by Kate Elliott
“Liath!” he said, emphatically, and found he could sit up. The movement dizzied him. Pain stabbed in his chest. He clutched the pallet he sat on and waited for the agony to quiet, as it did. He recalled the process of healing well enough. He had gone through this torment more than once. It would swell and ebb in stages until he was as good as before.
He touched his damaged throat, the voice that had never entirely healed.
Or almost as good as before.
It was still better than being dead.
“Sanglant!” Liath had braided her hair back, and her face was clean. It shone with joy. She grasped his hands.
“A powerful spell,” remarked the shaman, behind her. Her mare’s body filled half the space of the tent, and she loomed ominously over the raised pallet that rested on the ground before her. A slight shape lay curled up on the pallet. It was Blessing, unhurt but utterly slack. Normally Blessing slept with her hands closed into fists, tucked up against her chin; now she lay like a corpse.
“What have you done to my daughter?” he demanded.
Liath recoiled slightly, a movement checked immediately but not so quickly that he didn’t notice that her first instinct had been to pull away from his anger.
“Has she cast a spell on her?”
“Nay, love, she’s done nothing.”
“Then why does she lie there like a body that’s had its soul torn from it?”
“I pray you, Sanglant, do not speak such ill-omened words! Blessing fell into this stupor at about the same time I fell to Earth, or so we believe. She spoke, she said that she heard me and that I was all on fire. Ai, God.” The words were spoken regretfully. “She’s so big. Has it really been four years?”
“Three years! Four years! I’m no cleric to keep track. To me it seemed like an eternity, falling into the pit, but perhaps you suffered less hardship separated from me than I did from you!”
She took a step back, surprised by his anger, as was he. But it just kept boiling up, and boiling up, and he couldn’t stop it.
“How do you know this creature is not our enemy? She refused to help me find Blessing. Now I find Blessing here, in her clutches. How can you know that she did not injure our daughter?”
“Her people rescued Blessing from this man called Bulkezu. Blessing’s own servant Anna told me the story. Anna? Anna!”
“She is gone to fetch water, Bright One,” said the healer. Sanglant had not noticed her, but she sat by the entrance on a cushion, hands folded in her lap.
“Anna could have been bewitched—”
“She seemed a practical enough girl to me. Here now, love.” Liath eased up beside him and set her hands on his shoulders. He knew her expressions intimately; he saw that she was concerned, even apprehensive, and—surely—treating him as if he were a flustered hound that needed to be calmed before it could be settled for the night in its kennel. “You’re not healed yet. You should lie down and rest.”
“Why are you taking their side against me?”
That offended her, and she stiffened, shoulders going rigid as her chin lifted. “I take no one’s side. I am as much a prisoner, or a guest, of the Horse people as you are. As our daughter is. I have little more than a year to plan a great undertaking. I will ally with whom I must in order to stop Anne from bringing down upon us a cataclysm of such terrible strength and breadth that—God Above, Sanglant! You know what I speak of! You were at Verna. Why are you arguing with me?”
For the instant it takes to draw in a breath, a shimmering aura of flame trembled around her as though she were about to flower with wings of flame. This Liath had a terrible power. She was somehow the same woman who had vanished from Verna and yet now something else entirely, a creature not quite human and not quite the beautiful, graceful, scholarly, yet fragile woman he had married. The one he had saved from Hugh, from Henry’s wrath, from life as a fugitive.
The one who had needed him.
This Liath had killed Bulkezu with a single shot and driven off a pair of griffins with a blazing ring of fire. She spoke with the ancient centaur shaman as with an equal. She stared at him now forthrightly, her gaze a challenge.
“I don’t know you,” he said.
XVIII
GRIM’S DIKE
1
THE country north of Hefenfelthe was rich and sweet, as green as any land Stronghand had ever seen, laced with fordable rivers and manifold streams, and so gentle that it placed few obstacles in the path of his army. Spring brought frequent showers, but although it rained one day out of three, they made good time and met with occasional, if stiff, resistance as they marched north on the trail of the queen. Mostly they found abandoned villages and empty byres.
“The scouts have returned!” called Tenth Son, who marched with the vanguard.
Human outriders called down the line of march and the army creaked to a halt at a stagger as word reached the ranks behind. The van had come to the top of one of those gentle, if long, slopes that allowed Stronghand to survey the line of his army where it snaked back along the ancient Dariyan road. The paved road made their passage swift, although it exposed them to attacks from the surrounding woodland.
The RockChildren marched in even ranks, five abreast, each unit bearing the standard representing their tribe. Rikin’s brothers were given pride of place at the front and the rear, while Hakonin guarded the wagons with their precious siege engines, supplies, extra weapons, treasure and loot, and the ironworks that could be set up as forges in a semipermanent camp. Like rowing, pulling the wagons strengthened a warrior on those days when there wasn’t any fighting to be had. The other tribes took their places in the order of march according to the honor they had earned in the last battle or skirmish, a shifting dance of bragging rights that kept the soldiers eager. Even the human levies were permitted to compete, and in truth their presence made his own people fight harder. None wished to be an object of ridicule by having killed fewer of the enemy or gathered less loot than the Soft Ones.
“There they are,” said Tenth Son on the seventh day out of Hefenfelthe, as the sun neared the zenith.
Stronghand moved up to the front with Hakonin’s chief, Papa Otto, and the young Hessi interpreter beside him. The scouts approached at a gallop along the road. Eight had been sent out. Only five were returning.
Outriders cantered forward to meet them and soon a dozen soldiers pulled up in front of the vanguard. The five scouts dismounted. Their mounts went eagerly to the human grooms who would walk and cool down the blown horses. Only horses bred on the fjords ever really became used to the smell of the RockChildren.
One of the scouts stepped forward to give his report; the gripping beast pattern decorating his torso marked him as a Hakonin son.
“A substantial force moves northeast off to the west of us. They fly the banner of the queen’s stag and one of a white boar. They’ll soon cross this road. If they get ahead of us we’ve worse to face ahead. There are fortifications lying across our path, a line of ditches and embankments. The land narrows. There are steep wooded hills to one side and marsh to the other, but a corridor down the middle. That’s where the fortifications lie.”
“Are they newly built?” asked Stronghand.
“They’re old.”
Stronghand gestured. Word was passed down to the thirtieth rank, where Alban volunteers marched.
“You trust these turncoats?” asked the Hakonin scout. By the markings on the scout’s shoulder, Stronghand identified him as First Son of a Thirteenth Litter.
“These are not turncoats, First Son. They had no coats to turn. They were slaves. Now they seek honor and position in my army because they had none before nor any chance to try.”
“Yet they are soft.” First Son bared his teeth to show the flash of jewels, earned in Stronghand’s battles. He was sharp, and bold, and independent. Worth watching, for good or for ill.
“They may be,” agreed Stronghand. “They have yet to prove themselves.”
A pair of men, one y
oung and one gray, trotted up. Both had knowledge of this country, so they claimed.
“What are you called?” asked Stronghand, because he knew that with humankind, names give power and knowing the name of another brings power to the one who names.
The older man spoke with an odd accent. “I am named Ediki. That is my true name, though my master called me Wulf in the manner of his people. I was born in the fen country. When I was a lad, the Alban lord of Weorod captured me and sold me as a slave into the great city. We’re close by the manor and lands of Weorod now. This lad goes by the name Erling. His mother was my kinswoman. She was taken away even before I was, but he was born and raised in the city. From her, he knows a bit of lore.”
“I will call you the name you were born with, Ediki. Tell him of the fortifications.”
Ediki listened intently, nodding all the while, as First Son spoke and Yeshu translated. “Yes, that’s right where the lord of Weorod makes his home. The earthworks are called Grim’s Dike and the Imps. Built in my grandmother’s grandmother’s time by the winter queen of Lindale, called Aelfroth. Her brothers warred against her out of the western highlands. She built earth walls to hold them back.”
Erling scratched the slave brand that scarred his cheek, whether because it itched or because he was nervous, Stronghand could not tell. Unlike Ediki, he wasn’t small and dark but had the height and fairness common among the tall, blond Albans. “My mam said that Grim’s Dike was built by the old southerns, the iron soldiers, them who called themselves Dariyans and once ruled this land before the Albans came. She said it was built to stop the Albans who was then invading.”
Ediki shrugged. “If it were, it didn’t hold them back, did it? Maybe the lad’s right. Maybe I am.”
“When the Albans invaded? You are not an Alban?”
“The fair ones? No. They are latecomers, those. We are the true people. This is our land from the first days. The Albans are no friends of ours.” He looked up at Stronghand. With his broad chest and burly shoulders and coal black hair, tied back with a strip of leather, Ediki looked more like a bog spirit than a man, but his gaze was keen and his hands steady. If he feared the RockChildren, he knew how to hide it. “Lord, only the queen’s uncle has the right to fly the sigil of the boar. If this high lord and his army reach Grim and the Imps first, we’ll fight hard and ugly to get past them, I’m thinking. The lord of Weorod will have fighting men as well, to support him. If the high lord reinforces the queen—then she’ll be as strong as she can be.”
Stronghand nodded. “Therefore we must reach the fortifications first and set our own positions.”
“There’s a small force holding them already,” added First Son. “This lord of Weorod the slave speaks of.”
Stronghand grinned, baring his teeth in a challenge. “‘The slave’ is a slave no more but a soldier in my army. Speed is what matters now. We’ll march at double time, hit them in force front on while First Son leads his Hakonin brothers around through the forest to flank them. If he can.”
First Son grinned in response, accepting the challenge.
The two Imps were smaller ramparts placed to hold the low ground between the forest, their angle and position buttressed by the tangle of streams that interlaced this country, but whatever band was holding Grim’s Dike hadn’t the manpower to hold these westerly ramparts as well, so it was an easy task to swarm over them and march east as the afternoon progressed.
“Will we leave men to hold the lesser dikes?” asked Tenth Brother. Stronghand shook his head. “No. We’ll see the Worth of our Alban allies proved today. Let everyone advance.”
The sun lay behind them. Their shadows drew long and longer as they spread into battle order and advanced at a trot on the last great rampart. Grim’s Dike was grim indeed, the ramparts cunningly positioned to stretch across grassy heath with, according to Ediki, one end thrust into thick oak and ash woods and the other dabbling its toes in lowland marsh. From the vantage afforded by their approach, however, Grim’s Dike stretched out to either side far beyond what a man could see, a formidable obstacle with the great ditch gaping before them and the embankment rising high above. Ediki reckoned it at least two leagues in length. Behind it lay Weorod, where Ediki had been captured as a young man and sold into slavery in the distant city. Threads of smoke curled up from fires in that manor—hearth fires, perhaps, or forges as the Albans prepared for war.
First Son and his strike troop had already vanished into the forest as Stronghand raised his standard to signal the attack, nothing more complicated than a straightforward assault against massively inferior forces. He allowed Vitningsey to lead the charge and placed himself in the second rank. In silence they bent low and ran with the dogs loping beside them. These soldiers were limber and strong, so it was easy for them to leap down into the ditch and no difficult feat to scramble up the steep-sided embankment; they raised their shields to cover their heads as arrows and javelins rained down on them, but even such weapons as got through did little damage to their tough skin. The Albans guarding the rampart boasted bronze and stone weapons but evidently no steel, and while steel or iron could cleave the hide of one of his warriors, not much else would.
The defenders were few enough that it was hopeless in any case. He clambered up the embankment and kicked aside a bloody body as the first wave went over the top and, in silence, did their work. Only the screams of hapless men and the battering of spear and ax against shields and flesh accompanied the keening of the wind. As he reached the top, troubled by nothing more than a single arrow rolling down the slope past him, he saw both the battle unfolding and the landscape beyond. Within the haze made by the sun’s slanting rays casting gold across the heath he glimpsed a distant cluster of buildings, ringed by a low stockade and surrounded by fields and pasture. Tiny figures fled the estate with nothing more than what they could carry. Below, the remaining Alban defenders, not more than three score, formed into tight groups, shields held firm as those who had survived the initial assault attempted to regroup and retreat. They were determined, but they could not last long.
Far behind, he heard a horn blast.
The Alban lord and his army were approaching quickly. For his plan to work, he needed control of the dike at once.
First Son’s force burst out of the trees and hit the Alban defenders from the rear, just as he had intended. The Alban shield wall collapsed and the dogs went to work finishing off the wounded. Around him, his army flowed over the rampart and down like floodwaters breaching an embankment. Ten hundreds, as Alain would say, in the way that the Wendish ordered men. He needed no exact count to understand that while he had a large army, he had been forced to leave a second group as large to garrison Hefenfelthe and the surrounding countryside. Forty ships had sailed north so that he might have reinforcements massed to come in off the sea—if he could reach the sea. From the embankment he had a better view of the countryside to the northeast where the land sank into a flat marshy ground that seemed to go on forever, treeless, open, and utterly bleak. He saw no shelter for his army, no way to approach with stealth, no cover at all.
Yet out there in those trackless fens, the queen of Alba sheltered.
“My lord, we are ready.” Out of breath, Ediki stopped beside him with the two-score volunteers, First Son’s turncoats, the men who had once been slaves. They were tough, but the run and the climb had winded them. Were they strong enough to do what he needed?
“You know what risk you run,” he said. “You know what will happen if you fail?”
“We know, my lord. We know what you have promised us. It is worth the risk. We have no love for those who ground us down.” Ediki spat on the corpse that lay next to Stronghand’s feet, a blond youth not so very old; his chin had been smashed in by an ax-blow, but it was the spear thrust that had disemboweled him that had killed him. “They are not even my kinfolk—these ones. They came from over the sea.”
“Just as we did,” said Stronghand.
“No offense
meant, my lord,” said Ediki as the other Albans murmured. A few of them, like Ediki, were short and stocky, with dark hair and brown eyes, but the rest had the height and pale coloring of the Albans. “But it was the Albans who drove my ancestors into the hills and the marsh in the long ago days.”
“They raped my mother,” Erling said suddenly in the way of a man meaning to prove himself by displaying his anger. “I’m a bastard, and a slave woman’s son. You are the only man—” He hesitated as if seeing Stronghand for the first time. After so much time spent among humankind, Stronghand knew what disturbed them most about his appearance: the claws thrust out from the backs of his bony hands; the scaled copper of his flesh; his black slit eyes, the braid of coarse white hair, and the jewels that flashed when he bared his teeth. So like a man and yet not a man. Erling recovered himself and floundered onward. “—the only lord who has offered me anything but chains and the bite of his whip.”
“So I am,” Stronghand agreed. “And so I promised. Let the slave become the master, and the master become the slave.”
Half a dozen of his soldiers hurried up from below, carrying mail and bloody tunics and open-faced helms taken off the dead men. “Put on what you can,” said Stronghand, “and take your places. We haven’t much time.”
His army had all crossed over the dike and arrayed themselves according to his plan, a third kneeling in staggered ranks just below the crest, a third running back to invest the palisade and manor house, and the others split onto either flank. An entire hundred crept back into the forest under First Son’s command, backtracking.
He knelt beside Ediki, letting the old man conceal him with one of the rectangular Alban shields. His Alban volunteers now wore the outward garb of the men who had once defended the dike.
Two banners bobbed into view, fluttering with the sun’s light streaming across them: the queen’s stag and its attendant boar. No wolf’s head glittered among the host, but a man rode at the forefront wearing a helm ornamented with the tusks and snout of a boar. His army came in good order, well disciplined and confident. He estimated there were five or six hundreds of them, enough to inflict real damage if it came to a pitched fight. They could see from the dirt churned up by the passage of the Eika army that a large force had moved across this ground ahead of them.