The False Martyr (25 page)

Outside, following a
silent, black-robed man down the cobblestone street of a small,
prosperous town, he tried to keep his thoughts as far from Eia as
possible, tried to keep them on what he faced, what he had to do.
He assumed that they were somewhere outside of Wildern in one of
the many towns that clustered around the Kingdoms’ political and
economic heart. He searched for something that would tell him their
exact location, but they remained on residential street, surrounded
by abandoned houses that could have existed in any town within a
hundred miles. His thoughts turned instead to the village boys,
wondering what fate had befallen them, seeking some indication that
they were still alive, that they had not been mistreated, that
Dasen was not with them. He was left to wonder as they climbed a
slight hill and wound through a scattering of larger homes before
arriving at the manor that was their destination.

The te-am ‘eiruh led Ipid
through a garden littered with tents to an entirely unnecessary
tower standing on a small hill at the edge of the grounds. The
conical topped structure was clearly meant to mimic the
architectural rage that had turned the cities into mushroom
gardens, but here, by itself, the tower was a lost and lonely child
standing on the hill in hopes of finding its parents in the sea of
structures below.

At the tower door stood
two Darthur. One of them Ipid recognized as Arin’s regular guard,
Turgot. “May you know honor this day, Turgot,” he said in Darthur,
deciding to test the extent of his new standing.

Turgot nodded toward him.
“And you, k’amach-tur Ipid. Arin awaits.”

Ipid again marveled at how
his world had changed. He was dressed in his own, fine clothes, had
been allowed a room and a bath, had addressed a warrior directly
without having been spoken to first.
Suddenly, I am a person
, he thought
with some satisfaction as he strode through the door and started
the painful climb up the steps.

Tall and slender, the
tower was little more than an enclosed staircase with a sheltered
platform at the top. It rose only forty feet, but that was more
than enough. When Ipid finally cleared the final step – his foot
throbbing – he stared out a wall of open windows at a city that
covered the entire horizon. Five times the size of Thoren, Wildern
was a seemingly endless warren of blocks, roads, walls, and towers
divided down the middle by the Orm River. Nearly lost in the mass
of buildings were the four great bridges that crossed the river,
ancient structures built before the Exile and standing to this day
without the slightest sign of wear. On each side of the river,
surrounding the great houses and monuments in the city’s center was
a massive wall. Unlike Thoren, Wildern had never been seriously
threatened during the wars that defined the Kingdoms early years
and had never built additional walls to protect its expansion. Ipid
turned his eyes to the field that stretched between himself and the
city, took in the rows of tents that defined the Darthur army, and
wondered if the city’s leaders now regretted that good
fortune.

“
It is a beautiful city,”
Arin said in Ipid’s language. “I don’t want to destroy it. But that
is up to your leaders. We will meet with them tomorrow at dawn. I
have written the terms of their surrender on that page.” Without
looking at Ipid, he gestured toward a single sheaf of paper lying
on a small, ornate table.

There were only three
items on the page. Ipid barely made it past the first. It was
almost the exact opposite of what Eia had led him to expect. She
had told him that the Darthur would demanded horses and livestock,
but where he had expected to see animals was an almost
incomprehensible weight of gold. He stared at the paper, tried to
calculate, and finally gave up. But it was the very fact that it
was gold as much as the volume that amazed him. The Darthur cared
nothing for gold. They saw it as a weak man’s vanity, did not wear
it as jewelry, did not trade with it. Why would they demand it
instead of the cattle and horses that marked wealth in their
society? Then it struck him.
The
mountains
. The te-am ‘eiruh cannot
transport animals. Cattle and horses would have to be taken across
the mountains on foot, which made them nearly worthless. Gold –
especially this amount – could buy nearly every horse in the
Kingdoms and the same was likely true for the nations on Arin’s
side of the Clouded Range.

Still swooning, Ipid moved
down the paper. The final two demands were in no way surprises, but
that did not mean they weren’t onerous. The first of these was a
requirement that the Kingdoms provide all the food and supplies the
Darthur and their vassals required for as long as they were in the
Kingdoms. Ipid could not calculate the cost of that but had no
doubt as to the enormous burden of feeding so many men. But the
last was possibly the worst, a demand that the Kingdoms provide
fifty thousand men-at-arms to fight alongside the Darthur. Though
he could not remember the exact numbers, fifty thousand likely
represented every uniformed man in the country. For all of them to
join the invaders would be the same as inviting bandits and raiders
to claim the roads and the nights. And then to ask those men to
fight their longtime allies in Liandria or more terrifyingly to
invade the Fells was the height of insanity.

Ipid read through the list
again, trying to get his head around it. It was only three items,
barely fifty words, but he could not imagine the Chancellor ever
agreeing to them. The gold alone would scupper it. He could not
even imagine where all that gold would come from. Certainly there
was nowhere near that much in the national treasury, maybe if they
drained every bank, guildhall, workshop, and manor, they could
gather it, but the simple logistics of that was beyond daunting,
let alone the unrest it would cause. Add to that the food, the
supplies, the equipment, and the military forces, and it would be
the equivalent of stripping the entire nation bare.

“
And if they refuse?” Ipid
finally asked. He rubbed his head, felt his stomach
churn.

Arin turned from the
window and hit Ipid with his cool, blue eyes. “It is not a
negotiation. The terms cannot be changed. They will agree, and they
will fulfill them. It is only a matter of how much they will lose
before they do.” He waved Ipid away without turning from the
window. “That is all. Be prepared to ride at dawn”

And Ipid had no more to
say. He stared at the paper before him, tried to think of some
argument, some strategy that might convince Chancellor Kavich to
accept it. All the way down the tower he considered, past the
garden, to his room, through the night, until the dawn with nothing
to show but a growing sense of failure.

#

The day was gray.
The ground was wet and churned. The downpour from
the previous night – sheets of rain almost as extreme as the heat
that had proceeded it – had stopped a few hours before but
threatened to resume any time. Ipid watched the mud flying from the
hooves of the horses in front of him, concentrated on staying on
his own steed, prayed that he would not fall, that it would not
slip in the mud or trip on the uneven mass below and leave him to
be trampled by the score of riders that followed behind.

In front of him were Arin
and the te-ashute. They rode effortlessly, as if born in their
saddles, as if one with their horses. In the distance, trotting
across the same field were the Chancellor, his advisors, and
the
Chancellor’s Own
who protected them. The armor of the knights looked dead and
dull without sunlight to illuminate it, making them look like a
stone wall riding before the politicians they were meant to
protect.

Ipid could not help but
note the distinction. The Darthur leaders led the way – their
guards trailing behind – but showed no signs of worry that these
negotiations may go wrong, that a battle may ensue rather than a
treaty. And if it did go that way, Ipid had no doubt that the
te-ashute would be at the center of the fight while the Chancellor
and his advisors ran for the safety of their walls. Ipid held no
scorn for such as that – certainly, he would be the first one
running from any fight – but could not help but respect the Darthur
willingness to participate in the battles they sought.

In only a few minutes, the
Darthur arrived at the great open tent that had been constructed in
the center of a field between two of the roads leading into the
city. Arin and his advisors leapt from their horses and strode
toward the waiting table without missing a stride. The trailing
warriors quickly secured the abandoned horses and led them back
well beyond earshot of the pending discussions. Not feeling nearly
so spry, Ipid pulled his horse to a stop then stumbled from the
beast, nearly falling in the mud as his boot caught in a stirrup.
He came down on his injured foot and winced as he struggled to
release his other. The display solicited laughs from the warriors.
Ipid could only try to ignore them as he limped toward the tent,
flush heating his face on the cool morning.

Arin was standing at the
middle of the table – the Darthur had not thought to provide chairs
for the negotiations. He looked around himself then back.
“K’amach-tur Ipid, you are needed.”

Ipid jumped at the sound
of his name then accelerated his hobble as much as possible. Arin
made a space for him, and Ipid slotted into it, feeling the dark
looks of the warriors he had displaced. He could almost feel the
men jockeying for position, puffing themselves up so that they
resembled roosters preparing to receive a flock of hens. At one end
of that line, the non-Darthur te-ashute milled, chatting casually
with little seeming concern for what was about to happen. Ipid
supposed they had seen this happen enough times to know how it
would go, to know that the city’s fate was in the hands of no one
but its leaders and the te-am ‘eiruh.

The thought brought Ipid’s
attention to the shape on Arin’s other side. Though he remained
behind Thorold, Belab positioned himself to be seen, to have his
presence felt and actualized. Ipid gulped. If these negotiations
failed, Belab and his followers would ensure that the next did not.
But the cost of that would be another city destroyed, the death of
thousands, the crippling of an entire nation. And there was almost
no chance that these negotiations would succeed.

Thus it was that Ipid
turned to the last refuge of the hopeless. He was just finishing a
prayer when a dozen men in plate armor strode through the tent’s
other side. They clattered with every movement and brought with
them the smell of iron, wet leather, oil, and sweat. Ipid nearly
gagged as the men arrayed themselves around the tent, eyes on the
warriors across from them, hands gripping their swords, bodies
tense and ready. Outside, Ipid could see the legs of at least forty
horses though only a dozen men had entered the tent. Unlike the
Darthur,
the Chancellor’s Own
remained close, ready to strike.

“
Hup!” a man yelled. Steel
gauntlets pounded on shields. The guards snapped to attention,
fists on shields, faces forward, bodies stiff as iron-clad statues.
The gesture was meant to be a display of discipline, but it
solicited only scoffs from the Darthur. Ipid watched the guards,
hoping to see some clues as to their morale, but their face plates
were down, and their eyes betrayed nothing.

“
All hail the
duly-elected, most honored and esteemed by the Holy Order
Chancellor of these Unified Kingdoms,
Lord
Alden Kavich,” a small man with a big voice announced. He had
squeezed into the tent, standing in front of one of the guards. He
wore a tall conical hat that looked even more foolish rising above
his tiny form. His jacket and slacks were black but the vest
underneath was a weave of blue stripes on a black field as was the
scarf tied around his neck and stuffed into it. In his right hand
was a staff of polished wood nearly as tall as himself. On its top
was a great shining knob of silver. The tip was marked with dented
iron from being pounded into the floor of the
Chancellor’s Palace.
Ipid, of
course, knew him as the
Chancellery
Sergeant-at-Arms.

A call of “All hail!” from
the knights announced the arrival of Chancellor Kavich. He swept
into the tent with a look of contempt. He was a big man, who might
have been a great warrior like his grandfather had his life gone
that way. It had not. As it was, Alden Kavich was not nearly the
specimen that Oban Markovim had been, but he was decidedly plump.
He was of an age with Ipid but looked older. Jowls sagged from his
face, bags hung beneath his eyes, and what hair remained on his
head was decidedly grey. His pale-blue eyes were shot with blood.
His thick lips were drawn into a line, and he scowled at those
assembled across from him. He wore a fine black suit with gold
buttons, an embroidered vest of silver and gold, and blue silk
scarf. Hanging from his neck was the jewel-encrusted pendant that
marked his position. A round version of the Kingdoms’ flag,
sapphires and onyx writhed across its surface sparkling even in the
dim light of this grey day.

Following the Chancellor
into the tent were the members of the Bureau. First came Lord
Marshal Halking, commander of the Kingdoms’ military forces. Tall
and broad, but thinned by age, he hobbled in with the help of an
elegant stick. His ancient body appeared to have given up on him
years ago, but his eyes were crisp and clear, mind sharp. He wore
an elaborate uniform with a blue jacket that buttoned all the way
to where a black banded collar peeked out. An array of metals hung
from his breast. Golden tassels swung from his shoulders. A thin
sword with a sparkling guard hung from a heavily embossed leather
belt across his waist. He came to stand to the immediate right of
the Chancellor and brought himself stiffly to his full height,
which was enough to put him slightly above Arin but well short of
the other Darthur. Two officers in similar, if less impressive,
uniforms flanked him, watching their general as if ready to catch
him when – not if – he fell.