The Serpent Bride

  “Maxel? Where have you been? I’ve been so worried.”

  He gave her a glance, but kept riding so that Ravenna had to push her horse to catch up enough to hear his answer.

  “I’ve been out riding,” he said.

  Ravenna looked at StarDrifter and Salome, knowing something had happened, but that they were not likely to tell her.

  What were they up to? It involved Ishbel, no doubt. A pang, part of anger, part of jealousy, shot through her.

  “Maxel?” she said again.

  “We’ve been speaking with Isaiah,” Maximilian said. “It was nothing important, Ravenna.”

  “You were not so very surprised at the story I related, Axis,” Isaiah said. He and Axis were left alone atop the mountain peak.

  Axis gave a shake of his head. “I’d heard a little bit of it from Maxel before we left Sakkuth. The rest…well, the details I did not know, but none of it surprised me.” His mouth twitched. “And I am glad it won’t be me to save the world this time.”

  “Considering you did such a shitty job of it the last time around, Axis, I’d be hardly likely to hand it on to you.”

  Axis laughed. He waved a hand at the column grinding its slow way through Salamaan Pass. “And this is evacuation rather than invasion, am I right?”

  Isaiah nodded. “Invasion was the only concept my generals could accept.”

  “The Skraelings are heading south.”

  “They will provide Kanubai with his army.”

  “Stars, Isaiah, what about the millions of people left behind?”

  “We can leave the Salamaan Pass open for some weeks after the Skraelings have moved into Isembaard, but once Kanubai moves, we shall have to close it against his eventual march into the north. People will be able to flee north once word of the Skraelings spreads.”

  They were quiet a moment, thinking about the terror that would spread throughout Isembaard. Axis hoped that the news would spread fast, and that many would have the chance to make their escape.

  “And me, Isaiah?” Axis said eventually. “I have a feeling that there is a far greater reason for you to have dragged me back from death other than to have a useful counselor for your more insecure moments.”

  “Aye, there is. The first reason that I, that Maximilian, needed you back you can see before you. Kanubai is going to invade the north, Axis. He is going to try and destroy both Elcho Falling and its lord before they have a chance to destroy him. Maximilian will need an army, and he is going to need a general who can command it for him. You are that man.”

  Isaiah now turned to look at Axis directly.

  “The second reason Maximilian needs you is because he is going to need a friend. Someone who has been through what he now faces—the assumption of an ancient title, the resurrection of an ancient realm, in order to repel an even more ancient enemy. There is no one about him now who can provide that friendship, save you.”

  “Not Ishbel?”

  “No,” said Isaiah, “not Ishbel.”

  That evening, just as Maximilian and his group were finishing their evening meal, Ishbel walked into the circle of firelight.

  “Maximilian? Would it be possible to speak with you?”

  She looked gaunt and anxious, and held her cloak gripped tightly about her.

  “Have you not done enough?” Ravenna said. “You can’t just walk in here and—”

  “Ravenna,” Venetia said in a low voice, gripping her daughter’s arm.

  “Maximilian,” Ishbel said, ignoring Ravenna. “We need to talk about what Isaiah said today. Please.”

  Maximilian gave a nod, rising to his feet.

  “Maxel—” Ravenna began, making to rise herself, but Venetia literally hauled her back to the ground.

  “No!” Venetia hissed as Maximilian and Ishbel faded away into the night. “You need to let them speak, Ravenna. Alone!”

  Ravenna stared at her mother, then reluctantly nodded.

  Venetia studied her, wishing she knew what to say. She’d watched her daughter work her way into Maximilian’s bed, and she’d seen—clear to anyone save her blinded daughter—his reluctance to keep her there. Venetia had traveled with Maximilian for many weeks now, and she thought she knew the man. Guilt and honor bound him tightly, as did his wish not to hurt Ravenna’s feelings, whom he felt he owed for his release from the Veins.

  But guilt and honor and debt did not make a good foundation for a relationship, particularly when Maximilian still yearned for Ishbel.

  “Ravenna,” Venetia said gently, “Maximilian will break your heart eventually. You do know that, don’t you?”

  “He loves me.”

  Venetia looked across the fire to Salome and StarDrifter, both watching and listening carefully.

  “He does,” said Ravenna. “We’ve been through so much together. You just don’t understand.”

  “Maximilian, I had no idea you were the Lord of Elcho Falling. I’m sorry.”

  They had found a spot relatively isolated from the campfires and people, but one with enough light cast from the many fires that they could see each other’s faces.

  Maximilian looked at her, noting the hollowed cheeks, the overly bright eyes. She looked very tense and nervous, but she also looked more open and honest than he’d ever seen her.

  He wished she could have found that honesty far sooner. He wished he could have been the kind of man she could have been honest with.

  “You never gave me a chance to tell you,” he said.

  “What I said, in the woodsman’s hut…”

  She couldn’t go on, but both of them heard her words echo through their minds.

  I hate him. Over the years I’ve had visions of him, and always I know that if ever he catches me, then he will wrap my life in unbearable pain and sorrow, for pain and sorrow trail in the darkness at his shoulders like a miasma. I know he will ruin my life. He will ruin the world.

  “Do you still feel that way, Ishbel?”

  She hung her head, fiddling with her hands.

  “Do you still dream of me, Ishbel?”

  Her head came up again, her eyes bright with tears. She nodded.

  “And are they still the same?”

  “Worse,” she whispered.

  Maximilian sighed. “What did you want to say to me tonight, Ishbel?”

  “Just…just that…that I was sorry. I wish…”

  “Don’t get started on the apologies and the wishes, Ishbel. It is far too late for that.”

  “There is something else.”

  “Yes?”

  “What I learned today—that you had been kept in the Veins for seventeen years—made me feel ill. I find it difficult to believe that someone could do that to you.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, Ishbel. It does no good. Besides, they also put you through the horror of your parents’ deaths.”

  “But seventeen years, Maxel!”

  He noted the use of the familiar, but was too tired to correct it.

  “It is over and past now, Ishbel.”

  “No,” she said, “I don’t think it is.” She paused, deliberating what to say next, knowing it could drive a further wedge between them, but wanting quite desperately to let him know she did know what it had been like for him.

  “A long time ago,” Ishbel said, “when we were almost happy, that night in the woodsman’s hut, when we made love…Maxel, one of my skills is to uncoil memories. When you slept, I lay my hand on that scar on your left hip, and uncoiled—”

  “I don’t want to hear this, Ishbel!”

  She was crying now, silent tears that slid down her cheeks. “I know what it was like for you, Maxel.”

  He half turned away, moving a hand slightly as if to wave away her words.

  “What do they want of us?” she said after a lengthy silence.

  “To save this land from Kanubai.”

  “I have no idea how.”

  He gave a small smile at that. “Neither do I. I fear it is a great mistake cho
osing me to try to save the world.”

  “I could not think of anyone better to choose,” Ishbel said softly, but Maximilian did not hear it, for he had turned and walked away.

  Five days later, Isaiah’s invasion force moved into the Outlands.

  They met with some minor resistance from small bands of men, but they were quelled within hours.

  There was nothing between Isaiah and the north.

  Nothing between Maximilian and Elcho Falling.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Pelemere, the Northern Kingdoms

  Look,” said Sirus, “if we attack from his left flank, we’ll—”

  “That’s shit-talk and well you know it,” said Fulmer, King of Hosea. “That’s all you can talk, yes? You couldn’t fight your way out of a brothel, let alone—”

  “Shut up,” said Malat, weariness evident in voice and posture and haggard expression. “Just shut up, Fulmer. You do not help the situation at all.”

  “And you can?” Fulmer said, his voice rising a little, betraying his youth and inexperience.

  Malat sighed, moving away from the other two kings and pouring himself a cup of warmed wine, buying time before he had to answer. The past few months had been stupidity personified as the three kings of the Central Kingdoms pitted their armies against that of the Outlanders, whose forces were led by Chief Alm Georgdi, who had replaced the murdered Rilm Evenor as the war leader of the Outlander tribes.

  In theory, the armies of the Central Kingdoms should have destroyed the Outlanders. Their combined forces were four times the size of Georgdi’s, they had considerably more resources, they fought on their own territory, which meant they did not have the long supply lines that Georgdi did, and their armies were better equipped.

  Unfortunately, superiority in theory did not translate to success on the battlefield.

  They had fought Georgdi up and down the plains between Pelemere and Hosea and, while Georgdi had enjoyed no major victories, he had suffered no defeats, either. His army was well disciplined, highly motivated, and battle-skilled.

  And it enjoyed the supreme advantage of having but one leader.

  On the other hand, the Central Kingdoms’ armies suffered from lack of coordination, lack of cohesion, and three supreme commanders who bickered constantly among themselves and who could barely agree on the day of the week, let alone a coherent battle strategy.

  “Georgdi is in danger of surrounding us,” Malat said, turning back to the other two, his wine untasted. “We’ve managed to get ourselves stuck in this…” He caught himself just before he said nightmare of an indefensible city. “Stuck here in Pelemere. Our supplies are low to the point of nonexistence. Winter settled in a month early. We don’t have soldiers used to fighting on starvation rations in the middle of snowdrifts…and Georgdi does. Gods, my friends, they’ve fought the Skraelings in Viland for decades. Fulmer, have you heard anything from the supply train that was leaving Hosea two weeks ago? We need those supplies, man. Badly.”

  “I’ve heard nothing,” said Fulmer. “None of the scouts have yet returned.”

  Malat and Sirus exchanged a worried look. No one had heard anything from the north for at least ten days. The entire area had been blanketed by snowstorms, yes, but they should have heard something.

  “I think—” began Sirus, when he was interrupted by the door opening and one of his captains entering.

  The captain bowed, excusing himself for the interruption.

  “Sire,” he said, “Chief Georgdi sits his horse outside the city gates, requesting a parley.”

  “What?” said Fulmer. “He has come to surrender?”

  “No,” said the captain, “he says he has come to warn of the approach of a tide of death.”

  BroadWing EvenBeat fought his way through the gusts of snow, his wings barely able to hold him aloft.

  He was terrified.

  He’d never encountered a storm like this. It wasn’t its ferocity so much as what it was.

  Not just wind.

  Not just snow.

  There was something else in the air about him.

  BroadWing couldn’t see the creatures, but he could hear them, and he could feel them. Whispers, cold, soft fingers brushing his face, his arms, his belly.

  And sometimes, so fleeting he thought he’d imagined it, a face, an Icarii face, floating before him.

  A cold smile lighting its features.

  Then it would be gone, and BroadWing would be left to fight his way through the storm once more, desperate to get to Pelemere, desperate to warn the northern kings of what approached.

  “Tell Georgdi he has our word,” said Malat. “He enjoys safe harbor while in Pelemere.”

  As the captain left, Malat looked significantly at Fulmer. “He does enjoy safe harbor while under the parley flag, Fulmer.”

  “Perhaps he wants to surrender,” said Fulmer.

  “And perhaps you’re nothing but a young fool,” said Sirus, sitting down in a chair. “It might be better to allow Malat and myself to talk to Georgdi.”

  “If it wasn’t for my forces and my supplies—” Fulmer began.

  “Yes,” said Malat, “and we’re more than grateful, Fulmer. I don’t know what we would have done without you. But I think it is important to hear what Georgdi has to say. He has fought with nothing but honor, and I don’t expect anything else from him now.”

  Fulmer grunted, but he said no more, and joined Malat at the table with Sirus.

  He hoped they would make Georgdi stand.

  Chief Alm Georgdi was nothing like what any of the three men had expected. Somehow, Malat thought, as the Outlander entered the room accompanied by three of his men, all unarmed (and one looking as though he’d come straight from the battlefield, given his grubby clothing and exhausted features), they’d always imagined Georgdi as an enormous bear of a man. A hulk, rippling with muscle, and probably bristling with a full beard and curling mustachios as well.

  Instead, Georgdi proved to be a trim man of good height, short of hair and clean-shaven, who looked as if he should be a scholar rather than a far-too-successful warlord. His attire was stylish, his manner elegant, his eyes bright and honest.

  Malat instantly knew that whatever news he brought, it wasn’t going to be good.

  An approaching tide of death?

  Georgdi waved aside all formalities and offers of refreshment, pulling out a chair and sitting at the table without waiting for an invitation.

  “We’re in trouble,” he said, his well-modulated voice as elegant as the rest of his appearance.

  “So you have come to surrender,” Fulmer said.

  Malat closed his eyes briefly and prayed for patience.

  “All of us are in trouble,” said Georgdi, ignoring Fulmer and looking between Sirus and Malat, instinctively knowing the better men at the table even before Fulmer had opened his mouth. “And all our families besides. Many of them will already be dead. Our petty little battles must be forgotten in the face of what approaches.” He turned, gesturing to the disheveled and exhausted man who’d entered with him and who now took a step forward.

  “This man is Jelial,” said Georgdi. “Lord Warden of the Eastern Plains Province of Gershadi. Fulmer, you know him, surely? Yes, well. Jelial’s hometown is Hornridge. He staggered into my camp late last night. Jelial?”

  “I have been running south for these past six weeks,” Jelial said, and the three kings went cold at the sound of his voice, because it echoed with hopelessness, “trying to keep ahead of death.”

  “Oh, for gods’ sakes, man,” said Malat, rising from his seat, “what have you to tell us?”

  “Several million Skraelings are approaching,” said Jelial, his voice still dead. “They ate their way through Hornridge. No one survived.”

  Jelial looked at Fulmer. “Hosea is no more. Everyone, everyone, is dead. And as they come farther south, as they feed, they are growing stronger, larger…different. Gods, sometimes I have caught glimpses of some of them who bore t
he heads of jackals! The creatures are now streaming toward Pelemere. They are perhaps a day away, maybe two if you’re lucky. Get everyone out. Get them out!”

  “Nothing will stop the Skraelings,” said Georgdi in a tone as casual and even as if he were discussing the arrangements for a breakfast. “I know Skraelings. I fought them with Evenor in Viland. They are murderous in bands of a few score, and almost impossible in bands of a few hundred. Millions? Let alone the millions of what Jelial describes? I am not even going to attempt to stay and fight on these plains. You are welcome to your Pelemere and your Central Kingdoms, gentlemen. Within minutes I am going to rise from this chair and ride back to my army, which I shall gather about me and with all haste ride, flee, back into the Outlands, which I can either hope the Skraelings will ignore, or where we might have some chance of containing them in the passes between the FarReach Mountains and the Sky Peaks. What you do is your choice. If you decide to abandon your kingdoms—which, frankly I advise, because you stand no chance against these Skraelings—then you may flee with me. The more of us there are to battle the Skraelings in the mountain passes, if it comes to that, the more hope we have of standing firm against them.”

  Fulmer, Malat, and Sirus stared at him. For the moment none of them could speak.

  “You have lost your kingdoms,” Georgdi said, his voice now softer. “By the end of this week they will have vanished beneath a seething tide of death. Get who and what you can out now. You have a day, two at the most. Sit there and gape if you wish, but, frankly, I’d be moving.”

  With that he pushed his chair back and rose. “I don’t have time to linger here. My armies spent the night packing, we will be gone by midmorning.”

  “It’s all lies,” Fulmer said, white with shock.

  “No,” Malat said quietly, “it isn’t.”

  “The Skraelings?” said Sirus. “Millions? What is happening? They’ve never come this far south before. And in such numbers…What in the world are they doing?”

  “They are led by a man called Lister,” said Jelial. “He styles himself the Lord of the Skraelings. His Skraelings are swarming south. Migrating. My lords, I beg you. Flee. Flee.”