me, and if he didn’t kill me
outright, I would have Ion Nomenus to attend me in my puppet show.
At least I’d know he was a liar; I wouldn’t have to
wonder.

In the dark hours of the morning, I exercised the privilege of a
king: I slept. I never even heard the noise as the Eddisians and
the Attolians I had asked the magus to send me arrived. I had more
than five hundred men among the barons and their retinues.
I’d been correct about the weapons that had been concealed.
Every baron and his men were armed, but they weren’t an army,
and altogether we were fewer than two thousand against ten.

When the sky was growing light, my father knocked on my door. I
washed my face and dressed, missing Nomenus already, and then went
down the stairs to find something to eat before the day began.

By the time the sun was up, we were far down the narrow road to
Oneia. The first spot I had in mind to stand and fight was more
than two-thirds of the way to the sea. The road followed a
watercourse, and the hills for most of the way were too steep to
climb without care and attention, but the narrow valley began to
open out as it neared the coast. The hillsides beside the road were
both less high and less steep. I knew, as I hoped that the Medes
did not, that just behind the rise of those hills there was a level
spot. Then, out of sight from the road below, the hillside rose
much higher. I put my Attolians just behind the top of the lower
hill and sent my barons and the Eddisians to find cover on the
upper slope.

When the Medes came, their weapons glinting in the sun that had
burned off the sea mist, the Attolians brought their crossbows to
bear, firing down with accuracy too deadly to ignore.

The army was traveling only ten abreast and cheek by jowl on the
narrow roadbed. At a shouted command, a block moved forward and
reordered itself as it came, shaping into a phalanx of twenty by
twenty and moving up the hill at top speed. The Attolians’
fire slowed them not at all.

The Attolians on the hill formed into their own blocks and
charged down. That did slow the first of the Medes, but as more
phalanxes came up, they pressed forward. I was on the upper hill,
screened by takima bushes, but I could see very well. The noise was
overwhelming. I didn’t remember noise like this at the battle
near Brimedius. The hammering sounds of weapons ran together and
were so loud that very soon, instead of hearing it, I felt I could
hear nothing at all.

The Attolians couldn’t hold the hillside. Step by step
they were forced back. Suddenly, they broke ranks and retreated.
The Medes followed, lured out of their phalanxes, their mouths open
in inaudible shouting.

They topped the hill, and their expressions changed. Too late
they looked for their side men, but their side men were out of
reach. On my command, the Eddisians charged from above. Their
momentum carried them through the disordered enemy and across the
brow of the lower hill. The weakened Mede phalanxes disintegrated,
like trees losing leaves in a high wind. The Eddisians continued on
down the hill toward the army below, still in its tight marching
formation.

All the ten thousand men of the Mede fighting force were trapped
behind their own front line. Those in the frontline troops, with
the enemy bearing down on them, recoiled. The front line pushed
back into its own pikemen, who couldn’t stop the men behind
them, who were pushing forward.

I should be humble, but I’m not. I was delighted.
Everything was working just as I’d hoped. I stood on the
hillside and cheered. The men around me shouted with me. We watched
the confusion traveling back up the line of the Mede army like the
contractions of an earthworm, while the Eddisians continued to hack
at the front line. Then we scrambled and slid down the hill to the
road and hurried on toward Oneia.

We could have stayed and replaced the Eddisians in the battle
line as they fought to the last, but we would have been putting
ourselves in the same position as the Medes: most of our men in
back with just a few at the head of the line to fight. With both
armies limited by the narrow roadway, the Medes would soon
prevail.

Instead we hurried away. Once the road was clear, the Eddisians
would turn and follow us at a run. The curves of the road were all
that would protect them from the Mede fire until they reached the
open ground around Oneia, where we would be waiting to give them
cover. We would have the advantage of space to spread out and
fight. The Medes would still be in the roadway, and as they issued
from it a few at a time, we would take them. Sooner or later the
great pressure of men would overwhelm us. That would be the time
for each man to kill as many as he could before he died.

I ran, with my father just behind me. I slowed, but he
didn’t move up, and I realized he was shielding me. My armor
plate would stop an arrow or a bullet at that range, but not a
crossbow quarrel. There weren’t any crossbow quarrels,
however, or bullets, and all it did was slow me down. I was
staggering by the time I heard the shouting ahead of us, and the
clanging of metal against metal. My father suddenly passed me and
then slowed and looked backward, clearly undecided which enemy to
face.

Gasping, I tugged on his shoulder and tried to catch enough
breath to reassure him. The men around us slowed, but I waved them
forward and staggered on. It wasn’t shouting, it was
cheering, I was almost certain. We came around the last curve in
the road, and we saw them: rank after rank of men in the blue and
gold of Attolia waiting for us, banging their weapons and
yelling.

“Attolis,” I gasped to my father. “He sent
more men.”

E
ARLIER in the day, the magus had slowed the Medes on
the coast road as they tried to fight their way from the port to
Elisa, so that nearly a third of their column was still in the
Elisa Valley and not yet on the road down to Oneia when the armies
of my loyalist barons came over the hills from the hinterlands. The
loyalists had been traveling all night by torchlight and went
directly to battle without a rest.

Down in Oneia, the head of the Mede army was crushed with the
help of the fresh Attolian troops. The Attolians had arrived only
the day before and during the previous night, transferring in small
boatloads to the tiny beach below Oneia. If the weather had not
been calm, they couldn’t have done it and would have been
sitting offshore as we died.

As it happened, the Medes were forced by the pressure of men
coming down behind them along the roadway and out into the open to
face a coordinated attack where their greater numbers never
benefited them. It was madness for their general to commit all his
forces on such a road, and I can only think that he fatally
underestimated me. Perhaps he, too, had been listening to the Mede
ambassador in Attolia.

When the Medes finally organized their retreat, we followed them
up toward Elisa. I’d sent men around to reach our ambush site
from behind to cover the hillside with their fire, so that the
Medes could not treat us as we had treated them.

I learned afterward that in the Elisa Valley the Medes had tried
to break away and drive for the capital road, only to find that
pass blocked by Hanaktos’s army. Hanaktia is a woman of iron
and had taken me at my word when I said that there would be a
remedy for all transgressions. She had left the safety of Elisa and
ridden herself to her late husband’s soldiers to rally them
to fight against the Medes.