The Seer - eARC (71 page)

“He dies, many times, in many ways, in many futures, but I cannot see everything, let alone the causes. Maris, can you heal him?”

“It would take some time.”

“We don’t have time. Can you do something quickly? Enough that he can move and speak?”

“I have no desire to do that. He holds Dirina and Pas as hostages, and has across the years tried to kill you. Why should I help him?”

Amarta put a hand on Innel’s unbandaged shoulder. His eyes fluttered open. For a moment he gave the look of an injured animal: confused and frightened. Then he was asleep again.

“Because,” said Amarta, “I ask you to.”

“Elders, we must leave,” said Mara at the door to the longhouse, one hand on the flank of her shaota. Her horse was nosing the door open, eager to be away into the battle.

The elder man sat on the bench and motioned to the large doors that faced to the west. Two Teva children, both with fresh blood-dotted scars encircling their forearms, pulled open the doors to let in the day’s light.

“Ride with the wind,” the woman in orange said to them, holding her hand palm out toward them. They each ran by her on their way out the door, touching her palm with their own.

“Elders,” Mara said, her voice rising. “The Arunkin are coming. We must go.”

The woman in blue touched Mara’s face and smiled. “Now is the time. We stay here, daughter.”

“No,” Mara said, putting her hand atop her mother’s hand on her face. “You are not ready.”

“You are not ready, perhaps,” said her father. “You will be.”

“I will not leave you,” Mara said fiercely.

The elder woman in orange said, “You will. It is time for us to stand where we have governed, stand against the invaders. Your turn will come.”

The three elders arrayed themselves on the bench that faced the open door, took each other’s hands.

Mara’s shaota nosed her again more urgently. Her voice broke. “I am not ready to see you die.”

The Arunkin army’s horns blew, again and again.

“Then mount up, Mara,” her father the elder said, his voice as hard as stone. “Make us proud.”

Horns sounded distantly from the field as Maris reached fingers of thought into Innel. As he moved restlessly in his sleep, she sought to shift his blood to win its battle.

“Maris,” Amarta whispered, “is he ready yet? Is he sensible? Can he walk?”

“Not yet,” muttered Maris. “This is not fast work.”

“Yes, I am,” Innel answered, words slurring, blinking, breathing hard. He managed to sit up, squinting as he looked between the two of them. “What am I to do, Seer?”

“Talk to the elders, ser. Try to understand them. To listen.”

“To listen,” he said dully.

“Yes. Can you do this?”

He struggled to get out of bed, and suddenly Nalas was there, helping him to his feet. Maris saw Innel trembling. She put her focus back inside him.

“That is all?” he asked. “Listen?”

“Truly listen, ser.”

He nodded.

“Also,” Amarta said, squinting, as if peering into the distance. “I may not have another chance to tell you this: low to high and left to right.”

“What?”

“I don’t understand it either. If you live out the day, it will be important to you. But if you don’t leave now, it won’t matter at all.”

“Amarta,” Maris said, “I need more time. He is still very ill.”

“There is no more time,” Amarta said.

Innel stumbled past the two of them, Nalas half holding him up. “Bring my horse,” Innel said to one of the guards. The man hesitated. Innel drew himself up and gave the man a hard look.

“Yes, ser,” the guard said, dashing outside.

Innel considered the Teva sleeping on the cots. “We’ll need two horses.” He looked at another guard, who left as well.

“I will go with you,” Nalas said.

“Not safe,” Innel managed.

“Ser, when the general finds you’re gone, she’ll hold me responsible. I would far prefer to take my chances with you.”

Innel made a thoughtful sound, then nodded, turned to stumble toward the door, Nalas holding him up.

“Ama,” Maris said, still making what changes she could to Innel’s body as he lurched out the pavilion door. “He is not ready.”

“He has to be,” Amarta said as she woke the Teva.

As Tayre watched, the sun lit up the rocks of the mesa to the south, making them glow.

The Teva had multiplied in number, streaming in from the buildings of Ote, coming out from the cover of trees, trickling in from the edge of the Rift. They now numbered in the hundreds, dashing and galloping across the area between the army and the town, darting forward and back from the Arunkel line while staying just out of bow-shot range.

It was nothing like a formation. One moment they they swooped and swirled like a flock of crows, the next they seemed a chaotic mob. Yipping and shouting, singing and laughing, the sound carried like a distant mob of overenthusiastic troubadours.

Showing off, Tayre guessed.

Or warming up.

Still the Arunkel army did not move.

Tayre took a sip of wine from a skin, a chew of jerky, and shifted to get more comfortable on his branch.

Innel clung to neck of his horse, hot and exhausted. Nalas sat behind him, keeping him from falling off. The three other Teva were on the second large horse, leading them forward.

Innel made eye contact with the Teva he had hurled across the room the previous night, before his sister had tried to kill him. The man’s face was covered in heavy yellow and purple bruises. One eye was swollen shut. Innel was starting to wonder if it seemed unfair to him to be hurled about like a sack of grain by someone nearly twice his size when the Teva nodded at him and grinned widely.

Innel blinked in surprise. He didn’t understand the Teva, he realized. Not even a little.

He wondered what else might fall into that category.

Truly listen, ser.

As they made their way around the outskirts of the field of battle, following game trails though trees and high rocks to enter Ote unseen from the rear, war horns sounded. The signals for battalions one, two, then three, in succession. His army, even if he was not there to lead it.

Lismar would find herself in an enviable position today: she could take credit for this battle’s success yet attach any failures to Innel. Through the trees he caught glimpses of the massive motion forward, the army surging to the same destination he was.

He knew what Lismar would call what he was doing now. For a moment he considered turning back, crawling into his bed and putting his faith in an accomplished general and the overwhelming force now advancing on the Teva. By everything he knew, all the years of study, the tutoring by veteran commanders like Lismar who had made the empire what it was today, Arunkel would surely win this day. Better armed, extensively trained, once again it seemed impossible his people could lose.

Whatever Lismar might think, it was only treason to be conversing with the enemy while the battle raged around them if he failed to accomplish what he had come for.

He thought of his brother. He knew what he would say now.

Don’t push until you must. Then go in with all you have.

All he had.

“Hurry,” he said to the Teva leading the way as he pressed his horse forward to Ote.

The sound of hoofbeats was wrong.

“Not ours,” the elder man said.

The woman in blue sighed, took the hands of the other two, squeezed them briefly. She drew her knife.

She had chosen the knife because it had belonged to her birth mother and hers before that. It was said to have touched the depths of the Rift. Maybe that was true, because all the Arunkin she had killed with it had seemed to have a moment of startlement as life left them, a deep darkness in their eyes. Or perhaps that was surprise at having been slain by a small, elderly woman. It was hard to tell.

In any case she would fight her last fight with it not because it was the most effective weapon she could take into this precious time but because it was the weapon that was closest to her spirit. A companion of many years. Almost as many as those who stood beside her.

To her right her wife in orange took a few steps back and drew her bow. To her left her husband stepped around the table and took up the curved sword of their people.

At the doorway stood three Teva, silhouetted against the morning light.

“Elders,” one said.

“Nahma?” It was his voice, but he had been captive in the Arunkin’s camp, so treachery was possible. She was ready.

Nahma stepped inside, followed by Makan and Rmala. “I have brought someone to you,” he said. “It may be a good thing. I do not know.”

A large figure followed them inside. He waved away a companion, who stepped back outside. Shuffling and swaying slightly, he took in the three armed elders.

Arunkin. Breathing heavily. Not looking at all healthy.

He nodded and spoke. “I am the Lord Commander of the Host of Arunkel. At least for the moment. You are the governing body of the Teva?”

“We are,” said her husband, his sword still out.

“What do you do here, Arunkin?” asked her wife, taking arrows in one hand and holding them ready, her bow in the other.

In the large man’s eyes she saw something she recognized: a willingness to die.

It gladdened her. She smiled at him.

He said: “I have been told that I should apologize for my army’s intrusion into your lands.” He paused to take another deep breath, as if recovering strength to continue. “If this is so, I must first understand why. Will you tell me?”

“The fighting begins, elders,” said Nahma from the door.

“All of you,” said the elder in orange, “Go to your shaota. Join your kin.”

Nahma paused a moment to look back.

“Make us proud,” said the woman in blue softly.

“I will, Mother,” Nahma said, leaving with the others. Now only the three Elders and the tall Arunkin remained.

It was clear to the woman in blue that, at least in this moment, despite that the Arunkin and their large and clumsy horses thundered closer to Ote, this man was not their enemy.

“Lord Commander of Arunkel,” she said, lowering her knife. “If your army breaks through to Ote, we expect to die defending this house. If you stay, we cannot offer you safety. Not from our people, not from yours.”

He nodded at this, waved it away. “Tell me about the gold,” he said, lowering himself gingerly to the bench. “Everything. As quickly as you can. Then, if we are all still alive, perhaps we can come to some accord.”

Maris continued to heal Innel even as Nalas lifted him onto the horse. Then the horse left and he was beyond her reach. She drew her attention back to Amarta, who took her hand and led her and the remaining two Teva out into the camp. As they passed the guards, they looked away, as if choosing not to see Amarta and a mage and their other two captives leaving the tent.

Prudent of them, Maris thought.

The camp was nearly deserted. Amarta led them out through the fenceline and toward the high rocks. One of the Teva turned to the other and spoke. Maris’s command of Tevan was minimal, but it seemed a simple order to return home. He left.

From there the three of them walked up into the rocky hills. In a small clearing surrounded by high rocks, Amarta stopped. “Here, I think,” she said.

“Here, what?” Maris asked, turning in place, feeling the character and quality of the land below her.

Then she felt him.

Gallelon stepped out from behind a rock, brushing strands of ginger hair behind his ear. His expression of surprise mirrored Maris’s own.

“This is unexpected,” Gallelon said. “Maris, why are you here?”

His warmth drew her like a hot wind. She took his etheric touch and fed it back down and into the earth, where it found him again through his feet, the circle completing between them like a kiss and embrace in one. His easy smile turned broad.

“An explanation,” she said to him in the ancient language of her kind, “would bring with it many complexities and an expense of time.”

“As always,” he muttered, and looked at the others. “Jolon of the Teva, I believe.”

Jolon dipped his head. “High One.”

“Arunkin,” he said of Amarta, tone slightly puzzled. Then to Maris: “This seems a bit more than coincidence. Were you looking for me?”

Amarta spoke. “My doing, ser. I don’t have time to explain, but I must convince you to come with us. Tell me what I must say, ser, to gain your help.”

“You’ll have to do better than that, Arunkin; my willingness to help for nothing in return has gone sour lately.”

“She is the seer, Gallelon. Of rumor and truth.”

“I don’t care if she’s the Rift worm. I’m not in a charitable mood.”

Amarta took a breath. “There is a foal in your future, ser. And the way she looks at you, and you at her . . .” Amarta’s eyes went bright. “I would give so much to be hers, the way you could be, if you help us.”

At this Gallelon’s mouth slowly fell open.

Amarta waited a moment more. Then: “Jolon, will you lead us to the mine?”

As Tayre watched, a long horn blast sounded, then another, and a third. Shields raised, the army advanced, flanks of cavalry riding forward around the sides, pulling the entire mass of thousands into a rough crescent shape.

The Teva, now perhaps four hundred strong, were still vastly outnumbered. As the advancing cavalry picked up speed, the Teva stopped their dancing, took bows in hand, and stood in their stirrups.

The forward ends of the lines of armored warhorses, the points of the stretched crescent shape, had nearly reached the town. Nimble and maneuverable as the shaota might be, Tayre was having a hard time seeing how these few defenders of Otevan were going to survive this.

Indeed, the Teva themselves looked uncertain, their horses backing toward the town into a loose line, as if they thought their single row could somehow defend their town against the rows-deep infantry and armored warhorses bearing down on them.

Then the Teva line broke apart, each side moving to meet the approaching warhorses. A bit out of range yet, Tayre would have wagered, but he would be wrong: Arunkel cavalry suddenly stumbled, soldiers clutching at sudden shafts between gaps in armor and helmets, doubling over, horses running forward without riders.