He could probably grab its mane and hang on long enough for someone to get a belt or something around its neck. The horse’s lips brushed his arm, gently as human fingers, and softer. Gird reached up to a tangle of yellow-gray mane that felt surprisingly silky. The horse yanked its head up, and Gird came to his feet. Everyone was watching him, silently. He looked at them, shrugged, and stroked the horse’s neck. It stretched its head out, shook it sideways, and gave an elaborate yawn, showing a mouthful of heavy, slightly yellow teeth. Gird stroked its shoulder and barrel. He loved the feel of a healthy animal, and although this one had looked dirty from a distance, the coat felt sleek and clean under his hands. It must be someone’s stray.
He found himself atop the horse bareback, holding the rope of an improvised halter, hardly aware of the sequence that put him there. The horse had sidled this way and backed that way until Gird had had to climb on a rock to keep stroking that sleek coat; he had wanted to keep stroking it. Then in some way the horse had indicated an itch, a flybite, on the opposite shoulder, and Gird had leaned across to scratch it, and there was a fly biting lower down, and he had leaned farther—and found himself lying belly-down across the horse’s back. It had stood motionless until he made the obvious move of throwing a leg over.
It was much easier to see, from up here. He could see all the cohort beside him, and the ones ahead and behind. He could imagine how much easier this would make guiding a battle. But he had never imagined the effect of horseback riding on the unaccustomed rider. At first he was tense, then he relaxed and enjoyed it, and then—all too soon—his muscles and tendons began to complain. About midafternoon, he couldn’t stand any more of it, and managed to slide off—which was harder than he’d supposed. His feet burned and tingled unpleasantly, until he walked the blood back out of them. The horse followed Gird as if he were tied, although Gird had forgotten to take hold of the rope.
He climbed on again the next morning. He was stiff in places he had never been stiff, but the horse had found another rock to stand beside. His legs loosened up quickly; he found the rocking motion pleasant. Something about the feel of the gray horse between his legs gave him confidence. He wondered if this was what the horse nomads felt, what made them raiders and not farmers. Of course, they rode real horses, war horses, and not gentle old carthorses. The back under him heaved a little, and Gird grabbed for the mane. Surely the horse had not heard his thought, and taken insult! He tried to think of something complimentary, just in case, and was rewarded with a relaxed back and springy walk. His original intent, in coming north again, was to intercept the king’s western movement at a site where the ground gave him advantage. The king, however, had recognized that same situation, and put his army to a forced march to intercept Gird’s. Unluckily for Gird, the runners who would have brought him this information were captured. If he had not chosen to ride, for the first time, out beyond his scouts, he would have led them into a trap. As it was, the gray horse stopped with a snort, planting its feet firmly in the road, and refused to budge. When Gird tried to swing off, it whirled, nearly unseating him, and then started smartly back down the trail at his first experience of a trot. He clung to the mane desperately, afraid to fall at that speed; when it slowed, where his forward scouts were, they had taken that return as an alarm.
“I don’t know,” Gird said, glad to slide down now that the horse was standing still. It looked past him back up the trail, and snorted. “It saw something it didn’t like; animals can smell and hear better than we can.”
His scouts slid forward, to reappear not long after with word of a large enemy force lying right across the route Gird had planned to take. Gird looked at his maps again. Any other route to the same ground would take them several more days, and the enemy might easily trace them and reposition themselves. Straight ahead he might get a slight advantage from a slope, but he’d have to engage in woods where the pikes were far less handy than swords. He frowned. Back down their trace a half-day or so was a passable field, a large natural meadow, backed by a steep forested ridge behind several lower hills. They had come the long way through it, to avoid the hills, but he could hide several cohorts back there.
It was the best he could do, and it would do only if the enemy decided to come after them; they could not sit for long without starving. He gave his orders, and then had someone give him a leg back up onto the horse. Old worn-out horse it might be, but it had saved him, and maybe the war. He stroked its neck, as he waited for the last cohort to reverse. Strange that an old carthorse should be so willing to carry an untrained rider, and so gently, but he would be foolish to question such good fortune. The horse heaved a huge sigh, and butted his foot with its soft nose. Gird scratched its withers, and his own head, contented for the moment.
His army reversed and marched back down its trace without attracting immediate mounted pursuit—the only kind Gird feared. They were on his new-chosen field a little after midday. It was not as good as he remembered: there were bramble patches near a small creek, and muddy areas under the fresh green grass. But such as it was, he had no choice. He moved his army back, under the edge of the trees, to encamp, sent his scouts well out, and set to work to improve the site as best he could. By nightfall, he had word that the enemy was coming, on more than one trail. The largest group followed his own trace, but another was moving in from the northeast, on one of the alternate trails. So, he thought. He had been right—no escape that way, even if he’d tried it.
Chapter Thirty
In the predawn stillness, he could hear a single bird calling from far away, high on the hill’s slope. His army slept. As quietly as he could, Gird made his way past the banked firepits, past the line of sentries, to whom he nodded without speaking, and started up the hill. Here, beyond the camp, he walked through layers of fresh summer scents, the night smells of open country. A patch of pale tiroc flowers poured out heavy sweetness; in the hot daytime sun, they hardly had an odor. Down from the heights came a waft of cedar, a sharp bite of wild thyme. A goat had brushed against the bushes here; its sharp pungency banished the other smells for a moment, until he’d climbed past it.
Ahead, the hill was dark against the early dawn glow. Something rustled in the bushes, a frantic frightened scurry as some small animal fled. The bird called again, closer now. It was no bird he knew, with that exquisite rippling flow of music. Gird looked back. Light had seeped into the upper sky, and far to the west the land began to show its shape, the hilltops their color. He climbed on, very aware of the smells and sounds, the feel of the cool air on his bare arms, the texture of the leaves that brushed against him, the feel of the stone or soil beneath his feet.
He came to the hilltop sooner than he expected. Behind, below, the ragged and smelly army lay hidden in shadow. He heard a distant clatter of pots, and wondered what the cooks would find to put in them. More roots and herbs, no doubt, and they still had two sacks of meal. Not much for a whole army. But morning hunger had been part of his life from childhood; farmers were always out working at dawn. He had this brief, private moment before the day’s cares.
Far over the rim of the world, the sun rose up, the light by which truth could be seen, as Esea’s priest had named it. Against the low slanting light, Gird saw the myriad furred tufts of grass, rose-gold, forming a dancing curtain of rose, veiling the sun’s impossible brilliance, transmuting it to grace and delicacy. He stood bemused, as he had once long ago on his farm, on that silver starlit evening. All was gold now, gold and rose together, shifting veils softening piercing brilliance; the scent of it rose up around him, a column of rose-gold incense. He had just time to think This is a vision, when the hill slipped out from under him and he hung suspended in gold and rose draperies. Now he looked west again, over the land new-lit by the sun, where soft gold light filled the valleys like wine, and a harder radiance chiseled the hilltops into clean, unblurred beauty. Despite the haze of gold, he could see far, to the distant mountains on the edge of Finaarenis. He had dreamed of them as cold,
gray, uncaring crags, but now they stood serene and gracious, great castles awaiting their lords. He seemed to see within them, to the arched and echoing halls where the rockfolk harped and sang and crafted jewels and gold into treasures worthy of such castles. Now he looked north, across the light, to the great river and beyond, seeing at a glance all its laughing little tributaries, and the great loom of the moors and the broad steppes.
There the horse nomads roamed, with bright embroidery on their boots, narrow streamers blowing from poles by their tents, herds of shining horses. Above them romped the Windsteed, flaunting a cloudy tail, and broad across the grassland the Mare of Plenty ranged on tireless hooves. Behind her, grass sprang tall and green, and her hoofprints filled with clear water.
He would have been frightened if it had been possible; he retained enough of his wit to know that. But it was not possible. He lay quiet in the gold and rosy veils, looking where he was bid, seeing the land as it was, as the gods saw it, as it could be: in the broad light of day, peaceful villages of farmers, orchards restored and fields once more fertile. Flocks of sheep on the hillsides, herds of cattle in river meadows. A market fair, in some town that might be built where a burnt village had been, with fair measures given, and fair weights enforced. Children splashing in a shallow ford, a woman riding a horse, a bright helm on her head, cottages with tight roofs and mended walls, rows of bright flowers. The vision pierced his heart, brought scalding tears to his eyes. This—he had almost forgotten—this was what he wanted, not an obedient army, helpful farmers, even victory in battle, but this peace, this plenty, this justice.
With the tears came his release from the dream. He felt himself falling, but slowly, like goosedown or a dandelion tuft; felt gentle arms around him; heard a murmuring voice he could not quite follow. Flower petals drummed feathersoft on his bare arms, against his face, drying his tears, and when he came to himself, he was standing in a drift as white as snow in the broad morning sun. He reached his arms into the cool petals, lifted them, buried his face in them. Alyanya’s sign, it had to be—but beneath the fragrance was a faint bitter tang of cold wet earth in autumn. Promise and warning, then, and he but a peasant. Laughter rang about him, so joyous that he smiled before he realized the sound had been within him.
“Dammit!” he burst out, unthinking. “You won’t ever make anything simple!”
And the voice that answered him then was cold, clean and precise as starlight.
—No. I did not make anything simple.—
Gird’s knees gave way, and he fell into the flowers. That was not Alyanya, by any reckoning, and he could not pretend to himself not to know who it was. Ask for a word from the gods, he thought crazily, and beware—
But the knowledge he had asked for without really wanting it was pouring into his head, overfilling it as if someone stuffed a sack with wool.
Promise: it was possible to win that peace for his people.
Warning: it was not his peace.
His fault? he wondered.
No answer, only certainty. All the symbols the priest had taught him, all the gnomes had shared of their lore, flickered through his mind as quickly as the counters on a trader’s account board, a rapid clicking that ended with the crashing finality of stone falling onto stone. As it was now, as reality lay, that peace was possible, but he was forfeit.
He had thought he did not care, until he knew it was certain. Now, in a silence he realized was more than normal, he lay face down in Alyanya’s flowers and had leisure to consider if he meant in truth what he had said so often. I would give my life, he’d said. I will risk, he’d said. I could be killed as easy as you, he’d said to frightened yeomen.
But that had been risk; the spear might thrust in his gut, or not. The sword might slice another’s neck. So far it always had been someone else, and he knew now he’d half-expected it always would be.
Now… certainly die? Never enjoy that peace? Never sit with his grandchildren around him, telling his tales of the old days?
He was suspended again, this time in the vast caverns of his own mind: cold, darkness, fear beneath him, and nothing at all above. If he fell now nothing would slow his fall; he would not land in Alyanya’s flowers. His own mind—he knew it was that, and no gods’ gift of vision—painted all too vividly a picture of the land after his fall. No peace, but the ravages of the magelords, the scavenging of brigands. More dead bodies bloated in the fields for crows to pick clean; babies and children and young and old: he saw all their faces. Innocent beasts, cows and horses and sheep, lame and wounded, wandering prey for folokai and wolves. And he saw his own death then, the death of an old man, bald and feeble, when he could no longer forage from his hideout in distant caves: he fell to folokai, and the crows followed.
Death either way, then. It should be easy, he told himself fiercely, to buy that peace with an early death. It was not easy. On his tongue he tasted the ale he would not drink, the roast he would not eat, and in his hands he felt the warm bodies of the children— o, most bitter!—he would never hold. It is not easy! he screamed silently into silence. His own mind replied tartly that nothing was easy, nor ever had been—and he opened his eyes and blinked against the snowy petals.
It was not easy, but he had done other things that were not easy. He had seen his mother die, and Mali that he loved, and his daughter near death at his feet. He had seen the best friend of his youth trampled under the lords’ horses; he had seen wells poisoned and fields burnt barren. He took a deep breath, holding all these things in his mind, all the pain he could remember, all the love he’d had for family and beasts and trees and land—love that no one else ever knew, because he could not speak it. He tossed it high, with his hope for life. And felt it taken, a vast weight he had not known he carried.
The petals vanished, though he could feel their softness yet, and their perfume eased his breathing. He was all alone on the hilltop, though he heard someone crashing through the bushes on the upward trail.
“Gird! Marshal-general!” One of the newer yeomen, to whom that title came naturally. Gird took a breath, and hoped his face did not show all that had happened.
“What?” he called back, hearing in his voice a curious combination of irritation and joy.
“They’re coming! They’re already out of the wood!”
Gird swung to look north, and they certainly were. Horsemen first, the low sun winking on polished armor and bit chains, gleaming on the horses themselves, gilding the colors of banners and streamers and bright clothing. Some of those were surely mage-lords. Behind them, shadowy in the dust already beginning to rise at the edge of the wood, were the foot soldiers, rank after rank. His mouth dried. How many hundreds did they have? He had thought he had more—one thousand, two thousands, three… The horsemen halted just far enough out on the meadow to let the infantry deploy behind them. Gird searched the wood on the far slope for the archers they would surely have sense enough to send out in a flanking movement. His own archers were supposed to be up on the end of the ridge, guarding against archers getting into his rear. He hoped they were alert. He had no fear of the horses or foot soldiers getting back there; the ridge behind him to the south was safe as a wall.
Below him, he heard his own army coming into order. He started down the hill, hoping the enemy had not spotted him atop the hill. He put his hand up to his hair, thankful that he hadn’t put on his salvaged helmet yet.
At the foot of the hill, the gray carthorse stood as if it were waiting for him. Someone had found a saddle for it, and a bridle. Even so, the horse had positioned itself beside a rock. Gird climbed on, wondering even as he did why he found it so natural that the horse was making itself useful. Cob came running up with his helmet, and offered a sword. Gird shook his head. He hadn’t learned to use a sword yet, and a battle was no time to try something new. The horse was new enough.
His cohorts had formed; he rode past them, checking with each marshal. The faces blurred in his eyes; his mouth found the right names by some ins
tinct, but only Rahi’s stood out distinctly. She gave him her broad smile, and the gray horse bobbed its head. Rahi’s cohort laughed. He wanted to tell her, and no one else, what the god had told him, but he could not. That kind of knowledge had to be borne alone. He noticed, without really thinking about it, that over half of his yeomen had managed to find a blue shirt to wear; it was beginning to look like a uniform.
For a time it seemed that the enemy might simply stand on the far side of the field and stare at them, but after a time they moved forward. On the north, the broad-topped wooded ridge sloped directly into the meadow, but on the south, Gird’s side, three distinct low hills lay between the sharp southern ridge and the more level grass, with the sluggish creek running east to west along it.
Gird had done what he could in the limited time he had to make this ground as favorable as possible. He had archers on the north face of all three hills, as well as the blunt end of the southern ridge. He had had pits dug, in the mucky ground near the creek, lightly covered with wattle and strewn with grass. This would, he hoped, make both cavalry and foot charges harder, and prevent easy flanking of his troop. His main force was arrayed before and between the two more eastern hills; the western hill seemed undefended, but in addition to archers had several natural hazards. Against the lords’ reputed magicks, he had no defense but Arranha’s comment that a mage could not counter what he did not expect. He hoped they would not expect the small, doomed, but very eager group that he had left well hidden on the south face of that north slope, directly in the enemy’s rear, with orders to stay hidden until the lords were busy with their magic elsewhere.
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