In the Ruins Page 3

  Like the chickens, they scattered but to more purpose.

  “Dear God,” said Aunt Bel. “That’s a strong smell. We’ll have to wash him twice over before we bring him inside. I’ll have the girls make a good bed for him by the hearth. He’ll be abed all winter, if he survives at all. He looks more like a ghost than like our sweet lad.”

  “He can hear you.”

  “Can you hear me, boy?” she demanded. Because it was Aunt Bel asking, he fluttered his eyelids and got out a croak, not much more than a sigh. “It’s a wonder he’s still alive, abused like that.” She made a clucking noise, quite disgusted. “It’s a good thing you went after him, Henri.”

  “Don’t let him die, Bel. I failed him once already.”

  “It’s true you let your pride get the better of you. You were jealous.”

  The movement of Henri’s shoulders, beneath Alain’s chest, betrayed a reaction.

  “Nay, there’s nothing more to be said,” retorted Bel. “Let it be, little brother. What’s in the past is gone with the tide. Let him be. I’ll nurse him myself. If he lives, then we can see.”

  A drop of moisture fell on Alain’s dangling hand. At first, he thought it might be rain from those brooding clouds, but as they trudged down into the riot of the living, he realized that these were Henri’s tears.

  II

  THE LUCK OF THE KING

  1

  SANGLANT knew dawn came only because he could smell the sun’s rising beyond the haze that concealed all horizons. Ash rained down on his army as they straggled through the scorched forest, dragging their wounded with them. Here and there fires burned in the treetops. Smoke rose, blending with the ash drifting over them. Limbs snapped and crashed to earth to create echoes within echoes as the devastated forest collapsed on itself.

  They assembled in their tattered legions around the ancient fortress where Lady Wendilgard had met her death. Up on the height of half fallen walls, Captain Fulk posted sentries to watch over the wounded. The prince stood on the shattered ramp, once a causeway leading up into the fortress and now a series of broken stair steps littered with stones, weapons, and four dead men not yet dragged away. The last surviving troops who had heard the call to sheathe weapons and retreat emerged battered, bruised, and limping from the trees to take up places in the clearing. They were crammed shoulder to shoulder, weary and frightened, and all of them awaiting his command.

  Perhaps two thousand troops remained to him, out of opposing armies which had each easily boasted twice that number. Of his personal guard, once numbering more than two hundred, some two score remained. Every man among them bore at least one wound, some minor and a few, no doubt, mortal. To his left waited Capi’ra and her centaurs, who had weathered the storm better than most, and a remnant of Quman soldiers. The winged riders had been hit hard in the field by the heavier numbers of Henry’s army, but they had held their ground. It was largely due to their courage and will that he had saved as many of his troops as he had during that initial disastrous retreat when Henry’s forces had overpowered him in the early part of the battle. Of the rest of his noble brethren who had marched with him from Wendar and the marchlands, he had only two surviving commanders: Lord Wichman and Captain Istvan, the Ungrian. Lord Druthmar was lost on the field, although no man living had seen him fall, and he had long since lost track of the rest of his captains and lords, who might still be huddling in the forest or lying among the dead.

  Henry’s army formed up to his right: Duchess Liutgard and her cavalry out of Fesse, Duke Burchard and his Avarians together with his daughter Wendilgard’s remaining men, and others from Saony and the duchies of Varre. The terrible storm and the blast of burning wind had hit Henry’s army as hard as his own.

  Henry’s army no longer.

  Henry’s corpse lay fixed over Fest’s saddle. Sanglant held the reins.

  “Your Majesty.” Hathui bowed before him. “What now?”

  “Where is Zuangua?” he asked, surveying the scene. “I see no Ashioi among our number.”

  “They did not follow us back this way, my lord prince …” Lewenhardt corrected himself. “Your Majesty.” Like the others, the young archer was filthy, smeared with ash and dirt and blood. Ash pattered down, the sound of its steady rain audible even through the many noises of the army creaking into place, men weeping, men talking, horses in distress, a few dogs barking, and wagon wheels squeaking on the fine layer of ash and grit. “They went off into the trees toward the sea, along the old track they were following before. I don’t know where they’ve gone.”

  “I do,” Sanglant said. “They’ve abandoned us and gone home, for I’m thinking that their homeland must surely have returned from its long exile.” It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think of Liath struggling among the living or lost to death. “Hathui, if we build a fire, can you seek Liath through the flames?”

  “I can try, Your Majesty.”

  He nodded. She took two soldiers and trudged through the pall into the forest, where charcoal would be easy to gather. The trio passed a group of exhausted men stumbling out of the trees. The ash so covered every least thing that it was impossible to tell what lord or lady these soldiers had served before the night’s cataclysm.

  All his, now. Every one of them. With his dying breath, Henry had willed Wendar and Varre to his favorite child, his obedient son, the bastard, the one the king had long wished to succeed him despite all opposition.

  “We cannot see into the future,” Helmut Villam had once observed. That was a mercy granted to humankind, who would otherwise drown in a sea of unwanted knowledge filled with reversals, tragedies, unhoped-for rescues, and the endless contradictions of life.

  He remembered the passion in his own voice that day by the river, below the palace of Werlida, when he had spoken so decidedly to his father the king. “I don’t want to be king. Or heir. Or emperor.”

  And now, of course, he was. King, and heir to an empire he had never desired.

  “What of your Aostan allies?” he asked his cousin Liutgard, nodding also at the old duke, Burchard.

  The duchess shrugged, wiping ash off her lips with the back of one filthy hand. Her hair was streaked with ash, tangled and dirty; impossible to tell how fair it was under all the soot. “They fled west along the coast instead of following us,” she said. “Their allegiance was to Adelheid, not to Henry. There are yet stragglers, and a few wandering confused among our troops. For the rest, those who live, I believe they will all fly home.”

  With a sigh, Sanglant rubbed his stinging eyes. “Has there been any report of the griffins?” he asked those standing nearest to him. Clustered behind Hathui were a dozen Eagles rescued from Henry’s train.

  In truth he needed no answer. If the gale had not killed the griffins outright, then it had surely blasted them far away. It seemed impossible for any creature in the air to have survived the storm.

  Ai, God, he was so weary that he had begun to hear things, a strange rushing roar that nagged at his hearing until even the folk surrounding him heard as well. To the south, shouts of alarm rang out above the snap and crash of branches as though a second wind raked through the forest. Scouts left behind to stand sentry over the road tumbled into the clearing.

  “The ocean! The ocean has risen!”

  He gestured to Lewenhardt and Captain Fulk. Together they ran along the road into the trees, and before they had gone far they saw an astonishing sight. Water surged inland through the trees, losing depth quickly until it lapped and sighed around their boots. As they stared, it drained away, most into the ground but in a few stubborn rivulets back toward the sea, dragging twigs and leaves in its undertow. Sanglant knelt and brushed his fingers through a remnant pool as the roar of the receding waters faded. He touched the moisture to his lips, spat out the salty brine.

  “This is seawater.”

  “That is not possible,” said Captain Fulk. “No tide can rise so high. It’s a league at least—more!—from here to the ocean!”

 
“Bring Fest. I’ll need an escort of a hundred men. If there’s any hope of capturing Queen Adelheid, we must seek her now. Bring Duke Burchard, since he knows the town and its defenses. Tell Duchess Liutgard to make an account of what provisions are left us, tend to the wounded, and ready the men for a long march. Bury the dead before they begin to rot.”

  “Even the emperor, Your Majesty?”

  “No. We must prepare Henry for the journey north. See that his heart is removed from his body, and his flesh boiled until there is nothing left but bones.”

  The road through the forest had survived the conflagration, but it was muddy and streaked with debris. The wind gusted erratically and after one man was knocked out cold by a falling branch, they watched for limbs with each flurry. The trees were blackened and burned on the side facing the southeast. Desiccated leaves filtered down with the ever present ash fall. Light rose as the morning progressed, but the day remained hazy and dim and the heavens had a glowering sheen. Every sound was muffled by the constant hiss of ash and the layer of soot and mud blanketing the damp ground. It was cool, yet clammy, and the long walk exhausted them and their horses alike.

  “Is it the end of the world, my lord pr—Your Majesty?” Lewenhardt whispered.

  “If it is the end, then why are we not dead? Nay, Lewenhardt, it is as it seems. A terrible cataclysm has overtaken us. We may yet survive if we keep our wits about us, and if we hold together.”

  Duke Burchard drew the Circle of Unity at his chest, but said nothing. The old man seemed too stunned to speak. He was not alone in this. For every soldier who exclaimed out loud at the scorched forest and the marks of the recent flood there were four or five who gaped at the devastation as though they had, indeed, lost their wits.

  “I dislike this, Your Majesty,” said Fulk. “What if the sea returns?”

  “We must see. Besides Queen Adelheid, we must seek out those who survived and hid until daybreak. Liutgard said many of the Aostans marched west along the coast. What of them?”

  Pools of salty water filled the ruts in the road, and a gloomy vista awaited them when at last they emerged from the trees and gazed through the swirling ash that obscured the bay of Estriana, half a league away. The plain looked strangely scumbled, strewn with debris. He could not mark the field where the battle had been fought or the line of their retreat because branches and corpses and planks from wagons and all manner of flotsam lay tumbled everywhere. He saw no life at all in the distant town.

  “You are sure?” he asked Duke Burchard. “You left Queen Adelheid behind in Estriana?”

  The old man’s voice was more like a croak. “So I did, Your Majesty. She held a reserve behind the walls in case of disaster. It was already agreed that she would remain in the tower rather than sortie out. She is a strategist, Your Majesty, not a soldier.”

  “So she is,” agreed Sanglant, “if she yet lives. I walked right into the ambush she and Henry laid between them.”

  Burchard shook his head impatiently. “We saw well enough what trap Henry fell into. The daimone with which Presbyter Hugh ensorcelled him spoke his words and moved his limbs according to the presbyter’s command. Henry did not speak. That plan was the queen’s alone.”

  “She is a formidable opponent, then. What do we do with her now?”

  Staring across the plain toward the Middle Sea, Burchard wept softly. “Perhaps bury her?”

  The pall of dust hid the waters, which seemed, impossibly, at low tide, drawn far back across tidal flats.

  “Ai, God!” cried Lewenhardt, who possessed the sharpest gaze among them, able to pierce the haze. “Look!”

  The water was rising swiftly. It swelled at the mouth of the bay into a monstrous wave that crested into a wall of foaming white. The wave surged forward across the bay and smashed down onto the town and the shoreline, engulfing it and inundating the land. The water rose up and up, still climbing as it flooded the plain.

  “Run!”

  The others turned and fled. Sanglant could not bring himself to move. He could not quite believe, despite the evidence of his eyes, that the sea could rise so fast and run so far. The whiter crest that battered the town dissipated quickly, subsumed in the vast tidal swell that rolled inland across the plain. Fest snorted and shied, and he reined him in, turning in a complete circle before the horse settled, uneasy and in protest but holding fast.

  “My lord prince!” cried Captain Fulk, returning in haste to rein up beside him. “We’ll be drowned. You must come!”

  The tide lapped to its highest extent a stone’s toss from Fest, not even reaching the outlying trees of the forest, and sucked hissing and burbling back into the sea. All that lay strewn over the plain from the first surge rushed outward with it. Even the stone walls of Estriana toppled into the wave, all but the highest tower, which was protected by a double ring of walls that had taken the brunt of the impact.

  His men, creeping back, wept to witness the sea’s fury. As the wave receded, the ruins of the town emerged from the water. The stone walls were shattered at a dozen places. Seen through those gaps, the buildings looked like piles of sticks.

  “Ai, God!” cried Duke Burchard. “Queen Adelheid must surely be dead! No one could have survived such a deluge!” He glanced at Sanglant and wiped his brow nervously. “Surely she had a reason for the terrible course she took, Your Majesty. Surely she did not wish to harm the king. She loved him. She is a good woman.”

  “Let us hope we do not have to make decisions as cruel as the one she felt herself forced to make,” replied Sanglant.

  “I think it most prudent if we retreat,” said Fulk. “We have seen that these unnatural tides are not yet faded. Look how the water sucks back out again. What if a larger surge comes?”

  “Look,” said Lewenhardt. “Something is moving out there!”

  Sanglant dismounted.

  “Your Majesty!” protested Captain Fulk

  “I’ll walk. The footing looks too tricky for horses.”

  “Why go at all? If you’re swept away—”

  “I think we have time. The second wave did not approach until we had walked all the way from the old fort. If you have ever sat upon the sea’s shore and watched the waves, Captain, you will have seen they have a rhythm of their own. These great waves need time to approach.”

  Fulk had stood firm through many terrible events when others quailed and faltered, and although the prospect of drowning clearly horrified him, he did not fail Sanglant now. “Very well. I’ll come with you, Your Majesty.”

  Sanglant grinned and strode forward. The ground was not hopelessly muddy because the tide had come up and receded too swiftly to soak in, but damp ash made the ground slick and debris from the forest caught about their ankles and snagged in their leggings. It was not silent but uncannily still, with no sign of life but their own soft footsteps. The hissing fall of ash serenaded them. Maybe it would never stop raining down. Perhaps the heavens themselves had burned and now shed the soot of their destruction over the earth. The throttling gurgle of the sea faded in the distance as the tide receded back and back beyond the tidal flats, although it was difficult to see anything clearly through the haze. Now and again they caught the scent of rot.

  They walked out onto the plain, glancing back at intervals to see the forest, farther away each time, and the troop clustered at the fringe of the trees, obscured by falling ash.

  “Are you sure Lewenhardt saw anything, Your Majesty?” Fulk asked at last. “It could have been the wind. It’s hard to see anything with all this cloud and ash.”

  “Hush.” Sanglant held up a hand, and Fulk fell silent, not moving, chin lifted as he, too, strove to hear. But few men had the unnaturally keen hearing that Sanglant possessed, and Fulk could not hear the faint sounds of splashing. “It sounds like a fish flopping half out of water. There!”

  A ditch had captured something living that now thrashed in a remnant of seawater. They came cautiously to the edge and stared down into a pit filled with a murky blend
of mud, water, and scraps of vegetation. A corpse was fixed between the axles of a shattered wagon, face mercifully hidden by one wheel, legs gray where they stuck out of the scummy surface.

  “Ai, God!” cried Fulk, stepping back in horror.

  The tide had trapped a monster from the deeps. Sensing them, it heaved its body fully back into the water with a splash, but it had nowhere to hide. They could distinguish its huge tail sluicing back and forth. At last it reared up out of the mud defiantly, whipping its head side to side and spraying mud and flecks of grass and leaves everywhere. Its hair hissed and snapped at them, each strand like an eyeless eel seeking a meal out of the air. It had a man’s torso, lean and powerful, shimmering with scales. It had a face, of a kind: flat eyes, slits where a nose should otherwise grow, a lipless mouth, and scaly hands webbed between its clawed fingers.

  “It’s a man-fish,” whispered Fulk. “That kind we saw on the river!”

  It was trapped and therefore doomed, washed in and stranded by the tide, but a fearsome beast nevertheless and therefore not worthy of mercy. Yet Sanglant frowned as Fulk drew his sword. The creature stared boldly at them. Sharp teeth gleamed as it opened its mouth. And spoke.

  “Prinss Ssanglant. Cap’tin Fulk.”

  Fulk jumped backward. “How can this beast know our names!”

  “Prinss Ssanglant,” it repeated. The eels that were its hair hissed and writhed as though they, too, voiced a message, one he could not understand.

  “Can you speak Wendish? What are you? What are you called?”

  “Gnat,” it seemed to say, yet it kept talking in a language he did not understand, although he had heard it before.

  “That’s Jinna.”

  “It’s too garbled, Your Majesty. I can’t tell.”