Page 105 of The Summer Pass

“No, I’m sorry to way Darma killed him when he took over. Hattu was too loyal to me for his own good. The princess’s name is A-R-T-A-M-I-Y-A.” He spelled it out for her.

“I see her father didn’t come back with you. Is he really all right?”

“He’s fine. We decided he should stay in Tagra Degra to give colour to the story that he’s my hostage, in case we need it later.”

“That makes sense.”

“Are you and the princess … ” He paused. “Are you getting along?”

Mikhi glanced toward the tent, and Vanu could tell there was a whole story of monkey-related injustices she wanted to tell, but she was trying to behave like an adult.

“We are fine,” she signed very primly. “We are not friends, but we are fine.”

Vanu was proud of her, and also grateful not to have to hear the story, but sorry that he didn’t have leisure for it, all the same. Not that he wanted to know, but it was pretty clear that Mikhi was miserable, and he wished he could help.

“What about Lill?” Mikhi asked. “Is he all right?”

“He took an arrow in the arm, but he is healing.”

She nodded. “Good. Atari wrote in her letter what he did, how he went into Tagra Degra to look for them and got captured. I’m sorry I didn’t believe in him the way you did. You were right to.” Her adult expression dissolved into something very young for a moment.

“It’s more complicated than that,” said Vanu. He felt she deserved as honest an explanation as he could give. “It’s something you may understand better when you’re older. I was right about him, but … I was also in love with him. Am in love with him. I know—it’s embarrassing.” He smiled. “I guess it was easier for me to believe in him. I spent a lot of time thinking about him, about why he did things.”

“I see,” she said doubtfully.

“But I don’t think you were wrong to be angry with him.”

“That seems … confusing.”

“Yes. And I’m not saying you should still be angry with him now.”

“No. Good. I’m not. So you’re going to attack the lowland king’s men tomorrow morning?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Does he love you back?”

“Lill? Yes.”

“Good.”

Chapter 35

How to Do That

The Sukiyan standard was a model of a man’s hand, attached to the shaft of a spear, with a bedraggled garland of something hanging off it. Firuduna could not see the point of it, but he accepted that it was important to the Sukiyans and thus it made sense to capture it.

He shoved with his own, lightweight shield, whacked spear points aside with his sword, and pushed past the front line of soldiers to reach the standard-bearer and his guards. Enu and a couple of men from Tawakhura were following him. Firuduna locked eyes with the standard-bearer. He was young—Barda’s age, and not much bigger than Barda. He was armed with a sword, but he hadn’t drawn it. One of his guards held his shield in a way that should have covered both of them, but he was distracted now by Enu barrelling down on him. Firuduna ran at the standard-bearer with a yell, sheathing his own sword and sliding the strap of his shield up his arm to have both hands free. He crashed into the young man, clanging helmet against helmet with a force that made his ears ring, and yanked the standard out of the bearer’s hands. Then he kept running, holding the standard above his head, feeling crazily invincible, crashing past spears and shields, deeper into the Sukiyan ranks.

Ahead of him he could see the siege tower, an ugly thing covered in rawhide, smoke billowing off the bottom where the fire that had taken hold of the wooden skeleton was being doused. The whole thing was tipping further and further sideways, toward the wall of Tagra Degra. And as it tipped, figures were swarming up it.

Surely that was madness? Even if it actually came to rest against the fortress wall, they wouldn’t be high up enough to get over—would they? Besides, the whole thing might collapse further and take them down with it.

He had no time to be thinking about that. He began using the Sukiyan standard as a fighting staff now. The brass hand on the end of it clanged against a helmet as he whirled it. He thumped the butt end hard against a shield. He caught another glimpse of the siege tower, and in a moment of battlefield clarity, he saw a figure jump lightly from the wall of Tagra Degra to land on the top of the collapsing tower, and he knew from the shape and the way the figure moved who it was. It was Barda.

Firuduna brought the standard down so hard on a helmeted head that the soldier under it crumpled to the ground, and the wood of the standard splintered. The brass hand hung off the end like a casualty. The garland was long gone. He whirled it again, with a full-throated yell. Over the head of a Sukiyan who ducked to avoid his blow, he saw a Zashian soldier on the siege tower slam into Barda, and Barda fall, arms flailing, all the way down into the ditch below the fortress walls.

He felt a thump from somewhere, and only when he looked down and saw blood did he realize he’d been stabbed.