Chapter 13:
Queen of a Nighted Realm
The two men laughed as they chased the screaming woman into the dark.
Hanuvar crept closer to the wagon and watched the lone bandit bent near its right axle searching the belt pouch of a dead man. The scream held the bandit’s attention. He hurried his plunder and called out for them to save some for him. It was the last thing he said. Hanuvar clasped the bandit’s mouth from behind as he cut his throat, then held his lips closed to muffle him while he bled out. The dog, Kalak, watched silently.
Hanuvar eased the body to the ground beside its fellow. The wagon sideboards were high, but he knew two more bandits looted the bodies at the camp beyond. He donned the dead brigand’s cap as he started around the wagon, the dog at his side, but needn’t have bothered with the thin disguise. One man guzzled from a wineskin and the other sorted rudely through the bags they’d already tossed off the wagon bed, complaining the merchants weren’t carrying anything but cloth. The man with the wineskin glanced at Hanuvar just as he drew close enough to drive his knife point through his chest.
The cloth sorter alerted to the choking noise and started to draw as he turned, but Hanuvar leapt forward and struck in a single motion. His target tried to side-step, but moved only fast enough so that the belly blow took him in the thigh instead. He went down, and Hanuvar dropped him with a knee to the man’s abdomen and his knife to his throat. The only tricky part was catching the dying man’s wrist as he tried to plunge his own blade into Hanuvar’s chest.
The dying can manage desperate strength, but Hanuvar outlasted him and rose, weapon to hand, flexing his ankle, sore from the strenuous activity. He was impressed with the strength of the dog’s training. He had ordered him to hold back, and the canine had kept clear and quiet. That was all for the best, for he’d not wanted the rest of the bandits summoned by Kalak’s barking or the shouts of his victims.
Now, though, the mastiff growled, hackles rising as though it faced some terrible foe. Hanuvar hadn’t seen where the woman had been hiding, only the sound of her discovery, and it had spurred him to act. He had no idea how she’d escaped her pursuers.
She now stood on the edge of the dying fire, small and slim in a dark dress. Precious stones glittered on her fingers and upon the filigree above her high brow. Her face was round and clear and beautifully formed, with full lips and wide eyes that seemed not to blink. She appeared to have been staring at Hanuvar for a while.
“Where are the men who chased you?” he asked.
“They walk the last road,” she said, in a peculiar lilting accent. “From whence did you come?”
She spoke Dervan like a native Turian, though her pronunciation carried an unfamiliar, formal cadence. “Nearby,” he said. He did not add that only the foolish light fires in the Turian wilds at night. He himself had bedded down before sunset, planning to finish the rest of his travel after moonfall. Robbers were not the only dangerous things said to walk these hills.
“Where were you hiding?”
“I was not hiding,” she said, and took a further step. She stared down at the bodies. He expected she might fall to weeping, or kneel beside one of the fellows he supposed to be her husband, or father, or brother. But her attention was cursory at best and finally she stopped only a few paces out from Hanuvar, who had finished wiping his weapons on a dead man. The dog growled further, and she smiled indulgently, as though she found the beast amusing.
“You are efficient,” she said.
“There may be more,” he told her. “We should retreat.”
Only then did she turn her smile on him. “As you wish.”
There was something strange in her manner, and though he had killed these men only to save her, he had no desire to put his back to her. He gestured for her to precede him.
“Do you not wish to stop for their silver?” she asked.
Their, he thought. Not our. And she showed no interest in retrieving her belongings.
“No. I have what I need at the moment,” he answered.
Her gaze raked him and then she turned and walked with graceful quiet into the darkness. He gave her directions and followed, Kalak close to his side. Soon they were over a hill and into the little shelter of trees where he had picketed his horse and laid his blanket down.
The black gelding shied from her as she walked close, laying back his ears, and then she strode about the little camp, seeing where he had made a smokeless charcoal cookfire in the evening.
She pushed hair back from her forehead. Her eyes did not leave him. “So you come alone, to Turia, and hide in the woods. Whom do you flee?” she asked.
“I flee no one.”
“Then you seek someone.”
“Something like that.”
“Perhaps you seek me.”
“Only to help you,” he said.
She laughed at that.
“What are you doing here, in the wilds?” he asked.
“I’m trying to find my people.”
That wasn’t the answer he expected. “You weren’t travelling with them?”
“Them? No. I happened upon the scene, like you.”
He understood now that she had misled him, just as she had the bandits, and her scream had been for show. Now it was imperative he understand her game, and her nature. “Who are your people?”
She smiled, and was lovely. “You would not believe me.”
“You might be surprised.”
Once more she stared at him. “I think you are a hunter, like me.”
“That may be,” he said.
She walked to his left, quietly. He had seen leopards pace thus. Kalak growled again.
“There is a thirst in you,” she said. “I see it now. You want revenge.”
“A part of me does. But vengeance is time consuming, and I am short on time.” He wondered now if his time was shorter even than he had thought. He had decided, at last, what was so strange in her movements. Her nostrils never flared; her chest never rose and fell. Whatever she was, she did not breathe. “Who are you?”
She smiled more widely, and while she was beautiful there was that of a predator in her look. “I think you know, now, Dervan, that I am not mortal. And it is your people who brought me to this.” She snarled at him, and he sensed the strength in her and thought she was nearly done with her playing.
And so he spoke the truth. “I am no Dervan.”
She tilted her head and regarded him, her fine eyes narrowing. “You do not lie,” she said slowly. “While I sense your fear, I see it gives you strength. You intrigue me.”
“Who are you?” he repeated.
She did not answer for a time, then flicked her fingers in a dismissive gesture, as if her deciding to grant his request was a minor thing. “I am the queen of a fallen people, crushed by the Dervans. My name is not important, for what is a queen without her people?”
He sympathized with that sentiment, one too often misunderstood by rulers. “You said you seek them. Where are they?”
“Dead. And I do not mean my waking death. The Dervans came for my lands. And I fought them. They were too many. One by one all fell, until there was nothing left but a small force, living in the hills.”
Hanuvar now knew with whom he spoke. “You are Queen Philenia. The folk of Turia speak of you still, and how you died with sword in hand. How your body was spotted on the battlefield, but never seen after.”
Her head tilted minutely and her eyes searched his. “Why do you not run, mortal man?”
Because he knew it would not help him. He sought to escape her through a different course. “The Dervans slew my people. I would have died with them, but for the aid of a friend.”
Her eyes lit.
“You said you seek them,” he pressed. “How?”
She touched the necklace and pulled free the palm of her hand. Shining in her white palm were dozens of pale blue forms. “These are those I’ve gathered in the last little while.”
“Your people?”
“The souls of those who walk my lands at night. Almost I have enough. And when their numbers match those I lost, I will trade them to Lady Death, and she will give my people back!”
She was mad, and very dangerous, and he knew that she was likely still to attack, but he could not help but respect her dedication. And he told her so. “You are brave and determined and cunning.” And he added, because he sensed it remained important to her, and because it was true: “And you are very beautiful.”
She lifted her head in approval.
“But what if your people do not want to come?”
Her fair brow creased. “What? They will come to me.”
“I have spoken with Lady Death,” he said.
Her eyebrows raised.
“It must be very pleasant there, with her, because no one returns, even when openings present.” He thought of his brothers who had clasped his arms in farewell before returning to a realm beyond mist. “You never went to her, did you?”
“I resisted. What hold can she have on their allegiance? I was their queen!”
“I suppose that she is an end to strife,” Hanuvar sad. “She is solace. She is . . . oblivion.”
She bared her teeth. “You speak of her with love.”
He shook his head. “I love my people. She has almost all of them.” He could not help but speak with a hint of ferocity, and she heard it in her voice.
“You understand!”
“I do,” he said.
She was but a step away, and the scent of her reached him. Kalak let out a bark, but Hanuvar motioned him still. The dog fell to growling.
The queen smelled of old soil, and new blood, and the wild places, but not of rot. Her eyes were shining, but she no longer played, and he did not think he saw thirst there. “I have nearly all I need,” she said quietly. “And then I will make my trade. And I will see. If you want, I can show you how it is done. It may be that if we approach her together, with a great trade, we will have a better bargain for her. She will want these souls. She is always greedy for more.”
“She is,” Hanuvar agreed. “But she only takes. She never gives. Her patience is measureless. She will outlast us all.”
Her teeth flashed as she snarled. “You think me a fool? You think I have wasted all this effort?”
“I think you are clever, and I think you are angry, and I think you love your people. But I think you should pick your battles better.”
“What other battles are there for me?”
“I have need of friends,” he said. “Your people are passed. But some of mine still live. You could help them.”
Her face clouded. “You think I would help any of the living?”
“Not any,” he said. “The last of my people.” He saw her frown beginning, and spoke passionately: “To give them the aid you wish someone would have given you.”
She stared at him for a long while, then addressed him in a passionless voice. “Leave me.”
He extended his hand. “Come with me. You deserve a better end than this.”
She considered him in bewilderment. For a moment, he thought she meant to say yes. “I feel the blood pulsing through you, and I feel the truth of your advice. I thirst for the one and rage against the other and yet I do not mean to kill you. Both rise to war with my reason. You have touched me in a way I have not known in long years. Would that I could wander away with you. But it is my . . . nature that I am tied to his land.”
“If you cannot go, what will you do?”
She laughed too long, then shook her head. “New experiences are as formless as mist to me, compared to what was. But I will try to hold to what you’ve said. And work some other plan.”
“Remember that you have at least one friend left.”
“A friend,” she repeated. “How curious. What is your name, friend?”
“I am Hanuvar.”
She regarded him with head held high and dismissed him with the slow, regal wave of a hand. “Go now, Hanuvar. With a queen’s blessing, whatever good it does you. I may forget much when next I wake. But I think I shall remember you.”
“I shall never forget you, oh Queen.” He bowed his head to her. While he gathered up the bags and took up the reins, she vanished as if she had never been. He half expected to find her at his back, especially since Kalak continually looked behind them, but he rode the rest of the night and reached the hills at Turia’s edge just before dawn without sight of her. In the dim light behind him he thought he glimpsed a lone figure along the road side, but it might have been a trick of the light, for when he peered more closely there was nothing there apart from a lone tree, swaying in the morning wind.
In Apicius we remained in a terrible kind of stasis. The gladiators had no luck uprooting the garrison, although they too constructed some catapults and traded occasional stones with the soldiers. Late one night a swift military ship reached the protected berth under the fortress walls and the gladiator’s sharp-eyed sentries saw a few dozen reinforcements join the garrison. The next morning word went forth that Ciprion was among the new arrivals, in advance of a legion marching from the north. He proved uninterested in discussing terms, even with his own wife held as their prisoner, for Dervans were highly resistant to negotiating with rebellious slaves. When a society is built on the back of slave labor, any suggestion that those in bondage could improve their lot by violence is to be stringently avoided.
What Ciprion thought in private I do not know. At this point, enough days had passed that Izivar and I worried as to Hanuvar’s whereabouts. Izivar conferred with the Volani gladiator, Eshmun, anxious that Hanuvar might be mistaken for a Dervan military man and slain by their forces.
Eshmun promised that he would keep alert for him. Learning that Hanuvar was somewhere nearby, the leader of the gladiators, Tafari, set his men to patrol for him, thinking the great general might be the answer to all his problems. You may recall that Hanuvar and I had met this Tafari, and that he was one of the few who had elected to remain with Gnaeus, the false Hanuvar, and then had not turned up at a later rendezvous. Tafari was a capable leader, and Izivar guessed what he must be thinking. Who better to get past a Dervan garrison than the greatest general in the world?
Out on his mountain, Calenius continued to work his magic beneath dark clouds.
—Sosilos, Book Seventeen