The Humbled (The Lost Words: Volume 4) Read online

  Sonya stood next to Richelle. She had not expected to see the baroness there. Apparently, giving birth to Pacmad’s daughter did not grant her enough immunity against treason, it seemed. Sonya would have been glad if not for a very selfish regard for her own fate. She had to concentrate. Stupor would not do now.

  “I am not sure what I should tell you, Pacmad,” she said bravely.

  He stepped off the dais and approached her. She braced herself for the blow. But he just stood there, unnervingly silent, staring at her, judging her, weighing, waiting for her to lose self-control.

  “You will tell me about the Eracian raid,” he spoke.

  Sonya went cold. “I do not understand.”

  Pacmad grinned wide. “You will.” He nodded at one of his soldiers. The man barked a short order in their native tongue. From across the hall, Kataji warriors started ushering a new audience into the chamber. Unlike the women, the newcomers hardly walked on their own. They dragged their feet; they shuffled and hobbled; others had to be almost carried inside, with a nomad fighter on each side. Soon, they entered the pool of lamplight and candles, and she could discern more details. Bruised, battered, wet men, with crumpled clothes, spattered in mud and dirt, their faces swollen from a beating. Some were manacled, others walked more or less on their own, but they all dripped on the cold white marble, and the flecks of their blood mingled with the red veins in the flagstones.

  “Now you understand,” the chieftain said, pleased.

  Raid? A night raid? She had plotted an uprising against the Kataji for months now, carefully orchestrating the bits and pieces, planning the city’s rebellion to the last detail. Now, when it supposedly was happening, she stood paralyzed, helpless, unprepared.

  The warriors deposited the prisoners before the women, unceremoniously dumping them on the floor. Some remained upright, but most sagged to their knees. Sonya realized some of the men were wounded, with knife and sword cuts on their arms and legs. One of the Eracians begged for water, but no one paid him any heed. Lady Fidelma began to cry.

  Pacmad looked at the enemy soldiers and nodded, satisfied. He turned his piercing blue eyes back at her. “Now, tell me about the raid.”

  Sonya swallowed hard. “Honestly, I do not know anything about this.” She did not need to pretend. She really did not.

  The general sniffed. Once again, Sonya bunched her muscles, waiting for his fist to plow into her belly, and again, Pacmad kept his meaty hands at his sides, looking utterly smug, enjoying the moment immensely. Then, he spun quickly and slapped Richelle, hard. The baroness barely had time to wail before she collapsed. Once on the ground, near the wounded men’s feet, she began to sob. Sonya dared herself to look. The woman was holding her face, dark-red blood slithering round her fingers like tiny snakes.

  It was happening too fast, Sonya thought. She had to gain control of the situation. She had to. Otherwise, Pacmad would render impossible damage on everyone present, including her. Losing her life would be almost too easy, she realized. But what if he spared her and then threw her into a dark underground cell? What if he denied her all the perks, all the freedom she had? What if he took away the grudging trust he had given her? The horror of that prospect almost made her vomit.

  Seeing Richelle bleed was a lovely occasion, but not right now. As a queen, she had a duty toward all of her subjects, even hated whores like the baroness. She suspected Pacmad wanted her to seem happy about it, wanted to expose her ambitions, alienate her from the rest of the women, strike strife and discord among them. That seemed like the best way to undo their plot. Make one of them betray the rest. Which was why Sonya must not let her emotions show.

  Instead of gloating, Sonya went down on one knee and brushed matted hair from the woman’s swelling face. Drool and sticky threads of blood ran from Richelle’s lips and nose to the marble. The baroness held her eyes shut tightly and was sobbing quietly. Ignoring her disgust, Sonya gently wiped the woman’s cheek with her sleeve, then dabbed her lower lips.

  “Stay there,” she whispered.

  “Stand up,” Pacmad ordered.

  Sonya let go of the other woman and straightened, all too aware this monster and his men were watching her, her nightgown too thin to hide her body. She kept her mouth shut, uncertain what the general might do.

  “Tell me about the raid,” he repeated.

  Sonya licked her lips quickly. “I do not know anything about the raid, I swear.”

  Pacmad scanned the crowd of frightened women. His mongrel eyes rested on Lady Miranda, a lowly merchant from Paroth, if Sonya’s memory served her well. She had found herself visiting Somar at the wrong time. “Benis, Cowden, rape her.”

  Miranda only managed to squeal in weak, stunned protest as the warriors came forward and dragged her to the floor. The other women began crying loudly. Sonya kept her face hard, passive, and pushed her tears deep into her soul. There was no rule that said you could not weep later, much later. It was almost dignified.

  The captive Eracians began stirring, trying to struggle free, cursing and spitting. Not all of them. Some were just too tired beyond caring, others injured and dying, others yet too terrified. Sonya could not blame them.

  “Leave her be, you scum,” one of the Eracians hissed. He got pierced through the gut with a spear. Laughing, the nomads left him on the floor, feebly kicking with his bare feet, spreading blood in curious shapes with his toes.

  “Please stop,” someone spoke. It was her own voice. Oh, what a fool she was.

  Pacmad glanced at her, looking surprised. “Stop?” The men were tearing the clothes off their victim, sniggering, speaking in their tongue, fondling her flesh with their grubby hands. Miranda was gazing at the vaulted ceiling, her eyes wide and glazed. “Stop?” Pacmad repeated. “Cowden, cut her open. Slowly.”

  The Kataji pressed a knife to the girl’s belly. A red line blossomed round the gray steel, trickled away, pooled in her navel. Miranda was breathing in short bursts.

  Sonya dropped onto her knees. “Please. I beg you. Please stop. No one doubts your power.”

  The general raised a finger, and the other warrior raised the blade off the woman’s pale skin, waiting for instructions. That gave Sonya a grain of hope. This whole affair was a well-orchestrated terror act intended to get the Eracians thoroughly defeated. That much was plain. But she had no idea what the chieftain would do once he got what he wanted—be it information or humiliation.

  “No one? Then what is this? An Eracian army trying to infiltrate my city? A plot behind my back? You whores dare plot behind my back? Maybe you do not doubt my power, but you surely doubt my intelligence and resolve. Cut her.”

  “Please!” Sonya wailed just as a shrill cry rose below her feet. Lady Miranda began thrashing.

  “You fucking coward,” a soldier was shouting, ignoring the sheet of gooey red down the side of his jaw. “You fucking nomad rat. You fuck. Once we take the city back, we’ll go west, and we gonna fuck every one of your wo—”

  One of the guards thumped him on the nape, and the man dropped to his knees. A kick got him flattened. Then, a Kataji warrior was kneeling above him, sword ready.

  Pacmad raised his finger again. He was in total control of the situation, enjoying himself immensely. “Is that so? I have a better idea. You get to keep your lives, soldier, but I get to kill these whores. What do you say?” He reached out and grabbed Sonya by her hair forcefully, bringing hot tears to her eyes. He yanked her close, squashing her face against his crotch. “I kill her, and you go free?”

  The prone man rolled sideways, blinking blood out of his eyes and mouth, coughing. “Fuck you.”

  “Kill him.” Pacmad looked at the other Eracians. “How about you, brave fighters? You get to choose. Your lives against theirs. We get to rape and kill these bitches, and you go home.” He released Sonya, pushed her away. Then he reached randomly into the crowd and caught another, nameless woman. She started whimpering, and her shrill words mingled with the death gasp of the Eracian sol
dier. “See this whore? I kill her; one of you goes back to your lords outside. Fair deal.”

  Sonya was rubbing her scalp, trying to vanish the ants of pain, feeble, defiant satisfaction creeping into her battered soul. None of the soldiers would accept the bargain. Not one. It made her proud of her realm, of her brave husband. He had sent these men to their deaths, hoping they would be able to breach the Kataji defenses and rescue her. His attempt might have endangered her, but she could not hate him for that. In fact, she loved him.

  Disgusted, annoyed, Pacmad shoved the other woman back to her friends. His eyes were back, boring into her. “These soldiers might not talk, but you will. Tell me about the raid.”

  Sonya did not rise. She stared up at her captor, trying hard not to look away. She had to be strong. All these months, she had lied and manipulated, and he had believed her. Now that she was telling the truth, he was doubting her.

  “I do not know anything about this raid,” she repeated.

  Pacmad flexed his jaw left and right. He was breathing through his nostrils, trying to contain himself. Suddenly, he smiled. “I believe you.” He turned toward the captive Eracians. “You will tell me everything you know, or I will rape and cut them all to bits, right here, right now.”

  One of the captives raised his manacled hands. “We were sent to capture the gatehouse. That’s all. We were supposed to secure the fish market and nearby quarters, open the gates, and let the army enter the city under the cover of night. That’s all. That’s all.”

  The Father of the Bear climbed the dais and sat down on the throne chair, frowning, his face creased with deep thought. Must be another charade, Sonya wondered. She was feeling she might have sorely underestimated this man. There was just no knowing what he truly planned. Why he so tenaciously held to his prize, the capital city, even as the Eracian forces captured more of the surrounding land and tightened their grip on Somar.

  “You want the gates open?” Pacmad retorted. “You will have them open.”

  The next hour trickled away in a nightmare of flashes and bright images, flickering lamps and torchlight, the coppery stench of drying blood, and the piercing wails of Eracian men dying by sword and knife. One by one, Pacmad had them tortured to death. The women were forced to watch. Some retched, some fainted, and there was wind of an unladylike smell rising from their midst. Sonya could not have cared less.

  She kept her eyes fixed on the slaughter, making sure she remembered every little detail. One day, she would tell Bart all about it, and she would demand he exact vengeance on the Kataji. She would make sure the nomads disappeared from the annals of history. She would make sure not a single baby was left to continue their filthy legacy.

  Finished with the killings, the chieftain ordered the bodies removed. Grumpy, disgusted warriors began dragging the pieces out of the throne hall, leaving crimson smears on the floor. Sonya watched as one of the tribesmen grabbed Lady Miranda’s leg and hauled her out, whistling a tune, weaving a snaky red pattern behind him. Next, the terrified palace servants were summoned, and they began scrubbing, their mute tears dripping on the pink floor.

  Pacmad called one of his trusted warriors over. “Arrest all the guild mistresses and bring them to the palace. We’ll keep them locked with this lot.” He was speaking in continental on purpose so that Sonya could hear him. “I want no one on the streets. Get four thousand archers near the gates, and let’s give the Eracians a little surprise.” He rose from the throne chair and walked out.

  The women were left there, standing, kneeling, exhausted to the bone. The cleaners ignored them, as if they had some dreadful disease. Sonya shifted her weight nervously from one leg to another. She wanted to sit down, but she could not imagine pressing her rump into all that blood.

  “Thank you,” Richelle said on her left, her voice distorted by the swelling of her lips and her clogged nose.

  Sonya turned, astonished. She had not expected that. “It’s nothing,” she mumbled. The baroness was hard to recognize, her face all mangled up. Sonya felt pity for the other woman. She knew she should be feeling very much satisfied, but that emotion refused to coalesce.

  Time stretched. The squares of night air outside turned purple and pink, and dawn broke. With it, the sounds of fighting, the muted hollers of ten thousand mouths yelling and screaming and cursing. There was a huge engagement between the Kataji and the Eracians, she realized, but she could not imagine how the battle was unraveling.

  Sometime later, Pacmad returned, looking clean and fresh. His sword was sheathed, restful. His brows shot up when he glanced at the smelly huddle. “You are still here? Oh well. Dismissed. Go back to your chambers. Sonya, stay.”

  Richelle gave her a worried look as she shuffled away. But if Sonya had expected the other woman to intervene on her behalf, she was disappointed. Swallowing a lump, she waited for the chieftain’s whim.

  “You are a brave woman,” he told her.

  “I am honored,” she said, her throat raw. She was thirsty. She was hungry. She wanted to sleep.

  He snorted. “Come with me,” he ordered and led her away. She found herself disoriented, weaving down familiar corridors without any sense of direction, her footsteps echoing against the cold stone, her eyes focused on the back of her captor. She hated him. She no longer wanted to best him; she wanted to spill his innards and watch birds feast on them.

  Steps. She wobbled and groaned as she climbed, out of strength, breathless. But she knew she must not falter. Her fingernails scraped against mortar, ruining the delicate polish Janice had finished only yesterday.

  Pacmad was waiting inside one of the solars, smiling. She glinted against the sunlight, shielding her eyes. The mongrel was staring toward the South Gate, where a great battle was coming to an end. The Eracian standards seemed to be moving away from the city walls, back toward the siege lines. The fish market, the docks, the narrow streets of the slums growing like weeds round the gate swarmed with the nomad troops. A pall of smoke was rising from several districts, curling in strange black shapes above Somar.

  “You really can’t get round the idea of not underestimating us,” he was saying, not looking at her. “Even after last year’s defeat, you still think we are just bloodthirsty primitives. Today, the Eracian leader has learned a painful lesson.” He glanced at Sonya, Vergil’s eyes mocking her. “I opened the gates for him. Opened them! Let his troops enter the city. And still they lost.”

  He put a hand on her shoulder, and she almost winced at his hot, greasy touch. “My victory today will go into the war books. They will speak of my utter cunning. How I lured the Eracians into a trap and destroyed them. My troops only lost several hundred men. The Eracians lost thousands. Such a clever snare. The fires to block the streets so the enemy could not flank us, the archers to pin down the reinforcements, my men lurking in the houses, using the confusion to their advantage.”

  Bart’s army seemed to be in full retreat now, horns blaring. Farther away, the massive siege machines were hurling large stones in great, deep lobes, crashing against the rooftops, corner towers, and the curtain walls. She willed the masonry to shatter, to tumble.

  The rest of the city was quiet, peaceful, deserted. The women were probably hiding in their homes, waiting for the order to rebel, but there would no such order today, she knew. Pacmad had outwitted her. He might not know of her scheme, but he had effectively ruined it.

  Pacmad’s hand strayed lower, to her breast, twisting her nipple. She bit her pain away. “The fools think bringing down the battlements will somehow change the situation. They will only learn the red price of my cunning and resolve as they start losing more and more in those narrow streets and dark cellars. Let them come. No one can defeat me.”

  Sonya was not a believer, but she sent a nameless prayer for her brave, glorious husband. Pacmad’s hand probed lower, more forcefully, his breath getting faster.

  “Lie down. Spread your legs,” he grunted.

  She obeyed, because she knew there was nothi
ng else she could do right now. But she would not despair. She would fight. She was the nation’s queen, and she would liberate Somar from the nomad clutches.

  CHAPTER 18

  Ewan stood in the grass by the roadside, watching the pilgrims pass him by, reminding of his first visit to the nameless Oth Danesh cities. Some would look at him and nod in curt greeting, others would smile, but most seemed focused on their own journeys. For every mounted man riding a donkey or an old mule, a hundred walked. The procession did not look inspiring. But Ewan knew its power wasn’t in the number of blades or horses it had.

  He let the last group pass, a flock of sheep grazing and following in a cloud of dust. The guard dog was keeping the animals together, but when it sensed Ewan, it slunk away to a safe distance, tail tucked low.

  Soon, the column veered toward Keron, heading north. Ewan climbed back onto the beaten trail and walked into the settlement. From what he had heard, this place had not existed only a year back, and now it was a town even bigger than the other city just a few miles away. You could see people working in the fields, you could hear hammers banging, and there was smoke sputtering from chimneys. Wrapping it all was an invisible layer of energy. Ordinary folk wouldn’t spot it, but he felt it in his bones, a kind of resonance in tune with his body.

  Ewan knew he had arrived where he should be. His stomach no longer tingled.

  Without any hurry, he marched into the town, ignored by the locals. He was not really sure where to go, but he expected his feet to take him to the right shed or shop. Somewhere in this industrious chaos, he would find the source of all this creation.

  “Are you here to join us, son?” someone called, and he knew it was directed at him.

  Ewan looked at the other person. A man, fairly nondescript, wearing a priest’s robes, well worn with use. “Maybe,” he replied.

  The clergyman frowned. He must have expected more enthusiasm from the newcomer. “May I know your skills?”

  Ewan wondered what his skills really were. Not dying by a sword edge, he thought. That would be quite useful in the coming days. “I must speak to whoever leads your congregation. You must take me to see him.”