Walking back to find his horse, he ran into the Eremian: Miel Ducas, the resistance leader. His instinct was to quicken his pace and turn his head, to avoid pointless conversation. Instead, he slowed down, long enough for the Eremian to catch his eye.
"Excuse me," Ducas said. "Can you tell me what's going on?"
"There's been a battle." Not, when he thought about it, the best way of saying it. "We've found bodies; ours and theirs. It's not clear who won. We're pressing on, same plan as before."
"Oh." Ducas nodded. "Thank you," he added; reflexive politeness of the nobility, meaningless. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
"No. Thank you," Nennius added quickly. "All under control."
"Thanks to Daurenja." Ducas was looking at him as though pleading for something. "I gather he's pretty well saved you from disaster."
"Yes." Damn all monosyllables. "Yes, we'd have been sunk without him." Nennius hesitated, then made himself go on. "Is it true? What the other man said."
"I don't know," Miel replied. "But I heard him admit it. And I don't see any reason why they'd lie about something like that." Hesitation. "I can see what a difficult position it puts you in."
For some reason, Nennius found the sympathy infuriating; his own reaction surprised him. "Not at all," he said. "Like I told you before, it's not my jurisdiction. I'm not even sure the Duke's got any authority in the case, since it's crimes committed by an Eremian against Eremians in Eremia."
"He's not even Eremian," Ducas said. "Daurenja, I mean. He's Cure Doce by birth, apparently." He frowned. "So who would be the competent authority?"
"Don't ask me, I'm not a lawyer. Your own duke, I suppose. He's with the Vadani, last I heard. But it'd be complicated by the fact that Daurenja's an officer in Vadani service; you'd have to get Valens' permission to proceed against him, even if you could find the proper Eremian official to hear the case; and that's unlikely, since-"
"Since so many of the Eremians are dead now." Ducas nodded reasonably. "But in this case, I suppose the proper authority would be me. Theoretically, I mean. All that side of Eremia used to be my land, and strictly speaking Framain and his household were my tenants." Suddenly he smiled, a nervous, frightened expression. "Which makes me judge and chief prosecution witness. As though it wasn't complicated enough already. I don't suppose you're the slightest bit interested, are you?"
Nennius looked away. "I've got rather a lot to do right now," he said. "And I need Daurenja, at least until we meet up with Valens' party, assuming they're still alive. I can take formal notice of what you've just told me, but that's about it, I'm afraid. And I'd be obliged if you wouldn't make an issue out of it. At least, not till things have sorted themselves out."
"When the Mezentines have been wiped out to the last man, you mean." Ducas nodded again. "Of course. Thank you for your time. I'm sorry for wasting it." He started to walk away.
"I'll make sure Daurenja doesn't leave the column until we meet up with the others," Nennius said.
"Of course; he's a very useful man, and we owe him our lives." Ducas grinned; not the sad smile of a moment ago. "Pity, that. If he could just desert and go away, it'd make life so much easier. I'll do what I can to keep Framain from cutting his throat in the night."
Nennius' horse wasn't where he'd left it. Someone had moved it, no doubt trying to be helpful. He stood completely still for several minutes, entirely unable to decide what to do. Then they found him again.
There had been, they told him, a development. Come with us, we'll show you.
It turned out to be just another stack of dead people, naked and cut about. "Pure fluke," some excitable young officer was saying.
"Someone happened to barge into this pile with a cart, and I was at the wedding, I saw her quite close up, so I recognized her. And then I saw him, too." He was standing over two bodies that had been separated from the others; he looked like a dog standing over a toy it wants you to play with. Such cheerful enthusiasm.
Nennius looked at the bodies. A man he recognized; a strange-looking young woman. She'd been hit with a spear through the ribs; her head had been half split, like a stringy log with a knot in it.
"That's General Mezentius," Nennius said. "Who's she?"
Don't you know? the young officer's face was shouting. "That's the Duchess," he said. "Valens' wife."
23
And again.
As his fingers took the strain of the bowstring, he realized from the pain that something was wrong with them. He glanced down and saw that the skin on either side of the middle joints of his first two fingers had been blistered and rasped away. He pushed the bow away from him with his left arm, hauled the string back with his right until his thumb knuckle brushed the corner of his mouth. The bow was fighting him now, like a panicked animal on a tether. Down the shaft, on the point of the arrowhead, he saw his target (impossible to think of it as a living thing, let alone a human being. His instructor had told him that, years ago: shoot at a deer and you'll miss; shoot at the sweet spot behind the shoulder, size of a man's hand, and you'll have no problem). As the string began to pull through his fingers, he raised his left arm a little for elevation and windage. At just the right moment, the arrow broke free, lifted as the air took the vanes of the fletchings, peaked and swooped like a hawk. He watched it into the target, heard the strike. A straightforward heart-and-lungs placement; he was still moving, but already dead. Valens pinched the nock of another arrow between thumb and forefinger and drew it from the quiver. And again.
Only three arrows left in the quiver now. A minute or so since he'd refilled it, frantically scrabbling arrows out of the open barrel while keeping his eye fixed on the next target. Good archers only count the misses; he'd missed four times today. The stupid, stupid thing was that he liked archery, it was one of the few things he actually enjoyed doing (and so, of course, never had time for). Every stage of it soothed and pleased him; the smooth softness of putting the doeskin glove on his right hand, the expression of strength in the draw, the instinctive precision of the aim, the complete concentration, the fine judgment of tremendous forces poised in a moment of stillness, the visceral joy of the loose, the beauty of the arrow's parabola, the solid pride of a well-placed hit. Using this precious, delightful skill to kill people was obscene. Using it to defend himself and his people from extinction was simply ridiculous, like dancing or flirting for your life.
And again. A Mezentine had managed to scramble up the side of one of the iron plates; he'd lost his momentum and was hanging from the top edge by his fingertips, his feet scrabbling wildly for an impossible foothold on the smooth, flat surface. Valens watched him for a moment; he was trying so hard, he'd done so well to get that far when all the others had failed; he wanted him to succeed, simply out of admiration for his courage and agility. The Mezentine got the sole of his foot flat on the plate and boosted himself up, an astonishing effort; he'd got his upper body up onto the edge and was using his weight to balance. He'd made it; so Valens shot him. He slithered back down the way he'd come and pitched in a slovenly heap of limbs on the ground. The cartwheel rolled over his head, crushing it into a mash.
As Valens nocked the next arrow, he spared a moment to glance into the barrel. Empty.
He hesitated. Vaatzes' wonderful strategy of moving fortresses was posited on the assumption that the arrows wouldn't run out. But they'd been shooting for two days and a night, and their splendid supply of ammunition was strewn out behind them like litter on the road; no chance to go back and pull arrows out of the dead. Two more shots and that was that.