Sample

Prologue

“Why should we care if the savages are dying?” asked Ripa, Usus’ newest recruit, as monkeys shrieked in the unseen reaches of the jungle canopy. Around the soldiers thick fog hung heavy in the still air, fragrant with the scent of decay. Its moist gray mantle obscured all but their immediate surroundings, giving the jungle the feel of dim twilight, even in daytime.

“Let them die,” said Ripa. “It would save us all this trouble.” The new recruit wiped his sweating brow and dragged his feet.

Usus shook his head, annoyed at the young warrior’s naivete. Molding a conscript into a soldier was always tedious, but Ripa was proving to be more taxing than most. Ten days’ travel in the mistforest did not help Usus tolerate the petulant, overgrown boy.

Worst of all, the youngster seemed incapable of keeping his discomfort to himself. “First, we send warriors to kill the savages,” he droned. “Then, when the savages are dying of some pestilence, they send for us to save them.” He threw his hands up. “It just doesn’t make sense!”

Usus paused to catch his breath. “No sense, eh? Let’s start at the beginning. Tell me. Why would Emperor Melsarrazar be interested in administering this wretched place?”

Ripa was suddenly silent. He looked this way and that, but failed to find the answer among the vines, trunks and stew-thick fog.

With a wipe of his brow, Usus rained down salty sweat onto the leaf mold and started walking again. “Because of its tin mines, my boy. Now, remind me. Why is tin valuable?”

“Because it’s needed to make bronze?” asked Ripa, unsure.

“You’re a clever one,” said Usus between breaths. “And what happened during the War of the Straits?”

“We couldn’t keep making weapons because we ran out of tin.”

“Correct. Otherwise the Ladikan city states would be Morzan subjects.” He squeezed out his fog-drenched beard like a sponge. “And who mines the tin in Eymchal?”

“Eymchal slaves.”

“Good. Now, from Melsarrazar’s perspective, what good are dead slaves?”

Clarity blossomed on Ripa’s young face, then soured to silent resentment. After a pause he said, “Well, from Melsarrazar’s perspective, what good are dead soldiers? At this rate, I’ll be joining the dead savages before we even arrive at the village.” He stopped and put his hands on his knees, struggling for breath. 

The boy was truly soft. Usus was uncomfortable, yet he was more than twice Ripa’s age and breathing half as hard. Did Ripa do nothing but lounge and eat cherries his entire life?

“Wrong again,” said Usus. “Dead soldiers have served Melsarrazar’s purpose to the greatest extent possible.” He turned away from Ripa to hide his smirk. It wasn’t right for a Sataba like Usus to tease a fresh soldier, but he couldn’t help himself; he was sick of the jungle too, and finished with everyone’s complaining.

Ripa stopped his trudge for a moment, jarred to realize his expendability. He scowled, then went back to putting one sullen foot in front of the other.

When Usus was younger, thoughts of warriors’ tenuous lives made him shiver too. Maybe the boy was right to be afraid. History taught that the Long Peace between Morza, Ladikum and Wemet probably wouldn’t hold for a hundred more years, and Ripa had an entire military career, twenty years at least, ahead of him.

By contrast, Usus would retire at the end of the year. The current assignment was uncomfortable, but not the most dangerous he’d received. It just needed to be done so he could finally move on.

Before he could retire to a life of wine, dice and mid-day naps, he would first have to learn something about the supposed pestilence afflicting the Eymchal savages. Petty sorcery seemed most likely. 

Then, as his last assignment, he’d go with Satrap Araxa’s honorguard to attend the Panthelassian Games down in Takros. While there, perhaps someone could explain to him why any good Morzan would attend that debauched Ladikan festival. Peace lets men forget who their enemies are.

Then, when that’s done, I’ll finally be free.

The jungle’s unbroken wave of chirps, beeps and screeches snuffed out the Morzan warriors’ heaving breaths. The unbroken shroud of mist, unnatural waxy leaves, deafening din, swarms of insects, the ceaseless gurgling left Usus feeling isolated and engulfed. The jungle bore down on the Morzans like a snake squeezing the godsbreath from its prey.

He imagined jagged, mist-shrouded mountains stretching to the horizon in every direction. Just get through this last assignment, then you can head to the Games and relax with a cup of wine.

Their Eymchal guide, an impossibly old walking-stick of a man, led Usus and his force of six soldiers toward the remote village. When they rounded the trail’s switchbacks, Usus thought he saw the fleet old pathman laughing at the young warriors’ misery. Good for him. They deserve it. Complaining doesn’t get the assignment done.

“Nt much lonyer,” said the guide in broken Morzan.

“What?” asked Demethresi in a loud voice from the back of the marching line. “I can’t hear back here.”

“He said it’s not much farther,” snapped Ripa. “But he’s said it a dozen times already, so who knows.”

“Yes, bt you’ve asyed thirteen times how yose we air,” said the guide, a thick Eymchal accent oozing through his missing teeth.

“Just get us there,” said Ripa, exasperated.

The men continued their trek upward, with Usus and the guide leading them along a well-worn game trail. They slunk between the sinuous trunks of giant wood sentinels, over gurgling streams that fumed and bubbled at their feet.

Usus leaned on his short spear like a walking stick, thighs burning. With each breath, hot musty air puffed up from the soaked linens under his scale armor vest. I’m too old for this. They shouldn’t send an old man to see to things like this anyway. Pestilence and old men go together like lamb and lentils.

The trail led to a small clearing at the base of a stony bluff, no doubt veined with tin ore deposits. Endless mist whipped above the ragged settlement and over the ferny crag above. Through the fog, Usus made out roughly two dozen primitive straw huts lining the perimeter of the packed-clay clearing.

With each step into the opening, Usus and his men left the din of the jungle further behind. Now he noticed sounds the jungle’s racket had rendered inaudible until moments before. The expectant rattle of scale armor. Men snuffling droplets of fear-filled sweat from their nose tips.

As the guide fetched the chief, Usus’ nervous men fondled the grips of their weapons. Usus wouldn’t show his nerves. If he did, the men would panic, break rank. That’s just what soldiers did. So he maintained his stoic mask.

 The village was different this time. When Usus visited before, women wove baskets in the village center. Children played games with sticks and wooden balls. Old men rolled dice in the shade.

Not anymore. Today there was nothing but furtive eyes peeking through slits in the huts.

“Keep your daggers in your belts,” Usus said. “We are here to learn, not fight.”

The guide soon arrived with the Eymchal chief, sinuous and lean, wearing nothing but a leaf loincloth and an expressionless face. On his head perched a headdress of iridescent blue parrot feathers, a striking contrast with tawny, owlish eyes. His skin was rubbed with all manner of smudged black ash and painted white spirals. Demethresi gawked at the savage leader like a child watching a juggler.

“Greetings, Sataba,” said the chief. “You are here to see. We are desperate and hope that your healing arts can help.”

“Greetings, Naoğa,” said Usus. “Yes, I heard about your uncle and the related troubles. I am very sorry. I’ve come to take a look and report back to Lebneh. I’ll see what our healers there can do. They are the best in the world.” 

“Yes, I too hope your healers can help.”

“Well, let’s get on with it,” urged Usus, growing uncomfortable. “What do you have to show us?”

“This way. We go to the life pole.” Naoğa gestured to another clearing, barely visible through another track of jungle, then turned to walk in its direction.

He kept a hand on the hilt of his shortsword. An ambush seemed unlikely, but was always possible. Ten years ago, Sabarnyan riders ambushed him under the pretense of parlay. Then frothing, bow-wielding horsemen stampeded from a nearby thicket. They struck down most of his company, including his cousin Balthar. It was the most terrifying moment of his life, and he had no intention of letting his guard down just because the old chief claimed to come in peace. For all he knew, the pestilence reports and reclusive villagers were bait, nothing more. Though it would be difficult to stage the eerie silence of the village.

As they passed into the jungle again, Usus began to mistrust the very air he breathed. It was bad air. He knew it. What plague might the foul jungle air bear into his old lungs? Shallow, quick breaths would be better. Whatever invisible evil rode on the breeze wouldn’t go so deep inside if he didn’t take a deep breath. Eventually, when faintness made him stop, he buried his mouth in the salty crook of his elbow.

They arrived at the clearing and the chief stopped. Usus halted beside Naoga, and his men lined up behind them.

“Look from here,” said the Eymchal chief. “Go no closer.”

Usus’ gaze followed the lifepole upward from its base. As his eyes rose, his stomach dropped. On top was the plague victim’s stiff, blackened corpse, swaying in the blowing mist like a grisly weathervane. The dead man’s back arched, his mouth open, face still drawn in final agony. A gauzy veil of white threads festooned the blackened flesh, glinted in the overcast light. From the head emerged smooth, glistening growths, unlike anything Usus had ever seen.

Usus stifled a wave of nausea. Save us, Anahita, goddess of health, gracious mother of all. Save us! He raised his left finger to his forehead to bless himself.

His men stood beside him, still as pillars of salt, eyes wide and unblinking. The plague-killed corpse flew like a flag, a banner of death itself at the top of the Eymchal life pole.

“This man killed his wife, children and brothers before madness drove him to defile our sacred pole with his death,” said the chief. He looked up at the victim. “It hunts us on the wind.” His grave eyes moved down to Usus, pleading. “Help us.”

Keep up with my progress!