The Misbegotten King (27 page)

“But if he can make us give up, surrender of our own accord, then he’s won.” She pressed her lips together and straightened
her shoulders. “So we mustn’t give up hope and we mustn’t despair, because if we do that—”

“We belong to him.”

A wave of loathing swept over her, nausea so acute she felt as though she might vomit.
Hold fast, daughter.
The voice whispered through her mind, like a scent of roses in the midst of offal. She closed her eyes, concentrating on
the voice. Hold fast? she wondered. For how long?

There was a long silence, and then Vere spoke so softly
in the shadows, she had to strain to hear him. “If anyone gets out,” Vere said finally, “I think it’s important to try and
get Alexander out. You and I may be expendable, lady. But I would wager anything that Amanander has plans for his twin.”

D
espite Roderic’s impatience, several more days passed in slow progression, bringing news of neither Deirdre nor Annandale.
Only a desultory progression of messages from the North trickled in, with Everard’s assurances that for now, at least, the
Muten Tribes were being held in check.

Finally, frantic with worry and angry with himself for listening to Annandale’s plea, he ordered a contingent of scouts to
head into the inaccessible interior of the Pulatchians. The uncertainty was driving him mad.

He was reviewing the maps with the leader of the scouting party when there was a knock at the door.

“Lord Prince.” The captain of the watch stood in the doorway, uncertainly. He had left his command, which was a punishable
offense, and he knew it. Roderic looked up and frowned. “What’s the problem, Captain?”

“In the distance, my lord, there is a column of soldiers approaching. Coming up from the south.”

“What? We’re being attacked?”

“No, my lord. They’re ours. They look like they’re in retreat.”

“Retreat? Come with me.” He hurried to the top of the
keep, calling for Brand and Miles. As he stepped out onto the windswept roof, he could see, in the distance, a ragged column
of men coming ever closer. “Captain,” Roderic ordered over his shoulder, “get men out there, horses, litters—see to their
needs.”

“At once, Lord Prince.”

Heedless of the sun’s glare and the gusting breeze, Roderic watched as the battered regiments staggered through the main thoroughfare
of the tent city surrounding Ithan and disappeared through the gates. He frowned as he recognized the colors of the regiments.
These were the men he had sent to Dlas with orders to reinforce the garrison there. Brand was going to be frantic.

Grim-faced, he marched down to the hall, to find a scene bordering on chaos. The exhausted men were slumped on every available
bench or chair. The wounded lay in long rows near the dais, and Lady Norah, with the other women of the household, bustled
about, finding blankets, offering cups of hot wine and cider steaming with spices, or pieces of bread and hastily sliced meats
and cheese. Among the wounded, the physicians bent here and there, calling for bandages, ointments, and salves, and more than
once, a sheet to place over the face of a dead soldier.

Roderic glanced around the room. Brand and Miles were nowhere to be seen. He squatted next to a man who huddled by one of
the hearths, hands cradling a goblet. On the tattered tunic were the remnants of a captain’s insignia. “What happened, Captain?”

“Lord Prince.” The man offered a weary salute. “I didn’t think we’d make it back. We were lucky to get
so far, and then we ran into the bad weather. Storms, Lord Prince, swirling clouds of dust which reached from the sky to the
ground. They came up out of nowhere, it seemed. We must have lost almost half again as many on the Arkan Plains.”

“Did the Harleyriders attack?” Brand spoke quietly, grimly, and Roderic looked up to see his brother standing over his shoulder.
He knew by the look on Brand’s face that he, too, had recognized the troops.

“Harleyriders? Monsters. They looked like Harleyriders, Lord Prince. But—”

“What do you mean?” Brand demanded, and Roderic knew that worry for his son made him sound harsher than he would ever intend
otherwise. “Was it Harleyriders, or wasn’t it?”

The other man stared up at him. “I wish I could say, Captain Brand. But in truth—yes, they were Harleyriders. They looked
like Harleyriders and smelled like Harleyriders. But they fought like no other men I have ever encountered in my life.” He
shuddered and, despite the heat of the day, pulled the blanket tighter around him.

Brand narrowed his eyes. “Captain—”

Roderic rose and put his hand on Brand’s arm. It was obvious to him that the men had been through a great deal. There would
be plenty of time to hear them out, to ask questions and gather information.

“Lord Prince,” said a man who wore a sergeant’s stripes on his bloodstained sleeve, “Captain Brand. It wasn’t Harleys. Was
monsters dressed as Harleys. I’ve never seen the like. They looked like men from a distance,
but when we got up close, it was like they were already dead.”

“What?” The hair rose on the back of Roderic’s neck.

“Where did you meet these—these monsters?” asked Brand, his voice taut with suspicion.

“When we reached the border of Dlas, Captain,” answered the sergeant. “We never made it to the garrison. They just appeared
out of the desert and kept coming.”

“What do you mean by that?” A tic had appeared beneath Brand’s left eye.

“We crossed into Dlas, and right on the Loma border, in the hills, they were waiting for us. We couldn’t shake them—they just
kept coming.”

“Day and night, Lord Prince,” said the captain. He stared into the cold hearth with dull eyes. “We had no sleep—they followed
us all the way back to Arkan, and then the dust storms hit.”

“What’s your name, Captain?” Brand bit out the words.

“Jonovon, captain of the Fourth Regiment, Fifth Division.”

“Your orders were clear,” Brand said.

Jonovon raised his face and met Brand’s angry eyes calmly, wearing the expression of a man who knows he has done his duty.
“Captain, I am well aware what my orders were. But you have to believe me when I tell you I have never seen anything like
this. These soldiers, whatever they were, had such accuracy—whatever they took aim at, they hit.”

“Lord Prince.” Another man, roused from a fitful sleep by the voices, struggled to a sitting position near
the sergeant, “My name is Athal. The captain’s right. These Harleys weren’t like any others I have ever seen in my life. I
saw them take direct hits and just ignore them. There was no way we could have gotten any further in Dlas without losing every
man.”

“Lord Prince—” Another tugged at Roderic’s hand. His voice was no more than a weak whisper, and Roderic bent down on one knee
to hear him. “The winds, Lord Prince, when the enemy stopped, the winds followed us, as though some hand controlled nature
itself.”

Roderic looked at Brand. He got to his feet once more. “All right, men. Thank you for the information. We’ll need to talk
more with you, but for right now, rest. Lady Norah will see you have all you need.” He cleared his throat and gestured to
Brand. “Come.”

The two threaded their way through the ranks. In the doorway of the council room, Roderic paused and saw Miles cross the hall,
dismay plain on his face. He motioned to Miles. As the Senador made his way to the council room, Roderic shivered, despite
the warmth of the stuffy room. “What do you think of this?”

“Call up every available reserve. Someone’s got to get down there and relieve the garrison at Dlas as soon as possible. If
those things—whatever they are—intercepted these men, then there’s a likely chance the garrison is besieged.”

Roderic caught Miles’s eye. The Senador’s face was set and grim, but there was a wordless pity in his expression as he looked
at Brand. Miles understood that Brand spoke as a father. “First,” Roderic said, choosing his words carefully, “I need reports
from all those men, especially
the officers. We have to know what we are dealing with.”

“I agree,” Brand said, still frowning, “but dispatches should go out immediately to the reserves held at Ahga.”

Miles drew a sharp breath and Roderic shot him a cautionary look. “Why don’t you do that now, Brand? I’ll have Henrode and
his scribes begin to take down the reports. It won’t take long to find out what we need to know.”

Brand spun on his heel and was gone before Roderic had the chance to say anything more. Miles let out a long breath. “He’s
more upset than I’ve ever seen him.”

Roderic nodded. “He’s lost his wife in this war. He can’t stand the thought of losing his son, too.”

Miles nodded slowly, and the two men stared a few minutes as the hall was gradually restored to some semblance of order under
Norah’s capable ministrations. Roderic watched her moving amongst the wounded men and something twisted in his gut. The thought
of losing Annandale was more than he could bear.

Long into the night, Roderic read the reports scribbled in Henrode’s hastiest hand. As dawn approached, he put the last piece
of parchment down on the stack piled high on his desk and covered his tired eyes with one hand. What the reports amounted
to was terrifying in its simplicity. Ordered to reinforce the garrison at Dlas, the army had met no resistance at all, until
they had crossed the Loma border. There, as they headed toward Dlas, they encountered an enemy such as they had never met
before. Although the soldiers looked like Harleyriders,
they didn’t fight like Harleyriders. Some were clad in rags, and some wore the black leather of the Riders. All fought with
polished steel. They fought with grim ferocity, stopped by neither dark, nor weather, nor lack of food or sleep. Their numbers
were impossible to estimate.

In their thousands, they pursued the hapless troops across Loma, through swirling storms of dust and debris, then, as if by
some internal signal, the enemy stopped in a silent line at the Loma desert, in an eerie row, staring north at the escaping
troops.

As Roderic shuffled through the pages, reading the grim news over and over, one parchment caught his attention. He paused,
fingering the report as a chill shuddered through him. In the center of the page, one poor wretch had drawn the symbol on
the shields carried by these unknown foes: an inverted triangle topped by a crescent. The hair on the back of his neck rose.
It was the same sign he had seen in Nydia’s flames all those months and months ago, on the day he had first met Annandale.

He wet his lips and closed his eyes, and Annandale’s face rose before him. Those eyes, blue as the summer sea beneath a cloudless
sky, gazed back at him, and he remembered the nights spent in her arms, her gentle smile, her merry laugh. What if she were
lost to him forever? he wondered. How could he endure her loss?

He shoved the thought aside. Nothing was to be gained by brooding upon things which had not yet come to pass. Annandale was
safe among the Mutens. She had to be. The remains of the fire hissed in the hearth and a low wind moaned. He glanced outside
the window,
where a gray dawn was spreading behind the purple mountains.

He rubbed his eyes, gathered the parchments together in one neat heap, and went to dress. There was no chance of sleep for
him.

Henrode was waiting as he strode into the council room, his ink-stained fingers already scratching his pen over parchment.
“Henrode,” Roderic said, surprised, “what are you doing here?”

The scribe shot Roderic a look of exasperation. “Lord Prince, I have been your scribe for more than three years now. I know
when you will want to send out dispatches. Here. You might sign these.”

Amused, despite the situation, Roderic picked up the papers. Among them were the summons to the last of the reserves held
at Ahga. Roderic picked up Henrode’s pen and scrawled his signature at the bottom. A small stab of anxiety quivered through
him. These were the last of the professional troops. It would be well to order a conscription of the able-bodied men amongst
the farmers and the merchants. As he opened his mouth to tell Henrode to write an additional order, Brand entered the room.

“Good morning, Roderic.” Brand’s face was pale and the shadows were dark beneath his eyes. He looked like a man who had spent
the night fighting demons.

Before Roderic could respond, bearers carrying Phineas’s litter marched into the room, followed by a yawning Miles.

Roderic took his customary seat at the head of the table. A servant brought food and set plates and goblets
on the table. He bowed briefly, then shut the door behind him. Roderic reached for a piece of bread and gestured to the other
men to help themselves. He tapped the stack of parchments on the table. “I will assume you all are aware of what is in these
reports.”

Miles nodded slowly. “I’m not sure I believe it. I’ve never heard of anything like this before in my life.”

“There’re too many men involved not to believe it,” Roderic replied.

“Oh, I agree, Roderic. The question isn’t whether it’s real or not, it’s—”