The Invisible Chains - Part 3: Bonds of Blood (57 page)

He thought for several minutes, then looked up.

“Divide them in groups of a hundred men,” he said. “Put out their eyes, except for the first one. Leave him his right one. He can lead the others of his group. Give them food for three days and send them on their way back to the Queneq Pass, under escort of a patrol of ten soldiers.”

“Anaxantis, no...” Hemarchidas exclaimed horrified.

“See, that it is done. Immediately,” the warlord ordered. “Now.”

“
Oh, my friend, what are you doing,”
the Cheridonian thought sadly. “
This decision will forever cling to
your soul. Not a day will go by or you will be asking yourself whether you did the right thing. You won't be
able to undo this. You will forever have a reputation for having a cruel streak and we, your friends, will be
the only ones to know how untrue and undeserved that is.”

Timishi as well felt more sorrow for Anaxantis than for his erstwhile tribesmen about to be blinded.

“
It will forever be a blot on your name, rouwin,”
he thought. “
Your own soldiers may have hailed you as
Muktharchtankhar, but in our chronicles you will be known as Tmeritektos. Anashantish, the Thief of Eyes.”

Seated upon their horses, Hemarchidas and Timishi looked out over the battlefield.

It was dark and the moon cast a pale light on the plain before them. All over the prisoners were guarded by Ximerionian soldiers. Hundreds of torches were burning everywhere.

One by one, in little groups, the captured Mukthars were led behind the ridge they had so confidently occupied that afternoon.

The Cheridonian and the Wolf Mukthar rode between the groups, following the one that was marched off.

The valley bended and curved several times. After about ten minutes they couldn't hear the noise behind them anymore. After another fifteen minutes they came at an open place, not unlike the battlefield, but much smaller.

In the distance the previous group was walking northwards. Prisoners were waiting, kept in check by more than two hundred soldiers. The warlord was obviously not taking any risks. The new arrivals joined those already waiting there and a soldier began to count them. One by one the Mukthars were led to one of three fires. Some struggled when they realized their eyes were about to put out by red hot steel rods. A lot of them didn't and resignedly submitted to the inevitable.

Hemarchidas pointed at a lonely figure, sitting on a folding chair.

“There,” he said to Timishi.

They rode up to Anaxantis who sat immobile, watching the proceedings, and dismounted.

Some of the men about to be blinded recoiled, most of them flinched. Almost all of them cried out when the hot steel burned through their involuntary closed eyelids. A few only groaned.

Timishi walked away, thinking he had seen a familiar figure.

Shigurtish was one of the few Mukthars who could count. He shoved some of his men before him. Timishi, who noticed what he was doing, had a quiet word with some of the soldiers. Together they went up to the Bear Mukthar prince.

“That one,” Timishi pointed him out to the soldiers. “It doesn't belong there. It was standing there, much more in front.”

Anaxantis, who had seen the commotion, walked up to them, followed by Hemarchidas.

“What's going on,” he asked of Timishi.

“This cowardly shorgah was trying to hide. It hoped to be the first of a new group, so as to save one of its eyes. I corrected the situation.”

Anaxantis said nothing.

“Listen, listen to me,” Shigurtish cried out desperately. “I'm a Mukthar frishiu. I could be the next quedash.

Treat me honorably. I can negotiate a good peace between our nations.”

The warlord raised his eyebrows.

“Honorably?” he asked. “Honorably, like you were planning to treat me? I seem to remember you were going to let me beg you to kill me, only to deny me.”

“Ridiculous. Shorringah have no honor,” Timishi added calmly. “You will never be a quedash. The law states that you must be of sound mind and unblemished body. After your eyes are put out you will be neither.

You will be nothing. Even among the Bear Mukthars you will be a joke. They'll probably teach you how to weave baskets, blind and with groping hands, just to get some use out of you. And as punishment for inflicting the greatest defeat in Mukthar memory on your tribe. May you live long, shorgah.”

“Tell your quedash,” the warlord added coldly, “that the remnants of the next army he sends against me will crawl back to their home grounds. For not only will I have the survivors blinded, I will have their hamstrings cut as well.”

Shigurtish didn't respond. He knew everything he could say would only make him seem weak and ridiculous.

Anaxantis returned to his folding chair, but Timishi waited beside Shigurtish until it was his turn to be blinded.

“Soldier, turn it my way,” he said, and he smirked. “I want my face to be the last thing this shorgah ever sees.”

Only a suppressed grunt escaped Shigurtish's lips as the hot steel went into his eyes. A soldier bound a rag around his eyes. Another gave him half of a stale bread. Then they guided him to the others of his group and put his right hand on the belt of the Mukthar before him.

Not five minutes later the group was ordered to march. Hundred men, led by a fellow tribesman with one eye, escorted by ten soldiers on horseback, stumbled away.

“Come,” Hemarchidas, standing behind Anaxantis, said softly, “everything is going fine. There is no need for you to supervise this personally.”

“No, there isn't,” the warlord agreed.

“Come then, you needn't be here.”

“Yes, I do. I gave this order.”

Hemarchidas inhaled deeply.

“
He's dying here. Part of him is dying,”
he thought, feeling miserable and helpless. “
He will, never, never be
the same again.”

He tried desperately to find something to lure his friend away.

“Yes, you did give the order,” he said finally. “And—”

“And you spoke against it.”

The Cheridonian balled his fists.

“Yes, yes, I did. I wasn't thinking. I was stupid. You were right. You were right all along. There is no other solution, but having them killed out right. I was too dumb to see that. It was a good decision. A wise decision. Now, please, please, come with me, away from this place of horrors. They deserve this.”

“And I deserve
this
,” Anaxantis answered obstinately.

Hemarchidas wept without making a sound.

The tent stood down the slope, almost at the bank of the river Zinchara.

“Argh,” Obyann shivered, “I'm cold and I'm hungry. All thanks to you, Landemere. You had to go and play the hero, didn't you? It didn't suffice just to send in the cavalry, did it? Serves me right, I suppose. Who sleeps with the dog gets his flees, as we say in Ramaldah. Not, let me add immediately, that I would ever sleep with you. Ah, well, it's too late to fill up the pit when the calf has already drowned.”

Arranulf shrugged.

“Oh, Obie, leave him alone,” Rahendo said. “He was only— Oh, my. What do you think will happen to us?

The prince seemed very angry. And he had just ordered the commander strangled. What if he wants more?

What if he can't stop anymore? You know, like dogs who have tasted blood. You can't trust them anymore after that.”

He crept nearer to Ryight="rerloohunzo and leaned against his lover, in as far as his manacles permitted him, seeking comfort.

“Oh, Pookie, what if he decides to hang us all?” he added worriedly.

Ryhunzo threw an arm around him, chains and all.

“They won't hang us, Sparkling Splendor to my Dull Squalidness. We're nobles.”

“Oh, yes, that's right, I almost forgot—”

“I guess they will probably behead us with one of those gigantic, sharp broadswords that cut through your neck in one blow, in which case I, of course, will demand they take you first, Eternal Bloom of my Perennial Happiness, so that you will be spared having to witness how the cold steel slices mercilessly through my proud but tender neck, and although I will barely be able to hold back my tears when your severed head falls from the block and, with bloody neck, rolls through the sawdust and comes to rest before my feet, gazing up at me with glazed, lifeless eyes, yet I will, with superhuman courage, born out of my ardent desire to be worthy of you, retain them, and I will turn to the pitiless prince and defiantly taunt him, shaking my fist at him in anger and contempt while saying haughtily ‘Uberon necks may be cut off, but they are too stiff to bow to tyrants, so watch, oh cruel Tanahkos, how a scion of our House knows to die in scornful dignity,’ and when finally my head in its turns is parted from my body it will tumble down and roll up to yours only to come to a soft halt when our cold lips tenderly meet in a last, heartfelt, deadly kiss.”

Rahendo stared in the dark at him with open mouth, and eyes, big as saucers.

“Oh, Pookie, how horrible,” he stammered, not believing his ears.

“It will be
awesome
,” Ryhunzo sighed, looking dreamily at a point, only discernible to him, somewhere on a distant horizon.

At that moment an angry voice could be heard outside the tent.

“Fiddlesticks, I say, of course I have permission to visit them. I always have permission. I'm a doctor.”

Some muffled, mumbled protests were barely audible.

“What kind of doctor? Let me explain, you pestilent stalk of rhubarb. The kind of doctor that when he says to the prince ‘Drop your pants’ makes him drop his pants like a good boy. That kind of doctor. Are you a doctor? Does he drop his pants for you?”

Again the answer was a muted, rumbling sound.

“This medicine smells like roasted chicken because it is a salve based on chicken fat, and neither can I help it that this cooking pot was the only recipient available to transport it in. Why are your lips still moving? Let me through.”

The tent flap opened and Murno Tollbir entered, carrying a metal kettle with a lid, a torch, and a satchel on his shoulder.

He blinked and let his eyes get accustomed to his surroundings. Then he planted the torch in the ground and put the kettle down. He crouched down next to Rahendo.

“Let me see your wrists and ankles,” he said.

He went from page to page.

“Well, they seem to have used rather loose shackles. Hardly any chafing as yet.”

Groaning he stood up and scratched his beard.

“Don't worry, boys, I'll hav" widt I'inge a word with him. He's not a bad guy, you know. A bit of a temper, though. Impatient as well. Sulky. Headstrong too. Can be obstinate as a mule. Vile mood swings at times.

But not bad. All the same, you shouldn't be here. At your age you should be running around, getting in all kinds of mischief... On the other hand, that was probably what got you here in the first place. And, now that I come to think of it, you should be sleeping at this time of night.”

He noticed Ryhunzo looking at the kettle, saliva almost running out of his mouth.

“Ah, yes. It is my considered opinion as a man of the medical profession that you need some medicine. Said medicine being roasted chicken, of which I happen to have some with me here. Can't sleep on an empty stomach, can you?”

He put the kettle in the middle, lifted the lid off, and let the hungry pages each take a piece.

“Yes, I thought you would be famished by now. Have napkins as well, somewhere in this satchel. We're civilized men after all. And a flask with something to drink. Easy with that stuff though. I made it strong: four parts of wine for six parts of water.”

He looked on smilingly as the pages devoured the pieces of chickens and passed the flask around.

“Never fails to amaze me how much pleasure a chicken can provide. Cooked or alive, for that matter. Extra— ordinary, versatile beasts.”

About an hour after the doctor had left, Hemarchidas entered the tent. He crouched down next to Arranulf.

“How are you holding up?” he asked.

“Well enough, I suppose,” the page answered and shrugged.

Hemarchidas stood up.

“What will happen to us?” Obyann asked.

“The first thing that will happen is that you are going to be fed,” Hemarchidas said, opening the tent flap and beckoning two soldiers in.

“Keep quiet about this, because the prince doesn't know I'm doing this, and I'm sure he wouldn't like it.”

The soldiers carried baskets with bread, butter, cold cuts, cheese and a jar into the tent. The Cheridonian was surprised the pages didn't fall on the food as ravenous wolves, but he said nothing.

“Is he still angry at us?” Arranulf asked.

“His highness doesn't like it when his orders are treated as mere suggestions,” Hemarchidas grumbled.

“Will we get out any time soon, you think?” Ryhunzo asked.

Hemarchidas shrugged neutrally.

“I've got to go. I'll leave the food here.”

The soldiers had already left, and the Cheridonian was almost outside when he turned around.

“I almost forgot,” he smiled. “The warlord hopes this will be a sound lesson you will remember for a long time. Anaxantis, on the other hand, wondered if you four war heroes would do him the honor to share his lunch with him tomorrow.”