Campaign of the Deep Fens, A’Offizer ca’Matin had told him the Gardes a’Liste had raised their family to cu’.
When his tour was over a year from now, after his return to Nessantico, Eneas had promised Cenzi that he would resign from the Garde Civile and offer himself for training as teni, even though he would be much older than the usual acolytes. He was certain that this was what Cenzi wanted of him.
The Hellins War had been good for Eneas, though not for the Holdings.
At least, it had been so until this shadow came. This chill in his spine.
It’s not a premonition. It’s just fear…
He’d felt fear before. Every soldier felt fear unless he were an utter fool, but it had never touched him like this. Fear rattled the bones in your flesh; fear made the blood sing in your ears. Fear turned your bowels to foul brown water. Fear set your weapon to shaking in your hand. But Eneas didn’t tremble, his stomach was settled, and the tip of his sword didn’t waver in his grasp.
This wasn’t fear-or not any kind he’d experienced before. That worried him most of all.
What is that you send me, Cenzi? Tell me, so that I may serve You as you wish…
“O’Offizier cu’Kinnear!” A’Offizier ca’Matin barked, and Eneas shook his head to dispel the thoughts. He saluted his superior offizier, who was already astride his destrier. “I need you to drive your men into their right flank; push them into the valley for the war-teni to handle. We shouldn’t have their nahualli to worry about; the outriders have said they’re still back near the Tecuhtli at Lake Malik. Understood?”
Eneas nodded.
“Good,” ca’Matin said. “Then let’s get this started. Page, tell the horns to call the advance.” The boy he’d addressed ran toward the knoll where the horns and signal flags were clustered as ca’Matin saluted Eneas: the sign of Cenzi, that Eneas returned solemnly and devoutly. “Cenzi’s fortune to you, Eneas,” he said.
“And with all of us,” Eneas returned fervently. Ca’Matin yanked on the reins. He cantered away, the powerful warhorse moving carefully through the tall grass toward the center of the lines where the banners of the Holdings rippled in the afternoon breeze.
The cornets sounded then, harsh and bright. The call floated before them in challenge to the Westlanders, and the sound of weapons clashing against armor rushed after it. Eneas took the reins of his own destrier from a waiting page and mounted. His e’offiziers looked at him expectantly. “Make your peace with Cenzi,” he told them. “It’s time.”
He raised his hand, signaling them toward the right flank and the steep hills there.
A roar answered him, a thousand throats calling out. They began to move, slowly at first, then more rapidly, until they were rushing headlong down toward the spears of the enemy. As they charged, the war-fire of the teni behind them shrieked over their heads, smashing into the front ranks of the Westlander forces and gouging holes in their ragged lines. There didn’t seem to be an answer from the nahualli; Eneas thought that the sour fear would leave him with that, but it didn’t.
Eneas and his men surged into the fuming gaps. The clash of steel on steel echoed from the flanks of the lush hills, as did the screams of the wounded who went down under the hooves of the destriers they rode. Eneas struck at a short spear that thrust toward him, hacking away the barbed tip and chopping down with his saber at the hand that held it. Blood spurted and the savage face below him fell away. His horse pushed forward, and he cut at the Westlanders on either side of him, armored in chest plates of bamboo and heavy cloth sewn with small brass rings, their helmets adorned with the plumes of brightly-colored birds, their ruddy skin painted with orange-and-yellow streaks that made their faces look like skulls or tattooed with black-and-red lines. They were fierce opponents, the Westlanders, and no soldier of the Holdings who had faced them dared to belittle their skill or their bravery. Yet- oddly-they gave way now, retreating back toward the main mass of their army. Eneas saw a darkness under their sandaled feet: the soil directly in front of him was like a circle of sand, but that sand was as black as the charcoal of a burned log.
The unease that had afflicted Eneas before the battle deepened, settling like a deathly chill in his lungs so that he labored to breathe and his sword felt like a leaden weight in his hands. He urged his horse forward onto the sand and as he did so, he shouted: a wordless cry to banish the feeling with noise and rage.
He was answered by a sound he’d never heard before.
The sound… it was as if one of the Earth Moitidi-those unworthy children of Cenzi-had screamed an unearthly and deep roar, and the sound pulled Eneas’ head around to the left toward its source. Orange fire and foul, black smoke erupted from the ground. Dirt clods fell around Eneas like a solid rain, spattering him, and with it… with it were parts of bodies. A hand, still clutching a broken sword, rebounded from the neck of Enean’s destrier and fell to the ground. He stared at the gory object. He heard the screams then, belatedly.
“It’s the nahualli! Sorcery!” Eneas screamed in warning to his troops, to the awful hand that had fallen from the sky.
He was answered with a roar that was even louder than the first, a blast that blinded him with its light as the force of it lifted him bodily, tearing him from saddle and horse. A demigod had plucked him up-Eneas seemed to hover for a breath or more: this… this is Cenzi’s premonition and warning… -and flung him back down to earth as if in disgust.
The earth rose up to meet him.
He remembered nothing else after that.
Karl ca’Vliomani
Karl clutched a necklace in his hand: a shell of polished gray stone that he had given to Ana, long ago. The necklace had been around her neck when she died; Sergei had given it to him. Flecks of Ana’s blood were caught in the deep ridges. He tightened his fingers hard around the shell, feeling the hard edges press into his palm. The pain didn’t matter; it meant that he could still feel something other than the emptiness that filled him now.
Who did this? Why would they kill Ana?
Karl had lost too many of the people he most cared about over the years. He’d wrapped himself in grief and sorrow and sometimes anger at their passing, he’d awakened at night certain he’d heard their voices or thinking that “Oh, today I should call on him or her…” only to remember that the person in his mind was forever, irrevocably, gone.
This… this was worse than any of those deaths. This was a knife-blow to his heart, and he could feel himself bleeding inside.
Can I survive this? I’ve lost my best friend, the woman I love.. ..
Karl was seated at the front of the temple, with Regent Sergei and Kraljiki Audric to his left and the newly- installed Archigos Kenne and the a’teni of the Faith to his right. Kenne had been Ana’s friend and ally from the beginning, when they had both been part of Archigos Dhosti’s staff. Now, looking two decades older than his actual years, his hair white and hands shaking with an eternal palsy, Kenne appeared severely uncomfortable with the responsibility thrust upon him. The Archigos leaned over to Karl and patted his hand. He said something that Karl didn’t hear against the choir’s singing: “Long Lament,” by the composer ce’Miella. Kenne’s actual words didn’t matter: Karl nodded, because he knew it was expected.
In the pew directly behind them, in the midst of the ca’-and-cu’, was Varina and Mika ci’Gilan; like Varina, Mika was also a longtime friend of Karl and Ana. Mika was the local head of the Numetodo faction in Nessantico, directing the research of the sect here. Varina’s hand touched Karl’s shoulder; without looking back, he covered it with his own before letting his hand, like a dead thing, slide into his lap. Her fingers tightened on his shoulder; her hand remained there.
The embrace was meant to be comfort, he knew, but it was simply an empty weight.
Who did this? Karl had heard a dozen rumors. Predictably, some blamed the Numetodo. Some Firenzcia. Some the Brezno branch of the Faith. The wildest story said that the assassin called the White Stone had been responsible, that there’d been a pale pebble on Ana’s left eye when she was found, the White Stone’s signature.
That last rumor was certainly not true. But the others… Karl didn’t know. But he vowed he would find out.
Karl had envied, sometimes, the comfort of faith that Ana had. He and Ana had even spoken of that, the night
