Chapter 34 #2
The Sepāhbad presses his khanjar against the man’s forearm, the squish of skin near my ears making me almost flinch.
He slices slowly, back and forth as if sawing the trunk of a tree; every flicker of pain must have been excruciatingly felt.
My hand clamps his wet lips as he screams. When the arm is gone, the hand twitches on the clay, dead muscles spasming one final time, blood dripping down black hairs.
I stare, almost immune to the grotesqueness of it.
A dark thought follows it: this torture could be worse.
The Gates technique must mean the Sepāhbad cannot access his affinity until he recovers from the fever.
‘You know more, or the other arm will be next.’
Now, words fall out. ‘Y-you are too late,’ his words slur. ‘The melee was a farce. Zayguk has allied with Azadniabad, not Sajamistan as you thought. An invasion is beginning from the eastern front – not Ghaznia -with Zayguk granting passageway into Khor.’
My mind recedes to the last question of the Wadiq tests – it’s as if it was prophetic of this moment.
‘They crossed today?’
The Azadnian struggles to speak, though he cackles. ‘T-this morning.’
‘So, the war has begun,’ the Sepāhbad says.
My gut curls in. I must find a way to kill Akashun, who must be in Azadniabad’s wartime capital.
The Sepāhbad pats the Azadnian’s only hand. ‘Be free now. You’ve fallen for charm under your Great Father. Now, die by another.’ To my surprise, he circles his fist over his torso in the Azadnian salutation.
The man’s heart is carved from his chest, the khanjar sinking like teeth into skin. For a second, I feel that blade sink into me, like I am the Azadnian sprawled before a Sajamistani.
The Sepāhbad stands. ‘You did not capture them.’
I look into his feverish eyes and make my tone steady, so he has no choice but to hear honesty in my lie. ‘Because they took their lives before I could.’
‘If you had moved sooner, it would have prevented the suicides. With their feeble loyalty, they’d have confessed information without much prodding, avoiding this man’s torture.’
I know he is right. My skin crawls as if I’ve been flung naked before him – for all my excuses, he saw my trembles on the battlefield; he knows I am sympathetic.
The best martial artists must be familiar with pain to inflict it, and mine is a wound bleeding openly for him to study. And his next words confirm it.
‘The truth is, in war, no judgement is correct. But the point is not about correctness, it’s about compromise. You are an underling, leaving no room for hesitation.’
‘I understand,’ I say, but I speak too fast because his eyes darken.
‘Do you, shepherd girl?’ He prods. ‘Two soldiers, from the Dawjad nomads, proclaimed allegiance to their brethren. The third seemed loyal to Emperor Akashun. If we spent our time looking at the details of every soldier’s philosophy outside the colour of their uniform, well .
. .’ His lips curl. ‘It wouldn’t be a war at all, now, would it?
You would fall for false sympathies. In battle, that would kill our warriors.
You had sympathy because. an enemy was nostalgic of the vast pastures you hail from? ’
‘It was a mistake – a foolish, emotional mistake. But,’ the words are desperate, clawing to the part of him that perhaps understands; is he not from their tribe, ‘they never chose this.’
‘Would you like to be a peaceful warrior?’ A dark amusement weaves through his question and my disappointment bruises me.
‘She is still not certain when the truth is before her eyes. If you saw these soldiers guarding Mitra, would you recite the same defences? These people cling to their history like a ruse of impartiality in war. And now, you sought a charity by letting those soldiers take their own lives. They spoke of freedom, so, naturally, death would become theirs.’
‘Because it was.’ My throat cinches. I see there is no victory when two empires are at each other’s throats fighting over land; no way to be the in-between. The Camel Road is a borderland, the grey amongst the black.
Before the Sepāhbad departs, he brushes one of the corpses with his foot. ‘What people forget when they worship their history is that, as beautiful as the idea of a revolution is, all revolutions begin and end with war. All revolution is war. War is what we fight.’
For my disobedience, he informs me my overseer will dole out a punishment on my return to Za’skar. Then he departs, but the raven remains.
It perches on a branch and watches me slowly bury the corpses. For I see myself in them. After I am done, the raven claws its talons across the dirt and I chuckle bitterly. ‘Thank you, Rasha,’ I whisper as it soars back to its master, who let it stay for the burials.
Like my father, Warlord Akashun is a symbol of strength for a people who’ve lived in terror of the other empires, people who are weak.
Their worship does not make them foolish; it only proves their vulnerability.
But heroes are nothing in this world. They fatten by feeding on the helpless because we seek something larger than ourselves.
They are illusory symbols, and like all illusions, they can break.
If I must defeat him . . . I need to remember this. I cannot merely kill him – I must kill the symbol of him, the hope he gives them. Perhaps it would do the world good to have no heroes at all. We like to be ordered. We need fear.
I loved it. Perhaps the world will love it too, I muse to myself.