by David Keck
“Uluric was well suited the task. He was foremost among the barons of the kingdom and a man of iron. A champion. The king gave to Uluric a great round horn—the battle horn of Aubairn, and no mean gift. Aidmar commanded Uluric to sound the horn if he met the Enemy. In return, Aidmar vowed that the host of Aubairn would ride at its call.
“Although Aidmar was wise, the Enemy was swift. Even as he uttered his command, the Sons of Heshtar were in the marches of Aubairn. Even as Uluric was given the battle horn, the thralls were on the River Greyroad. Uluric and the king’s guard found shapes beyond naming, and numbers beyond counting, as they reached the southlands. All was lost without every man of Aubairn. And so the horn rang out.
“But, in Aubairn of the Forests, Aidmar knew fear. More news had reached him: stories of the swift terror from the sea. And when he heard the battle horn, he feared that he could not save his court and his champion both. He saw only one course: He must flee with the Host of Aubairn, with the women and children and common folk, making all speed north to Pennons Gate. And this he did, abandoning Uluric and the bravest of Aubairn.
“Soon, the horn was silent. But the folk of Aubairn were too taken up with flight to mark the sound. Thousands fled.
“It was here they came. Below these walls. Many hundreds broke from the trees below the battlements of Pennons Gate. We Solantines saw them enter the field. I myself witnessed these things. They ran through the long shadows as the Eye of Heaven failed in the west, carts and beasts and lives scattered behind. They ran with children in their arms. And we Solantines made ready to throw our Forest Gates wide. But, as the fastest came in sight, the last of the light failed. And the thralls of the Enemy rose up. Ragged forms tumbling through the sudden gloom. Hurtling devils. We could not save both the Aubairn folk and hold our gates against the Enemy. All of Errest lay behind us, unwarned, unguarded. I saw them dying. And I commanded the gates barred.
“My duty and my shame,” he said.
“Under the Eye of Heaven, we searched the field of the slain. And few, indeed, did we find to bury. They had only come so far because Aidmar fought rear guard in the trees to the south. His crown was there, years after. But none of it was enough. He was as helpless as we. And, for long decades, thereafter, we ground our teeth in helpless shame and stood guard where we must, upon our Gate.”
The man looked over the table.
“On this night, we feast the return of Uluric’s Horn. It was nigh two centuries before the kingdoms of the Atthias drove the Enemy from our realms once more, and we ceased to see the Hornbearer in Fellwood. A man of Yrlac wrested the Horn of Uluric from among the prizes of the Enemy. Shield-bearer to Prince Calamund, he was, and he winded the horn in the face of the Enemy with the whole Host of Errest behind him and he bore the Horn from the Fellwood at war’s ending. In this hall, we saw it. A defeat had been redeemed.”
The Solantines bowed their heads, and Durand was sure they prayed a thanksgiving.
Nearer at hand, Abravanal muttered, “Many kingdoms, many kings, one army to break the Enemy,” and he looked across the Solantines’ table to Leovere.
“I know this story,” said Leovere. “It was told in Yrlac, in Penseval. Leowin bore Uluric’s Horn before the army of Errest and broke the Host of the Hornbearer at the side of the Lost Princes and was made Duke of Yrlac in the days of joy and grieving at war’s end by Willan Blind. Duke Leowin—a kinsman of mine.”
There were puffed chests among the men of Yrlac, but Abravanal made a bitter face. “From so great a tree, such piteous fruit.”
Leovere stiffened. “It is my sincere wish that you had passed unmolested to this place. My banner is brandished by men with whom I have not spoken. As, I think, is yours. The attack was not my doing. I would see our two houses joined in peace.”
The duke’s knob-knuckled fist clamped tight around his spoon. “You say ‘joined’?”
“Your Grace,” Leovere began, “I—”
“How do you wish to come by this joining?” The duke coughed into his fist, wincing sharply. Almora clutched her father’s shoulder, urging him to settle, but he only erupted once more, leaning across the table. “Do you know who was in that mill? Do you know?” Fury twisted the man’s frame. “The very girl after whom you lust so greedily.”
“It should not have happened.”
“No. No! It should not. We are in agreement. Your dogs should not have set upon my family in my own lands.”
“Your Grace, I cannot help what desperate men will do—”
“How can I believe you when you smile and lie to my face? What is the vow of a man foresworn?”
“Enough!” said Leovere, his eyes flashing. “Enough.” From his cloak, the man drew a curving horn of hammered bronze and iron bands. He slammed the thing down.
The uncanny horn gleamed.
“What do you do here, Leovere of Penseval?” said Maedor.
“From the fire at Penseval—the fire of my father’s Red Hall, only newly rebuilt. Leowin’s hall, by Heaven. And we did not all escape, my kin. But, from the fire I have this horn.” He let it go, lifting his hand, and Durand saw scars that matched the convolutions of the sculpted bronze, curve for curve, like a brand. “What do you say to this, Abravanal of Gireth?”
Benches groaned backward as knights on both sides stood. More than one sword whispered from its scabbard. Durand had his flail free of his belt when a great voice boomed.
“Stop!”
The ancient Constable of Pennons Gate stood, his arms spread like a man summoning devils. The candles guttered, pitching the room into a shivering darkness. “Put up that horn, Leovere of Penseval. I had not thought to see it pass this way again.
“This feud among Sons of Atthi must end. Hear me, all of you. No man may shed Atthian blood in this place, or you will find yourself cast beyond the protection of patriarchs. Outlawed. Your heirs, dispossessed. Fight here, and you will have nothing else to fight for—to win or to lose. Set your differences aside and make peace.”
Standing in the dying echoes of these words, the knights, hands still on the hilts of their swords, subsided back into their places, though Durand was not first among them.
Faintly then, an aching note reached Durand’s ear. Something was crying out, a moan rising from the frozen emptiness between the peaks. The Solantines touched the hilts of their weapons as their commander lifted his chin. Faintly, the horn in Leovere’s fist trembled in harmony. The brass curve buzzed against the tabletop.
Finally, the sound left them.
Maedor gestured to his captains, a nod sending men to the battlements or out into the high barrens. “I would have you part ways, milords—Leovere to Penseval, and Abravanal to Acconel. Or all of you to the ends of Creation. But there is a knotted doom upon us, and the Powers must work their will.
“The feast is ended,” Maedor declared.
10
The Horn of the Forest
Abravanal was not fit to walk after the excitement at Maedor’s table.
Pennons Gate was black as a mine. They walked long reaches with hardly a lamp or candle’s flicker. Durand kept an eye on every door and passageway as the party walked the old man back to the infirmary. Though Maedor made sure they went nowhere without some grim minder, Durand had seen ruthlessness from the dogs of Yrlac and he would not forget.
Yet it was neither knights nor captain who led them. Instead, Almora marched straight-backed through the old fortress, and it was all an exhausted Abravanal could do to keep up. Deorwen shot Durand a beseeching look, but soon the girl had swept them into the sickroom and the old man capsized on the bunk.
“There you are, Father, safe and sound once more,” said Almora. She brusquely smoothed a blanket. “I hope your second recovery is as swift as your first. I think I might like to see something of this place. I have heard so much about it, after all. Like as not, the Powers have heard enough from me on your behalf.”
“Almora!” said Deorwen.
But Almora lifted her
head and left the old man gaping from his bed as she stalked from the room. She had not left his side for days.
Durand followed, with one of the Solantine brothers right after him.
The girl climbed the winding passageways of the fortress, passing arrow slits glowing faintly with the light of dusk. Sometimes Durand followed her by the slap and hiss of her soles on flagstones, listening at the mouths of stairwells and hesitating at intersections.
Finally, she climbed a last long stair and stepped into the light at the top. Durand braced his hands on the icy walls and followed, only to confront a scene like that which must have met the Creator at the close of the first day. The dark stone world had ended; Almora had found the battlements of the fortress and climbed into the sky. She stood there awestruck, a tiny thing against that broken world.
Between two mountaintops, a valley plunged through six hundred fathoms of gloom into untold leagues of forest.
Almora just stared.
Durand let her have the room to think. Soon, Ailric and the Solantine joined him, climbing into the last twilight.
This was the Pennons Gate of the skald’s tales. Here, where the fortress faced the Fellwood, Pennons Gate was a single wall whose battlements spanned the whole valley from side to side, a thousand paces. Every hundred paces or so, a stern turret jutted over the abyss. Even on that day, three hundred years after the war’s ending, Iron Knights walked the wall. Clouds passed by low enough to touch.
Almora walked, and the rest stepped out onto the parapet, not far behind.
“I do not understand,” said Ailric.
Durand’s glance took in the forest, the mountains, the wall, and the girl. “What?” he said.
“All this.” The young man lifted his spread arms. Ailric stepped to the wall, vanishing between two merlons and reappearing. “The wall is too tall to be any good to an archer, and no man living could pull the bow that reached these embrasures from below.” He peered down once more. “What is it, five hundred fathoms?”
Durand nodded; it was certainly more.
“How far can an arrow fly?” said Ailric.
Durand’s mind took him back to sieges in Yrlac and Gireth. He had seen arrows. “They won’t get through mail past a hundred paces. Less. They’ll bother horses and the like to three hundred, just falling. Cuts, if it’s a broadhead. Shooting from this height, that’s what you’d have.”
Now, it was the turn of the Solantine. The man grunted, and Durand turned to recognize the flat nail-head eyes of his jailer from the first day.
“You’ve been misled, you lot. This fortress is not as you think it,” he said. “It is not a wall.”
“It has the look of a wall,” said Durand.
“It is a cliff and a crooked road. The road climbs the cliff, each section battlemented and looking down on the one below. Each switchback is commanded by a gate. In time of war, the gates are packed with archers and difficult to approach.”
“Ah,” said Ailric. “No matter how large the army, the front would be measured in paces. Even the lower gates would be impassable.”
“Thralls beyond number have come against us here. Pennons Gate—the wall you’ll hear the skalds go on about Pennons—is naught but a keep at the end of a winding road. The last stitch of road passes below these highest battlements, or we wouldn’t bother shooting. It is hardly more than twenty fathoms to the track.”
“So no one ever fights from these heights.”
“Arrows have been loosed from every tower. And stones flung. Even to the stones of the Gate itself, where they could be pried free by desperate hands. The Enemy has climbed every step but the last.”
“Host of Heaven,” said Ailric.
The man grunted. “You will see marks in the stone along the parapet.” And, indeed, there were funnel-like grooves around each embrasure. “Fear-sick archers worrying at their arrowheads. The whole wall a fool’s whetstone.” Off where Almora walked, the wall bore thousands of scars. “I have done it.”
The monk subsided back into silence, and Durand watched Almora, alone above the forest in the evening light. She had lived through more in a few days than she had in ten years, and Durand was glad to see her walk in the open air, far from the murk of the sickroom.
She had just passed one of the towers where the round flank obscured part of the wall walk when she screamed out. Durand was there in a moment, and found her standing before a pack of soldiers who’d been sheltering against the curve of the tower.
This was where Leovere’s dogs had gone.
The soldiers sneered up at him. They were casting knucklebones along the parapets. He saw someone passing a wineskin: a soldier with a boar’s bristle mustache. The man who turned to receive it was Morcar the Toad.
“Cold, ain’t it?” said Morcar. After taking a swig of wine from the skin, he waved the thing toward Almora. “She want some, you reckon, Durand Col? Do her good.”
Durand swatted the skin into the forest. It tumbled through the shadows and shadowed sentries all down the wall turned their faces.
Morcar gave Almora a leer, not giving ground.
“This one always speak for you, dear?”
“Leovere said you’d left this place. Said you acted without him knowing,” Durand said.
“Here you are, lumping me in with them raiders, Sir Durand. But I took His Grace’s part. I said as much on the day. There we were, Grugan and I, watching over the old man—in disguise—when suddenly there’s that village aflame and unsavory horsemen on all sides. If you’d have let me get Abravanal safely away, he might have been spared a few hard nights.”
Durand grimaced. “So that is the tale you’re telling?”
Somewhere, a high-flying carrion bird called, “Haw! Haw!”
A sneer spread over Morcar’s face, and Durand saw the great green gulf of the Fellwood through the embrasure at the man’s elbow. The black shapes of two Rooks flickered over the trees. Morcar was very near the edge. In the next moment, Durand had lashed out. The heel of his hand struck Morcar’s breastbone with force enough to send the toad through the nearest embrasure—and only at the very last instant did Durand drop to his belly and snag a bony ankle.
“Rash,” said Durand, straining. “I understand.” Fathoms below, the Rooks turned a circle, their shadows flickering over the billowing treetops, but it was more likely that Morcar would hit the road or the battlements a hundred feet below. “Haw! Haw!”
Nearer at hand, sentries swarmed in, catching hold of Ailric and Morcar’s thugs.
“Now, what do you say, Morcar? Eh?”
“Let me up!”
“I should have killed you in that mill, friend. A man does not often get a second chance.”
“This is sacred ground!”
“Sacred ground? I’m not sure you’re on any kind of ground at all, friend.”
As Morcar twisted to look down, his weight wrenched Durand’s shoulder. He very nearly lost his hold.
“Best not to do that again,” said Durand, panting. He thought of the Solantine who’d guided them. “How many fathoms is it, brother? Eh? Ailric, what did he say?”
“Twenty to the track,” Ailric said flatly. “Five hundred to the bottom of the gorge.”
Durand felt the blood bulging at his temples.
“Say what you will, Morcar. I know what you’ve done, and I know what was in your mind. But you will never get your hands on His Grace or his daughter, no matter what devilry you conjure. Your master has disavowed you. Knows nothing. On his oath. Keep clear of His Grace.”
“Pull me up!”
Durand could see the shadowed tiers of the Pennons Gate road. Morcar had burned a sanctuary full of people.…
Suddenly, there was a voice at Durand’s ear. The breath was hot.
“Bring him up now, or you will be carted round the Atthias in chains for the plowmen to spit on. You’ve had your fun, hmm?”
Durand swiveled his head and found the jailor-knight flat on his belly at Durand’s side.
“It might be worth the price if my people would be safe.”
The Rooks were laughing.
“I hear you, and know your mind.” The monk’s lips scrabbled at Durand’s ear. “But let us think on this price and who would pay. You are the duke’s man. How would it be if my brothers judged that old Abravanal or his daughter had ordered this man dead, hmm? Maybe now it isn’t just brave Durand Col shouldering the blame. And there’ve been kings scourged over less. Poor girl, maybe. Poor old man, certainly.”
Durand looked the man square in the face. On either side of a nose like a broken finger, the nail-head eyes blinked once. A man believed such a face.
Durand heaved at Morcar till the jailer-knight could get a fist on the devil’s belt. The other Solantines rushed to his assistance.
Back on the walkway, Morcar’s men lunged at Durand, shouting murder. Solantines seized him, and those monks not wrestling Morcar from the brink rushed to keep the others at bay.
Almora sheltered beside young Ailric, her dark eyes wide. Durand could not get free.
“Get her inside,” he called to Ailric over the commotion, and watched as Ailric shepherded the girl away.
“Durand!” said Morcar.
Durand turned to see him being dragged from between the two merlons, livid and thrashing.
“I’ll have your guts for this!” The man tore at his clothing, reaching for a sword or dagger despite the restraining arms of the monks.
He knew the rage of a chained bear. He should have dropped the devil. The Solantines hauled Morcar off, herding Boar’s Bristles and the rest in the same direction.
The jailer-monk withdrew himself from the embrasure a moment after, and, brushing his surcoat with rough palms, turned to Durand. He smiled a brief sardonic grimace.
“You’ll come with us?” said the monk.
Durand found that a good dozen Solantines remained around him. Every one looked as solid as a sack of nails.
“Fine,” he said, and they led him down into the fortress.