A Rising Moon
Page 24
Hold. From what Orla had already seen, she thought that might be an impossible task.
She heard footsteps approaching from behind her. “That’s the last of them,” she said without turning around, knowing it was Eideard. “No one else will be coming to help until Àrd Mac Tsagairt and the rest of the warriors finally arrive.”
And Sorcha and Magaidh with them . . . It had pained Orla to leave her lover as well as Magaidh behind, but she knew Sorcha would be better protected and safer with the bulk of the Cateni warriors around her. Orla worried more about Sorcha’s safety during the crossing of the strait, but that would be in the hands of Elia.
For her part, Magaidh had chosen to remain with her injured husband and serve as additional protection should they be attacked during their march. “I’m sorry,” she’d told Orla as they parted. “Part of me wants to go with you, but one more draoi is unlikely to make a difference. Comhnall’s my husband; he’s hurt and needs my help. I’ll keep Sorcha safe for you. And you . . . keep yourself as safe as you can. We’ll be there to rejoin you as soon as possible.”
“They’ll be days yet,” Eideard muttered. He came alongside her to look down at the beach. “I’m afraid we’ll be defending the second ring without them.”
“Then that’s what we do.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw Eideard nod. Still gazing down at the currachs, he spoke to the air. “I hear things, Orla. Some of the draoi are openly saying that the ceanndraoi no longer deserves his title. He was wrong about Muras; he was wrong about Savas. You . . . you were right.”
Orla felt the Moonshadow slipping closer to her with that comment, and she stepped back—she didn’t need to hear the voices; she didn’t need to listen to them argue about what she should or shouldn’t do, didn’t need to hear Leagsaidh tell her again how she was the First and so they should be ceanndraoi. The wounds the Moonshadow had given her were still tender but healing, though she realized that her face would forever be scarred and disfigured. She hadn’t used her anamacha since she’d gone to Savas; she feared what would happen if the Moonshadow forced its way forward again.
You’ll have to use the Moonshadow soon. You won’t be able to avoid it.
“It’s not the time for that,” she told Eideard. “We don’t need to be fighting amongst ourselves with the larger enemy at our door. What Greum Red-Hand holds is only a title. Nothing more.”
“But you and I together—” he began.
“Eideard, you’ve demonstrated that you’re a fine, brave warrior. You understand war and its tactics. I admire you for that, and so do the others. You deserve the title you’ve taken, and you have it because the other àrds insisted that you take it. Magaidh told me that Comhnall gave up the title because he knew it would pass to you.”
“You think most of the draoi wouldn’t do the same for you? They understand the power you hold better than I do. And after Muras, the respect they once had for Greum Red-Hand is gone.” Orla didn’t respond. She heard Eideard exhale loudly as he turned to her. “We’d have beaten Savas at Muras except for the ceanndraoi. You wouldn’t have made that mistake if you’d had the silver torc.”
“Eideard, I was already empty and exhausted when we fled the field. Only Elia knows what would have happened. We might have prevailed, but we also might have lost everything.”
“When will it be time, Orla? When Greum makes a fatal mistake that costs us Bàn Cill?”
“It’s not time,” she repeated. “Not yet.”
The first of the Cateni were just reaching the bluff from the winding path leading up from the shingled beach. Eideard waved toward them. “I think of you as the ceanndraoi whether you have the silver torc or not,” he told her. “So do many of the others. But let’s get this group settled. It won’t be long until we’re all tested.”
* * *
Savas moved more slowly than they expected. Ceanndraoi Greum and the others arrived before the attack on the inner ring commenced. It was a small comfort. Comhnall Mac Tsagairt and the bulk of the army, though, had yet to reach Onglse, still marching through the mountains of the mainland.
Onglse was protected not only by the sea and the strong currents of Onglse Strait but also by two rings of stone walls punctuated by tower fortifications, at the center of which sat Bàn Cill with its much smaller third ring. In its history, the much longer outer coastal ring had been broken sporadically by enemy invaders, most recently by Commander Savas in Voada’s time, only a hand of years before. Savas had actually opened a breach in the second ring’s defenses before he’d turned back south. Now Savas’ forces held the great bulk of the southern arc of the coastal ring but not yet any of the forts of the second ring.
In all history, the smallest third ring had still never been breached.
The fear was that this might be that moment the sacred grove and temple of Bàn Cill itself was open to being overrun. The sun was shining down from a nearly cloudless sky, so bright that the anamacha were entirely invisible alongside their draoi, though Orla could feel the Moonshadow’s presence. Staring out from the crenelated tower of the southernmost of the second ring’s forts, she looked out over a sequence of furrowed hills that lay between the two defensive walls. Several sheep wandered the landscape, grazing. The land before her was stony and heather-clad, streams running through the boggy bottomland between the hills. The tall grasses, sedges, and thistles atop them punctuated the landscape with the colors of red fescue, sea plantain, sea pink, marram grass, and buttercup. Scattered here and there were stands of pine, yew, whitebeam, buckthorn, and oak, all of which would impede and slow the lines of an invading army.
The land of Onglse itself was their ally here.
They could see Savas’ army beginning to form their lines on the first hill inside the coastal wall, the imperial banners flying from the chariots, and their battle horns—brighter-sounding and more shrill than the bronze carnyx used by the Cateni—blaring signals that caused the sheep to lift their heads briefly. Orla expected that Commander Savas himself would be riding in his chariot, though from this distance Orla couldn’t distinguish his from the others. Eideard had already taken his chariot out, riding just out of bowshot from the Mundoan front lines, calling for Savas to emerge and challenge him directly.
Ceanndraoi Greum was also standing at the tower’s summit in company with Ceiteag and several of the other draoi. His shoulder wound had largely healed in the intervening days; his arms moved as he called out. “I couldn’t reach them with a spell from here,” he said too loudly. “I don’t believe any of the others could either. Though of course the Moonshadow . . .”
Orla started to protest, but Greum gave her no chance to speak. Since his return, he had resumed command of the Onglse forces. Orla had seen messengers—not Cateni she knew, and neither warriors nor draoi—entering the fortifications and going to Greum’s apartments. She assumed they were bringing word of Savas’ movements. Leaning on his staff and letting his bad leg swing around, Greum turned to the courtyard as Eideard’s chariot entered. He leaned the staff against the inner wall, pulled his robes about himself, touched the silver torc around his neck, and called out to those below as he lifted his hands.
“Today, we honor those who gave their lives holding back the invaders in order to give us time to return to Onglse. Without their sacrifice, Savas and his horde would already be in Bàn Cill, cutting down the oaks and burning them, desecrating the sacred temple of Elia, replacing her figure
atop the central blackstone altar with a bust of Emperor Pashtuk: an insult to every draoi, every àrd, every clan, and every Cateni.” Greum pointed southward, toward the Mundoan army. “We are all that stand before them now, and we must not allow the lives of those warriors who have earned their place in Tirnanog and those draoi who now dwell in Magh da Chèo with their anamacha to be wasted. We must stand here, and we must hold this line of defense for Onglse: until the rest of our warriors and draoi can return to help us; until the clans of the north send us every last son and daughter to help us cast out the Mundoa and send them back across the Meadham; until we have washed this soil with the enemy’s blood and our own. Will you do this?” he shouted, and was answered by an affirmative roar, the clashing of spears against shields, and the metallic bleating of the carnyx. The other draoi on the rampart shouted with them, Orla joining them.
As the cheers faded, they could hear the sound of the Mundoan horns accompanied by the steady thudding of boots, horses’ hooves, and iron-clad wheels on the landscape of Onglse. Savas’ army had begun its advance. The sheep scattered before them.
“Ceannàrd Iosa, do the warriors understand their orders?”
“They do, Ceanndraoi,” Eideard answered. “We know what’s expected of us, and we’re ready as soon as the draoi join us.”
Greum nodded. “Then it will begin soon. Open the gates; it’s time for us to fight or to fall. Archers, draoi: take your positions on the walls. You draoi who are with the chariots, go to them now.” With that, Greum grabbed his walking stick and turned back to face the Mundoa. Most of the other draoi moved with him. Orla and the few other draoi who would ride with the chariots went instead to the tower’s interior staircase leading down to the courtyard. Orla ran to Eideard’s war chariot, accepting the hand he extended to help her up.
“Are you ready, Ceanndraoi?” he asked her, grinning.
“Don’t call me that,” she told him. “And why are you smiling?”
“Because Savas is waiting for me, and I have my uncle to avenge. Why are you so solemn?”
“Because I don’t delude myself about what we’re facing.” Orla tied a rope around her waist to the back rail of the chariot, pulling it tight. She could feel her stomach roiling at the thought of what awaited them. “I’m ready,” she told him. It was a lie, but Eideard nodded, tapped Tadgh on the shoulder, and the chariot jolted forward through the fort’s gates and outside.
Orla found her view constricted compared to what she’d been able to see from the tower. Aside from the jolting ride of the chariot, she was now low to the ground. The second wall largely followed a ridgeline and the tower itself had a large meadow fronting it; the meadow sloped rapidly down to a boggy winding stream, and the Cateni had made that as impassable as possible. For two days the minor draoi had been constantly chanting rain spells, swelling the stream until it overflowed its banks. The flooding had left nothing but blankets of thick mud for several strides on either side of the stream itself. A chariot’s wheels would become hopelessly mired, the hooves of cavalry horses would become heavy, and foot soldiers would become slow-moving targets for the archers on the ramparts, who could see down to the stream.
Their hope was that the Mundoa would realize that crossing the bottomland and ascending the hill to the waiting chariots and warriors would cost them more than they were willing to spend. None of the Cateni expected Savas to abandon the assault on the ring, but a retreat to assess and adjust their tactics would gain the Cateni a few more days: more time for Àrd Mac Tsagairt and the rest of the army to arrive. And Sorcha and Magaidh with them, Orla thought.
However, at the moment, those waiting for the attack couldn’t easily see past the next hill ahead of them. Orla couldn’t see the front line of Savas’ army at all, as it had yet to ascend to the summit of the ridge in front of their own. The second ridge back—out of range of either spells or arrows—was lined with chariots and yet more soldiers under imperial banners.
They could hear the front line, however: the jangle of livery, the calls of the officers keeping the lines together. As Orla watched, the banners of the line began to lift above the green hill, gold thread in the cloth glinting in the sunlight.
“We’ll wait for them,” Eideard called out to the other chariots and warriors who had followed them from the gates, closed again behind them. They could see the long line of foot soldiers nearing the crest. “Keep to the meadow here—let them founder in the bottomland. The archers and draoi will deal with them as they come up the hill, and we’ll make short work of any who make it up to us.”
Even as he spoke, the first volley from the archers in the fort arced over Orla and those around her. Shields flashed up from the Mundoan line to catch most of the arrows, but the line’s advance was staggered as several of the Mundoan soldiers went down. The arrows were followed immediately by the first spells of the war draoi in the ramparts, Greum’s voice the loudest as he shouted his release word. Fireballs hissed across the hills, lighting flared from sudden clouds; amidst the smoke and flames, gaps became visible in the Mundoan line, with bodies strewn across the hilltop and spilling down into the ravine ahead.
“Shields up!” Eideard shouted suddenly. A dark flock of arrows from behind the Mundoan line lifted over the hill, seemed to hover in the air momentarily, then fell. Orla heard arrows thunking into the meadow grass around them as Eideard put his shield over the two of them; when he brought it down again, it had been liberally feathered, as had Tadgh’s shield. The thick leather armor over the backs of their horses was scarred with the marks of arrowheads.
Horns blared behind the Mundoan lines, and signal banners waved from the second ridge; with a massed battle cry, the front line began to rapidly descend the slope. “Now!” Eideard called to Orla and the other draoi in the chariots. “Tadgh, take us forward!”
Tadgh shouted to the horses, slapping the reins down on them so that the chariot lurched toward the slope’s verge, allowing them to see the soldiers charging toward the stream and the bog at the bottom of the valley. Orla opened her arms, allowing the Moonshadow’s anamacha to enter her. Her vision was overlaid with the landscape of Magh da Chèo, and she fought to keep her focus on the onrushing line. Her breath shivered; she feared that the Moonshadow itself would force its way into her mind, and she wouldn’t be able to stop it from sending her reeling into madness and memory again.
As Voada began to tear energy from the Otherworld, Orla’s hands moved in the now-habitual patterns, taking in and holding the power her mam fed her. Heat and light flared between her hands. The spell cage bulged, threatening to tear apart and release itself, but as Orla started to speak the release word, a new voice intruded: a doubled cry from Leagsaidh and the Moonshadow itself.
But she had no choice. She continued weaving the spell cage, making the strands longer and thicker, forcing her hands to move faster so that nothing escaped. The other draoi were already releasing their spells; fireballs, lightning, howling wind, and jagged balls of hail all plunged into the Mundoans. The glare between Orla’s hands became that of a new sun, sending shadows fleeing even in the sunlight. Eideard glanced back at her, and she saw his eyes widen.
Orla spoke the release word—“Teine!”—and hurled the inferno toward the Mundoan advance, already beginning to fall ap
art from the other spells as the soldiers reached the swampy morass of the valley. Orla’s spell exploded in the midst of the line, sending bodies flying with terrible screams, gouging out a crater from the slope behind them and sending clods of mud, rocks, and shattered bodies raining down on the soldiers still trying to advance. The line broke, soldiers with liquid fire clinging to their armor attempting to flee back up the slope against those who were still descending. Others threw themselves into the water of the stream, rolling in the mud in a vain attempt to put out the flames, or tried desperately to pull themselves up the side of the crater.
The advance morphed into a rout all at once, the Mundoan soldiers still on their feet scrambling back up the slope, pulling at the brush and grass for support, some of them crawling on all fours. The slope was littered with abandoned weapons and armor torn from their bodies; the wall of the crater slumped as Orla watched, sending a landslide of rocks, mud, and soldiers’ bodies toward the valley floor. At the top of the ridge, the Mundoan officers pushed in vain at the retreating soldiers to turn them back. The Mundoan signal flags waved frantically, and their horns sounded: a trio of notes that Orla had never heard before. The Mundoa began to retreat, the chariots on the second hill vanishing behind the slope, the banners lowered.
Eideard shouted in triumph, waving a spear at the backs of the Mundoans, his voice joined by the roar of the other warriors in the meadow and those watching from the ramparts. Orla pulled herself away from the Moonshadow. She found she couldn’t join the cheers; instead she looked at her hands, the hands that had held that terrible spell. She thought they should be burned and blistered, but no, they were unchanged. The screams of the dead and dying Mundoan soldiers still echoed in her ears, and she could see them writhing in agony in the valley below her. Some of the Cateni warriors were half sliding, half walking down the slope, swords in hand, to dispatch the wounded.