“Ceanndraoi, we should go down now. They’ll be within an archer’s reach in half a stripe or less.”
“Go on down and tell the others to be ready,” Orla told Colin. “Send Mànas up. I’ll be staying here. I want Savas to see me.”
Looking just to the right of her face, Colin bowed and scurried down the ladder to the ground below. Orla found her fingers seeking out her mother’s oak leaf pendants, never off her neck under the ceanndraoi’s torc. She stroked the ridged surfaces between her fingers. A bit later, she heard the sound of Mànas clambering up, and she released the oak leaves. The draoi was breathing hard as he approached her. He pushed back thick brown hair that had escaped the tie at the back of his head. Though still considered an inexperienced war draoi, he was likely a few years older than herself, she noticed—but then, most of the draoi were older than her. At least he had the politeness to look at her face without flinching. He also glanced warily over to the anamacha of the Moonshadow standing alongside her. “Ceanndraoi, how can I help you?”
“I’m certain that there will be arrow fire on this position from the Mundoa. I need you to take care of that so I can conserve energy for my own spells. Can you do that?”
He nodded quickly. “I can, Ceanndraoi. Don’t worry.”
“Good,” she told him. “Then stay here with me. Commander Savas’ people will be here soon.”
Already she could see the chariots approaching out of the mist, though none of them was flying the imperial banner that would mark Savas’ own chariot. They spread out as they approached the wall where the ridgeline flattened. As Orla had predicted, the bulk of the chariots and mounted soldiers appeared to be with them, along with a significant force of foot soldiers. Behind them, she could make out the towering forms of a hand of ballistae, catapults ready to hurl boulders at the wall. She could hear them as well: the creaking of their great wheels, the calls of the drivers, the cracking of whips on the packhorses that were pulling them, the thudding of boots on the stony ground, the clatter of metal against metal. Behind the chariots and the front line of men, marching before the ballistae were the archers.
The machinery of war was laid out before her.
“Get ready,” she told Mànas. “Call your anamacha.”
A few breaths later, she saw the archers stop to lift their bows at the command of an officer. Bows curled as the bowstrings were pulled back. Then arrows filled the sky, a swarm of deadly, hissing small birds. She heard Mànas shout his release word, and a new wind fluttered her cloak as it passed her. The arrows plummeting down directly in front of them were swept aside, falling harmlessly to the ground on either side while the rest clattered as they struck the wall or feathered the ground before it. A second flight of arrows met the same fate.
“Good!” she told him. “Be ready to keep that up.” Orla felt her anamacha slide close to her, and she opened herself slightly to their voices, calling for Iomhar to come to her. When she felt his presence, she called out, using the power he fed her to amplify her voice so it rang out loudly across the landscape. “Commander Savas! Let us talk! Come forward! I promise your safety!”
She thought for a moment that he wasn’t going to respond, then she saw a chariot near the ballistae begin to move, and from it was waving the banner of a stooping, angry hawk on a blue field. The chariot came forward through the lines, stopping just below her. Savas in his mirrored krug armor stared up at her; so did his driver, the younger man who shared his bed.
“Ceanndraoi Orla,” he called out. “So you’re not merely a dream this time. And you’ve guessed at my tactics all too accurately, it seems. I have to admit I’m impressed. But where’s your army?”
“I’m real enough,” she told him. “And I’ve brought no army with me.”
“That would seem, well, foolish on your part.” He gestured to the array of forces behind him. “I have one, after all.”
“I don’t need an army, and I’m not a fool,” she told him. “What I’m offering you is another chance to avoid terrible bloodshed. Take your army back from where you came, and I promise that no one will die here, at least.”
She could hear a mild mockery in his voice as he answered, “If you surrender to me, Ceanndraoi, I can make the same promise. But I assume that you’re not intending to do that. I’d say we’re at an impasse.”
Orla sighed. “Commander, I want you to order your soldiers to move well away from your ballistae. All of them. And have them move the horses too if you want to spare them.”
Savas glanced back at the ballistae, still far away at the rear of the formation, then looked back at Orla, puzzled. “Ceanndraoi, those are well out of the range of even Voada’s spells. Believe me, I remember just how far she could cast spell-fire.”
There was rumbling laughter from deep within the anamacha at that. “As I’ve already told you, Commander, I am not my mother. Will you move your people or not? Choose.”
Savas leaned forward toward his driver and spoke to him, then jumped down from the chariot as the driver slapped the reins on the two horses and rode back toward the lines. “This will take some time, Ceanndraoi,” he said, calling up to her.
“I can be patient,” she told him. She watched as Savas’ driver rode up to one of the other chariots; she recognized the banner of the sub-commander whom she’d nearly killed at Muras. The two spoke, then the sub-commander barked an order to his own driver and careened away toward the rear while Savas’ driver returned to the commander. Not long after, she saw the dark specks of the soldiers around the ballistae moving back and away from the machines and other men leading away the teams of horses.
Orla opened her arms to the Moonshadow, which moved quickly to her. The shadows of the Otherworld fell over her sight, the sky as always speared by crackling blue lightning. She felt her mam coming forward out of the crowd of draoi within the anamacha, but she held up her hand to stop her.
But the warning was already too late. Leagsaidh approached, the Moonshadow looming behind, a darkness that somehow glowed as if illuminated by a black sun.
There was tempting power in the words. Orla felt herself wanting to agree with her, to let herself fall under the seductive spell of their twinned voices.
It took all of Orla’s will to draw back and shout
She ignored them, waiting, and when she felt them pulling energy from Magh da Chèo, she started weaving the spell cage. This was not like anything she’d handled before, different even from her mam’s powerful spells. This was raw, undiluted energy that burned her hands even through the spell cage. She had to squint against the glare of it.
The glow in the spell cage redoubled in intensity, and Orla closed her eyes.
“Teine!” Orla cried, opening her eyes as the spell cage shattered and the fireball inside shot away from her, arrowing over the land, as bright in the daylight as a falling star on a moonless night, spewing sparks as it roared over Savas’ head, over the chariots and infantry and archers, to finally break ap
art with a thunderous boom as it approached the ballistae. A single smaller fireball struck each ballista and exploded, shattering timbers and sending them flying, turning what remained into instant infernos sending smoke and sparks pinwheeling up into the mist and rain. Shouts of consternation and awe rose from the Mundoa, and Mànas muttered an obscenity behind Orla.
The effort cost her. She wanted to drop to her knees, wanted to close her eyes and sleep. She stiffened her back, refusing to show how the spell had drained her. She couldn’t display weakness to Savas, or he would overwhelm her with sheer numbers.
“Commander Savas,” Orla called down to him, and she drew on the dregs of the Moonshadow’s power to strengthen her voice so that the soldiers behind him could hear her. “Did that convince you of what I can do? You should know that I can do the same to this entire line you’ve put before me—and I will do that if you insist on remaining here. Your sihirki are a joke, your arrows can’t touch me, and now you’ve no ballistae to take down the wall. Do you want your men to die in agony, writhing in spell-fire? I’m offering you the opportunity to retreat. Now. Will you save your men, or do you need to see the reality of what I’ve threatened to do? It’s your decision, Commander, but you need to make it now.”
To the credit of Savas’ influence over his troops, none of them broke rank, none of them moved. Commander Savas continued to stare up toward Orla, and she worried that he would refuse, that she would need to call on Leagsaidh and the Moonshadow once more when she wasn’t entirely certain she’d survive that.
“I’ll accept your offer of safe passage back to the outer wall,” Commander Savas said, and Orla felt relief surge through her. “You’ve won here. But the war between us isn’t done, Ceanndraoi. We aren’t finished. Understand that.”
Orla nodded, and Savas said something to his driver, who reached down to pull him back into the carriage as it began to move. Orla watched as Savas spoke to his sub-commanders, as the army turned to march back the way they’d come, past the smoldering ruins of the ballistae. Horns blared, and drums pounded, the clamor slowly receding. Well out in the distance, she could see the Mundoa also retreating from the other towers. Mànas, Colin, and the other men with her were cheering.
She smiled, but that was all she could manage. Savas’ words were still in her ears, and so were the voices of the anamacha.
* * *
Orla would learn upon her return that the battle had not gone so easily for those in the towers.
As she rode in Colin’s chariot to the west tower defended by Comhnall and Magaidh, her sense of worry increased, especially since she knew that Sorcha had gone there as well, since it was closest to where Orla had stationed herself. That concern grew when she saw workers erecting a pyre well back from the wall and saw the number of Cateni dead laid out nearby.
As Orla’s entourage entered the rear gate into the courtyard, they found that the outside gate wall had entirely collapsed. Warriors and servants alike were carrying away the rubble, and the courtyard had become a hospital for the injured, with archiaters moving among the makeshift beds and the groans and cries of those gravely wounded. “It’s a shame that you draoi have no spells that can heal a person,” she heard someone say as Orla leaped down from the chariot to gaze at the scene. She turned to find Sorcha there, cloth for bandages in one hand and a basin of red water in the other. Her hair was matted with dried blood, and more streaked her forehead. Sorcha gave Orla a fleeting smile and lifted the bandages. “I thought I would do what I could here,” she said. “The head archiater says that I have the touch and she’ll teach me what she knows. Maybe I’ll be an archiater.”
Orla hugged her, not caring about the water that sloshed out of the basin or what others watching might think. “You’d make a wonderful archiater,” she told her when she released her again. “Were you hurt? All the blood on your face and hair—”
“—is not mine,” Sorcha finished for her. “I was helping to bring the injured in here. And there’s still too much to do here. Magaidh and Comhnall are waiting to talk to you; they can tell you better than I how the battle went. They’re still outside the tower. Go on, now. I’ll come and find you later.”
* * *
Comhnall was standing with Magaidh and his son Hùisdean alongside their chariot, though it was Hùisdean wearing a warrior’s armor, and another young man she didn’t recognize was in the traces, holding the horses. Comhnall had evidently directed the battle from the tower’s ramparts, as expected. His good hand was clutching a sword, though it looked unbloodied, and his left arm was still bound to his side, though someone had strapped a shield to it.
Clouds of steam billowed from the horses’ nostrils as Hùisdean stroked their heaving flanks, and the sides of the chariot were covered with gore that caused Orla to quickly look away. Hùisdean’s leather armor was liberally spattered with scarlet, and Orla could see wounds on the young man’s arms and left side, now clotted with dark blood. Magaidh looked to be exhausted and drained, holding tightly to the chariot’s rails.
There were bodies strewn on the ground around them, all in Mundoan armor, all of them unmoving.
“Ceanndraoi!” Comhnall said as she approached, and Magaidh hurried to her, enfolding her in her arms.
“I don’t know what you did,” Magaidh said, “but we’re all grateful for whatever it was. We were holding the wall, but that was at a terrible cost. Yet suddenly the Mundoan banners were waving and their horns were calling, and they disengaged and retreated. We didn’t pursue, not knowing what had happened with you. We saw fire and smoke to our west where you’d gone, but there was no way to know . . .” Magaidh heaved a sigh, catching her breath, and grabbing Orla tightly. “I’m just glad to see you, though you look even more tired than me. The Moonshadow?”
Orla nodded silently, and Magaidh hugged her again. “Be very careful,” she whispered into Orla’s ear. “Please. It was hard enough losing Voada. I’ve no interest in having to grieve like that again.”
“What happened here?” Orla asked, and it was Comhnall who answered. “Savas’ people had bridges and ladders their engineers had made. Those allowed many of the foot soldiers to cross the ravines, as well as some mounted soldiers and a few chariots, though Magaidh and the other draoi sent fire down to burn many of them.” Comhnall shook his head. “But their line was simply too long for us, and it was impossible to stop the advance. At this tower, they swarmed up the final slope here as well as to the east, overwhelming the warriors I’d arrayed. The fighting was fierce and—as you’ve undoubtedly already noticed—deadly.”
“And once the warriors and soldiers were engaged,” Magaidh added, “we draoi were limited in what we could do without also hurting our own people. The Mundoan officers had set heavy ballistae on a ridge just out of draoi range to hurl boulders and fiery pitch at the tower and walls, and though we draoi managed to intercept some of those, they still succeeded in damaging the fortifications.” She gestured at the ruins of the gate wall behind them. “Their sihirki tried a few of their own spells”—Magaidh shrugged—“but none of them were of any concern.”
“The ceannàrd and Àrd MacGowan—how did they fare?” Orla asked, and Comhnall shook his head.
“We haven’t yet heard,” he said. “But as far as we can see, the Mundoa seem to have vanished back to the outer wall. Hopefully the ceannàrd and Àrd MacGowan were no worse off than us. And you, Ceanndraoi? How was it with you?”
“Savas isn’t an unreasonable man,” she said. “He made the right choice after I demonstrated to him what would happen if he persisted. Still, he’ll change tactics next time to adjust, and the following battle likely won’t go even as well as this one.”
/> “So there will be a next time?” Magaidh asked. Orla knew she was asking the same question her anamacha had: You didn’t kill the man? She shrugged. Magaidh’s gaze remained on her. “Oh, my dear girl,” she said. “You’re exhausted. Comhnall, I’m taking the ceanndraoi to our quarters to rest. She needs to sleep and recover before we do anything else. If Eideard comes here, tell him he’s not allowed to bother her.”
“No,” Orla insisted. “There’s still too much for us—” But Magaidh was already leading her away, and Orla found herself too tired and unwilling to resist.
26
Parley and Agreement
“ORLA?”
Orla lifted her head against the heavy weight of the ceanndraoi’s torc, blinking to clear the sleep and the dreams of battle and death from her head. “Sorcha? Is that you?”
“Aye.” Sorcha’s voice sounded as weary as her own. Orla wondered how long she’d been asleep and whether Sorcha had been tending to the wounded all that time. “Magaidh said to tell you that the ceannàrd is here and that there’s a chariot with a white banner approaching our tower.”
“I’ll be right there,” Orla told her, reluctantly pulling aside the quilt that covered her. She was still wearing the bog dress she’d worn during her confrontation with Savas. It smelled of spell-fire. She tucked the oak leaf pendants under her collar. “Give me a little time, and I’ll be there.”
“I’ll tell them,” Sorcha said, and vanished again.
When Orla emerged, she found everyone near the ruins of the gate, looking outward. A chariot with a white cloth fluttering from a pole was approaching; a driver crouched in the traces, and a man in Mundoan krug armor stood behind him. There were no spears or other weapons visible. As Orla reached the group, she heard Eideard call to the archers on the tumbled walls to hold. The man in armor jumped from the chariot as the driver halted near the broken gate wall.
A Rising Moon Page 29