Drenai Saga 02 - The King Beyond the Gate (17 page)

“He was going to kill me, Tani.”

“I know. But he’s gone now.”

“Why did he want to kill me?”

Tenaka had not known the answer. Neither had Orrin, but thereafter a guard had been placed at Arvan’s door and his life had continued with fear as a constant companion …

“Good afternoon.”

Scaler looked up to see, standing by the pool, a young woman dressed in a flowing gown of thin white wool. Her hair was dark and gently waved, and her green eyes were flecked with gold. Scaler stood and bowed.

“Why so gloomy?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I would rather say melancholy. Who are you?”

“Ravenna, Rayvan’s daughter. Why are you not in there with the others?”

He grinned. “I know nothing about wars, campaigns, or battles.”

“What do you know about?”

“Art, literature, poetry, and all things of beauty.”

“You are out of your time, my friend.”

“Scaler. Call me Scaler.”

“A strange name, Scaler. Do you climb things?”

“Walls, mostly.” He gestured toward the seat. “Will you join me?” he asked.

“For a little while only. I have errands to run.”

“I am sure they can wait. Tell me, how did a woman come to lead a rebellion?”

“To understand that, you have to know Mother. She is of the line of Druss the Legend, you know, and will not be cowed by anyone or anything. She once drove off a mountain lion with a large stick.”

“A formidable lady,” said Scaler.

“Indeed she is. And she also knows nothing about wars, campaigns, and battles. But she will learn. So should you.”

“I would sooner learn more about you, Ravenna,” he said, switching on his winning smile.

“I see there are some campaigns that you understand,” she said, rising from her seat. “It was nice meeting you.”

“Wait! Could we meet again? Tonight, for instance?”

“Perhaps. If you live up to your name.”

That night, as Rayvan lay in her broad bed staring out at the stars, she felt more at peace than at any time during the last few hectic months. She had not realized just how irksome leadership could be. Nor had she ever intended to be a leader. All she had done was slay the man who had killed her husband, but from then on it had been like sliding down an icy mountain.

Within weeks of the campaign Rayvan’s slender forces controlled most of Skoda. Those were the heady days of cheering crowds and camaraderie. Then word began to filter into the mountains of an army being gathered, and swiftly the mood changed. Rayvan had felt besieged in the city even before the enemy had arrived.

Now she felt light of heart.

Tenaka Khan was no ordinary man. She smiled and closed her eyes, summoning his image to her mind. He moved like a dancer in perfect control, and he wore confidence like a cloak. The warrior born! Ananais was more enigmatic, but by all the gods, he had the look of eagles about him. Here was a man who had been over the mountain. He it was who had offered to train her fledgling fighters, and Lake had taken him back into the hills where they were camped. The two brothers, Galand and Parsal, had traveled with them, solid men with no give in them.

The black she was unsure of. He looked like a damned Joining, she thought. But for all that, he was a handsome devil. And there was little doubt he could handle himself.

Rayvan turned over, punching a little comfort into the thick pillow.

Send in your legion, Ceska. We shall stave in their damned teeth!

Down the long corridor, in a room facing east, Tenaka and Renya lay side by side, an uncomfortable silence between them.

Tenaka rolled onto his elbow and looked down at her, but Renya did not return his gaze.

“What is the matter?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“That is palpably untrue. Please, Renya, speak to me.”

“It was the man you killed.”

“You knew him?”

“No, I didn’t. But he was unarmed—there was no need.”

“I see,” he said, swinging his long legs from the bed. He walked to the window, and she lay there staring at his naked form silhouetted against the moonlight.

“Why did you do it?”

“It was necessary.”

“Explain it to me.”

“He led the mob, and he was obviously Ceska’s man. By killing him suddenly, it cowed them. You saw them—all armed, many with bows. They could have turned on us, but his death stunned them.”

“It certainly stunned me—it was butchery!”

He turned to face her. “This is not a game, Renya. Many men will die even before this week is out.”

“It still was not right.”

“
Right?
This isn’t a poem, woman! I am not some gold-armored hero righting wrongs. I reasoned that his death would allow us to remove a cancer from the city without loss to ourselves. And anyway, he deserved to die.”

“It doesn’t touch you, does it? Taking life? You don’t care that he might have had a family, children, a mother.”

“You are right; I don’t care. There are only two people in the world that I love: you are one, and Ananais is the other. That man had made his decision. He chose sides, and he died for it. I don’t regret it, and probably I would have forgotten it within the month.”

“That is a terrible thing to say!”

“You would prefer it if I lied to you?”

“No. I just thought you were … different.”

“Don’t judge me. I am only a man doing my best. I know no other way to be.”

“Come back to bed.”

“Is the argument over?”

“If you want it to be,” she lied.

In the room above them Pagan grinned and moved away from the window.

Women were strange creatures. They fell in love with a man and then sought to change him. Mostly they succeeded to spend the rest of their lives wondering how they could have married such boring conformists. It is the nature of the beast, Pagan told himself. He thought of his own wives, running their faces past his mind’s eye, but he could picture only about thirty of them. You are getting old, he told himself. He often wondered how he had allowed the numbers to become so great. The palace was more crowded than a bazaar. Ego. That was it! There was no getting away from it. Just as there was no getting away from his forty-two children. He shuddered. Then he chuckled.

A faint shuffling noise disturbed his thoughts, and he moved back to the window, peering out into the shadows.

A man was climbing the wall some twenty feet to the right. It was Scaler.

“What are you doing?” Pagan asked, keeping his voice low.

“I am planting corn,” hissed Scaler. “What do you think I’m doing?”

Pagan glanced up to the darkened window above. “Why didn’t you just climb the stairs?”

“I was asked to arrive this way. It’s a tryst.”

“Oh, I see. Well, good night!”

“And to you.”

Pagan ducked back his head through the window. Strange how much effort a man would make just to get himself into trouble.

“What’s going on?” came the voice of Tenaka Khan.

“Will you keep your voice down?” snarled Scaler.

Pagan returned to the window, leaning out to see Tenaka staring upward.

“He is on a tryst … or something,” said Pagan.

“If he falls, he will break his neck.”

“He never falls,” said Belder from a window to the left. “He has a natural talent for not falling.”

“Will someone tell me why there is a man climbing the wall?” shouted Rayvan.

“He is on a tryst!” yelled Pagan.

“Why couldn’t he climb the stairs?” she responded.

“We have been through all that. He was asked to come this way!”

“Oh. He must be seeing Ravenna, then,” she said.

Scaler clung to the wall, engaged in his own private conversation with the senile eternals.

Meanwhile, in the darkened room above, Ravenna bit her pillow to stop the laughter.

Without success.

For two days Ananais walked among the Skoda fighters, organizing them into fighting units of twenty and pushing them hard. There were 582 men, most of them tough and wolf-lean. Men to match the mountains. But they were undisciplined and unused to organized warfare. Given time, Ananais could have produced a fighting force to equal anything Ceska could send against them. But he did not have time.

On his first morning with the gray-eyed Lake he had mustered the men and checked their weapons. There were not a hundred swords among them.

“It’s not a farmer’s weapon,” said Lake. “But we have plenty of axes and bows.” Ananais nodded and moved on. Sweat trickled under his mask, burning against the scars that would not heal, and his irritation grew.

“Find me twenty men who could make leaders,” he said, then walked swiftly back to the crofter’s cottage he had made his quarters. Galand and Parsal followed him.

“What’s wrong?” asked Galand as the three men sat down in the cool of the main room.

“Wrong? There are nearly six hundred men out there who will be dead in a few days. That is what’s wrong.”

“A little defeatist, aren’t you?” said Parsal evenly.

“Not yet. But I am close,” admitted Ananais. “They are tough, and they are willing. But you cannot send a mob against the legion. We don’t even have a bugle. And if we did, there is not one man out there to understand a single call.”

“Then we shall have to cut and run, hit them hard and move away,” proposed Galand.

“You were never an officer, were you?” said Ananais.

“No. I didn’t come from the right background,” snapped Galand.

“Whatever the reason, the simple fact is that you were not trained to lead. We cannot hit and run because that would mean splitting our force. Then the legion would come after us piecemeal, and we would have no way of knowing what was happening to the rest of the army. Equally, it would allow the legion to enter Skoda and embark on a killing campaign against the cities and villages.”

“Then what do you suggest?” asked Parsal, pouring water from a stone jug and passing the clay goblets to the other two.

Ananais turned away and lifted his mask, noisily sipping the cool water. Then he turned back to them. “To be truthful, I don’t know yet. If we stay together, they will cut us to pieces in a single day. If we split up, they will cut the villagers to pieces. The choices are not attractive. I have asked Lake to supply me with rough maps of the terrain. And we have maybe two days to drill the men so that they will respond to rudimentary calls—we will use hunting horns and work out simple systems. Galand, I want you to go among the men and find the best two hundred. I want men who will stand firm against horsemen. Parsal, you check the bowmen. Again, I want the best brought together as one unit. I shall also want to know the finest runners. And send Lake to me.”

As the two men left, Ananais gently removed the black leather mask. Then he filled a bowl with water and dabbed the red, angry scars. The door opened, and he swung around, turning his back on the newcomer. Having settled the mask in place, he offered Lake a chair. Rayvan’s eldest son was a fine-looking man, strong and lean; his eyes were the color of a winter sky, and he moved with animal grace and the confidence of a man who knew he had limits but had not yet reached them.

“You are not impressed with our army?” he said.

“I am impressed by their courage.”

“They are mountain men,” said Lake, leaning back in his chair and stretching out his long legs onto the tabletop. “But you did not answer my question.”

“It was not a question,” replied Ananais. “You knew the answer. I am not impressed. But then, they are not an army.”

“Can we turn back the legion?”

Ananais considered the question. With many another man he would have lied, but not with this one. Lake was too sharp.

“Probably not.”

“And will you still stay?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“A good question. But I cannot answer it.”

“It seemed simple enough.”

“Why will you stay?” countered Ananais.

“This is my land, and they are my people. My family brought them to this.”

“Your mother, you mean?”

“If you like.”

“She is a fine woman.”

“Indeed she is. But I want to know why you will stay.”

“Because it is what I do, boy. I fight. I’m Dragon. Do you understand?”

Lake nodded. “So the war between good and evil does not concern you?”

“Yes, it does, but not greatly. Most wars are fought for greed, but we are luckier here—we fight for our lives and the lives of the people we love.”

“And the land,” said Lake.

“Rubbish!” snapped Ananais. “No man fights for dirt and grass. No, nor mountains. Those mountains were here before the fall, and they will be here when the world topples again.”

“I don’t see it that way.”

“Of course not—you’re young and full of fire. Me, I’m older than the sea. I have been over the mountain and looked into the eye of the serpent. I have seen it all, young Lake. And I am not too impressed.”

“So! We understand one another, at least,” said Lake, grinning. “What do you want me to do?”

“I want men sent now to the city. We have only seven thousand arrows, and that is not enough. We have no armor—get some. I want the city scoured. We need food, oats, meal, dried beef, fruit. And I want horses—up to fifty. More if you can get them.”

“And how will we pay for all this?”

“Give them notes.”

“They will not accept promises from dead men.”

“Use your head, Lake. They will accept because if they don’t, you will take what you want. Any man who refuses will be branded a traitor and dealt with accordingly.”

“I am not going to kill a man because he won’t let us rob him.”

“Then go back to your mother and send me a man who wants to win,” stormed Ananais.

The weapons and food began to arrive on the morning of the third day.

By the morning of the fourth day Galand, Parsal, and Lake had chosen the two hundred men Ananais had requested to stand against the legion. Parsal had also organized the finest of the archers into a single group of just under a hundred.

As the sun cleared the eastern peaks, Ananais gathered the men together in an open meadow below the camp. Many of them now carried swords, courtesy of the city armorer. All the archers carried two quivers of arrows, and even the occasional breastplate was to be seen among Ananais’ new foot soldiers. With Parsal, Lake, and Galand flanking him, Ananais climbed to the back of a cart and stood with hands on hips, eyes scanning the warriors seated around him.