He realized there were other creatures about: small white-furred foxes, stained pink around the jaws, a weasel-like creature with a striped black-and-white tail, even a species of hard-shelled insect that seemed impervious to the cold. He killed several of these by touching them. He scorched them with the warmth from his fingertips. Heat. Such a powerful force in this place, instrument of both life and death, of torture and salvation.
Thinking this last, he set about gathering the supplies to build a fire. It was not easy, weak as he was. He had often to stop and take sips from the water skin wrapped close to his abdomen and to nibble the hard flat bread, the only food he could stomach the possibility of. In the slanting light of the early dusk he fed a growing blaze. He tossed atop it the frozen, singed bodies of his soldiers. He ventured into the dark and cold and dragged back offerings to the flames. Again and again he did this, each time a small journey between extremes. His head reeled when he moved too quickly. Often he dropped to one knee, eyes closed, still, until the spinning stopped. A wind had kicked up again and with its shifting bluster it was impossible not to inhale smoke. Coughing and soot covered, he stayed at the task until the work was completed. His army was not to be food for the scavengers. Better they were freed to the air so that they might blow away and search for peace dispersed far across the Giver’s misbegotten creation.
Late that evening Leeka huddled near the blaze, his eyes tearful from ash. Grit caked on his lips and stuck to his teeth. Several times gusts of wind brought him the sound of women singing in the distance. Impossible, and yet he heard it with almost enough clarity to pick out individual words and to hum the tune inside himself. What to do now? He tried again and again to focus on this question. He was a general faced with a tragedy; before anything else he must form a plan of action. But he never got further than asking the question before some memory of horror yanked his attention away. Though his mind roiled with scenes of the slaughter, he could not fix one single image in which he had seen one of those enemy men creatures fall. Throughout the work of the day he had not found any of their dead. All the limbs he had collected and tossed to the flames had been from his own men. He found nothing that proved even one of the enemies had been killed, nothing that even led him to believe they had been wounded.
The invader’s trail was easy to see in the burnished light of morning. Despite the blurring effects of snow and the wind, the path they had left was like a dry river cut into the tundra. Whatever wheeled vehicles they pushed or pulled must have been massive, for the tread of them cut diagonal ridges into the ice several feet deep. He saw the crisscrossing tracks of the rhinoceros creatures. In and around these were myriad footprints left by the enemies themselves. Some of these were larger than a man’s by half. Others were small enough to be children’s. Still some appeared from the tread of the boots to be those of Acacian soldiers. Prisoners?
Leeka set out down the trail. He marched with all the supplies he could salvage dragged behind him on one of the smaller sleds. He fashioned tent poles into walking sticks and slammed these into the ice with each step. He pushed his pace, a single figure jogging in pursuit of an army. It did not make much sense. He was not yet sure what he was trying to accomplish. He just had to do something. He was a soldier of the empire, after all, and there was an enemy afoot, a nation to warn.
CHAPTER
Like all the Aushenians that Aliver had thus far seen, Igguldan dressed proudly in his national garb: long leather trousers shrunk skintight to the legs, a green-sleeved shirt completed with a blue vest, a felt hat set at an angle on his head. They were simple garments really, like something worn on a hunt. This was in keeping with the national character. Aushenians loved the rolling forestland of their country and liked to think themselves still the huntsmen their ancestors had once been. From the strong, long-limbed look of him, Aliver felt perhaps they were that.
Aliver had once complained to his father that other nations should not have been allowed to maintain a royal class. What sense did it make for one king to rule over other kings? It undermined their authority, threatened to make others equal to them. Should there not be a single monarch for the empire? Leodan had answered with measured patience. No, he had said, that would not be better. All the nations of the Known World-other than Aushenia-were subservient to them in many ways, in all matters of importance. They were conquered peoples, but they were not without pride. Keeping their kings and queens, their customs and traits, allowed them to hold on to some of that pride. This was important because people without a sense of self were capable of anything. “It takes nothing from you to occasionally call another man royal,” he had said. “Let them be who they are, and let our rule over them feel as gentle as a father’s hand upon a son’s shoulder.”
It was not a full contingent of the King’s Council that met the Aushenian prince. A few senior members sent their secretaries instead-something Leodan murmured about under his breath. Thaddeus was there beside the king, along with Sire Dagon of the League of Vessels and enough others to grant the meeting the appropriate air of importance. The foreign prince was surrounded by other officials of his state, advisers and seasoned ambassadors. Aliver knew the prince to be only three years his senior, but in action he seemed a much more practiced dignitary. The older men deferred to him. Before they spoke they asked his permission with their eyes. He conversed freely with Leodan and Thaddeus, and he recited a long greeting from his father, Guldan, which sounded much like a poem in its rhythm and occasional use of rhyme. Aliver might have been put out to see a young man more comfortable than he yet was in such a role, except that Igguldan, with his open face and smiling manner, was hard not to like.
“Gentle councillors of Acacia,” Igguldan said, “in truth I have never looked upon a more beautiful island-nor more impressive palace-than this one. Yours is a blessed nation, and Acacia itself is the central jewel in the most lavish of crowns.”
For some time he spoke as if his only objective were to sing the praises of Acacian culture. How he loved each and every view the high citadels offered! How he marveled at the quality of the stonework, the functional artistry of Acacian architecture, the refined demonstration of wealth without pretense. He had never eaten a finer dish than on the previous night: swordfish grilled on an open flame right before him and drenched in the sauce of some sweet fruit he had never before imagined. Everyone he had met here had been so courteous and dignified that he would take back to his homeland a new perception of model comportment. Coming as he did from a smaller nation, one prey to nature’s shifting seasons and temperament, he stood in awe of the sublime merging of power and tranquillity that was Acacia.
He had a smooth tongue, so much so that Aliver was slow to notice at what point he shifted his focus to the true business of his visit. By the time he caught on, Igguldan was declaring that his nation took pride in its long history as a free and independent state. He knew he did not have to remind any gathered in the room about the role that Aushenia had played in securing the Acacian peace. It was the dual fronts and the combined power of Aushenia and Acacia that had defeated their common enemies years before. They might have had fractious relations on occasion since that distant time, but it was the spirit of their former relationship that his father wished their two nations to remember now.
“That is why I come bearing my father’s request that you admit Aushenia peacefully into the Acacian Empire, as a partner province on par with Candovia, Senival, or Talay. If you accept us, Guldan swears that your nation will profit from it and never regret the decision.”