chapter eight

The brazen sound of horn would interrupt a morning calm.

A combat drill halts. Soldiers rally to the gates, tributaries drawn from the housing barracks, the pavilion, the tents. From the training yard, a hundred soldiers hail the portcullis with the sun in their eyes. A summoning. It means one thing only: the troops have returned.

I lower the point of my sword. But my grip would tighten.

For months there had been a shift in the winds. A rustle of war. A cardinal would find its way across the desert to pick at the scraps at our feet, twitching its blood red wings. An omen of carnage. But the men who did not believe in superstitions when it turned against them, picked its bones with their teeth.

Then the commander would make two trips. The first: to answer a subpoena by the edict of the monarch. A new boy-king, King Philip IV, his name was passed through the barracks in slips of whispers. His court was plainly disliked—debauched, they murmured—lacking the fundamental discipline that paved the empire to its glory. But he would appease their egos, because when the commander returned from Madrid, the recruits became espadachines (swordsmen) and the corporal became sergeant—promotions were offered like sweets.

Sergeant Perez gave us the debrief then, having emerged from the commander’s chambers. But the words were spoken too fast, faster than I learned. I caught him by the sleeve as the soldiers dispersed. “Tell me in English,” I had pleaded, unsettled by the tension that had stolen over the crowd. His eyes would roll heavenward, something crude lashed from his tongue. “Much has happened,” he said brusquely, “the Spanish are fighting many wars. Our domain is broad, but dispersed, and our resources have thinned immensely. The one that demands our attention in proximity and threat, is with the Bourbon house of France, who have joined the war only to spite us,” he spat the words out.

I had little grasp over politics, for many centuries I was here and there and then elsewhere. Names of states and kings that ruled changed as often as I changed dresses. But even I had heeded the decade-old friction between the Roman Catholics and Protestant church. Religion and war were often an inseparable dual. Across central Europe, widows held closed-casket funerals and commoners starved on the streets. Though details were vague to me, it was clear that a storm was approaching the House of Habsburg.

The thought is unnerving. Though I had come to appreciate the art of swordsmanship, I was no soldier, never mind the loyalty. But in the sanctum of the camp, it became easy to forget a world beyond four walls. It is a small nation of its own: a self-reliant autarky complete with fickle politics. Work became busier, and demanded every second of my wake. Then the commander would make his second trip. He assembled his highest-ranking officers—Elymus amongst his squad—and they had left with their finest armoury and heaviest swords.

Men that returned now, bloodied and wearied, but with their heads held high. The iron grilles are wrenched upwards with a screech, and they pass through the threshold, dragging attestations of war behind them. Men absent of an arm, a leg, a face—sacrifices to the vultures. Others would not pass through the gates at all. Fifty had left, only thirty returns.

Yet the man that leads them, pierces the sky with his spear. The light that glints off is blood red.

“We have fought, and we have conquered.”

For a second I am god-struck.

Enyalios on his ebony steed, divinity in his red stained teeth. Blood rivered over his face and shoulders like a cloak. And the sun would slide over the crest of his helm; the dark iron splattered—worn like a crown. The men by his side would lose light to his siphon—even the centaur at his flank, his golden presence shadowed. In storm-touched eyes, the wrath of war stirred.

“Maestre de campo,” the men kneel.

“God of war,” I whisper to my feet.

An avatar of Ares, the centaur had told me many moons ago, vessel of a god. I had dismissed his words too easily, banished the notion to his fanatic devotion to his commander. But now, they are less easy to forget.

The commander carried a heavy brown sack, but he pulls it over his shoulder now, grinning something sly. He untangles the knot that sealed it, and then in one movement, turns the opening of the sack towards the ground. Cheers slew through the crowds in a turbulent roar. Bile rises up my throat. I anchor my body with my sword. No, the sack had not been brown. My heart lurches as the heads do, one by one tumbling to the dirt, their skin gray and their open eyes rheumy. Gods…

One rolls to my feet. A sunken face severed at the neck, with dark eyes and sallow olive skin. A small scar touched his upper lip, under a crooked nose that had been broken too many times and never healed right. He was so human, so real…and a trophy to be shelved. I tremble, reaching out.

“Rise.”

The Commander’s order severs my attention. Slow and dazed, I stand with the other men. “What were you doing, rat-boy?” Vulture-nose hisses next to me. He grabs my upper arm harshly, jolting me from my stupor. What was I doing? I shake him off with a glare, unable to explain myself.

“Soldiers,” The Commander begins, “we have drawn the first blood, but victory is still long ways ahead. Those dense bastards have declared war.” A bellowed laugh. He skewers his spear into the closest head in jest. The sound of splitting flesh and fracturing skull is sharp.

“The years have been too kind to them, they have forgotten of our strength. In time, we will meet them in the battlefield, and slaughter every last one of them. We will return with their arrogant heads, and line each dagger on our palisade until our walls run red.” A smile of promise. “Until, they remember to be afraid again.” The spear is retrieved in a slickened wet sound. Where the face had been, only a caverned hole remains.

The men champion their commander’s words. Yes, they will do just that.

An unease strikes low in my stomach, it snares a slip of fear, and would feed a growing dread. His words carry but one message: It is a sign that I must leave. These walls would no longer sequester from a brewing war across the desert, one that was not mine to fight.

When half a year had passed and Rai did not return, I lived on patience. One more day, just another and I would leave. Then days passed. Had he forgotten? A more terrifying thought had struck me: had something happened to him? So I had waited, for days, for weeks, until I was not sure if I was waiting at all…

Now I did not know if I could afford privilege.

In one liquid motion, Enyalios unsaddles from his horse. He approaches the circle of men.

“A troop will be dispatched shortly to transport supplies to the bivouac. The following men will be assigned.”

He nods at the lieutenant, “Cavallero-” then at the sergeant “-Perez…” With a given familiarity, more senior soldiers are selected. Then unexpectedly, he would turn to the lower-ranks, the newly anointed soldiers. Under his assessment, their faces liquesce to an unadulterated desperation. Pick me, they beseech with their pining eyes, pick me. Vulture-nose next to me strains, his breath caught in anticipation. I still.

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“Ruiz,” the commander says to one of the men next to us, whose face splits with elation. Vulture-nose growls low in his frustration. The commander would continue his evaluation, hawk-eyes gauging into souls. Leisurely, they would pass over my head, and stop to appraise me.

Perhaps it is to his surprise that I was no longer the trembling boy only eight months ago. I meet the steel of his gaze with my own. Fists and lashings have stolen my softness. My clothing would not hide the fullness of my arms nor the taut lines of my legs. Pliant palms had coarsened from labour and combat, and in eight months they had found a home around the hilt of a sword. One I find comfort in now. Vulture-nose would press his fingers around my wrist, the blunt of them eating into my skin like scythes.

It is only when the commander’s eyes press on, that I would find my breath again. He roams over the rest of the boys. Over Vulture-nose, then over Rock, over more faces that would turn sour. With a slither of reprieve, he selects three other men, wide as oxen and equally as violent—true-bred agents of war. It felt ludicrous that he would settle for less.

“For the motherland!” His spear would break the belly of the sky. A hundred voices would echo.

***

As the black night kills light, I return to the training yard. They are still there; I live a small relief. In the darkness, they are but large shadows on the smooth ground. Five in sum, I smuggle them in turns to the back of the latrines. The smell will disguise the rot.

I am too familiar with the feeling, I think, hiding the last of them beneath my cloak. His skin is bone cold in my palm.

A row of heads line the stone walls. Three would stare back, eyes imbued with secrets only dead men share. I wait for the sickness, but it would not come. It is a bitter realization. Turning the head in my arms, I study his face. It is the same one that had tumbled into my vision this morning. Its skin, which had been stiff as bark, had begun to loosen under the hours of heat, and flesh became slumping, wilting wax.

I place him on the ground. This place, I think sadly, it is a poison.

I drop to my knees, and begin to dig with my fingers. It is my small betrayal to the Tercio: a small rebellion to the butchery. And it would be the final act. Tonight, I decided, I would leave. And I do not think I would look back.

Dark perished eyes capture mine. In the trickery of the night, decaying faces seem to smile. I grin wryly in return. Beneath my fingers, the earth gapes a shallow dimple. I bury them one by one, placing a coin atop each sealed eye. Copper for their journey across the Styx. “Rest,” I tell them.

When I return to my bed, it is colder than I left it. “Theros?” I whisper. But he does not answer. I peek under the bunk—not a rodent in sight. Retrieving my stowed bag from its hideaway, I begin my hunt for the mischievous rat. I would find him around the kitchens, skirting through the pavilion with the crumbs on his chin.

Crouching behind a column, I tense as patrolling soldiers pass, yawning a day’s lassitude. I beckon him towards me, glowering at the taunting twitch of his nose. “You will get me caught,” I growl at his insolence.

“I cannot believe we are leaving this paradise,” he answers, one muffled by his snack, “and it will not be me that gets you caught, you are perfectly capable of doing that by yourself.”

“How do you figure?”

“Persephone,” he sighs, “your plan is preposterous.”

“It is not much of an escape,” I concur, “it is simply an…exit.”

“I still think we should reconsider the horse.”

We had quarrelled for some time over this one matter. In his argument: we would soon die in the sand without a horse—that is the warranty of the desert. Though I could not die from thirst or hunger, there was a certainty that Theros would eat me alive if I did not die first from his whining.

“Stop talking about the horse. There will be no horse.” I reach into my pouch, where, swaddled in linen were three loaves of stale acemita and the end of a dispute. “This is all for you,” I negotiate, revealing my leverage, “but only if you stop with the nagging.”

Theros’ snout froths, another fight lost to gluttony. “What horse?”

I grin my small victory. No, there would be no need for a loud, lumbering creature on a mission of stealth, I would have one in the pocket of my cloak, a hundred times smaller but twice as loud. “Let’s go,” I say.

The camp had two exit points: the gate and a more covert back door. The front gate needed at least two large men to work the mechanisms of the bolted doors and portcullis, whereas the back was a much simpler wooden swing gate. While two sentinels guard the front entrance on a gatehouse, two are posted outside the camp in the back. It is a weakness. But I was not the only one who realized. Instead of wielding spears on a fort, the men bear firearms.

A new shift would have started an hour ago. After a generous dosage of opium poppy in the scheduled sentinels’ teas, which I had pocketed from the physician’s tent—the guards should be putty in their posts.

“You are too proud of a ridiculous plan,” the rat comments dryly.

I hoist my bag higher along my shoulder and peek around the pillar. Though I no longer had a formal curfew, getting caught would precipitate questions I did not want to answer. It is to my fortune: the camp is ghost grounds in this hour. The watch grows lazy to the stillness and barrack walls quiver with the crescendo of slumber. It is now. I run along the buildings, slipping through the long shadows. The rigor structure of the camp thus makes it predictable.

Pressing against the stone outer wall, I angle my eye through a slit of clear view between slackened limestone. It would not reveal much, only the length of a musket slanted to its side, muzzle in the dirt. The gentle sounds of sleep are encouraging. Discreetly, I unfasten the gates, wincing at the screech of sliding metal. Doors would pry open in the wind. I shoulder through the crack.

Turning, I note the man on the floor, back against the door and face to the heavens. His mouth is wide open, gurgling dreams. The jostle of the gate had not roused him from his unconsciousness. Slowly, I step over his leg.

Somehow, it is this fatal movement that snaps his eyes wide open.

Bleary eyes find mine and they would narrow. I stiffen. A rise of panic bubbles from my throat. Then his hands scramble for his gun. “Shit,” I curse. I lunge for the other end of his musket, gripping my fingers against the smooth cool metal. His hands wrap around the breech of the arquebus, but they fumble in his disorientation. “What the fuck!” he screams, turning flush.

I shift to the side, turning sideways to tighten my grip around the bayonet. I wrestle with my might, but it is futile against his strength. “Theros!” I grunt, gritting my teeth. The rat leaps from my pocket. I watch the sentinel’s eyes widen. “What the-” but he would lose it to a garble. The large man jumps to his feet, the gun forgotten, and begins a wild dance. Theros had crawled into his breeches, and it turns the soldier to jellyfish.

I almost pause to gawk.

But instead, I swivel the gun in my arms quickly, and pummel the butt of it into his forehead. The light goes out immediately, and he slumps onto the floors. Theros remerges from the opening of his pants, looking stupefied. For a second, I loosen, pressing my face into my palm.

That, was most certainly no part of the plan.

And then it hits me, all too late, that I had forgotten the other guard. The hard blunt of a gun presses into my spine. The click of the cock vibrates into my skin. Shit, shit, shit, shit.

“If you run,” a cold voice sounds, “I will shoot.”

For a second, I consider running. The blow would not kill me, perhaps it may even misfire. But sense finds me alas. “Don’t,” I growl, “I won’t.” Steadily, I renounce the musket in my arms and turn around.

I recognize him immediately. It is the soldier that kept guard of the commander’s tent. The one I thought was almost kind. I should have known it was him. Any other, and I would already be in pieces. A bead of contrition eases the tension. “Good evening,” I say lightly.

His face is wound tight, but I thought I saw it fracture in the slightest. “God, I knew that was some funky tea,” he says, and then the shadow of a grin would crook on his face. The guard lowers the barrel of his musket, but an accusation would fire in its place. “I did not take you for a deserter.”

“I am a lot of things,” I answer vaguely with a shrug.

“You know I cannot let you leave.”

A frustration finds me in an instant. He sees the crease in my brow and aims his weapon again. “I will have to shoot you if you run,” he warns.

I pinch my eyes shut, a stubbornness clawing through me. I had my dagger. The musket is not an effective weapon close-range, too long and clumsy to aim. I am fast. I could disarm him. But when I open my eyes again, I recognize the situation. A shot like that would awaken the whole camp. Then I would be hunted, by men on horses. Horses, shit.

“I won’t run,” I repeat quietly.

He does not lower the gun when I pick up Theros and edge backwards to the gates—a small surrender. But he would laugh. “That was some fine entertainment,” he croaks, pointing a thumb at the folded man on the floor with a swell on his head.

I agreed, but sulkily, I bare my teeth at him instead. Chortling, he nudges me good-naturedly towards the opened door. “I won’t say a word,” he says, “but it’s going to cost me.”

I wonder how many times he has done this. Narrowing my eyes, I reach into my bag and pull out a handful of coins—a month’s worth of wages. It seems like all I was doing tonight was losing copper. I drop it reluctantly into his open palm. “Bye now,” he says cheerily.

Biting back a retort, I turn stiffly and walk back through the prison gates. Theros is trembling on my shoulder. “Not a word,” I threaten. Defeat is a humiliating and sullen affair.

"Sure," he says. I could hear the stifled laughter in his squeak, "but only if I get to keep the bread.”