The Traitor Baru Cormorant (41 page)

“Tell them to go home to their families,” Baru commanded. “Tell them to bear word to Duchess Nayauru: come over to us, and we may still be merciful.”

“A fair fate for the fighters of Nayauru.” Tain Hu lifted the head in offering. “But what of the men of Falcrest, the men in masks?”

“Slash their tendons,” the Fairer Hand ordered. “Let Cattlson drown in his own cripples.”

 

22

T
HAT
night in camp, beneath the deerskin of her tent, Baru woke from a dream of a bird with an arrow behind its eyes and wings of blue fletching, circling the Iriad market, calling down to her:
I left it in the well!
From the dead peak of Taranoke came thunder and fire and she looked up to find the slopes covered in red sailcloth, rolling down on her, a scream in the air, a panic in the earth.

“My lady,” murmured the armsman who had shaken her awake. “My lady.”

“Ai.” She caught his wrist. “What news?”

“You cried out.” He averted his eyes, and she realized, with shame, that she did not know his name. “I thought you might prefer to be woken.”

“Of course,” she said, and then, seized by a sudden gratitude: “You did well.”

*   *   *

T
HE
victorious Alemyonuxe column, flush with the glory of the battle on the Fuller's Road, brought its wounded to a hamlet called Imadyff—Belthyc words,
a good grove
. When the village healer failed to save a favorite Alemyonuxe son from infection, his grief-mad father, a widower and a hard man, took the healer's own son as compense—unspooling his bowels through a slit in his belly. Two village mothers shot him mid-act, violence erupted, and the Alemyonuxe Coyotes, hungry and blood-mad, burned the hamlet down. Drunk on war they went south down the road into the nearest Nayauru vale, found storehouses of salt and meat in the village there, and made off with them, killing the guards and the party that came after them.

The weight of winter and the pace of the forest war had begun to tell. The men were scurvy-mad, starving, exhausted, and they had no loyalty or love for the people of Duchy Nayauru.

“We cannot turn on the yeomen and peasantry,” Baru hissed, and the Vultjag war council nodded in agreement, looking to the coin-and-comet banner, the open hand. But Tain Hu, eyes dark, shook her head and gave grim counsel. The Army of the Coyote had grown too huge, too hungry for salted meat and beer and blood. There was no forage to be had. In order to fight on enemy land, it had to hunt.

“There is a balance,” Tain Hu said, “seen everywhere in nature. It takes many prey to support a predator. We have brought too many predators to Duchy Nayauru.”

And Baru saw the Masquerade's hand at work. They had sent their woodsmen everywhere, driven out the deer, burnt the underbrush, gathered the forage and taken it into their fortifications. Left the Coyote no prey but Nayauru's serfs.

They had a broad eye for war, a willingness to fight not just in the field with horse and spear but everywhere, with everything. They planned for the long run. She knew this, knew it better than anyone else in the rebellion. Knew the secret strength it gave them.

After the council she went to Tain Hu. Baru twice drew breath to speak, and twice released it, before at last saying: “I'm going to order the Coyote to start demanding tribute from Nayauru's villages. Food and clothing. Arrows. Goats. Only what we need.”

“They will do that with or without your orders.”

“This way,” Baru said, “I can at least pretend to have control.”

She'd checked her private maps, rolled in horn, guarded jealously. Duchy Nayauru was bright blue. The Dam-builder's serfs, addicted to Fiat Bank loans, all loved her.

But the Coyote had to feed.

*   *   *

N
AYAURU'S
shock columns reached Ihuake's frontier forts and laid siege. Scurvied, desperate, surrounded by the Dam-builder's elite siege engineers, Ihuake's garrisons would not last a month. When they fell, Nayauru would control the border and, by the Belt Road, threaten the Cattle Lord's capital at the Pen. She could offer Treatymont a safe road north to strike Erebog. Her ultimate victory would be very close.

(Looking over the maps and reports, Baru frowned at shards of drunken memory, years old—fragments of a soliloquy, a horizon glimpsed through dark eyes, a certain laugh—sprays of light on amber reservoirs—where, why? Was it important?)

But before the forts could fall, the Army of the Coyote intervened.

Lyxaxu scouts found a tempting target: a large convoy, heavily guarded, bogged down in the spring mud just short of a river crossing. Oathsfire's longbowmen burned the bridge and began to hunt the convoy guards, killing the pack animals and horses first, then working on the men.

The convoy guards might have outlasted the supply of arrows—Oathsfire's yeomen had been trained to attack in mass, not with precision. But they had no stomach to stand by their wagons and be shot apart. First in a trickle, then in clots, they abandoned the convoy and scattered into the woods. The Coyote raiders saw some of them pillaging their own wagons before they fled.

In the foundered convoy the Oathsfire Coyotes found sacks and chests of coin. Wages meant for the siege technicians and levies at the front.

“We've won,” Baru said, thrilled by the news. “Nayauru's fighters already know that she can't keep their lands and families safe. Without pay they'll mutiny.”

“That's what you said in autumn.” Tain Hu huddled with her in the command tent, helping decode the encrypted Iolynic missives that came to them. “That Nayauru was bound by coin. She surprised us—she may yet again.”

“She may surprise me. Her fighters won't. We've cost Nayauru her momentum. She'll make terms.”

And she was right. The Duchess Nayauru sent riders to Ihuake to arrange a council, and to beg her to call off the Coyote loose in the woods.

In turn Ihuake sent riders to the Duchies Erebog, Lyxaxu, Oathsfire, Vultjag, and Unuxekome, petitioning the rebels to send emissaries to the Midlands, asking for the counsel of the Fairer Hand. A summit between the rebels and the great powers still uncommitted.

From Treatymont there came no word.

The rebels would sit in council with the Midland Dukes. The Traitor's Qualm stood poised to break.

*   *   *

A
S
they marched back east into Duchy Ihuake, moving toward the council in stealth, Baru found herself writing it as if it had already happened, as an extract from the future history the rebellion wanted to make:
The Council of the Midlands would be remembered as the first great turning point, the triumph of the Army of the Coyote's winter strategy, the moment that Aurdwynn broke the Traitor's Qualm and made the rebellion real
.

Foolish and naïve. But so hard to stop. It was the way Unuxekome would see the future—as a story, a saga coming toward its climax.

They would meet at Haraerod, on Ihuake's land, in the shadow of Mount Kijune. So they came:

Unuxekome and Oathsfire together, marching west from the Inirein, sniping at each other about money and women and matters of pride as they crossed the Sieroch plain. Oathsfire brought ten companies of elite scouts and bowmen to stand sentry. Unuxekome came with a coven of ilykari from his harbors and diving towns, armed with the knowledge of truth and falsity, ready to sniff out treachery. Duke Pinjagata joined them on the road to Haraerod, marching utterly alone, confident that his duchy's strength at arms made him more valuable as an ally than a prisoner or corpse. He put a stop to the two men's bickering: his soldier's tongue proved a match for both of them, and they judged it better to withdraw.

Haraerod's merchants and brewers and clothiers welcomed the business, the lanky bowmen wearing Oathsfire's millstone tabards and the keen-eyed laconic mothers with a taste for mason leaf.

Next came Erebog and Lyxaxu, the Crone and the philosopher-duke, and if they remembered years of cold rivalry in the bitter north, well, they were wise and sagacious, and set those years behind them. From the high pass by Mount Kijune they saw the coming of the Dam-builder Nayauru: a glorious stream of armored cavalry pouring in from the west, Nayauru white-gowned at their head, her posture unbreakably proud. To her left rode Autr Brinesalt, broad and mighty, hammer-armed, loam-skinned, and to her right Sahaule Horsebane, who carried a spear caked in dark blood.

“She certainly has a particular taste,” Lyxaxu remarked, watching the column through a spyglass. “Men with certain names.”

“You have a Maia name too, boy.” Erebog cackled at his reaction. “Your blood could go into Nayauru's great dream. Just tell your Mu it was a matter of state—she'll be forgiving.”

“The Incrastic breeders would say the old blood of the West is thin in me. Diluted and made pale by so long marrying north.” Lyxaxu lowered the glass. “I don't think it matters. We whisper about Nayauru, but the whispers lead us astray.”

“Tell me your great theory, O sage.”

“Nothing so sagacious.” Lyxaxu folded up the spyglass with delicate care. “Only that she loves them, and they love her. That is what we miss.”

Erebog looked away, eyes hooded. “Foolish to love a noble consort. Gets in the way.”

Lyxaxu didn't press her. Telling, the way she'd lowered her gaze: avoiding Lyxaxu's eyes, of course, but the horizon too. Like the distant Wintercrests might cut her.

Duchess Ihuake arrived two days later in a column of warhorses so torrential in its passage it had to be followed by a roadwork gang. She and Nayauru made a guarded exchange of peace gifts. With the Midlands and the Rebel North gathered, the council waited only for the Fairer Hand and her field-general … or for word of the Masquerade army and Duke Heingyl's cavalry riding up the road from Treatymont to kill them all.

The Army of the Coyote came through the woods, scattered in its columns, wary, feral.

Baru, Tain Hu, the Stakhieczi brave man Dziransi, and their armsmen came to the bluffs above Haraerod and looked down on a valley flooded in color: a tartan of duchies, a glorious and voracious mass of horse and tent, the speartips of the drilling Haraerod guard phalanxes cutting the sunlight.

“Devena,” breathed Tain Hu, and fell to her knees in awe. “See the Aurdwynn of old. See our ancient strength. Your Excellence—” She raised herself up on her haunches, balanced on her toes and one gloved fingertip, and looked back in wonder. “Look what we have made,” she said, smiling, her red-slashed cheeks dimpled. “Look at the spring our winter planted.”

They walked down into the valley, the coin-and-comet banner flying on a bent pole. The Duchess Ihuake sent her cavalry out as escort, and then Nayauru, not to be upstaged by her rival, sent her own, and Oathsfire rode out to them with horses for Tain Hu and Baru Fisher, but she refused to ride while her guards walked, so he dismounted to walk with them. His beard had flowered again with the spring and he spoke with profane good cheer.

They went into Haraerod through a roar of hooves and cheers. But it was a fearful adoration, Baru thought, uncertain, troubled.

They had gathered too much strength here. Charged the valley with too much power, uncertain of its loyalties.

 

23

“I
T
would be an error of rigor,” Lyxaxu said, “if we didn't press Her Excellence on this point. She put great confidence in Nayauru's willingness to wait. She was wrong. That's all I mean to say—”

Tain Hu snapped over him. “That's not all you mean. You're undermining.”

“Vultjag.” Oathsfire, glaring over the rim of his beer. “You're not pissing in the woods anymore. This is a council of peers. Show some respect.”

Tain Hu's mailed arms made an angry carillon on the arms of her seat. “Baru Fisher braved scurvy and starvation while you wasted her treasury on bowmen and fur. If you had a fraction of her courage or conviction you'd say what you want plainly—”

“We all want the same thing.” Lyxaxu, laughing, raised his hands. “Vultjag, please.”

“Is that so? Is that right, Lyxaxu?” Tain Hu came halfway out of her seat as she pointed to Erebog, as if the gesture came up out of the earth like a quake. “Let's check for an
error of rigor,
shall we? Erebog—you want what he wants? You'd like to palm the Fairer Hand and take her back home to hold until she's useful for kingmaking?”

Erebog sniffed at the inelegance of the question. “I share Lyxaxu's concern. Her Excellence misjudged Nayauru's intent. But it's clear to me that we owe our good position to the actions of the Coyote, and I understand that credit lies with her.”

I wish, Baru thought, that they would all just shut up and do as I say.

The rebel dukes had all agreed to meet in a Haraerod longhouse to take counsel. Tomorrow they would need to speak to Nayauru and Ihuake with one united voice. Tonight—

Well, tonight they made Baru despair of the very possibility.

“You mean,” Oathsfire said, “you owe
your
good position. There were Stakhieczi fighters in your land, weren't there, Erebog? This man Dziransi, emissary of the Mansion Hussacht, come south from their hidden fastness to speak with us at long last—how did he come to be there? Who would you have turned to for protection, if the Coyote hadn't come to open your roads and clear out your bandits? Would the Duchy Erebog be the Mansion Erebog now?”

Not without a certain sharpness, Oathsfire.

Lyxaxu shot Oathsfire a warning glare—cautioning him not to play that angle yet, perhaps.

No need: the Crone ignored him. “Immaterial. What matters now is that we court Nayauru away from Treatymont.”

“Court her away?” Unuxekome laughed low in his belly. “We all know Nayauru. She'll get in bed with both sides, and then continue doing whatever she pleases.”