Sunset Mantle Read online

  The horns blew again. Cete shook his head, and charged on, and his men followed. Even if he was violating the chain of command, they, at least, knew to obey it. His sin was not theirs. Three more heartbeats, and they were in among the tribesmen, and no law or custom allowed a commander to call off a troop once they had come to grips.

  If nothing else, he’d secured a retreat for those with better discipline. Then all thoughts of strategy, all thoughts of right and wrong vanished, and there was nothing but sword and axe and knife and blood, the push of line against line.

  The first wave of tribesmen went down. They had courage, but lacked the discipline of the cities—each tribesman fought to prove himself, to win acclaim and honor, but Cete’s troops fought because that was what they had learned, because they had been trained to do nothing other than fight when the blood began to flow.

  First wave down, second wave coming. Not the heroes of the first line, not young men trying to prove themselves, but the fighting men of a northern tribe, beards and hair tied back, mail shirts and brass embossed shields. Man for man, the Reach army was their better, but there were too many of them. Step by step by step, Cete and his men were forced back to the riverbank. Before them, a mass of fighting men, hundreds of tribal warriors, with goat-skin standards and red-painted shields. Behind them, a drop almost as tall as a man, and bleached stones beneath.

  Damn Radan! The boy had looked fine, and they had been right to march out to meet this threat, but if he was to be a field general, he had to see that circumstances had changed. Now was the time to call for the slingers and ladders, now was the time for a counterattack. The surprise was gone, and Cete had a beachhead for him. Cete had disobeyed, but he had been right, and Radan had to take the advantage that Cete’s fifty had earned.

  It had not just been his fifty who had remained on the weak side of the streambed. Others had not heard the call to retreat, or had come to grips before it was blown, or had not chosen to obey. But there were less than eighty of the Reach men, and they were falling fast. Cete ducked underneath a spear, which skidded across his shoulder. He pushed up, axe in one hand, knife in the other, and found the weak point in his opponent’s mail shirt. The knife cut in at the armpit, and the tribesman pulled back, howling in pain.

  Two more came in, and went down, but all along the riverbank his men were dying. Three patches held. Where he stood was the first squad, and remnants of the fourth; he could not tell who was left alive. He could hear the soft sounds of a ready army behind him, amidst all the thunder and shouting of the melee. If Cete had kept his horn, he’d have blown the charge himself, and to hell with the consequence, but that was long gone, trampled with his tent or taken as a trophy.

  There was a pause in the assault, just an instant, and Cete looked back over the dry riverbed. There was Radan, his face white beneath his helmet, horn to hand. He was young enough that this might have been his first real battle.

  Cete took a spear in the center of his chest. It dropped him to one knee, but it didn’t cut his armor, or knock him back into the streambed. The roar came up from inside him, forced out from his chest, loud enough to hurt his throat. He was on his feet, his foe was gone, and he was holding a fistful of hair. He had no recollection of what had happened; his vision was going white around the edges, and while his fingers still gripped his weapons, he could no longer feel them. The edge and the breath of the madding.

  He leapt forward, beyond the knot of his men, into the face of his enemies. Cete had always known how he would die.

  Behind him, as though through a very long tunnel, the trumpets blew the charge. A hook-bladed knife gashed into the side of his face; his axe took off the hand that held it, so the spray of the tribesman’s blood met his own in midair. Another spear in the center of his chest, as he moved through the blood. This one caught between two plates in his armor, and the man behind it tried to push through the chain and arming shirt. Cete’s axe came up and around, cut the spearpoint off just beyond the tang. He was pushed forward, forward by the weight of the men behind him.

  Cete staggered, held his ground, did his best to distinguish between the tribesmen and the Reach army. They started singing the war hymn, which helped. He joined in the chorus, found his voice in theirs, found his center in the tramp of armored men moving as one. The tribesmen had been pushing his fifty-command hard, but against the force of the Reach army, they were the ones who fell, they were the ones who turned to flee.

  Then the terrain the tribesmen had chosen worked against them. It was too broken, too steep for easy flight. Warriors tripped over roots, caught their feet in brambles, fell and were killed by spear and axe. The trumpets blew the halt as the tribal army thinned out, fled in too many directions to follow as a troop. This time, that caution was correct. It did not seem likely to Cete that the tribes were trying to lead them into an ambush, but he had seen too often their courage; they were fleeing because they were losing. As soon as the odds evened, they would turn and fight, ferocious as boars at bay.

  Cete could not remember where he had left his dagger—in a tribesman’s belly, perhaps, or knocked from his grip and trampled into the gory earth—but there was no shortage of replacements. He picked up a hook-bladed tribal knife and stuck it in his belt. It was longer than the dagger that the Reach army had issued, and the balance was different, but it was a fine tool. It would serve.

  More than two hundred men of the tribes lay on the field made muddy with their gore, their weapons taken as trophies or heaped up and burned. Of the Reach army, no more than thirty men had fallen, twenty-three of whom were from Cete’s fifty. Eight others had taken serious wounds, three of whom were unlikely to survive to see the Reach Antach again. Cete walked at the head of a sadly diminished line, but a proud one; the victory was theirs, and they knew it.

  Already, the ravens were settling on the branches of the oaks and terebinths, croaking at one another and watching the men beneath with first one eye, and then the other. Already, broad winged vultures circled, drifting without the slightest motion of wing or tail. Soon, the Reach army would leave, taking their spoils and their slain with them, and the ravens and vultures would have their share. It would be a long time before the tribesmen returned to that field, split through by a dry riverbed.

  The army spent two more days marching outward, but the tribesmen did not show themselves a second time, and the supply pouches from the Reach grew thin. They reached a hilltop, raised up there a prayer altar, and offered their psalms of praise, and begged forgiveness for their transgressions. Then they turned back for the Reach, scouts and slingers ranging on the hills beside the column, waiting for the tribesmen to avenge their slain.

  Chapter 3

  Six days later, they returned to the walls of the Reach Antach. There had been no further ambush or attack, no trace of tribesmen, hostile or friendly. It had been as fine a raid as any Cete had ever seen. More than two hundred tribesmen dead, dozens more likely to die of their wounds, and a great wealth in arms and armor taken or destroyed. The strike by the Reach would have been death for most tribes, their standards left to rot as the survivors begged to share the tents of cousins and second cousins. Nothing less than a confederation of tribes would be able to raid again for a generation. And they had only lost forty men of the Reach—thirty in the fighting, and ten more of their wounds. For all that included twenty-eight men of Cete’s fifty, he did not count himself disappointed with his performance in the field, and his surviving soldiers held their heads high.

  It seemed that the other commanders did not fault him for his losses. After spending the ritual night outside the walls, after the army was purified by the priests, they marched back through the northern gate of Reach Antach. As they came up to the gate, two other commanders came up behind Cete and lifted him up on their shoulders.

  They sang the battle hymn as they carried him through the gate, and Cete was amazed to feel tears on his face. During the weeks of training, the other commanders had not said much to him
, good or ill, and both he and his troop had known themselves to be outclan. They had sold their labor to fight for the Reach Antach, but they were not of it. Now, it seemed that those who lived were men of the Reach Antach. As he was carried back into the Reach, Cete felt a part of him that had died when he left Hainst the City coming back to life.

  Once he was through the gate, they let him down, clapped him on the shoulder, and then they all sang the battle hymn together as they marched on towards the church. All along the streets, women and children and laboring men watched. Some were cheering from the moment the Reach army returned singing. Others watched with anxious eyes until they caught sight of the face they sought, and only then did they join in the general celebration. It was thanks to Cete’s fifty that there were not more who turned away shaking and pale, or who joined the procession behind the linen-wrapped stretchers, crying silently in the smell of the cypress branches and saxifrage.

  The joy that they had felt coming through the gate diminished when they reached the courtyard of the church. Radan Termith was there, as was the Antach of the Antach, and Lemist Irimin, scholar-priest of Reach Antach. They were all wearing the white mantles that men wore to atone, or for their burials, or for when they sat in judgment.

  There was the pale limestone facing of the church behind them, and the long gray wall that marked the limits of sanctified land all around. Soon all the congregation of the Reach stood in the courtyard, men and women, soldiers and stonemasons. The sweat cooled on Cete’s back as the battle-hymn quieted and was still. The men who had marched out to fight the tribes walked hesitantly into the church courtyard, to hear why Captain General Termith had raced ahead of his army into the Reach, and why he had called the Antach and the priest to sit with him in judgment, in front of the whole congregation.

  “What is the law,” said Radan, when there was at last silence, “when a fifty-commander disregards the order to withdraw, and causes the death of half of his command by his refusal to obey orders?”

  The world tilted, circled around; Cete tried to keep from falling down.

  “The law is that the forehead of this fifty-commander should be cut open so that his scar shall always be seen, his back should be lashed seventy times with a rod of myrtle or with a whip of calf-skin, and he should dwell on the outside of the camp,” said Lemist, slowly. She was old, and when she led the services, or delivered a sermon, she would speak carefully, not letting her words run away with her. But she was not this slow. She saw what was being done, and did not approve.

  Nor did the Antach of the Antach look pleased to be sitting in judgment, trailing the skirts of his white mantle in the dirt of the church courtyard. The chairs they had brought out were fine work; cedar and cypress and sycomore, but none of them looked entirely comfortable in them; Lemist and the Antach were uneasy, and Radan . . . Radan was risking a great deal, and Cete did not know why. Radan called witness after witness to stand before the leaders of the community and the whole congregation. Each told what they had seen; there were no falsehood spoken before that tribunal. Some of the witnesses—his men, the other generals, men who had lived when they would have died—tried to explain why Cete had been right. As Radan cut them off, and called others to confirm what had happened on the field, Cete did his best to think through what was happening, and why.

  The letter of the law was against him, and he had no clan that would demand mercy, no patron with standing to argue that Radan’s orders had been criminally flawed. That he knew as soon as the accusation was made. It did not take long for all those gathered to know it as well, as all the details were drawn out through witnesses, through questions to the priest and to the Antach, through consultation of the law.

  “And now,” said Radan, when the witnesses were done, when Cete could find no point of law to justify his disobedience, when the sun was low enough in the sky for the afternoon service to begin, “unless the lord of the Reach chooses to override my judgment and authority, I shall adjust the verdict through my right as captain, and administer justice.”

  There. That was it. It finally all fit into place. The tribe that had been raised up against the Reach was not the only arrow in the quiver of the city clans. They had another, far deadlier bolt, and Cete could at last see it, just before it sank into his breast.

  Radan Termith, captain general of the army of Reach Antach, was committed to the destruction of the Reach Antach, and of the Antach clan. That was why he had camped recklessly, that was why he had blown the retreat, and that was why he had waited so long before sounding the charge. He needed the trust of the people of the Reach to see his task through, and he had given up much of that trust by prosecuting Cete, and at long last, Cete understood why.

  He could see it on the face of the Antach. Whether or not he overrode his general to grant clemency to the fifty-commander who had saved his army, he would lose. If he let the trial take its course, Radan would grant clemency himself. The Antach would lose the trust of his men, and Radan would gain it. That would mean their deaths at the hands of the next tribe the city clans raised, and his own soon after.

  If he overrode Radan, Radan would lose the respect of the troops, and the Antach would be seen as a protector of his men; well and good, but it would also lay the grounds for breaking the contract between Radan Termith and the Reach Antach. Unlike Cete’s contract, which rested on the bare bedrock of the law, Radan’s contract would have teeth to it. There would be financial protection, and there would be the honor of the Termith staked . . . it would have been structured to give the Termith grounds for feud if the contract was broken. The Antach could not second-guess his general, not without giving the armies of Clan Termith grounds to set out from Termith the City, with law and custom marching alongside.

  Either way, if Cete would remain silent, either Radan or the Antach would pardon him, and he’d see it through with his scars all honorable scars, and with his position intact. If he played it right, he could stand at Radan’s shoulder, and when the axe fell on the Reach Antach, there might be a home for him in Termith.

  As the accused, Cete had been sitting on the ground, before the tribunal. Now he stood, back straight, head held high. “I ask no mercy,” said Cete. “I claim no clemency from man. The captain general has chosen to prosecute me for my violations of the laws of battle. Let the sentence be carried out, so that the law shall not be broken.”

  The priest looked troubled, the general looked furious, and the Antach looked like a man reprieved from the gallows. Cete locked eyes with him, the man who was his lord, and for whom he had chosen to be branded as an outcast, to be whipped and beaten. “Lay on, then!” said Cete, his voice loud in the silence. “Or have you assembled this congregation for nothing?”

  Next to the Antach, Radan seethed. This was not what he had intended. He had given up a great deal, and gained nothing by it. The most expendable of his fifty-commanders, the man chosen to be his winning stone, had walked off the board and made him look a fool. “Then let it be carried out, if that is your wish,” said Radan, the smoothness gone from his voice and manner. “Sergeant Mase! Execute the sentence of the court and of the whole congregation.”

  Mase stepped forward out of the ranks, took the myrtle rod from the hand of the priest, its bark as dark as skin, the knife from the belt of the Antach, its blade as clear as dawn. Radan leaned forward as Mase stepped past, gave him his instructions too quietly for Cete to hear. Mase looked troubled at those words, lost the spring in his step that he had on being called forward.

  As Mase went through the preparations for the scarring and the lashes, removing Cete’s shirt and laying it to the side, binding Cete’s arms in front of him, and getting a blessing from the priest and from the Antach, Cete considered what Radan might have said. He had outplayed the captain general, but Radan would still be looking for an escape. Then Mase came forward with the knife, and thought fled.

  Mase cut open Cete’s forehead, pulled back a flap of skin, so the blood flowed down freely.
r />   This was it; this was the end. There was no Reach so remote, no city clan so desperate to take on a fighting man with that scar. If he wished to work with his axe again, he could perhaps become a bandit in the hillcountry—even the tribes would know what that mark meant, and even they would not have him.

  Cete did not allow himself to weep, but the blood dripped down like tears.

  Mase then took his stance a step and a half behind Cete. “Knew you’d come to a bad end,” he said, and Cete felt his old grudge against Mase rising up in his breast. Of course. That was it; yet another scheme from the captain general.

  Radan had seen what had passed between Cete and Mase. He did not want Cete as a living reminder of what he had done, begging at the outskirts of the Reach, so he had told Mase to kill him with the rod. The men would think it was part of the grudge between Cete and the sergeant, and some of the stain of what had happened would leave Radan’s hands, to fall on Mase, who would be sacrificed at some later point, to win back a measure of respect from the men.

  The words that Mase had said about his honor chain still lay between them, but this was more important. “Strike as you have been ordered, Sergeant Mase,” said Cete, loud enough to be heard by the assembled congregation. “I know that it is not your hand moving the rod.” He looked across at Radan Termith, and saw the hatred blaze up there. He had been right, and now that stain would not spread. Radan had destroyed him, but he would not escape any of the blame for that destruction.

  If the man with the whip or rod killed a man who was being lashed, he was liable for a charge of murder. Perhaps Radan would push that through, have Mase executed as well. Cete had said what he had said, so if Radan did that, he’d be murdered in the street. While that would give ample grounds for the Termith to declare a feud with the Antach, Cete did not think their son would chose that method of seeing their aim accomplished. Mase would live, and Radan would be hated.