Good for the Saranah, Amemun thought, but bad for Grenda Lear.
CHAPTER 8
His name was Captain Waylong and he was a sapper and a soldier; a sapper and a soldier for whom, exactly, was beyond him at the moment. As his company marched south past the border tree, a wideoak that for centuries had marked the meeting point of Haxus and Hume on this road, he pondered the strange turns and twists of fate. Only three months before, he and his company had swung past the same wideoak, part of a Haxan army on its way to invade Grenda Lear. Now he was part of a Chett army, nominally under the command of a prince of Grenda Lear, on its way to invade… well, Grenda Lear. Without understanding all the politics involved, he certainly understood the irony.
He wasn't so sure he understood his own feelings on the matter. He had been quite proud of being a Haxan, and almost as proud of his haughty and clever king, Salokan. After all, he had spent his whole life being a Haxan and learning to despise the weak and effeminate enemy south of the border. Now, although Salokan was still his ruler in name, Haxus was no longer an independent Kingdom; indeed it did not properly belong to any Kingdom, since the real power behind Salokan, Lynan Rosetheme, was not much more than an outlaw in his own homeland and possessed nothing except two of the mythical Keys of Power.
Just then a detachment of Chett cavalry trotted past. Waylong spat dust out of his mouth. Well, he corrected himself, possessed of nothing except two Keys of Power, the orphan Kingdom of Haxus and a bloody huge army. He could not help grinning. That's a damn sight more than many other kings can claim, I suppose.
Despite all the political and moral conundrums he now carried as extra baggage, Waylong had one thing to be grateful for. Lynan Rosetheme was leaving Haxus. Thinking about that pale creature sent a shiver down his spine, and he was glad his soil was free of it.
Unlike many of the soldiers in his company, Waylong had actually seen Lynan Rosetheme up close. As a captain he had been present when the remnants of the old Haxus officer corps had been summoned to the palace in Kolby. Salokan was seated in the throne, and to his right and slightly behind him stood the conqueror, small and white. The throne room was lined with the terrifying Red Hands, Lynan's personal bodyguard; he had seen too many of his own people go down beneath the short swords of those bastards.
Waylong remembered that Salokan had looked ill and almost as pale as Lynan, and that his right hand was heavily bandaged. He remembered, too, how both men had eyes that seemed dead to the world around them. It was the Chett queen Korigan who spoke and explained the situation to them alclass="underline" most would be reconstituted as the new Haxus army, but some specialty units, such as the sappers, would be moving south with the Chetts to invade Hume once again. The assembled officers gave a faint-hearted cheer, neither keen to return to the place of their defeats nor to serve under such a forbidding master.
But Salokan stood then and told them they would be serving the best interests of Haxus, and the destiny of Haxus to take Hume would finally be realised. The officers cheered a second time, with more gusto, but Waylong would never forget how Salokan had sounded like a slave and not a king; he, like Korigan, nothing more than a mouthpiece for some darker presence.
And now here they all were, tramping through a country that only months before had known peace for over fifteen years. Not only his own company of sappers, but also quite a few units of heavy infantry, their spears carried nonchalantly over their shoulders as if they were out hunting bear cubs. The rest of the Haxus army Lynan had left behind, but none of his Chetts. Waylong looked on with respect whenever the famous horse archers rode by, sitting in their saddles with greater ease than any Haxus rider was capable of; and he looked on with something like awe at the Chett lancers, a kind of cavalry no one in the east thought the Chetts capable of producing. And then there were the Red Hands and the Ocean Clan riders under the command of the ugliest human being Waylong had ever seen; they carried the short sword as well as the sabre and recurve bow, and he had seen first-hand how proficient they were at using all three.
He looked briefly over his shoulder and wondered if he would ever again see his homeland, and realised with a dim pain that he no longer truly had a homeland. For better or worse, the Haxus he grew up in was gone forever.
'Every day you come closer,' she said.
'I'm not coming for your sake,' Lynan told her. They were standing in a green grove filled with a heavy mist.
Lynan felt soaked through. His hair stuck to his scalp and face like seaweed on an exposed rock. His skin was as cold as marble. She was half lost in a tangle of vines and creepers, and it was hard to tell where she ended and the forest began.
'Of course you're coming for my sake.' She smiled at him, and he could feel himself becoming aroused. Her voice was like a summer breeze, and her skin looked as soft as a carpet of moss. 'You want to be with me again. I can hear your dreams. You dream about me all the time.'
'No,' Lynan said between his teeth, but even as he said the word he knew he was lying. 'No!' he repeated, more fiercely, but it sounded no more convincing.
She stepped towards him, her outline blurring with the leaves and branches that surrounded her. Her beautiful face flickered in the shadows. She stopped a few paces from him. 'You can lie to your friends, Lynan, but you cannot lie to me. We are the same, you and I, and I can read you as easily as I read the twisting tree and the burrowing badger.'
He tried turning his gaze away from her, but it was useless. Wherever he looked, she was there. 'I want nothing to do with you! Leave me alone!'
'All life desires me,' she said sweetly.
'All life despises you,' he spat back.
'There is less difference between the two emotions than you imagine.'
'You sound like a priest,' he said scornfully.
'And there is less difference between me and a priest than you imagine.' Suddenly she was right before him, and she stroked his cheek with one scratchy finger. 'We both want your soul.'
'You want it for yourself.'
'And now we are back to desire.' She retreated a step and frowned in thought. 'I remember what it was like. Centuries ago, before your kind came to Theare. I remember what it was to make love, to desire the body of another and not his soul. In a way I am more innocent now than I was then: my desire is less base, more pure. I desire the best in you, not the worst.'
'You will take everything from me, my soul and my life.'
'They are the only things about Lynan Rosetheme worth having.' She laughed, and the sound of it was like leaves falling. 'Oh, I cannot forget your gifts. The Keys of Power will look fine against my breasts.'
'You shall never have them.' But even as he said the words the two Keys around his neck melted away and appeared around her own, the two talismans resting between her pale green breasts with nipples the colour of old wood.
'What is it you desire the most, Lynan Rosetheme?' she asked, coming close to him again. Her breath brushed against his face like a cold wind. 'What do you want, my conquering prince?'
Lynan felt his sex stiffening. His desire for her was overwhelming. Without volition his hands stretched out to cup her breasts.
'What is it you want?' Silona asked again, smiling sweetly. She took one of his hands and placed it between her thighs. 'Above all else, is it Silona you desire?'
Deep within him stirred a terrible anger, something that belonged to Silona as much as it belonged to him. He pushed her away with a furious shout. She flew back in a flurry of whirling leaves and disappeared.