The Born Queen

by Greg Keyes

  His eyes traced down to her rounded belly. Gently, he stroked his fingers along it.

  What’s in there? he wondered.

  He hadn’t given much thought to being a father. Qerla hadn’t been able to bear his children; men and Sefry were too different for that. After she’d died, he’d never mont to marry again. And since this thing with Winna had begun, he’d been mostly thinking about keeping them alive.

  But a child, a boy or girl, part him, part Winna…

  He tightened his heart. There was no use thinking like that. Whatever Winna was carrying, it wasn’t going to be Mannish.

  Should he tell her what he feared? Could he?

  It seemed the geos was powerful and canny enough to protect its purpose. Could he jump off a cliff or slit his own throat? Provoke a fight with Emfrith and then lose it?

  Probably not. But the thing about a geos, at least he had always heard, was that when its conditions were fulfilled, it was unmade. So when they reached the Briar King’s valley, he would be free of it, free to act as he wanted. The witch obviously thought that would be too late, but the witch couldn’t know everything.

  He just had to keep his head and do what he could do. Test the geos until he found its weakness.

  He rose carefully, afraid to wake her.

  The sun was higher than he liked. He itched to be gone, keeping Fend as far behind him as he could, but this might be the last good sleep she got for a long time.

  He found Emfrith in the inner yard, talking with some of his men. He looked up as Aspar descended the stair.

  “Morning, holter,” Emfrith said. His tone sounded a bit strained, and Aspar reckoned he knew why.

  “Morning,” Aspar replied.

  “The Woothshaer chasing you wasn’t hard to find,” he said. “My man Arn spotted it upriver, near Slif Owys but moving this way. They’ll be here by tomorrow.”

  “We’d better get moving, then,” Aspar said.

  “I think we’ll fight them here,” Emfrith said.

  “Werlic?” Aspar said. “Fine, then; you do that. The three of us will be on our way.”

  “No, that I can’t let you do,” Emfrith said apologetically.

  Aspar’s hand went to the feyknife, but he let it drop and balled his fists instead. “First your bloody father, now you,” he snapped. “What’s wrong with you people?”

  “We’re just people who do what needs to be done,” Emfrith said. “My family guards this march, and I’m not going to let motley monsters and Sefry come strutting in unchallenged.”

  “Yah, werlic. But what’s that to do with us?”

  “If I let you go, they’ll just follow you. If you’re here, they’ll be forced to fight, and we’ll slaughter them at our walls.”

  “Didn’t you learn anything from your little brawl with the woorm?” Aspar asked.

  “Yes,” he said, nodding. “Quite a bit. And more since, as we’ve had occasion to kill a greffyn. They’re tough, I’ll grant you, but they can die. And there aren’t so many of them in the band coming here.”

  “You’ve got only fifty men,” Aspar pointed out. “They may not be many, but they can do fifty men.”

  “I’ve sent for more from my father, and I’ve alerted Celly Guest—that’s the other fort I mentioned, about three leagues north. We’ll have more than fifty.”

  “Maunt, maunt,” Aspar said, almost begging. “This is a bad mistake.”

  Was that the geos talking?

  No, this was stupid.

  “I’d rather have your help than lock you up,” Emfrith said, “but we’ll do it any way we have to.” He sighed. “I’m putting Winna in the tower, under guard, until it’s over.”

  “You’re taking her prisoner,” Aspar said, his voice flat.

  Emfrith strode angrily toward him, and for a moment Aspar thought he might have succeeded in starting the fight he had wondered about earlier. His hand went back to the feyknife.

  But Emfrith stopped a kingsyard from him. “I love her, holter. I’m doing what I think is best for her.”

  “And I’m not?”

  “I don’t know. But she’s not in the best shape to travel, is she? To be chased over hill and stream by this horde? Women die from that sort of thing.”

  “Yah. But you’re still taking her hostage.”

  “If you want to look at it like that, I can’t stop you,” Emfrith said. “But this is how it’s going to be. Now, you can sulk about it, or you can help me win. You’ve fought more of these things than any of us. We have a day. What should we do?”

  “Run.”

  “Raiht. Besides that.”

  Aspar shrugged inwardly, and his mounting anger leveled off. Maybe this was for the best, for them to all die here. Better than waiting to see what the witch had in store for Winna and her child.

  “To begin with,” he said, “three of the Sefry warriors are something Leshya calls Vaix. They’re supposed to be stronger and faster than Mannish warriors. They have swords like my knife and Grimknows what else. Leshya can probably tell us more.” He rubbed his chin.

  “Some of the beasts aren’t that smart,” he went on. “Leshya and I killed several of them with pit traps. You might want to dig some of those. And haul heavy things up here to drop on them. Do you have any siege engines?”

  “I’ve got one catapult.”

  “More would be better.”

  “We’ll make do,” Emfrith said. “Why don’t we go find Leshya and some beer? I know greffyns, but the other things Arn describes are new to me.”

  “How did you kill the greffyn?” Aspar asked.

  “Eight of us charged it on horseback. Two of us managed to hit it in that sally. That didn’t kill it, but it slowed it down. We just kept lancing it.”

  “You didn’t lose any men?”

  “We lost two horses, and three of my men got pretty sick, but no one actually touched it. Winna warned us about that.”

  “Some of these will be harder than that,” Aspar said. “I’ll help. You’ve got my word. But you won’t keep Winna locked up.”

  Emfrith held his gaze for a moment then nodded curtly.

  Sir Evan of Leanvel had a loose sort of face with several chins and cheeks threatening to join their number. At the moment his bushy eyebrows were pinched together in a frown.

  “What’s that, then?” he asked, pointing at Fend and his monsters.

  “Name it whatever you like,” Emfrith replied. “Manticore is what I’ve been calling it.”

  “I fancy that,” Sir Evan replied. “Like the beast in the story of the Knight-Prince of Albion.”

  “There’s more of them,” Leshya said.

  Aspar already had noticed that. The number of men and Sefry looked about the same, but Aspar now counted seven utins loping along, four greffyns, and two manticores. There were also a couple of wagons Aspar hadn’t seen before, likely because Fend hadn’t wanted to bring them over the pass.

  “Theres something odd about a Woothshaer with a supply train,” Emfrith said.

  “Yah,” Aspar allowed. “But Haergrim’s hunt is mostly dead men, alvs, and booygshins. They don’t need to eat. The monsters probably eat off the land, but that wouldn’t leave much for Fend and his men.”

  The enemy was still a good ten bowshots away, approaching the Warlock River across a wheat field. Aspar and his companions were watching from a low bluff a bowshot from the river. The land below the rise was clear and flat, a good place for a charge. Better yet, Fend had to cross an old stone bridge that was wide enough for only about three horses to go abreast.

  Aspar still didn’t feel particularly hopeful.

  “Celly Guest would like the honor of the first charge,” Sir Evan said.

  “It’s my duty, sir,” Emfrith replied.

  “Come along, lad; let us have a go first. We’ll save you a greff or two.”

  “You’re the senior,” Emfrith said. “If you ask like that…”

  The knight smiled and reached to slap Emfrith on the back.
“Very good. Down we go, then.” He raised his voice. “Come along, men.”

  Celly Guest had spared them not only Sir Evan but fifty heavily armored riders, thirty archers, and thirty pikemen. As Aspar watched, the knight formed his cavalry in a thick column, five abreast and ten deep. He supposed that made sense, as they would only be charging what was coming across the bridge.

  The archers fanned out on the bluff, with the pikemen lined up to protect them. Emfrith’s men were now the reserve.

  Aspar sighed and strung his bow. Leshya did the same. He checked the binding on the spear he’d made from the feyknife one last time, wondering if it would be better to have it in his hand.

  Probably not. Emfrith had given him a new throwing ax and dirk, which would be fine against men and Sefry but of less use against the sedhmhari. If he fought one of those, better to keep it at more than arm’s length.

  Fend was forming his beasts up, too. Aspar wondered how exactly the Sefry communicated with them and how he had learned to do so.

  He probably would never know. If he got Fend close enough to talk to, Aspar didn’t intend to waste any time asking questions.

  Fend didn’t seem much interested in getting within bowshot, however. He wasn’t in sight. In fact, Aspar still didn’t know his old enemy was with the band at all.

  Whoever led them, the monsters would be his vanguard.

  One of the manticores came first, followed by the pack of greffyns and then the utins.

  Have I lost my mind? he wondered. Am I dying of fever in the Mountains of the Hare? Is any of this real? Because it shouldn’t be.

  The archers began firing as the beasts marched onto the bridge. Some of the shafts stuck, but the sedhmhari all had hide like armor, and none of them went down.

  He heard the snap and hum of the catapult firing. Emfrith and his men had dragged it down there and found the range that morning.

  A stone a little larger than Aspar’s head flew to the bridge and struck one of the greffyns just behind the head. It screeched and flopped over with its back plainly broken, and a tremendous cheer went up from the men.

  The manticore charged.

  Once again Aspar was startled by its speed. Sir Evan and his first and second ranks were trotting now, and as the thing neared the end of the bridge, they went to a gallop, ten lances with the weight of ten horses and ten men behind them.

  Oddly, there wasn’t much sound as they came together, just a sort of dull thud. The manticore, for all its armor and weight, was driven back. It was hard to tell how hurt it was, though.

  The riders wheeled away as the greffyns came leaping across, and the next two rows of horsemen gathered speed.

  However Fend controlled them, it was clear that he couldn’t make them any smarter or he would have had the catlike beasts avoid the charge and try to flank. They didn’t, though, but met the charge head to head, leaping over the downed manticore.

  Two of them were actually lifted into the air by the lancers, but the third got through, bowling over one of the horses and ripping into it with its beak and claws. Those riders wheeled away, too, but the beast abandoned its first kill and took down another horse.

  The manticore wasn’t moving. Two of the four greffyns looked like they were dying, and a third was wounded.

  Something was missing.

  “Sceat,” Aspar said. “Where are the utins?”

  But even as he asked it, he saw them swarming out of the river, coming at the cavalry column from the sides.

  Utins, unlike greffyns, were pretty smart.

  Cursing, Aspar picked the nearest and started shooting at it. His first arrow skipped off. The second stuck but didn’t look like it went in deep.

  The column already was coming apart as the riders turned their horses to meet the fast-running utins. Aspar watched as the one he was firing at leaped nimbly over the lance aimed at it, danced down it, and struck off the head of the rider with its claws. Aspar sent another arrow at it as it came back to ground and disemboweled another rider’s horse.

  “Holy saints,” he heard Emfrith gasp.

  Now the second manticore was starting across the bridge. The archers were pouring arrows onto it because the remaining greffyn and the utins were too mixed up with the horsemen to target well.

  With a shout, Emfrith began trotting his horse forward, his men behind him.

  The archers shifted their fire again as several of the utins began running toward the bluff. Aspar picked the one coming his way and began letting fly.

  His first shot hit it in the eye. It spun and staggered but roared and began speeding toward them again. He saw one of Leshya’s white-fletched shafts appear in its thigh. Aspar put another arrow on the string, inhaled, and let it snap. It glanced off the thick scales of its skull.

  Then it was up to the pikemen. It grabbed one of the pole arms below the head and flipped itself up and over the first rank, but one of the men in the second rank managed to set his spear, and the monster’s weight drove the point into its belly, showering gore all around. Screaming, it grasped at the shaft.

  It was five kingsyards from Aspar. He took careful aim and shot it in the other eye, and this time the arrow went all the way to the back of the skull. Its mouth froze open, and it stopped struggling. The pikemen rolled it back down the bluff.

  Another one was coming, but fifteen arrows met it. Most either missed or skipped off, but one that found it struck it through the eye.

  The archers were beginning to remember his advice concerning the creatures’ weak spots.

  A glance showed him that the other wing of archers wasn’t doing so well. An utin had gotten through the line, and most of the men were in flight.

  Things were coming back together on the field below.

  Sir Evan and the other nine in his first charge had kept their cohesion and, as he watched, put their lances to the greffyn. Most of the rest had dismounted and were taking on the utins with sword and shield, encircling them with superior numbers. One was already down, being hacked by eight heavily armored men.

  Emfrith’s group was slowing its charge because the second manticore had stopped advancing and stood just out of catapult range.

  In moments, the two remaining utins tore away from their tormentors and ran back across the bridge.

  “I don’t believe it,” Aspar said.

  It looked like Sir Evan had lost around fifteen horsemen and probably about that many archers. A few more probably would die of contact with the greffyns. But of his monsters, their enemy had lost all but two utins and a manticore. Suddenly, beating them didn’t seem that much trouble at all.

  They seemed to know it, too. The wagons were turning.

  Sir Evan was forming his men back up, and Emfrith was galloping back up the hill.

  “Well,” he said as he drew up, “maybe not such a bad idea, after all.”

  “Maybe not,” Aspar agreed. “I never would have believed it, but maybe not.”

  “We’ll dog them for a while, find a good place to attack them, and—”

  “Sceat,” Aspar said. “I think Sir Evan has other ideas.”

  Emfrith turned just as the Celly Guest horsemen—what remained of them—went thundering over the bridge, along with about twenty of Emfrith’s men. The manticore wasn’t there anymore but had moved back up the hill.

  “Get back here,” Emfrith howled. No one looked back. They probably couldn’t even hear him.

  The men and Sefry across the river had turned but didn’t seem to be readying a countercharge. He couldn’t make out their faces from that far away, but something seemed odd about them.

  “I don’t like this,” Leshya said.

  Aspar just shook his head, trying to figure it out.

  And then, as if struck by a thousand invisible arrows, Sir Evan and all the men with him, along with their horses, fell and did not move again.

  Far across the river, Aspar saw something glinting in the back of one of the wagons.

  “Turn around!” Lesh
ya screamed. “Close your eyes!”

  Aspar felt his own eyes starting to warm and followed her advice. After an instant, so did everyone else.

  “What is it?”

  “Basil-nix,” she said. “If you meet its gaze, you die. I think it’s too far away right now, but…”

  “Get them out of here, Emfrith,” Aspar growled. “Get what’s left of your men out of here.”

  “I don’t understand,” the young man wailed. He sounded as if he’d just been wakened from a deep sleep.

  “Sound retreat,” Aspar told the man with the horn.

  “Sir—”

  Aspar took Emfrith’s shoulder.

  “He’ll move up now. We can’t fight with our backs turned. We didn’t know about this.”

  “Raiht,” the boy said, his face wet with tears. “Sound the retreat.”

  A black shadow passed over them, and another, and there was a sound of many wings.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  KAURON

  STEPHEN PAUSED, trembling, staring at his feet, staring at a thousand pairs of feet in shoes, buskins, boots, bare, missing toes, huge, tiny.

  It was like what the Vhelny had done to him, except the other memories weren’t his.

  But that distinction wouldn’t matter for long. He closed his eyes and stepped, feeling as he did a myriad of other steps, a thousand different swayings of his body.

  His stomach couldn’t take that, and he doubled over, vomiting, observing with an odd detachment that in that act he somehow felt more solid, more himself.

  But he wasn’t. That was the greatest lie in the world, the most fundamental illusion. That thing called Stephen was a culling, a mere snip of what really existed. The rest of him was trying to get back in.

  Would that end it? Would he be complete if he gave up the fantasy that this tiny Stephen thing was real?

  Maybe.

  No.

  The voice barged through the rest, pushed them back to whispers. It was gentle, strong, confident, and Stephen felt some of the strength from the first fane come back to him.

  No, the voice repeated. That is death. The voices you hear, the visions you experience—those are the dead, those who let go of themselves, who allowed the river to take what was in them. You are stronger because you still have a self. Do you understand? You are still tied together. You are real, Stephen Darige. It’s totality that is the illusion. Only the finite can be real.