“I’m strong enough for another spell after that if it doesn’t.” And mad enough. If Ehara and the damned Sea-Priest want it this way, then they’ll get it. Women barefoot and pregnant? Women in chains? Not while I’m regent. . . .
“Will you . . . ?” Hanfor laughed ruefully and broke off the question. “We follow where you lead.”
They would, but did she have any right to lead them into such danger? The image of chains slipped through her thoughts, and her jaw tightened. Who else would take on the Sturinnese?
She forced herself to wait until the players had eaten before she flicked the reins, and Farinelli started forward.
Half the armsmen rode on each side of the players, Jecks, Anna, and her guards, down the road between the hills. The road was at least a half-dek from the top of the hills that flanked it.
“Would that those hills were not so close,” murmured Hanfor. “You chance much.”
“They won’t attack,” Anna said, hoping she were correct, “not until we’re in the center. Can you have the archers ready to fire their arrows, some in the direction of each hill? Once I start the first spell?”
“I will ensure that.” Hanfor edged his mount away from Anna and toward Alvar. Shortly, commands flowed along the lines of armsmen as the Defalkan force neared the center of the low hills.
Anna licked her lips, shifting her weight in the saddle. Rickel and Fhurgen rode in front of the sorceress and regent, their eyes scanning the nearing hillsides. Jecks rode beside Anna, and Liende and the players close behind.
The wind had gotten stronger once the growing afternoon clouds had blocked the sun, and with the smell of earth came also the faint scent of burned meat, and occasionally the intermittent smell of smoke, grassy smoke.
Anna glanced around. “Here.”
As the armsmen circled to form almost a ring around the regent, the players dismounted and formed up on the road, facing westward.
Anna dismounted, cleared her throat, and glanced at Liende. “We need to hurry.”
“Half warm-up! Then the arrow song. The long one.”
The sorceress nodded to herself and waited.
“At my mark!” commanded Liende as the warm-up ended.
Anna turned to Hanfor. “Have them shoot once I start singing.”
“Archers! Arrows! Now!”
“Mark!” ordered the chief player.
Anna sang.
“These arrows shot into the air,
make each head strike one armsmen there . . .”
Even before Anna completed the spell, the archers had released a second volley of shafts, and horsemen began to appear on the slopes above, galloping out of formation but straight toward the Defalkan armsmen.
Anna swallowed, ignoring the light-headedness she felt.
Perhaps half of the charging figures in crimson were cut down by the last of the Defalkan arrows, but more than a thousand armed lancers poured over the hills toward the Defalkan force. At least, it looked like that many to Anna.
She looked back at the players. Delvor lay sprawled on the ground. Liende stood panting, exhausted, almost unable to lift her horn.
Jecks had his blade out and his mount shadowing Anna.
The sorceress sprinted to Farinelli and yanked out the lutar. Shit! Shit! Shit! No matter how you plan, it doesn’t quite work. . . .
The only spell she had down cold enough to rattle off that quickly was the short flame song. She forced a quick and rough strum/tuning of the lutar, and tried to match the pitch she wanted before she sang.
“Armsmen wrong, armsmen strong,
turn to flame with this song . . .”
She forced the image of Dumaran figures into the spell, and she had to sing the entire spell twice before fires crackled out of the sky, before the awful whips of fire raked the hillside.
Then, fires flared in front of her own eyes, and she couldn’t even see Farinelli or Jecks. She tried to sit down, tried to cradle the lutar . . . half hoping she had managed that before blackness and flames lapped over her like tides of ice, tides of fire.
. . . ice and fire, fire and ice, and will the world end twice . . .
Whips of fire flayed men, except they were boys, boys like Mario, boys like Birke and Skent . . . just boys . . .
Horses screamed as flames burst from the saddles on their backs . . . and a hot fire rain fell on ashen valleys and low hills, hills and valleys that had been green, oh so green . . .
. . . fire and ice . . . ice and fire . . . mist and flame . . .
Some time later, when the sky was dark, Anna found herself wrapped in a blanket, sweating, on her cot. Jecks sat on a stool, as if he had been waiting.
Her head ached, and her stomach twisted. She struggled into a sitting position. Large unseen hammers pounded at her skull, and knives slashed at her eyes. She closed them. That didn’t help. She opened them. They still hurt.
“How fare you, my lady?”
“Like shit,” she rasped. “As usual, for this sort of thing.”
The white-haired lord extended a bottle.
She sipped the warm wine, once, and swallowed. Then she took another longer swallow. “Maybe . . . that will help.”
“Your players are exhausted. The armsmen do not look this way.” Jecks’ voice was low and bleak.
“What happened?” Did they capture us? Where are the guards, then?
“Once again, you have utterly destroyed an enemy,” Jecks said quietly.
“I . . . didn’t plan it that way. They didn’t give me much choice.”
“You gave them less, lady.” Jecks did not meet her eyes.
“Wait a moment,” Anna snapped, sitting up and letting the blankets fall away. “Here we go again. Ehara sends golds and tries to grab some of Defalk. He sends lancers, and he won’t admit it. He won’t pledge to keep his hands off, and everyone sits around and says, ‘Sorry, Lady Anna, you just don’t have the armsmen to stop him.’ So I try to make everyone happy and build a dam to suggest I have the power to stop Ehara.
“Now it’s all my fault, and you’re saying that I gave them no choices? I gave them plenty of choices. They just weren’t honorable choices. That’s the problem with your great and ‘honorable’ Liedwahr, my dear Lord Jecks. If it doesn’t involve lots of bloody killing, with dull swords and men on big horses, it’s not honorable.” Anna laughed harshly, and jabbed a hand at Jecks as he started to open his mouth. “No. You have no right to judge me. Don’t you dare to judge me. Every time I try to do something, it’s going to offend the Thirty-three. You sit there and look away. Don’t upset the lady Anna. She might do something horrible. Don’t get the sorceress-woman angry. Well, I am angry! I’m pissed! Do you think I wanted to kill all those men? Do you think I like the smell of blood and burned flesh? You say I gave them no choices. I’ve given everyone a lot of choices. All my life. And you men, all of you, give me none. ‘Do it our way. Do it the honorable way. You can’t do it that way, Anna. That would displease someone. That would upset someone.’ What about me? I’ve saved your grandson’s ass, and your precious lords’ asses, and it’s never enough. . . . Everyone looks sideways at me, like I’m going to . . . explode. . . . Well . . . you can see it. I’m exploding. I am the unreasonable madwoman. I’m the screaming, wild bitch-sorceress! That’s what everyone wants . . . to learn that I’m unreasonable. That I don’t understand. Well . . . I don’t. I don’t understand why . . . why . . .”
Anna found herself gasping, her head spinning, suddenly aware that the entire camp was silent. So silent that no one moved. She took one deep breath, and then another.
Jecks’ eyes were on the ground.
Anna took the bottle he had set on the damp clay and swallowed deeply. Maybe she could drink enough that she could sleep. Whatever she said didn’t matter. No one really listened. No one wanted to hear. She took another swallow.
Lord, she was tired. She sat, shaking from rage and exhaustion, on the edge of her cot, her head throbbing, her eyes seeing dark double
images . . . wondering what had set her off.
What choice had she had? She couldn’t use spells that didn’t kill—they were Darksong. Are you any better than any man aroused with bloodlust? She’d gotten angry at the enchanted arrows or javelins or whatever, so angry she really hadn’t thought.
Was Jecks right? That force was the only answer? Or that she had given them no choice? But had they given her any, really? Or was that just rationalization? But no one had ever given her any real choices, just choices that looked like they were real.
She sat in the twilight and looked through the open tent flaps at the embers of the fire. Her head throbbed still, and her eyes burned, and double hot and cold images danced before them.
Jecks sat on the stool, equally silent, eyes still averted.
Inside, Anna continued to seethe. Don’t judge me. . . . You have no right to judge me. . . .
Outside, only the faintest of murmurs filled the damp night.
Finally, Anna reached for the blankets, knowing she would collapse if she did not lie down again, wondering if she had pushed Jecks too hard . . . wondering . . .
107
The warm rain, slightly heavier than a mist, fell around the Defalkan riders as they continued westward out of the valley, out of yet another valley of dissonance, chaos, fire, and death.
Anna took a breath of damp air. The rain had deadened the odor of burned meat and death. She glanced ahead at the churned hoofprints in the mud of the road, far less dense, far fewer than when Ehara had fled the Vale of Cuetayl.
Hanfor rode next to her while Jecks rode behind, not surprisingly, since Jecks had not spoken to her since the night before, and she wasn’t about to speak to him.
“On to Dumaria,” she murmured, more to herself than to Jecks or Hanfor.
The sorceress glanced over her shoulder past Lejun and Rickel to where Liende rode before the players, all looking as tired and bedraggled as Anna felt.
So much for your ideas of not having Liende play for battles . . . so much for so many ideas. She took a slow deep breath. You’ve got to relax some. Then she shrugged her shoulders and bent her head forward, trying to stretch out the tightness.
“We will need to cross the river somewhere,” Hanfor said, “to reach Dumaria.”
You don’t think I know that? Anna bit back her first retort, then swallowed before speaking. “One way or another, we’ll manage. We always do.” Anna supposed she could use her marvelous sorcery to build a bridge—or find a ford. She felt like laughing, but held back the feeling, knowing it was close to hysteria. “Ehara has to find the ford or bridge he used.”
“If he does not,” added Alvar, riding slightly ahead of Anna, “then he must face us again, and now our forces outnumber his.”
“He will find a ford,” predicted Hanfor, wiping away the rainwater collecting on his brow.
Anna glanced down. The lower part of her trousers and her boots, where not protected by the leather of the stirrup guards, were mud-splattered once more. The sky seemed to lighten, and she hoped that meant the rain was passing. Then, the way things were going, it could mean a lightening before a heavier rainfall.
Her eyes went to the road ahead, the one taken by Ehara. She had defeated his forces twice. Close to five thousand Dumarans were dead. The two major cities were flood-ravaged wrecks . . . and she still had to keep pursuing and fighting.
Won’t it ever end? Do I have to destroy every last chauvinist in power on the fucking planet? And if I do that, will I turn every one of their sons into a fanatic? But if I stop now . . . nothing’s resolved . . . nothing at all, for all the deaths. . . .
Was that how all conquerors felt, rationalizing killing with more killing?
She still felt like yelling at Jecks—or breaking down and sobbing. Neither would help. Instead, she took another deep breath and looked at the muddy road ahead.
108
WEI, NORDWEI
Ashtaar’s fingers run over the oval of black agate briefly before she steeples her fingers on the polished surface of the desk and waits for Gretslen to seat herself in the straight-backed ebony chair that has replaced the older chair.
The blonde seer sits, clears her throat gently, then begins. “My congratulations on your selection to the Council.”
“Thank you, Gretslen. The sorceress?”
“The sorceress has destroyed the last of the lancers of Sturinn, and all save one of the Sea-Priest sorcerers. She has chased Ehara out of the northeast of Dumar. Ehara has less than twentyscore armsmen from more than ten times that number.”
“They are dead? Or wounded? Or deserters?”
“All of them are dead. Kendr and I could not discern any deserters through the reflecting pools. There could be a very small number.”
“You are cautious. Good. Where is the sorceress now?”
“On the eastern bank of the Falche, north of Dumaria. She cannot cross the Falche without risking her forces. The rains have swollen it mightily, and her earlier sorceries ripped away the bridges.”
“Gretslen?” asks Ashtaar deliberately. “Why do you dislike the sorceress so much that you blind yourself to what she can and cannot do?”
“Mightiness?”
“You heard me. Why do you hate her so much? Because you think you could do so well in her boots?” Ashtaar laughs, and the laugh is hard and cruel. “You would have failed long before now. You are neither ruthless enough, nor compassionate enough.”
Gretslen does not respond.
“Since you will not ask, I will tell you.” The spy-mistress’s fingers caress the black agate oval again. “She will do what must be done, because she has suffered enough, and knows the consequences if she does not. She suffers because she knows too well how hard her actions fall, and she will struggle to balance them, and she will fail. Yet she will struggle well enough that most of the people she rules will forgive her and follow her. Those who do not . . .” Ashtaar shrugs. “They will essay her destruction, and perhaps one will succeed. You have great ability, and you believe that force always succeeds. It does, but not all force is obvious.” She smiles. “Thank you. You may depart. Please keep me informed.”
“Thank you, Mightiness. We will do our best.” Gretslen’s voice is even, and she rises, and bows, then turns and walks gracefully to the door.
109
DUMARIA, DUMAR
The Sea-Marshal glances up from the drums as Ehara steps into the small room off the armory. Heavy wrappings cover his arms, and his dark hair is short and frizzled. One of the burns on jerRestin’s cheeks oozes a reddish fluid.
“Yet more sorcery?”
“What else would you suggest, Lord Ehara? My own iron quarrels burst into flame. Iron—flaming—before I could even approach the bitch. Yet she used no sorcery to seek me.”
“She is braver than most lords.” Ehara’s voice holds a touch of amusement. “She rode into a trap, and turned it on us.”
“You and your men did not move quickly enough.”
“Neither did you, Sea-Priest, but you escaped. Most of my men did not, and another score who did drowned in trying to cross the Falche.”
“It took all my sorcery to hold off the sorceress’s fires.” JerRestin looks at his arms. “I was not entirely successful even so. I did lower the waters at the ford.”
“Yes. Not enough.”
“Enough to leave the sorceress on the eastern side. She will not risk the river with such a small body of armsmen.”
“Her twenty-fivescore no longer look so insignificant, and I am confident she will find her way across, if she has not already.” Ehara looks pointedly at the drums. “You labor at more sorcery?”
“We have lost more than forty fine ships to the first attack of the sorceress. I have lost over three thousand of the best lancers, dying in agony. A handful of us remain, and I can never return to Sturinn. Not with such disgrace. I can but atone.”
Ehara’s heavy eyebrows lift.
“The sorceress will die. She has powe
r, but not cunning. She must live to succeed. I must die to succeed.”
“Then you had best die soon, and well, Sea-Marshal, for my armsmen are few and thin.” Ehara’s booming laugh rings hollow. “She has foiled you twice. What will be different a third time?”
“She has used her glasses before attacks. This time, I will be along the line of march, well away from any battle site, in the most innocent of settings. You will be farther westward. . . .”
“I should retreat . . . leave Dumaria defenseless, and open to those barbarians of the north?”
“She will not sack a defenseless city. She has never done that. She will pursue you—and me.”
“My Siobion? My heirs?”
“Leave them. She has yet to kill an heir.”
Ehara frowns. “I should listen to a man who is already dead?”
“You can listen or not.” The Sea-Marshal binds the last of the drums into the framework. His lips are tight together between words, as though each movement, each word, is agony. “You cannot defeat Defalk while she lives. After I die, one way or the other, you are no worse off.”
“That is the first true statement from you since you came to Dumar.” Ehara’s lips twist.
“Watch how you call upon truth, Lord Ehara. The harmonies have a way with those who would make truth their handmaiden.” The Sea-Marshal’s eyes glitter. “I, above all, have learned that. So will the sorceress.”
110
Anna glanced up through the rain that continued to fall, and then down at the swollen Falche, as it swirled around and over the piles of rock and masonry that had once been bridge abutments and piers. Despite her jacket, and her sodden felt hat, she was soaked through, and the wind had turned cooler, if not cool enough to chill her—yet.
Downhill from where she sat on the big gelding, Hanfor received another scouting report. Beside her on his mount sat Jecks, stolid and silent in the late-afternoon damp, silent as he had been since the slaughter in the hills.
The Spellsong War: The Second Book of the Spellsong Cycle Page 56