by Tad Williams
"If only the Qar had stood with us." That betrayal troubled him far more than any of his own wounds. He had misjudged the Twilight People badly, and now the whole Funderling tribe was paying for Ferras Vansen's stupidity. "I still can't believe…!"
"Don't torture yourself, Captain." Sledge Jasper looked up from his whetstone. The Funderling sharpened his knife so frequently that the blade was growing hard to see. "The Earth Elders have a plan for us-no mortal can claim to know as much as the gods."
"But this time it's the gods we must fight, or so it seemed from what the Qar told us."
Cinnabar snorted. "Me, I take nothing the Qar say on trust, but it doesn't matter. Whatever the truth, this southern king, this autarch… he thinks he can free the gods, and he's battering his way into our holiest of holies. That's reason enough to stand our lives on the balance. That you fight alongside us, Captain Vansen, is more than anyone could ask. Don't waste your strength on regrets."
Vansen wished it were so easy, that he could command his feelings like soldiers; but that army was far less obedient than these brave Funderlings.
25
Tooth and Bone "Blind Aristas told the boy that his dreams had been given to him by the gods, and that the meaning of them was that an innocent must go to the house of the angry god Zmeos Whitefire and find the lost sun."
-from "A Child's Book of the Orphan, and His Life and Death and Reward in Heaven"
He awakened slowly, as if swimming up from Erivor's pounding depths.
"Why do you hide from the battle, Barrick Eddon?" One of the Trickster Qar grinned down at him like a fox. "There is still much to do."
"Yes," said another smiling nightmare. "You should not sleep so late."
But even as they taunted him, these long-limbed Tricksters-three of them, as far as he could see, in different downy shades of gray or brown and with angular faces like laughing demons out of the Book of the Trigon-had been clearing away the dirt and stones that had engulfed him when the wall of the cave collapsed. He could still hear the sounds of strenuous fighting outside the cavern, but at least the cannons had fallen silent. Barrick wanted very much to get out in the open before they began firing again.
As he staggered to his feet and began to knock the worst of the clumped dirt from his armor, the first Trickster handed him his sword, hilt-first. "Perhaps you would like to go out and stick some other sunlanders with that," the creature suggested.
"Perhaps I would." He examined the strong, slim Qar blade, which was scratched and dented in a few places but not too badly damaged. "And since you helped dig me out, perhaps you would like to keep me company while I do so."
"It would be a pleasure, Barrick Eddon," said the creature, its gray face shiny as ancient leather. "Oh, yes, we all know your name. I am Longscratch. These are Riddletongue and Blackspine, my quarterling cousins. We came here to kill sunlanders, but if it is now the southern sort we kill instead of your sort… well, let it be so."
The Qar had already made clear how they felt about his people; Barrick was undaunted. "Very well, then, you feathered bandits," he said. "Show me what you can do."
They dashed out of the cavern. The sun had mostly set, though a bit of it was still spread on the horizon like melted butter, and the sky had begun to show its first stars. It would be full dark soon, which would help the Qar, but even so, what chance could they have against the autarch's vastly larger force?
Barrick was surprised to see that the cannons facing the hillside had been abandoned, but only when a flight of a dozen or so birds swept past him and the shrill voices of their riders floated to him on the wind did he begin to understand some of what had happened. Birds were swooping down without warning all over the near side of the beach and at the edge of the picket around the Xixian camp, but attacking only southerners. That was because little men were riding on the birds-Queen Upsteeplebat's Rooftoppers, he realized. Thick leather and Mihanni plate didn't protect the soldiers' eyes and throats from the tiny darts the little men were firing at them. All around him, Xixians were running madly, hands clapped over their faces; many more lay unmoving on the sand, a-bristle with miniature arrows.
Barrick looked back to the cavern they had just quitted, but there was no sign of more troops coming. "Where is the queen?" he asked the Tricksters. "Where are the rest of our troops?"
"We are the end of the line," Longscratch said. "Our army is all in the field."
The flying Rooftoppers had only managed to drive the nearest Xixians back toward camp, but the attack from the air had given the rest of the Qar a chance to escape the hill caves without being blown to pieces by the autarch's cannons. But the Xixians were hardened fighters and had discovered that, as astonishing as little men on birds might be, they were not impossible to fight; some of the southerners had grabbed burning brands from their campfires and swung them through the air like rippling banners of flame.
Longscratch and his cousins finished scavenging up loose arrows, stuffing as many as they could find into their quivers, which, other than their arm-shields, seemed the only thing they wore.
"We must find Saqri and the others," Barrick called. "Follow me!"
He sprinted across the sand and then leaped over the ring-pit the southerners had dug around their camp. Some of the wooden barricade still lay on the ground, smoldering. A great knot of men and horses were caught up in a whirlpool of battle a few hundred paces away along the broken fence. Hundreds more of the autarch's men were running across the camp to join the struggle, some of them covering their heads with tent cloth against the claws and arrows of the bird-men. The Xixians were clearly beginning to regroup.
Barrick and the three Tricksters reached the rest of the Qar, who were trying to hold their newly won position against an ever-widening force of Xixian soldiers, but every time a southerner fell, another stepped up into his place. The rest of the autarch's troops, just arriving from the farther parts of the camp, were organizing themselves for a counterattack; in moments they would swoop down and wipe the few hundred Qar away like a storm wind threshing sea foam to oblivion.
Barrick could not pause to think about the worsening odds. The fighting was all around him now, spears leaping out at him like striking serpents, the bearded Xixians yelping and growling like dogs around a midden. His Qar armor was so light he hardly felt as if he was wearing it, but it was becoming cruelly hard work simply to stay alive on the ground, and now even more enemies were rushing toward them, many of them mounted. As if awakened by all this chaos, the Fireflower voices were threatening to overwhelm his thoughts.
Crying Hill, and the Gray Ones advancing…
Ah! My queen, my sister, take the children and flee…!
Stand and face us, soul-drinker…
Moments Barrick Eddon had never himself experienced washed over him and he found himself slowing, stunned by so many new ideas. A Xixian spear slipped past his shield and dug into the joint between his sword arm and the shoulder of his armor. He stumbled and almost dropped his blade as a line of fire burned across his skin and sinew. One of the Tricksters-the darkest one, Riddletongue-jumped forward into the breach and caught a second Xixian stab on his arm-shield, little more than a padded tube of bone too large to come from any creature Barrick knew. The Trickster then jabbed at the attacker with his own spear, an ivory-white needle only a few handspans longer than a sword.
Rasha, something in his memories whispered. The tooth.
The Trickster flung his arm up and let another attack scrape off his arm-shield. Omuro-nah, the Fireflower voices murmured. The bone.
Rasha-sha, omuro-nah, rasha-sha, omuro-nah! chanted ghosts from a hundred different battlefields in a hundred different centuries. Tooth and bone, tooth and bone! They had sung it in victory many times, but they had sung it even more frequently as their allies had died beside them and as they themselves had formed the ring in which they would postpone defeat as long as possible.
You will not see us because we hide in the night. You will not feel
us until it is too late. You will not defeat us because we will die with our fangs in your throat-tooth and bone, tooth and bone…!
Barrick scrambled forward to fight beside these anciently familiar yet barely known allies, trying to remember all that Shaso had taught him. Each moment that unfolded was so full of sharp blades and screaming faces that for a while even the singing of the Fireflower rolled off him, as unremarked as a light rain.
He stopped at last to rest, lungs burning, sweat stinging his eyes, dozens of small and large cuts stinging him too. He was amazed by his own strength and stamina; even the Tricksters could not keep up with him.
They woke your blood, a voice sighed in words he could just separate from the din around him.
Ynnir? Speak to me! Dizzily, he looked around. The southerners were giving ground, but Xixian arrows still fell all around him, appearing suddenly and quivering in the churned ground of the city's bayside commons like some odd crop. They are so many, Lord! What can I do to help Saqri?
You can make haste, the voice told him. Midsummer comes with the morning. If the southern king can keep you here until tomorrow, he has won-he has already nearly reached his prize.
Make haste? How?
Tell my sister-wife that you and the rest of the People have served your purpose here. You must find a way down into the depths before it is too late… too late…! The king's voice, already faint, trailed into silence.
Barrick could not find Saqri. The sun had set behind the hills, but that was not the reason. He could see much better than he should have been able to, so that the night seemed no darker than late afternoon. Catlike, his eyes made use of light he had never noticed before, light which gave edges and colors to things that ordinarily would have been obscure and gray. And his muscles and sinews seemed already to have recovered enough to begin fighting again. It was as though the power and experience of all the kings inside him were plaited like the fibers of a rope, strengthening all that he was, making him a newer, stronger thing.
Godlike. That was the word-there were moments he felt almost godlike. The Fireflower was like molten silver in his veins, strengthening him, filling him with heat and weight. Even with all Shaso's careful training, he would only have been a crippled boy of sixteen years who would never have survived this fight, but instead he had killed at least half a dozen men and wounded a dozen more, his blade finding its way through the Xixians' defenses time after time, like a stroke of lightning.
As he hurried toward the nearest fighting, some of the Xixians turned and saw him. They shouted with dismay. Something hot and gleeful rose up in Barrick Eddon's chest, like hands of fire cupping his heart.
They fear me!
As he reached the edge of the nearest skirmish, he finally saw Saqri and Hammerfoot and the others who had led the way. The queen and her friends were trapped in a swirling melee near the center of the Xixian camp. The moon had crept above the horizon, and its bony gleam was enough for him to see color, detail… everything. He could even make out the terrified faces of the men Saqri was fighting-or destroying, rather, because if Barrick's own blade had been like lightning, the queen's spear was something even swifter and more deadly, perhaps the heavenly thunderbolts that had once flickered around the peak of Mount Xandos itself.
But the Xixians had so many more soldiers that they could bury Saqri and the Ettins in bodies. Cavalrymen from the farther reaches of the embattled camp were now galloping toward the Qar in great numbers, and these newest arrivals, unlike the earliest defenders, were fully armored. Battle standards waved from the backs of their saddles in the colors of half a dozen Xixian companies, horsetails flapping, leather straps jangling with coins.
As Barrick watched, three of the riders split off and headed toward him. Good sense should have made him drop back to the security of the rest of the Qar forces, but something in Barrick was afire and would not let him do the sensible thing.
I've been running for years. No more. My banner is my blood-if they want it, let them come take it!
"For Whitefire! For Kupilas!" he shouted, and leaped forward so that he would be better spaced between the approaching riders. Something black flew at him, and he let his momentum carry him onto his side in the dirt as the arrow hissed by. "For Crooked!" he shouted, climbing to his feet again.
Something boomed on the bay behind him, but Barrick had no time to look. The first of the riders was upon him, leaning half out of the saddle and swinging a long, metal-headed club. Barrick took the blow on his shield and managed a cut at the rider's back, but his own blow only bounced harmlessly from the Xixian's armor. As the rider wheeled past, Barrick confronted the other two horsemen, both carrying long, small-headed axes. Instead of retreating, he ran forward, forcing them to mistime their swings. He feinted toward one, then shoved his blade into the other Xixian's chest just below his armpit. The Xixian clung to his saddle and did not fall, but he was shouting in pain and bleeding badly.
More thundering noises, and from the corner of his eye Barrick saw a huge burst of fire and smoke and flying dirt in the midst of the Qar, and bodies spinning through the air. The ships in the harbor! The autarch's men were firing their deck guns, but in their eagerness to destroy the Qar, they were firing into the mass of their own men as well!
The horsemen who were after Barrick had turned and were coming at him again, slower this time, to take better advantage of having him outnumbered.
Surprise them, the voices urged. A thousand different invisible maps of things he could do came to him, as if he could read every page of a book at the same time. He took a few steps, then suddenly sprinted forward and rolled beneath the middle rider's swinging mace. He grabbed at the man's wrist as he passed, something he could never have done with his arm crippled as it had been, then held on, digging his heels into the earth so that the horse's own force was enough to yank the man out of his saddle. The soldier fell only halfway and dangled with his foot caught in the stirrup, thrashing helplessly until Barrick caught up. He vaulted into the saddle, then turned and hacked away at the screaming man's trapped ankle until it parted company with his foot and both parts of the Xixian soldier fell to the bloody sand.
As soon as Barrick had his own feet in the stirrups and the horse under his control, he made a point of riding after the wounded man he had already stabbed, not because the noises the man was making bothered him, but because a certain cold implacability was growing in him and he wanted to leave no loose ends, but before Barrick caught him the wounded horseman grabbed at his throat and fell from his horse, pierced by a Qar arrow. The last rider, now confronting a very different kind of fight, abruptly turned and spurred back toward the greater safety of the Xixian ranks at the edge of the camp.
Mounted now, the experience of a dozen kings helping him to calm the Xixian horse, he caught sight of the Tricksters fighting a group of southerners.
"Longscratch, Riddletongue, Blackspine-here!"
As he waited for them, Barrick could see a group of Xixians running away from the fight, but not with the desperate haste of men trying to flee the field of battle: they seemed to be under the control of an officer and were headed toward a large tent near the center of the camp, out between the edge of the city and the bay-the quarters of the autarch himself or some other high-ranking Xixian? Or perhaps something more directly of use in the battle, like one of their huge cannons? Or it might even hold important prisoners. "Hurry!" he shouted at the Qar. "Those Xixies are hiding something. We have to catch them!"
By the time the three Tricksters reached him, the fighting had surrounded him and Barrick was battling for his life again. As he and the Qar fought their way free, Barrick could see that something was happening on the hillside just outside the edge of the city and the camp. A great force of men was riding down out of the heights, singing and shouting. Were they enemies-or unexpected allies? Who could it be? They sounded like northerners! For a moment Barrick could almost believe the Fireflower was showing him some long-buried memory of Coldgray Moor,
some vision of men and fairies at war, but it was no ancient Qar battle, it was here and now.
They fought their way out of the worst of the battle. Blackspine found a horse that had lost its rider and clambered into the saddle, soothing the frightened beast with a few whispered, hissing words, then extended a slender arm to help Riddletongue up behind him. Longscratch had found a mount of his own; the previous owner's severed hand was still tangled in the reins, bouncing against the horse's shoulder.
"They are hardy, these sunlanders," said Longscratch with a nod toward the dangling hand, "but the fighting does not have much savor. I liked them better in the old days, when they fought one at a time like proper warriors."
"And one had time to suck their marrow when they were dead," added Blackspine wistfully.
Barrick pointed with his bloodied sword. "Look! Those southerners have fallen back to guard that tent. Let's go have a look at what they don't want us to see." He spurred toward it, and the Tricksters followed, laughing and singing wordlessly.
Even as the Xixian horse hit full stride beneath him, its brute strength flowing as smoothly as oil from a flask, something darted past Barrick's face, passing so close that he ducked down against his stolen mount's neck. The men guarding the tent had seen them coming and were loosing arrows as fast as they could, but they did not flee. What was it they were willing to give their lives to guard? Barrick's heart began to pump even faster. Could they truly be so lucky as to have caught the autarch himself on the field?
Several of the guards disappeared into the tent. Barrick and the Tricksters came down on the rest and scattered them. Riddletongue killed one with a swift lunge and a thrust through the eye while his cousins occupied the others, and Barrick swung down from the saddle and forced his way in through the tent flap.