“They—we—are as safe as I can make them.” He nodded thanks to Gaeres who led his vuhana to him and handed him the reins. The simulacrum watched him with solid white eyes before giving an equine snort.
He was the last of the five to mount and found himself staring at a nebulous black sea of shapes and vaporous faces. Kai and human, they awaited his command.
“Which way?” Serovek asked.
“Escariel.” According to scouts and witnesses, a portion of the horde had broken from the main body and reached the township. In his altered state, Brishen could smell them on the wind, like rot from a cesspit on a hot summer day.
The galla would linger there for a short time, confused by the sudden absence of tempting magic emitted by the Kai living in or near the township. It wouldn’t take them long to hunt for its newest source—Brishen and his army.
“They’re trapped by the Absu on one side. Are you familiar with double envelopment?” Serovek and Andras nodded, while Gaeres and Megiddo shook their heads. “It’s a pincer movement in battle. Attack the enemy from the front, sides and back. You encircle them, then annihilate them. With the Absu acting as a wall, the dead only have to flank three sides. Once we block the galla in, we drive them toward the Haradis and do the same to the greater horde we find further down river. Use your swords to cut down any that break free of the net.”
Andras cocked his head. “I thought galla couldn’t be killed.”
“They can’t. A cut with the sword will simply send them back to the breach, where they’ll come right back out until we close it.” Brishen looked to each man. “Ready?” At their nods, he wheeled his vuhana around and raised his sword above his head.
“To me!” he cried and rode down the tor’s slope on the fleet-footed mount, Wraith Kings beside and behind him, and a host of shrieking, howling dead flowing like black water around them. A macabre hunt illuminated by moonlight, they tore across the plain.
They reached Escariel before the dawn broke, a two-day ride accomplished in hours. The vuhana Brishen rode looked like his living mount, except for the eyes. The similarity ended there. This creature didn’t gallop, it flew, ground rushing beneath its hooves.
Escariel was a husk of the town he visited days earlier. Empty of Kai and every other living thing that could flee the overrun township.
The midden rot smell buffeted Brishen’s face as they galloped toward the Absu. Strange chittering screeches accompanied the rancid scent, and he got his first true look at the galla.
Agile, twitching things with bowed backs and bony fingers as long as his arm, they cavorted along the Absu’s opposite bank, waving skeletal limbs and clambering over each other like rats in a feeding frenzy.
Their faces…
Brishen was an eidolon, a creature born of necromantic magic that controlled the risen dead, and even his spirit recoiled at the sight. If these were the twisted results of Gullperi ridding themselves of their malevolence to attain purity, it was no wonder their brethren punished them for the deed.
Anger fueled his revulsion. These things had fed on his people and threatened to devour everything in their path. They were an infestation to be burned out, scoured clean and utterly annihilated.
Their dissonant screams rose to a feverish pitch when they spotted the kings, some even separating from the legion to hurl themselves against the river’s invisible wall. The dead answered, trilling their own challenges as they lined up along the safe side of the Absu in infantry lines.
Brishen guided his vuhana behind the line, calling out commands to the kings. Megiddo paired with Andras while Serovek rode with Gaeres. Brishen plunged into the crowd of revenant to face Hasarath and the human leader who first refused to follow him. Both bowed at his orders to split their company, and soon the army separated into two distinct units, one with the monk and exile, the other with the margrave and the Quereci chieftain’s son.
Solitary, Brishen faced a hul galla that repeatedly smashed itself against the river’s unyielding barrier in a frenzied attempt to reach him. He imagined he looked like nothing more than a sweet meat to a pack of starving wolves as his magic streamed off him like blood. He raised a hand and slashed downward. “Now!”
The dead surged across the river in a black wave, unencumbered by the impediment of water. They flowed around the edges of the galla mob, shadow grappling with shadow as the demons sought to avoid the tightening net, and the dead blocked their escape.
Brishen followed Megiddo as his vuhana raced along the perimeter. A pair of galla squirmed out of a break in the infantry’s rampart. “Cut them down, Megiddo! Cut them down!” He slashed at a third that ran straight at his mount and leapt on Brishen.
The thing was a strangling, scratching serpent that tore at his armor and tried to drag him off the vuhana. Brishen peeled it away from himself long enough to stab it. The strength and rage bled out, leaving only a black dust that faded to nothing. Lightning licked down the blade’s hamon line as if tasting the bitter flavor of a first kill.
Another charged him, and the vuhana sprang forward to meet it. Brishen’s sword sliced through the galla’s torso, leaving sparks in its wake, and the demon disintegrated.
“They can’t be that easy to kill,” Megiddo shouted as he decapitated another escapee.
“Remember what I said,” Brishen shouted back. “You’re just sending them back to the breach.” Where they would emerge again and again until he closed it off for good.
They fought until the sun was high above the horizon. The dead pressed ever inward, building an impenetrable wall around the galla, until the horde heaved and contorted against its restraints and screamed its rage.
Were Brishen still bound by his fleshly body, he’d be half dead from exhaustion. Instead, exhilaration, power, and horror hummed through him, as strong as the Absu’s current.
Serovek trotted up to him. “Too bad we can’t set them on fire and have done with it,” he said.
“You don’t know how much I wish that were an option.” Brishen signaled for the other kings to join them. “I’m not much of a drover,” he said. “So if any of you have that skill, speak up.
“I’ve been herding since I was old enough to walk,” Gaeres volunteered. “Sheep, cattle, or galla, herding is herding.”
Brishen nodded. “I defer to your knowledge for how to get these things down river and into Haradis.” He turned to Megiddo. “Then I’ll need you and your rune circle knowledge to trap them there.”
“Whatever is required, Your Majesty.”
Brishen surveyed their morning’s work. A vast, roiling sea of demons and revenants darkened the plain. Haradis lay to the south, not far for a tireless vuhana to gallop, as distant as the moon for kings made drovers to lead the damned that had destroyed her.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Ildiko returned to a Saggara bursting with displaced Kai and rampant rumors of demon battles in the empty streets of Escariel and along the Absu.
Tents, yurts, and other temporary shelters spread across the plain. A makeshift city had evolved from the refugee camp, swelling with more Kai. Horse herds dotted the grasslands and flocks of chickens flapped out of the way with indignant squawks as her party rode to the redoubt’s gates.
Only she, Anhuset, Sinhue and the kapu kezets had returned to Saggara. The Quereci clansmen who accompanied Gaeres to the tor refused to leave.
Ildiko didn’t argue with their decision. She was, in fact, grateful for it. Their insistence in remaining at the tor meant they would not only watch over Gaeres’s body, but those of the other Wraith Kings. Even the threat of roaming galla or the returning dead didn’t convince them to leave. She had ridden away with their assurances to guard the tor and Anhuset’s promise to hunt them down if they made off with Brishen’s favorite mount.
The journey back to Saggara was grim and quiet. Except for a brief discussion of where to camp and when to leave, they each kept their own counsel, and their evening camp had been more silent than a funeral processi
on. Ildiko had tried once to engage Anhuset. “Are you ill?” As a human, Ildiko hadn’t suffered the draining effects of the ritual that sucked away Kai magic.
Anhuset shook her head but didn’t comment. Whatever lingering symptoms plagued her, Sinhue and the kezets, none of them mentioned it to Ildiko or each other.
The entire sejm appointed by Brishen met them inside the gate—nine men and women chosen from the ranks of his most trusted vicegerents, justiciars and military officers. It included Mertok and Cephren, whose daughter Ineni had caught Ildiko’s attention with her clever idea of flooding her father’s dream flower field to create a bigger barrier against the galla.
Mertok helped Ildiko off her horse amidst a crowd of curious onlookers. “Did it work?”
The same question was reflected in the face of each councilor. “It worked,” she said. “We saw from a distance the kings ride toward the Absu with the dead accompanying them.” The sound and the sight still made her shiver.
Quiet cheers and murmurs of relief greeted her statement, and she wondered if they sensed their magic drain away, or if it was a matter of proximity. The farther out from the tor, the lesser the effects? No one looked sick or panicked.
One of the vicegerents answered her unspoken question. He leaned into the impromptu circle they created around her and lowered her voice. “We must meet as soon as possible, Your Majesty. Many of the Kai have complained of sickness. If it’s plague…”
She let the statement hang in the air and the others shuddered. Ildiko might have done the same if she didn’t already know the source of this “illness.” She slid a glance to the Elsod who leaned against her horse, a weary old woman made even older by what had transpired at the tor and the loss of her own considerable magic.
“Please see to the Elsod and her companions and give me time to wipe off the journey’s dust. I’ll meet with you all in His Majesty’s council chamber.”
Once in the bedroom she shared with Brishen, Ildiko shed most of her clothes and sent Sinhue to rest, promising to summon her if needed. Clad only in her shift, she raised the lid of the chest at the end of the bed. Brishen stored much of his everyday garb inside, and she plunged her hands into the neatly folded stack of shirts, tunics and trousers.
She brought one of the shirts to her nose and inhaled deeply. It smelled of him, cedar and the sachets of dried herbs and orange peel nestled inside the chest to ward off insects and freshen the clothing. His body lay far from her, within a circle warded with necromantic magic and guarded by nomads whose loyalty lay not with him but with the man who rode with him as eidolon.
Shivering, she yanked the shift over her head, replacing it with the shirt. Not as long as the shift, it still fell to her knees. She donned one of her shapeless frocks over that and added a heavily embroidered tunic cinched at her waist with a wide jeweled belt. The ensemble was part of Brishen’s bridal gift to her—apparel far more sumptuous than anything she’d brought with her from Gaur and uniquely Kai in its cut and style.
The best part was she didn’t need Sinhue’s help to put it on. She looked as shattered as Ildiko felt when her mistress sent her away to rest.
Ildiko sat on the chest to lace up her boots and paused, closing her eyes. The image of Brishen’s expression when Serovek stabbed him would haunt her nightmares until she died, along with the memory of his body, still and bloody in the snow and his blue-eyed eidolon staring down at it with a dispassionate gaze.
“I leave my heart and my kingdom in your capable hands, wife.” They were his last words to her before she fled the tor ahead of the dead’s summoning.
She raised her hands to stare at the trembling and curled them into fists before hiding them in her lap. Brishen had made her regent, putting all his faith in her ability to hold his kingdom together while he tried to stop the galla from tearing it apart. Ildiko had never been more terrified in her life—for her husband, for the Kai, for herself.
She took several shallow breaths and finished lacing her boots. Giving into her fear of failing him or losing him was a luxury she didn’t have. If he returned—when he returned—she’d fall apart and cry herself sick. For now, she had a sejm to meet with and a country to rule. A young human queen over non-human Kai. What could possibly go wrong?
The sejm already crowded the council chamber when Ildiko arrived. While Anhuset had refused an appointed place on the sejm, she was present, a grim sentinel eyeing the rest of the chamber’s occupants from a spot where she could watch the door.
Ildiko’s first order of business was an abbreviated accounting of the events at Saruna Tor, and she fielded several requests for more detail.
“What spell did the king use to raise the dead?”
That one she could answer honestly. “I don’t know. It was in a language I don’t speak. Neither bast-Kai nor any human tongue I’ve been taught.” She glanced at Anhuset. “Did you understand it?” The Kai woman shook her head.
“Stragglers leaving Escariel last say they saw a great mass of shadows cross the Absu and attack the galla. The were led by strange riders on horses with white eyes and seemed impervious to injury from the galla.” The councilor recounting the eyewitness accounts was skeptical. “Surely, that can’t be the king and the humans?”
Ildiko shrugged, surprised by how fast Brishen and his army of revenants traveled. “The dead and their generals aren’t bound by time and distance as we are. Who knows how fast they can travel. Did the witnesses say if the galla were overwhelmed?” A blessing from the gods if they were, but if the scout reports held true, the greatest horde was yet to be encountered.
Mertok answered her. “I’ve stationed watchers near Escariel. I received a report shortly before you arrived. No galla have been seen on the river banks, but you can still hear them in the distance. Likely the main body of the horde following the Kai who left Haradis.”
“We can’t stop anyone returning to Escariel if they wish,” she said. “But warn them just because it looks like His Majesty’s army has pushed the galla back, it doesn’t mean there aren’t more still lurking on the shore or in the township.”
Another councilor broached a subject that made Ildiko stiffen with dread. “We’ve had widespread complaints, mostly from the older population. A sickness. Every Kai of adult age has complained of it, though it doesn’t seem to affect the young. Some fear it’s the beginnings of a plague.”
Ildiko willed herself not to glance at Anhuset. “Are any of you experiencing these symptoms?” She knew the answer but adopted a puzzled expression when each councilor nodded or replied in the affirmative. “Have they grown worse?” When they all said no, she tapped her chin and pretended to consider. “If it’s plague, we’ll know soon enough. Make sure the wells are kept clean and free of debris. We have a lot of people gathered in one spot. It will be too easy to poison the water supply from simple carelessness and neglect.”
No amount of clean water would chase away the strange sickness the Kai suffered, but she’d use the assumption to her advantage to make sure they took necessary precautions to prevent a real outbreak of disease. Even without physical symptoms of illness manifesting, they’d learn their magic was gone the moment they couldn’t reap a mortem light from a dead loved one. She’d have to lie through her teeth, pretend ignorance of its cause, blame it on the galla and pray the Kai’s fear and hatred of the horde would convince them her suggestion held merit.
Until then, she had more than enough immediate concerns to keep her sleepless. Their dwindling stores of food alarmed her most. With as many refugees as Saggara housed now, and more to come, it wouldn’t be long before they were decimated, even with strict rationing. Transport animals would become food, with the oxen teams slaughtered first, followed by the horses.
“Place additional guards at each storeroom and barn and watches on the horse herds,” she instructed Mertok.
The meeting lasted for hours, and Ildiko was more exhausted when it was over than she was from the journey to and from Saruna Tor. Mert
ok lingered after she dismissed the other sejm members.
“Your Majesty,” he said. “You should know there’s already talk among some of the vicegerents and others that it’s wrong to have a regent who isn’t Kai ruling Saggara in the king’s stead.”
Anhuset’s eyes turned a paler gold and narrowed. “Who are they? I’ll be happy to disavow them of the notion.”
Ildiko smiled. Thank the gods she had such a fierce supporter. “I don’t think we need your particular method of persuasion just yet, sha-Anhuset.”
She wasn’t surprised by Mertok’s revelation. Discontent and disapproval among the newly elevated Kai nobility had been a given the moment Brishen revealed his plan to appoint her regent.
“They’ll have to swallow their gall for now. Brishen has named me regent, and I’ll do what I must to hold the throne until his return.” She’d likely be well and truly hated by the time her regency ended, but her husband would still have his throne. “Increase the presence of your troops in the great hall during supper,” she added. “It’s best to get a clear message across now instead of waiting until someone challenges me.”
She didn’t have to wait long for the challenge.
Supper, as usual, was a crowded affair, even more so as those who normally didn’t eat in the great hall attended to hear Ildiko’s summary of the Wraith Kings’ plan to banish the galla. She answered numerous questions, careful not to elaborate on the ritual’s effect on the five men and verified that yes, Gaur had sent a general of its own to help Brishen. She didn’t mention they’d sent an expendable exile or that he’d come unaccompanied by troops.
She described how the magic used to make Brishen and the others Wraith Kings, rendered them mostly impervious to any harm inflicted by the galla and allowed them to control the dead who followed them. The Elsod attended the supper and confirmed everything Ildiko said.