Cu’Linnett bowed low to Jan, hiding whatever expression might have crossed his face. “The Hirzg has given his orders,” he told the page. “Send word to the offiziers and have the horns call ‘Pursuit.’ ”
Jan watched the page, his face serious and drawn, ride away. He hugged Allesandra as the horns began to blare. She beamed up at him.
“We’ll rest tonight inside the walls of Nessantico,” he told her.
Justi ca’Mazzak
The courtiers, the sycophants, the chevarittai, the ca’-and-cu’: they gathered about Justi. He was surrounded by them while they cooed support and encouragement. He swaddled himself in their comfort, even though he glimpsed the uncertainty on their faces when they thought he wasn’t watching.
The pages had returned from the battlefields at three separate points around the city; the word was not good anywhere: the northern arm had been entirely routed and the Firenzcian forces were nearing the sections of the city outside the walls; the news was little better in the south, though the fens and marshes along the river worked as their ally there.
But there was one ray of hope: in the center, Commandant ca’Rudka had kept his men in order and was still holding back the main enemy force. It seemed that the Firenzcians could not break through him.
“Kraljiki,” the courtiers crooned, “everyone knew that it would not be a swift battle, and the closer to Nessantico the Hirzg comes, the less room he will have to maneuver and the more our resistance will stiffen.
The commandant is already demonstrating this. Hirzg ca’Vorl can’t take the city, not while your arm holds your sword. .”
If Justi noticed that the words were spiced with desperation, as if they were trying to convince themselves as much as him, he pretended not to notice. Instead, he nodded knowingly and gazed fiercely out from the wall at the Avi a’Firenzcia. Behind him, Nessantico seemed oddly quiet and deserted; ahead, the road and the fields beyond the last houses of the city swarmed with soldiers in blue and gold.
In their thousands, a bulwark against the Hirzg, they comforted him.
You have never been defeated, Kraljiki,” Bella ca’Nephri said loudly, and the ca’-and-cu’ murmured their agreement, all the chevarittai who had been his friends and cronies for decades now. “You will never be defeated.”
But when I went to war, it was the Hirzg’s army I had behind me. I never rode against a force that was the equal of ours, and I had Firenzcian-trained offiziers directing the Garde Civile, and Firenzcian troops swelling the infantry, and Firenzcian war-teni. .
He closed his mind to the doubts. He frowned more fiercely and gripped the pommel of his sword more tightly. “We will never be defeated,” he agreed. “Where is the Archigos?” he asked Renard, as always near his side. “I thought she would be here with me.”
“She told me to inform you that she has moved forward with the remaining war-teni and the Numetodo, Kraljiki,” Renard told him.
Justi frowned. “She did that without. .” he began, but there was a disturbance near the gate, the ranks of the Garde Civile parting to let a rider through: a page, the boy covered in dust and his horse lathered with sweat. He half-fell from the horse and staggered over to Justi, dropping to his knees before him. “Kraljiki,” he panted. “The commandant. . Could not stop the Firenzcians. . Falling back to the Fen Fields. . Garde Civile must come. . And the rest of the chevarittai. .”
Justi stared at the boy. The whispers were already spreading through the crowd, racing back into the city. Ca’Nephri and the other ca’-and-cu’
watched Justi, the masks momentarily struck from their faces. He could almost hear their thoughts. They were prepared to tell him whatever he wanted to hear, and they would be equally prepared to say whatever the Hirzg might want to hear, should he take the Sun Throne from Justi.
There was less loyalty in them than in the palais dogs.
As long as they thought Justi would remain Kraljiki, they would do as he asked. But if they believed he were about to fall, they would be on him, snarling and vicious. .
If you go out now, at least they will remember. At least they will say, “He died bravely.”
Justi chuckled at the boy, as if his reports were amusing. “Renard, please give this boy some refreshment. He’s had a hard ride and he’s done his task well. It seems I will have to go rescue our commandant.”
The sycophants laughed with him, their amusement edged with nervousness.
Justi drew his sword, and the crowd cheered. “We ride forward” he cried, “and we will show the Hirzg what happens when he rouses the ire of Nessantico.”
Their cheers rose as he urged his destrier forward, and the chevarittai closed around him and the troops of the Garde Civile surged through the gates of Nessantico to the sound of blaring horns.
They cheered, and Justi showed them a stern face, and he wondered whether he would ever ride through these gates again.
Ana ca’Seranta
Ana had sent the dozen or so most effective war-teni ahead with Commandant ca’Rudka and Karl. The others. . she wasn’t as certain about any of them-in more than one way.
The training with the Numetodo had been at best erratic. Ana found that she couldn’t blame the war-teni, given the way she’d reacted to seeing the Numetodo spell-magic. Many of them had resisted the
training, they’d scoffed and hesitated and argued with Karl, Mika, and the other Numetodo who tried to show them ways to speed their spells or to store them for future use. Several, like Ana, had found their faith tested enough that they’d become less rather than more effective.
Worse, she wondered whether when the time came-and she knew it would come-that ca’Cellibrecca called on them to obey him as Archigos rather than Ana, whether they would stay loyal to her at all.
But. . a handful had taken to the training with enthusiasm. And many of the Numetodo had set aside their suspicions and recent history and pledged their support to Nessantico. “The better of two ills,”
Karl had said to her when he brought the news. “We know well how ca’Cellibrecca would treat us.”
Is this what you want, Cenzi? Do You truly want me to defend a man who killed his own matarh and who would sacrifice me without a thought if he believed it would save him? Someone who used me in the same way Vatarh used me? I know ca’Cellibrecca and the Hirzg are no better and perhaps worse, but I could flee instead. I could run away with Karl, perhaps to his home or beyond into Mahri’s Westlands. Are You truly asking me to die here?
Are You saying that I must be willing to shed your blood and the blood of the teni who follow you for this? Is this is Your will? Is this why You brought me here? Please, I beg you, tell me. .
“Archigos!” Kenne’s voice broke in on her prayer. Ana, her head bowed and hands folded before her, brought her head up. “Look!”
Perhaps a half mile beyond the old gates of the city, the Avi a’Firenzcia made a turn eastward. Several buildings, the outliers of the city, were set there, with fields around them and the River Vaghian murmuring behind. The fields had, only a century before, been a low mosquito-infested swampland, frequently flooded when the rain-swollen Vaghian left its bed. But during the Kraljica’s reign, the Vaghian had been tamed with mounds of earthern banks, and the fens converted to farmland.
Ana had commandeered the second-story balcony of an inn there, at the curve of the road. From her vantage point, she could see out to where Kenne was pointing. The fields, like all the farmland to the east of the city, had been stripped and harvested early. The meadows were now muddy encampments. At the eastern edge of the camp, soldiers in the colors of Nessantico were pouring from a small woods bordering the fields, and she could hear distance-blurred shouting.