This is the thirty-fifth chapter of Wealthgiver, an alternate history serial romance about nationalism and cave-Thracians. For the back-of-the-book description and an index of chapters, click here. For the beginning, click here. For the previous chapter, click here.
The man Andrei had promoted to "Captain of the Western Division," did not fall to his knees and swear allegiance to the Republic, but neither did he have Andrei killed on the spot. He led them eastward, or perhaps followed.
Again, Kori rode behind Andrei, although now the way was broad enough for him and Cenk to ride abreast. They had left behind the defile and emerged into a series of alpine meadows, where sheep grazed and cowbells rang. The only herders they saw were women or young boys, and these kept their distance.
"General Cenk."
Kori's ears pricked at the sound of Andrei's whispered French.
"When we arrive at the Mountain, will Zülfü command his men to attack us, do you think, or Nikolai?"
Zülfü would be the mask for the Good name Zvelsárt, "Thunderer." The man resembled a bear in a vest and red cap, but like most Good, he was wily and reserved. It was impossible for Kori to tell whether his apparent conversion to Andrei's cause was real, whether he and his men were her honor or prison guard.
The man rode behind Kori on a horse of his own. He was possibly able to understand French and certainly within hearing range, but Kori wasn't sure if that mattered. Zülfü and his men would do whatever was in their interest.
Cenk must have made a similar calculation. "Whatever he might command them to do, I don't know if his men will even obey. We are after all Good."
Andrei turned in his saddle to look at her. "Kori?"
"I can give you no better answers than the ones you have already. The Darkness knows itself."
"I wanted to ask how you're feeling."
Kori didn't want to think the thoughts she would need to think in order to answer that question. After the first attempt on Andrei's life, she had realized she stood above a pit, and the pit was still there. "We are the Good," she said. "Faith is blind. Loyalty is thoughtless. Our leaders' decisions must benefit the followers. They lead well, or do not lead for long."
The road around them blazed as a cloud moved past the sun.
"So, how do we prove we're right?" Andrei asked. "Win a battle? Heh. For which we need loyal soldiers. Whose loyalty we must buy with a battle won." He shook his head. "That's not that sort of logic we need."
"Nor madness," said Cenk, pointedly.
Andrei put a hand over his eyes. "We need," he said, "poetry."
Another cloud covered the sun and suddenly Kori was cold again. She hunched in her saddle. Poetry was lost to her.
Andrei had bluffed his way past Zülfü, but he would not be able to do so with Nikolai. Even in the best case, this little army would have to besiege the Sacred Depths. Kori had no thoughtless loyalty, no groping faith. She had no idea how they could win.
Andrei slowed so he could bring his horse beside her, but she slowed as well. Soon, Zülfü had caught up to them, and Andrei had to direct his attention elsewhere.
"…arrive in Peshtera tomorrow morning," the captain was telling Cenk.
Andrei raised his voice. "Is there nowhere else we can recruit along the way?"
Both officers looked back at him. Andrei pointed down the road, to where the land sloped down into a swampy bottom-land, and they could all see a town. Or what had been a town.
"That would be Batak," Andrei said, "wouldn't it?"
General Cenk left answering to his captain, who grumbled, "Yes."
"But you don't recommend stopping there?" Andrei asked, voice mild.
Cenk did not so much as twitch an ear, but Kori could feel his attention sharpen.
Zülfü scratched under this red cap and gave his king a surly frown. "No."
Andrei looked at him.
"My Master," the man finished.
Andrei maintained his stare, upper body rocking with the motion of his horse. Beyond him, columns of light stretched and broke between Mountain and moving Sky.
Two years ago, the Bulgarians had attempted an uprising against the Ottoman Empire. The revolution had been mismanaged, uncoordinated, guided by anger and foolishness. A waste, in Kori's opinion. But the reprisals had been much worse than mere waste.
In some places, Ottoman soldiers had simply marched in to either shoot or hang the rebels. In others, in Batak, the professional soldiers were accompanied by bashi-bazouks, brigands paid in plunder. They did not merely crush the town, they stripped its people bare, slaughtered them, and burned the remains.
Zülfü looked away from Andrei. "We'll march straight through the town."
"You don't like saying its name," said Andrei.
The other man's breathing grew rougher.
Cenk cleared his throat and made a casual observation. "My Master, we could be in Peshtra before noon tomorrow."
"Would you say it was better to arrive a day early with fewer fighting men or later with more?" asked Andrei.
Neither of the other men seemed willing to directly contradict Andrei, which might indicate either too much loyalty or too little.
"Of course there is no one for us to recruit in Batak," Kori told him.
Andrei looked around at her. "You weren't there, were you?" he asked. "During the massacre?"
In the distance, dogs barked.
Kori tongue-clicked no. "Of course not. I was safe in the Depths. But I knew what was happening. The red torrents of Madness never flowed stronger."
"It wasn't Bacchus only," said Cenk. "Our god was with them too."
Kori made a quelling noise, but Cenk had been out of the Depths for too long. He paid more attention to Andrei's raised eyebrows and continued. "My Master. You know, it wasn't just for lust that they stripped the people before they killed them."
"I do know," said Andrei. "The clothes sell for less if they have big, bloody holes in them. Were you there, General?"
Cenk spoke with the care of someone who would commit suicide if so ordered. "My greatest efforts at haste proved insufficient."
Kori understood. The disorganization of both the Bulgarian uprising and the Ottoman reaction had caught Nikolai by surprise. He had dispatched agents like Cenk to most vulnerable towns, but the need for secrecy had slowed them terribly.
"I arrived three days too late," Cenk confessed. "What I saw was Madness. And Light and Darkness. It's the same as every place and every time."
Andrei squinted up at the Sun. "And you, Captain? Were you here in Batak?"
Zülfü slitted his eyes. "We were here. We were here before the Russians or the Turks or the Bulgars and Slavs. We have always been here."
Andrei's answer was cold. "Excuse me for being overfly formal with you." This time, he used the singular form of the pronoun. "Were you here?"
"I was, yes. Of course we removed our people as quickly as we could before we allowed the Fools to begin killing each other."
"The Good are never present for the act itself," Kori told him.
"I suppose you wouldn't be," said Andrei. "What about all the acts leading up to the act? Those letters gone mysteriously missing? Poison in some officer's food? What about all the other people who lived in Batak?"
"We already march with the Good men of fighting age from Tsepina and Tsigov Chark," said Zülfü. "My Master, believe me when I say that anyone who could fight in Batak died here."
"Then I am their Host. We will stop in Batak and I will make the same offer there I made in all the other Bessian towns. Then we'll set up camp for the night. If I understand you correctly, nobody in the town can pose a threat to us."
The officers kept their faces blank, but Kori had less skill, as well as less inclination, to control her expression. When Andrei passed his eyes over her, his mouth tightened. "Ride ahead of me," he ordered the other men, and slowed his horse so Kori could catch up.
She didn't want to. She felt trapped. The hand of a god was again at her back, but there was no ground in front of her.
"Why shouldn't we stop in Batak?" he asked.
She sighed and gave him a false smile. "Because it will curse us."
"Look, if there are men there who can fight, then we—"
"There are no men! No fighters. The town is a pit. It will pull us in. The men you've fooled into following us will remember what a war looks like."
He gave one of his dark little laughs. "I'm sure they don't need reminding."
Anger warmed Kori's chest. "The people in Peshtera are our families. Can you imagine doing to your family what the Turks did to Batak?"
"Are you saying the men will revolt?" Andrei looked to the side, thinking. "No, they're Bessians. They'll just sneak away. Slink back to their homes and hole up in their basement shrines, as safe as they were during the uprising and the massacre and the war. That's what your next poem needs to say."
Kori looked at him in horror.
He grimaced. "You know what I mean. When the goddess sings through you or inspires you or however—"
"No!"
Cenk and Zülfü's backs stiffened, but they didn't look around.
"You have a plan," Andrei told her. "This is exactly the reason you kidnapped me in the first place. Convince the Good to come out of the shadows. Well, Batak shows us what staying hidden does. It means you are too weak to do good in the world."
Kori leaned away from him and her horse swayed under her. "I never wanted that. I just wanted to be safe."
"That's not true. You were half-convinced that you should be empress of the Balkans. You didn't imagine you would rule over however many million people and also stay safe, did you?"
"No."
Andrei's eyes flicked up and down her. "I see the problem," he said. "You're afraid of prophesying again."
He kept his voice low. They would hear anyway! It didn't matter.
"You are, aren't you? Why?"
"Why?" she said. "It's obvious why. I have polluted myself." And, angry at his look of incomprehension, "I am no fit vessel for the Mistress of the House."
"No. That isn't…" Andrei growled to himself. "You're thinking like Nikolai. Purity and corruption. That's no way for a Bessian to think."
"You saw our toilet system. We live off pure underground streams." The brief flash of anger fled, leaving her colder than before. "I desecrated my gift when I sang in daylight, when I sang outside the Depths, when I sang for my own advantage, all those years ago."
He put his hand on her shoulder.
The movement directed their horses together. After a moment of rocking, the animals decided that they liked each other and pressed their sides together. Kori's right leg was squeezed between two hairy rib cages, and Andrei could put his arm around her. It wasn't exactly comfortable, but she could lean into his shoulder and close her eyes, just for a moment.
"Koschei put his death in an egg," said Andrei, "but you put your life on one."
"What on Earth are you talking about?"
"You don't know the story of Tsarevich Petr?"
Kori opened her eyes and looked up at Andrei. "I do know it, but I still don't understand what you're talking about."
"An embarrassing situation for a prophetess to find herself in. I mean you're telling yourself that you were selfish and that's why you're being cursed. That makes you sound like a heroine. But no, you gave your whole life to the Holy Mountain and its priests, and then you cursed yourself."
"That makes me sound like an idiot."
"We are all Bessians, and we're also all fools."
Kori reached up to flick the back of his head with her fingers. "Don't be so glib."
"I'm right, though."
He was. Back on the bridge, Kori had thought Andrei a coward. Now she wondered about herself. She had wanted too much to surrender. She still remembered the sick relief she had felt as she prepared to let her duties slide off her. Let her husband die, and her people, and her country. Drown herself in madness.
Cowardice was not a flaw in a gemstone, it was a weakness, the inability to escape a trap. It required effort to climb out. A reason to make that effort.
A shudder passed through her. Up from her belly and out her open mouth. Kori shifted against Andrei and opened her eyes.
"Better?" he asked.
She sniffed and clicked her tongue. "This hurts my back."
He shifted his weight and his horse stepped away from hers.
Kori stretched her back, but now her leg was cold. "I still don't know how to stop the men from deserting or how to defeat Nikolai."
"Neither do I," Andrei said, "but I do know how to be a good host."
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Next: Chapter 36: May Every Fool (6/12/2025)