In the battle, the rats had proved the bravest warriors.
With clicks, whirs, and clockwork sweeps of its tail, a brush of black iron wire as sharp and piercing as spear points, the colossal machine squirrel had cleared ranks of besiegers pouring through the shattered wall, each bristling arc crushing dozens into bloody slivered heaps, joining the hundreds of corpses pulped there by the tireless Terianan automatons, not only the gigantic squirrel, but a towering wolf, a hulking rabbit, and a voluminous owl.
Even General Cheruk had lain among the dead, having hurtled there dazed, dizzy, and half-dead, a tatter of scalp flapping over his brow and bleeding into his eyes. The werewolf shifted to his favored half-wolf form, which had just enough human spine to stand upright, and he was struggling to do just this when the rats swarmed the machine squirrel, sliding into its joints and gaps, steeling against the shrill screech of their brothers and sisters ground up by screeching cogs until the rat-jammed gears squealed through one, final lurch, stopping the squirrel stock still, when one rat shimmied in a ventilation duct, sprang the hatch, and whistled for the horde, who teemed in, devouring its talking squirrel operators.
While no one would ever know which animal sacrificed itself, sabotage had likewise undermined the rabbit, whose gushing sparks and barrage of fragments spread an explosion so contagious, that it spread not only to the mechanical wolf, who teetered, toppled, and broke into pieces,
but, unfortunately, to the Alsantian front line, who caught fire and hurtled full-tilt, turning all its humans, werewolves, and talking beasts into screaming torches.
While Cheruk had screeched to drop and roll, a full quarter of his werewolves persisted,
burning well past the point of regeneration. As the others whimpered and fell in, licking their singed wounds, Cheruk tucked his hanging flap of scalp forward, licked his paw, sealed the wound with his saliva, and sunk, brooding, until his scowling head rested on his forepaws.
As his brow and scalp knit, he scanned, idly, for their standard. While it lay clutched in the shriveled claw of a cremated soldier, it would still fly that day, and the fire that singed the proud banner's green fringe had crinkled and charred a new, jagged edge. Staggering forward, Cheruk raised and shook it, so that its blackened bone cymbals, tethered top and bottom, clattered and chattered,
drawing in his bedraggled troops.
As their eyes turned to the flag—on sky blue silk, red lips grinned wide over gnashing golden fangs so monstrous that the mouth could only close in a dream—they then turned toward him,
as for rhetorical effect, Cheruk had mimed its image, further lengthening his snout to such a grotesque grimace that he seemed to hunger for all those advancing.
While his forehead was already healing, many scars and wars had taught him that a new crease would be added to his wrinkled brow.
"Look now, you dogs!" Cheruk's howling yawps were so growlly that anyone else, human or beast, would hear only the yowling of wolves. "As those who followed orders lived, and those who disobeyed burned to a crisp, let that be my new rule going forward!"
While not a common gift among werewolves, Cheruk had handpicked for his personal battalion those with the gift of self-healing, and even now, with every passing moment, his ragtag contingent became, if no less tatterdemalion and motley in their savage character, more and more whole in skin, fur, and tooth.
"You," Cheruk shouted. "What do you have there?"
While a werewolf can smile a sheepish grin, it always has a wolfish leer buried in it,
and this was the case now, as this one raised his bowed head and held up a grisly trophy:
a blubbery hand with the blush of life, though ripped from its elbow joint.
"I know that fat hand," said Cheruk. "While I hated that snooty heap of blubber, and I'd like to give you a medal, fool, tell me why I shouldn't add you to the char pile for slaying a general."
"This?" When the werewolf tried to pass it off with a casual wave of his hand, it shivered through the gory forearm to wag its stiffened hand in a morbidly jocose wave. Fat men are so jocular, Cheruk snickered to himself, then stifled his chortle, as he well knew it was unbecoming in an officer. "It's just a bit of booty, General," the fool continued. "Did Vemulus not give us rights of plunder, General Cheruk?"
"That's General Cortero," snapped Cheruk, "the commander of the contingent we brawled with three days ago. If you've started another battle in the Prince's ranks, he'll skin your fur for a cloak."
"He was meat when I found him, Captain."
"That's General, to you, private," roared Cheruk.
"Begging your pardon, General. I'm a corporal."
"While you can't bust me down from General to Captain, I can bust you down all day long. Congratulations—you're my first field demotion, private."
On the moldering battlefield, ravens, crows, and chickadees feasted on the heaped dead as cool winds raked though, mingling the aroma of death with other rank scents: blood, sweat, fear, and the stinking droppings of horses, unicorns, and karik. Having a good eye, and a better nose, Cheruk would be damned if he didn't see some rogue talking birds joining in with the feast. The sight filled him with hope. While nearly torn to shreds by the Terianan automatons, they were still alive, after all, and it was the privilege of the dead to fatten the living.
No sooner had he had this inspiring epiphany, however, than the Terianan defenders surged from the rift in the wall, first the hooves of deer clambering over crumbled stone, then the loping tread of wolves and the snarling patter of onrushing hounds. While the four-legged Terianans were the first to lock horns with Vemulus's front line of "shock beasts,"soon the humans clanged together, their clash of armor, shield, pike, and sword shuddering in the Terianan meadows.
The Terianans pressed their homeland advantage, as having no streets or blocks other than its main road, Teriana was one gigantic grove, from which beasts and woodsmen flowed on all sides, flanking the Alsantians as they willed, not only fatiguing their front line, but, within the hour, routing the ranks, so that they had to fall back, leaving the front to be trampled under foot, hoof, and paw, and regroup a quarter mile away. When the Alsantians marched in shoulder to shoulder, however, shields locked and pikes leveled, they forced the Terianans back step by step until they scatterered and ran. This was when the Alsantian front ignored their better judgment, and, more importantly, the bellowed orders of their subcommanders, to sprint pell-mell after the defenders, in a berserk, bloodthirsty effort to run them down, only to hurtle, in screaming volleys of dozens of tumbling bodies, down the chasm of sharp rocks and thorn bushes concealed by a gigantic tarp pulled taut under sod and scattered fronds. And while the second rank stopped short, and teetered on the brink, they were blasted off the edge by the third rank, who managed to toe the rim by backpedaling, and gripping the shields and spears of the fourth rank, as their own weapons rained down into the gully, planting a fresh crop of spears in the corpse-strewn grass and cutting off the groans of those few who had survived the fall, while falling shields sunk halfway and wobbled in the dirt, like makeshift gravestones.
The two hundred ranks behind them, the remaining regiments of the Wolfhead Battalion, and Vemulus's other three armies, jammed tight, clashing armor and shields, gnashing teeth, and rearing hooves, then flowed around it left and right, closing ranks on its other side.
When General Cheruk ordered his werewolves to fall in, they jeered at the wriggling, writhing soldiers dying gruesomely on the spikes below, from outright heckling to sarcastic encouragement to get it over with and slide gung ho down their points of impalement, not to mention the side bets on whether they would kick the bucket before being left in the dust. Cheruk couldn't help snickering, but maintained a grim and grave demeanor, even as they turned savage, tail-wagging grins to him,
expecting him to approve their cruel jokes. If they hoped for a nod, they didn't get it, although he couldn't help the twinkle in his eye that sparked at the funniest and macabrest of the grisly jokes.
Having obtained high rank by being the first werewolf to bow to Suvani, Cheruk had entered a strange, new world of not only bizarre sights and smells, but outlandish ideas much too fiendish to be conceived by a mere lycanthrope. Those who said werewolves were monsters had considered neither the workaday wickedness of Alsantia, nor the daily atrocities of their Queen. While he was part human, and somewhat familiar with the everyday horrors of human cities--wage slavery, famine, disease, mass graves, abattoirs, the gallows, and the foul carnage of not only war but bloodsports where they sold pies and ices--Suvani's castle had been rife not only with the expected luxuries, but more savage delights: dungeons, torture chambers, laboratories where execution was researched and refined with an academic zeal, and no shortage of forcibly volunteered subjects from all ages and walks of life,
menageries of talking animals, and the designs that were less horrific, but even more outlandish and just as frightful, such as the alchemical lab, looking, with all its tubing and stoves, like an infernal kitchen, and the Zalgyne hangar, with its overpowering fumes of smoke, oil, and a stronger, acrid smell mingling the after aromas of a lightning storm and enchanted flame.
Unlike mundane fire, magical flame had a richer scent with more of the essence of fire, just as bag of dirt dug up last week wasn't as earthy as that just turned by a spade. It was this scent, full of eldritch excitement, that now not only raised his hackles in fear, but whetted his anticipation of it,
as if the wolf in him delighted in the destruction that was coming.
"Lope left full bound!" he yowled.
When some turned their heads doubtfully, he barked louder, "lope left full bound!" Their eyes widened, whether in recognition of the roar further distorting his rage, or the devastation surging toward them from their rear horizon, a growling hum that he now knew with a certainty.
He had ordered them into a wide flanking maneuver. While "lope left heel bound," would have sent them in a close flanking maneuver, along the advancing line of Alsantian troops, "lope left full bound," sent them on a wide angle, more left than forward, advancing only slightly but sprinting as far left as possible. Usually, this command brought about a desperate change of facing, the better to take the advantage, tearing into the unprotected flank or rear of your opponents.
In this case, it was a desperate bid to get clear from the strafing bolts the Zalgynes rained on the besiegers, as well as the billowing return fire erupting from the Alsantian ships, which rained flaming wreckage like meteors, gouging fiery holes in the Alsantian front which cooked the broken bones and spears of exploded soldiers like cauldrons. As the Ephremian aircraft veered for a second pass, their burnished metal seemed to stretch and curve in the flash of the setting sun, then freeze and sharpen in the gloaming pale moonrise, just before they banked hard, the flicker of spellcraft crackling in the exhaust, and they shot forth another storming volley of death.
As the snarling Cheruk sputtered all the human and animal curses he knew, he melted from half to full wolf, dropped to all fours in a rapid, cantering sprint, and raced his troops along Teriana's treeline, where doors in the trees and hatches in the grassy mounds creaked open. While the Terianans at first cringed from the massed werewolves charging alongside their homes, as their eyes ascended to the Zalgyne formation slicing through the Alsantian army, they teemed forth from their dwellings, flowing into a mob of citified animals and rustic humans, and while many looked like they had rolled out of bed, or more like, rolled out from hiding under it, having become emboldened by their attacking allies, they fell on the werewolves.
Five minutes later, when the dirty work was over, Cheruk shifted back to his transitional form. While he was happiest when he was a wolf, and it was part of his no nonsense, "mind your own business," philosophy that having more abilities led to having more problems, he had to admit that he couldn't conceive of living life as a normal wolf. Hands were so useful for the minutia of living, whether for cleaning up, taking more than your share, or simply picking your teeth, which he did now with one long, yellow nail, scraping free the flakes and gristle of the choicest members of the swarm.
One talking rabbit begged for his life in his left hand, and the carcass of another, whose screams were forever stopped when Cheruk munched his head in a single, savoring bite, oozed in his right. He so liked rabbit, even though they were all rib and foot. Their salty, gamy flesh was accented in talking rabbits by the marbling of their fats, caused by a sedentary, civilized life.
***
While the Terianan swarm proved less effective than the Ephremian aerial assault, the latter had also been stymied by Vemulus's bold decision. In truth, it was his only decisive order of the entire campaign, having been in a fever in his tent for days. Roused by the screech of the Zalgynes as they furrowed through his soldiers, the Prince had ordered his generals to occupy Teriana. Once the Alsantian armies had invaded the arboreal city, the Ephremians hurtled back to the eastern horizon.
Having cleared his tent of generals by an order on pains of death to gather intelligence on the whereabouts of the Zalgyne staging area. the still-queasy Prince Vemulus brooded in his bed.
While free of generals, he was not quite alone, having a moment before received, along with a missive that announced the Queen's approach and imminent arrival, a tiny silver cage of two white mice.
While one ran around and around the bars, squeezing here and there in a bid for freedom, at first Vemulus thought the other was dead, for it simply lolled in the center of the cage no matter how Vemulus prodded it, its tiny pink and white eyes not fixing on anything. If it was alive, its eyes were definitely dead.
Having been hauled between two guards gripping a tower shield between them, and having been still faint and nauseous to the point of vomiting, twice, over the cold, metal rim of his makeshift litter, the bleary-eyed Vemulus hadn't seen very much of Teriana. While he had visited a few times--more honestly, his uncle the Regent had dragged him there against his will when he was at a tenderer age, and more interested in pranking the servant boys--he guessed the Teriana of ten years ago had been rendered, if less sightly and a bit coarser from its infusion of soldiers, much more accommodating to his legions. And Teriana had always been a smelly boot of a city. Everyone knew you had to break boots in to make room for your feet, and this still held true when you were accommodating tens of thousands of feet.
The Regent had been an uncouth, hairy troll, and had never pretended to be Vemulus's father, and, for that matter, hadn't been much of an uncle, either, unless he had deigned to sire or uncle trolls, perhaps, but to Vemulus, he had been an age-pocked, scowling, double-jowled wart of a man, with little for Vemulus that didn't take the shape of carping, criticizing, and mocking, and even when he grudgingly imparted a skill he had mastered, such as swordsmanship, archery, tactics, strategy, and heraldry, he dominated Vemulus in all ways, pricking Vemulus's wrist with a disarming slap of his blade, splintering Vemulus's targeted arrows with his own called shots for the fun of it, deriding his tactical analyses, berating his strategic choices, and sneering when Vemulus confused rampant with ascendant on a shield's device. While it is hard to learn given a teacher's senseless grudge and one's own retaliatory spite and ruffled pride, Vemulus had become competent in these areas, and gone on to master one skill. Having been kicked in the shield arm by a recalcitrant warhorse, the Regent had learned caution of horses, and delegated to the Captain of the Guard the responsibility of teaching Vemulus horsemanship. This worthy knight had fostered such a sense of camaraderie that Vemulus had allowed himself to master the equestrian arts.
Even now, his breath ragged from back to back vomiting, Vemulus fought the urge to stumble up, mount his horse, Phebulus, and leave his troubles in the dust. While the Regent was dead, Suvani was alive, and bore Vemulus neither love, loyalty, nor remembrance of his role in their uncle's death,
but instead, having learned the Regent's lessons so well that she had unhorsed her predecessor from life
by the expedient strategy of provoking another motivated worthy to do the bloody deed, was about to come here and berate the cause of her ascendancy. Perhaps his foolish pride had upset her cruel but sensible strategy of cowing the Ephremians before they could muster an uprising against Alsantia. But should they turn a blind eye to the rebels in Teriana? And what of the otherworld savages who dishonored a prince of the Alsantian Empire?
As he stewed on the warm bedding, dampened by sweat, drool, and flecks of vomit, he berated himself most of all. Which is not to say the Regent's memory wasn't carping in the shadows of the captured tree dwelling, his wattled double chin and rust-brown age spots as vivid as life, as this phantom memory niggled him for the stupidity of being dragged, by all his worst impulses, into an unnecessary battle with Teriana. While winning his first battle should have been a source of pride to Vemulus, it had soured even before the screeching Zalgyne assault, not only from the bitter knowledge that his untenable idea was boldly realized by his cunning generals, but because marching on Teriana was not only a pompous and belligerent bid for power, but an act of profound hubris, setting his armies up in disadvantage against those Suvani had sent him to quell.
Barely an instant after vanquishing the Terianans, Vemulus had gone from victorious conqueror to harried and besieged, as if by inhabiting Teriana he had inherited their problems, with the additional difficulty of having a downtrodden people underfoot, who might mount an insurrection in the next inspiring wave of Zalgynes.
When they finally came, their buzz shivered in the gauzy windows of the strange Terianan tree dwelling. As his bleary eyes subsided into a groggy haze, he sat up, swung his feet to the floor, and one hand went to his aching head, while the other cupped his gurgling belly. After a final whirl, his spinning vision ebbed, if not to normal, to an oddly sticky eyesight, adhering only to curious details, as if the medium of his sight was as thick and sticky as glue.
As he wobbled to the window and steadied himself by grasping its sanded bark sill, his stomach flip-flopped, and his eyesight twirled fitfully, then settled down so quickly, it was as if his gurgling nausea was learning how to do tricks on command. Down boy. Vemulus raised his wavering eyes,
propped up his drooping eyelids by arching his eyebrows as taut as tiny longbows, then saw that there was absolutely nothing on the horizon, nothing aside from the strange woodland spread of citified forest that comprised Teriana. Where were they hiding, if not over the horizon? In the clouds? In the river? Underground?
Between his tent and this hollowed tree, Vemulus had stewed in his bedding nearly a week, and he was unwilling to waste another moment. His boredom had so swamped his nausea that by an act of will he tamped down the residue of his sickness, and prowled the oaken interior, groggily scouring for his boots, then a clean tunic, then his woolen socks, belt, and mailed surcoat. While the Ephremians would soon rear up, first their bizarre cavalry flying pennants under the aegis of veering Zalgynes, then endless waves of infantry clad in uncanny armor, and then the fiendish siege engines by which Ephremia had rightly earned its fearful reputation, none would present as fine a display as Vemulus, Prince of Alsantia.
Vemulus snorted in disgust at his sister's armies. It mattered little whether Ephremian notoriety or the drone of the Zalgynes put the fear of the siege into the Alsantians. He would be damned if he spent this forced entrenchment in a sickbed, or a hollow tree a little wider than a coffin. His revered and dreaded ancestors, the Kings, Princes, and Regents of Alsantia, having been interred in tree trunks set ablaze and set adrift in rivers, sunk in whatever cold waters or warm mucks would receive their corpses. Staying in this tree cut a little too close to this primitive ritual.
As stiff, sluggish, and steeped in sickness as he was, as the days followed, Vemulus was haunted less and less by his illness, and more and more by droning Zalgynes, the Ephremian battle-cries echoing off the hills, and his grumbling troops. Why should the ingrates grumble, he groused--the bears, wolves, and rats had their run of the riff-raff here, tearing rabbits, badgers, and beavers from their holes not only for food, but for tormented servants, moving targets, and chew-toys. He was even being gracious to the disloyal opposition who were fast enough on their paws to turn their coats in for Alsantian ones. While Teriana had its share of slain and captured warriors, his royal contingent of bears and wolves had swelled suspiciously in the shadow of the siege, and Vemulus hadn't the time to confront his talking animal commanders about these sudden recruits. Moreover, they would need the numbers to break the siege, and as turncoat deserters were unlikely to infiltrate any roles of real authority, preferring lapdog positions from which to skulk and shy from attention, he was happy for the fresh infusion of trench diggers and shock troops.
While he was unsurprised that the mice, cats, and hounds had, in the main, disappeared, he wondered, curiously, where they had gone. Having posted watches on the ramparts, he should have received word of any exodus. If the badgers and beavers had a tunnel network, would they not have used it? Surely they had not sacrificed themselves for the sake of rodents, curs, and mutts?
As the hardness and meanness of his full health returned, his nausea proved as elusive as the Terianan animals, aging into a fretful unease that visited Vemulus in conference with his generals, who informed him of the constant disquiet of the Terianans, which had infected the Alsantian troops with a malaise of their own, the frustration of occupying a woodland city with only a treeline where walls should be. Despite Teriana's earthen ramparts and wooden palisades, Teriana had too many openings,
and while their tree-dwellings were concealed from Zalgyne bombardment by the woodland fringe interpenetrating the city, his Alsantians were also muddled in finding rebels and insurgents in this urbanized forest, which not only had no clearly visible street fronts, but no street addresses, like a normal city should. More than once, his stupid soldiers scrambled their way into a desiccated derelict that crumbled into moldy splinters and rotted bark, or even more ridiculously, besieged an actual tree.
To Vemulus, such idiocy was as demoralizing as a siege, so that his stupid troops seemed to bungle and blunder according to the Ephremian plan. As he began to feel beset by stupidity and incompetence, not to mention the imminent arrival of his sister and her scathing criticism, Vemulus considered strolling over to the Ephremian side. After all, they were what he hated most--an honorable enemy. They would not only make him comfortable, but provide the luxuries suited to his rank.
As the Ephremians continued their sonic siege of Teriana, bombarding the woodland city only with their maddening, droning buzz, Vemulus began to rack his brain. Where is she? Having been spotted days ago, riding a winged sphinx, Suvani should have arrived by now.
As Vemulus fumed, he stewed, testing his wind and his sword arm with a few practice strokes, then tossing in a few verses in his Antinian Parables and a few pages from Chogunto Fila. While the books were stale as usual, the weapon felt unduly heavy, and his arm as dense as an anchor. When whatever he asked for, no matter how ridiculous, was brought by his Terianan hosts, he tested this as much as he could, like the teenage boy he yet was, demanding delicacies, rare codices, golden arrows, silk sheets, silkworms, spiders, chickens to set sparring against each other, and then, two talking rabbits.
While their feeble prowess was upstaged by the fluttering wardance of the roosters, Vemulus found their performance more amusing. The cringing bunnies fawned low, scratching their bellies on the pebbly ground of this tree tower, and begged to be spared the indignity of the bout. When one of the pathetic root-eaters had the gall to claim that he was a vegetarian pacifist, Vemulus sputtered a hoot of laughter. "That's practically your species, you little oaf, not your philosophy."
"It's not my species," snipped the rabbit hotly, then pinked under her white fur as she remembered who she spoke to, and stammered, "I'm a rabbit. I could eat meat if I wanted to. But the very idea! It's an odious habit."
"What a wonderful idea," chortled Vemulus.
"Eating meat? I think you mean ghastly."
"No, you tiny goon," said Vemulus. "I'm going to give both of you a chance, you see."
"To go free?"
"No and yes. One of you shall claim your freedom."
"And the other?"
"The other will be free of all cares."
"You mean to kill us." She shrank against the shadows of the tent.
"No, of course not," said Vemulus. "You're my guests. No, one of you will have a chance to eat meat. The other will have a chance to be meat."
"What?"
"Whoever eats the other goes free."
"That's horrible!"
"You gave me the idea." Vemulus feigned indignation with a sharp intake of breath. "Didn't you say you could eat meat if you wished?"
"But we're rabbits," moaned the other. "We're not cannibals, or even carnivores. It's not in our nature."
"Surviving is in everyone's nature," leered Vemulus.
"We object! We appeal to the Queen!"
"The Queen isn't here right now."
As their ears reddened, their noses purpled, and their whiskers shivered, it became evident that both very much wanted to blurt out something forbidden, which Vemulus indulged with a smile until both rabbits nearly exploded from the effort of biting their tongues.
"What?" said Vemulus.
"It is nothing, your highness."
"It's about time I got a highness, even though it backs up a lie."
"What do you mean, your highness? By nothing, she only meant that we are nothing, and not worthy of your time. You ought not sport with two lowly rabbits."
"I ought not, should I? Be grateful I'm giving you a chance. If I was a werewolf, both of you'd already be half-eaten. All the choice cuts would be gone, leaving a pile of furry limbs and tails."
"Your highness, please!"
"Tell me."
"Tell you what, your highness? There is nothing to tell."
"Tell me what you're keeping from your prince." Here he seized one rabbit, and raised her menacingly to his mouth. "I'm no ogre, but my teeth could make a dent in fat, old rabbit."
"Please, your highness! We have sworn!"
"Sworn?" Hiking his grip higher to her neck, he twirled her by that twist of skin and fur. "I swear to you now that I'll break you, rabbit." While Vemulus had enjoyed hunting with hounds as a youth, he had mainly given it up for being a frivolous sport, but would always remember the delicious sound of a dog snapping a hunted-down rabbit's neck. It was so easy. Rabbit necks were made to be broken, like apples were made to fall, or like deer, with eyes on either side of their skull, were blind to an arrow shot straight on at their breast.
"We dare not, your highness!"
"Dare, rabbit. Dare boldly, if you value your life."
"Better we die than all rabbits in Teriana."
"Do you mean you're being squeezed?" Vemulus wrung her neck a little tighter. "Rather like this?" Even as he tightened his grip with a measure of satisfaction, the rabbit's words disquieted him, for who aside from him could leverage talking animals mute? "Do you know that you tell me a great deal even by that?" As he lowered his glare to the rabbit's pinched face, her teeth drew back in a choked rictus, air sputtering from her twitching, whiskered mouth. "Tell me the rest, and you may save your own skin. All of Teriana is not in my tent. Save what you can save."
When she passed out with a strangled gasp, he cursed, and chucked the limp rodent under his bed, where she collided with his riding leathers, twitched, and lay still. As he rounded on the other, this rabbit flopped on his side, his tiny, pink pupils dilating wide and his chest jerking down and up. "Did you faint, or is this a heart attack, you little twit?" He nudged the rabbit sharply with his toe. He grumbled, "for want of a rabbit, my army was lost, and for want of an army..." Trailing off, he barged through the tent flap and half-ran down the hoof, paw, and boot-beaten path running narrow through the residential groves he had commandeered along with his generals.
General Savvo. He would know what was going on, thought Vemulus. But Savvo's tree was darkened, its windows pulled tight. So were Kluse's. While Vertun's tower was being dusted and washed according to that fastidious officer's specifications, the old-womanish general was nowhere to be found.
Cheruk's tree looked unlived-in. While this was highly likely, given the werewolf would abhor the herbivorous scent of the badgers that once lived there, on the heels of all of his generals being incommunicado, he found it a trifling suspicious, and barged into the arboreal tower.
While Cheruk had parked his tail there, judging by the clumps of fur strewn around the first floor--long, shaggy tufts too long to be badger or rabbit fur--Cheruk either had fallen out with one of his subcommanders, or been dragged away.
Having backtracked to Vertun's tower, Vemulus barged in, bowling over a smocked and aproned talking badger, whose filthy, scraggly hands scattered broom, dustpan, and swept clumps to the floor,
and streams of dust in the air, so choking Vemulus that he bent over, hands on his knees, hacking up the dust, and fearing his illness had resumed.
"Par-par-don me, my lord..." stammered the badger.
"Lord?" Vemulus hacked, then, still bent-over, lunged, until both hands clasped the badger's neck. "I'm your prince!"
"Prince Vemulus?" The badger's squeezed neck constricted the wail into a hissing squeal, like air wheezing from a bellows. "Mercy! Mercy! It wasn't my idea!"
"What?"
"I was only following orders!"
"What?" Vemulus's eyes widened as realization dawned: by luck, he had snatched up a filthy conspirator without knowing it. Entirely by accident, the badger was about to confess to a misdeed Vemulus might never have discovered. While the powerless rarely experience the serendipity of accidental disclosure, the prince occasionally enjoyed this fringe benefit of his power, as guilt-ridden servants and hirelings owned up to things that would never have been discovered, simply by coming under his baleful eyes. As a child he had hated his ghoulish eyes, their dead gray fringed with a hazel brown flecked with black, but he had grown into them by relishing their effect on the worms in his employ. When he was twelve, he had turned those wrathful eyes on his uncle, and The Regent had apologized for killing Vemulus's turtle. It was sarcastic, and off-handed, but the ruler of Alsantia had apologized to the same nephew he had often struck with training swords. "I thought I was kicking a rat, Vemmy. Maybe now you'll take better care of your things." Even his own mother's glare might have dented space and time before it bent the Regent, but as Vemulus's scowl contracted, his uncle sighed, rolled his eyes, and mumbled, "sorry."
"Tell me!"
"Please, my prince!"
"Tell me!" Vemulus shook the badger.
"Mercy!"
"Maybe you haven't considered that it's just you and me here, badger? If the prince of Alsantia said, 'I thought I was kicking a rat,' who's going to see anything different in your broken-necked body?"
"Please, my prince! It wasn't my idea! It was her! I only brought it into camp!"
"What camp? This is Teriana. It's not unlike a broken-down camp, but I don't live here. Not willingly. Not for long." As Vemulus scrutinized the badger, the animal's eyes shuddered. Accustomed to sniveling worms trying to walk back their misdeeds, Vemulus throttled the badger closer to his chest and breathed so heavily that the badger's cheeks rippled. "Don't even think of lying."
"You might as well kill me, then." The badger sagged, so limp and lifeless that Vemulus might have thought the animal dead, were it not for the sluggish pulse thumping against his thumbs and palms, and the tears trickling into the hair on the back of his hands.
"Poor badger," cooed Vemulus. "Don't fret. Many things would please me more than your death. While I despise liars, cheaters, and traitors, I have a soft spot for sniveling cowards. You have only to tell me."
"That's it, then," breathed the badger. "You want to know, and she'll kill my family if I tell. I'm done. Do it."
"She? Who do you mean? The Architect?"
"Take it back!" screeched the badger, suddenly come to life under Vemulus's outstretched arm, the badger's nails now like so many sharpened spikes, laying long scratches in Vemulus's arm, which only clutched the talking beast in a crueler grip, until the badger again sagged limp, its eyes bulging, less from strangulation than from brimming tears of grief.
"Then my sister?"
When the badger's choked snuffle burst into a long, drawn-out sob, Vemulus had his answer.
Who could it fear more than Vemulus? It was also clear that coddling would never work; the cur must be savagely shaken, must know fear greater than that it felt for the Queen.
"Stupid badger," sneered Vemulus. "Your family is already dead."
"You lie!"
"Do I? Perhaps. If she is not yet here, perhaps you are right."
"Why would that matter?"
"Teriana is in Alsantia, fool. Talking animals and humans only had harmony here because my sister has not had oversight. In the capitol, only predators may sign her charter and hold the rights of citizenship. There you could only hope to live in a hole as nature intended, and build dams in rivers."
The badger's sorrowful eyes slitted into angry glints. "Those are beavers, my prince."
"Beavers, badgers, it's all the same to me. And it's all the same to my sister, who would never deign to use filthy animals as leverage, although she might lie about it, if it suited her humor. Knowing my sister as well as I know myself, she would take pleasure in knowing you worked off your fat little bottom sweeping towers while pining for your whole beaver brood, who are undoubtedly already pitchforked and burned."
"Don't say it," sobbed the badger.
"You can't save them, but you can save yourself. While I wouldn't shed any tears in stepping on you, you're sufficiently beneath my notice that I could care less if you go free. And if I'm wrong, there might still be time. While I can predict my sister's wickedness most of the time, there's a chance she hasn't heeded her cruel impulse yet."
While the badger's eyes lowered in grief and shame, it kept its eyes fixed on Vemulus. "It wasn't sickness, my prince."
"What? She won't kill them with sickness. She'll kill them with death."
"No, Prince Vemulus. You weren't sick. You were poisoned." When Vemulus's answer was only his sagging jaw, widening eyes, and an overall slackening that let the badger wriggle free from his nerveless grip, drop to the floor, and inch for the door, the badger continued. "I brought it myself. We badgers had a whole network of tunnels under your camp."
"Then she wasn't involved! It was Terianan maeuvering that nearly did me in."
"Lord Audren forebade poisons, may he ever reign."
"Is that his head on my wall, or some other stag?"
"May he ever reign," whimpered the badger. "While Audren forebade it, his spy-master took a more liberal position, and being on a cordial footing with the Alsantian spy-master, exchanged, along with the usual pleasantries, gold for poison, for not only do spies everywhere have an accord on many things, such as a general interest in peace--it's good for our business--but it was clear on both sides that the reins of the Alsantian armies must be handed to a saner master."
"Are you saying my sister gave you the poison?" While the blood rushed to his ears, and all he could hear was his own shouting, Vemulus stammered on, deaf to his own words. "My own sister? My twin?" Now her tolerant looks took on a different meaning. The sufferance with which she met his swaggering and bragging took on a hostile light; having never loved him, she had suffered him to live. Now not even that. "She wanted to kill me!"
"No, my prince. At least not in the beginning. When I was involved, the doses were small. We were told that with you weak, the armies would stand down, and the siege would fade from Teriana. But we hadn't counted on your bloodthirsty generals. When war fell anyway, it was all we could do to stay alive, and we were unable to continue dosing your food. You should have recovered in a day, two at most."
"But it lingered for a week! I still feel half-dead!" Vemulus roared so loud that his vision blurred, then spotted, almost blacking out as he staggered back through the doorway, where he had to grasp the lintel above to steady himself, twisting there for a moment, all of him dangling from this shaky grip.
"It wasn't me. I've been assigned here since the occupation." The badger backed away from the wrathful Vemulus. "Not as a spy! By her armies. This is my work duty."
"Her armies?" Vemulus growled.
"They're meeting without you, my prince."
"Who?"
"The generals...and your sister."
"Suvani is here?" Vemulus snorted. "I don't believe you. My sister would never hide, not even from me." His left palm having slid over top his right hand, Vemulus wrung the badger so hard its bones ripped, slashing the pelt and gushing blood down Vemulus's legs. When mopping his bloody pants with the gory carcass proved a futile, counter-productive effort, the prince cast the little rag aside
as he clattered down the tower stairs, barged through the door, and trudged down the road of windowed trees.
"Aggh," Vemulus groaned, as much in frustration as from his whanged thumb tendon, strung so taut in choking the badger that a tingle rippled up and down his arm, not unlike striking one's funny bone. But the prince wasn't laughing. As the hand contracted, shrinking into a purpling, pained claw,
Vemulus grasped and pulled at it with the other hand, as if he could force it back to life. When the hand proved as unresponsive as the badger, he cradled it in his armpit, telling himself that even left-handed,
he was a match for anyone here.
As four armored Alsantians jogged past at a fast march, their faces whitening and their eyes averted, Vemulus batted the one bringing up the rear to the ground with a heavy thump, clang, and groan, then leaned down to hoist the man up, driving him high overhead with the upward thrust of a double uppercut. This bullying move cost Vemulus greatly, stoving his bruised fist until the excruciating pain brought his teeth on edge, and his breath to a fine, whistling seethe that fanned his rage like pure oxygen hitting a fire.
With both of Vemulus's fists planted in his ribs, the soldier's eyes screwed shut, and drool plinked onto the prince's shoulder.
"Is that how you salute your prince?"
The soldier's loud, agonized wince sounded like a tree falling, loosening even more saliva to drizzle down, but it was when he broke wind on Vemulus that the prince lost his mind, hurtling him back-first into a tree, shattering the mica window embedded in the bark and folding armor over battered flesh with a crunch.
When a creased white square fluttered from the soldier's cloak into a puddle, absorbing black water until it turned a sopping gray, Vemulus stooped to retrieve it, and unfolded the dripping paper on the back of his bruised hand. Although he tried to be delicate, a long strip tore free, slicing the paper into a wet scrap and a curling sliver. Laying this shred next to the other, Vemulus scanned the letter. When his eyes seemed to skip and stutter over the incredible words, they had to circle and peck, like vultures, for its shred of meaning. Coming back for a third read, they glided with heavy resignation over the message, then lifted up in indignation, to glare balefully at the kneeling soldiers.
"Your highness!" While the voice was harsh and powerful, it was still tremulous. The broad-shouldered soldier may have been even more massive than Vemulus, if a half-hand shorter. "We will not bother you with our sordid business."
"And what is that?" Snapping the well-trained steel lash in his voice, Vemulus smiled at the bulky soldier's flinch, then brushed very near the kneeling officer. The three remaining soldiers had knelt in a half-circle, leaving Vemulus surrounded and not a little confused, for this was no manner of obeisance to which he was accustomed.
"You need not bother yourself with our orders, your highness."
"Your orders?" growled Vemulus. "All your orders stem from me!"
"What would you have me do?" The husky officer's downcast eyes flinched as Vemulus's shadow reared high.
Vemulus lowered his upraised fist. "Where is she?"
"Your highness? Those orders aren't from the Queen."
"Don't be so stupid," seethed Vemulus. "I know my sister's handwriting, and this isn't it, though the heavy hand of this penmanship has a feminine cast. But I've drifted on from this peculiar forgery of my princely authority. While your peasant brain is a tiny coop with room for only one fluttering idea at a time, my royal brow, like the great Luskveld trees, harbors many birds of thought, some of which brood on your treasonous words, while others soar higher. And being a Prince, my mind often flies after my sister, the Queen."
"Your highness, why would your sister be here?"
"A little bird told me." Vemulus snickered. "A hairy, ugly bird, with a face like a badger. Then there's this note, from a General Tegana. I know of no General Tegana. There's a Lieutenant Tegana, but I didn't promote her! And what of my actual Generals? Cortero? Cheruk?"
"Cortero proved treacherous," said the thick-necked soldier. "Cheruk pushed his privilege a bit too far by cramming our Terianan hosts in his craw as fast as he could."
"Who decided this? Who ousted them from commands I gifted? Who proved a prince in my absence? Who wrote this? Who is General Tegana?"
"Your highness. Someone had to step into Cortero's shoes, and take command of your human forces."
"Who says? You're Alsantians, are you not? You could have overridden the Terianans as a leaderless mob!"
"Your highness..."
"Who. Said. Who promoted Tegana? And what tribute are you giving the Ephremians?" Vemulus snarled, "if there's any booty to distribute, I'll do the doling out, thank you very much."
"Your highness..."
Vemulus fumed. It was clear this one was following orders. Commands which had squeezed Vemulus out of the chain of command. It was also clear that Suvani, or this proxy, General Tegana, had ordered it.
Having few immediate options, and ruling out leaning on the lower ranking brutes kneeling at his feet, knowing they would be not only ill-equipped to retain clandestine information, but unlikely to be trusted with it, he chose the high road. Wadding up the damp paper and tucking it into his cloak pouch, he grabbed the muscular soldier's gorget--a ring of steel armoring neck and throat--and yanked him to his feet. "It's time I met my new subordinate, sergeant. Take me to General Tegana."
"Your highness, I'm only a corporal."
"Battlefield promotions happen all the time. I like the look of you. You remind me of a cheaper version of myself, as if hammered together from my battered old armor, the whole dilapidated heap settling an inch or two shorter perhaps, but nonetheless a chip from the old block." When this last phrase slipped out strangely, Vemulus had a dark, angry thought. "Did you know my father?"
"No, your highness." But a tremble flashed, gelled in his shiny, toady eyes, then sunk under his white, impassive face.
"Maybe you're my uncle's knock-off then?" Vemulus took a half step left, then right, as he scrutinized him, then whistled. "The resemblance isn't striking, but there's enough of a trace to provoke commentary as we pass through the rank and file. Draw down your visor."
"Your highness? I think you're making some mistake."
"While stubbornness runs in our family, deafness doesn't. You heard me, did you not? Lower your visor, sergeant." Once the trembling soldier was sufficiently promoted, abused, and obscured, Vemulus smiled. "What's your name, cousin?"
"Valorus."
"Walrus?" Vemulus snickered. "I see a lot of that in you too. With the visor lowered, it's like you have tusks. Would you object if I called you Sergeant Walrus?"
"Your highness..."
"Would you prefer Cousin Walrus?"
The soldier paled. Illegitimate royalty did not fare well in Alsantian society. Those not assassinated were promoted to high but precarious positions that would ultimately prove dishonorable or fatal. "Sergeant, your highness. Thank you, your highness." Having often ground his own teeth in sufferance of Suvani, Vemulus knew a whitewashed scowl when he saw one. So when Sergeant Walrus turned to his underlings, muttered under his breath, and looked over Vemulus's shoulder, the prince turned just a moment too late, so that the truncheon glanced off his ear, rather than bludgeoning his temple.
"You dogs!" The howl clanged painfully in his ears, rattling in tandem with his rung, blind skull. As he clasped his hands over his ears, they clinched with him, dragging on his arms, legs, and waist until he raked his elbows back and forth like a boar's horns, scattering broken-toothed yowls to join the jumbled ringing. When a growling yawp pitched through the clangor, then the gurgle of bloody death cries, Vemulus lifted his hands from his ears, clenched his fists, and left them hanging there, over his stopped, blacked-out head, like a punch drunk boxer.
"Your highness!" The snarl was not one of contempt, but of beastly indignation. "We are betrayed, my prince. Come. Now."
"General Cheruk?" As the ringing died, Vemulus's bleary, reddened vision cleared. The bodies of his treacherous soldiers were spilled to the ground, their throats torn free by claw and fang.
"I am no General now, and you are no prince, if we are to flee the Queen's wrath."
The plaintive whimper was so mewling that Vemulus again lashed out with his elbow, and was so gratified by the werewolf's groan, that he could not help crowing, "says who? Not your commander. Rise, General Cheruk. There is still time to coup the coup."
Cheruk raised his paw to nurse the bruised eye--its concussed tissue already shrinking, the purple fading to pink--and a shriveling trickle of blood dabbed his furry hand. " And we'll count coups on the way." Descending like a sickle, his nails sheared through a dead soldier's helm and skull, then yanked back the gory scalp as the werewolf uttered a growling chuckle.
"If you must." A corner of the prince's mouth dipped in a lopsided, nauseated frown, as he too dipped down, unbuckled the husky soldier's hauberk, unlimbered his shield straps, and soon armored himself with a deft grace that belied his youth. The Regent had made Vemulus practice at armor-off, armor-on for months, until Vemulus could run the drill by reflex, even when his mind was miles away with his horses. No doubt this was the most useful skill he had learned from his uncle, for it made him quickly impregnable in times of ambush, and when he was himself laying an ambush at dawn's light, he could sheathe himself in armor noiselessly. Armor battles were more about planning and work ethic than skill. While Vemulus would never be a master of weapons, he had slain many would-be sword-masters by being better prepared and better armored. While armor wasn't proof against a strong blow,
and often failed those whose footwork, parries, or shield work were lazy, Vemulus was anything but lazy, and liked to made his opponents sweat as he waited for opportunities. As most strikes were glancing or grazing, Vemulus was strong and massive enough to take those bruises all day, the better to time his own overhead smash or thrust. In his breeches, Vemulus would flee the most callow man-at-arms, but in armor, Vemulus could wade across a battlefield, suffer a few scratches and bruises, and lay waste to all about the bloodthirsty prince. Those who had never worn armor couldn't know the truth of it: wearing armor, and walking, running, or riding in it, was a skill, and at this practical art, Vemulus was a master.
Ninety seconds later, Vemulus was clad head to toe in the husky warrior's battle plate. While it usually took him under a minute, he had to wring Cheruk's arm to stop the helmet from being split by the werewolf's eager paw, still at the gory business of counting coups. Having buffed helm, breastplate, and vambraces to an adequate sheen that might honor some petty officer, Vemulus dragged Cheruk away by the scruff of his neck, for the werewolf had forgotten his rank, and began to dine like a common lycanthrope. Having choked back his bloody mouthful, Cheruk growled, snapped, and swung both arms wide, preparatory to a double-pawed slash that might have cracked Vemulus like a lobster,
had the werewolf not then remembered his prince.
"Where is she, Cheruk?"
"When she has me clapped in cold iron, my prince, I will no longer be able to change." Cheruk whined like a hound.
"You had no problem freeing yourself just now. What do you have to fear? Now is the time to man yourself, Cheruk. Where is she?"
"No, my prince. I was set free."
"Wait." Vemulus stopped short. "You--we--have an ally here? In Teriana?"
"The rats, my prince. Having found me jailed and half-starved in a hollowed tree, they burrowed through a dry patch of the dirt floor, swarmed the barred windows, then chewed through to freedom."
"The rats!" The deep rumbling gloat threw the prince's chest back. "Then we still have an army."
"Against your Alsantian infantry! Against my werewolf shock troops!" Vemulus stifled his guffaw in respect for his prince, but his face purpled with the effort of suppressing his mirth.
"A small, silent army is still an army. Not only do rats kill as often as tigers, they work better in groups, taint food, spread disease, have claws poisoned with their own droppings, and, given all that--not to mention a correspondingly low self-esteem--no doubt have fewer inhibitions."
"All that's true, my prince. "The werewolf shifted uncomfortably, as if uncertain how to proceed. "But are they not beneath you, your majesty?"
"As if my sister didn't send her own bottom-feeders against us! No one's calling for a fair fight, are they?"
"True enough," growled Cheruk, "but there's still the problem of getting you a meeting."
"Problem? Don't you know, Cheruk? In a city, a rat is never more than ten feet away, having burrowed here, there, and everywhere, hollowing walls, and spreading a foul, teeming sprawl in our sewers, in a mockery of our vile civilization. They're like fish, only our filth is their ocean. And that's just the common variety. The talking ones are even worse, Cheruk. Even Suvani's castle has rats, and I don't mean court parasites, but real furry rodents, making rooms nearly as comfortable as mine, rent free, in our walls, ceilings, and floors."
"You're not serious. I don't see any rats!"
"Why should you, when rats are famous for hiding and sneaking. But that's not what they're best at. Rats are listeners. Moreover, they're consummate listeners, real culture vultures. Isn't that right?" Although Vemulus called out confidently, when there was a long pause, the prince feared this dramatic introduction would fall flat, undermining him in front of his inferior, until the tiny, shrill squeak piped up: "you forget the mice."
"What's that? Call me highness or prince, you mangy creature."
"You're not my prince. You're not high to me. Vemulus." After a spitting sound, the voice continued. "It's like gobbing up a huge blob of phlegm, you know. A name a worm would have. At best, a nickname for a snake."
"You dare?! I'll burn your trees!"
"It wouldn't hurt us. Not only are our kingdoms more wide-ranging than the rats, but here in Teriana we keep them at bay, no matter how they try to squeak by us."
"A mouse? I have never been talked to like that before today, and to find out it was a mouse!
You've brought war on your entire species!"
"The sun would wage war on the sand in vain. We are too small, and too many. I only talk to you as a courtesy, one prince to another." When a screak in the wall curled in Vemulus's ears, his spine clenched, his fists balled, and his feet went up on their arches in his stiff mailed boots. The screeching skitter only became more agonizing, like a thousand tiny blades passing through his armor like butter,
hooking into his raw flesh, raking between his shoulder blades cruel and tight, and drawing his sarcastic smile into a pained grimace. By contrast, the voice became jarringly calm and patronizingly kind: "you should have heeded your dog."
If the shrieking, scratching tree echoes scraped the prince's ears raw, it must have been immeasurably more piercing to Cheruk's canine ears, as he ravaged the closest tree, indiscriminately tearing at grown bark and carved wood until it splintered and shredded under the nonstop slashing of his nailed paws.
Spotted waves of white, brown, and gray surged over Cheruk first, then swarmed Vemulus. In the nonstop spate of furry, chittering mice, it was like he was naked, for his armor offered no protection from the mice slinking under vambraces, crawling under his armpit, squeezing in his greaves, and poking under his breastplate. One even scratched its way up his scalp, knocking around under his helm.
One moment he was whole, and the next, he was leaking from hundreds of scratches, drawn as fine as an architect's pencil.