Black Spice (Book 3) (16 page)

The
ragged second line of Bantuans didn’t follow the first.  They split into two
groups and circled, closing the ring on Soth Garo and his men.

There
were four or five dog warriors for every death guard now.  The Hariji
musketeers died quickly as they were swarmed from all sides.  The remaining
handful of Baskillians tried to break out of the circle, led by Soth Garo, who
killed any man within the reach of his sword.  The Bantuans retreated before
him, but maintained the circle and rushed the death guards from behind, forcing
them to turn and make a stand.  They were overwhelmed but not easily, and they
died hard, taking several dog warriors with them.

Then
Aiyan was there, right behind Soth Garo.  Instead of slashing at him, he simply
held the flaming blade against his demon skin.  Soth Garo stiffened, feeling
the power of the flame, and whirled on Aiyan with all his fury.

He
attacked in blur of steel, wielding his greatsword one-handed as if it weighed
nothing, using it with the finesse of a fencing sabre.  Aiyan was ready for
this.  He slid to the side, parried and leapt away, making no attempt at a
counter-blow.  He kept up his defense, playing for time, waiting.  But Soth
Garo attacked relentlessly, pressing him back with a series of lightning fast
cuts and slashes.

Dozens
of Bantuans broke through the circle from different directions.  They didn’t
carry shields or spears.  They were tough old herdsmen, each backed by a couple
of strong lads.  They whirled bolas and lassos over their heads.

“Now!”
Aiyan called to them.  Even as he did, Soth Garo slipped his blade past Aiyan’s
guard with a reckless lunge that would have been suicide if his skin could be
pierced.  Aiyan twisted, to take it on the arm, but Soth Garo had all his
weight behind it.  The sword went through Aiyan’s arm, through his armor, and
deep into his chest.  He staggered backward and fell.

The
Bantuan herdsmen threw their bolas.  Soth Garo nearly tripped as leather thongs
wrapped around his knees.  As he slashed through them, a lasso dropped over his
shoulders.  He managed to cut the rope, but already another had taken its
place.  Then came a torrent of bolas, wrapping his legs and pinning one arm to
his torso.  One struck him on his sword arm, entangling itself as he swung the
sword, and the weights at the end of the thongs flailed wildly.  He sawed at the
thongs around his legs, but the lasso over his shoulders went taut and pulled
him off balance.  Then another lasso came over his head, followed by another
one, both of them pinning his free arm and his greatsword as the lads pulled
them tight.  One more lasso fell around his neck.  All together, they pulled
him over as they would an enraged beast.  The herdsmen quickly got a rope
around his legs.  Soth Garo struggled to burst his bonds, but the Bantuans held
fast.

With
a wordless cry, Kyric forgot his wound and limped quickly to Aiyan’s side. 
Blood ran freely from the gash in his armor.  He held his sword in one hand,
and the flame still burned.  Kyric tore his sleeve off and stuffed it through
the rent in Aiyan’s leather vest.

“I
doubt that will do any good,” Aiyan said, spitting a little blood.  “Help me
up.”

He
could barely stand.  With Kyric holding him, Aiyan stumbled to where Soth Garo
lay writhing in a cocoon of ropes and leather.  He knelt beside him and raised
the flaming blade, threading it between the leather thongs to place the point
against Soth Garo’s heart.

He
pressed down on the sword.  Slowly, slowly, it burned through the icy skin,
boring a path into the heart.  Jets of black steam sprayed from each side of
the flaming blade as it pushed deeper, then a fountain of slushy black blood.  The
white skin melted away, revealing a raw red hide beneath it.  Soth Garo was
dead.

Aiyan
let go, and collapsed on the ground beside him.

Lerica
stayed down until her vision cleared.
 
She had got her bell rung this time. 
One of the charging spearmen had knocked her over, and another had kicked her
in the head.  She checked the man she had nearly scalped.  He was lying on his
back, moaning softly — that was a good sign.

Climbing
to her feet, she tried to shake it off.  Ahead of her, the two formations of
spearmen jabbed at each other desperately while archers darted up and down the
line looking for a place where they could loose an arrow.  Out on their flank,
a group of enemy bowmen had begun to form up.

Lerica
didn’t feel good.  The shadow cat was no longer interested, or at least had a
headache, and she had had enough.  This was a Mokkalan war and she would leave
it to them.  When she had been down, she heard some gunshots from the middle of
the battlefield, but she couldn’t see over the fight in front of her.  She
began to back away.

Suddenly
they all stopped.  The two sides froze, weapons in hand, and looked at one
another.  It was over.

One
by one, the enemy dropped their spears, most of them sinking to their knees.  Then
Lerica heard a sound from her childhood, one she thought she would never hear
again: the soft cry of a thousand people weeping together, the voice of loss
and shame and horror.  At first she thought it was only the Silasese who had served
Soth Garo, then she realized that their cousins wept along with them.

In
the end, Mokkala was not so big a place.  These people knew each other.

A
hundred men and women lay dead or dying here, and Lerica was sure that many
times that number had been killed in the riverbed.  A distant wailing came to
her ears.  This was happening all across the battlefield.

She
saw a man shaking his fallen friend, trying to bring him back to life.  She saw
a bowman kneeling over a woman who had been killed by an arrow.  Some of the
survivors went to the aid of the wounded.  Others sat on the ground, their
faces frozen in disbelief.  She watched as Hastilla’s people walked among those
who had been their enemy, offering them comfort.

Lerica
knew that as hard as it was for them now, it would be worse after the dead were
buried.  Weeks or months from now, some of them would find that they could no
longer take care of their families, some would be angry, some would drive away
their friends to punish themselves, and a few would take their own lives in the
deep hours of the night.  She had grown up with the civil war in Aleria.  She
had seen these faces before.

She supposed that if she were a good
person, she would stay and help.  But she didn’t feel like a good person right
then, and she wouldn’t watch this if she didn’t have to.  She walked back to
the landing place, where
Calico
’s jolly boat waited to return her to the
ship.  Down the shore, where the river spilled into the inlet next to Tiahnu
Rock, the sun glinted off the tiny waterfall.  It ran red with the blood of the
Mokkalans.

Kyric
looked around for Naran, not seeing him anywhere.  One of his dogs lay dead on
the ground.  “I need help here,” he called, throwing himself down at Aiyan’s
side and feeling the bite of his own wound.  “Somebody.  Please.”

He
unlaced Aiyan’s vest and got him out of it.  A ring of dog warriors formed
around them.  One of the master herdsmen stepped through and knelt down next to
Aiyan, tying a green leaf over his chest wound and topping it with a handful of
sticky mud that he had in a jar.

Kyric
heard shouts of surprise all around him.  Everyone pointed to the sky.  The
Gavdi bird had come back, and now it shrieked and dived at them.  The Bantuans
didn’t know what to do.  They got behind their shields and raised their
spears.  But the monster bird pulled up at the last second, lifting its wings
and braking with a few downward strokes, settling on the grass not twenty paces
away.

Its
presence was a force that Kyric could feel.  The Bantuans lowered their
spears.  The creature turned its head and looked at them with one mad eye.

And
then it coughed.  Or something like that, a retching sound coming out as it
bent its huge head forward and gagged, opening its beak wide and vomiting
something onto the ground.

It
was Ubtarune.  He had a cut on his arm, and another under his eye, but he was
whole and alive and in full ceremonial costume.  He rose to his feet, wiping a
clear fluid from his face and hands.  He bowed to the Gavdi bird.  It let out a
short shriek and propelled itself into the air, flying away with long sweeping
strokes of its wings.

Kyric
stood and pulled Ivestris from Soth Garo’s body.  Ubtarune ran straight to him,
nodding like he knew what had happened here.  He laid his hand on Aiyan’s heart
and turned a grim face to Kyric.

“We must take him to Ilara at once, but
I fear he will not live to hear her song.”

They
took him to Ilara’s house, a place with the features of both home and temple,
and she sang over him until the rains came.  At the end of the day he was still
alive.

Ellec
came ashore with Lerica and patched Kyric’s wound himself.  The ball had passed
through his leg, leaving hole about as long as his little finger.  Ellec
squirted some water through it, saying that the ball had most likely carried
the cloth from Kyric’s trouser away with it, and that with luck there would be
no infection.  He suggested that they simply pack it, wrap it, and see how it
healed.  That night, a Manutu priest served a medicinal drink of spices in
coconut milk.

Lerica
brought him some
rass
wine and offered to stay while he kept watch over
Aiyan.  He declined both offers.  Lerica would be happier alone.  And even at
the end of the most terrible day he had ever seen, Kyric would not run to the
bottle.  Not today.  If their places were exchanged, Aiyan wouldn’t be
drinking.

After
the evening meal, Caleem came to visit, bringing Kyric a forked stick for a
crutch.  He had cuts and scrapes all over him, but he was alright.

Kyric
asked about Nakoa and Witaan.  Caleem said that Witaan had been badly wounded
in the counter-charge that saved the left flank, and that he had died a few
hours later, but amazingly, Nakoa had come through untouched.  He also said
that Naran had got his knee smashed in the fight against the death guards.  He
wouldn’t lose his leg, but he would never run again.  Sometime after midnight,
Kyric heard howling from the grassy plain to the east, a chorus of dogs raising
a long mournful cry.

Aiyan
woke at dawn the next day and was able to take some soup.  When Kyric asked him
how he felt, he only said that it was bad.  Ilara and her girls fussed over him
all morning.  His chest wound still leaked a little, but Ilara said that
bleeding was the least of his worries.

Tonah
came at noon, and that was when Kyric went cold inside.  The king would not be
paying a visit if Ilara expected Aiyan to live.  When he asked Aiyan if there
was anything he could do for him, Aiyan answered that he would like to have a
tent pitched in the trees behind the beach, where he could lie with a view of
the ocean.  Tonah said it would be done, and in less than an hour they came
with a litter and moved him.  Kyric’s whole leg was stiff.  Even with his
crutch, it throbbed painfully as he hobbled along with them, but at a time like
this he wasn’t going to let it show.

The
wind blew lightly on the beach, the roll of the waves breaking with a gentle sigh. 
Kyric had Lerica bring him his woodcarving knives, and he began a new piece
while Aiyan slept.  He didn’t want this to become a weird thing — his first two
carvings had been a little too prophetic.  He had taken up carving so he could
spend some time away from himself.  But as soon as he started he knew what it
would become.  It would be a sword.

The
other clans started the march back to their homelands on the following day. 
They took their dead with them.  As they departed, each one sent their highest
priest to Aiyan’s tent.  They presented him with small chests of spice.  Nutmeg
from the Manutu, fennel from the Bantuan, and cassia from the Silasese.  Even
the Onakai, who had seen their nation shattered, left him a box of cloves. 
Kyric had hoped that he would see Nakoa, so that he could ask forgiveness, but
his leg was too weak to search for him.  When he asked the Onakai priest about
him, he said that Nakoa had started home with Prince Mahai’s body.  It would be
covered in cloth and spice, and buried in the hill of kings.

Caleem
came at midday, and they sat in the tent talking as a long steady rain set in.

“What
did you do with
his
body?” Kyric asked.

“Soth
Garo?  Birjen and some of the other sorcerers took it to the north cape
island.  They cut off his head and Wyrau the Hariji turned it to dust, then
they buried the dust.  They did the same with the body and buried it far from
the head.”

Caleem
wanted to know more about the men of the dragon’s blood, who they were and
where they came from.  Even though he answered weakly, it seemed to do Aiyan
some good to hear Caleem’s questions.  He wanted to know about Baskillia as
well, and if the knights of the black blood wielded power there.

“They
pull many strings within the empire,” Aiyan said, his voice little more than a
rasping whisper.  “We believe that Master Cauldin controls the
Shi’Zalin
,
the military clan, and we are sure that someone close to the emperor has been
given the black blood.  If the Baskillian military seizes the wealth of
Mokkala, they will use it to conquer the civilized world, but without an enemy
here to fight, an invasion will not be allowed by the imperial family or the
other clans.

“Politics
moves strangely in any nation, so I cannot say what will happen.  But this is
my advice:  You will have to trade with Aeva and the other states of the West. 
If you do not, they will send an army and force you to trade, and this in turn will
bring the Baskillian army.  If Mokkala becomes a battleground for two giants,
your
people will not survive  So do not allow the Westerners to establish any kind
station or settlement here.  Do not allow them to come ashore at all.  Trade
with them in secret.

“With
any luck, the imperial spice clan will obtain the rudders to these islands
before the military can try anything.  But you should know it is inevitable
that the Baskillians will come here and build trade stations.  You cannot
resist the empire, so you should not try.  But remember that the spice is
valuable beyond reckoning, and you can use it to get favorable terms.  You can
demand they supply you with metals and precision tools.  You can get them to teach
you engineering.  You can insist they quarter no soldiers here — tell them that
you side with the empire and will defend Mokkala for them if they provide
muskets and train your warriors to use them.  They might even give you a few
guns.  As long as there is no trouble and they get the spice, they will agree.

“These
are only ideas, of course.  It might not go the way I think.”

Caleem
considered it.  “Let me ask you this:  If we trade with the Westerlings in
secret, will
they
be able to keep it a secret?”

Aiyan
almost smiled.  “Not for long.  But it may give you the time you need.  In the
larger world, Mokkala is a small island.  It is possible that a spice war
between the East and the West could be fought on the high seas alone.  Whatever
happens, you must use the spice to influence those who want it.  If you allow
yourselves to be caught in the sweep of the northern nations, your people will
be swept away.”

Caleem
gave him a seated bow.  “You have given me much to think about,
Ulendi Aku.
”

“Please
translate,” Kyric said.

“It
is a title of honor.  The closest words in Baskillian would be ‘Great Hero.’”

After
Caleem had gone, Aiyan said, “What concerns me more than the empire having the
wealth of spice, is the way Soth Garo spread his blood to so many here. 
Usually they only force the black blood upon those in power.  They have always
been careful about leaving proof — Cauldin has never wanted the existence of
his order to be known.  He has always wanted his own history to be dismissed as
a fanciful legend should it be discovered.

“Converting
the Hariji king and his sons, priests, and sorcerers would have given him
control of the whole clan.  He could have attacked the Onakai with no more than
that.  Giving his blood to every fighting man did give him an edge in battle. 
His army was motivated, determined and nearly fearless.  But much more than
that — and this is my point — it allowed him to conduct a war so immoral as to
cause a mutiny had they not been under his power.

“In
a place like Baskillia, where the military is formalized under a single clan, I
wonder if the same thing could take place and remain unknown.  To have an army
of a quarter million all marching to a single will. . . . “

“Soth
Garo alone converted five thousand men in a couple of months,” Kyric said.

Aiyan looked at him.  “Yes.  In one pint
of blood there are hundreds of drops.”

Aiyan
looked worse the next day.  He hardly said anything.  When he wasn’t sleeping,
he lay with his head propped and eyes slit, gazing out to sea.  Thankfully, his
pain was less than it had been the last two days.  Lerica sat with Kyric when
he wanted her there and stayed away when he didn’t.  They went down to the
water’s edge at sunset, and sat quietly for a time.