“Jan. Hirzg.” His matarh was frowning, while ca’Damont merely looked uncomfortable. “I don’t think-”
“I have given my orders,” Jan snapped, interrupting her. “Starkkapitan? Do you see an issue with them?”
Ca’Damont shook his head once. He barked out quick orders. “I will meet with you later, Matarh,” Jan said. “On the Isle.”
Allesandra looked unconvinced. He thought she was going to argue further, but she only glared at him. He saw her glance once at Sergei; the Regent gave her the barest of shrugs under his own armor. His nose sent sparks of sun chasing across his face.
His matarh finally inclined her head. “As you wish, my Hirzg,” she said. “My Hirzg,” not “my son.” He could hear the irritation in that. She yanked hard on the reins of her horse and started south, a quartet of Garde Hirzg and one of the war-teni closing around her belatedly. The starkkapitan gave a salute. “Cenzi’s guidance to you, my Hirzg,” he said. “I will make certain the A’Hirzg remains safe.” He started to move away, then pulled up on the reins. “Fynn made an excellent choice in you,” he said to Jan. “Be careful, Hirzg Jan.”
Starkkapitan ca’Damont saluted again and moved away, the greater part of their entourage moving with him. Jan looked around at the others. “Let’s find this black sand,” he said to them. “Ambassador ca’Vliomani-the lead is yours.”
Karl led Jan’s squadron north along the Avi, the soldiers they passed saluting the Hirzg and his banner, then turned left down a more narrow street, leaving behind the army. The jingling of their armor and the stolid, steel-clad clop of their horses’ hooves on the cobbles was the loudest sound along the street. There were no more faces in the windows, no one visible up the curving way. Some of the doors to the buildings they passed were open; many of them forcibly. Trash littered the avenue. They passed several bodies: people a few days dead from the look of them, their corpses bloated and with limbs thrust at stiff, strange angles, maggot-encrusted and swarming with flies. Jan stared at them as they passed; he noticed Sergei doing the same, with an odd intensity.
Not long ago, these had been living, breathing people, perhaps hurrying to lovers, carrying their children, shopping for food in the markets or drinking in the taverns, carrying on with their lives. He doubted that they’d expected those lives to end so quickly and finally. He doubted they’d expected to turn into transient, accidental monuments to warfare.
He sniffed, unable to keep their stench from his nose-he wondered if Sergei could smell them at all. He clenched his sword tighter in his hand and wrapped the reins more tightly around his left hand.
To the south, they all heard a sudden rumbling like thunder, and faint shouting. Sergei, next to Jan, glanced that way worriedly. “I think, Hirzg,” he said, “that a battle has started. Perhaps we should return.”
Jan shook his head. “Ambassador, how far are we from this place?” he asked.
“Another two cross streets,” ca’Vliomani replied. “No more.”
“Then we’ll go on.”
Sergei pressed his lips tightly together, but made no other response.
They continued, coming to another, even smaller lane, where Karl paused and rose up in his saddle. Glancing down the narrow street, Jan saw a battered, ancient sign hanging from a building to the right: a badly-rendered swan was drawn in red paint on the boards.
“There,” ca’Vliomani called out to Jan and the others. “We should-”
He got no further.
From the left, from the right, several dozen painted warriors came shrieking toward them. The next minutes dissolved into a chaos Jan would remember for the rest of his life.
… a coruscation of blinding light from the front of the group, then another, and he realized that Karl and Varina had both released spells. He heard screams…
… the chevarittai at Jan’s right was taken from his saddle by a leaping Westlander, and the man’s horse rammed hard against Jan’s leg. His right leg was pinned between the two horses and he shouted at the pain that shot through the limb despite the protection of his greaves. He yanked at the reins of his horse…
… but there was more movement to his right and behind him even as he did that. He saw steel and brought his sword across his mount’s body almost too late-enough that the blow that would have taken him above the straps of his cuisse was deflected, but the Westlander’s blade instead chopped deep into his destrier’s rear leg. The horse whinnied in terror and pain. Jan saw the horse’s eyes go wide, felt the horse’s leg give out under him, and he was falling…
… “To the Hirzg!” he heard someone call. Jan was on the ground with a confusion of legs-both equine and human-around him. He pushed himself up quickly (his right leg sending fire up his spine at the abuse). There was a Westlander coming at him, and Jan managed to find the hilt of his sword, lift the heavy steel, and thrust underneath the chest plate of the man’s strange armor. He felt his blade enter flesh. It caught briefly, and Jan-grunting, feeling his mouth stretched in a rictus of fury-twisted and pushed, and the blade went suddenly in. The Westlander, impaled, still completed his strike, but the vambraces laced around Jan’s forearms took the brunt, though he thought that his right arm might have been broken by the blow. He tried to pull his sword from the man, but could not, and the man’s dead weight nearly pulled the weapon entirely from his grip, which had gone numb and dead itself…
… Another Westlander shrilled to his left, and Jan pulled desperately at his sword again, though he knew it would be too late. But another sword-a Firenzcian one-sliced across the man’s throat, nearly severing the head. Jan was spattered with hot blood…
… And hands were lifting him. “Are you all right, my Hirzg?” someone asked, and Jan nodded. His right hand was tingling, but seemed to have returned to life. He clenched the fingers, working them in the mailed glove, then reached down and pulled his sword free. He turned. ..
… he saw a trio of Westlanders gathered as a shield around another of the painted warriors, this one with a bird tattooed over his shaven skull and face. Sergei was there, his sword rising and falling, but the Firenzcian soldier next to him fell, his hand taken from his wrist. Jan rushed toward that gap, not thinking but only reacting…
… and somehow he was past the guard and in front of the bird-marked Warrior. The Westlander’s armor turned Jan’s first cut, and the hard bronze pommel of the man’s sword slammed into Jan’s chin underneath his helm. He went staggering backward, tasting blood…
… As he saw the bird-warrior parry Sergei’s attacking sword. ..
… as he charged again at the man, grimacing and grunting, and the Westlander couldn’t defend against both of them at once. It was Jan’s blade that slithered through, that found the chink between the rounded bands of the man’s armor and entered him. The Westlander gaped as if surprised. Jan heard a voice somewhere call out a strange name: “Tecuhtli!” as the man fell to his knees. Sergei’s sword followed Jan’s, striking the man in the neck and head. The bird-warrior went down onto the blood-spattered cobbles, facedown.. .
… and it was over except for the roaring of his pulse in his ears. Jan realized that he was breathing hard and fast, that his heart was pounding so furiously that it threatened to burst from his rib cage, that his leg and both arms ached, that he was liberally coated with gore, and that at least some of the blood was his own. He was standing wide-legged and bent over, breathing hard. His stomach heaved; he swallowed hard against the searing bile, forcing himself not to be sick. He felt Sergei’s hand clap him on his armored shoulders. He blinked, looking around him: there were at least a dozen bodies on the ground, some of them clad in the black-and-silver livery of Firenzcia. A few were still twitching; as Jan watched, those of the Garde Civile were dispatching those of the Westlanders who were still alive. There were streams of blood trailing from the bodies, and entrails spilled on the street like obscene sausages.