And then, for the moment, there was no one left to kill. I sat on Altaru's back gasping for air. Dead knights lay on the grass all around me. It seemed that I had slain the Ikurian lord, for his great body had been cleaved in half, from neck to groin. Or perhaps Kane had sent him on to the stars, for my terrible friend sat perched on his horse, looking wildly about him as he held up his dripping sword. Maram and Atara pressed close to me on my other side. I couldn't guess how many men Maram had dispatched or Atara had added to her count.
A great fear struck into the Ikurian knights who had witnessed this terror. It passed like a sick heat into the bellies and limbs of their brethren all across the field. Without a word being spoken, ten knights turned their horses to gallop back toward the village and across the Clear Brook. And then twenty more broke, and then a hundred, and suddenly the entire mass of Ikurian knights lost their will to battle and fled the field in a panic to save their lives. A few score of our knights galloped after them. But then I called out to Sar Vikan, and to the other captains, and all the rest of the knights of Mesh: 'Hold! Help our line! Take the enemy from behind!'
Where was Morjin?
To our left, the two wings of our line had now closed in even more tightly upon the elements of the two armies caught between them. Many men, however, were fleeing from this death trap. To the far left, two thousand yards across the once-green pasture near the woods, the Urtuk warriors had given up the battle as lost. They simply rode off the field, and would keep on riding, as I later learned, clear across the Lake Country and through the southern passes out of Mesh. The Galdan heavy horse, those still alive, fled ahead of almost the whole of the Galdan light infantry. But the others could not retreat quickly enough.
Lord Avijan led the charge around the enemy from the left, and I led Asaru's knights against the enemy's rear from the right. We charged around and forward, meeting up with Lord Avijan's companies, and we thrust our lances through the backs of many Galdans and Sakayans. A few of them managed to turn toward us, and these died facing the terrible weapons that laid them under. Only a few battalions of the Galdan heavy infantry had escaped the enclosing Meshian line, and almost none of the mercenaries, Blues or the Dragon Guard. These were caught in a ring of steel a mile wide; they were packed together like cattle. They moaned and screamed like cattle, too, as the ring drew tighter and tighter and we killed them without pause or mercy.
What followed then was sheer butchery. I had no care to stop it, nor did Lord Avijan, nor Lord Tanu, nor any of the other Meshian knights or warriors who had lost friends, brothers or sons there that day. We kept striking our swords into the enemy until our arms grew so tired that we had to rest and let our companions next to us deal out this unrelenting death. The ground beneath us grew soggy, like a bog. Blood overflowed the close-cropped grass, and ran in little, snaking rivulets down to the Clear Brook, turning it red. Hours it took to slay all of our enemy, down to the last man. When the battle was finally over, the sun was an unbearable smear of red raining down fire from the sky.
I wandered for a long time among the heaps and-twists of bodies. Later there would be a count of them, but all I knew was that there were too many thousands of them. In truth, even one man killed this way was too many - unless he was Morjin. I looked for him everywhere. Had he somehow escaped this dreadful battlefield? I looked across the Culhadosh Commons, from one end to the other. Nearby a young man lay moaning as he clapped his hands to his belly, trying to keep his insides from spilling out. Farther away, the horses of the enemy were grazing peacefully where they could find a clear patch of grass. Lord Tanu and other lords were calling out to reform their battalions, trying to bring order, if not sense, to the madness that had befallen here.
Then a rider picked his way among the dead and found me where I stood above Asaru's body. He said to me, 'Lord Valashu, King Shamesh calls for you.'
I stared at him as if he had spoken words to me out of a cruel dream. I told him, 'My father is dead.'
'No, his wounds are mortal, but he still lives,' the messenger informed me. He pointed toward the woods to the east of the battlefield. 'I am to take you to him.'
I shook my head in amazement. Hadn't Lansar Raasharu seen my father die? Perhaps he had only assumed the worst And reported this to Asaru, and me. Such mistakes were often the result of the fog of battle.
I mounted my horse then, and followed the messenger across the field. We came to a place next to the woods ringed by many lords and knights. And at the center of this ring, my father sat back against a tree. Someone had removed his helm. His long black and silver hair, tied with many battle ribbons, spilled across his shoulders. His eyes were closed as he coughed up blood and gasped for breath. A bright red froth bubbled from the great hole in his armor over his chest. He held his long, bloody sword across his knees. I dismounted, and the knights made way for me as I walked forward and knelt by my father's side. He opened his eyes and looked at me. It seemed to take a great effort for him to speak my name: 'Valashu.'
Lord Harsha stepped up to me and laid his hand on my shoulder. His cheek was bleeding where a saber had nearly taken out his remaining eye. He pointed at my father's chest and said simply, 'A Galdan lance.'
'But we've got to get him to Master Juwain!' I said. 'He's healed such wounds before!'
'Your father wouldn't allow it,' Lord Harsha told me, shaking his head. 'Not while the battle was still being fought.'
My father reached out and grasped my hand. He said to me, 'I told you not to come.'
'But I thought you'd been slain! Lord Raasharu told me that Asaru was king and had sent for me!'
A spasm tore through my father's body as he worked to breathe. Then he gasped out, 'Lord Raasharu. . . was not himself.'
His eyes cleared and touched mine. And suddenly I knew. I saw the evil tapestry that Morjin had woven for me, all of a piece.
'Asaru is dead,' my father said to me. 'All of my sons, gone. .. except you.'
He let go of his sword as he smiled at me. With all the strength left in him, he pulled off his ring, with its five bright diamonds. He pressed it into my hand and said, 'Now you must be king.'
I squeezed this heavy circlet of silver in my fist. I shook my head. 'No, there is still time!'
'No, there is no time'
I held his hand as his breath sucked in and out, in and out, growing weaker and weaker. Then he raised his finger to point over my shoulder, west, toward Telshar, Arakel and the other mountains. And he said to me, 'You should never have left the castle.'
He coughed, once, very hard, and his whole body shuddered. He gripped his sword with one hand and my hand with his other. For a moment, his eyes grew incredibly bright, like stars. He gazed at me as if he had finally come home. And then he died.
I kissed his hand and laid it upon his sword. I kissed his lips. I stood up slowly. I pulled off my surcoat and laid it over him. I could not weep for him, not yet. I could not grieve for Asaru, or Yarashan or any other warrior of Mesh who had fallen here today. For the battle was not yet over. In truth, it was only beginning. I turned to look up the grassy slope of Culhadosh Commons, where the hills beyond blocked a clear line of sight of my father's castle high above Silvassu. It was my castle now, I told myself, what was left of it. I stared up at the great plume of smoke that my father had pointed out to the west, and I watched it rise like the souls of the dead into the sky.
Chapter 33
In my flight back toward Silvassu, with the smoke billows above the castle looking ever larger, I paused only long enough to remove the heaving moldings of armor that were hampering Altaru's motions. Even lightened this way he had a hard time of it, for the going was mostly uphill, and he was already tired. I pressed him hard, even so. By the time we pounded up to the castle's south gate, he was nearly lathered. I, myself, could hardly breathe when I saw that the drawbridge was down and the iron gates hung open.
We had to pick our way across the bridge, for much of it was char and other parts were still burn
ing. I gagged on the smell of oil with which its stout timbers had been soaked. As we entered the castle, I gagged on the smell of death. Just inside the gates lay the bodies of a dozen Meshian warriors. All of them, it seemed, had been killed by slashes to their throats. In the west ward, the dead were everywhere. Many of these were of the Dragon Guard, whose red armor had been cut open by dreadful kalama strokes. I noticed with grim satisfaction that these ravagers outnumbered the dead Meshians who had fought them here. But I could do nothing except rage helplessly at the sight of all the women, children and old men who had been slaughtered like animals. Hundreds of them lay in pools of blood near the garden wall's gate leading into the middle ward. It seemed that they had been cut down trying to flee toward the safety of the keep.
The much larger middle ward held even more bodies. The garments of some of these had been doused in oil and set aflame. I was not sure that all of them had been dead when Morjin's men immolated them. Carts and wagons were smoldering, too, and bales of straw, barrels, heaps of spears and wooden swords, the timbers in the blacksmith's shop - any and all things that could be set on fire.
The gates to the keep had been battered into splinters and also put to the torch. Many knights had died trying to defend it. I dismounted Altaru and made my way inside. It was a charnel house. The stones in the halls were soaked with the blood of the many dead who had fallen there. More of my countrymen lay in bloody heaps in the various rooms. In the armory swords and spears had been snapped into pieces and cast upon a pile of corpses. The treasury was empty. In my room across the hall, I found Lord Rathald and his family. Lord Rathald, it seemed, had been killed trying to protect his daughter and his grandchildren, who were gathered in the corner behind his cold form. He still gripped his bloody kalama. I did not know why the Dragon Guard who had killed him left it in his hand.
Now I could bear my dread no longer, and I burst out into the hallway. I stumbled over a long line of bodies as I ran toward my parent's rooms crying out as loud as I could: 'Mother! Nona! Mother!' But the rooms were empty. I searched as well in the adjoining servants' quarters, and in the library and the kitchens. I called out for my mother and grandmother, many times. And then I swallowed my gorge and went into the great hall.
And there I found them. Two of the great, long tables had been shorn of their legs, and then upended and bound with ropes against the stone pillars holding up the roof. And my mother and grandmother had been fixed to these tables with nails. My mother was dead. Her tunic was torn with many bloody gashes; to either side of her, the table's wood was riven with deep slits. It seemed that the Dragon Guard, after they had crucified her, had used her for target practice with their spears.
But they had shown no such mercy to my grandmother: I saw to my amazement that she still lived. Blood oozed from her palms and bare feet; her breath barely filled her frail, old body as she struggled to speak to me.
'Valashu!' she gasped out.
I came up to her and kissed her feet. Great spikes of iron had been pounded through flesh and bones, deep into the table's wood.
'We've got to get you down from there!' I called to her. Her head had dropped upon her chest, and I looked up into her milky, blind eyes. 'Please, help me,' she said to me.
I drew my sword and cut the ropes holding fast the table. With a great heaving that nearly broke my back, I eased this great slab of wood onto the floor, between the bodies that lay there. I knelt beside my grandmother. I touched her quavering arms, her bloody hands. I could think of no easy way to pull her off the bent-over nails without further tearing her flesh.
'Who did this to you?' I cried out.
She gathered in a deep breath and murmured, It was. . . Morjin. He said that he wanted you to know this. The traitor, Samelu - he held my wrists. And Morjin pounded in the nails.'
'Damn them!' I shouted. I shook my sword at the stones of the ceiling high above. 'Damn them to death!'
'Valashu -'
'Damn them! Damn them! Damn them!'
'Valashu, listen to me!' she pleaded. 'You must help me, please.'
I gripped my sword as I used my other hand to brush back the sodden white hair from her forehead.
'Help me to die in peace.'
I looked down through the blur of water in my eyes at my grandmother's beautiful face. In the soft, anguished lines, I saw to my wonder that there was no hate there. There was no resentment, either, nor anger at her fate - only a warm and overwhelming concern for me. For she, too, was a Valari warrior in her fierce, sweet spirit. And so she said to me, 'Promise me you won't waste your life in seeking vengeance.'
'But how can I not?' I shouted. My fury struck her like a blow, and I bit my lip to see her wince in pain. I lowered my voice and gasped out, 'How can I not slay Morjin?'
'Slay him if you must,' she said to me. 'But do it only because you must ... for Ea's sake, not out of vengeance. Do not let the burning for his death destroy you.'
'But I -'
'Please, Valashu. Don't let him kill you this way.'
She fell still then, and I thought she had died. But I felt her heart beating, weakly, somewhere inside her.
Just then footsteps sounded along the hallway leading into the keep. Then Kane, Maram and Atara came hurrying into the room. 'Oh, my lord!' I heard Maram cry out. 'Oh, my lord!' It seemed that someone had told them of my father's death, and they had followed me up from the battlefield.
'We've got to get her off of here!' I said, laying my hand on my grandmother's wrist 'Help me.'
Atara descried a great, iron maul cast onto the floor near the body of a little boy whose brains had been bashed out. She went over and picked it up, and wiped the gore on the surcoat of one of the Dragon Guard, adding another stain of red to the bright yellow cloth. She brought the maul over to me.
'Why don't we try pounding out the spikes from the other side?' she said, tapping the maul against the table.
Kane, Maram and I made ready to lift the table off the ground, but just then, my grandmother opened her eyes. I knew that, somehow she could see the only part of me that really mattered. And she whispered to me, 'Promise me - please promise me.'
'All right,' I told her. 'I will.'
'Good,' she said. And then she died, too, joining my mother, father and brothers in that icy, black emptiness from which there is no return.
After that, we took down both my grandmother and mother from their mounts of wood. We laid them on the cold floorstones. I pulled the great black and silver swan banner off the wall, and covered them as with a shroud.
Then there came the sound of horses and men entering the middle ward outside. Kane told me that Sar Vikan and his knights had ridden up to the castle, too.
'Keep them out of here!' I said.
My grim-faced friend went out of the hall's southern doors for a few moments to confer with Sar Vikan, and then returned, shutting the doors behind him.
I began walking slowly around my slain people, toward the dais at the end of the hall. As I neared it, I had to step over a small wall of Morjin's knights and the Guardians who had fought them. Sunjay Naviru, in death, looked younger and smaller than I had remembered. Skyshan of Ki had fallen next to him, and Sar Kimball, Lord Noldru and many others. I climbed up the dais, where there were more of the enemy; a ring of dead Guardians fairly surrounded the white granite stand.
The Lightstone no longer rested upon it. In its place had been set a square of paper, topped by a piece of gold. I grasped both in my hand and tucked them down into my armor.
Maram came up to me and said, 'Maybe one of our knights secreted the cup on his person. Or had time to hide it, somewhere.'
I swept my sword down toward my dead knights. It glowed only dully. I pointed Alkaladur south, in the direction that Morjin would have ridden with the thousands of his Dragon Guard in order to escape from Mesh with the Lightstone. And its blade flared a bright silver.
'No, it is gone,' I said.
A shudder ripped through me as I tried not to fall
writhing to the floor. It was as if one of Morjin's knights had chopped my legs out from under me and then gutted me with his sword.
Kane came over and placed his hand on my shoulder. 'So, then, we'll take it back! We'll ride after them and kill the Dragon!'
Atara shook her head at this. 'No, that's impossible, now.'
'You say that?' he growled out.
'Yes, I do. This was well-planned. Morjin is hours gone from here. We willl never overtake him.'
'We must overtake him.'
'He will have had fresh horses stationed in relays all along his way,' Atara said, holding her hand against her blindfold. 'Our horses are all exhausted and would have trouble galloping a mile.'
'But Lord Avijan still commands a battalion of knights!'
'Half a battalion, now,' Atara said. 'And they, too, are exhausted. I doubt if they have the will to pursue Morjin.'
I wrapped my hand tightly around my sword as I struggled to find the will to keep standing. I stared at the stand's bare granite where once the Lightstone had shone so splendidly. Then I cried out, 'But why did this have to happen!'
The echo of my words off the hall's cold stones, falling like thunder upon the dead, was my only answer.
Kane stepped over to the dais and rolled over one of the bodies there. I ground my teeth together as I stared at the face of Lansar Raasharu.
'It was he who did this,' I said to Kane. 'Somehow, he killed the guards at the gates, and opened them to Morjin.'
'So,' Kane said: 'So.'
'He was a ghul,' I murmured. 'He was the one that Kasandra warned of.'
'No,' Maram forced out, shaking his head, 'not Lansar - it can't be.'
'He always hated Morjin,' I said. 'Too much, for too long. And then, when I struck down Ravik and Noman killed Baltasar, the hate, too terrible - like a robe of fire, you see. It maddened his soul. And then Morjin seized him.'
Lord of Lies Page 64