Lord Armel fell in the late afternoon, three months after the battle began. It was a glorious fall; an enemy charge had scattered his men, and he’d met them singlehanded. Dozens of warriors had fallen before him, and in the end it was impossible to say which sword or arrow had dealt the final blow. He had died well, but he had died.
Oh, thought Rahim, as Lord Armel’s horse cantered back to the Garnian line, dragging its master’s body by one foot still caught in the stirrup. We’re going to lose.
The certainty brought more relief than the knowledge brought dread. There had been too much uncertainty when Armel first arrived with fresh reinforcements for Garn’s battered forces. Hope could be such a cruel curse.
Their defenses had once flared two miles out from the city; now Rahim could turn around, throw a stone, and hit the palace wall with ease. The city was empty and sacked, their forces a pitiful fraction of what they had once been, while the advancing Orany line never seemed to run out of fresh-faced new fighters. Their only saving grace was that the palace sat at the top of a hill, forcing invaders to climb as they fought. It was not enough to save them.
As the bereaved horse continued to unintentionally parade its dead master before what remained of Garn’s forces, the fighters from Orany withdrew. It was mercy on their part, or a cruel sort of cleverness: their best hope, Lord Armel with his troops and his skills and his many victories, was dead. Instead of letting desperation make them fierce, the enemy was now giving them time to think.
“Rahim.” Larkin gripped his arm. He’d lost an eye a month in, forcing the remaining one to work twice as hard to convey his despair. “What do we do?”
Rahim stared back at him dully. A brave man, an honorable man, would stand and fight to the last breath for his king. Rahim was tired. His body ached in ways that told him most of the pains would never truly go away. His badly healed broken leg would never carry him straight again. He was King Etien’s least favorite vassal lord.
“If the city is lost,” he said, “best let him know right away.”
Word spread quickly. Lord Armel had been their last hope. King Etien’s vassals had drained their lands of soldiers and resources alike. There was nothing left but the hope that the king of Orany would accept a surrender.
No one else stepped forward to pass the word back to the king. Eyes lowered to the ground as Rahim squared his shoulders and trudged back to carry out the task himself.
Stepping inside the palace, he knew in an instant that something was wrong. Servants had a way of avoiding notice, but Rahim could hear the difference between quiet and silence. He checked the throne room, the great hall, the royal bedchambers, and the king’s solar, before resorting to the servants’ stairs and scullery.
A layer of dust lay over neatly made beds. Food rotted in the kitchens. In the wine cellar, a trapdoor lay wide open, leading down a ladder to cool, dank tunnels.
When he returned, the sun was beginning to set. Uneasy peace lay across the battlefield. Larkin watched for him, tense and alert.
“The king is gone,” Rahim told him. Around them, a listening silence fell. “He’s been gone for a while. Lord Armel died for an empty house.”
Two other vassal lords went to investigate. They must have found the tunnel, because they did not return.
The few who remained gathered in the night to talk. Three other vassal knights were left, all of them beaten down and limping. When Rahim spoke, they listened, because listening to Rahim was the reason they were still alive now.
(Lord Armel had not listened to Rahim.)
“There was a tunnel in the cellars,” he said. “It must be how the king and his household escaped.” He paused. “And Sir Roul, and Lord Oswin.”
“You want to run?” Sir Edric was the least wounded of the lot; his arm had healed straighter than Rahim’s leg. “We swore oaths—”
“Etien cut and run,” Larkin snapped. “The oath’s broken, and it’s not on our end.”
“The king of Orany may show mercy,” Sir Warin said, hands shaking. “He’s the stronger ruler—he may be worth following instead.”
“Or he may wipe us out as a show of his strength,” said Larkin. Sir Warin flinched.
“There is nothing for us here,” Rahim told them all. “Only a tunnel.”
The other vassals exchanged glances.
“…To where?” Sir Edric asked at last. “My land’s in Orany’s hands by now.”
“Mine will be soon,” said Sir Warin. “Once they take the city, they’ll claim every blade of grass from here to Halderon.”
Despair hung in a heavy pall over the pitiful little gathering. Rahim pursed his lips, letting his words sit on the back of his tongue. Larkin’s eyes were on him, as if he already knew what they were.
At last he spoke, cupping a hand over hope’s sputtering candle flame.
“He won’t claim mine.”
The story went that Rahim’s grandfather had been a young man when he got the idea in his head: cross the Opal Sea to the prosperous kingdom of Beorna, establish new trade routes for the caliphate, and rise in riches and esteem. He’d gotten three friends involved, and they’d packed up their families and belongings and made the journey by ship and caravan. The king of Beorna had welcomed them with open arms, eager for the spices and dyes they sold.
They had enjoyed just under five years of prosperity before the king passed, his son took the throne, and Beorna promptly crumbled. Neighboring kings and warlords pounced on the easy riches, and the merchants’ families escaped with their lives, the clothes on their backs, and no money to make the journey back to Asran.
Rahim, who spent most of his early life with his nose in a book, could have told them this would happen. These lands had no unifying name, because there were so many kingdoms and would-be empires scattered from one coast to another, and none of them ever lasted long enough for any one to stick. The only permanent fixtures were the temples to the Patron, and the warlords only left them alone because the high priests were the ones going around decideing which heads to put crowns on. Resting their fortunes on the patronage of a single king had been the height of foolishness.
Luckily, the rest of Rahim’s relatives had kept their wits about them, dodging both the instability of royal service and the desperation of serfdom. His father was a tinsmith, his mother a dressmaker; there was always work for them, beneath the notice of warlords and aspiring empire-builders. Rahim himself might have found happiness as a scribe and scholar, if he hadn’t been dragged off by one of the warlord Etien’s press gangs.
When the weary survivors of the once-kingdom of Garn stepped across the border into Greymare, every one of them felt it. The prickling hairs on their necks, the buzz in their teeth, the colored specks dancing in the corners of their eyes. Before them, the road stretched into the trees. To the left, the forest seemed to shine, bright vivid green and dotted with azalea buds, sunlight trickling through the foliage like liquid gold. To the right, the forest stood shrouded in shadows and rot, branches twisting into so thick a lattice that no light reached the moist, loamy ground.
At their head, Rahim felt their eyes on him. He looked back over the sea of people in his wake. He had expected the former knights to retrieve their families, and they had. What he had not expected was that Larkin had been a generous landlord, and that Warin had ingratiated himself to his castle staff, to such a degree that a small army of farmers, servants, and cooks had quietly packed up their lives and followed. Further surprises came in the form of a shame-faced and defeated Lord Oswin, his wife and children, and not far behind them, Lord Armel’s hollow-eyed widow.
Word had spread of their flight to Greymare. It must have reached the king of Orany as well.
“It is safe,” he called out so they all could hear. Better to tell them all at once than let the message warp as it passed from one mouth to the next. “The fairies are tolerant of our presence. Don’t mind the trees that walk across the road.”
The procession moved down the road, pace quickening. Within a few hours Rahim could see smoke rising from the kilns of a nearby potters’ village. The trees gave way to meadows turned to farms and pastures, to bare rock carved into quarries, and in the distance, to the town surrounding Castle Greymare.
Rahim smelled smoke, and saw the gray haze hovering low over the distant cluster of roofs. His heart plummeted to his feet.
“Sir Rahim! Thank the Patron!”
He hadn’t seen the slender dark-haired boy keeping watch from off the road—Hob the Hunter’s eldest son. No wonder he hadn’t seen him—when Randel stood still enough, he might as well be invisible.
“Randel, what’s happened?” he asked. “Is the town on fire?”
“Just a few houses burned, and they’re out now,” the boy reported solemnly. “Three hundred came up the road yesterday, in Orany colors. Lady Asha was ready for ’em—they’re all dead now, I think. She’s set a watch on the road and in the woods, in case more come.”
“She’s alright?” The strangling feeling loosened around Rahim’s throat.
“Yes, sir. About ready to pop any day now, but it hasn’t stopped her.”
Somewhere behind him, Lord Armel’s widow gasped. Sir Warin snorted, and Larkin stifled a laugh. Rahim barely heard any of them.
“Good boy,” said Rahim.
“Old Kellan’s dead, sir,” Randel told him. “Miss Matilda’s telling the town what to do now, and everyone’s listening.”
“I see.” Rahim steadied himself against the pang of grief. “Thank you, Randel. Return to your post.” The boy dipped his head and darted to obey, and Rahim led his people onward.
True to Randel’s word, the town still stood, but a few houses had burned beyond repair. Rahim saw the first bodies halfway through—soldiers wearing Orany colors.The townspeople had piled them up on the side of the road where they wouldn’t leak on anything important. Rahim spotted Matilda, younger sister of the late headman, barking orders while helping to right an overturned cart. He ought to speak with her, if she was taking over the town’s affairs. Later.
With every step the bloodstains on the road grew thicker, until at last Rahim stood at the foot of the castle walls, staring agape at the bodies piled around the gate, and the woman standing with her back to him, directing every able-bodied member of the castle staff from the steward to the scullery maids to clear away the dead.
Rahim caught his breath. Took in the linen gown in her favorite shade of crimson, the sleeves rolled up over arms as strong and dark as rosewood, and the waterfall of braids cascading over her unbowed shoulders.
A sob slipped from his lips before he could stop it. Asha turned around with a sharp expression, as if ready to snap at him to help instead of standing there and weeping. Her dark eyes met his, and her face went blank. One hand strayed to her swollen belly.
Rahim’s leg nearly gave out as he ran the last few steps to reach her.
“You’re alive,” she said. Her voice was steady, confirming a fact more than expressing surprise or relief. “King Etien—”
“There’s no King Etien,” Rahim told her. “No Garn. There’s just us. Are you—when did—why—” He stopped, despair squeezing off his words. “I hoped Orany wouldn’t want this place.”
Asha pulled back, holding his shoulders at arm’s length. “I’m not certain they do—the force they sent was insulting. Nothing some arrows and a few cauldrons of hot oil couldn’t fix. Is Etien dead?”
“I don’t know,” Rahim admitted. “I don’t care. He abandoned us at the palace.” He turned back to the procession he’d led. “Whatever Garn was worth, this is all that’s left. They had nowhere else to go.”
“We’ll manage, as long as they mind their manners.” Asha squeezed his hands, and he brought hers to his mouth.
“What about you?” he asked. “Are you alright? And the baby? I didn’t see any damage to the farms, but is our food alright? Are you eating enough?”
“We’re alright,” she said. “Rahim, we’re alright. Put that to rest in your mind.” Her eyes flickered toward the waiting crowd. “We have a duty.”
Someone coughed politely. Alam, his steward, had survived the skirmish. Now his eyes roved over the crowd as if performing a rapid head count. “I can speak with Matilda about finding space for them,” he said.
“She won’t be hard to find,” Rahim assured him. He turned back to his companions, still clutching his wife’s hand, and stopped short.
Larkin, Warin, Edric, and Oswin stood before him. They were no longer knights or lords, and likely never would be again—Rahim had no lands to offer them, only Greymare, so full to the brim with hidden fairies that he doubted it was his to give away. But still they stood before him, awaiting a command.
A weight settled in the center of Rahim’s chest, sticking there stubbornly no matter how steadily he forced himself to breathe. “Alam—my steward—will get you settled,” he said. “Between the castle, the town, and the surrounding hamlets, there should be room. There are certain customs here, ways to keep safe and appease our neighbors. Learn them. Teach them to others.”
“Yes, sire,” said Larkin. Carefully. Deliberately. Warin and Edric echoed him. Oswin’s lips moved inaudibly as he inclined his head.
Rahim squeezed his wife’s hand, painfully relieved when she returned it. Oh, beloved, forgive me.
