Love is a Battlefield

Evan heaved his broken leg over the saddle of the messenger corps pony that seemed to be, so far as he could tell, the only other surviving member of the kingdom’s collected armed forces. He spent a few seconds squeezing the pommel of the saddle so hard that he felt his knuckles might snap apart, and concentrated on not falling unconscious for a third time. He was near the crest of a gently sloping hill, just below a line of forest, looking out over what had been, only hours before, a vast field of grain, sitting ripe and waiting for the coming of the reapers. The reapers had come, but no grain was sown. This year’s harvest yielded only a feast of flesh for the crows. 

On the hill with him were the King, his military staff, and several of the noblemen of Kant, all dead. Nearly all of the noblemen that were not on the hill were somewhere on the field below; officers among the ranks. Evan saw no sign that any of them might have survived that maelstrom. There was not a military force within a hundred leagues large enough to effectively defend even a barony. Evan looked out over the field of reeking gut-ruptured death before him, and saw the corpse of a kingdom, slain by the Commander in Chief who had been her hero and savior, Earl Tanon.

Tanon had defected, and to a man, his own prized brigade of heavy infantry had followed. It was not an army, but it was as good a back bone as an army could want, and when Tanon returned he had with him the armies and blessings of two kingdoms, both of whom had not forgotten their own suffering against Tanon, when he had first defended Kant against them, then took the fight to them. They had not been able to resist attempting to exact an ironic sort of vengeance by turning Kant’s own war master against it. Not knowing that is was they who were the tools of vengeance, they made a deal with Tanon, and he led them to the slaughter.

Evan bemusedly pondered the nature of the war council on the other side that had preceded this disaster, wondering at the tactical nonsense Tanon must have sold them to get them to commit to a head on assault against Kant’s army, effectively signing a suicide pact with Kant. They should have swallowed their greed for the prizes Tanon promised and realized that he did not want Kant. He only wanted the King.

These thoughts bobbed up and sank down randomly in the rushing black and gray river that was Evan’s pain. But one thought remained afloat and insistent. The constant reminder was conspicuous in his watery eyed vision. The mercenary cavalry out of the east that Tanon had hired to supplement his force seemed to have survived the total devastation. Not all of them, most of them in fact, Evan knew, were dead. He had some hand in that himself, directing the King’s cavalry through flagmen on the hill, but there had been a lot of them to begin with and the number of them alive was significant.

The presence of the riders out of the east had compounded the betrayal by Tanon of his native kingdom. They were considered barbarians by the people of Kant and they had been raiding the eastern baronies along the frontier for as far back as anyone knew. They were the reason peace was a thing that Kant could never fully realize. They were just one more reminder of Tanon’s uncompromising thirst for revenge.

Before, they’d been moving about in small clumps throughout the far edges of the carnage, seeming in their black cloaks and black leather helms, to be kin to the crows that now claimed dominion. Through his struggles to get his leg out from under his own dead horse, coax the pony too him, get himself mounted, and most importantly, maintain consciousness, Evan had been watching the dark riders move in bunches of three and four away from the field to where they seemed to be mustering on the high road. This sight had given force to the will that pushed his body to function through its pain and exhaustion. Riders out of the east, raised from boys to be raiders, would not be thwarted by a wall guarded by a few companies of terrified militia who could not, at any rate, cover any significant portion of the wall. In the back of his head, interspersed with irrepressible lightning flash images of individual horrors he had witnessed throughout the day,  there was a vision of the dark riders already inside the city, going at a gallop straight up the main boulevard, the  palace looming up before them. The palace where many wives of rank were at this moment waiting anxiously for news, including his own wife, Sarah.

It was possible that he could reach the city first. He could get Sarah out and away. He was unsure if he would be able to accompany her, given his condition, but he would gather an escort and see her gone, somehow. First, he had to get there. Two-hundred yards through the trees at his back, lay the vastest stretch of the King’s grain fields, and through the middle of those fields ran a track that was rarely used by any but the grain wagons. It ran straight to the west gate by a much more direct route than did the high road to the south gate, and though it would normally be heavy with wagon traffic on a day like today, Evan knew from constant scouting reports that it was deserted.

He prepared himself the best he could for his journey, but before he went, he had a duty to perform. He had seen the King’s corpse, now he must bear witness to the villain’s demise.  He could see a corner scrap of the cursed blue and white fluttering in the soft breeze. It had been as inexorable as the turning of the sun, coming ever closer and closer, marking the progress of Tanon, where he rode at the core of the arrow straight ranks of his brigade of strong young men in half plate, swinging long swords with the viciousness of wounded pride which radiated from Tanon, and seemed to seep into the whole of the world.

Grunting and clutching himself about the gut in an unconscious attempt to rescue himself from each inevitable shock of pain, he guided the horse slowly down the hill beyond a mound of dead shapes which consisted mostly of several members of the one company of heavy cavalry he had kept on the hill with the King.

He stopped the horse after only a few seconds that seemed to have gone on forever, and there, he could clearly see the whole of the banner of the Blue Hawk. And there was Tanon, lying with his head on the steel pauldron of his standard bearer, who in turn had his head on Tanon’s. One or the other of them seemed to have tried to prop the standard up between them, wedging it in the space where their shoulders and necks came together, but it was tilted over most of the way and hung partially draped across the standard bearer’s body, like a shroud.

Tanon was nailed to the ground by a thick cavalry lance through his gut. Evan tried a little cheer for his boys, but he did not seem to have the breath for it at the moment. The way Tanon’s head was propped on the thick, steel sheathed shoulder, as on a pillow, he appeared to be staring up at Evan. He was thinking it must be the descending sun in Tanon’s eyes that gave them that look of life, when Tanon spoke.

“Evan!” he gasped.

Evan himself gave a little gasp. The horse shifted, and Evan cursed.

“Evan,” his voice was pleading, and at first Evan thought he wanted to be saved, or killed, but Tanon continued on, “Tell me, is the King dead? I must know it from one who has seen. Tell me, please!”

Ironically enough, Tanon’s voice, the voice of an old friend, brought him out of the almost zombified stupor that each new horror had begun to shift his mind into. It brought him more into the here and now by taking him back.

A dark night, eons ago, leg broken, astride a horse, surrounded by frontier, trailed by mounted raiders, Tanon riding at his side and coaxing him on with promises of every comfort, but most of all, pleading on behalf of Sarah.

“She’ll stick a knife in me if you die, Evan, if not a sword,” every word of it spoken with the sad seriousness of a man at a funeral.

Evan had actually laughed, and he always felt that he had made it thanks to that laugh as well as the constant invocation of Sarah’s name. For a moment, with the agony in his leg, and Tanon’s voice in his ears, Evan had the sensation that that long ago night existed here simultaneously with the dimming autumn day. The sensation was so vivid and strange that he thought he was dreaming, and he started, brining himself back into some semblance alertness.

Tanon was pleading to be allowed a report of the King’s health.

Evan coughed a weak little laugh at the way Tanon had fallen into officious terminology. Tanon was purposely trying to make him laugh. With a three inch thick ash shaft through his guts, he was trying to make Evan laugh.

Then youth, and the long ago night vanished from Evan’s mind and there was again only the apocalypse around him. Evan understood well enough what Tanon’s pleas were about, and at first, he did not want to say, did not want to give this man anything he yearned for, but he could not help himself, the condemnation felt like an amorphous beast in his belly, demanding to be regurgitated; a thing that was a part of the ritual madness that had begun in the late morning with a tremendous crashing together of men.

“You’ve killed him!” Evan spat it out in a hissing screech that was alien to his own ears, but he continued on, “You’ve killed them all! You’ve killed everything!”  The last came out in a dry croak that was thick with bitterness and seemed to him to fit the atmosphere around them, as if he himself were a corpse having a conversation with the corpse of Tanon.

“Then I am revenged,” Tanon said, and his voice and his breath came out as if the heaviest burden a man might ever bear had just been lifted from him. “And I am redeemed,” he continued, “my one friend, the only one who understands, yet survives.”

For the briefest moment, Evan was honestly baffled and he looked about him at the scattered wreckage that had been soldiers for something resembling Tanon’s description. Then he realized that Tanon was referring to him and he was so outraged, so anxious to proclaim denial of any such allegiance, he could only splutter and cough.

“You understand, Evan,” Tanon said in that same even tone that was maddeningly oblivious of the lance.

“Traitor!” Evan wheezed, “You!” he coughed.

“I was betrayed,” Tanon said, “betrayed by the King, and betrayed by my wife, just exactly as were you.”

Evan went still as his mind fell into a very cold and cautious mode, trying to allow Tanon’s words to drift through him without touching anything inside.

“You know that it is true. I see it. I know that you love Sarah as much as I love Delia…”

“You killed Delia!” Evan grabbed on to the old string of accusations with a sudden burst of energy.

Tanon sighed tiredly, and was silent for a moment. Evan searched desperately for a way to extend the accusation, to drive it home, to stop him. He almost started to drive the horse to kick Tanon in the head, but then he remembered he wasn’t on his own mount and knew it would spook the pony if he tried to drive it to do such a thing. Not that he had the energy for such a maneuver.

“While the King had me in my cell, before the Chamberlain pointed out that I could not be detained for executing an adulterous wife, however expeditious and inconvenient my method, I was paid a visit, by the Queen,” Tanon said.

Tanon had killed Delia by crushing her skull against the stone wall of the King’s bed chamber. Tanon’s duel with the King, inevitable only in so far as it had been played out on a grain field by thousands of champions, had been on that night postponed by the intervention of the, Nitus, who had been guard captain under the king’s father. He was the only man who might stand between the two. He did so, Evan knew, only because he knew the King would otherwise die. Tanon had refused to kill the old hero and had allowed himself to be arrested, ostensibly for the murder of Delia. The Chamberlain, however, who would have to present the charges at court, had been forced to point out to the King that, as a noble lord, Tanon had the authority to execute an adulterous wife, by much crueler means if he chose, and adultery was, somewhat awkwardly implied by the over all circumstances.

Awkwardness had been the mildest aspect of the days following the late night scene in the King’s chambers.  Tanon’s formal challenge, presented before the throne, within moments of his cell door being thrown open, declined to accept any champion. Tanon would face only the King himself. It was not a valid challenge, but the King accepted instantly and they very nearly fell to right there in the hall of the throne, but it was stopped, and then intrigue ensued.

It was the King’s great grandfather who put the final halt on proceedings. In his old age, he had developed a serious case of guilt, and he attributed some of the bad acts of his youth, to temporary insanity (and, or drunkenness). As a result, he had ratified an act by the king’s council that gave them the power to intercede in cases where the king was clearly acting “outside the bounds of rationality.” Normally such a thing could never gain the unanimous consent of the council; the council was too ingeniously structured to allow the competing interests to come so fully into alignment. But there was a crisis. The King was without surviving blood kin, and no heir had come after seven years. Only a baron of the Lost Barony would be accepted by all as king.

The Lost Barony was the nineteenth barony, which had been lost to the frontier four centuries before. Baron Sturgus, fighting a rear guard action against the invading barbarians, had managed to bring many of his people out of the barony safely. It had then been his leadership that had united the eighteen baronies and driven the attack back along the wider front and ultimately saved the confederation of baronies. His own barony though had been completely engulfed, and would not again be retaken for centuries.

Out of the confederation had risen the new kingdom with Sturgus as its king by the covenant that would see to it that his descendents would always sit the throne.

Evan had gained his own current prestige by at last managing what Baron Sturgus and no other since had been able to do. He had developed the newly organized cavalry and the tactics to go with it that had at last retaken the Lost Barony.

In the wake of Tanon’s challenge, the council, for the first time, exercised the controversial power it had been given over the throne. The council determined that the King’s acceptance of the unlawful challenge was “outside the bounds of rationality.” The court fell into turmoil, and life became somewhat treacherous for Evan himself. Eyes fell inevitably to where the only truly tangible power laid; the military. It would be they who would have to either back the council, or arrest them, as the King demanded. As commander of an entire branch of the King’s army, in the midst of an apparent governmental meltdown, Evan found himself holding a set of reigns that were like nothing he could have imagined as a young cavalry ensign. Seeing himself in a no win situation, he ordered all mounts be turned immediately over to the pool, and all weapons be locked in the armory, to be issued only to the watch. Stand down became the primary general order, and Evan made it clear that if either the King or the council attempted to override him, he would resign his post, return to his childhood home of Brownstone and buy the local hostler out of his position. He had seriously considered that as his first option.


Drivis, who commanded everything but the cavalry, fancied himself Tanon’s second in command, though there was officially no such position, and Drivis was in fact equal in rank to Evan. Though, only militarily speaking, Drivis was a noble, and though he had been granted a knighthood, Evan was not noble born. He had earned his position through a lot of years in the saddle fighting all the little wars that for Kant that were inevitable, with a frontier on one border and two hostile kingdoms on another.

Drivis had come to where Evan had put himself on watch permanently, at the corps headquarters, and as “acting Commander in Chief”, ordered Evan to resume normal operations, especially local patrols, which Evan had ceased as something of a way to apply pressure for a resolution. Evan told Drivis that either the King or the council could have his resignation; acting Commanders in Chief who attempted to usurp his command could have his lance, pointy end first on the field of honor.

Drivis had not pushed but he did decide to take sides and back the council. It seemed to Evan to be a monumentally stupid career move, but the “irrational act” as it had become commonly known, had been made an amendment to the covenant binding the eighteen baronies together, so it could be said in all honesty that Drivis was doing the right thing.

It became apparent that the King would not be allowed to face Tanon, and shortly thereafter, Tanon rode out of the city. His Hawk Brigade, four abreast, as pretty as a parade, followed behind.

The move caught everyone off guard, and by the time anyone decided to try to stop them, only a fully mounted force would have any chance of catching them. When the King ordered Evan to go after them, Evan knew he would have to kill them all, including Tanon, and even though Tanon was an old friend and something of a mentor he might have gone, for though things might be interpreted in more ways than one, the King had no choice but to assume rebellion, and Evan did after all, serve the King. There was also the fact that Tanon had killed Delia, and though it was Tanon’s right, Evan had felt somewhat appalled by the seemingly casual brutality of it. But there was something else within Evan. There was a fairly strong empathy in him for Tanon and his cause that he did not allow himself to think about too carefully, but simply followed as an instinct and knew that he did not want to kill Tanon for this man, king or no.

“My Lord King,” Evan had said, using the old formal mode of address that he had only heard used on the day he had been knighted, when Tanon presented him into the order in which the King was also a member. “I must confess that I do not feel fit to be in command of such a mission. I will, of course, resign immediately. I will, as an alternative, offer to accompany you and twelve of your mounted guard to find Tanon. He is far from the council, and there are many worthy fields along the southwest road. It could be settled.”

What Evan had seen in the King’s face at that moment he could not say for sure, there were several subtle changes of expression the only one of which Evan read clearly was rage, and for a brief moment, Evan thought he might be soon parting with his head. Another realization struck Evan in that moment, and that was the realization that the King had never had any intention of facing Tanon. The whole thing with the council had been a ruse.

And they had been counting on Evan to finish Tanon off all along.

But the King did not behave angrily toward him; instead he finally just sighed and said, “What do you think he’ll do, Evan?”

“Reports have him moving steadily southwest, Your Majesty, so he is not returning to his own castle. There is no indication that he is in communication with any other house. He seems to be heading directly for the border by a way that would allow him to skirt both Talerone and Pallas. Knowing the man as I do, my best guess would be that he plans to make his way to the city states in the south and do mercenary work.”

“Truly?” the King said, honestly surprised, as well as apparently relieved. “Such a thing had never occurred to me.”

Evan’s theory, which had at least seemed possible to him, quickly became something like conventional wisdom at court, thanks to the King. Two years later, when Tanon marched on Hazel Ford on the Culvern River at the southern border with the armies of Talerone and Pallas, Evan again wondered at what future connection his head might or might not have to his body. But the King needed Evan now more than ever. The King’s cavalry was Evan’s creature. During the course of the last eleven years, it had been rebuilt and reorganized by him from the horseshoes up into the finest cavalry in the known lands.

If only they’d been enough.

All that had happened seemed to Evan, who was half delirious with pain, to be all one agonizingly long day, as if in the dark hours after midnight, Tanon had killed Delia, been thrown in his cell, then all that had come after had occurred in the early morning to culminate in the late morning with a battle that had annihilated one kingdom, and gutted two others.

The whispers that the Queen had visited Tanon in his cell, Evan had taken merely as hysterical rumor, bred by the general shock that had settled over the palace in the days after Delia’s death. For Evan, it had not mattered one way or the other, he had bigger worries. There had been other rumors as well, ones that were far more fantastic, and that he had ignored completely. For Tanon to suddenly start talking about the Queen’s visit to his cell seemed strangely incongruous and irrelevant and added to the surreal quality of the day, with its sunlight slanting over his right shoulder through trees of orange and red, stray grain stalks bobbing in the breeze like creatures with hearts that can know defiance, death so dense and vast that beside it life became puny and even lost some of its reality.

“Poor girl,” Tanon said of the Queen, “what course of action had she? Can a wife execute a husband?” Tanon grunted a little laugh. “But she was much more than we thought, Evan. Young as she was; she was strong, and smart. It was Nitus that brought her, deep in the hood of her cloak. You won’t believe what she said. She said that she had come to bring her condolences because she knew I’d be hurting from Delia’s death.

“I was about as mortified as I’ve ever been, Evan. I could not fathom that Nitus had not shared with her the circumstances of Delia’s death, but how else to explain the true empathy and sorrow of her demeanor? Not a word could find its way into my mouth at that moment. Then she said, ‘I know how you loved her, Tanon,’ and the way that she looked at me made me see that she was well aware of the fact that I’d killed Delia, but more she did know how I loved Delia. She was sitting on the bunk, the only place for her and I stood in front of her. I was only able to tolerate gazing into those eyes few seconds. They were far too young to know as much as they did. I collapsed to my knees and sobbed in her lap like I don’t imagine I’ve ever sobbed in my life.

“Well, after all the crying was done, she told me her story. She told me how much she had loved the King, how easy he was to love, how a different sort of the same charm that holds the eighteen baronies straight and true, can steal a woman’s heart right out of her chest. He did it to her, and then when there was no heir, he changed toward her, and simply began to turn his charms on other women. That was why the Queen had become so reclusive, in those years. It seems, that he was determined to get an heir somehow and that he charmed several women, one right after another into falling in love with him and convincing them that there was a way for them to bear the next king. Both the Queen and Nitus believed they may have been willing to participate in the assassinations of their own husbands. The Queen herself would presumably share the same fate. It was Nitus, grim as a cliff face and backing her up that made it all so believable, but who can say? One thing they did know for sure was who the women were that went to the King’s bed.”

Tanon paused for a moment, and Evan felt himself balancing on a precipice, focusing hard on keeping himself mentally upright and using that focus to push against the pain that wanted to dominate him.

“I don’t want to break your heart, Evan,” Tanon said. “You’re a good man and have been a good friend for a lot of years, but you have to see the truth of love the same as you have to see the truth of a battlefield. Sarah was one of the women who went to the King. The Queen told me that she was desperately in love with him, and was determined to give him an heir.”

A little piece of neatly folded parchment tucked under a perfume bottle. What had drawn his eye to it? Why did he look at it? It was an act of pure absentminded curiosity.

It had been a love note from the King to his wife. It had cut him deeper than he’d known he could be cut. She had explained it away and convinced him that nothing was happening and he had believed her, but not quite. On the surface, he convinced himself, that he had not heard the lie, and whatever it was, he forgave her and moved on.

I’ve forgiven her. I already knew, and I’ve forgiven…I…

It didn’t exactly hit him suddenly, it more drooled down over and into his over taxed consciousness.  He’d been staring into Tanon’s eyes the whole time he’d been listening to him, but now he realized that he could only actually see one of Tanon’s eyes. A crow was blocking his view of the other. It was sitting on Tanon’s face; its black talons sprawled across his lips and cheek, squishing them about into grotesque expressions as the bird shifted about. Tanon’s one eye still stared at him with that same intense look that seemed to be trying to remind him that love can lead to an open grave as to anywhere else, and the bird began to bob ever so slightly as if in barely suppressed glee, or perhaps in agreement with Tanon’s sentiments.

The crow decided to delay its gratification no longer and very slowly and deliberately lowered its beak to just barely touch the surface of Tanon’s visible eye. It opened the beak very slightly and took the surface of the eyeball between the pointed tips and began to tug gently, pulling it so that it stretched up like a taught sheet being pulled up from a bed.

The spell over Evan was broken when the eye burst and a flood of bloody yellow tears flowed down Tanon’s cheek. A clacking croak vibrated out of the bird and Evan thought that it was amusement.

He shuddered, and almost welcomed the renewed flash of pain. He looked out across the field and saw that very few of the dark riders were still poking about for obvious treasure.

As he turned the horse back towards the trees, his mind turned to the track through the fields beyond. He thought of the different directions it ran, east to the city, and west into the foothills of the Serene Mountains. Siln lived in those mountains. He led the snow ponies through the high pass in winter to keep communication open with Northsend. Siln was at the low cabin now, scouting the hills for the army. Siln could fix his leg as well as any city healer. He’d love to have a man who knew horses like Evan to help in the mountains.

I’ve forgiven her. I love her.

The low cabin was a day’s ride, but there were rations in the saddlebags, and…

It wasn’t real. None of it is true.

…the pain wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be, if he held himself just so in the saddle. The messenger pony had a nice gait.

The deep shadows within the trees swallowed Evan like a womb. Inside him, the battle raged on.


Word Count: 5030