— Chapter 42 —
Plenimar

FROM where she sat her horse in the front ranks that morning, Beka could see Klia just down the line, conferring with the queen and the other officers of her army. Phoria’s gold-chased breastplate and helm glinted in the light, and her tabard was the color of flame. Between that and the great white Skalan stallion she rode, you didn’t need the royal standard to find her in battle. Klia said something to her half sister and Phoria laughed and clapped her on the shoulder. Everyone was in good spirits today. Or almost everyone; down the line Beka could see Danos, grim and haggard as he sat his mount. In recent battles and skirmishes he’d been bold, but not foolish, yet it was clear the disgrace of his family and his severed relationship with Princess Elani weighed heavily on him.

The cold autumn wind off the Inner Sea made the myriad army standards snap on their poles, their varied colors bright against the blue Plenimaran sky. Black-headed gulls sailed overhead, mingling their shrill cries with the hiss of the wind through miles of long dry grass. Before Phoria’s massed army, the rolling hills of the Plenimaran frontier stretched into the distance, becoming foothills and then the jagged mountain ridges of the peninsula that connected Plenimar to the mainland. Between the Skalan army and the crucial pass there, what was left of the Overlord’s army stood in full array.

In less than three months since Klia’s troop had captured the vital ford, Phoria and her combined regiments and warships had made a concentrated push, decimating the Plenimarans, and driving them back to their own doorstep.

Looking south, Beka could make out Plenimaran warships far out at sea, trying to stop a flotilla of Skala’s navy from making landfall. From this distance they looked like toys in a great tub.

There was movement in the rank behind her. Nyal emerged from the press and reined in his bay beside hers. His dark hair flowed loose beneath his scarred helmet, and Aurënfaie chain mail glittered above the front of his corselet.

“It’s a good day to fight, and good ground,” he remarked.

“It is.”

Their eyes met briefly, conveying all that they could not say here.

“A damn good day!” Sergeant Rylin exclaimed just down the row.

Others started to cheer, but Beka held up her hand for silence.

The Overlord left his lines and rode forward with a phalanx of officers under a flag of parlay. Phoria’s standard-bearer raised another and the queen galloped out with Klia and her guard to speak with him.

“This is it!” someone said among the ranks. “He’s got to capitulate now! We’ve got ’em!”

An excited murmur spread out from there, but Beka kept her eye on the queen. Klia had spent hours with the other officers in Phoria’s tent last night, and come away tight-lipped and silent.

The queen and the Plenimaran Overlord spoke for some time, small figures at this distance deciding whether or not any more blood was to be spilled.

They parted at last and each group rode back to their own lines. Klia rode back to Beka and Nyal, while Phoria remained out in front of the line.

Turning to face her army, Phoria addressed them in a ringing battlefield voice.

“My Skalan brothers and sisters, the Overlord has refused to surrender, despite our greater numbers. This—” She swept a gauntleted hand dismissively at the not inconsiderable Plenimaran line. “This ragged company is all that stands between us and Benshâl—between us and total victory!”

A great cheer rippled back through the ranks. The queen’s words were passed back over shoulders.

Phoria held up her hand again and silence fell. “You’ve all fought brilliantly this summer. Thanks to your valor, we have come farther than any Skalan army since the days of your great-grandparents. I ask you now to go farther still. Give me another victory today and I promise you, you will see the hidden lands of Plenimar through the eyes of conquerors!” She paused as another cheer went up, not quite as enthusiastic as the last one.

Beka glanced over at Klia, but the commander kept her gaze on the queen. She wasn’t smiling now.

More than the Plenimaran forces stood between them and Benshâl; the mountains loomed ahead, the passes perhaps still crawling with defenders, and winter coming on. Snow showed on some of the higher peaks already. Even without resistance, it would take more than a few days to traverse those heights—and who knew what lay beyond? More troops in reserve? An armed populace? Unless they captured the Overlord and paraded him before the army, the chances of resistance were high.

“My brothers and sisters!” Phoria continued. “This day we have the chance to secure the lasting safety of Skala. No more will Plenimaran armies march on us. No more will their ships plunder our vessels and coast, carrying Skalan citizens off into wretched slavery. No more will they choke off the Gold Road and starve our treasuries, our people. In our beloved homeland, people are suffering now, this very day, from the deprivations caused by Plenimar’s boundless aggression. Our people! Our loved ones! And those who have spilled their blood to keep us free of Plenimar’s yoke! My brothers and sisters, will you stand with me this day to preserve the future of our homeland?”

This was greeted with a roar of acclaim, Klia and Beka with them.

Across the field came more cheering, but Beka thought it must be driven by desperation.

Phoria drew the Sword of Gherilain as she shouted, “For Skala!”

“For Skala and the queen!” the soldiers roared with one voice, banging shields and waving weapons. “For Skala and the queen!”

Brandishing the great sword, Phoria wheeled her horse and gave the signal. The battle trumpets blared out on both sides of the field and the armies began the dance of battle.

The two forces clashed like surf against the rocks. As the morning wore on, lines broke and pockets of little battles formed across the field. Outnumbered as they were, the Plenimarans fought with the fury and zeal of defenders. It went on through the morning and into the afternoon. Beka and Nyal stayed at Klia’s side, with Myrhini and most of Beka’s troop. So Beka was close enough to hear when Klia let out a ragged cry of dismay.

“The queen’s horse is down! To the queen!”

Just ahead of them, the queen’s standard, close by Danos’s pennant, wavered over a seething sea of battle for a moment, then went down. There was no sign of Phoria or her horse. Getting to the queen was nearly impossible but somehow they hacked their way through.

As they neared where they’d last seen her standard, Beka realized that Nyal was no longer beside her. In the crush of battle there was only an instant to look around, but there was no sign of him. Heart warring with duty, she had no choice but to press forward with Klia, who was still shouting, “To the queen!”

Suddenly the press gave way. Before them, Phoria lay over her dying stallion’s heaving withers with half a dozen dead or dying riders around her. Her horse’s hindquarters were badly hacked and its throat was slashed, Beka noted in an instant, but what filled her heart with ice was the sight of the queen’s headless body, and the laughing Plenimaran marine standing over her, holding her head by her pale hair in one hand and the bloody Sword of Gherilain in the other.

As voices in two languages shouted the news Klia let out a scream of pure rage and leapt over the horse. With a single swing she sliced the marine’s head from his shoulders, then caught her sister’s before it could strike the ground. She placed it reverently beside the body, then took up the queen’s sword and held it high, yelling “For the queen! Avenge Queen Phoria!”

The cry spread and the battle went on, the Skalans driven now by vengeance. The army loved her, the queen who led from the front, and the warriors fought beyond the edge of exhaustion, slaying every Plenimaran they came against or dying in the effort.

The lowering sun was painting the clouds a bloodstained red when word spread that the Overlord was wounded and suing for peace. Still at Klia’s side, Beka and her troop had to wade through the dead and dying to reach the place of parlay near the shore.

The Overlord was already there, lying on a litter. He was a worn, haggard man, no more than thirty. His wounds were hidden under his red-and-silver robes of state. He wore no armor, but he clutched his crowned helm under his left arm. As Klia and her entourage entered his retinue went to one knee, but the Overlord remained where he was.

The proceedings didn’t take long. A scribe drafted the terms of surrender under which Plenimar relinquished all claims to any lands outside their own borders, including the sacred isle of Kouros, which Plenimar had held for decades, and vowed to pay yearly tribute to Skala for one hundred years.

Beka paid scant attention, worried sick over Nyal. It was nearly dark before she was released to search for her husband with the help of twenty of her riders. Working on foot, she tried to retrace her steps to the last place she’d seen him. In the ruddy light, it was a hellish sight. Camp followers moved among the heaving piles of bodies, stripping the enemy and killing those who still lived. Drysians and soldiers were already sorting the dead, helping the wounded, and speeding on those too badly hurt to survive.

At last Beka heard a shout to her left and followed the familiar voice to where Sergeant Rylin and a rider named Sori were kneeling on either side of a bloody body. Beka ran the last few stumbling steps and went to her knees beside Nyal. Someone had taken off his cuirass and mail and cut his left sleeve open. The upper bone was broken and protruding through the skin. His face and neck were covered in blood, and his right leg, but his eyes were open and he raised his right hand weakly. A jagged cut had laid his left cheek open to the bone. That at least accounted for some of the blood.

She clasped his hand, fighting back tears. “How bad?”

“The leg wound is deep,” Rylin told her, already wrapping strips of cloth cut from someone’s tabard around that wound. “But it’s his arm I’m worried about.”

“Talía,” Nyal croaked. “Don’t cry, my talía. It’s not so bad.”

“It doesn’t look good,” Beka said, wiping her eyes on her sleeve.

“Cadeus and Samani are off looking for a healer. In the meantime, I can set that arm,” said Sori.

Nyal squeezed her hand and she nodded.

“Are you wounded, Beka?” Nyal asked as the others gathered rags and cut splints from a broken halberd.

“Not a scratch,” Beka managed. “The queen is dead, Nyal.”

His eyes widened “Then we’ve lost?”

“No. Klia took up the sword and led us to victory.”

The wound on his cheek gaped as he tried to smile. “Then we’ll go home at last!”

The healer didn’t find them until dawn, and by then Nyal’s wounds had begun to fester, though they’d been washed with what water Beka and the others had left.

The exhausted young drysian came to them with a servant hauling his cart of simples. He dressed Nyal’s wound and those of the other riders who had them, and gave them healing blessings. When he was done, Beka pulled him aside.

“Thank you, Brother, for all you’ve done. Please, will my husband survive his wounds?”

“The infection wasn’t too bad, but if that bone doesn’t mend well, he could lose the arm.”

Beka nodded and turned back to the others. She’d love Nyal just as well with one arm as two, but what it would do to him, not to be able to hunt or draw a bow anymore, she couldn’t imagine.

Phoria’s body had been rescued and lay in state in her pavilion under a black shroud. In front of it, the bodies of fallen officers were laid out on cloaks with their hands clasped on their breasts and their swords beside them. Danos was not among them, Klia noted. Either he’d taken Phoria’s words to heart, or been lucky.

There was no time to mourn her fallen sister yet. She first sent word of the victory and the queen’s loss the fastest way she could, with a message sphere to Thero, asking that he bring word to Korathan. Then she spent a weary night conferring with General Moraus and her surviving officers, taking in the number of dead, and trying to reapportion commands. By right of birth, she was now Marshal of the Armies, assuming Phoria’s command until the new queen could do so.

Just after dawn Beka Cavish returned with word of more casualties—Nyal was among them, badly wounded.

Standing by the dying fire, Klia looked around at all her gathered officers. “Take heart. The war is over, and though our losses are grievous, the service we have done Skala will ensure the safety of our land for generations to come. As we mourn the loss of our queen, so must we honor her sacrifice and victory.”

“But the victory is yours,” one of the generals, Sarit, said.

“I only finished what my sister started,” Klia told him. “And now I must complete another task. I’m starting for Skala today by sea, to bring the Sword of Gherilain to its rightful owner. In the meantime, General Moraus, you will assume command here; see to the wounded until spring, then bring the army home.” She paused. “And I have a field promotion to make. Captain Beka Cavish, step forward.”

Beka, who’d been standing with Anri and Danos, looked up in surprise, and in the brightening light Klia could see how weary and bloodstained she was. Wind-burned as she was, her face was pale behind the freckles, and it was clear she hadn’t slept, either. Nonetheless, she came forward and saluted smartly.

Klia smiled. “I’m promoting you, Beka Cavish. These past five years you have served well, rendered untold service to the royal family, and exemplified valor on the field. From this day forward, you are a commander of the Queen’s Horse Guard.”

A murmur went through the assembly. Most knew that her father was a foreigner, and of low rank. They had no idea of his service to the Crown. Klia stilled it with a sharp look, then unhooked her silver and gold gorget and presented it to Beka.

After a stunned instant, Beka took it in both hands and went down on one knee. “Thank you, Highness, for this immense honor. I will not fail you.”

“I know you won’t. I call you all to bear witness. Rise, Commander Beka Cavish, and assume your place with your peers.”

When the last of the night’s work was finished at last, Klia made her way wearily back to Phoria’s pavilion to sit vigil, accompanied by the generals and commanders. As she neared it, she noticed Danos nearby. He saluted her with a wan smile. She returned it, wondering what the future held for him.