Страница 148 из 168
And then, Maeander thought, you’ll have completed your life’s work. And I-I’ll have done nothing more than helped secure your fame.
The thought filled him with despondency. Fast behind this came an old memory from when he was eleven years old and Hanish had just turned thirteen. Their father was still alive then, vocally proud of them both. In honor of Hanish’s birthday, Heberen had arranged for them to dance a Maseret before a revered group of veterans in the Calathrock. It was to be one of Hanish’s last duels as a novice-the last time it would not be a fight to the death. They used real knives, but they wore their thalbas over chain-mail vests. Spots on their chests marked their heart points. This was the target they were each to aim for to end the contest.
They were both lithe and strong, their bodies growing in exuberant bursts. Maeander was nearly Hanish’s height and strength and had suspected for some time that his skills at the dance surpassed his brother’s. On this occasion, before the roomful of elders, he could not help but push Hanish to the edge. He had not pla
That night, however, he was yanked from his dreams. He awoke to instant fear. He felt a living weight pressed down against his back. Someone clenched his hair and wrenched back his head. The flat edge of a knife blade touched his skin, angled just enough that he could sense the edge of it tasting his flesh.
And then Hanish’s voice spoke from close to his ear, cold and precise. One way or another, he said, Maeander would never humiliate him again. “Don’t deny that you didn’t mean to! Everybody with eyes saw it. I felt it. You would have me know that you are my better. You wish me to fear you, don’t you? But I don’t fear you. It’s my knife at your neck, brother. It always has been and always will be. I could kill you right here, right now, if I wished to.”
Maeander did not doubt him. His brother might have spoken with the Giver’s voice, so complete was his assurance. Hanish told him that he had a choice to make. He could die right there-with no accomplishments to his name-or he could agree to help him change the world. “Swear to the ancestors that you’ll never work against me. Swear that you’ll always obey me. Swear it to them and I’ll let you live. Otherwise you die right here, right now. Nobody will question me for it. You know that.”
The answer poured out of Maeander to his lasting shame. Perhaps the one thing that had kept him true to the oath he swore that night was how much it shamed him. Faced with death, he balked. He lay there paralyzed with fear, horrified that he might miss out on the life of glory he so vividly imagined. It was, he knew, a moment of unforgivable weakness. Hanish had pressed him up against the only real thing a Meinish male could be made to fear-a death before having achieved greatness. Ironically, by the Meinish code, he should still have hissed defiance back at Hanish. He should have accepted that worst of fates with smiling indifference. He did not.
That fact would have been an unbearable disgrace, except for what Hanish did next. Having heard the pledge muttered, Hanish’s weight went limp on top of him. His breathing came in gasps. After a few mystified moments, Maeander realized his older brother was crying, bawling from someplace so deep within him that each sob wrenched upward from his gut. Maeander did not move, did not even mention that Hanish still held the blade to his throat. They had never spoken of that night since, though Maeander remembered it almost every day.
And now…now Hanish was on the verge of his greatest triumph. Maeander, by comparison, had failed. That was what it amounted to. He had failed. It did not mean defeat for his people. Nothing Aliver could do would stop Hanish from completing the ceremony to release the Tunishnevre. When the ancestors walked the earth again, they would be an invincible force. All the tricks and ploys and strategies he and his brother had devised would be nothing compared to the fury they would unleash. So by holding Aliver’s army in northern Talay he had aided his brother’s complete victory. That was fine enough. But that was not the point. The point was that Maeander Mein would have no true place of glory in the story anymore. Who would remember him? Who would sing of Maeander after Hanish accomplished the one thing his people had yearned for for more than twenty-two generations? It felt as if Hanish had never removed the blade from his throat.
Facing this, Maeander decided that there was only one honorable way left for him to redeem himself. He sent messengers to his generals, informing them that they would be launching a delayed assault in the morning. He had something in mind to open the day. He would not live through it, but that did not matter. If he joined the Tunishnevre now he would be unleashed with them in the days to come. He would be one of the Tunishnevre, one of the ancestors his brother must revere. Anyway, he had been too long without looking the enemy in the face. Even Hanish had never done that. And if he accomplished what he hoped to, Hanish would never be able to take it from him.
None of what he thought or pla
So accompanied and armed, Maeander approached the Acacian camp across the scarred desolation that was the previous days’ battlefield. He carried a ba