The Right Hand of God (59 page)

Helpless and hopeless, she watched the ceremony take place. The trumpets and the obeisance and the words of surrender were spoken by a woman from her own beloved village of Loulea.

Stella stood no more than a few feet away from them, but was not surprised that no one recognised her broken body as that of one of their former companions. At least, almost no one: the Haufuth occasionally cast glances in her direction, though since he had his forehead pressed to the ground it was difficult to tell exactly what he was thinking.

There was a document to sign, apparently, but the Destroyer did not intend to sign it here in Vulture's Craw. 'I will have the signatures of the leaders of Faltha from their own hands, as they grovel before me in the Hall of Meeting at Instruere,' he said, savouring the coming delight as though he experienced their humiliation and his glory already. The servant-girl could feel his eagerness, his vast hunger, his

insatiable desire for revenge on anyone associated with the Most High. For him, the true moment of surrender would come when the Sixteen Kingdoms bowed before him. In spite of his longing, he was prepared to wait until then.

Now the ceremony was over and the Falthans left, each commander accompanied by a Maghdi Dasht to ensure obedience. Stella watched them leave without experiencing the feelings of abandonment and loneliness she might have expected. Instead, she realised that they had become just like her, each with a black shadow. Or, perhaps each of them now a pale shadow to a black-cloaked reality. This should not have consoled her, she knew, but it did.

They came for Leith after dark. Phemanderac made his way down into the dell, followed by two menacing Lords of Fear. The Bhrudwans seemed to have identified everyone who could operate in the realm of Fire, and had assigned each one a sinister guardian. Leith's jailer, the chief of the Maghdi Dasht and the most powerful of the Bhrudwans save the Destroyer himself, would hardly be necessary, Phemanderac thought as he lifted the insensible youth to his feet. Grief already held him prisoner.

Phemanderac himself was in mourning, and over such a trivial thing. They had taken his harp and smashed it, and the sound of the rosewood breaking was more than he could bear. It seemed to signify every fine thing that had been lost. Crafted by Mandaramus himself, he thought as he grieved; possibly the last of its kind, and he let the tears fall. As Hal was, as Wiusago and Te Tuahangata were, as many others had been. He wept for them all.

'Come, Leith,' he said gently, knowing that if the youth didn't respond, he would be made to obey. 'Time to let him go.'

The boy's hand slipped out of his brother's cold fingers. For as long as he dared Phemanderac stared at the features of the cripple, which registered no more than a mild surprise. The sword had been taken from the body, but the small entry wound was still visible, just below his heart. His face and hands were white as alabaster, as though he was a broken statue. Smashed like a harp, the Dhaurian scholar mused. He will be missed.

'Phemanderac? What did we do wrong?' The voice was hoarse, ragged.

He turned away from the body and towards the deep, wounded eyes of Hal's brother. 'Do wrong?' he echoed, unsure of the question, surprised that Leith could ask it so soon.

'Yes. Was it tactical? Should we have waited to gather a larger army? Or was it because we put our trust in magic and not in our own strength? That we trusted the arrow of unity more than the strength unity would bring?' The eyes were overbright, the face flushed.

'Leith, it is not a good time—'

'Or was it what Kroptur said? Did I somehow bring this down on all our heads because I didn't love my brother when it mattered?'

'No more talk!' snapped a voice, and both Phemanderac and Leith found themselves carried out of the dell, slung over broad shoulders.

'What about the Jugom Ark?' Phemanderac asked their captors.

'Just another arrow now,' came the harsh reply. 'Leave it where it lies.'

'And Hal? Surely he at least will receive the honourable burial his skill and valour deserve?'

'He is carrion. He will feed the birds.' The two Maghdi Dasht reached out with their coercion, and Leith and Phemanderac were given no further opportunity to ask questions.

Over the next few weeks winter turned to spring. Few of the beaten Falthan army had the heart to see the new blossoms on the trees by their path, or the renewed activity in the sky above the great plains of central Faltha, or on the never-ending grasslands themselves. They learned instead to obey the severe discipline of their new masters, to live with hunger and cold as the best was taken by the Bhrudwan army, and to cope daily with humiliation. Even the discontents within the Falthan ranks were unsettled by the capriciousness of their captors, who seemed to take great delight in punishing their charges for the most minor deviation from the rules -but only after ignoring these infractions for days or longer, and sometimes taking one man and leaving unpunished another who committed the same offence. And the punishments were brutal. One man, driven beyond endurance, lost a hand for striking a Bhrudwan officer, while another suffered the same fate for respectfully asking for a misheard order to be repeated. The taking of a hand seemed to be their standard punishment. Worse, the punishments were public, and all close by were required to witness the swift and terrible judgments of the Maghdi Dasht, and learn thereby. They learned to hate.

Graig and his father Geinor walked into chaos, there was no other word for it. Graig was especially anxious to be reunited with Leith, the mighty and magical Arrow-bearer, who paid him such respect when first they had met. He had begged to be allowed to remain at Leith's side, but reluctantly saw the sense of travelling south with his father and the other messengers in search of support for the coming war against Bhrudwo.

Every day on the southern journey he took time to practise with the sword, remembering the jibes of the Arkhos of Nemohaim, and was determined to be accepted into the service of the Arrow-bearer. Geinor tried to speak to him of diplomacy and the workings of a king's court, knowing that this would be of more use to his son, but Graig had seen action in the Battle of the Four Halls and again on the dreadful night when the Ecclesia had been betrayed, and for now the glory of the swordsman closed his mind to everything else.

After four weeks of hard riding they reached the Bay of Bewray, to find the land in an uproar.

The humiliated King of Nemohaim had stepped aside a matter of days after Leith had spoken with him, and contention over the throne had swept across the country in waves of killing.

This dreadful chance meant that most of the soldiery in Nemohaim was otherwise engaged, and so Geinor and Graig had no king to entreat.

The two men spent fruitless weeks trying to enlist support for an eastern war, but such a nebulous prospect drew few away from the war of succession. Until the day, that is, when a fleet of tall ships under full sail ghosted up the Bay of Bewray and succeeded in gaining everyone's attention. Fifty ships with five hundred swarthy southerners in each, men with long dark hair and broad moustaches from ports such as Silsilesi, Kauma, Jardin and the pirate island of Corrigia. Sarista and Vertensia had thrown themselves behind the Jugom Ark: every seaworthy vessel they could call on now sailed the perilous winter seas for Instruere.

Geinor and his son rode down to the wharves to meet them. The admiral of the fleet, a small, effete man with a

stammer, belied the image of a southern pirate so feared in Nemohaim, but his mind was sharp and his commission clear.

'We sail north tomorrow with as many Nemohaimians as we can raise,' the admiral stated in his lisping way. 'I would have expected the king himself to meet us. Are the men of Nemohaim so inured to the presence of southern ships that they care not we fill their harbour?'

Geinor explained the situation, and the admiral cursed loudly, sending the seagulls to flight.

'What sort of place is this?' he railed, then apologised when he saw that the aged courtier had taken offence.

'May I ask when you put to sea?' Graig asked him respectfully.

'The first ships left Morneshade, two days east of Kauma, nigh on a month ago. We've stopped at most ports on the way, gathering support for my king's quest.'

'A month ago?' Geinor responded quizzically, realising that his lessons had not been entirely wasted on his son. 'Then you cannot have set sail because of our emissaries.'

'Indeed not! And why would Nemohaim send emissaries to Sarista?'

Geinor's brow furrowed, then cleared. 'Not Nemohaim, but Instruere. I am one of the Arrow-bearer's men, sent south to raise an army to help oppose the Bhrudwan force we feel sure is coming west.'

Now the admiral wore a broad smile, and invited the men on board. There they ate and drank of the legendary Saristrian fare, and explained all about Leith Mahnumsen and the Jugom Ark; and how they had been written right into the heart of the story.

'My king heard about the coming invasion through his brave Arkhos, struck down by the evil now abroad in

Instruere,' said the admiral. 'We come north to cleanse the Great City of that evil.'

'Then you travel north in vain,' said Graig stoutly. 'Leith has already cleansed the City with the Jugom Ark. But you can come north anyway, just in case, through some foul wizardry, the Bhrudwans passed through the Gap before the Falthan army arrived.' He supplied the admiral with the numbers he asked for: the date the army had most likely left Instruere, and the probable numbers it comprised.

'Your friend's army will be too late,' said the admiral shortly. 'We sent our own spies north many months ago, using a little-known path along the eastern edge of the Idehan Kahal, the Deep Desert as it is known in the north. Lately they have returned, and reported to the king of a large Bhrudwan force that was even then high up on the high plains of Birinjh, and would have made the Gap ere our spies returned home.'

'So they will be fighting now? Even as we speak?' Graig asked, his eyes sparkling.

'Aye, they will be fighting,' growled the small man, tugging at his moustache irritably. 'They will be fighting, and they will be dying like flies in winter. I would not expect more than a quarter of the victorious army to march back home. Think on it, lad: three chances out of four that you would be left lying unburied on some rocky field, a cast-off of an ill-conceived war.'

Graig was not sure he liked this man, but he and his father gathered as many countrymen as they could and accepted passage on one of the great southern galleons. The fleet passed northwards through dark, cold waters, landing once at Lindholm, the westernmost city of Deruys, to take on provisions. There they were joined by a few eager Deruvians who had been left behind by the main army. Somewhere north

of Te One-tahua, an island at the northern extremity of the Pei-ra Archipelago, the fleet was hit by a huge winter gale from the Wodhaitic Sea, and the huge ships were scattered like seeds, driven towards the Deruvian coast near Derningen. One of the smaller ships foundered and sank before anyone could get near it, and two others were crippled to the extent that they were forced to make for the small harbour at Brunhaven. The normally carefully-composed admiral threw curses at the wind and the sea for a week, stopping only when the last of his seaworthy vessels was accounted for. Then, running before a flagging breeze, the southern army sailed east until finally the vast delta of the great river came into view, a brown stain on the pure blue sea.

The shocking news of the defeat of the vaunted Army of Faltha spread quickly across the wide plains of central Faltha, as bad news is wont to do. It was whispered that the Jugom Ark had been lost, and the favour of the Most High had been withdrawn, because the Arrow-bearer had refused a challenge from the Destroyer. This could scarcely be believed, but many people were prepared to take the risk to find out for themselves. Initially, farmers and town-dwellers lined the route as the captive army and their conquerors made their Way west from Vulture's Craw. Some of those who gathered decried their own soldiers, hurling abuse and sometimes stones at the ones whose failure had consigned them to Bhrudwan rule. These were the same people who had cheered them on their eastward journey, reflected many of the captives angrily. With typical inconstancy the Bhrudwans left this disrespectful behaviour unpunished, except on occasion when they would drag some white-faced peasant out from behind whatever hedge he had hidden, and give him or her the standard punishment. The hand would be left behind in the road, and the local populace would be forbidden to touch it.

At Ehrenmal, the largest Favonian city save the capital Sturrenkol, the Destroyer and his retinue were received by the King of Favony and his court, who begged to be allowed to accompany their new master westwards to Instruere. Their request was granted, they were told, but they would not be given the City. That gift was to be given to another. The king waited too long to offer his thanks for this favour granted him, and to him, also, was given the standard punishment. Or, at least, that was the rumour that made its way around the Falthan camp.

Leith and Phemanderac were not free to join the others, but were afraid to ask why. They were kept apart in a small tent and forced to eat, make their ablutions and sleep in the company of their two Maghdi Dasht captors. Sometimes they were allowed to speak to each other, and the long days and weeks of desolation were whiled away with small talk: of the trees that grew on the hills above Dona Mihst and what animals might be found in them, of the huntsmen of the Great North Woods, some of whom occasionally visited Loulea; of the singing in the Hall of Worship, where the Dhaurians gathered to worship the Most High, and of the rolling breakers that surged along the cold grey coasts of the North March. Things of value, things enjoyed without a thought for the future, things they might never experience again.

'Amasian was almost right, Leith,' Phemanderac said one afternoon as they drew close to Sivithar. The boy turned his head to stare blankly at the philosopher.