Tomorrow's Kingdom (45 page)

The one who'd planted his vile seed in the belly of the only woman who'd ever treated Mordecai as a man like any other!

Mordecai felt a surge of hatred the likes of which he'd never known. Even as he did, he saw the cockroach take in the sight of the vast New Man army. Like the coward he was, he faltered and reined in his horse, forcing the men behind him to do the same.

There was a long moment of silence in which nobody moved.

Then, in a voice thick with fear, the cockroach wheeled his horse around and bellowed, “
RETREAT
!”

Heart hammering with sudden, uncontrollable excitement, Mordecai stood up in his stirrups and shouted, “After him!”

As one, the New Men uncertainly looked over their shoulders at him.

“Your Grace—” began Murdock in alarm.

“
AFTER
HIM
,
YOU
BASTARDS
!” screamed Mordecai, frantically waving the New Men toward the canyon. “
CHARGE
!”

FIFTY-NINE

“
T
HEY'RE ON THEIR WAY BACK
, Your Majesty!” shouted Rachel, looking almost as terrified as Persephone felt. With the hand that wasn't clasped tightly in Persephone's, she pointed toward the canyon. “And by the looks of it, they have the entire New Man army at their heels!”

Looking past the Khan bodyguards who'd been ordered not to leave her side under any circumstances, Persephone went cold when she saw that Rachel was right. And though it was precisely what Azriel had
hoped
would happen, it was harrowing to see him at the rear of the retreat, just a step ahead of hundreds of sword-wielding, screaming New Men.

Persephone held her breath as he, Zdeno and the other horsemen who'd been used as bait burst out of the canyon and ducked. The instant they'd done so, Fayla and her waiting archers loosed their arrows. The New Men at the front of the attack were hit to a man. As they staggered backward, Fayla and her archers readied their
bows for a second volley, and the Khan and the rest of the fighting force swarmed the mouth of the canyon. Those in the front stabbed, chopped, bashed and kicked bodies aside; those behind cleared the bodies and cut down the few who managed to escape. Persephone could see panic on the faces of the nearest New Men—both at the unexpected ferocity of the attack they were facing and also at the fact that they were being packed in more and more tightly together as the New Men at the other end of the canyon continued to rush forward, unaware that their comrades' escape from the canyon was blocked.

Distant shouts of surprise and alarm from the heart of the New Man camp informed Persephone that Robert and his men had begun dropping out of the trees in which they'd been crouched all night. Though she was unable to see them, she could easily picture them rushing forward to close off the far side of the canyon so that the New Men could not retreat.

Sandwiched between two fighting forces, they were doomed.

Persephone felt no remorse whatsoever. She'd made it known throughout the kingdom that she'd spare any New Man who deserted before the final battle. Any who'd chosen not to do so were not only her enemy but the enemy of her realm, and for that they deserved to die.

It wasn't long before the carrion birds began to gather overhead. As the intensity of the battle gradually began to abate, the Khan Ghengor grinned over his shoulder at her and said, “Easier than shooting fish in a barrel, eh, Your Majesty?”

Cur—who, since the start of the melee, had been sitting at Persephone's side with his hackles raised and his teeth bared—snarled wetly at these words. Persephone said nothing. The gods had cursed her once before for her hubris—she'd not tempt them to do so again by giving voice to her rising confidence that victory was within her grasp and that those she loved best in the world would all survive to enjoy it.

Unfortunately for Persephone, the gods must have been able to hear her thoughts as easily as her words, because each of the New Men who'd heretofore been desperately attempting to fight his own way clear from one end of the canyon or the other, suddenly began surging forward en masse. As they did so, the fact that they were packed shoulder to shoulder became an advantage, for it gave them the power of a united front.

One hand clasped tight in Rachel's and one hand pressed against her rock-hard belly, Persephone breathlessly watched Azriel, Zdeno, Barka and the others fall back a step, and then two. A break appeared in the line, and a New Man tried to dart through. He was cut down, but the space he left when he fell gave the man behind him a chance to fully swing his sword. Zdeno, who was fighting beside Azriel, leapt out of range in the nick of time, but as he did so, he stumbled over a body and went down himself.

As the sword-wielding New Man raised his blade, the spear-toting soldier behind him stumbled through the gap and Rachel screamed.

Wrenching her hand free of Rachel's, Persephone
planted both hands on Ghengor's back, shoved hard and shouted, “
GO
HELP
!”

Ghengor and the other Khan needed no further prompting than this. Hefting their battle-axes into the air, they ran screaming into the fray with Cur hot on their heels.

It was then that the Fates, who'd ever been so fond of playing tricks on Persephone, played their cruellest one yet.

For as she stood there believing that she was about to see the love of Rachel's life cut to pieces, Azriel, in a desperate attempt to save Zdeno, lunged and lost his footing. He managed to twist in mid-air as he fell on top of Zdeno, but that only made the situation worse for him. Because it meant that while Zdeno was now entirely shielded from harm, the well-muscled abdomen that Persephone had, on more than one occasion, threatened to slit bow to stern, was left utterly exposed to the cold steel of the New Man's raised blade.

SIXTY

E
VER AFTERWARD
, whenever Persephone thought about the three seconds that changed her life forever, they replayed in slow motion.

The grin on the face of the gore-splattered New Man as he prepared to plunge the bloody blade of his sword into Azriel's exposed belly.

The sound of her own scream being cut short as her first labour pain slammed into her with the force of a sledgehammer, sucking the air out of her lungs and driving her to her knees.

The sense—rather than the sight—of the spear hurtling toward her.

The fleeting thought that she was too paralyzed by the excruciating pain to move out of the way and that she'd never thought it would end this way.

And then …

And then …

SIXTY-ONE

“Y
OUR GRACE
, we must retreat at once,” insisted Murdock.

“Retreat?” Mordecai laughed hollowly. “We cannot
retreat
, Murdock, you fool!” he snarled. “My entire army is trapped in that godforsaken canyon!”

“I was not suggesting that the men should retreat, Your Grace, for they are not only trapped but doomed,” said Murdock, his protuberant eyes flicking toward the canyon from which the screams of his wounded and dying soldiers rose up like a chorus of the damned. “I was speaking of you and me alone.”

“Alone? Without my wife?” asked Mordecai, spitting out the word
wife
like it was a bad taste in his mouth.

“She is sick, body and soul, Your Grace,” said Murdock. “I fear she would slow us down to the point of capture.”

“Aurelia is the only woman in camp,” said Mordecai. “To leave her behind would almost certainly see her ravished to death when the savages from the queen's army come looking for the spoils of war.”

“Yes, it would,” agreed Murdock.

Mordecai did not say anything more on the subject of his miserable wife and her fate, choosing instead to return to staring in numb disbelief at the sight of his ambitions being utterly destroyed. Even when he'd lost his power over the dead king, the queen had slipped through his fingers, and his alliance with Bartok had come to naught, Mordecai had always been able to comfort himself with the knowledge that he yet had his great army of New Men and that if all else failed, he could crush—or at least inflict severe damage upon—his enemies.

Now he did not even have that.

And since he lacked the position and means to tempt, coerce or conscript new men into a fighting force loyal to none but him, he would never have that again.

Unbelievably, he was back to where he'd started out so many years before—a crippled nobody in possession of nothing.

He wondered if he was going to vomit.

“Your Grace,” pressed Murdock. “By setting fire to our tents and taking certain other measures, I've managed to buy us some time but if we do not leave now, while the bandits on this side of the canyon are occupied slaughtering the men, they will turn their attentions upon us.”

Still, Mordecai just sat upon his horse staring at the end of his dreams.

“It will never be over until you are dead or captured, Your Grace,” said Murdock sharply. “As long as there is breath, there is hope, and you may trust me to do
everything in my power to keep you breathing. But you must come with me
now
!”

Hearing Murdock speak in such an uncharacteristic fashion helped to bring Mordecai back to his senses almost as much as did the sight of one of the bandits whirling around and fixing his hate-filled eyes upon Mordecai. The wretch immediately received a sword thrust in the back for his troubles but Mordecai did not need to be told that he might not be so lucky next time—and that if the man's comrades were
all
to turn their hate-filled eyes upon him, the end he would suffer at their hands would be a bloody one indeed.

And so, without another word to Murdock or another thought to his bride, Mordecai wheeled his mount around and was about to begin galloping away when he heard the queen scream—and then stop screaming with chilling abruptness.

His cold heart hammering hard, Mordecai wheeled his horse back around, stood up in his stirrups and strained to catch a glimpse of her.

But the only thing he could see at the end of the narrow canyon was a large pile of black-clad bodies and a tiny but beautiful patch of the pink-tinged early morning mists that hung above the distant jungle.

And so, with the fleeting thought that he never thought it would end this way, Mordecai turned and galloped away.

SIXTY-TWO