by A. H. Lee
They didn’t come.
Roland tried to put that thought away for later. Some part of his brain laughed. There will be no later.
On the battlements of the fort, Roland glimpsed a human figure, standing beside something like a bear. Except he knew it wasn’t a bear. It was a wolf. It must be satisfying to watch us die from the fort you nearly broke your teeth on.
Anton rode towards the southern edge of the fight, calling encouragement to his troops, although his knee prevented him from actually participating. The sun shone dimly through the clouds, almost directly overhead now. The men had fought hard for hours. They were still fighting hard, but with no end in sight, their courage was wavering. Roland could practically feel the shift in morale. The salt of the sea tasted like tears.
And the golems were coming. Half a dozen of them waddled or lumbered through the rain. They’d become slathered in blood-slick mud, and several had incorporated the maimed bodies of the fallen into their torsos and limbs. Roland wondered whether that meant they had somehow entrapped the spirits of those men, or whether they simply had a ghastly instinct to collect human body parts. Our troops will break, thought Roland. When those monsters reach us, they will break and run. That is when we will all die.
Roland couldn’t help glancing at the figure on the battlements. This is when most enemy commanders would offer terms.
“He won’t,” she said, her voice hollow.
Roland suspected she was right. He gave us his terms in the conference room, and we refused. Hastafel is not the sort of person who takes rejection well.
“It’s not your fault,” said Roland. “Leaders take risks. It would have worked, if...” If our reinforcements had come.
Daphne stared at the golems closing in. “Roland, our lines are going to break soon, and when they do, I want you to try to reach Uncle Jessup’s forces in the pass. No heroics, no last stand before the gates. You ride hard for the Valley of False Hope. Perhaps it will do us one good turn at least.”
Roland snorted. Escape under these circumstances was unlikely, although he supposed a few might get away. “I’ll escort you in that effort.”
She turned to him savagely. “No, you won’t. I am not the rider you are. Not in the mountains. You are more likely to succeed on your own.” She caught her breath and added in a rush, “This battle will have weakened Hastafel, and he will not be expecting a surprise attack after dark from the border lords. You can retake the fort, and if not, you may be able to starve him out by cutting him off from his ships.”
Roland opened his mouth.
“You’ll make a good king, Brother. If you do not wish to wed, perhaps you can point out to Uncle Winthrop that the succession will pass to his children. That may appease him.”
The knot in Roland’s stomach climbed into his throat. “You’ve...thought this through.”
“Of course I have. Get ready.”
“Daphne, I can’t.” You’re asking me to live with the knowledge that I left you here to die. He stared into her steel gray eyes. This is the way that you and Father were always tougher than me.
“You can,” she snarled. “That is an order, Roland. I suspect I will only be queen of Mistala for another ten minutes, so it’s probably my last order. Please don’t treat it with contempt.”
Roland’s vision blurred. He’d never thought to spend his last battle crying. He forced his eyes westward, still unsure what he intended to do when the lines broke. As a result, he was the first person to notice something odd at the mouth of the valley.
The rain was slackening, and the fickle wind had changed directions, blowing the clouds out to sea, improving visibility. A line of white stretched from horizon to horizon.
Roland blinked hard to clear his vision, but the line did not go away. The weather had cleared enough that he should be able to see the beach from the top of the valley. At first, Roland couldn’t find it. Then he realized he was looking at a shining expanse of nearly dry sand. One of Hastafel’s troop ships was sitting in mud some distance out. Roland’s mouth fell open. What in all the hells? “Daphne...”
“I see it,” she whispered. “What am I looking at?”
Roland shook his head. He caught sight of something else—a lone rider galloping from the beach. He was crossing broken, soggy ground littered with bodies and debris. He should have been picking his way with caution. Instead, he was riding all out—a small, dark figure on a big, pale horse. And behind him...
Hastafel’s troop ship flipped over and disappeared. Daphne made a little noise of shock. Even at such a distance, it was a startling sight—a whole ship demolished in an instant like a toy. The line of white came on, and now Roland knew what it was. A massive wave.
The capricious sun broke from the clouds as the wind continued to blow towards the sea. It sparkled on the wall of water as it obliterated the beach and hit the mouth of the valley. Roland’s eyes fixed on the rider. He’d come about halfway up the valley, but the wave behind him was coming faster.
Roland couldn’t breathe. He stared at the horse. Cato?
There was confused shouting among Hastafel’s troops. It was clear that some of them had spotted the wave, and were uncertain of what to do about it. Signal flags flashed towards the forts.
The rider was covering the ground impossibly fast, but the wave continued to catch him up. Roland felt a strange exhilaration. He had no idea what would happen next, but somehow he was glad he was alive to see it.
“Armies of Mistala,” he bellowed, “hold your ground! We are not beaten! Hold! Your! Ground!”
The golems sped up. Whatever strange force animated them had clearly gotten a boost, because they moved muddy limbs faster. But the rider was upon them, and just behind him, the impossible wave. It had lost height as it came up the valley, taking on strange shapes that morphed rapidly into something familiar. Riders emerged from the water. They swung weapons that rippled and shimmered, and their horses shook manes of gleaming foam.
They fell upon Hastafel’s troops, enveloping them. They washed over the golems and blasted through their muddy bodies like water through a broken damn. In seconds, the enemy lines lost all organization. Men ran shrieking, struggling out of the water, only to be dragged back down by liquid hands. Horses thrashed in the waves. Golems disintegrated, leaving behind the bones and bodies of their grisly collections.
The water ghosts did not attack the Mistalan troops or their allies, but the flood still poured in around them. “Hold!” shouted Roland. “Hold!”
Men were holding onto each other, trying to keep their footing as the rushing tide rose to the bellies of the horses. The strange rider had stopped just beyond their lines, and he sat still upon his panting beast, watching the carnage. He looked otherworldly, soaked in sea foam, his clothes in rags, streaming in the wind. His horse’s eyes burned red and smoked.
Roland’s horse skittered on the uncertain footing, gave a terrified neigh. Anton had backed his horse up against Daphne’s. Daphne had one hand locked in the shoulder of his coat. Is the flood going to wash us all away?
Roland urged his horse forward, churning through the water, half-swimming. The lines parted for him, and Roland sloshed towards the dark scarecrow on the nightmare steed. Roland’s own animal stopped when they were only a few paces apart and refused to go nearer.
They stared at each other as ghosts drowned Hastafel’s army around them. The man’s eyes behind his glasses were glowing. And they weren’t black, after all. They were a very dark green.
“Sair?”
Sairis blinked.
Roland had the uncomfortable feeling that they were actually standing in a River. If he looked quickly to the right or the left, he felt certain he would see a twilit wood. His horse would disappear in a silver streak at any moment, and he and Daphne and all the rest would be caught in a current that no one could deny.
“Sair... Please.” He didn’t even know what he was asking for.
Sairis blinked again, as though trying to
wake up. His eyes seemed to focus. “Roland.”
“You came.”
“I—” Sairis sat up straight in the saddle. He spoke a word that came out in a rush of black smoke and made him shudder.
The tide reversed. Suddenly it was rushing out, out, and the troops of Mistala were staggering and clinging to each other, but they were holding. Hastafel’s troops didn’t have a chance. Those who had not already drowned were wrapped in the embrace of watery ghosts and dragged out to sea as the wave retreated down the valley. It took bodies and equipment. It took Hastafel’s camp and his war ships. It washed the valley clean, and the sun came out and sparkled on the wet earth as though nothing else had ever happened here.
Sairis began to look a bit more human as the Shattered Sea drew away. Roland noticed that he was barefoot, all of his clothes in tatters. Roland wanted to say, “What happened?” But the words that came out of his mouth were, “Your eyes are glowing.”
Sairis laughed, and his face transformed in that way Roland had loved on their first meeting. Roland would have thrown his arms around him then, if his horse had been willing to approach. “I’m sorry I’m late,” said Sairis. “As you have probably guessed, things went very wrong. I need to give you sad news.”
Roland’s eyes had fallen to the horse again. It was Cato, but... “First tell me what you’ve done to my horse!”
Chapter 17. Precarious
“I can fix it,” said Sairis. “It’ll probably go away on its own. He’s got some faery blood, and I...I...” Gods, what did I do, exactly? Sairis felt as though he were waking from a dream...or drifting into one. He was coming down from a great height, the way he felt sometimes when he’d been walking on the Styx and woke in his body, confused and disoriented.
Roland dismounted and approached with caution. “Well, nothing’s going to threaten Cato for the moment, but he’ll spook the other horses if you bring him nearer. Come on, Sair, get down, and let’s go find you some clothes. I believe you’ve gotten my money’s worth out of these.”
Sairis laughed. The sound seemed to echo inside his head. Am I full of magic or empty? He couldn’t tell. He had a burned-out sensation, as though he’d been a conduit for a great deal of power. He tried to get down from Cato, nearly fell into the mud, and Roland caught him.
Roland’s armor was startlingly hard and cold, and liberally splattered with blood in every shade of wet to dry. The armor made him seem even bigger, particularly down here on the ground. The helmet made his face seem like a stranger’s.
Sairis stared up at him. “You look like a knight,” he whispered.
“You look like a necromancer,” said Roland and kissed him.
Sairis forgot about death and battles and magic and ghosts. He did not care that Roland’s gauntlets were rough against his back or that his vambrace scraped over Sairis’s shoulders. Roland’s armor might have been cold and alien, but his mouth was warm and achingly familiar. Sairis fetched up against the unyielding breastplate, and it didn’t feel like a threat. It felt like a fortress.
Roland broke the kiss, swept Sairis off his feet, and carried him back towards the lines. Sairis’s tattered clothes fluttered around them. The world rocked with every step. I think I need a nap.
Still, Sairis had the presence of mind to reach into the inner pocket of his coat and pull out the soggy roll of letters. He hoped some of them were still legible. “Commander Jessup gave me these right before he died.” Well, right afterward, technically, but now’s not the time to quibble. “They’re from your Uncle Winthrop to Marcus. You need to read them, Roland.”
* * * *
“He was trying to get Marcus to spy for him! To control me! To...do the same thing he tried with Sairis!” Roland sat across from Daphne in the makeshift command tent that had been hastily erected from what few supplies they’d been able to scavenge in the wake of the wave.
The remains of a scant meal lay atop a tree stump, and they sat around it on chunks of driftwood that had washed up the valley. Daphne sipped weak tea from a canteen and leafed through the letters. They were all water-damaged at the edges, but the center of the roll had remained dry. Together with Sairis’s recounting of the events of the previous evening, they made for damning testimony.
When Marcus refused, Uncle Winthrop sent a man to murder him...to poison him with magic. Because of me. Roland still couldn’t bear to say it aloud. He felt as though he would choke on his pain and fury. “I am going to challenge him to single combat, and then I am going to kill him, Daphne. He has betrayed us in every imaginable way. Uncle Jessup was his own brother, and he—!”
“You will do nothing without my consent,” she said sharply. “Roland, we are in a tricky spot. Just let me think.”
Roland stood up with a growl. He had taken off his armor, but he was still wearing the sweat-soaked linen that he’d worn all day. He glanced towards Sairis, sleeping under a spare coat on one side of the tent.
“He’ll be fine,” said Daphne. “You should get cleaned up.” Gently, she re-rolled the letters and handed them back.
Roland took the papers with an absurd sense of protectiveness. They were not only letters from Uncle Winthrop to Marcus, but also some drafts that Marcus had written and apparently never sent. The sight of his bold, messy script and familiar signature sent a pang straight through Roland’s chest.
“You should get a physician to look at Anton’s leg again as soon as he wakes,” he told Daphne.
The Lamontian prince was asleep a few paces from Sairis, his face pale and clammy in the dim light. Roland hoped he would not lose the leg. He had pushed himself hard on a mangled knee, and the bandage was soaked with blood.
As Roland exited the tent, he saw the line of exhausted officers and advisors waiting to talk to Daphne. She still has hard decisions to make.
Hastafel and a small number of his inner circle remained inside the two forts. Roland did not think it could be more than a hundred men, probably less. Daphne and Lamont’s troops had not yet tested Hastafel’s resolve, preferring to rest and deal with their wounded. With the bulk of his army destroyed and no way to get supplies or reinforcements, Hastafel would weaken, but Roland didn’t like the idea of leaving him in there for long.
What if he makes more golems or calls up monsters from the Shattered Sea?
Roland considered other possibilities as he walked through the late afternoon chill to search for clothes in the makeshift commissary. What if he doesn’t stay in the fort? What if he decides to march on down the pass into the lowlands? How much trouble could he cause with nothing but his magic and an outlaw band?
Roland found the stream where men had been washing off the grime of battle. He stripped off and got busy with a scrub brush and a bar of soap.
To the west, the sun laid a golden track across a peaceful sea. It would set in another couple of hours. We’ll be missing our beds in the fort, then. He had no doubt that some of the officers now speaking to Daphne were advising a full-scale assault tonight or even earlier. No one had seen any archers upon the walls, and it was even possible that Hastafel had made the decision to abandon the forts and ride into Mistala as Roland feared. However, if he decided to stay...
Without access to supplies or reinforcements, that will be a winter’s siege. It will take at least that long to starve him out, and that’s if we make absolutely certain that he is not relieved by sea. Zolsestrian ships will try to reach him, and they may succeed. Our current company is in no way equipped for a siege.
Hastafel might be in a tight place inside the fort, but for the moment, he was sitting on all of their food and supplies. Roland also worried about the non-combatants—squires, cooks armorers, Daphne’s maids and advisors. Roland wondered whether they were barricaded inside their rooms, whether they’d managed to flee down the pass, whether they were in the stockade, whether they were dead.
At least Sairis is safe.
Several of Roland’s fellow soldiers had approached him to ask cautiously after the necromanc
er’s wellbeing. He had saved their lives, and they all knew it. They also saw me kiss him.
No, they didn’t, Roland told himself. I was standing with my back to the lines, and there were a thousand other things to look at.
Another voice scoffed, Their prince talking down a necromancer wasn’t the most interesting thing on the field?
The kiss lasted for two seconds, Roland argued. Alright, maybe five seconds. Anyway, they didn’t see!
They did, his mind insisted. Daphne certainly did if that long-suffering look she gave you was any indication.
She didn’t say anything, though. No one had said anything. No one ever would. They would pretend they hadn’t seen, because...
Roland’s thoughts were interrupted by a signal horn. Hastafel attacking? Roland laced up his trousers at speed and struggled up the riverbank, tucking in his shirt and trying to convince himself that he didn’t feel bruised all over. He shrugged into the coat he’d found, which was too snug across the shoulders. Roland wondered with a pang whose it had been.
The signal horn was still braying the call to arms. Soldiers who’d been asleep on the ground with their heads on their packs were jumping to their feet, blearily searching for weapons. Roland came out of the trees, straining his eyes towards the fort.
But the gates had not opened. Nothing had changed.
With a sense of mounting unease, Roland glanced towards Mount Cairn.
In the distance, the setting sun reflected off the armor of long, orderly lines of troops, switchbacking out of the clouds. The border lords.
This should have been good news. Here were reinforcements with food, fresh weapons, clothing, tents, and other supplies. Here were fresh men and horses to overwhelm Hastafel’s scant troops in the forts or begin a proper siege. This should have been salvation.
Roland thought of Sairis, of Uncle Jessup, and he was not reassured. He looked towards Daphne’s patchwork command tent, at their exhausted men struggling back into battered armor. He thought of their empty bellies. This could get ugly.