A Secret Atlas (64 page)

She nodded slowly. “Oh, be under no misapprehension, my lord. I do respect you and

even admire you, but I still hate you. I will bear our children without ever coming to love

you. But I will love them, and they shall be the outlet for my love. The fact is, however, that I hate you less than I hate those who put me in this position. They discounted and

discarded me. I shall live to see them regret their folly. In this, I do believe, we are united.”

He allowed himself a chuckle. “And how does this play into the gift you gave me? The

promise that you would allow me to be Emperor?”

“These things are one and the same.” She shivered and pressed herself back against him.

“Our children should be more than either of us, and deserve more than either of us have

had. You will become Emperor, and they shall have an empire. It will be best for them and

for the world.”

Pyrust kissed the back of her head. “I am pleased my children have so intelligent a

mother.” He reached down and swatted her bottom playfully. “Go now, wife of mine, and

warm our bed. I shall join you momentarily.”

“Yes, my husband. Then we will make our bed hot indeed.”

Jasai swept from the chamber leaving his gloves, one whole, one deformed, lying flaccid

on the ground. Pyrust kicked them into the shadows, then stepped forward to warm his

hands.

It did not surprise him when the Mother of Shadows emerged from the darkness, bearing

his gloves in a clawed hand. “Something bothers you, my Prince?”

Pyrust stared into the flames, knowing he would barely see her even if his night vision was

unaffected. “Less than a month and a half and she is already pregnant?”

“You saw she was a virgin when you took her on your wedding night.”

“Blood appears in eggs and appears on sheets by all manner of means.” He frowned

heavily. “Was she pregnant already?”

“Interrogations have revealed no rumors of her having a lover.” Delasonsa’s shoulders

rose and fell in a shrug. “On the trip here she bled and has not bled again. It is highly

probable she is pregnant and that you alone have lain with her.”

“So, if she is pregnant, the child is mine?”

“Yes.”

“Could learning she is pregnant be what has triggered this change in her?”

The Mother of Shadows chuckled. “It was not so much a change as an acknowledgment

of reality. She seeks to make things better for her children. She is young, yes, but not

frivolous. Maternity seldom changes a woman in that way; it merely awakens her to her

true nature.”

Pyrust nodded. “It is an interesting future she paints.”

“Yes, my lord, but one yet unrealized.” Delasonsa’s voice came softly from within her

hood. “She might miscarry, or the child could fail to thrive. Though no assassin will reach

her, there will be attempts, and the least upset could trigger a disaster.”

“You are right, of course.” He turned to face her, taking his gloves in his half hand.

“Rumors of her pregnancy must be quashed—and the rumor-mongers slain. Cyron would

not kill her, but the Helosundian Council of Ministers would. Remind my ministers that their

welfare depends on that of my wife, of whom I am inordinately fond. That will have them

falling all over themselves to make her happy.”

“You see clearly, my lord.”

Pyrust sighed, tucking his gloves through his belt. “My dead brother’s bastard will become

a liability once my child is born.”

She nodded solemnly. “I shall deal with Thyral.”

“Don’t kill him.”

“No?”

“Delasonsa, you may think me a fool, but I am not a heartless one. His father died

because he dared listen to Naleni agents and plotted against me. He had to be slain, as

did his elder siblings. The boy was but an infant and now is six years old. He does not

know who he is, so now is the time to train him. Tell him that I have selected him for a very

special duty. He shall be your apprentice, then my son’s bodyguard. He shall come to be

the guardian of the Emperor.”

The Mother of Shadows bowed low, held it, and came back up slowly. “You honor me by

entrusting me with your blood to train.”

“I dare do it, Delasonsa, only because I know you shall stand between ambition and my

blood.” Pyrust smiled slowly. “This future will come to pass. We both will have much work

to guarantee it, but it shall come to pass. The gods will it, and so do I.”

6th day, Month of the Wolf, Year of the Rat

9th Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court

163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty

737th year since the Cataclysm

Nemehyan, Caxyan

The trumpet blast rolled over the smoky lowlands, then from the jungle to the northwest

came a return call. Though the haze and distance made them difficult to see, five hundred

Naleni warriors wearing bright scarlet uniforms rode from the jungle on horseback. Large

golden dragons coiled on their chests and red pennants snapped beneath the heads of

their light lances. Each man bore a round shield, similarly emblazoned with a dragon, and

a colored cloth strip hung from the spikes atop his helmet—a different color for each of the

five companies.

Nauana gasped, and a murmur arose among the assembled Amentzutl. In no

conversation with them had Jorim found any evidence that they knew what horses were.

The pack animals they used—
cunya
and their larger cousins
ayana
—struck the Naleni scholars as being more camel-like. While the
ayana
could sometimes be ridden, the

Amentzutl had no stirrups and no martial tradition of fighting while mounted.

As the companies came forward they parted, with two to the left and three to the right,

forming a space for a dozen war chariots. Drawn by four horses each, the chariots had a

driver in the center and two archers standing on small risers that allowed them to shoot

past the driver and horses. A trio of wickedly curved blades four feet in length protruded

from the axle hubs and flashed brightly in the sunlight as they turned.

Nauana looked at Jorim, her eyes wide with wonder. “My Lord Tetcomchoa, you have

produced a miracle. Strange beasts and stranger things. You have given us victory.”

Jorim shook his head. “Just a chance. How good a one, Nauana, we’ll see.”

She stared back at the battlefield as the murmuring grew among her people. Not only did

they not know horses but they had no practical knowledge of the wheel. Given that they

lived in a mountainous land, where packing goods on beast back was more practical than

building roads for wagons, relegating the wheel to their calendar and children’s toys made

an odd sort of sense.
Horses and chariots are as world-altering to them as discovering this
continent was to us.

The cavalry moved into a trot, quickly coming across cultivated fields. The way the smoke

had spread over the fields, the cavalry faded in and out of view. Jorim was pretty certain

that neither the Amentzutlian warriors nor the Mozoyan could see the Naleni troops. They

could hear them, however. Their hoofbeats echoed like thunder.

Arrows continued to rain down, killing hundreds of the grey legion, and the Amentzutl held

their line against the fearsome press of the enemy. A portion of the Mozoyan formation

furthest from the escarpment broke north and west. At first Jorim feared they were going

to form up to face the cavalry, but instead they just plunged toward the Amentzutlian line.

They headed for a spot where the defenders had thinned and grey bodies filled the trench.

Whether by design or accident, they rushed at the line’s most vulnerable point, and in

sufficient numbers to overwhelm the warriors set to oppose them.

The grey tendril charged out, but it never reached its target. The Naleni lancers burst from

the smoke and slammed into the Mozoyan flank. Swift and strong, the horses crashed into

unarmored bodies, snapping limbs and knocking Mozoyan flying. Lancers stabbed steel

broadheads through slender bodies, then cast aside weapons weighed down by a half

dozen impaled devil frogs. Swords filled empty hands, sweeping around in great arcs that

scattered limbs and harvested heads. Shields batted leaping Mozoyan from the air, and

steel-shod hooves scattered them.

Mozoyan surged into the gaps between Lancer companies only to face a new horror. The

war chariots raced down upon them. The archers shot as swiftly as they could, and every

arrow found a mark. In some cases, arrows ripped through one body to skewer another.

But the Mozoyan that fell to the arrows were more fortunate than the survivors, because

the wheel blades proved even more terrible. They scythed legs and chopped up bodies

that had already fallen. Wheels, hooves, and Mozoyan feet churned the ground into

bloody mud that spattered everywhere, coating the flanks of wheeling chariots and

charging horses.

Disoriented, with no leadership, the Mozoyan on the flank panicked and fled screaming

back to the main body. The alarm spread to the whole of the force. It surged away from

the cavalry, like a school of fish turning from a predator, then squirted back north. The rear

ranks leaped away as swiftly as they could. They disappeared into the smoke, and

horsemen plunged in after them.

The grey ranks closest to the trenches turned and tried to flee, but had no room to

maneuver. Darts, spears, and arrows harvested more of them. The Amentzutl warriors

came up and over the breastworks and attacked the Mozoyan. Tzihua led a small knot of

warriors over the filled trench and into the milling mass of the enemy. Their war clubs rose

and fell, blood spraying in red arcs, carving a solid wedge from the Mozoyan troops.

The center of the Mozoyan formation remained in chaos. Some drifted northeast and the

cavalry swept through them, slaughtering them in the hundreds. The war chariots did what

they could, but eventually had to be withdrawn. The bloody mud became so thick it

threatened to trap the wheels, and Mozoyan bodies offered little traction. Still the archers

picked out individual targets, and toward the end of things challenged each other to more

and more difficult shots.

The Amentzutl began to chant. Jorim could make no sense of what they were saying, as

the dialects all blended, but the warriors seemed to draw strength from the words. Other

warriors as big as Tzihua led their companies into the fray. The battle turned to slaughter,

and the Amentzutl engaged in it with zeal Jorim had never seen before and hoped he

would never see again.

Faster than Jorim thought possible, but not nearly soon enough, the battle ended. The

ground nearest the escarpment lay covered two or three feet deep with grey bodies. Some

Naleni and Amentzutl warriors had fallen, and more were wounded, some very seriously.

But their casualties were insignificant compared to the enemy’s losses, which were

beyond numbering.

He shook his head. “I wonder how many of them there were.”

Nauana looked at him. “You must surely know, my Lord.”

“I do not. I wish we could have a head count.”

“As Lord Tetcomchoa desires.”

Nauana moved to the edge of the pyramid, caressed her throat with her hand, then spoke

in a voice that easily filled the valley. Jorim could not catch all of the words, for she spoke in the most common of the caste dialects. But those below understood and the chanting

stopped. What seemed to be the whole of the populace began to move down the

causeway to the battlefield.

As they descended, the Amentzutl warriors again withdrew behind the breastworks and

formed up in their ranks. They lay their dead and wounded before them, then raised their

faces and voices toward the rest of the people. They uttered a ritual chant in one voice,

repeating over and over again, “Our time is finished, yours has just begun.”

The people reached the battlefield and began to spread out in groups. The laborers and

slaves began to collect bodies and shift them around, not shrinking from such a grisly

duty. Many paused to paint their faces or slick their hair with the blood of the enemy. That

struck Jorim as odd, not only because he found it barbaric, but because their work soon

had them covered in gore regardless.

They moved the bodies to areas where members of the artisan and merchant classes

began to butcher them. With incredible efficiency, they stripped the skin away and piled it

in one place. Others cut flesh from bone. Bones were cracked open, but were devoid of

marrow, so ended up being hauled to vast piles. The viscera likewise were sorted and

piled, sloshing into trenches from which the bodies and stakes had been cleared.

Most curious of all, however, was the duty performed by the politicians. At the base of the

escarpment, in a huge area that slaves cleared as quickly as possible, they began to pile

the heads. In no time a great pyramid of skulls appeared, and he had no doubt that a

careful accounting was being made of the construction materials.

He would have his head count.

Weapons got sorted out as well. The Amentzutl recovered their own weapons, then

retreated to clean and repair them. The rudimentary weapons the Mozoyan had borne

were tossed into a pile, but the Amentzutl refused to touch the arrows and lances of

Naleni origin. It took Jorim a moment to figure it out, but then he realized only warriors