by David Keck
Durand was mired in the midst of his battalion, and he twisted and craned to see between the helmets of his men. The gulf below the hilltop swelled with labored breathing and the footfalls of an army. At last, a gleam from the Farrow Moon flashed in the eyes of five hundred charging men.
Even twelve lines from the front, Durand felt the shock and fear as the enemy crashed into the Host of Gireth. Men braced and stumbled, creating sudden heaving crushes in the lines. Many would be pinned, helpless despite years at the pell and in the lists. But Durand could do nothing—he could scarcely see.
In ragged flashes of moonlight, Durand made out a strong wedge of Leovere’s rebels, driving deeper and deeper into the jumbled line of Durand’s host, cutting through the men like the prow of a ship. And Durand saw that Leovere had grasped a weakness in the Host of Gireth—in every host of Errest the Old.
This was Leovere’s game. There had been just enough warning and just enough confusion that every conroi in the host had balled up around its banner. Now, Leovere’s wedge shoved the conrois aside like a boar’s snout in a barrel of apples. And the wedge was coming on faster than Durand would have believed.
Garelyn was roaring: “We’ll have to get around him. Cut him off. Swallow him up!” Leovere’s wedge pitched and jolted nearer and nearer. Durand saw wild Morcar in the spattered prow, with Leovere a step behind. And Durand knew that Leovere would not care a damn about getting out—no more than an arrow cared when it buried itself in the enemy’s heart. “He comes for us,” said Durand. “A few cut throats and the issue is decided, Duke Garelyn! Call your banners in. I want ten squadrons rallying here. Give every flag and pennon to Almora. Ten banners in one fist now! He comes!”
There would be no siege at Ferangore. There would be no long battle. Leovere had thrown his whole force at the heart of his enemy, striking with all of his power and all of his wiles, and it must end in an hour. If he could cut the throats of Durand and Almora, he would break the Host of Gireth and stride straight from the chaos to the Tower of Ferangore.
With Moryn Mornaway and the Duke of Garelyn, Durand launched himself into the lines of his own men, hauling banner knights and petty barons from every conroi he could reach. Any man he knew from Abravanal’s court, he seized and threw behind him. “To the girl! Your banner in her hand!”
Finally, Durand turned and raised Ouen’s sword as Morcar surged through the mob. Durand snarled to himself, “Let Morcar come. Let Leovere come.” The whole wedge had shoved near enough to Durand that he could have spat upon them. Durand was smiling straight into the face of Morcar—when the mob of loyal swords broke around them. The cataract of blades and churning limbs knocked Leovere’s wedge aside only a step from Durand and the last of Almora’s guard. And there, so near, Leovere’s advance staggered. In the space of heartbeats, Leovere lost his grip on the battle, for then the men of Gireth saw how small was the force of the enemy and how lost they were in the Host of Gireth and they found the courage they had lost in the confusion. Now, Leovere’s men bled for the pain and shame they had brought to the Host of Gireth.
Durand, unwilling to leave Doerwen and the rest, was jostled by friendly knights crowding forward. Blades swung like cleavers and there was soon neither room to stand nor room for the dead and maimed to fall.
Durand fought for a glimpse of Leovere in the press. Now was the moment to cry for mercy. There could be neither rout nor retreat, only massacre. And the blades of Gireth were falling.
But Leovere had never been far away. Just as Durand spotted Leovere’s white face and bulging eyes, someone broke through the crush and flew for Durand himself. A sudden blade hacked splinters from his shield, numbing his forearm and fingers in the shield straps. Here was Morcar. Like a beast at bay, he had broken loose from his brothers and flung himself through an instant’s space. Here was Leovere’s hope.
Durand smashed Morcar’s face with his black shield, fast and hard. He felt blows clatter and grind over the iron rings at his shoulder and a slippery wetness at his neck, but he was fresh and Morcar had been beating steel blades in dragging armor till he could not breathe. Durand gave him a knee and skipped his fist from the man’s helmet, but then he saw Leovere and an opening.
Leovere’s plan might serve Durand just as well. If Morcar’s blade could free Yrlac, Durand’s could end a rebellion.
There was a ragged, brawling moment as Durand lunged between one body and the next. Leovere’s throat was bare—just rectangle of naked skin—and Durand threw his weight behind the point of his sword, but was brought up short with his blade groping an inch from Leovere’s blood. Morcar had a fistful of Durand’s old black surcoat.
Stranger, Leovere’s eyes were fixed on something beyond the fray, as if Durand’s sharpened steel made no difference. A savage, confounding joy blazed in his face.
A groan arose from the Host of Gireth and a recoiling wave jostled through the army. The front rank had seen something on the hills. Durand imagined some reserve racing late to the fight, now taking the host in its flank, but it was not mortal men he saw when the clouds parted. Instead, he saw the maragrim. Hundreds tumbled uphill, swift as springing deer.
Lord Leovere thrust his hand at the Fellwood king and spread his arms to encompass all of Yrlac, all of Creation. And Durand knew that their doom was upon them.
A thing of stilting limbs crashed into Gireth’s flank, and men became children in the face of such nightmares. Babbling, sobbing horrors pelted into the ranks. Monstrous. Vile. Impossible.
And above them all rose the Crowned Hog of Fellwood, tall as trees. Coffin narrow and spider black.
For an instant, Durand jabbed his sword at Leovere’s gullet, thinking that he might still send the summoner to meet his masters Below, but the first convulsions of the mob now heaved him away. Against the mad weight of such a panic, the strength of one man was useless. Chest to chest, Durand was lifted, scrambling for balance with only one boot on the turf.
Morcar’s face was a yard from Durand’s fists, but neither man had space to swing or a free hand to make the attack.
For a moment then, the clouds took the moon and Creation seemed to fill with howling. A thousand men struggled in the hands of things they could not see. And Durand wondered what had become of Deorwen and Almora. He twisted against the dark and drove himself with furious elbows and pure savagery back into the mass of his own people. Every yard cost blood and snapped bones, but, when the moonlight shot through once more, Durand found himself in the final ring, where stood Garelyn, deadly Mornaway, and Ailric, flashing their blades at whomever approached. Berchard and the women stood behind. In Almora’s eyes was pure bewilderment, but Deorwen knew that doom had found them.
Still, Durand could not give in.
He thought of Ydran, the town. It would mean a rout of the last standing men, but there might be a way to get a few into Yrdan and behind walls. There was a castle. He roared to Ailric, “The castle! The castle! Get them down!” and threw himself upon the knights of the household guard, spinning them at the foe. “The girl! Hold them!” And the staring animal eyes became the eyes of men as they understood that there might be a chance for someone.
The monstrous things leapt upon kinsmen and friends. Grown men were snatched from their feet while the brutes rampaged through the fight, killing mindlessly, even falling upon their allies. One thing sobbed and sobbed as its great cleaver swatted heads and hands from defending knights.
But Durand’s men covered ground even as the onslaught tore their lines to pieces.
A hundred paces, two hundred—and five hundred dead. They were running through hovels. Fallen roofs. Broken walls. The castle was a bowshot below. And they fought as they fled. A pocket of men would face the enemy, holding them off as their fellows ran. But no one could stand for long. Again and again, the bravest died.
In all the tumbling chaos of the retreat, Durand lost track of Leovere and his men, but he soon found them. They had torn loose of the fight. And, as if the maragrim were n
ot enough, now Morcar and Leovere’s guard flew past a bondman’s longhouse and crashed into the flank of the broken host.
Durand pitched himself into Morcar’s path, knowing that soon they would be finished, and that castle was too far away.
But renewed screams drew Durand’s eye. Morcar, too, was looking. And there was the Hornbearer, huge against the dark vault of Heaven, throwing the bloody wreckage of dead men.
As they watched, it seized some poor soldier and flung him, crashing into the ranks of Leovere’s guard. The corpse wore the horn blazon of Leovere’s own people. Only then did Durand really understand what he was seeing: the Hornbearer strode among Leovere’s rebels.
Durand saw Leovere then. The lord brandished a crooked thing between himself and the Hornbearer. High in Leovere’s fist was the Horn of Uluric—the battle-standard of the men of Penseval and the lure that had called the Hornbearer from his forests. The giant paused.
Creation was still. The whole night turned around the horn and the Hornbearer like some black whirlpool.
A broken man dangled, forgotten, in the Hornbearer’s hand. Here were the monster and his master, frozen in the midst of the dying. Then the giant thrall seemed to shift its horned face. In its black, blank look was as little humanity as there was in the turning of cogs or gears. And, without a sound, the giant tore the man in his hands asunder.
Leovere’s mouth opened as the rout stormed around him. Even Morcar seemed shaken; he’d taken a step from Durand, and Durand might have killed him then, but Ailric was calling. The boy pointed downhill, past Ydran where the vast wall of Hesperand stood—not a wall in truth, but palisade of twenty-fathom trees, old as Creation, with trunks like the long bones of the world.
Durand saw it: the thralls were running, but not in pursuit of the Atthians haring downhill. They were running toward the eaves of Hesperand.
“Stand aside! Let the devils past!” Durand waved his arms at Leovere, but the Lord of Penseval seemed lost.
Durand looked to Leovere’s captain. “Morcar, damn you! Get your men out of the way!”
A scuttling thing with a man’s face charged between them, mauling one soldier as the two leaders recoiled. The Hornbearer strode through with men in both fists. Something like a spider carried a horse in its mouth. They were all headed downhill. All swarming through Ydran—or the forest beyond it.
Ydran could mean nothing to them. Gireth and Yrlac meant nothing to them. Leovere had called the thralls of Heshtar into the beating heart of Errest the Old.
Morcar yanked Leovere from the path of the maragrim, and—though there were men and horses crying out upon the hillside—the maragrim left them behind. Leovere sat prostrate on the turf. His men stood, scattered and ragged as scarecrows.
Around Durand were all of Abravanal’s household.
Durand still had a blade in his fist. He looked to Deorwen, Almora. Deorwen only nodded. A stone’s throw downhill, the Hornbearer and its host slipped through Ydran. Maybe those lost villagers been right to flee for the uncertain, deathless trees. Durand stepped through the gap toward Leovere, sword hovering over the midnight turf.
“Leovere,” he said. “Leovere of Penseval.”
Morcar turned. He seemed to be the only man able to defy Durand, but he did nothing.
“I brought them,” said Leovere.
“Here, Your Grace. Have a care what you say,” Morcar managed.
“I called them,” repeated Leovere. He squinted up at Durand. “A thousand years or more, they have been barred, and I took my grandsire’s damned horn from the wall.” Durand could not help think of the long watches on Pennons Gate. “I have been duped! That thing is bound for Eldinor; it can be nothing else. They have used me. My fear and wrath and pride and greed. I have been their tool. I have been the servant of whispers.”
The last pack of maragrim loped into the ghostly trees, and Leovere writhed.
“What have I done?” he said. “They will come upon Eldinor unaware. That is why they had me stand in this place. It is the straight road to Eldinor. I am a fool, and worse than a fool. It is the end of everything.”
Already, it was too late for a last stand, too late to send warnings to Eldinor. There was no hope of marshaling forces at the capital. There was no king to stand against him. Only a boy, helpless in the tomb below the high sanctuary—when he reached it. The Hornbearer would throw open the portals of the high sanctuary and, in a moment, the Wards of the Ancient Patriarchs would be no more. The Banished, the Strangers, and the thralls of Heshtar would be freed upon the people.
Durand had seen the Banished cringing in the in-between places. And the Strangers, he knew, stood beyond the borders of Windhover—as terrible as anything in Hesperand—waiting to step into the ward-bound lands of Errest.
Garelyn was wild, his face white and masked with black blood. “Rightly you may call yourself a fool! Many will die for your idiocy, but, by my oath, you will not be last.” Morcar blocked the marcher lord as the man thrust his sword toward Leovere.
Men in Leovere’s broken party were drawing themselves to their feet. Garelyn looked hard at Morcar. “Lord Morcar, I suggest you step aside before I recall your part in this villainy.”
But, before Leovere’s man could answer—before Garelyn could force them—a great rushing stirred among the trees of Hesperand not a bowshot from their argument.
It was like a sudden wind. A sound like the ocean.
And the whole host of the maragrim stepped as one from the trees.
All were silent, and their great lord stood among them a moment. Then, with two balled fists like barrels of stone, the Hornbearer smote one tall tree like a man beating once upon the frame of the door that was barred to him forever.
Even Durand felt a grip of dread. Leaves fluttered down around the giant thrall and it might do anything. If the maragrim turned upon the ruined armies on the hill, not one of them could survive. And so they watched. But then, after a span of a dozen frozen breaths, the Hornbearer turned from the forest, his vast and hurried strides carrying him west. With every step, he and his host moved faster.
Durand knew the route.
“There is an arm of the forest that reaches south and west into Yrlac,” he said. “They must pass around it before striking north once more.”
Almora moved among them, stepping free of Deorwen and Ailric. “They mean to take Eldinor, those things?”
“Aye,” said Durand. “I think so.”
“With nothing standing before them?”
“There is the Host of Errest.” Durand scratched the mailed back of his head.
Almora watched the retreating shadows of the host. “How will they know? The Host does not wait in Eldinor. Men must come from every corner of Errest. They have not even been called, have they? They cannot even know.”
“It is so,” said Durand. “I fear it is so.”
A sober and broken group listened as the girl spoke, understanding that they stood at the end of the world.
“Well,” said Almora. “What have you to say?”
Coensar pawed splatters from his face. “In Lamoric’s day, we tried the Hesperand road. If that is barred, you must skirt the forest to reach Mornaway or Hellebore or Eldinor beyond.”
“It must be ten leagues,” said Deorwen.
“They have lost a night’s march at least with this,” said Mornaway.
“Or more. They are much delayed, it is certain,” said Coensar.
Deorwen tilted her head. “And if we cross Hesperand, if we march day and night, we will catch them up and then there will be another night’s work to match this one.”
Heremund spoke then, from beneath his deep cowl. “Errest will not survive the Hornbearer’s coming to Eldinor. Down will come the ancient wards, the armor of sanctuaries that keeps the elder spirits in their place. They have been bound too long now for sudden freedom. They hunger. They rage. They go mad.”
Deorwen was not cowed. “I will speak because someone must. You must look at
the thralls’ work this night. What will be the result of another meeting?”
Almora turned to Deorwen, but the next voice was not from among their party
“It is of no matter.” It was Morcar. His sword’s point trailed in the grass. “We cannot remain.” His head swiveled, taking in Leovere and the desolated broken rebels. “We meant only to take our due, but now we have set this thing loose and gained nothing. We in Leovere’s party must go to Eldinor.”
Durand was not sure whether Morcar worried more about the kingdom or the disgrace of being so wholly taken in. Whatever Morcar thought, Leovere was nodding now. But the rebel host scarcely numbered a hundred men—or a hundred men who might be fit for travel.
“No,” said Almora. She seemed so very out of place in that ruined village. So very still and small. “None of us can remain. Not now. Not knowing. We must ride together for Eldinor, all of us.”
There were dead men all around. And the dead were not strangers. Knights under one banner had slept as fosterlings on the rush-strewn floors of each other’s halls. That was hard. And Leovere’s men had done the killing. They had summoned the fiends. And, though Durand had little sympathy for Leovere’s cause, Abravanal’s lordlings still held Yrlac’s lands, and Durand Col, a common knight from Gireth, was still strutting about calling himself the Duke of Yrlac.
It could not all be made right. The dead could not be raised. But there were still things a man might do while he lived.
“Leovere of Penseval,” Durand said, stepping forward. The bleeding men of Yrlac looked solemnly upon him. “Before the king and Great Council, Abravanal put Yrlac in my hands, yielding his title to me and my heirs.”
Leovere did not argue, though some of the old fury tightened his scowl.
“I have shed blood over Yrlac, as much as any man. And so, I say that the title and lands are mine to do with as I please.” Durand pressed on into the face of Leovere’s despondent fury. “And I say that they should be returned to the blood heir of the title.” Men called out on both sides: outrage, disbelief, but Durand did not relent. “As they were my lands, my title, so now they are yours, Leovere of Penseval. I do this thing now before my peers on this night, and on my oath I will not be gainsaid.”