Siege of Stone

CHAPTER 11

In his command headquarters late at night, General Utros lay awake with two naked women pressed against him. Ava and Ruva were motionless, but he knew they weren’t asleep. He could feel their skin against his, smooth but cold, harder than the soft feminine curves he was used to touching. His own skin was just as tough, the nerve endings muffled like a voice shouting from a great distance.

Ruva stirred and, through the intangible connection with her twin sister, Ava also shifted. Lying still, with the sorceresses on either side of him, Utros stared up at the crosshatched roof and thought of the one woman he truly wanted, the passions that still stirred in his stony heart. He didn’t love these faithful twins, but they gave him what he needed.

Majel had given him so much more.

In his mind, she was far away in the capital city of Orogang with Emperor Kurgan, the man to whom Utros had sworn his loyalty. And though he still felt bound by that oath, Utros was torn by his passions and his dogged insistence on serving both, even if it ripped him apart and destroyed everything.

If the two yaxen herders could be believed, Majel was now separated from him by much more than distance. He had seen the lovely empress only a few months ago, according to his memories. Was it possible that he and his army had been petrified for centuries? That the beautiful and passionate woman was long dead? He couldn’t bear such news, if it was true. He had to know, but here on this broad plain, far from Orogang and the rest of Iron Fang’s empire, how could he learn the truth?

If Majel was dead and Emperor Kurgan was no more than the dust of history’s bones, what was he fighting for?

Utros locked away those worries in a separate section of his mind, like damming a stream. The trapped thoughts and concerns would flood him unless he found real answers.

Outside the headquarters, he heard the camp stirring. The wooden structure had been raised quickly, using rough-hewn logs and branches. His soldiers had done their tasks well, given their minimal resources. They always served him without question, and Utros never disappointed them either. He was their commander.

On his years-long military march, he’d become accustomed to traveling with a fine tent, a place with furs and hangings, council tables spread with maps and battle plans. He wanted to keep Ava and Ruva content, and now he held the two women in his bed, one beefy arm around each as if to crush them against his body and squeeze their energy into him. They lay together beneath a freshly cured yaxen pelt. It wasn’t the same as fine woven blankets or slick sheets from the palace in Orogang, but it was a first step.

The thin mattress was stuffed with dried grasses. Under other circumstances it would have felt prickly and uncomfortable, but his hardened skin didn’t notice such minor things. The smoke from the braziers curled upward, escaping through the gaps in the crisscrossed roof. The dull red glow of burning charcoal and incense bathed the structure in comforting light. The smoke was thick, but Utros could barely smell it. The two sorceresses had added special herbs to the braziers, which sometimes gave him visions and revelations. Now, his dusty lungs seemed dulled to the effects.

But he didn’t need visions. Utros had his mind, and he could make plans.

Scouting parties had returned to the great camp with supplies, having ransacked the homes of a few settlers in the hills, woodcutters, a lone prospector, two men with mules bringing a load of goods to Stravera, all of whom had confirmed the information provided by the yaxen herders Boyle and Irma.

Before long, a raiding party would find the large town itself and bring back more vital tools and materials.

His invincible army would make the world tremble. Utros had swept across the land and seized an entire continent in the name of Iron Fang because he had sworn to do so, and the general always kept his promises.

Now he felt like a beggar. His vast army, though still powerful, was little more than a collection of refugees. The soldiers had no tents and nothing to eat, even if they no longer had an appetite. The glorious city of Ildakar stood before them, huge and impregnable, mocking the army with its wealth and its way of life.

Utros had to know the truth of what had happened to his army. He needed to know what he was required to do next, and he had to understand the answers before his countless soldiers began to realize that their commander might be facing doubts.

“I know you’re awake,” he said aloud. “Both of you.”

Ava pulled away from him, propping herself up on an elbow. Ruva held herself against his broad chest, as if trying to reassure him with the pliability of her breasts, nipples that were hard from the lingering effects of the stone spell, not from arousal. She, too, pulled away.

Lying on his back, he continued to speak. “We have to find out what has happened to Ildakar, what’s happened to the empire. Whom do we serve now?”

“We serve Iron Fang,” said Ruva, “as always.”

“But what if Iron Fang is nothing more than a skeleton in a crypt, or a memory in a history book?”

The women remained quiet for a moment before Ava said, “Then you serve yourself, as we have always served you.”

“I don’t serve myself,” Utros snapped. “I am not a petty tyrant. I don’t do this for my own aggrandizement.”

“You may not, beloved Utros,” said Ruva, “but we serve you. We only supported Kurgan because he is the leader you chose to serve. All your soldiers fight for you, not for Iron Fang. You earned their loyalty. You led them to glory. Iron Fang is merely a tick on the ear of a dog, drinking blood and growing bloated.”

Utros sat up, tossing the heavy yaxen hide aside. “Kurgan is my emperor. If you spoke such words in Orogang, your tongues would be ripped out and burned on skewers before you.”

“We are not in Orogang,” said Ava. “You know that this empire was built because of you, not Kurgan.”

Ruva said, “The emperor doesn’t deserve you, beloved Utros, but my sister and I respect you, so we serve your wishes.”

“Cast some spell or show me visions so I can understand my place in the world. I’ll fight ruthlessly to defend what I must, but not if I don’t know!”

“You already know.” Ava slid out of the bed and walked over to the brazier, tossing more dried leaves into the coals so that the smoke thickened. She waved her hands, making the fumes drift toward Utros and her sister. The general caught the sweet tang of the herbs. “The yaxen herders already told you the answers. Don’t you believe them?”

Utros sighed. “I don’t want to believe them. You say that I’m the heart of this army, but I draw my strength only because I serve my emperor.”

And I have betrayed him with his wife … the woman I love.

“I may be strong, and I may have led these soldiers to many victories,” he said, “but without my emperor, I am like a door without a hinge. He is my commander.”

Ava returned to the bed and sat next to him. She began to caress his chest, while Ruva stroked his back. They touched his cheeks, the smooth skin and the dragon-burn scar.

All he could think of was beautiful Majel with her long black hair, streaked with reddish highlights when the sunshine struck her. Her almond-shaped brown eyes, her tanned skin that was more beautiful than gold, her kisses, her sighs, her moans as he held her, taking her with ferocity in his tent like an animal in heat. And then after that passion was sated, a longer, slower lovemaking as they sang a song with their bodies, a secret song that Emperor Kurgan could never hear.…

“Our magic is given to you,” said Ava, lying down and draping her leg over his, while Ruva touched his thigh, then wrapped herself around him as well. They were trying to tangle themselves in a knot of bodies and cold flesh. They had painted their smooth, hairless skin with fresh, bright colors again, but he could not see the details in the dimness of the smoky fires.

“We will give you everything, beloved Utros, if we can.”

“As you always have,” the general said in a soft voice, and then he responded to their touch.

The sisters had given him their devotion, their love, their energy, their faith, since they were teenage girls. They’d been considered oddities, revered in a small mountain town, which was one of the first conquests General Utros had made in expanding Iron Fang’s empire. Ava and Ruva had been born even closer than normal twins. Their bodies were fused, their legs melded like two soft candles pressed together.

The babies might have died or been cast out by superstitious villagers, but their father took a terrible chance while they were still infants. As their mother wept in despair, the father had taken his sharpest skinning knife and placed the two connected infant girls on a table. He had cut them apart, hacking through the skin and fused bone that was like an intertwined tree. He had broken them apart, splitting their fused legs; then he wrapped the wounds that bled and bled. Their wounds became severely infected. The shrieking babies had faltered, becoming sicker and sicker.

Then they had died. The spirits of the two innocent infants went to the underworld and actually faced the Keeper. Their hearts stopped, but for only a few minutes. Somehow the village healer managed to revive them. The father stood there, his face sagging, horrified at what he had done. But the girls lived. They had been snatched away from the Keeper.

But He had touched them.

Though each had a horrific matching scar on her leg, the girls were strong, and they healed. They tested each other. They grew up and learned how to walk and run so that they barely showed even a limp. But they did not hide their scars; they flaunted them, wearing short shifts, growing up aloof and beautiful.

When they were ten, the Keeper claimed the debt they had taken from him by killing both their mother and father in a terrible coughing plague, leaving the odd twins to raise themselves. The village feared Ava and Ruva, but their real magic hadn’t manifested until their blood courses came, at the age of thirteen. The young sorceresses lived in the cottage their father had built, and they terrified the villagers. They did no work, but simply claimed whatever food they wished, the clothing they needed, by walking into other houses and rifling through wardrobes and shelves, walking off with what was their due. The townspeople were too frightened to argue with them.

When Utros’s armies marched into their village, the soldiers pillaging and ransacking, the town leader begged the twin sorceresses to help. Ava and Ruva merely scoffed at him, then walked through the startled ranks of soldiers and presented themselves before General Utros.

“You need us with you,” Ruva had said.

“Why?” Utros had demanded, not understanding who the twins were, although he had seen the odd sparkle and offset gaze in their faces.

“You’ll know, sooner or later.”

Utros had indeed taken the twins as his own, though not as lovers. They were too young, and even though they grew to be quite beautiful, he never changed his mind. When he asked Ava and Ruva what he should do with their village, if he should subdue it in the name of Emperor Kurgan, they advised him to make a gesture that could not be misread by other villages in line to be conquered. So he killed all the townspeople and burned the buildings, then spread the word. He’d been a brash young commander then, and the sacrifice of that one town caused fifteen others within a day’s ride to surrender immediately to the banner of Iron Fang.

Utros never took credit for his victory, always insisted that Kurgan deserved the power and the glory, which meant that the emperor also received the blame and the fear. Utros moved on, conquering land after land.…

“We will help you fight,” said Ruva now, whispering close to his face in the dim command structure. “My sister and I know many spells, but for simple information, there is a more straightforward way.”

“I know,” he said. It had been several days since his army had awakened, and their siege was firmly in place. He remembered when this military force had first arrived at Ildakar. They had just recovered from the disastrous attack of the wild silver dragon they intended to unleash against the city.

Even without the dragon, Utros had brought his ranks to fill the plain and let Ildakar tremble before the unspoken threat for two days before he had marched up to the city gates to demand their surrender. He’d known they wouldn’t concede immediately, but he could starve and strangle them over time.

He hadn’t expected the wizards of Ildakar to turn his army to stone for centuries.

Those events seemed like only a week ago in his own mind.

“I’ve made my decision,” he said. “We’ll demand to speak with their representatives. Our next step depends on how Ildakar responds.” He smiled, then reached up to stroke his stiff beard and the patchy scar on his left cheek. “After we talk with them, I will plan how to tear down the city.”