Belisarius Laughed

by Alicia McKenzie

'Lead from the front', the old adage went. Nathan Dayspring had always believed in it whole-heartedly. In ten years of leading the Clan Chosen against the Canaanites, he'd taken that as his philosophy, put it into practice on a daily basis. When your army was made up of men and women from a few dozen different--and often hostile--clans and factions, keeping their respect and loyalty was a constant struggle. Already this year, he'd been challenged four times. Unsuccessfully, of course, but he really didn't like fighting duels. Aliya always lost her temper if he ended up with even so much as a scratch.

Leading from the front had its disadvantages, of course. It made him even more of a target than he was already. But it turned out well enough, mostly. He would find himself in the right place at the right time to make a difference in the course of the battle.

Other days though, he began to wonder if he wasn't getting too old for this. Which was an amusing thought, considering that he was still six months short of his thirtieth year. But he couldn't pretend to ignore how he felt on days like this. Old and tired--and helpless.

Limping through the shattered gates of Tsimshara, he glanced around at the battle damage, his jaw tightening in anger. The wounded were being tended to, outside in the camp and in the citadel at the heart of the city, but the nearly-deserted streets only made the wounds done to the city itself all the more obvious. Tsimshara had a history stretching back almost five hundred years. It had been a beautiful city.

Never fails, he thought grimly. Nothing ever fell out exactly as he planned. One swift, decisive attack to take a city whose population and council were already sympathetic to the 'cause' had turned into a bloodbath. The Canaanite garrison had fought to the last man, unwilling to give up the city, prize that it was, situated here on the major trade routes with the Slavani Consortium. Such a waste--

"Nathan, stop glaring," Tetherblood said quietly from beside him. Beside him, where he'd been throughout the battle--as always. It was the empty place on his other side that bothered him, though. Even though it had been his idea to begin with. "The bohar will be waiting for us--"

"Pipe! The bohar can go flonq himself," Nathan growled. As far as he was concerned, the bohar, the leader of the Tsimsharan council, bore more than a share of the blame for the sheer brutality of the battle that had just concluded. "They were supposed to open the gates!"

"You don't know the whole story yet," his lieutenant, best friend, and long-time surrogate brother said, far too reasonably to suit Nathan's temper at the moment. "Try to keep that temper of yours under control until you do, that's all I'm saying. Green?"

"Green," Nathan said grudgingly, and they continued towards the center of the city, past patrols of their own soldiers gathering up the dead. Nathan saw one Clan soldier emerge from a blown-out home, the small, still form of a child in her arms and tears coursing down her cheeks. His own eyes stung, and he rubbed at them angrily, nearly tripping over some debris as he did. Pain shot up his injured leg and he cursed.

Tetherblood took his arm. "Would it have killed you to let one of the healers take a look at that?" he asked, gesturing at Nathan's leg. "Looks nasty."

Nathan grunted. "They had better things to do."

"Well, all I'm saying is that it doesn't look good for a city's new protector to arrive for the water rite and fall on his face. Very undignified."

Nathan stopped and glared at his friend, who gave him a guileless look. "Since when did you care about being dignified?" he asked acidly. "I seem to remember you walking out in front of our lines at Bigraia and showing every Canaanite on the walls your--"

Tetherblood grinned. "It made you laugh, didn't it? And it made them angry enough to make the mistake of opening the gates and charging. How long do you think the siege would have gone on if they hadn't?"

With a snort, Nathan pulled away from Tetherblood and started forward again. "Exhibitionism as a valid diversionary tactic. Maybe I should be recruiting skin-dancers, then."

"Do my ears deceive me?" Tetherblood asked with a grin, following him. "Was that a joke?"

"T," Nathan said in as pleasant a tone as he could muster, "I'm getting the very strong urge to practice the technique Aliya taught me for telepathically shutting down someone's speech center."

Tetherblood merely chuckled. They continued on through the devastated streets until they reached Tsimshara's central square, in front of the citadel--which looked largely intact, Nathan noted. In the center of the square was the well, a deliberately archaic structure connected, in this case, to a very sophisticated system of cisterns and water purification equipment, all built below ground. It had been mined by the Canaanites--Nathan had lost six people, disarming the explosives and dealing with the death squad of Canaanite Elite left behind to make sure that the mines went off as scheduled. If they had, it would have meant the end of Tsimshara. A city couldn't survive in this region without sufficient water resources.

There was a substantial crowd in the square, but Nathan only had eyes for the six old men and women grouped around the well--the 'elders' of the city, the members of the inner circle of the Tsimsharan council. They would have had no power at all, under Canaanite occupation--which was probably why they had contacted him in secret with their desire to make their city part of the Protectorate. And so he'd organized this expedition, deep into the contested territories, risking his people to 'liberate' the city. Risking more than that, personally, he thought with a flicker of grim amusement.

"She's going to kill me, you know," he murmured to Tetherblood.

Tetherblood chuckled again. "As if you didn't know that from the moment you decided to leave her behind."

Nathan shook his head. "You think we could maybe find another city to liberate? On the far east coast of the Mao-Sino Pact, maybe?"

"I think you should go back and take it like a man, D," Tetherblood said with a perfectly straight face.

"I was afraid you were going to say that," Nathan muttered, his thoughts returning to the choices that had led him here, to this moment. The decision to mount an expedition hadn't been entirely unselfish on his part--Tsimshara was too strategically important for him to have simply disregarded the council's plea--but he had set out on this course of action fully intending to do all he could to drive the Canaanites out from these walls. He had expected the council to uphold their end of the bargain, and open the gates to his troops.

As they reached the well, one old man stepped forward, ceremonial goblet held in shaking hands. "Be welcome to Tsimshara, Dayspring," the bohar said in a surprisingly strong voice, using a more formal dialect of the Slavani dialect common to the area.

Nathan glared at him, but accepted the goblet and took a perfunctory sip of the cold, fresh water it held. However badly the day had gone, he really didn't have any choice about completing it in the proper way. "By right of blood shed, I claim this city for the Clan Chosen," he said harshly, and looked around at the crowd. "Be welcome to the Protectorate, Tsimshara."

A great, shuddering sigh went through the crowd, a sound of such relief that Nathan felt a sort of unwilling warmth. No matter what was lost to bring them about, these moments were precious. To see the realization of freedom on the faces of those who had lived under Canaanite rule for so long--

Then he looked back at the bohar, and his anger, which had eased so briefly, hardened into cold resolve. He passed the goblet back, waited while the bohar took a sip and hurriedly rattled off the formula of acceptance.

The old man passed the goblet to one of the women standing behind him. Only then did Nathan speak.

"Perhaps you might explain to me why we had to use plasma artillery to blow open the front gates of your city," he said coldly. The bohar flinched, but Nathan caught his eyes and held them, using one of the Askani tricks Aliya had taught him. "I'm waiting for an answer."

***

Nearly eighteen hours later, Nathan sat down on the bed in the room he'd been given in the citadel, so numb with exhaustion that he barely noticed that it was definitely on the opulent side. They were trying to impress him, he supposed. It didn't matter.

His leg felt like a solid bar of pain; he could barely use it. He'd promised Tetherblood that he'd see one of the healers, but there just hadn't been time. There had been prisoners to deal with, work details to organize--Tsimshara was part of the Protectorate now, and the city was owed more than simply military protection. The Clan had to help repair the damage it had been partially responsible for causing. The damage that COULD be repaired, at least--nothing could be done about the people lost. He'd stood on the walls for an hour or so, watching the pyres burn outside. So many pyres, tonight, like fallen stars spread out across the land.

He reached out and levered his injured leg up onto the bed, and then laid back with a weary sigh. Sometimes he thought he hated the aftermath of battle worse than battle itself. Acknowledging our shadow, Aliya always called it. He had a more simple definition; for him, it was a matter of picking up the pieces.

Thoughts of Aliya made him wince again. It hadn't been a joke, his comment to Tetherblood, earlier. She WAS going to kill him for leaving her behind in Siraiva, the temporary 'capital' of the Protectorate, the 'rebellious confederation of territories' (to hear the Canaanites tell it) that the Clan Chosen had liberated in ten years of fighting.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time. He'd needed to leave SOMEONE behind capable of rallying the troops from the outlying areas if the Canaanites seized the opening he'd given them and attacked. And the people of the Protectorate loved Aliya--almost worshipped her, he thought sometimes. She was their Clanmother, their Lady of Battles. She performed their children's Naming rites, established schools and hospices, and generally looked after the welfare of the people who had taken oath to the Clan. Whole legions of young women trailed around after her, trying to model themselves on her. Mother, priestess, warrior--she really had been the best choice.

Of course, he really should have presented the whole thing to her and argued for his plan--rather than organizing the expeditionary force on the border at Bigraia and sneaking off while she was inspecting garrisons in the south. He just hadn't wanted to get involved in an argument. It was bad for morale if their people heard their Clanmother and warlord screaming at each other.

And there were other reasons, too--if something had gone wrong, here, Nathan hadn't wanted Tyler to lose both his parents. The days where he and Aliya could just charge blithely into battle at each other's side were over. They had responsibilities now, and not just to the Protectorate.

Good excuse, Dayspring, his conscience said sardonically. She IS going to kill you, and you know what? You're going to deserve it. He groaned and closed his eyes, willing himself to sleep and forget about it for a while. There were about a hundred things waiting for him to do at dawn, which was only a few hours away--

An indeterminate amount of time later, he was roused from a groggy half-sleep by the sound of shouting in the corridor. Someone flung his door open, and Nathan sat up quickly, reaching for the plasma blaster he'd set on the small table beside the bed. Seeing that it was Tetherblood, he relaxed--a little.

"Tell me," he said curtly, getting up and starting to pull on his armor again. His leg had stiffened up, and it was difficult to cover how much trouble he was having even putting weight on it. Tetherblood either didn't notice or chose not to comment.

"We appear to have eight divisions of Elite troops about thirty klicks outside the city," he reported, his tone incongruously casual.

"Oath! How the flonq did they get here?" Nathan spat, and started from the room at as close as he could manage to a run. Tetherblood kept up with him effortlessly as they headed down towards the unofficial command center they'd set up elsewhere in the citadel. "Airships?" If that was the case, they were in trouble. The only shield generators in the city were the ones they'd brought with them, barely large enough to seal the gap in the walls they'd caused when they'd blasted through the gates. They had no way to defend against an aerial bombardment.

"No, thank the Bright Lady. Looks like they came up the river."

Nathan said nothing more until they reached the command center, saving his breath for the argument that he suspected was about to take place. There really was only one strategy that had any chance of working here. Unfortunately, it was not going to win much favor with the council, he suspected.

"You're going to WHAT?" the bohar shrieked.

Nathan glowered at him. "I said," he enunciated clearly, ignoring the anxious babble from the rest of the council and the leaders of the Tsimsharan militia, "I'm going to do the only thing I can. Do you want a battle inside the walls? You've already suffered enough losses, and we certainly don't have the resources to withstand a siege." He was arming himself as he spoke, telepathically ordering his officers to gather their battle-groups and get into position. "Not to mention that I have responsibilities in the south--I won't be trapped here," he said warningly.

"But--you're leaving us defenseless!" one of the women council members wailed. "You just swore to protect us!"

"And what, precisely, do you think we're doing?" Tetherblood asked patiently, before Nathan could make the retort the comment deserved. "Our strengths are mobility and hand-to-hand combat. We give those up, we might as well invite the Canaanites in for the evening meal and hand the city back to them."

"Enough of this!" Nathan snapped, just as the bohar seemed ready to make another objection. "You want to be part of the Protectorate, that includes being under MY authority when it comes to military matters! This is not a debate!" He loomed over the startled old man, deliberately using his height and sheer size to intimidate. He did it rarely--Aliya always scolded him for it--but there was no time for the diplomatic approach. "Have your militia gather just inside the walls. They're no match for the Elite, but the more warm bodies you can throw in front of them if the worst happens, the better." He glanced around the room. "Silo!"

The young, dark-haired officer, one of the better products of Tetherblood's recruiting trip into the western provinces three years ago stood up from where he was monitoring the comlinks and nodded. "Yes, Dayspring?"

"Stay here," Nathan growled. "Make sure they know which end of a plasma rifle is up." He glared briefly at the bohar, disgusted, and then stalked--or tried to stalk, rather--from the room.

"You could have been more encouraging," Tetherblood said from behind him. "Rather than openly planning for the worst case scenario--"

#Be realistic,# Nathan thought at him angrily without turning around. #Eight divisions is a little more than I expected. If there's not an informer of some sort on that council, I'll--enroll in the Canaanite army.#

"But you do have a plan, right?"

"Always."

"Nathan--"

"More or less--"

***

Rather less than more, Nathan thought later, stumbling over a Canaanite who fell right in his path, missing an arm and half his chest. The Clan soldier who'd killed him, a tall blond woman Nathan vaguely remembered from Bigraia, reached out and pulled him to his feet.

"Dayspring! Are you all right?" she shouted. Another Canaanite lept at them, shouting, and she nearly bisected him with a one-handed slash from her shalmitar, the unpowered version of a psimitar that so many Clansmen had taken to carrying. It was hard to use a plasma rifle in close quarters like this, and the battle had turned into a bloody, hand-to-hand combat almost immediately. Nathan started to nod, to reassure her, and then regretted it as it sent a new wave of pain through his head. Something had smacked him on the back of the helmet a few minutes ago, knocking him to the ground. He wasn't sure who, or what--

His psimitar was still in his hands, but he couldn't seem to focus enough to use it. He'd gotten off a few blasts with it, earlier in the battle, but although he'd taken out their river transports and some of their artillery, he'd mostly just managed to draw attention to himself.

Suddenly there were Canaanites rushing them from every direction. Nathan pulled away from her and managed to get his psimitar up in time to deflect a blow that nevertheless drove him to his knees. The next one would have finished him off, but the Canaanite suddenly crumpled forward with a groan, blood spurting forward from an exit wound of some sort.

Nathan looked up to see Tetherblood standing a short distance away, lowering his gun and then rushing forward. Nathan forced himself to get to his feet and turned to help the soldier who'd assisted him earlier.

Tetherblood reached him, cursing under his breath as he got a good look at him. "Get out of here before you get yourself killed, you idiot!" he shouted.

"No time," Nathan said raggedly as they fought. Tetherblood was probably right--he really shouldn't be here. He'd have ordered anyone else off the battlefield if he'd found them in this sort of condition.

But he'd be dead and burned a full week before he'd ever back down when the safety of a Protectorate city was at stake. He wasn't just a soldier, here--he was the one who'd taken Tsimshara's water oath, and he had to be here fighting for them--

"Oath, Nate! You're not doing--any good--here!" Tetherblood grated, facing off against a Canaanite even bigger than he was. The green-armored giant, for all his size, didn't really have a chance. Tetherblood dropped him almost immediately, and turned for another opponent.

Arguing would have been a waste of breath, Nathan told himself. He fought on grimly, the world narrowing to the psimitar in his hands and the green-armored Canaanites surrounding him. He couldn't use the psimitar as it was meant to be used, but it still made a decent conventional weapon--and an even better way to keep himself from falling on his face, as Tetherblood had so delicately put it earlier.

Eventually, though, his field of view widened again. He found himself standing alone in a brief lull, a strange pocket of silence, where the battle seemed to flow around him but not touch him. It was an unsettling sight, as if everyone else but him was moving in slow motion. Tetherblood and the blond soldier were nowhere to be seen. Nathan began to wonder if the blow to the head wasn't having some peculiar effect on him.

But everything had slowed down just enough for him to notice an alarming trend taking place. Slowly but surely, his troops were being pushed back towards the walls, he realized blearily. The sheer weight of the Canaanites' numbers was winning out. No, he thought desperately. Has to be something--some way--think, Dayspring!

Even as he tried to think it through, to come up with some tactic that might work, might save them, he became aware of a abrupt change in the telepathic atmosphere. Surprise---relief, from his Clansmen, and alarm from the Canaanites? He froze, startled. What the--

Then sound returned, and he heard a triumphant shout from behind him. He tried to turn, to raise his psimitar, but his bad leg buckled underneath him and he fell to the ground, striking his head against something. I'm making a bad habit of this-- he thought as his vision blurred, darkness creeping at the edges.

#Nathan!# a familiar voice cried in his mind. He blinked up, seeing a Canaanite standing over him with some sort of curved weapon in his hands that gleamed in the light of the sunrise. Above, in the sky, he caught a flash of movement, the sunlight reflecting off a small, delicate-looking craft of a familiar type. It was diving towards him, almost as if on an attack run.

A skimmer? he thought. It certainly looked like a Clan skimmer, light and fast and bristling with weapons. But they hadn't brought any with them, had they?

It was the last thought he had before the world went dark.

***

"I really should kill you, but you're such a pitiful sight at the moment. It wouldn't be enough of a challenge." The voice was cool, but the undertone of concern was unmistakable.

Nathan managed to open his eyes. "Hah," he rasped, realizing he was lying in a bed. His throat was painfully dry, but the pain in his leg and his head had diminished to a distant ache. His head was swimming, as a matter of fact. He didn't think he could lift it off the pillow if he tried. Whatever drug he'd been given for the pain felt very strong. "I'd like to see you try."

Aliya raised an eyebrow, her green eyes almost glowing in the dimness of the room. She was still in armor, and didn't even look like she'd stopped to clean off the accumulated dirt and blood and grime of battle. "Oh, really?"

"No, not really," he admitted with a cough. He became aware that there was someone else in the room, and smiled faintly as he recognized Lysar, one of the healers attached to the Siraivan command. She nodded to him pleasantly, gathering up her equipment, and then left. Without moving his head, he glanced around, realizing that they were back in the citadel, in the very room where he'd caught that brief interlude of sleep before the Canaanite reinforcements had shown up. That was vaguely reassuring, but the very fact of his wife's presence here was still a cause for concern.

If she stripped the Siraivan garrison, I'M going to kill HER. He should be demanding explanations, but from Aliya's expression, he was liable to regret it if he did. "Compliments on your timing," he said, his voice still hoarse. He wished she'd come closer, rather than sitting all the way over there looking as if she was about ready to pass judgement on him. It was unnerving.

"Mmm," she said. "Call it a sixth sense developed through constant practice. I'm used to rescuing my idiot husband when he gets himself into trouble that he can't handle on his own."

Nathan winced, and tried to sit up. His head spun, and Aliya was suddenly there, pushing him back down. "I'm fine," he muttered, but didn't resist her.

"Pipe, Nathan," she said angrily, sitting down on the edge of the bed. She tossed her red-brown hair back over her shoulder, glaring at him. "What in the name of the Bright Lady possessed you? I thought you grew out of--stunts like this ten years ago!"

He bit back the retort he really wanted to make. She was shielding the psi-link, he sensed, and wondered why. "Stunt," he said flatly. "The Protectorate has a new city, doesn't it? A city that happens to be worth its weight in platinum from a strategic perspective?"

"Yes, Tsimshara is safely part of the Protectorate," she said, her voice quiet but intense. "But just barely. It was a close thing, Nathan. Did you not pay attention to the fact that they were driving you up against the walls? If we'd been a few minutes later in arriving--" She shook her head almost angrily. "The Clan Chosen nearly lost their warlord today. Do you know how close you came to getting yourself killed?" She punched him in the shoulder, not lightly, and he winced. "I don't think the trade would have been worth it, Nathan."

He closed his eyes, not wanting to listen to the 'you are NOT expendable' speech, but flinched as she laid a cool hand against his forehead. "So, how did you know?" he asked roughly, not opening his eyes.

"Give me some credit, Nathan," she said, her rich voice suddenly full of amusement. "We ARE psi-linked, beloved. There's a limit to how much sneaking around you can do. Besides," she chuckled, "I threatened poor Avali with a dire fate if she didn't give me a full briefing."

Nathan groaned. He'd left Avali, one of the original members of the Clan Chosen and a long-time friend, in charge of the vastly reduced garrison at Bigraia. "Poor Val," he muttered.

"She'll live," Aliya said calmly, and Nathan couldn't help a laugh. He opened his eyes, staring up at her, half in wonder, half in disbelief.

"You're terrible, you know that?"

"And you," she said, bending over him, her green eyes boring into him like twin lasers, "will regret it for the rest of your short and likely very unpleasant life if you EVER do anything like this again, Nathan Dayspring." Her expression softened briefly. "Next time, wait for me. We work better together, remember?"

He stared up into her eyes, feeling close to losing himself in them, as usual. The psi-link was open now, carrying all her love and real anger and the echoes of a terrible fear. Nathan decided it was probably a good thing he'd been unconscious before she'd found him. Good for him, that was, considering the mood she must have been in.

Being philosophically forbidden to apologize really made moments like this difficult, he reflected.

Aliya laughed, and kissed him on the forehead. #It's the thought that counts,# her voice said softly in his mind. #Now go to sleep. The bohar and most of the council were having hysterics, last thing I heard--I really should go and see to them.# Her voice hardened slightly on those last words.

Nathan sent back a wordless acquiescence and closed his eyes, smiling to himself. Despite how angry he'd been at them earlier, he was suddenly feeling very sorry for the Tsimsharan council.

END

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