He could see enemy troops being led away at bayonet point, herded together without their weapons, under the supervision of hard-faced Talorean infantrymen. Cavalrymen, impassive and intimidating with sabres drawn, watched the defeated as they trudged by. Here and there scavengers looted the corpses of the dead, performing the traditional after-battle rituals on friend and foe alike.
Beside him, Lord Esteril kept up a steady flow of pointless chatter, going back and forth over the finer points of the battle with a connoisseur’s relish. Sardec was hard pressed to pay much attention to him. He felt like saying he had followed none of this because he had been too busy fighting for his life, but, of course, he was too polite to do so.
Ahead of him now were a number of enormous bridgeback wyrms. The high command had already dismounted and were clustered around Lord Azaar. Someone had produced a small folding canvas shooting chair for the General and he lounged in it with an appearance of ease and boredom contradicted by the bright intensity of his eyes. The whole scene was mirrored in the silvered surface of his mask.
The crowd parted as Sardec and his companions approached. Some of his fellow Terrarchs bowed to him. Others watched him with steely, calculating gazes. It dawned on Sardec that he was about to enjoy an hour of fame and that some of those glancing at him were measuring him, calculating how much they should flatter him and court his attention and bask in his reflected glory. Others were looking at him with jealousy, as if he had somehow stolen something that should rightfully have been theirs.
It was folly but he could understand it. He had been part of such a pack himself once, looking at other Terrarchs as rivals, particularly his peers. A small puff of pride swelled in his breast. He was important to these people, or at least more important than he had been, now that he was the hero of the hour.
Another part of him watched it all mockingly and with not a little contempt. At dawn he had been making life and death decisions, unsure of whether he would live to see another nightfall. Compared to that, the flattery of fools and the envy of the small-minded was nothing. His smile became a fraction colder. At that moment, he looked like a true Terrarch lord.
Amid the crowd around the General he saw Lady Asea, and the three Foragers he had sent to warn the General. Weasel still looked insolent, the Barbarian looked smug and the half-breed looked at him with barely concealed hate. Sardec guessed he had earned that in the last year, but could not quite find it in himself to regret it. What did he care for the hatred of his inferiors? The thing that surprised him was that he had even noticed it at all.
Asea herself looked at him speculatively. Her expression reminded him of a woman contemplating a candy box being offered by one of her maids. Perhaps she found cripples interesting, he thought sourly. Perhaps, after centuries of consorting with the whole of body, there was something titillating about the maimed. He told himself he was being foolish, but there was something about the Lady Asea, her calm and her self-possession, that had always made him deeply uneasy.
General Azaar rose from his chair and strode to meet Sardec. His limp was barely noticeable, but Sardec was all too aware of it. Here was somebody else who had paid the price that War demanded from her worshippers. As the General came closer, Sardec caught the whiff of the strong scent Azaar always wore to cover the rotting smell of his body. The rot was there too, concealed, and Sardec’s stomach quivered with revulsion. He understood all too well why there were some who considered Azaar’s refusal to gracefully slit his own wrists in the Halls of Forgetting to be obscene.
“It does me good to see you alive and whole, Lieutenant,” said Azaar. There did not seem to be any irony in his words. His voice was thrilling and sincere, and Sardec heard within it some of the subtle compulsions mastered by the elder Terrarchs. He could not help but feel grateful and pleased, but part of him resented being manipulated even as he basked in the glow of praise.
“Your servant, sir. It does me honour to present to you our late foe, the esteemed Lord Esteril of Morven.”
“Lord Esteril and I are old friends,” said Azaar smoothly. “It gladdens my heart to see him again even on such a sorry occasion as this.”
Lord Esteril bowed, visibly swollen by the recognition granted to him by the famous General. He bowed to Azaar and then for the first time seemed to notice Lady Asea and bowed to her too, in the old fashioned courtly way of the elderly. She nodded her head politely in return. She was not about to curtsey in this mud, Sardec guessed.
“I hope you will forgive my surrendering to this young lad, Lord Azaar. I mean no slight. It merely seemed to me that your Lieutenant’s splendid defence of his position warranted the honour.”
Things had taken on a slightly unreal quality. Men had died bleeding in the mud today, and they were all standing here talking politely and in full formal courtly ritual. And yet, he knew that it could not be any other way. The Terrarchs were like that. They were polite and they were honourable. It was one of the things that separated them from beasts and from men.
The little niggling worm of doubt returned and whispered in his ear that it was the deaths of men that had made these small rituals necessary. What of it, the true Terrarch in him responded, theirs were the lives of mayflies anyway. The worm whispered that their lives were important enough to them and he could not find it in himself to deny it.
“You must join me in my tent and tell me your stories,” said Azaar, and once again his voice was laced with compulsions. Both Sardec and Esteril nodded and moved in the direction he indicated with his gauntleted hands, to where servants had already erected a small pavilion, and were preparing food.
Behind them, bullet-torn banners, stained with mud and blood, fluttered in the breeze.
“How is that you come to be opposing our advance to help your Queen, Lord Esteril,” Azaar asked. There was no menace in Azaar’s manner, merely polite curiosity. They might have been discussing the weather. It was all very civilised.
“As you know General, my sympathies have always been with Empress Arachne and her policies. Great as my respect for you is, my loyalty is to her and my cousin Lord Malkior.” Esteril sounded quite pleased with himself.
“I had thought your loyalty was to Kharadrea.” Once again Azaar’s tone was neutral.
“While Orodruine was alive, my loyalties were clear. He was a great leader, a great Terrarch, but now…” He shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands deprecatingly. “There are two claimants to the throne, both with equally valid claims. We have been here before. We all know where that sort of situation has led in the past.”
Sardec nodded. It had split the Terrarch Imperium with Lord Azaar at the head of the Scarlet Faction, and Lord Malkior and his cronies at the head of the Purple. It had led to the weakening of firm central government, and to the granting of more and more liberties to the human subjects. Sardec could not quite bring himself to resent that the way he once had. He would need to take himself firmly in hand. It would not do to begin feeling too well-disposed towards the lower orders. They needed to be kept in their place.
“And how is Lord Ilmarec.”
“My liege is well.”
“I am very pleased to hear it. I had thought he supported Queen Kathea.”
“He still does.”
“Then why does he attack her allies?”
“He says she needs no allies. All outsiders should leave Kharadrean soil. We shall resolve our own differences.”
That brought a long silence. Outside Sardec could hear people moving and the subdued murmur of servants. In the distance a wyrm bellowed. This was news. Ilmarec had been Kathea’s strongest supporter. He was a powerful wizard and could draw on large armies from his extensive estates and his web of supporters. Azaar cocked his head to one side. Once again Sardec thought he caught the whiff of rot through the sickly sweet perfume.