Gathan led his army south. As he advanced, he sent parties east and west to sweep the countryside for rebels. None were found. Scouts brought word the town still stood and was eerily calm. A few bold bandits entered the outskirts for a closer look. They reported no defenders in sight. Dead bodies there were in plenty but no rebels.
Sensing a trap, Gathan sent scouts to reconnoiter. The squalid squatters’ camp ringing the old town had been burned, but the city proper appeared only lightly damaged, although in Samustal it was hard to know what was new damage and what was mere decrepitude.
The scouts entered through an unguarded gate, the clopping of their horses’ hooves disturbing clouds of insects. The smell of death was familiar to all who took Samuval’s coin, and it overpowered even the usual stench of Samustal. The bandits rode past the bodies of comrades, slavers, and elf townspeople. Flies and vultures were having a feast.
The captain of the scouts decided the rebels had indeed chosen the coward’s course, fleeing Samustal after their coup. He summoned a rider to carry word back to Lord Gathan. The courier was just turning to canter away when an arrow took him in the side of the neck. Before he hit the ground, fifteen of his fellows likewise thudded to the dirt, arrows sprouting in necks, chests, and backs.
“Ambush! Withdraw!” the bandit captain shouted, wheeling his mount. A second volley arrived, and another ten men fell, and the captain finally caught sight of the archers. They were on the parapet of the stockade. The scouts had ridden right under them. The captain cursed the bandits who had reported the town empty of rebels.
Atop the timber wall, Kerian was doing some cursing of her own. The Kagonesti archers lined the parapet, while below several score townsfolk huddled out of sight, clutching captured arms. Since Olin’s overthrow, many of the bolder residents had come and asked to serve Porthios. He allowed them that honor.
“You missed the commander,” she snapped at Nalaryn, crouching near her.
“We hit where we aim. The first rider would’ve carried word back to their general.”
“We ought to have taken them all,” she said darkly. Any that survived could warn their comrades as well as the first one.
The late-afternoon sun threw long shadows across the streets below, and bandits could be seen riding up the side streets parallel to the stockade. Roofs and chimney pots shielded the enemy. The Kagonesti ceased their punishing rain. Porthios did not send out his newly formed militia; the townsfolk would be no match for the mounted bandits.
“They must have more troops nearby. We should never have delayed. We should’ve left this place immediately.”
Kerian knew her grumbling was pointless. Liberating the secret cache from the attic of the mayor’s palace had kept them in Bianost when they otherwise would have made straight for the safety of the woodland. Nobody had expected bandits to return so quickly or in such numbers.
“Do you fear the enemy?”
Kerian turned. Porthios was climbing the stairs to the battlement. His ragged robe flapped around his gaunt legs like the wings of the crows that infested the town. She glared at him.
“Of course I fear them! Twenty warriors and a mob of civilians against an unknown number of trained mercenaries?”
He looked away, seemingly unconcerned, and her anger grew. She yelled down to the townsfolk below, describing the red and yellow livery of the bandits the Kagonesti had stung. She was told those were the colors of Gathan Grayden.
Kerian recognized the name. She had learned a lot about conditions in Qualinesti during her brief but turbulent time as a slave. Porthios seemed unimpressed by her description of the bandit leader as the worst of Samuval’s lieutenants. He stared out over the parapet, although there was little to see. Gathan wasn’t foolish enough to parade his army for his enemies to count.
In fact, Porthios was deep in thought. The strain of taking the town, coupled with finding an unexpected bounty concealed in the mayor’s palace, had set his mind racing. He’d half expected to die liberating Bianost from Lord Olin’s yoke. The future, once confined to a narrow woodland path and a nameless death, appeared much wider. But he had to proceed carefully. He must continue to be bold, or his rebellion would be crushed by Samuval’s superior might. Yet every move had to be considered with care. The entire responsibility lay on his shoulders. Kerianseray was a patriot and a good fighter but hadn’t the finesse to guide the campaign Porthios imagined. His small force must be led with the right attitude.
A leader must ignore the petty troubles that plague lesser minds. Porthios’s divine encounter in the woodland had taught him that. He could not allow himself to be distracted by tactical problems. He must concentrate on the grand strategy. The god had shown him that only by looking beyond the obvious and the commonplace could he free his people.
A shout from the Lioness drew his attention to the street below. The surviving bandits had made their way to other gates and were spurring for the north road. Before they reached the woods, more of their mounted comrades appeared among the trees, along with sizable companies of foot soldiers. A veritable hedge of pikes filled the road.
“Are they massing to attack?” Porthios asked.
Kerian slumped, turning to sit on the narrow parapet with her back against the stockade. “No,” she said glumly. “They’re encircling us. Grayden doesn’t need to storm the town. He can’t know how many we are, so attacking the wall would be a waste of soldiers. He’s only got to trap us here till hunger and thirst force us to yield, or until he can overwhelm us.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s what I would do.”
Grim silence reigned. Then Porthios drew a deep breath.
“We can’t allow the cache to fall into bandit hands. I’d rather see it destroyed first,” he said. “So we must fight.”
He stood. Instantly, an arrow whizzed by his shoulder, ripping his sleeve as it passed. Kerian grabbed the front of his robe with both hands and dragged him down behind the sharpened logs.
“Take your hands off me.”
She remembered the face under the mask and let go abruptly. With much affronted dignity, Porthios stood again and descended the steps to the street.
Kerian shook her head. She’d known other warriors like him. Bravest of the brave they often were, but frightening. Placing little value on their own lives, they often didn’t value anyone else’s either.
She and Nalaryn peered carefully over the barrier. Here and there, elf eyes could pick out bandit archers settling into position among the burned-out ruins of the squatters’ camp.
Telling Nalaryn to hold his place, Kerian climbed down to the street and followed Porthios back toward the town square.
Once the setting of slave auctions, executions, and Olin’s unsavory entertainments, the square was again a gathering place for the elves of Bianost. Kerian had thought most of the original inhabitants were long gone, driven out or sold away into slavery. But several hundred had gathered, eager to serve their liberator. The word had spread to gather in the square, and the sudden arrival of Gathan Grayden seemed only to whet their appetite for battle.
Porthios walked ahead of Kerian. As he entered the square, his pace slowed. The crowd of elves shifted toward him, determined to get a closer look at their benefactor.
The scene felt oddly familiar to Kerian, reminding her of Gilthas’s progress through the tent city of the exiled elves in Khur. The Speaker of the Sun and Stars was regarded as the noblest being in the world, but while his grateful subjects were welcome to approach the kindly Gilthas, none tried to accost Porthios. Curiosity and gratitude brought them near, but his forbidding demeanor arrested their enthusiasm. Scores lined the way, but not one hand reached out for his ragged robe. Their expressions were different too.
She had nearly reached the fountain in the center of the square before she identified the difference. The Speaker of the Sun and Stars represented a lofty ideal. Porthios was a reflection of each of them, the rage and shame of every elf in the subjugated l
ands, personified in one gaunt, shabby frame.
The slave pens had been torn down by the mob. Since then, debris and garbage had been removed from the central fountain. Seeing that, Kerian wondered aloud about restoring the flow of water.
An elf standing on the stone platform by the obelisk said, “There is no water.”
“What, none? None at all?”
He explained the feeder pipes were broken or choked with garbage. “Olin never bothered to keep them up. For months, all water has been carried in.”
“In from where?” asked the Lioness, eyes narrowing.
“From the springs in the meadow south of town.”
The squatters’ camp had grown up when traders became tired of tramping in and out of the stockade for water. They moved outside to be closer to the springs.
Kerian gestured peremptorily for Porthios to accompany her. Conscious of being watched by hundreds, he followed. They ascended the steps of the mayor’s palace.
Out of earshot of the crowd, she hissed, “Did you hear? The bandits have us cut off from our only water supply!”
“There are rain cisterns under the streets. We’ll drink that.”
Heatedly, she pointed out the cisterns were likely nearly dry after the long summer drought. Any water in them would be stagnant, an invitation to disease.
“Then we will fight and win before we get thirsty,” Porthios said.
The Lioness’s famous temper nearly broke. Porthios had achieved amazing things, but his bland indifference to their safety made her furious. All the old enmity between city lord and woodland elf welled up inside her for the first time since leaving Khur. This arrogant, mutilated noble was gambling with all their lives!
There was no telling what she might have done had not fate intervened in the person of one of Nalaryn’s Kagonesti, a female called Sky. She jogged up the steps, calling for Kerian and the Great Lord. They were wanted back at the north wall.
Kerian clutched her filthy hair with both hands. “What now?” she groaned.
“The bandits are fighting,” Sky said and took off.
Kerian took that to mean Nalaryn’s band was in peril. She headed down the steps without even looking to see whether Porthios followed.
The crowd of elves in the square peppered her with anxious questions. She fended them off but quickly realized that was a mistake.
“The bandits are coming back,” she announced, not breaking stride. “If you value your liberty and love your race, follow me and bring a weapon. The battle is now!”
There were only a few cries of fear. In a body, the elves grabbed whatever makeshift weapons they could find and streamed after the Lioness.
Near the stockade, Kerian heard the telltale sounds of battle. Entering the last street inside the wall, she was surprised to see Nalaryn’s Kagonesti crouched below the parapet. They did not appear to be engaged, so who was fighting?
She raced up the steps. Behind, the elves of Bianost gripped unfamiliar weapons, their strained faces turned upward.
“What’s going on?” Kerian demanded.
One of the Kagonesti pointed wordlessly. Kerian put an eye to a chink between the logs and peeked out. She drew a breath in sharply.
Beyond the wasteland of squatters’ shanties a considerable battle was indeed taking place. Gathan Grayden’s soldiers, some on foot and some mounted, were milling around their leader’s fluttering standard. No one on the stockade could identify his foe through rising clouds of ash and dirt, but Nalaryn offered a bleak and logical opinion. The rats who’d fled Olin’s town had carried word of his downfall in all directions. The newcomers were probably troops of another bandit lord who sought to grab Olin’s former territory.
“This may be a well-chewed bone, but they’ll fight like rabid dogs to possess it,” he said.
Kerian watched as lancers in bright breastplates charged through Grayden’s disordered ranks. His attention had been focused entirely on the town. He had not expected an attack from elsewhere. The mercenaries formed squares to hold off the cavalry, but they were isolated from each other and unable to do anything but fight to stay alive.
Before the sun set, the battle was over. Grayden himself, surrounded by his best retainers, abandoned the field. His men he left to the mercies of the victor, and like Olin’s mercenaries before them, the bandits broke and scattered. The last Kerian saw of Gathan Grayden was his standard, borne away by a warrior on a black horse.
The townsfolk, watching the melee through gaps in the logs at ground level, set up a cheer when Grayden’s soldiers fled. Kerian silenced them with a thunderous command. The cure might prove worse than the disease.
A block of mounted warriors trotted toward the stockade. The Kagonesti nocked arrows and awaited the order to loose. The approaching column numbered perhaps three hundred.
It was either fight or surrender, and for her part, Kerian had no intention of allowing herself to be chained again. Better to die right here and now.
She gripped her captured sword tightly. Only a modest archer, she left that art to those far more capable. Soon there would be plenty of fighting to go around.
The mounted column halted at the edge of the burned-out section of shanties. A smaller contingent of two score riders came on.
Still peering through the gap between the timbers, Kerian muttered, “I wonder if the Scarecrow has a secret weapon.”
“Only my mind, and my vision.”
He was not two feet behind her, looking out over the notched parapet with customary nonchalance. One day he was going to stop an arrow. She said as much.
“But not today. Can you not see? Those are elves.”
Had he showered the assembled defenders with steel, he could not have astonished them more. Kerian rose partway from her crouch, looking over the top of the timber bulwark. The riders’ armor was commonplace half-plate; their helmets open-faced. Mercenaries from Beacon to Rymdar wore the same harness. Neither did their horses’ trapping reveal any distinctive elven style. What did Porthios see?
The contingent halted just within bowshot. A cloud slid across the sinking sun, and when its shadow covered the field, Kerian finally saw the riders’ insignia. Their bright breastplates bore a symbol inlaid in silver. In full light the contrast was too poor to see at a distance.
The symbol was a star, the eight-pointed star of Silvanesti.
At the forefront, the ranks parted, and three riders emerged, leaving the others behind. The riders on each end were male, one in a commander’s helmet and mantle, the other a well-dressed noble. Riding between them, mounted on a white mare, was a female elf of great beauty. Her riding clothes were jasperine, a fine white cloth woven with gold and red highlights. She put back her hood, revealing black hair.
Kerian stared. The rider looked like … but it couldn’t be. It was too unlikely.
The elderly noble accompanying her hailed them. Atop the log wall, no one breathed, much less answered.
“Great Lord, will you speak?” whispered Nalaryn.
There was no reply. For the first time, the unfailingly confident, supremely smug Porthios was speechless. When Kerian saw his state, she knew her guess about the woman’s identity was correct. His eyes were wide. His bony shoulders trembled.
“I cannot!” Hoarse, agonized, the words fell from his lips like blood from a fresh wound. He made choking sounds. “I cannot!”
Everyone was staring, especially the local elves. What new threat could so unnerve the bold savior of Bianost?
Then, astonishingly, Porthios turned and scrambled down the ladder. He stumbled at the bottom, almost falling on his face, regained his balance, and whirled away, parting the amazed townsfolk like a plow turning fresh soil.
Outside the stockade, the noble called out again. Kerian sheathed her sword and headed for the ladder.
Nalaryn stayed her with a hand on her arm. “Are they friends?” he asked.
“They are gifts from the gods!”
She went to the sally port door cu
t into the stockade gate. Some of the Bianost elves, not understanding the situation, protested. She offered only brief reassurance before flinging open the door and stepping outside.
The white-clad elf woman guided her horse closer. Kerian gripped her sword hilt and stood stiffly at attention, aping the posture of a palace guard.
“Greetings,” the rider said. Her voice was warm and honest. “I am glad we arrived in time. The bandits were spread thin trying to surround the town. We were fortunate to rout them.”
Feeling very shabby and unkempt, Kerian passed a hand over her cropped hair and offered a bemused smile. Although the rider had spoken Qualinesti, Kerian answered in Silvanesti. She was not fluent, but more proficient than when last they’d met. “We are glad of it, too, Highness. I’d hardly expected to be rescued by family,” she said.
The lovely face went blank for a handful of seconds, then: “Kerianseray?”
The name was a disbelieving whisper. Kerian’s smile broadened into a grin.
Nalaryn emerged with his foresters. The Kagonesti chief asked who the noble lady was.
The mounted elf smiled at him. “I am Alhana Starbreeze, at your service.”
8
Smoke drifted across Bianost’s town square, fed by the still-smoldering ruins of houses all around it. Moving in and out of the swirling smoke, Kerian and Nalaryn led Alhana Starbreeze toward the mayor’s palace. Alhana was accompanied by Samar, Chathendor, and a small honor guard. The bulk of her warriors remained behind to patrol outside the stockade and make certain Gathan Grayden and his bandits did not recover their nerve and return.
Alliances Page 10