Chapter Twelve
The sun was rising as the queen of Attolia rode into the narrow passage of the Naupent, the hoofbeats of horses echoing behind her like ragged heartbeats. The mist ahead of her, held at the very threshold of the pass by the warm dry air inland, might have been a solid wall of gray stone. Crossing into it, Attolia found herself alone in a ghostly pale world as the ground underfoot went from gravel to grass and the hoofbeats behind her slowly faded.
She was listening with all her heart, but the only thing she could make out was the squeak of leather tack from the riders she’d brought with her. She sensed their presence on either side but could no longer see them.
“Your Majesty,” someone on her left called quietly. It was Teleus, and she knew he’d found the first of the dead. She turned her horse in his direction.
Some of the bodies were laid in an orderly row; the others were scattered as if, by the time they had fallen, there had been no one to help them off the field. There was still silence as all ears listened for the slightest sound, a call for help, even a moan. The mist, catching the sun, was dissolving, revealing more and more bodies as it faded away, Attolian, Eddisian, and Mede.
Attolia and Eddis had been successful beyond all expectation. They had beaten back the Medes, forcing their enemy to retreat into the narrow gorge of the Leonyla, pushing them beyond the defensive walls built centuries earlier to narrow the already narrow passage. The Peninsula held those walls now, the gates of the Leonyla, and they could hold them indefinitely so long as they did not falter. The Peninsula had the advantage, and the advantage must not be wasted in grieving. Even for the death of the king.
Attolia had guessed what she would find and had made Eddis stay behind. They knew the pass had been held, because the Medes had not come through it. They also knew it had been held at terrible cost, because none of those who had gone to defend it had returned. No messenger even to tell the fate of the defenders, most of them Eddis’s uncles and cousins, her high king, her Thief.
Attolia, her voice firmly under control, said, “Gather in our dead. Leave the enemy where they lie.”
“There is no fuel for a pyre,” said Teleus beside her.
“We will carry the dead through the Naupent and down to the fields of the Leonyla. They will have their due—their rites and their pyres—with our other fallen.” A pyre that burns seven days for a high king, she thought.
The mist was receding faster, as if the horses coming through the pass had opened the way for the warm air, and it was flowing into the valley in a rush. So many bodies, lying tangled together, piled one on top of another, covering the ground. And still not a sound from anywhere around them.
“Only sleeping,” Attolia said aloud.
“My queen?” Teleus thought he had misheard.
She swung down from her horse, landing heavily, catching the captain for balance. “They are sleeping, Teleus. We must wake them.”
“My queen,” Teleus said again, afraid for her as she moved from man to man, crouching over them, shaking them, saying, “Wake up, wake up.”
He went after her. He hesitated, then he placed his hands on her shoulders. “My queen.” He had no other words, and only the warmth of his touch in the chill morning air to offer. His voice penetrated my darkness, and slowly I opened my eyes to find myself lying in the wet grass where I had collapsed.
The day before, the minister of war had watched in amusement as the king tried to send me away from the battle line and I’d stubbornly refused to go. When the king turned to him for help, though, the minister had accomplished easily what the king could not. “There will be a pool under the laurels,” he’d said, pointing to where the twisted mountain trees grew along the stream bed. “Collect every bottle and sack the men have and fill them there. Be ready when we call for water.” When I still hesitated, the look he gave me was so stern, Snap was carrying me away before I knew I’d given in.
“Thank you,” I heard the king say behind me.
“He should live to tell the tale,” said his father. “Gods willing he will not fill it with nonsense for our great-grandchildren to read.”
So I had helped the wounded back from the fighting, offering those who wanted water a sip and doing what I could to ease their passing. Then, as the Medes continued to flow into the shallow cup of the battlefield, over the lip of it like a libation running in reverse, rising against us in an endless tide, I had used my little knife, staggered and stabbed, striking at knees and thighs, certain I was going to die, only I had not.
As the sun had dropped and the shadow of the ridge reached out over us, the flow of the enemy had slowed then begun to recede. Their cause lost, the Medes had withdrawn, taking the path back down to the sea, descending into the mist as it rose to greet them, leaving those of us still alive to sink to the ground, too exhausted even to call out to one another as the mist covered us as well, not with cold and damp, but with darkness.
Now I rolled over and the horse nearest me danced away in surprise.
I was still blinking when Attolia stepped to my side and sank to the ground, too ungainly to bend down. She took my face quite gently in her hands and brushed my hair back from my face. “The king, Pheris. Does he live?”
I’d seen him toward the end of the battle, but he had stumbled away from me, into the mist.
Attolia turned to Teleus. “Look for the living,” she said. “Gather in the dead. I will look for the king.”
Pulling her robes a little higher, she picked her way across the slope of the battlefield, and I staggered after her. It was a miracle I could move at all. At first I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, but as I woke a little more, I stared into the faces of the dead as I passed. They were transformed, their skin as pale and hard as stone, their blood black, and the dew gathered on their hair and their eyelashes anointed them like sacred oil. They were easy to distinguish even in death by their uniforms or by the cloth bands on their arms. I looked at the foreign army and thought they too must be men of many different places, but I could not read the language of their faces and uniforms. In death, they were anonymous.
When we found the king, he lay unmoving, his face in the curve of his arm. He’d been alive, I was certain, at the end of the day, but he was as still as the dead when the queen dropped beside him, calling his name.
On the ground next to the king lay the minister of war, each drop of condensation on his lifeless face glinting like a diamond in the strengthening light of the day. As I watched, the king woke and saw his father and remembered that his father was dead.
As he sat up, Attolia circled the king with her arms. He laid his head on her shoulder and drew his hand very gently around her. Wordless, the queen stared at the bodies scattered over the grass as if wondering where to begin grieving. When her eyes narrowed, I knew she’d seen Nahuseresh’s body. It was not far away.
“Did your father kill him?” Attolia asked, catching at one small detail in the maelstrom of grief.
“The poets can say so,” said the king, his voice hoarse from shouting and from weeping. “My father fell early in the day, and Nahuseresh was alive much later than that. I have no idea who killed him.” His voice roughened further as the tears still to be shed began to rise. “I saw my father fall. I was too far away.”