The Gold Falcon

by Katharine Kerr

  Dallandra considered the question—doubtless Ridvar was assuming that Clae was the usual sort of page, the son of a noble-born man. To tell the truth, that he was only a scribe’s brother, would make Ridvar dismiss him. “He’s a younger son, Your Grace, and his father’s dead,” she said. “Tieryn Cadryc took him in.”

  “Ah. I’ll send someone to speak to Cadryc, then.”

  With a wave all round the young gwerbret strode out of the hall. Dallandra found a bucket of reasonably clean water and began washing the blood and bits of flesh off her hands and arms. She was almost done when Salamander came down the staircase to the great hall. He looked so ill that at first she feared he’d been wounded himself.

  “No, no, fear not, O princess of powers perilous,” Salamander said in Elvish. “I just made another ghastly discovery. Lady Varigga killed herself upstairs. I don’t know if she saw the combat twixt her son and Gerran. Did you know about that?”

  “One of the chirurgeons told me.”

  In but a few moments they both heard more, when Neb and Clae came into the great hall together, shepherded by one of the gwerbret’s riders. Clae clung to his brother’s hand, and his face turned pale at the sight of the dead men, but otherwise he was surprisingly calm as he walked along, looking at each one.

  “There he is.” Clae pointed at the corpse of a sandy-haired lad who couldn’t have been much older than Neb. An arrow had pierced his throat. “That’s Raldd.”

  “Ah, horseshit!” the soldier said. “I’d been hoping we’d taken him alive. I wanted a word with the lad before the gwerbret hanged him.”

  “Can I leave now?” Clae said.

  “Of course, lad,” the soldier gave him a grim smile. “You’ve done well.”

  “Wait for me outside,” Neb said. “We’ll talk for a bit.”

  Clae walked slowly from the great hall, his head held high. He’s going to grow up into one of them, Dallandra thought, and the thought brought her close to tears.

  “I wanted to tell you somewhat quickly,” Neb said. “Honelg tried to kill Matto before he took refuge in the shrine.”

  “He what?” Salamander said. “Oh, by the Black Sun herself!”

  “It’s ghastly, inn’t?” Neb nodded in his direction. “He told the boy that death would be better than falling into the hands of Vandar’s spawn.”

  “Oh.” Salamander paused, and for a moment he looked aged as well as ill. “Apparently the pity I’ve been feeling for him is misplaced.”

  “I’d say it was.” Neb turned to go, then glanced back. “I’d best go see how Clae fares. We can talk later.”

  Together, Salamander and Dallandra followed him outside to the cleaner air of the muddy ward. Here and there a few of Ridvar’s men were picking up dropped weapons and tossing them onto a pile down near the gates. The Westfolk men were hunting for arrows that they could salvage, but they scorned the enemy’s rough-made bows. Prince Voran’s men were leading cows out of the stables, and servants staggered by with the sacks of grain and armloads of hay to feed this living booty. Later, she supposed, the servants would strip the dun of the rest of its livestock. The victors would eat well tonight.

  “We should make sure that Arzosah and Rori get a couple of hogs,” Salamander said. “Where are the dragons, by the by?”

  “I don’t know,” Dallandra said. “I’ve not had a moment outside till now.”

  They left the dun and walked down the twisty maze of earthworks to the open ground below. The stink of a large encampment met them, but at least, Dallandra reflected, it didn’t smell of fresh blood, unlike the great hall. Judging by the silver light behind the clouds, the sun hung past zenith but still well above the horizon.

  “It’s so odd,” she said. “It was all over so quickly.”

  “Deverry battles tend to be like that,” Salamander said. “I have this nasty feeling that Zakh Gral is going to be an entirely different affair.”

  “Me, too. Unfortunately.”

  “But let us leave opening that sack of troubles to another day.”

  “Yes. Tending the wounded is more than enough trouble for me for one afternoon.”

  “I meant to tell you,” Salamander went on, “I heard that Ridvar is going to take the prisoners back to Cengarn and have them drawn and hanged as rebels.”

  “He what?” For a moment Dallandra couldn’t speak. She took a deep breath. “Are you sure that’s true?”

  “I heard it from Ridvar’s captain. The gwerbret wants to kill them publicly. He thinks that it will scare any of his townsfolk who believe in Alshandra into giving her up.”

  “May every god on this earth or above it blast Ridvar to the depths of his soul.”

  “Dalla!” Salamander caught her arm. “What—”

  “I’ve been fighting to save the lives of those men, and now I see that I should have just let them die because it would have been kinder. And on top of that, that mooncalf lad of a gwerbret doesn’t understand Alshandra’s worshippers in the least.”

  “Here! You’re the one who was just telling me that we had to be ruthless. What about those traitors in Cengarn?”

  “I’ll worry about them later. Where is he?”

  “Who? The gwerbret—Dalla, you can’t just go and—”

  “Oh, can’t I?” Dallandra pulled her arm free of his grasp.

  With Salamander right behind, babbling words she didn’t bother to comprehend, Dallandra strode through the camp. She found Ridvar standing in front of his tent with the two princes. A servant was just carrying away his mail and helm. Overhead hung the bright gold sun banner of Cengarn, matching the blazons on his shirt.

  Dallandra marched up to Ridvar and grabbed him by the blazons with both hands. Distantly she heard men shouting that someone was laying hands on the gwerbret. Guards came running only to stop a few feet away when they saw that the interloper was a woman. One of them grabbed Salamander by the shirt collar and hauled him back. Dallandra ignored them.

  “You!” she snarled. “I hear you’re going to torture the prisoners to death.”

  Ridvar was too shocked to do more than gape at her. Prince Daralanteriel stepped forward, caught her hands, and pried them from the gwerbret’s shirt.

  “Dalla, you’re exhausted,” he said in Elvish, then switched to Deverrian. “My apologies, Your Grace. My healer—”

  “Is not going to be put off so easily.” Dallandra pulled her hands free. “Listen, you.” She addressed this last to all three of them. “The chirurgeons and I have been slaving for hours to save the lives of men you’re going to torture to death. I won’t stand for it. I haven’t studied healing for five hundred years to become an executioner.”

  “My dear woman,” Ridvar recovered himself. “They’re traitors to the—”

  “Don’t you condescend to me, you—” Dallandra stopped herself in the nick of time from calling him an ignorant child. “You don’t see the obvious, do you? These cultists all want to die. They call it witnessing to their goddess. Why are you giving them exactly what they want? Seeing them go singing to their deaths is going to make converts, not deter them.”

  Once again Ridvar could only stare at her.

  “You know,” Prince Voran said, “she’s quite right.”

  Prince Daralanteriel nodded his agreement. At these signs of royal approval, the guards all moved away from Dallandra. Salamander’s captor let him go with a murmured apology.

  “I saw a grim truth today,” Voran went on. “These Alshandra worshippers are a different sort of man than we’ve ever seen before, and my heart is sore troubled. Our people have always tended toward great passions and wild humors. Coupled with this set of peculiar beliefs—” He shook his head and shuddered. “Do we put out a fire by throwing oil upon it?”

  For a long moment Ridvar stood looking back and forth between the two men of royal blood.

  “Besides, Your Grace,” Salamander stepped forward and knelt smoothly in front of the gwerbret. “The prisoners are common-born farmers. Where’
s the honor in killing them?”

  Ridvar let out his breath in a sharp puff. “I’ll take all this under advisement,” the gwerbret said, “but truly, I do see the truth in what you’re all saying.”

  Daralanteriel turned to Dallandra and spoke softly in Elvish. “Go away and leave him to us.”

  It was a reasonable request, she supposed. Salamander got up and slipped his arm companionably through hers.

  “My humble thanks, Your Grace,” Salamander said. Then he led her firmly away.

  This time Dallandra let him. Her fury had spent itself, leaving her tired and a little dizzy. As they walked through the camps of the Deverry men, they heard more gossip, that the gwerbret would also leave men behind on fort guard, in case any Horsekin appeared to visit their now-dead ally.

  “And then there’s that priestess, too,” said one soldier. “If she comes through here, she’s in for a surprise. We’re to arrest her and bring her to Cengarn.”

  Salamander’s face went dead-white, and he stopped walking, but only briefly. With a catch of breath he nodded the man’s way and walked on faster. Does he realize he’s fallen in love with her? Dallandra thought.

  “What’s wrong?” Dallandra waited to speak till they’d gone well past their informant.

  “Naught, naught.” Salamander smiled brightly. “It’s just that I doubt if Rocca’s a threat to the gwerbretrhyn.”

  “Of course she isn’t. But she might make a good hostage to bargain with.”

  Again he went pale, and she noticed him shoving his hands into his brigga pockets as if to hide their trembling. No, he doesn’t realize it, she thought. All at once she felt impossibly weary. “Ebañy, I’ve got to lie down. I’ve got to sleep. I hate battles so much, seeing men die, feeling their souls all around me, so bewildered.”

  She staggered, and for a moment lost her balance so badly that she nearly fell. The mass of tents below them on the hill seemed to rise up like a wave of filthy water. Salamander caught her arm and steadied her.

  “Let’s get you to your tent,” he said. “You need to sleep.”

  “But I want to know about the dragons—”

  “I’ll scry for them, once you’re resting.”

  In vision Salamander found the dragons among rocky hills and dark pines, a common type of terrain a good many miles to the north. Arzosah crouched on an outcrop of gray boulders, her wings tightly furled, her tail lashing in rage. Rori would settle near her, then suddenly leap into the air and fly in a wide circle, only to return and perch among the rocks for a brief while before flying again. Although Salamander could see that she was speaking, he couldn’t hear her voice. He wondered if she were trying to persuade him to consult Dallandra about his wound. Whatever her subject was, Salamander could assume that Rori was refusing to listen.

  Salamander broke the vision and turned to tell Dallandra what he’d seen, but she was already asleep, curled up in a nest of rumpled blankets. For a moment he stayed in the shelter of her tent and thought about Rocca. Would she come back only to blunder into a trap? There was no way he could warn her without betraying his own people—he was painfully aware of that. He opened his Sight again, though this time he thought of Rocca. He saw her standing outside the stone shrine, talking with two Horsekin men. All three were laughing, perhaps at a jest. Again, he could hear nothing. He watched her until she went inside the shrine, then looked around the fort.

  The gates stood wide open, and two guards were sitting in the dirt between them, playing dice. A quick thought of Sidro brought her image to him. She was kneeling in the kitchen garden, weeding a row of cabbages with one of the Horsekin priestesses. In the sunlight her hair gleamed, as blue-black and shiny as a raven’s feathers. She looked too untroubled to be someone who knew about the army of destruction assembling off to the east. He broke the vision. Apparently no one at Zakh Gral had the slightest idea that an attack was coming. Whoever the raven mazrak was, he certainly hadn’t gone to the Horsekin with a warning.

  Salamander got up without waking Dallandra and left to find Calonderiel. The banadar was standing in front of the prince’s tent with his archers all around him to watch Daralanteriel divide up the Westfolk’s share of the booty—scavenged arrows, blankets, live chickens, and the shoddy like—into equal little heaps, one for each man who’d fought that day.

  “Dalla’s in your tent,” Salamander told Calonderiel. “She’s exhausted.”

  “No doubt,” Calonderiel said, “squandering her energies on the Roundears as she was. I’d better go make sure she’s all right.”

  “I’d recommend it, truly.” Salamander watched him hurry off, then turned back to consider the prizes of war. “You know, Dar, you might leave the dun’s actual furnishings behind, like those pewter bowls, for instance. The gwerbret’s going to attaint this dun and give it to some other lord.”

  “Too bad,” Dar said cheerfully. “Ridvar gets plenty of coin and kind in taxes. He can just part with some of it. Let him furnish the dun all over again.”

  “I take it your heart is not warm with affection for the gwerbret.”

  Daralanteriel snorted loudly and went on sorting.

  It was not long before everyone learned just whom the gwerbret would choose for the dun’s new lord. Salamander changed his bloodstained shirt for one that was merely dirty, then wandered uphill to the Red Wolf camp. Servants had set up an iron spit over the central fire, braced by two green branches cut to their clefts. A young hog, his wyrd come upon him, was already roasting. The smell of food cooking made Salamander’s stomach growl. For a moment he felt thoroughly disgusted with himself, that he’d be hungry after the things he’d just seen.

  “Looking for Neb, are you, sir?” a servant said to him.

  “I am, truly, and the captain as well.”

  “They’re both down by the tieryn’s tent. That big gray one over there.”

  “Have they buried Warryc yet?”

  “They have, sir, but they gave him a grave of his own. I’m glad of it, because he was a decent man for a rider.”

  “I didn’t care to think of him being dumped into a ditch with the rebels, truly.”

  “Did you hear the news about Raldd?” The servant glanced around, and then dropped his voice to a murmur. “They’re going to draw him like a chicken and hang his corpse, trailing guts and all, out by the main gates for the ravens.”

  “Indeed? Well, he’s dead and beyond caring.”

  Salamander walked on and found Neb sitting with Gerran on the ground in front of Tieryn Cadryc’s tent. Gerran greeted him with a weary smile and a briefly raised hand. Salamander hunkered down to join them.

  “His grace is inside with his grandson and the pages,” Neb said. “Matyc’s telling everyone about how his father tried to kill him.”

  “Again?” Gerran said.

  “He’s going to need to tell it over and over, and probably for a good long while.”

  “You’re doubtless right, Neb,” Salamander said. “How’s your young brother taking all of this? The dead men and suchlike, I mean. I was impressed with the way he identified Raldd. I’ll admit to being surprised when he didn’t even weep.”

  “I was, too.” Neb paused for a wry smile. “But don’t forget, we lived through a plague back in Trev Hael. Death isn’t a stranger to me and mine, alas.”

  “I had forgotten. My apologies.”

  “Well, a lot’s happened since Clae and I came staggering out of the forest, hasn’t it?” Neb shook his head in amazement. “It’s hard to believe sometimes, when I think of it all.”

  “So it is,” Salamander said. “This summer’s been a true turning point in your life.”

  “In all our lives,” Gerran said. “That fight this morning, it made me realize somewhat about the Westfolk and your longbows. Battle’s never going to be the same. Now you can kill a man from a distance easier than you can kill him face-to-face.” He turned his head and spat into the dirt. “Ye gods!”

  “What?” Neb said. “I don’t un
derstand why it troubles your heart so much.”

  “Well, by the black hairy arse of the Lord of Hell! You stand on a wall, you loose an arrow, and your enemy dies before he has the least chance to fight back. Where’s the glory in that?” Gerran paused to catch his breath. “Haven’t men always praised me for my skill with a blade? Well, does it matter anymore how good a swordsman I am? Or anyone else either. Not if the enemy has archers.”

  “That’s a good point, truly. I’d not thought—” Salamander broke off abruptly. “Look, here comes Prince Voran! On your knees, lads.”

  They all scrambled to kneel properly as, not merely the prince but Gwerbret Ridvar as well strode up, accompanied by their captains. Salamander was assuming that they wanted to speak with Tieryn Cadryc.

  “There you are, Gerran,” Prince Voran said instead. “I want to commend you on your part in the fighting today.”

  “Me, Your Highness?” Gerran blushed scarlet. “Truly, I was only doing my duty to my sworn lord.”

  At that Cadryc himself stuck his head out the tent flap, saw who his visitors were, and came out to bow to them.

  “It’s a good thing you’re here, tieryn,” Prince Voran said. “What I have to say to your captain concerns you, too.”

  “It does?” Cadryc said. “What’s this, Gerro? Did they catch you looting Honelg’s vast stores of gold and silver?”

  Everyone laughed but Ridvar, who was glaring at nothing in particular off in the middle distance, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. Salamander noticed Cadryc glancing at the gwerbret, then looking away with a false smile stuck on his face like a smear of dirt. Thank the gods the prince is here! Salamander thought, or we’d have a new war on our hands.

  “I found a couple of coppers on the ground, Your Highness,” Gerran said, grinning. “I’ll gladly hand them over if you’d like.”

  “Oh, I think me you can keep them,” Voran said. “Though you deserve a better reward than that. You know, it would gladden my heart to have the letters patent written out right here to give you a demesne down in Deverry, but of course—” He paused to give Ridvar a significant look, “—of course, the gwerbret needs men like you on the border.”