The King did not ride up front, but behind a v-shaped phalanx of soldiers and a second row of guardsmen. Whatever I thought of his intelligence, he valued his life. Our trot slowed to a walk. One of the hounds whimpered and had his mouth clamped shut by his keeper. In the end, it all happened so fast as to defy accurate description by my pen, but I will endeavor to do my best in spite of my limitations. It was sound first. The crushing of an Empire helmet by what Carbo called a log. The screams were next and I knew from experience it was not the Ba-Hali. Their silence is what the Empire soldiers feared most. With complete calm in their nakedness the Ba-Hali swung their clubs. Even in death, I found their discipline held.

Chaos was loosed upon the company and I drew the sword from my Prince and lept from my mount. I was not about to be in a life or death situation on the back of an animal I could not control. It gave me an unusual view of the conflict, the Ba-Hali view, as all others in our company were mounted and remained so, unless unseated by a titanic swing of a tree branch. One shattered on a shield in my vicinity and the naked tribesman was run through by the stable boy. He pulled the battered sword loose from his enemy’s chest and stared at it in disbelief. Blood as red as his own dripped onto the forest floor. In his shock, he let his guard down and a Ba-Hali woman swung towards him, her weapon a stone which fit in her palm. I acted on instinct, chopping down with my sword and severing her arm at the wrist. Blood spurted across the stable boy’s tunic and the tribe woman still made no sound of agony. She attempted to pick up her weapon with her remaining hand before a galloping King's guard unseated her head from its perch atop her neck. It rolled through a pile of leaves and stopped at my feet, eyes staring up at nothing.

The entire attack could not have lasted longer than a minute, yet dozens lay dead. A few from our own group, but mostly Ba-Hali. I put a hand on the stable boy’s shoulders as he vomited yellow bile and coughed. Even empty, his stomach heaved again and again.

“You did what you had to,” I said.

He chose not to speak and I left him to his contemplations and his roiling stomach.

The bodies of the Ba-Hali were stacked and burned. Men pulled their vests and tunics over their noses or else tied a rag. The few Empire dead were wrapped in cloth and laid over a donkey to be carried back to their families in Singhal. I see Edouard standing alone, leaning against a tree away from the chaos of cleanup and arguments over what happened. I saw Carbo in a heated discussion with other members of the King's guard in relation to how the phalanx performed. The King was being tended to. He had a gash across his forehead. The pattern of dried blood across his face gave him a menacing look, but he was not in any serious danger.

I approached Edouard and my stomach flipped over. I steadied myself against the tree trunk and held my abdomen. I blinked a few times and recovered myself.

“Shock is wearing off,” Edouard said, still looking at the King and his men.

“I’ll be alright.”

“I know.”

He looked behind the tree and to his left and right, before grabbing me by my shoulder and easing me behind the tree and a ways further off.

“I want to talk to you,” he said.

My stomach again rebelled and I doubled over in front of my Prince.

“My prince, I’m sorry. I–”

I retched on the forest floor, bringing up my breakfast and a quantity of bile while Edouard patted my shoulder. I opened my eyes and the world was blurring at the edges. Carbo’s outline in the distance was angular and unfinished, his spittle flying in rage each a distinct square. The King's bloody face was nothing more than a blotchy red cube.

“Edouard,” I said, looking up into his face, prepared for a horror show only to see…Edouard. He looked fine. Sweaty, with specks of dirt and leaf mould in his beard. His face was full of concern and his signet rings hung down on their leather strap dancing above me like a feather plaything above a newborn’s crib.

“Edouard, listen to me,” I said. “Go to your saddle bag as if you need something for me. A poultice, wine to calm my nerves, anything.”

He turned to do my bidding, but I grabbed the hem of his cloak.

“Wait. Leave your signets in the saddle bag.”

“Origio, I–”

“They’ll be safe for a moment.”

He did as I said, and the general disarray of a company after battle gave aid to his stealth. He walked back from his horse slowly, not eager to leave our way home unguarded.

Every step he took cleared my vision. The King's grisly wound came into focus, the stable boy, recovered now, was checking the horses for injuries. I took a deep breath and felt the burn in my chest and throat from forced bile. I sat up against the tree trunk and Edouard squatted down next to me, sure not to turn his back on his horse.

“It’s the signets, Edouard. That’s what holds the whole thing together.”

“You weren’t sick from battle,” he said.

“No. I was traveling in time. We were too far from them. The signet anchors to them, to their reality, their time.”

“I felt okay.”

“You’re physically stronger than me. I expect if you walked much further away the same would have happened.”

I described for Edouard as best I could what had happened when we and the signet had moved too far from the people of the early Empire we had become entangled with. I told of the flipping of my stomach, the buzzing in my ears, and hardest to recount of all: how the people around us had started to fade into their component parts, blocks and smudges of animated color, but not human. He took this information in stride and nodded as I spoke, asking only a few clarifying questions about the exact details as well as I could recall them. All the while, his eyes never wavered from his saddle bags. As my narration wrapped up, the company was also getting itself together to make for the safety of the palace at Singhal. Edouard helped me to my feet and we walked together to rejoin the King's retinue for our return trip. The stable boy was so afraid to make eye contact that he dropped my horse’s bridle at my feet. He hurried off to other duties and in spite of all I had been through I succeeded in my smoothest mount yet.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

It was late afternoon and the sun cut down through the thin winter canopy. We rode in rows of three. I was on the outside, next to two other serving men. My mind wandered and I felt homesick for my garret and my quiet days of dusting when a King's guard from the rear pulled up beside me.

“Prince Edouard’s man, are you?”

“Aye.”

“Yer wanted up front.”

He pointed with a grubby finger and I nodded my assent. I made my way to the front of the column. It was no mystery where I was wanted as Carbo had turned in his saddle to be sure I was attending him.

“Glad to see you are unharmed,” I said as our horses trotted in stride.

“And the King.”

“Of course. And the King.”

“I wanted to revisit our conversation from earlier.”

“As I said, I’m certain your learning surpasses mine.”

“So you did. But that was not all you said. You were lacking information, valet. That I recall being the thrust of your little speech.”

I hardly felt I had given anything close to a “speech” but I nodded, unwilling to anger him.

“You felt that Ba-Hali were a proposed enemy, am I correct? And how do you feel now?”

“Given the experience we’ve all had today, I’d be hard pressed to say the Ba-Hali feel friendly towards the Empire at present.” “Although,” I added. “I cannot imagine why anyone would seek my advice on the matter. As I’ve said. I am only a valet.”

“You speak eloquently for a serving man.”

I forced myself to chuckle and I ran my hand through my hair.

“In the plains where I descend from there is a cactus bird called a Maxai. Have you heard of it?”

He shook his head.

“It can imitate human speech to an uncanny degree. If you close your eyes, you believe a man is speaking to you. Traveling players train them to say bawdy phrases to shock small village folks out of their coin.”

“What of it?”

“Maxai, for all their talents, are not intelligent birds. They are brightly colored and are known to sit in the tall plains grass. Not in a scrub tree or a cactus, but in the grass. But they are blue and red and sometimes even vibrant purple birds. The grass does not hide them. Still they do this. They are easy prey. It is not uncommon for small children to pick up a Maxai from the grass and bring them home for dinner. It perches there in the coals of an oven just as in the grass, unable to determine what has happened to it as it slowly cooks, letting out a last bawdy phrase or two if you’re lucky.”

“An interesting story.”

I held onto the pommel and looked over at Carbo for the first time. Through my narration, I had felt his eyes on me, but I kept them trained ahead. Until this moment. I had to sell it.

“Yes, I am good at talking. I have spent my life in the company of many men of noble birth.”

He was quiet for a few beats and I wanted to leave him to contemplate what I had told him.

“Sir,” I said, nodding and falling back into my appropriate place in the column, sweat coating my back and palms, my heart beating a fierce rhythm against my ribcage.

Years earlier, when I was still a green library employee, I had sold Febril the same bill of goods about Maxai and he had not taken the bait.

“First,” he said. “You’ve never seen the plains in your born days and you wouldn’t know one if it crept up on ya. Second, you don’t talk like that.”

“Pardon?”

Febril rolled his eyes and pulled a long wooden peel from a hook in the ceiling, opened the oven, and adjusted the thin, aromatic loaf’s position near the coals. Once he had closed up the oven, hung the peel, and taken a healthy swig of ale he spoke again.

“It’s too practiced. If you want to sell a tale like that one you’ve got to be more casual like. It needs a bit of a personal touch. Something about your life as a boy and how you caught a Maxai and heard it insult your gran from the oven while it was cooking.”

“But as you just pointed out, I’ve never seen the plains.”

“Missing my point, my boy. I was never going to believe you. I’ve known you your entire life. But if you want to fool someone else, you’ve got some work to do.”

At the time, I had been hip deep in the oratory section and had become fascinated with it. The idea that I could sell anyone on anything by using the correct inflection, word choice, and tone of voice, it felt like magic. I had not yet spent enough time in the History section to understand that it did work and there were scores of men across time who had used oratory to great effect and great ill. Unfortunately, I wasn’t any good at it. The Maxai legend had been told to me by my father, but he had not lived long enough for the punchline. I believed it until I was a grown man and could hardly believe it when I found the story in a book about Rodanian culture. It was a common tale told to Rodanian children by their parents to get them out from under the feet of adults by sending them out “Maxai hunting” in the grass.

With Carbo, I counted on the benefit of his arrogance and ignorance. I needed him to underestimate me, to believe me when I told him I was nothing but a mimic of my betters. My heart rate returned to normal as the afternoon passed into early evening and the old capital came into view once again. There was an uptick in conversation as we drew close and men began to think of their beds, their wives, and a hot meal. I wanted nothing more than to sleep. Food was unappetizing to my burning throat and sour stomach, and the idea of having any more conversation was repulsive. The horses at a walk, we made our way through the city gates. They were thrown wide for us once we were spotted on the horizon. After the long and disjointed way up the cobblestone streets, I dismounted and handed off my horse to one of the many stable hands who had come out to greet us. It was going to be a long night for them.

I walked towards the palace doors and bumped into the back of another valet. All had stopped walking. Several kneeled. A horn began to play. An air of solemnity reigned for the fallen citizens of the Empire. I bore no ill will towards those of our company who had fallen. It was not their place to make decisions. They were instruments of the King's will. But most on my mind was a putrid aroma, the stink of burning flesh and the mound of Ba-Hali bodies left to smolder in the clearing in the wilderness. I wanted a moment of anger, of noise, for them, as their own people would not give it to them, living in silence as they did, and they were not being remembered by this ceremony. I did not shout or cry or cause a scene, but I remembered them. Someone needed to. I kept them in my thoughts as King Everard said some final words before the palace doors. I did not hear any of what he said and did not feel the worse for it.