Partha, Chapter Four

Hey all,

Kind of a weird situation here – as I mentioned in my previous post I have a collaborator working at a different pace than I am, so I have to sort of hopscotch his parts with the roughest of outlines of what happens in them and sift out the continuity problems afterward. So for those who read chapter one, here’s as much as I know of the action in chapters two and three – Field Marshal Callus gets healed (so he’s not dying) by Marcus’ mage and is mostly not involved in these two chapters. High Captain Marcus goes off on a delegation to meet a tribe, which double-crosses him and comes in force.

Long story short, the delegation of Parthans loses badly and only Marcus survives, barely. In chapter three, Marcus finds some friendly Salamani as the Phoenix Guard begins the long push into the region. This is actually the first piece I wrote on this story, and I’ve been through it a couple of times to fix the continuity issues between it and the previous post, but if I missed some, apologies for any confusion. As before, all critiques are welcome, no matter how harsh. Fire away.

(Admins – I’m not familiar at all with textile, so if you’re having to spend any time fixing my posts please let me know somehow and I’ll take the time to learn a bit and make them prettier.)

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Chapter 4
One Cannot Serve Two Masters

The boy should not have been giving me trouble. His sword was of truly shoddy make; he’d obviously been practicing but was no match for my skill. He fought with the desperate passion of one defending his homeland. I could see in his eyes the lives of his loved ones on his shoulders – mother, father, brothers and sisters, likely a promised woman for a family down the road. In truth he wasn’t a bad swordsman. Had he been born a Parthan he’d have entered the academy of swords two winters ago. It was his poor luck to be born here. Even poorer luck to choose me as his man-to-man opponent, although the old man must have seemed an easy mark. Twenty years ago he’d have been dead in three ways the moment he engaged me. Now, a week removed from my unpleasant encounter with local magic, my slower muscles and aching joints allowed him the pleasure of hope, however false and fleeting.

After a minute or two he made his mistake, as I’d known he would. He was trying to strike me wherever he could, ignoring that I’d had time to strap on my breastplate and helmet before they attacked. I turned slightly and let his sword deflect off my breastplate; it slid away harmlessly with a fierce scratch that pierced the relative peace of the early morning air. My sword hand was turned away – so I snatched a handful of his filthy tunic and brought his face against the crown of my helmet with all my strength. His body slacked; warm liquid ran down into my hair. I dropped him and looked for another foe.

But with that, their ambush was ended. After I’d finished the man I heard two, perhaps three more deaths in the forest of hawthorn and pine around us. They’d succeeded in scattering the camp of the Phoenix Guard – the morning fog obscured every tent and every one of my men from me – and for that, I granted them a modicum of respect.

“Ferrun!” I called, as I searched the boy. Incredibly, it appeared that he’d been the leader of his little band, unless he’d stolen the shell-and-bone scepter carried by all Salamani leaders. His wasn’t very large, indicating a low status, but still, it was an impressive achievement for a young man of his age. Tucked into his shirt I found a rolled-up filthy sheep skin, about the size of a scroll. It was a sketch of the area, done in charcoal – circles marked where the band of tribesmen would lie until the camp settled down, while Xs marked where they hoped to engage us. The map showed the location of the village nearby, as a reference for the tribesmen to know where to meet and where to rally once they’d harassed us. That was an act of amateur but unsurprising stupidity. The village was tiny, and this area was expansive and travel was difficult. Had I not already interrogated a fellow four days and many miles ago about the residents of this valley, I’d now know their exact location.

One X on the map in particular was marked with a hieroglyphic sketch of a bird, inside a triangle. This was not a literate society, but that symbol was as clear as the Field Marshall insignia on my shoulder – a phoenix in flight, inside a triangle. Though I’d taken to sleeping in the same style of tent as that of the other men since the battle for the Shrine, and always in a random location in the camp, they knew where I’d be.

“Ferrun!” I called again, and the form of a man appeared in the grey fog, coming toward me. I picked up my sword, although I was fair certain that it was my captain coming to report on casualties.

“I’m sorry, Field Marshal,” said an oddly familiar voice. The man who stepped out of the fog was tall and thin, but not frail. His drawn sword was red with blood and the lieutenant bars on his pauldron were scratched deeply. His thin blond hair was cropped short on his head; beard stubble covered two scars on his left cheek. The arm flinched as he walked – clearly the scratch had been suffered in this battle, though he didn’t appear to be wounded otherwise. “The captain has left for the Hall of Warriors.”

My head spun with the man’s declaration – they’d felled Ferrun. It seemed impossible. He’d been as good as I was at his age; he could have beaten any of these Salamani blindfolded. The guard would miss him as a swordsman, a strategist and tactician. I’d miss him.

“Until our reunion under the eye of Anahita,” I whispered.

“Until then,” the man said, nodding, completing the prayer in Ferrun’s stead.

“What do they call you, Lieutenant?” I asked, as the men of the Phoenix began to reform, dragging corpses with them.

“Donnett, Field Marshal,” he said.

“Why don’t I know you?”

“Ferrun’s right hand – Lieutenant Serna – fell in the battle for the shrine,” Donnett said. “Captain Ferrun promoted me while you were still recovering from the healer’s work on you. The legion can vow for me.”

“Well then, I suppose it is Captain Donnett, now.”

Donnett was confused, but only for a moment. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “I shall attempt to bring the position the dignity of its former occupant.”

I handed Donnett the map and pointed out the mark for my rank. “They knew where my tent was, Captain,” I said. “They knew where I’d be sleeping.” If the notion of a traitor in camp fazed Donnett, he did not show it. By now there were scores of other Phoenix Guards around us, reforming the camp, cleaning, and searching the bodies of our attackers. By my count we’d killed seventeen. I was reasonably certain that none had gotten away, although flame spears – members of my light infantry reconnaissance squadron – were out confirming that for me that very moment. “Did we take any alive?”

“None, Field Marshal,” Donnett said, as we walked through the camp. “It appears they were quite intent on victory or death.”

Rank amateurs. I recalled the words of my mentor and father. Never make the mistake of lionizing a last stand, for it is never appropriate, except in the most exceptional of circumstance. Dead men are useless to the living. It was a heresy if spoken in public, but behind the locked gates of the Hall of Command in the Warrior Academy, it was a principle that lost battles but won wars. History was littered with commanders emotionally taken with the notion of a heroic charge into the meat grinder, or a stand against impossible odds. Those histories – almost without fail – were written by the scribe of the Parthan commander who let them have their day as a hero by retreating once, perhaps twice, but returning shortly to calmly cut them down when the fools had burned through their resources, or their divisions had lost morale.

“I may have come upon something you’d find interesting, Marshall,” Donnett said quietly. He looked around to see if anyone was within earshot. Satisfied, he continued, even quieter. “Before setting out I interrogated several of the prisoners in the capital from this area and prepared a list of all the Clans in the region.” Donnett produced a scroll case from one of his belt pouches. I uncorked the case and unfurled the neatly rolled sheet of papyrus, covered with names written – by Donnett, I assumed – in perfect calligraphy.

I’d heard a few of the names before – Mozhia, Ferazian, Kirazhak – but beyond a passing familiarity they held no significance for me. Donnett sensed this and continued. “The wizard – what is his name?” he asked.

“Ethelan Savrus.”

“Wizard Savrus has not been terribly useful to our cause on this expedition, has he?”

“No, he hasn’t,” I replied. “But that’s hardly his fault. The fox fever would fell my finest warrior, let alone disrupt the concentration necessary to cast-”

“His original family name is Ferazian.”

My breath caught in my lungs. The sky seemed to close in on us a little. “Can you prove this?”

“Of course,” he said, scowling, somewhat offended. “I’d not condemn a man on my intuition. I’ve a man in the mage hall of records. He caught wind that we were on our way to this province. He remembered the man’s name change those years ago and brought it to my attention. He has departed the city on all his breaks from the Hall. He was the only student in the past five years not to register his destination. I have seen the records. Ferazian has been serving two masters.”

“Gods help you if you’re lying to me.”

Donnett smiled. “The Gods will aid only those who aid themselves, Marshal, and perhaps not even then,” he said. “Thankfully, I have neither want nor need of them.”

“He has grey fox fever,” I said. “That can kill a man of any age, easily. Even if he survives he won’t ever breathe properly again.”

“Self-inflicted,” Donnett said. “He probably administered the fever upon himself the day before leaving the capital. It would be no great chore to sneak into the potion supplies of the mage hall. If he used a small enough dose, and ate it instead of simply absorbing it through the skin, most of it would die in his stomach and it would take weeks for what was left to work through his intestine. I don’t know, but I’d guess he is wearing a talisman spelled against the most lethal effects. That way he’d not have to fight any of his countrymen, nor protect the Guard from their ambush, but still be in place to pass them information of our location.”

I paced a moment, surveying the activity around me. The Guard was nearly finished breaking down the camp already, and had already buried the tribesmen – there was a reason they were the finest in the empire. A Flame Spear, wearing only a short sword and dressed as the Salamani common folk, caught my eyes from shouting distance. He made a cutting motion with one hand and a circle with the other. None had gotten away. I nodded to him and signaled to keep a perimeter.
I made my decision – I had nothing to go on but what Donnett had given me, and the consequences of inaction were too high. “You’re willing to stake your life on this claim?”

“If you deal with Ferazian and find no evidence on him of my assertion, I will willingly take his place in the Hall of Cowards,” Donnett said calmly. “But if he has not betrayed you, than his place in the Hall of Warriors is intact, and he needn’t worry.”

“He will still be in his tent,” I said. “It must be done before he suspects.” I set off in the direction where I’d find the mage’s single-person tent.

“Why the rush?” Donnett asked. “He cannot cast any magic in his condition. You can give him a proper trial before the men.”

I shook my head. “He will have scrolls, especially if you’re correct.”

Donnett followed along at my right and a step behind, the Parthan captain’s stance. So he’d been studying. That was all to the good. Other men became curious about our sudden march across the camp, but they were Phoenix Guardsmen. None of them questioned their commander; they knew that if they were to know, they would be told. One young Guardsman – obviously in his first campaign; he almost certainly could not yet grow a beard – stepped toward us as though he intended to join us, but a veteran near him grabbed his arm.

If he was a traitor, the wizard would be ready, despite his illness. It was too dangerous a task for me to undertake myself, especially now that I was in no condition to fight a wizard. I needed a man who could finish the business in a blow. If he got to his feet, there was no telling how many Guardsmen he might bring down with his scrolled magic before we felled him.

I saw the man I’d been looking for – he was eating a roasted pheasant with one hand and carrying his gear with the other. Most men required both hands to carry their equipment; Aquilo was two hands taller than most men. His fellow lieutenant Katema walked beside him – he was only a little shorter, but much thicker than Aquilo, and wore a red beard and several iron piercings in his ears and nose. “Marshal,” Aquilo said casually, when we approached. I did not require the men to stand at attention when in the field; such was the behavior of lesser commanders and lesser men. My authority and the discipline of the Guard were unquestioned, and I didn’t need it reinforced by children’s foot games.

“Aquilo,” I said. “I’ll need you to dispatch Ethelan for me.”

The olive-skinned man only smiled, dropping the pheasant and gear and stretching his scarred arms toward the sky. Another might have asked me what the wizard had done, but Aquilo was of the Dhaniri people, who loathed mages. The freezing weather had kept him perpetually irritable, and here was a chance to end the life of a wizard. He needed no reason.

Katema carried on with his business, as Donnett and I followed behind Aquilo. He walked toward the mage’s tent, along the way pulling up two pikes that had been stuck butt-first in the soil in a row. I motioned for a small group of archers and spearmen – eight, in all – to cover him. They fell into formation to his side.
Nobody had placed their tent within thirty paces of the mage, which was how it had always been for the forty years I’d been in the Parthan Imperial Force. It was small, with enough room to fit only a single person lying down, and expensively decorated, worked on both sides with ornate designs around the wizard’s initials, E.S.

The five spearmen and three archers set up a perimeter about halfway between the surrounding tents and the mage’s tent, which suddenly looked quite alone on an island of dark soil and permafrost. I could see his stocking-clad feet sticking out the back. When the ambush had come, he hadn’t even put his boots on. Evidently he’d had no reason to believe he would need to run, more evidence to support Donnett’s theory.

Aquilo – a pike in each massive hand – looked to me first, and I nodded. For a moment there was only the sound of his boots crushing the frost on his way to the tent. I thought at first that he’d call the mage out to face him honorably, but I recalled, just before he finished it, that his people believe in victory alone.

The man tossed one of the pikes in the air to switch his grip, and hurled it like a javelin, shredding the tent and sticking in the ground underneath it. Pinned to the ground, Ethelan Saverus – Ferazian – didn’t make a noise, but the pike’s grip shifted back and forth in the air as he moved inside the tent. I opened my mouth to tell Aquilo to throw the other and finish it, but he had already grasped it with both hands.

Suddenly a bolt of white fire ripped through the hole in the tent, setting its edges on fire and striking Aquilo in the chest and shoulder. The two layers of thick furs he wore protected his body, but the flames struck him with enough force to lick up the furs to his neck. Aquilo howled as the skin of his neck bubbled and hissed like a hot spring. He knelt down, scraped up a handful of frozen earth, and held it against his neck for a moment. He grinned in relief, and – I was certain – at the prospect of a new battle scar. Then he stood up and hurled the other pike. Again it shred the tent wall and stuck in the ground beneath it. Both pikes stood still as flag posts. Aquilo looked to me, heaving, the shoulder of his fur coats burned away, the flesh on his neck blistered and raw. He bowed his head, and left to collect his gear. “Marshal. Captain,” he said, as he passed Donnett and me.

By now a sizable crowd of the Guards had gathered, no doubt believing that our attackers’ rear guard had caught us up. The gathering was good, now that the deed was done – there were several men of rank among them, and it saved me the trouble of collecting them to tell them what had happened to the mage. I nodded for the five spearmen to search the tent. “The wizard was spying for the men who attacked us this morning,” I told the gathered men. “The deaths of three guardsmen are upon his shoulders. Tell any man who asks you what has happened here, and why it had to be so.”

The guardsmen, generally satisfied, though some more than others, dispersed to complete the work of organizing and breaking down the camp. Apart from being the empire’s best fighters, every man in the Phoenix Guard was educated in politics and strategy (although some took to it more than others). The guardsmen were sensitive about deaths of their own, especially at the hands of their own even if it was their marshal doing the killing, even if it was the mage. I could tell that some would later privately theorize and postulate as to what had occurred this morning, but it didn’t appear that there would not be enough doubters to cause a problem of discipline. Had they seen me order the execution of another guardsman, that could have been a greater problem. Few would shed many tears over the mage.

Jarrus, the young Parthan spearman who searched the mage, approached Donnett and me. He passed me a small leather bag. Most of what I found inside was useless trinkets, though among them there was a small vial with a fox’s head carved into the stopper. I showed it to Donnett, who said nothing. I lifted out an odd piece of jewelry, cut from a dull jewel from the south that made for ugly jewels but was used often as spell stone. I recognized one of the runes carved into its face as a healing incantation. “He wore that directly in the center of his chest, Marshal,” said Jarrus.

“Over the windpipe,” I murmured, turning the talisman in my fingers, watching Donnett’s inscrutable expression. The only other thing I found of interest was three spell scrolls. I couldn’t read any of them, but at this point I did not need to read them. The wax seal on one of them showed an impression of a flame.

“It appears you’ve earned your promotion,” I said to Donnett. “Enjoy the extra coin.”

“I’ll settle for another day above ground,” he replied, as we left the mage and his tent where they stood. Men would bury him, and catch up to the Guard probably about mid-day – the tribesmen had been one matter, but they’d take the time to put the mage in the ground deep. “But I won’t turn down the extra coin.”

The sun had at last crested the eastern mountains when the Guard was ready to move. Ferrun would have a brilliant morning on which to ride to the Hall of Warriors.
An animal handler brought up my horse, which was unperturbed by the morning’s battle. Horses were rare enough in the Parthan Empire, and Parthan horses were so difficult to breed that even the Phoenix Guard – the Emperor’s personal force – had no cavalry. We only even knew of the concept of cavalry from the ancient wars of expansion, when the General Nathus malla Nashira battled men fighting on horseback in the southern province of Bedavaan. As the Parthan foot soldiers closed in to overwhelm them, the Bedavaani army, rather than let their animals fall into our hands, slaughtered every Bedavaani horse in existence, executed the population down to the last child, and finally committed mass ritual suicide in the palace.

If they’d left us enough of those horse to breed a force of them, we’d now rule the world. As it was, only one in nine Parthan mares bred in captivity, and then it was a near-impossible chore to get them to breed enough to keep the population steady. The wild ones were utterly impossible to train, even with the assistance of magic. Because of this, the price of a good Parthan horse was about a fifth that of a fully-developed farm; the price of a war horse was closer to a quarter. My war council’s horses were protected by a full squadron of archers and infantry, untouchable by any attack. That meant that three squadrons only slept two-thirds of each night, but it was worth it – we never lost horses to thieves or ambush.

A Guardsman, Shanja, of Aquilo’s people, approached and proffered Ferrun’s sheathed sword to me. I looked at it, and took it after a moment. “Did you have to sheathe it?” I asked him.

“I did, Marshal,” he replied, and left.

Good. At the least, he wasn’t caught off guard. With luck he brought a little pain into the life of the one that brought him down. “Shall I stand with you as you send Captain Ferrun his horse?” Donnett asked me.

I held Ferrun’s sword tightly in both hands and closed my eyes. I couldn’t afford to lose a horse, this deep into the campaign. “Ferrun is an impressive hand with animals,” I said. “He’ll find a horse to carry him to the hall.” Donnett said nothing, but nodded. He understood the honor he’d just been granted.

I was preparing to saddle when another man approached us. He was Parthan, though clearly not a Guardsman – a gray and white robe covered his considerable girth, and the tattoos on his hands marked his office of Imperial Messenger. He looked younger than his likely age, but for his neatly trimmed stark white beard and balding hair. “Marshal,” he said, smoothly. “I will require a moment.”

These messengers did this from time to time – one would be out in the frontier, aside from the army not another Parthan around for leagues, and an Imperial Official would appear out of thin air and request “a moment of your time.” It had happened to me perhaps a few dozen times over my career, and it never became less jarring, less dreamlike in the way incongruous elements were suddenly thrust together.

“Of course,” I said, clapping him on the back. I knew that would annoy him, and I had always enjoyed irritating the prim sensibilities of bureaucrats. I didn’t hate the bureaucrats the way many military men did – some men were born to combat, and some were born to administration. Both were vital, and both could be noble, in their way. This man was no more a coward than I, for braving the lion’s den of Imperial politics every day.

“I bring news from the Expansion Council,” the man said. “It is they who ordered me here.”

“And what would the Council in Partha require of a man with a good deal of work left here in Salamanca?”

“You know the manner of these requests, Marshal,” the man replied, and he was right. The messengers never knew. And they always called it a request, though the penalty for refusal could be quite severe. “I am to bring you back to Partha for an assembly, with you and you alone. The sensitivity of the information is such that Councilor Furius refused to commit it to vellum, thought stone or thought bottle. He will allow it spoken to you, and you alone. You are to bring only five of your men, and the others are to continue their mission here in your stead.”

“Is this a request of the usual variety, or the legitimate sort?”

“Legitimate,” the man said. He appeared as surprised at that as I was. When the council asked one back, one generally came or paid a steeper price than was worth the refusal. “I’ve been instructed to inform you that you are welcome to refuse to answer their summons, but should you choose to come with me, the council will interpret that as your acceptance to do what they ask of you. Councilor Furius told me before I left that the issue begged of your unique talents.”

Damned Furius. The youngling spends four years in the council and he thinks to order where my boots fall. The worst of it is that, by the law, he could. Even the least creative High Councilor of Expansion could easily find a dozen legal ways to bring misery to the life of an uncooperative Marshal. Emperor Parthus Andronus – three hundred years past, now – had sought to ensure that there would never again be another military takeover, as the one that began the year of the bastard son, and so had made several decrees that placed the Councils well above any military officer.

Furius had granted me the right of refusal as a ploy, a demonstration of his magnanimity toward the generation of leadership that came before him. Of that I had no doubt. Such good will toward me would buy him credibility and gravitas among the nobles, who bristle at young men ordering around their elders, even legally.

I stepped away from the messenger, trying to shake off the fog that had never really left. I’d taken a blow to the head, which made me feel hazy, and I’d been healed, which brought its own haze. I was finding it hard to think.
Furius knew I’d come. There would be no punishment for not coming, but he knew the thoughts I’d be having right now – that I could slog through Salamanca for several more months, taking a league a week, or I could take my chances with whatever else he had in mind.

The Council didn’t need to offer a punishment. They were offering to rescue me from one – wasting time grinding through this brutally boring slog of a province. I could leave the Guard here to finish the task of securing the new territory and establishing supply lines to Meroe’s borders. They hardly needed me to get through Salamanca now that the bulk of opposition was finished, and I could return in time to command the campaign for Meroe. That was the real prize – I needn’t bother with the slog. It needed to be done, but I’d earned the right to choose my battles.
I turned back to him. “Much as I loathe Tayalar travelling, it appears we can both please our lords today.”

“Good,” the messenger replied. “I will inform Lord Furius that you have accepted. Choose five men to accompany you. We must be off before mid-morning.”

The man hustled off to work his magic, in the forest, almost certainly to keep away from the disapproving glares of the Guardsmen. They were educated for soldiers, but cultural taboos are never easy to overcome.

I returned to the Guard, and was startled to find that I could see them all. The sun had finally broken the morning fog.