“Why should I fear that?”
“The reason is not so hard to guess. It is the same with every man. You fear testing your faith, because it means testing the Most High. Deep in your heart you fear he will fail. If he fails, you are utterly alone in this life and beyond; there is nothing you can believe in anymore.”
Quentin shook his head. “No, Durwin. That is not my fear.”
“Tell me, then.”
Quentin drew a deep breath, glanced at the hermit and then quickly away again. “I am afraid of being the priest king. I cannot say why, but the mere mention of swords and mines fills me with dread. Look at my arm! How can I wield the Shining One with an arm as dead as firewood?”
“It is the same thing in the end, is it not? You fear to accept something the Most High has chosen for you.”
“How is that the same thing?”
“Most assuredly it is. To accept the crown of priest king would mean placing your trust totally in the Most High. It means that you must trust him to know what is best for you, to know you better than you know yourself. It would mean trusting him beyond all trust, even when the way is unclear—especially when the way is unclear.
“When you trust like that, you necessarily test the god’s ability to keep you. You are—we all are—unwilling to make such demands of our gods. If we trust but little, we will be disappointed but little, eh?”
“If I do not believe, but follow anyway, does that not mock the Most High and defeat his will?”
“On the contrary, my friend. To follow without seeing the end— in unbelief, as you say—is really the highest form of trust.”
“It is but blind trust,” objected Quentin. The words of the hermit made sense to him, but he still felt as if he must fight acceptance.
“Not blind trust. Not at all. Those who trust the powerless gods of earth and sky—they trust blindly.
“Quentin, look at me,” the hermit commanded gently. “You cannot serve the Most High without trusting him totally, for there always comes a time when he will put you to the test. He will have all of you or nothing at all. There can be no middle ground. It is a demand that he makes of his followers.”
Both men were quiet for a moment. The great bowl of the valley had deepened into violet dusk. The western peaks still had the faint glimmer of flame at their summits, but that, too, was dying fast.
“Look at it this way,” said Durwin. “Why should you be afraid to test the Most High? He invites it! You see your injured arm as proof against his will. Cannot the one who created the bones also heal them? And if he chooses to raise an orphan acolyte to the crown of the realm, what is to stop him?”
Quentin smiled at the appellation. “You mean that I should go along with this strange business regardless of my own feelings about it.”
“Exactly. Do not seek to hide your doubts and fears, or mask them in any way. Give them to him. Let him take them. They are, after all, part of you.”
Quentin thought for a long time, and then said, “What did you mean earlier when you told Inchkeith not to be afraid?”
Durwin smiled. “More or less what I am telling you now. We must not fear for the Most High; he can take care of himself. We must only look to ourselves that we remain faithful to his call. I know it is much to think about in one piece. It has taken me years to understand these things, and I am asking you to comprehend them in but a few moments.
“Inchkeith does not know the Most High, but he is not an ignorant man. He still feels the fear of believing that something so good and so powerful can exist. And that, as I said before, is the place where most men turn aside.
“But if you go beyond your fears and doubts, and follow anyway— ah! Strange and wonderful things can happen. Yes, orphans can become kings, swords can sprout flames, and great enemies can be laid low at a stroke.”
Quentin did not hear when Durwin left him, so lost in thought was he. But upon looking up into the night sky, now alive with blazing stars, he knew he was alone. His thoughts roiled and swarmed inside him; and rather than soothing his troubled spirit, Durwin’s words had only served to increase the confusion—or so it seemed.
Quentin lay down and wrapped himself in his cloak to watch the glittering stars and to ponder the words of the hermit. He lay for a long time thinking and then slowly drifted into a troubled sleep. As he lay beside the glass-smooth Shennydd Vellyn, he dreamed a dream filled with things both strange and wonderful.
41
The muddy little tributary Myrmior had indicated on the map lay across the path of the advancing Ningaal. It was, as Theido had advised, not a particularly large stream, but it was deep and lay below steep tor-bound banks in a most dense part of Pelgrin. If anyone ever spoke of it at all, it was called Deorkenrill, because of the air of darkness and gloom that surrounded it. Its gray and turgid waters slid quietly along a serpentine course through noisome bogs and stagnant pools until at last it emptied into the mighty Arvin many leagues to the north.
As unwholesome as it was, it was at this very place that Myrmior proposed that the army of the Dragon King make a final stand to try to halt the invaders’ inexorable drive toward Askelon.
The plan was simple, designed to separate the amassed Ningaal into smaller groups that could be nettled more effectively by the defenders. But like most stratagems of war, Myrmior’s plan was not without its element of risk. The weary defenders closed their eyes to the danger, thinking that as it was likely to be their last hope of stopping the Ningaal before they reached the plains of Askelon, no risk was too great.
For many leagues to the north and south there was only one fit place for an army to cross the Deorkenrill: a hollow at the bottom of a slight hill where the stream flattened out slightly to form a natural ford.
“This is better than I could have hoped,” said Myrmior when he saw it. “It was made for our purpose.”
“Well,” remarked Theido, casting an eye around the wood in the gathering dusk, “it is not a place where I would willingly choose to do battle. Let up hope that the Ningaal think the same and do not suspect an ambush here.”
“They have become wary indeed. Their scouts now push far afield and ahead of the main body and are harder to elude,” pointed out Ronsard. “And Theido is right. This is not a place to do battle. Look around you: mud, trees, vines. A man can hardly draw his sword.”
“Brave sirs, that is precisely why this place is best suited for us. Whether they suspect or not, they must cross this water. I propose to make it as difficult as possible. But we must get busy. There is much to be done before first light tomorrow. We will need to work through the night.”
“Very well,” said Theido resolutely. “We have had our say, and have no better plan. We put ourselves at your command. What will you have us do?”
Myrmior looked around him in the misty twilight. A malodorous vapor was rising from the swampy banks of the Deorkenrill to drift slowly among the gray boles of trees.
“There!” He pointed out into the hollow through which the enemy must march to the stream. “We will begin by opening a channel into the hollow. We will fill it tonight and drain it in the morning. The mud should be very thick by then. And have some men start carrying water to that far bank. I would have that slippery with mud as well.”
And so they began. Though they had come unprepared for excavating and carrying water, the Dragon King’s forces turned whatever implements they had to the task. Knights more at home on horseback than on firm ground slogged tirelessly through mud and stinking water, digging with their noble swords or with bare hands, cutting a channel to bring water to the hollow. They worked by the glimmering of torches, listening to the forlorn cries of owls and other creatures drawn by the unnatural activity.
Others climbed the taller trees along either side of the bank and began building platforms of branches and limbs from which archers could rain arrows down upon the enemy. Ropes were wound with vines and stretched from one tree to another. And for Myrmior’s supreme surprise, three of
the largest trees growing at the edge of the near bank were chopped to within inches of falling and their upper branches were tied with ropes to other nearby trees and filled with mud and leaves.
This activity continued through the night, and by the time the sky glimpsed through the irregular patches overhead began lightening, Theido, Ronsard, and Myrmior stood on the far bank, looking at their handiwork.
“All that remains is to drain the hollow once more. And we will need hot coals to use with the arrows,” said Myrmior, very pleased with what he saw.
“Then we wait. We should have a few hours to give the men a rest before the first of the Ningaal come through here,” observed Ronsard.
“I am for it. We have done a labor this night. Let us pray that it has been to good purpose,” replied Theido in a voice strained and rasping from shouting orders through the midnight hours. “We will do what remains and then deploy our men to their appointed places.”
So saying, the lords turned at once to finish their tasks. Then, as the thin light of the morning filtered down into the murky dell, all fell silent. All was ready and there was not the barest hint that everything was not as it should be, that it was not all it seemed. An army waited among the ferns and in the trees and behind the turfy hillocks and was invisible.
The first of the Ningaal to come through the hollow were the scouts. They crossed the ford and passed on unaware of the army lying in wait on either hand. The next to pass were rank upon rank of horsemen, and just as Myrmior had hoped, the horses churned the hollow into a mud pit and made the far bank, already slick with the muck Ronsard’s men had created, a treacherous slide. But they, too, passed on unaware.
Tension seeped into the air. Theido could not understand why the enemy did not feel it, too. His stomach was knotted, and his nerves felt stretched as tight as bowstrings. Though he could not see them from where he hunched among the musty ferns, he knew his men must feel the same. Willing himself to remain calm, he waited.
The sun had marched to midday when the first of the footmen started across the ford. Hundreds of men, line upon line, waded through the waist-deep water and slithered up the far bank with difficulty. Theido could see them as they poured into the hollow and noted with satisfaction that the soldiers moved more slowly now as the mire deepened and sucked at their feet.
He heard a sound and a swift shout, and suddenly a horse and rider appeared at the edge of the ford. It was a warlord on his black steed, and Theido could tell he was unhappy with the time it was taking the soldiers to cross the stream. Without understanding the crude language at all, Theido knew that he was ordering his men to move along quickly; it was exactly what he would have done in the same situation.
The warlord sat straight in the saddle and looked long up and down Deorkenrill. Theido held his breath. Had the warlord spotted something amiss? Was their trap discovered?
But the grim lord swung his horse around and shouted once more to the scores of footmen trudging through the fen. Then he plunged through the stream and disappeared on the other side.
Nin’s soldiers were crossing in masses now, a hundred at a time. They staggered muddily to the ford and plunged in, then flung themselves up the far bank like fish flopping out of water.
Another warlord appeared, surrounded by twenty horsemen. He waited, as the other had, watching the men cross the stream, and then splashed across.
The forest echoed to the sound of something ponderous and heavy crashing through the underbrush. The wagons! thought Theido. Get ready!
The wagons were what they had been waiting for. According to Myrmior’s knowledge of the movements of the Ningaal, they most often traveled with their weapons and supplies in the wagons, half of their troops going before and the rest after. It was the second half of the Ningaal host that the defenders would attack.
Theido peered cautiously through the man-high ferns to see the first of the heavy wagons mired nearly to its axles in the hollow, now trampled into a swampy bog by the hundreds of feet of men and horses that had passed before. Around each wheel twenty or so footmen grunted and strained to push the wagon along, and the four-horse team leaned into the harness to the cracking whip of the driver.
Theido’s hand sought the hilt of his sword. He knew that even now a thousand arrows were being notched to their strings in anticipation of the signal that would not be long delayed. Each archer readied his cannikin of live coals and arrows with shafts wrapped in cloth soaked in palbah—flammable spirits. Myrmior, seeing Theido’s unconscious move, placed a hand on his arm and whispered, “Not yet. Give the others time to move up into position, and allow those who have passed on to distance themselves from the ambush.”
Theido took his hand away from his sword hilt and drew it across his perspiring face. He let his breath escape between clenched teeth.
The Ningaal, by sheer force of numbers, had succeeded in hauling their wagons to the brink of the ford, but now other wagons were entering the hollow and succumbing to the morass. Shortly, the hollow was filled with wagons hopelessly enmired and hundreds of soldiers clustering around them in an effort to budge them along.
“Now!” whispered Myrmior shrilly. “Do it now!”
Theido drew his sword silently and stepped calmly from the ferns. He raised his sword, knowing that all eyes were now on him. He dropped his arm, and suddenly the air was filled with a sound like an enormous flock of birds taking flight from the treetops. The dim air of the dank dell was instantly alight with darting flames arcing to earth like stars falling from on high.
A confused cry of alarm went up from the unsuspecting Ningaal as the flaming arrows found their marks: the wagons. In moments the wains were afire and the befuddled soldiers were overwhelmed with terror. The Dragon King’s archers then hailed down arrows upon the enemy without mercy. Ningaal dropped where they stood, never seeing their assailants nor hearing the sting that felled them.
The rout had only begun, however, when it was turned by the appearance of the two remaining warlords. One came pounding out of the wood, his bodyguard with him. Shouts rang out and orders flew, and in moments the chaos had resolved itself, though still the larger part of the Ningaal did not have weapons, confined as they were in several of the burning wagons.
That was soon remedied. A group of soldiers, in response to one warlord’s command, rushed upon one of the burning wagons, jumped into the flames, and began hurling weapons to their comrades. When one was overcome by fire, another leaped in to take his place.
The other warlord with his mounted bodyguard pointed his sword across the stream, and his warriors came galloping across the ford toward where Theido and Myrmior waited with a dozen knights. Arrows took two from their saddles at midstream. Another came on, and Theido found himself suddenly ducking savage thrusts that chopped the ferns and sent greenery flying.
He threw up his sword to parry the slicing blows and grabbed the enemy horse’s bridle, pulling its head down. The animal went to its knees, and Theido lunged at the rider, knocking him from the saddle. Theido’s poniard did its work before the warrior could disengage himself from his thrashing mount.
The murky wood now rang with the sound of battle. Men shouted their battle cries and fell to with a fury. Swords struck upon shield and helmet; axes whirled and bit, splintering anything that sought to stay the deadly blades. Theido stepped away from the riderless horse beside him and saw a dozen Ningaal axemen splashing toward him—some screaming, the handles of their axes still smoldering in their grasp.
He caught the first one in the throat as the warrior raised his axe. But he had not withdrawn the blade when a second was upon him. He saw the glint of the blade swing up, and he raised his shield, expecting his arm to be crushed by the impending blow.
But the blow never came. Theido dodged aside and saw Ronsard’s familiar face beside him, grimly determined, his sword streaming with blood as the wounded man at his feet writhed in agony. Behind Ronsard a host of knights stormed out of the wood where they had been concealed.
“I will take a warlord!” shouted Ronsard, leaping into the saddle so recently vacated by the rider at Theido’s feet.
The lord high marshal cut down two charging Ningaal as he flew across Deorkenrill; the dark water now bore the corpses of the enemy by the score.
The warlord, wearing a helm of white horsehide with a plume of a horse’s tail, whirled his mount around to meet Ronsard’s charge with lively skill. Ronsard’s sword flashed and flashed again; each time the warlord met his thrust and turned it aside. Neither could gain the advantage, and soon Ronsard, surrounded by enemy footmen, was forced to break off the attack and scamper once more across the stream lest he be hauled from the saddle and stabbed through a crease in his armor.
The archers poured their arrows upon the battlefield in a deadly rain. Flight after flight streaked down, and Ningaal fell by the score. The unhappy waters of the Deorkenrill flowed red with the blood of the dead. And on the far bank—that slimy incline of a death trap—the fallen lay like corded wood. In the quagmire of the hollow, the living surged ahead over the bodies of their comrades.
Myrmior had planned the fight well, and the Ningaal struggled in vain to gain the advantage. Myrmior dashed along the far bank, calling out orders and strengthening the position of the defenders where necessary and directing the archers to new and threatening targets as they emerged from the dim wood. Had there been more time, or had the Dragon King’s forces been larger, it would have turned out a day of victory for the stouthearted defenders. But it was not to be.
A mighty shout went up from behind the defender’s position. It rang in the dell like thunder, and even the most dauntless among the knights felt his blood chilled. It was the howl of the raging Ningaal who had passed over Deorkenrill, now returning, summoned by the sounds of battle. In moments the Dragon King’s forces were surrounded and would have been swept away instantly; but Myrmior, ever alert to the unexpected, had saved one last trick.
In the Hall of the Dragon King Page 64