Chapter 20: The Sixth Spear
They didn't attempt anything as dramatic as to push Kargöz's head down onto a stump. While one of the Ortheri warriors held him, another lifted an axe to swing from the side, to disembowel him. It wouldn't be so quick, but it would be just as effective. The Ortheri Cowr was standing beside Yîgeke so they could both watch while it happened. He was on the edge of cackling with pleasure to see it, and see her reaction.
A sudden shout from the valley below carried up to them. "A day will come!" Yîgeke recognized Qemik's fiery voice, and the answering roar was so loud, she was almost convinced she could feel it, like a gust of wind at her back. The Ortheri Cowr whirled around, seemingly in a panic, but as he made out what had transpired, his anxiety eased considerably. "One of those fools got himself a horse," he chuckled. "It will boot him little." But Yîgeke could sense an undercurrent of trepidation in his voice. Even now, while he was gloating about their inevitable triumph, the Ortheri Cowr was nervous.
Her eyes swept the clearing. Might the hooded man be present after all, and the Ortheri Cowr just bluffing, hoping she wouldn't notice? No, there was still no sign of him, and Yîgeke started to feel embarrassed, foolish, for hoping he might rescue her, or save their cause, once more. Here she was, awaiting the axe that would claim the life of Kargöz while the warmth of his lips still was on hers, then lop off her neck as well, dashing the hopes of all her people; and still she waited impassively for a mysterious figure of unknown motives to intervene.
No, it can't be the threat of this unknown man that had the Ortheri Cowr on edge. Her mind raced as she turned over and over what she knew. All he'd said about the prophecy. The invasion against the Westerlings. The first Ortheri Cowr and his intent and methods. His plans for the Haehînbór now, whether they all died, or only some. She felt sure there was something she wasn't grasping, but it eluded her.
The Ortheri warriors were standing still, waiting for the Ortheri Cowr, who was still watching the battlefield. It seemed Kargöz had a brief reprieve, while the Ortheri Cowr was too caught up in observing the battle to watch and enjoy the disemboweling.
Yîgeke followed his eyes to the battlefield. There were both horrors and wonders there. Haehînbór being cut down by the hundreds. Throwing themselves into almost certain death merely to gain, for a moment, a bit of ground for one of their fellows, or a broken spear-haft. She swooned to think of it, being there amongst them, having to make the same terrible choice, to charge against a warrior with nothing but hope to protect her. She knew she had neither the strength nor the courage to do what these men and women were doing below her, by the hundreds, by the thousands.
Hope. That was what the prophecy had always been about. She remembered something the Ortheri Cowr had said, in his tower in Caras Lithgweth. That hope itself had been fashioned into a weapon the Ortheri used to subjugate the Haehînbór. The Spears had given each of those brave men and women in the valley a tenuous grasp on hope, a chance to turn it back on the Ortheri, but it kept slipping away from them, lost in a haze of uncertainty.
But today, mere yards from here, within her grasp, was the means to finally seize hope, steal it from the Ortheri and turn it against them, for every Haehînbór below her. At the cost of her life, and that of Kargöz, of course. They would be cut down as a matter of course, and would have no chance to escape that fate. But for that price, she could purchase hope for her people. And that, she now saw clearly for the first time, was enough.
Suddenly, she laughed. The Ortheri Cowr turned to stare at her, as did the warriors. It was a most incongruous laugh. "What amuses you, girl?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.
"It's your own weapon," she said in between fits of giggles, "your own weapon. You fashioned it with your own hands. It seems right, somehow." Still chuckling, she whirled, one elbow connecting with the ribs of the Ortheri Cowr, mostly by accident. Perched near the edge of the long drop to the valley below, he began to flail, his arms spinning. She didn't wait to see what happened; she didn't dare to catch a glimpse of an axe biting into Kargöz, spilling his guts onto the sandy stones, for fear it might strip away this sudden rush of resolve. Snatching a spear from the hand of a stunned Ortheri, she turned to run, with the fleet feet that had carried her away from so many other confrontations. In but a few moments she'd closed the distance to the Spire of Last Days and hurled herself behind the shelter of its stones. Spears shattered against the tower's wall as she scrambled up the winding stair within it.
By time she reached the peak, she could hear pursuers below her, scuffling, grunting to catch up despite their heavy armor. But she didn't dare pay them any heed. There was only one thing left in all the world for her to do; then she could meet her end, knowing that, whatever else she'd done, she'd seized, stolen, the hope of the Ortheri and made it her own. As she emerged into the sunlight, in the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of a shape plummeting down the side of the cliff, a cloak billowing in the wind and failing to slow the fall; but she paid no heed.
She seized the spear at its center, stood tall atop the Spire of Last Days, and cried out, as loud as her voice could carry, "Hope is ours!" as she hefted the spear above her head.
Below her, arrayed across a swath of uneven pastureland, two armies paused and looked up at her. Thousands upon thousands of eyes were fixed upon her. Nothing and no one moved, not even the wind.
She tossed the spear to the clouds. Then, the winds whipping her hair around her, she turned and stepped down to meet the men coming up to slay her.