by Andre Norton
“The winged one reports that you have come to me bearing a Blood Call,” Varnel said.
He nodded. “I do, Lord.” Falconers normally did not claim title, but this man was ruler of his race and must be so honored. “From the Company Captain bound to Seakeepdale. He has sent you this report, which contains a full account of our situation. Ours and yours.”
The Warlord took the thick letter but continued to study the messenger. “You are acquainted with its contents?”
“I am, my Lord. A written message might be lost or destroyed, and it was needful that this information reach you. The falcon, too, can doubtless give you a good part of it if you question her.”
“What is your name, Dalesman?”
“Rufon. I am aide to the Lady Una, Holdruler of Seakeepdale, and so served the Lord Harvard; her sire, before his death.”
“I thank you, Rufon,” he said. He glanced at the entrance as an aide pushed the flap aside. “Your meal is ready. Eat now and rest a while until I have read this. I shall send for you again then, perhaps to question you or to hear your own assessment of the situation. Sometimes the opinions of those native to a place can be most helpful in the planning of our moves.”
“I am at your service, my Lord.”
The sun was better than two hours set before Rufon was once more admitted to the Warlord's quarters.
Varnel greeted him courteously, but there was a gravity, a heaviness, about him which told that he had read his Captain's report and accepted the reality of the threat it described.
“The invaders had not yet arrived when you set out?”
“No, Lord. They will have come by now, though, if the ghost's information is accurate.”
“You believe this spirit as well?” he asked.
“The Mountain Hawk does. I know fighting men, Lord, and I trust his judgment.”
“Mountain Hawk?”
The Dalesman flushed. “The Captain. The phrase was somehow put on him while he was in Lormt, and we of Seakeep have picked it up. No discourtesy is meant, but it is difficult to work without a name when dealing closely with a person over an extended stretch of time.”
To his surprise, the Falconer smiled. “I know. We frequently encounter that problem.”
His mood darkened again in the next moment. “Sixty thousand men. I do not command a third that number. Your Mountain Hawk is correct. If they cannot be met and held at some strong defensive position where they can bring only a small part of their force against us at any given time, we do not have a hope of stopping them. Whether his proposed wall will suffice, or whether it was completed at all…”
“We cannot know that until we reach Seakeep, my Lord.”
The silver eyes pierced him suddenly. “There have been some strange tales about this Seakeep,” Varnel said, “and about Ravenfielddale as well. A Falconer has never held such “ a position before, and I am wondering what my Captain's plans may be. His comrades were reticent to the point of mystery about the whole subject when some of them returned to my camp last fall.”
“That would be Falconer business, Lord,” the Dalesman replied carefully.
“Would you lie to protect him?”
Rufon's head raised. “What are you asking? The Mountain Hawk has done nothing that would bring disgrace upon him or upon his race. Throughout the whole time that I have known him, he has conducted himself with courage, nobility, and integrity. As for defending him,” he added almost fiercely, “I would give my body's life, and my soul's with it, for his sake, as would every other man and woman and every child old enough to so choose in Seakeepdale, even as we would for our own Holdlady.”
Once again, the Warlord smiled. “Peace, Dalesman!—So my son's ability to draw the loyalty of those with whom he serves extends beyond our own race?” He saw the other's look of astonishment, which he had, indeed, intended to elicit. “It has. always been our custom to so name some of the fledglings we train.”
“He wins loyalty because he merits it,” Rufon told him flatly. “Did you not hear among those tales you mentioned how he saved those Sulcar mariners?”
“That I did, both from some of my own warriors and from Captain Elfthorn himself. He has not been slow in spreading the story of his rescue and of the events that followed it.”
“Then you know your Captain—your son—is a credit to all your kind.” Rufon shifted uneasily. “Time flies, my Lord. Your people have been warned now, but the Dales have not. Will you send couriers—”
“No.”
The Dalesman's head snapped up. “I am sorry to have troubled you, Commandant. I have several miles to travel yet this night. …”
Varnel raised his arms in a gesture of surrender, all the while laughing silently. “Your temper is sharper even than the Mountain Hawk's! Be easy, Rufon of Seakeep. I will not send messengers because I have already done so.”
He reddened. “I crave pardon.”
The Falconer laughed again, this time aloud. “No need. I baited you. Sit. It takes time even for a race of blank shields to break a camp the size of this one.”
A great weight seemed to lift from the other's heart. “You will ride with me, then?”
The Warlord nodded. “All but one company of convalescing men that I have set as a guard over our villages and the couriers I already mentioned. I have heard enough about Seakeep and Ravenfield that I feel the need to see them for myself, and I prefer to do it with their lands unviolated and their people unslain.”
18
Tarlach allowed his weary body to slide down along the wall until he sat upon the fighting platform. He closed his eyes and tried to will his mind to shut out completely all awareness of the horror that had been his life for better than a full month now.
They opened once more. It was no use. The reality of this barrier and all beyond it was not to be banished merely by desire and the willing.
All was strangely quiet. The defenders were too spent for more than a word of thanks to those bringing them food and water, and the Sultanites made little noise while removing their dead. They had no need for speech, he thought dully; that work was well familiar to them by this time.
It was all too familiar to him.
The Captain roused himself to look along the platform to right and to left. There were too many missing who had stood there when these accursed invaders had begun their first charge nearly five weeks before. The wall they had raised with such haste had proven to be an excellent defense, but it could not shield everyone forever, could not deflect every dart and blow. All those felled were not dead, of course. The most of them were not, but warriors had gone from here to claim their places in the Halls of the Valiant.
A surge of grief twisted in his heart as memories of those he would not see again in this realm of the living crowded for place in his mind.
Was Rorick among them? The Lieutenant had been carried down during the last of the fighting, a spear transfixing his body. Such chest wounds were not invariably fatal, but the very great majority of them proved to be so, even in those surviving long enough to reach Daria's care.
Tarlach would miss him if he did perish. They all would, and they would sorely miss his skill and his courage in this battle. Whatever the outcome of his wounding, he would not be returning to the barrier. Either it would have fallen or relief would have come and the Sultanites be crushed long before he was healed.
Injury should have dismissed a lot more of them. There was not a single warrior in all the defending line who did not bear some wound upon his body, and few of the falcons were not similarly afflicted. Most carried several, and some of them were significant enough that they would have forced retirement from the fray under any other circumstances.
They did not have that privilege here. As long as a soldier could still stand and both attack and defend with reasonable effectiveness or a war bird take to the air and fight, he needs must remain in his place.
He himself had been fortunate thus far. He had received a half dozen or so cuts dur
ing the course of the siege, but they were no more than that and did not interfere with his combat ability or even cause him much in the way of discomfort. They gave him nothing at all of what could be termed pain. He could give the Horned Lord thanks that Storm Challenger was as yet unscathed.
The Mountain Hawk straightened a little. He examined his spear critically, both point and shaft. Their enemies would not be long in clearing enough of their fallen away from the base of the wall that they could function effectively there once more, work the defenders permitted to go on unhindered because it afforded them respite as well. When that moment came, their attack would be renewed.
His mouth hardened. Tarlach took no joy in slaughter, particularly when he could not but admire the tenacity and the raw courage of his opponents.
They had to be given that, these Sultanite warriors. They fell like flies into a fire, they shivered and at times swam in their sandy encampment, they endured inhuman crowding and watched wounded comrades perish who should easily have lived save for the obscene conditions under which the army was forced to exist, and still they came on with an ardor and a singleness of purpose the Falconer knew neither he nor any other of his people could have equaled.
They had the hope, no, the certainty of conquest to spur them, of course. The invading soldiers could see how few actually opposed them. They knew they need only wear them down to the point that the wall could not be adequately manned. Only one post need go, only one. If they could but get across the barrier in number in any place, swarm behind and around the pitifully tiny band of defenders, the whole would be theirs in a matter of minutes.
Officers and warriors alike were pressing harder and ever harder for that moment. Pride and honor were both pricked that their many should be held at bay by so very few. Beyond this, beyond even their race's dire peril and the command laid upon them by their Sultan god, the need for victory was on them. Every man of them realized that they must break through before their supplies gave out, before the even more dreaded shadow of sickness seized upon them, as it inevitably must if they remained confined much longer on this minute beach, ever under the stench of bodies burning in the fuel of their own fat.
Brassy trumpets sounded from beyond the wall, and the high-pitched, wailing shout that had for so long been the terror of their distant world rent the air.
Una of Seakeep leaped to her feet. They were coming again, a purple-turbaned, seemingly undammable sea of hate and death.
Seakeep's archers felled the first row of them, but those following after leaped their bodies before they had quite hit the ground, racing madly until they reached the stubborn barrier.
There, they began to climb, one bracing the other, forming living ladders to bring their comrades into combat range of those holding High Hallack against them.
A turban rose above the wall. The Holdruler waited a moment, then struck hard as the face became visible. Another replaced it and yet another.
She tried not to look into those faces, tried not to become conscious of them as such. It was not butcher work she did, for that implied personal safety and ease in the killing, and neither applied here. The Sultanites were coming up too fast, and each winning the ability to use his arms was a deadly opponent.
One gained the wall. Una failed to throw him down with her first blow, and before she could bring her weapon to bear again, a second foeman was before her.
The woman plunged her spear into the heart of the first and withdrew it again with a quick, wrenching motion, whirling to face the second warrior in the same moment, catching her spear in both hands as she did so.
The invader brought the razor sharp edge of his scimitar down squarely upon it, putting the full force of his arm behind the blow. The strong shaft shivered and shattered as if it had been fashioned of brittle glass.
The Holdlady had anticipated that and did not freeze in momentary confusion at the destruction of her weapon as the other had believed she would do. The Sultanite's charge was quick but careless, fatally careless, for Una lunged with the point-bearing segment of the spear, impaling her enemy upon it.
It had taken but moments to fell the two, but even in that brief span of time, a third had topped the wall.
The woman dove at him as if maddened, ducking low to just barely avoid the wide sweep of his scimitar. She struck the invader a sharp blow across the forehead with the remaining portion of her spear. It was no club, but all her force had been behind that blow. The Sultanite's hands flew to his face, and he dropped back, down over the heads of his fellows, unbalancing the one coming up behind him and taking him down as well.
Una sprang to her feet and drew sword to meet the challenge of the next climber only to see Sunbeam tear into his face until he fell, blind and screaming, into the seething mass of humanity below.
How much longer would the attack continue? It was growing late, and twilight was fading into something darker, but hers had not been the only position severely threatened, and the Sultanites kept up the pressure of their assault.
The battle raged on and on through the deepening shadows, but the early advances generated by the unexampled ferocity of the original attack could not be sustained. The defenders threw their enemies from the wall and kept them from it, and at last, the thrice-welcome notes of the retreat were sounded.
Tarlach waited until he felt sure that the call had been one of genuine release and not merely a summons for regrouping and then gave a similar call upon his own horn.
He came down from the wall as soon as its new guardians were in place. So weary was he in body and spirit that he had to will himself to wipe off his blade with the hideously stained rag he kept on his belt for that purpose and resheathe it.
Like all the officers, whose minds must be fresh enough to quickly and accurately respond to the challenges of each new day, he would pass the night in sleep and away from the barrier.
The Sergeants and rankless warriors were divided into a series of shifts so that about a third of them were granted the same privilege as their leaders each night and claimed the comparative ease of reserve service the following day. The other two-thirds had to keep the wall, half on watch at all times lest their enemies attack suddenly in the hope of surprising and overpowering them.
They were fortunate to have even this much respite. It had not been so during the first four days of the invasion. Then, the Sultanites had sent wave upon wave against them, hour after hour without break longer than that needed to clear the fallen from the fighting space around the savagely contested barrier, until they had at last come to know that there would be no quick conquest here and to realize that they themselves were weakening under the constant lack of rest, a lacking their enemies’ vastly superior position allowed them to counter somewhat despite their poverty in numbers. Since they must be able to fight for an unknown number of days longer—they had not guessed then that the battle would stretch out into weeks—they had been forced to give over their efforts during the hours of darkness almost entirely.
The Falconer Captain went first to the cottage where the most gravely wounded were taken to receive treatment and await transport into the highlands.
Brennan was standing by the door, his head lowered.
His own heart fell, although he felt no surprise.
“Dead?” he asked when he reached the other's side.
“Rorick? No. Actually, he was not so direly hurt and will almost certainly recover. They have taken him already.”
Tarlach nodded. The supply units came down as soon as the night was enough advanced to cover their activities from the invaders’ eyes. The injured went back with them.
“Any recruits?”
“A dozen from Cliffdale.”
Not enough, his commander thought wearily. They would help a little—every sword helped—but his needs were far greater.
The neighboring Dales had responded to Seakeep's call as Una had predicted they would, generously with goods but, despite her every effort, with very few fighting men.
His shoulders sagged. How much longer did they have before their casualties, phenomenally light as they were, eliminated their reserves, before they were forced to lengthen the distance separating each defender on the wall, before their surviving soldiers were too few to hold their enemies back? Had he been insane to imagine Seakeep could stand until help could cross all the distance from Linna to reach them? Had it been madness to think help would be coming at all?
The Mountain Hawk forced himself to straighten again. Such thoughts were for himself alone, were not to be encouraged at all. The very fact that they tormented him must be concealed. It was not his to reveal such weakness before those dependent upon him, not even before this one who was his friend.
The two officers soon parted, the Lieutenant seeking out the meal wagon just come down from the keep, Tarlach going directly to the cottage the Falconer officers had claimed for their headquarters so that they might remain as close as possible to the embattled wall.
He knew he should eat but could not bring himself to do so. He wished only to study the inevitable reports Una and Brennan, who had commanded the reserves that day, had prepared, take whatever action was necessary based upon them, and then sink into oblivion for a few precious hours, their enemies willing.
“Captain!”
He paused at the call and turned to watch the Holdruler's approach. He quickened his pace to meet her. The Lady Una amazed him. Of all the officers, she had held up best. She was wan and haggard, but her energy was all but undiminished. Rather, he corrected himself, she willed that it appear so, knowing how it would distress him to see her otherwise and how much the commander of Seakeep's war needed to be able to depend upon his comrades. These Dalesfolk had strength, right enough, and this one more than most.
“What news, Lady?” he asked when she had come up beside him.
“Reinforcements, much good they will do us. We must give them greeting all the same.”
He looked at her sharply. Her lack of enthusiasm for these much needed newcomers was patent and quite incomprehensible.