“I doubt that.”
“One more will make it certain,” Spendlove replied. He knelt over the disemboweled man on the ground. “There’s still life in him. I can probably use him again. Brother Ash-ern, prepare yourself.”
The other painted monk nodded.
“Why take chances?” Fend asked, waving at the disemboweled captive. “Use the girl.”
“I thought you wanted to kill her in front of the holter,” Spendlove said. “After all, you brought her all this way.”
“I had that whim,” Fend said. “It has passed. Just leave her where he’ll find her.”
Desmond glanced at the dying man.
“You may be right,” he allowed. “If he pops off in the middle, Ashern’s sending will go awry.”
Fend and his Sefry rode off. A few moments later Spend-love chopped his head at one of the men, and said, “Bring her out.” A struggling woman was led from one of the tents.
Holter, where are you? Stephen wondered frantically. As-par White was nowhere to be seen.
If the holter noticed Fend riding off—and of course he would—he would probably follow in hopes of killing him. Stephen realized he could no longer count on Aspar White; the man’s obsession with the one-eyed Sefry was obvious, though he had never deigned to explain why.
Stephen thought he knew what Spendlove was up to, now, though it seemed incredible. If he didn’t act very soon, the young woman below was going to be murdered in a very unpleasant way.
He’d just seen one man die that way. He would die himself before he watched it happen again. Steeling himself, he began moving toward the camp as quickly as he could.
8
The Plain of Terror
A saint’s breath of wind sighed along the battlements of Cal Azroth as Neil gazed past the queen to the sun melting on the distant green horizon. The plain of Mey Ghorn was open and still, the only motion in sight the occasional whirl of swallows overhead. The triple ring of canals around the fortress was already in shadow, and soon their waters would hold stars. Off to his right he heard soldiers talking in the garrison, connected to the inner keep by a causeway.
The queen often stood like this at evening, facing Eslen.
Laughter bubbled up from the gap between keep and garrison. Elseny, by the sound of it. Neil glanced behind and down and saw her there. From above, the circle of her yellow dress and her dark hair made her resemble a sunflower. She was in the citadel’s narrow, high-walled horz, on the big flat rock that was at the center of it, putting flowers in the wickerwork feinglest two of the old serving women had built earlier that day. Neil had never seen one exactly like this, vaguely human in shape. In Liery it was considered ill luck to build one so, though he had never heard why.
A movement to the side caught his eye, and with a start he realized he could see the edge of a second dress, peeking from beneath the canopy of an ash tree, this one blue and less noticeable in the fading light. Then came the flash of a white face looking up, and Fastia’s gaze touching his own. She quickly looked back down, while Neil bit his lip, a blush creeping up his face. Fastia often had avoided him in the two ninedays that had passed since that evening in Glenchest. He didn’t know if she hated him or …
Nor does it matter, he told himself. Remember what Erren said. He couldn’t control what he felt, but he could certainly control what he did. With one exception, that was what he had been doing all of his life.
Once was enough, though. The unfamiliar feel of failure rested heavy in his heart.
“Ten thousand men and women died on this plain,” the queen said softly.
Neil started and turned his gaze guiltily from the horz, but the queen wasn’t looking at him. He wasn’t even sure she was talking to him.
“Is it so, Your Majesty?” he asked, not certain how to respond. “Was it in battle against Hansa?”
“Hansa?” the queen said. “No. Hansa wasn’t even a dream in those days. Nor was Crotheny. In those days, the houses of men weren’t divided. The ancestors of Marcomir fought beside the Dares.”
“It was the war against the Skasloi, then?”
She nodded. “They had loosed their shackles and burned the citadels in the east, but that was nothing if they did not reach Ulheqelesh and win there.” She turned to him, and with a shock he saw tears in her eyes. “Ulheqelesh was where Eslen now stands.”
“I never knew its name in the demon’s tongue,” Neil replied. He felt profoundly ignorant.
“We don’t speak it often. Most do not know it. It is one of the burdens of royalty that we must read the oldest histories.”
“And the battle here, at Mey Ghorn?”
“The name has become corrupted over time. In the old tongue it was Magos Gorgon, the Plain of Terror.”
“And the battle—it was a great one?”
“There was no battle,” the queen said. “They marched and they died, their flesh stripped from their bones, their bones burned into dust. And yet they marched on.”
“They never saw their enemy? There was never a foe to lift arms against?”
The queen shook her head. “They marched and they died,” she repeated. “Because they knew they must. Because the only other choice was to live as slaves.”
Neil stared out at the darkening plain, a strange tickle of awe working in him.
“Every footstep on that plain must fall on the remains of those warriors.”
The queen nodded.
“It is a terrible story,” Neil offered. “Warriors should die in battle.”
“Warriors should die in bed,” the queen countered, her voice suddenly edged with anger. “Didn’t you hear me? Ten thousand ghosts are bound in the soil of Mey Ghorn. Ten thousand brothers and sisters, the fathers and mothers of Hansa, Crotheny, Saltmark, Tero Gallé, Virgenya—every nation of Everon has bones in this dirt. They were noble, and they were proud, and their only real weapon was the hope that their sons and daughters would see a better day, know a better world.
“And see what we have done with it. What do we fight about now? Fishing disputes. Trade tariffs. Bickering over borders. Our whole race has become petty and vicious. We fight for nothing.” She waved her hand to encompass the land around. “We denigrate their memory. How ashamed they must be of us.”
Neil stood silent for a few moments, until the queen turned to face him.
“Sir Neil?” she said softly. “You have something to say?”
He kept his gaze on hers, on those eyes so like her daughter’s.
“I know little of trade tariffs or politics,” he admitted. “I know little of the deep histories.”
“But you know something,” she said.
“I knew my grandfather, Dovel MeqFinden. He was a good man. He made little ships of wood for me when I was a boy, and he trooped across the rocky fields of Skern with me on his shoulders. He showed me the sea, and told me of the beautiful Fier de Meur and the terrible draugs who dwell in its depths.”
“Go on.”
“Skern is a small place, Majesty. You may not know that in those days our overlord was a duke from Hansa, and it had been thus for six generations. Our own language was forbidden us, and one half of our crops and cattle were forfeit to that man and his house. When that brought us to starvation, we must needs borrow from the duke, and to pay him back we must go into his service. We are a proud people, Majesty, but not so proud as to let our children starve.”
“Your grandfather?”
“A plague came and killed the most of his cattle, and he could not pay what he had borrowed. He was forced to work in the stables of our lord, the duke. One day a daughter of that lord sat a horse too wild for her. My grandfather warned her against it, but she ignored him. She was thrown.”
“She was killed?”
“She was not. Ten men were present to bear witness. My grandfather reached her and pulled her from beneath the hooves of the horse, taking a hard blow. He saved her life. But in so doing, he touched her, the great lady of a Hanzish house. For that he was hanged.”