We trudged like a normal army for the plains of Paika.
When we turned the last curve of the spice road, I gasped. The fields of Paika spread out before us, but they’d been emptied of what crops the laborers could harvest. Everyone living there had moved back behind the protective walls of the city. Miles to the south, the sloping valley went out to the ocean, which was a distant glimmer. To the north were hills and mountains.
What a city it was!
The stone walls made a giant U before the mountain, and there were several smaller rings of walls higher up the slope of the city.
And then the rows and rows of streets and houses and windows and parapets that clung to the slope seemed to go on and on, only petering out when the hillside became so steep as to make building impossible.
Jiva laughed as he watched me from a horse that walked slowly along with us. “Do you think it still so possible to take the city?” he said.
“The battle was already won before we arrived,” I said. Those walls would not fall easily, though.
“Maybe, maybe,” Jiva said, and spurred his horse on.
“He’s a bit excited,” Anezka observed.
“A boy before battle,” I replied.
We trickled through the empty farms and markets until we came to a stop on the edge of the fields just outside the thick walls.
An armored Paikan with a flag of negotiation flapping from a pole held in his saddle waited for us.
One of Jiva’s commanders rode out to meet him.
When he came back, the commanders waved me over. Jiva threw a piece of parchment my way.
I looked down at it. I couldn’t read: the words made no sense to a butcher from Lesser Khaim. So I looked back up at Jiva. “What is it?”
“The Hierarch of Paika wants to talk to you,” Jiva said.
“Me?”
The bitterness on Jiva’s face deepened. “I think he believes the Executioness to be the mind behind the army. The word has spread before us that the great Executioness marches with us. The lady who destroyed an entire Paikan army herself, after they razed Lesser Khaim.”
I ignored the sarcasm in his voice. “I know nothing about tactics or negotiations,” I said. “How can I speak for us?”
“Oh, but it does make sense,” Jiva said. “That this army is yours as well as mine, there is a grain of truth to that. So go. Talk to their great leader, see what he demands or wants, then come back to us. If they keep you in there, have no fear, we will come soon after to rescue you.”
I pulled Anezka over to me. “You have been in the city once before, will you come with me?”
She looked at the flag over the Paikan. “Will they honor the flag?”
“I can’t promise it,” I told her.
She mulled it over. “I’ll come. I want to see their leader’s face, I want to see if he realizes that he’ll see his city taken by us.”
I smiled at her. “We’ll each have our victories soon, Anezka. Come.”
We borrowed horses, and rode out across the field behind the Paikan negotiator toward the gates of Paika, where even more soldiers waited for us.
The steel doors shut once we were through, startling the horses with a loud rattle of chain as a giant weight fell down along the wall, the chains holding it yanking at pulleys and more chains that slammed the inch thick steel doors shut. The Paikans led us through the cobbled streets, past fearful farmers camped with their livestock in what had once been markets, but were now shelters as they waited for the battles to begin.
We followed the Paikans up the steep, cramped streets, where we could hardly see the sky due to the two and three story buildings leaning in over us.
It reminded me slightly of Lesser Khaim, and I shivered as the horse’s shoes echoed loudly around us.
At the top of Paika a final set of walls ringed an interior castle. Again, chains and weights rattled to shut the doors behind us.
The Hierarch of Paika waited for us by the battlements, the wind whipping at his robes.
“The Keeper of the Way, the enforcer of the Culling, and the ruler of Paika, the hierarch Ixilon, will speak with you,” the negotiator told us, and waved his hand in a bow toward the hierarch.
From up here I could look out over the city, out into the fields where our armies gathered in loose clumps around the patchwork quilts of farmland and irrigation.
“I called you here to ask what it would take for you to surrender,” Ixilon said.
I folded my arms. “You could have sent a message.”
“I wanted you to see I was serious.” Ixilon held his hands out. “And I wanted to see this legendary Executioness with my own eyes. I wanted to know what it would take to get you to stop this suicidal attack.”
“You can give me back my children,” I said simply. “Their names are Set and Duram. I have traveled from Khaim past Mimastiva, and all along the spice road on the coast to your lands. I survived the unprovoked attack on the great caravan by your people, and now I have finally arrived.”
Ixilon looked down at the ground. “I did not know the names of your children. But I know that all the children from Khaim, where I was told you hailed from, have all left. They are on their way to the Southern Isles. They have chosen the Way. Their pilgrimage has begun. There is no calling them back until they are done. They have chosen the paths their lives will take them on.”
“When did they leave?” I demanded.
“You will not catch them…”
“When?” I shouted at him.
The hierarch smiled. “If you were to leave now, on horseback, you might catch the last of the ships that are leaving.”
I ran to the edge of the wall, looking at the roads down to the gates and out of the city. Anezka touched my arm. I turned and looked into her wide eyes.
“Will you go?” she asked me.
Would I go?
All I’d ever wanted was my family back. Could I have it by running for the harbor, far at the end of the valley? Or was it a trick?
Was it just a way for Ixilon to get me out of the way before the battle?
“You should surrender,” I told Ixilon. “If you want to offer things, offer guarantees that families will no longer be pulled apart. That the cullings will stop. That you will reign peacefully over the coast. Then maybe we can discuss your future.”
“I can only offer those things if you promise me that the bramble will cease appearing, or deliver me a way the bramble can be defeated,” Ixilon said. “The Southern Isles my people hail from are small and carefully maintained. The sickness your people create from these lands floats to ours.”
“You know I can’t promise you the end of bramble. It cannot be destroyed, it can only be burned and hacked back,” I snapped. “It is a curse we must all suffer.”
“Then the culling must continue, and magic use must be checked,” Ixilon said. “And we are at an impasse. Your people have to realize that there are consequences for your actions.”
“Consequences? You speak of consequences,” I spat at the raider. “Come stand at your walls here and look out at the consequences of your actions.
“Out there is an army that you have created.”
Ixilon did look out. Then he looked back at me. “It is hardly an army. You want me to surrender by giving me a great show of numbers. But there are barely four hundred men out there. The rest of your army is made of women. Old maids. They call it the Widow’s Army, and you’ve only had months to train them. I will plow through them, and my elephants will scatter your old women before us like dogs.”
“Indeed,” I said. “I’ve seen the remains of wars. And the men never seem to remember the women running from the sword who guided the army’s packhorses to the frontline, and they always forget who bandaged the wounded through every skirmish. When the songs are sung about great battles, the women who helped sustain, feed, and build the army, who donated their husbands to the cause: they are always somehow forgotten. You forget that they are just as good at war as men. They fade in your memory only because they didn’t share the glory of the front line, even though they often shared the losses and deaths.