"Arawn’s a fool," Brand said. "He's looking for trouble, but Char won't give it to him."
"Why do you keep him?"
"Arawn or Char?" He shrugged. "We're long-time friends, me and Arawn. Me and Char, too. They have their faults. One drinks a bit, the other… he has a hard time with things sometimes. Arawn doesn't like it when things change. Makes him feel like he's got to shove up against me to prove who he is." Brand combed his fingers through his thick beard, and his lips quirked in a mirthless smile. "I won't kill him unless he makes me."
The moment had an odd clarity, a strange stillness, and Elansa realized that the observation Brand had just made might have been one Kethrenan might have made. Not couched so roughly, but they knew their men, these two. They knew what moved them, how far to push them, and when to stop.
Caught in the disjointed moment when she saw her husband and her captor in a similar light, she spoke with perhaps more softness than she had in months. She said, "Brand, why are you going to Pax Tharkas?"
He scratched his beard. Head cocked, he looked at her, deciding if he should say. In the stillness, she saw the gleam of silver around his neck, the glinting of the sapphire phoenix on his chest. He reached to touch it, the god-figure, and Elansa thought, He doesn't know what he's touching. He doesn't feel the magic.
"Do you know the Notch?"
How could he ask?
"Sometimes I used to stay with the farmer and his family," Brand said. "I liked their daughter. She liked me for a time. They were friends. They’d feed me when I needed it, shelter me if I wanted that. I gave them things—sometimes steel, sometimes just a brace of hares. It was a good place to be, a little fastness in the border to keep them."
But it hadn't kept them. It had burned, tumbled down, and been deserted. Elansa had seen it.
"What happened to them?" she asked.
Brand's eyes narrowed, and his hand fell from the phoenix. "Got raided."
"Goblins?"
Whatever warmth she'd seen in Brand's expression was gone.
"No," he said, and his eyes touched her, cold. "Elves. Too close to your precious border, that farm. They took a deer or two, hare or pheasant when they could without going too far in. Took too much." He jerked his head. "The little fastness couldn't stand against your husband's will. And I moved on, back and forth, building me a feud with goblins. But I remembered them and their little stone fastness that stood true against all but an elf prince. I thought I'd find a fastness of stone for myself. One that would stand against anyone. I'd sit there in the mountain, stash weapons all over the inside of this place, and never a goblin or elf would stand against me."
But the goblins had got a hob for a leader now, Gnash whose army swelled daily, or so it seemed. And the elves… well, that hadn't worked out well, either.
"What will you do in Pax Tharkas?" Elansa asked. He lifted his head, rough and shaggy. He looked at her long, and she saw that his nose jutted like an eagle's beak. "I have enemies. I will hold the place against them, and they will not take me."
The boldness of his reply astounded Elansa. His dozen outlaws grumbled against this journey daily, they grumbled against each other, and one threatened to break the band asunder while another planned to leave. Yet Brand spoke as though he were a general in the field, and all his troop loyal to the last heart.
I have enemies, and they will not take me.
Is he mad? She wondered. It might be he is.
A sudden cry shattered the moment—Chaser's shout of terror. Elansa turned but didn't see what hit her, what crashing weight bore her to the ground. She didn't know it was Brand on top of her till she smelled his breath and felt his beard on her neck.
The cavern erupted in a howling so terrible she thought the stone would break.
Chapter 12
In the darkness, Char's voice bellowed, "Ogres!"
As though the warning cry had conjured it, the stench of ogre filled the cavern, the reek of rotting meat, filth, and unwashed flesh. And blood. Under it all ran the thick coppery smell of blood. She didn't see Swain anywhere, but Chaser lay flung against a stone wall. He looked like a broken toy, his neck twisted and an arm ripped from the socket. Blood poured from where his arm had been, running like a river. The high keening Elansa yet heard in her ears was the echo of his death scream.
Cries of rage filled the cavern. Brand dragged her to her feet as arrows flew, bowstrings twanged, and a thundering voice roared in a language Elansa had never heard before. Ogre-speak, words that made her think of oaths and curses and ugliness, raged around her like a storm.
Unarmed and defenseless, Elansa looked around. She searched for a place to rim to, a way out. Four ogres, hideous creatures half again as tall as a human, had the ground between the outlaws and the entrances to the cavern. They seemed to have no weapons but clubs, and those looked like no more than stout tree limbs. A fury of hounds stormed around the knees of the ogres— Fang and his brethren tearing at the legs of the monsters. One hound died shrieking, and another flew through the air and smashed against a wall, its bones broken. Ah, but the rest held, furious and changed into creatures as fierce as wolves. Five harried one ogre, ripping calf muscles, exposing veins to bleed their turgid greenish blood. By the time the third hound died, the ogre was on its knees, laying about with its club and screaming. An arrow pierced its neck, and another followed so close to the mark that they vibrated against each other, shaft and shaft. Thick greenish blood sprang from a tapped vein, and Elansa heard Ley shouting, "Again, "Tianna! Again!"
The half-elf shouted a gleeful war cry, and two arrows flew as one. Now four pierced the ogre's neck, and the great creature wavered on its legs.
All this Elansa saw in the instant of her panicked search for a way out. Ogres before and behind an icy stream and a stone wall….
Where to go?
"Nowhere to go," Brand said. "Nowhere but where you are. Only crazy people fight ogres, or desperate people."
Brand thrust a dagger into her hand, and her fingers closed round it as though she'd know how to use it. In his own right hand Brand held his sword.
"Defend yourself," he said as the curses of ogres and the oaths of humans raged in the cavern. The stink of blood and bowels loosed in death fouled the air. Brand leaped up the steps, the lily stairs, and Elansa followed as though pulled.
"Fight!" Brand roared, his voice like thunder bounding off the stone walls. "Fight to the tunnels!"
Arawn swung his sword above his head, whirling it in a silver wheel of light, calling men to him. Brand did the same. As though they'd done this a hundred times—had they not?—the outlaws sought a commander. Half went to Arawn and half to Brand. In this way they divided the two remaining ogres.
In the middle ground, the outlaws engaged, and they were like hounds themselves, harrying the foe. The light of the distant moons glinted off steel blades and the polished iron of arrowheads. Cold as a pitiless glance, the light slithered on blood—slick stone. Into this Elansa plunged, clutching Brand's dagger as though it were a lifeline. She'd not gone three long strides when something hit the ground at her feet, something that sounded like a cabbage flung down.
Her gorge rose, and bile burned a fiery path up her throat. A broad hand fell to the stony floor, severed at the wrist, fingers spread as though to grip. When she looked up, she saw Brand. Wearing his own blood and the blood of an ogre, his eyes blazed, his face contorted with battle rage. Just in the moment their eyes met, someone hit her from behind, and she fell to her knees onto hard stone. Her elbows crashed on the ground, and her fingers went numb as outraged nerves refused to feel. The dagger—useless metal!—flung from her hand, skittered over the ground and got lost in the darkness and the The breath jolted from her, Elansa tried to rise. A weight bore her down, the two hands of an ogre closed around her, squeezing as it lifted her from the ground. Muscles screamed, and she felt her ribs groan from the pressure of its grip. Stinking spittle dripped into her hair, onto her neck. Breathless, her heart crashi
ng against ribs, her sight began to fail, to fade at the edges and turn black.
Elansa had no breath to scream, hardly the sight to look for help.
And then, the ogre's blood spilled out of its neck and onto her arm and her hands. It burned! Like acid, like fire, it burned her flesh. She fell from the ogre’s grasp and hit the floor.
"Get up! Get up!" It was Char shouting at her, the dwarf just pulling his axe out of the back of the ogre's neck. "Get up and run!"
But where? The battle had surged to the walls where the passage out gaped. In between, the cavern was littered with the dead—one ogre’s corpse, the bodies of five hounds, and poor broken Chaser.
She moved, stumbling, and then flung herself aside. Char shouted something, and through the madness a yellow blur launched.
Fang!
Slavering, the hound hurtled past Elansa from the side, eyes like fury. He sank his great fangs into the ankle of an ogre, then changed grip and leaped to clamp on the monster’s wrist. The ogre stiffened, reeking foully of pain. With its other hand it grasped Fang’s neck, thrust a thumb through the hound’s windpipe, and flung the beast against a wall.
Running, weeping, Elansa lost her footing on blood—slicked stone, and she fell. She scrambled up again, and only when she saw what had tripped her did she stop. Brand lay on his side, motionless. She saw him, and she saw—in one bright moment of clarity-the sapphire phoenix spilled out of his shirt.
She could have healed a blight with that phoenix. She could have called up the power of the god who is the ruler of all nature and all the world around would have become as a living being to her—earth and sky, fire and wind and water. She would have spoken to them as she would to kin.
Elansa reached down and took the sapphire phoenix in her hand. It throbbed beneath her fingers. It knew her. How not? In her veins ran the blood of the generations of woodshapers who had used this talisman to heal.
"My Phoenix," she whispered.
Brand groaned, his eyelids flickering as the stone hanging round his neck quickened, as the blood in Elansa’s veins began to sing. He opened his eyes, and it seemed to her, looking into the brown depths, that he saw her from a far place, as though they stood with a vast plain separating them. The roar and the rage of battle faded, and she knelt in a quiet place. Not a place of safety, no, not that. Danger howled all around, but now, for this moment a sheltering wing had dropped between her and death.
In silence, she began her prayer. O my Blue Phoenix, give ears to the earth to hear me. Give wit to the stone to know me. Give courage to the rock to break and fall and—
A fiery energy shot through her from her knees to her neck, screaming in her every nerve. Here was the pain of the world breaking, of stone falling and rock shattering.
She screamed, and screaming she would not let go the flashing energy running through the stone. She did not know magic from pain. Ah, but this was not different from taking in the illness of trees to change it to strength, making an alchemy and transmuting sickness into health.
In her heart where all her prayers were born, Elansa cried, "Habbakuk! Phoenix, my strength rises!" And like the Blue Phoenix rising up out of the ashes, wide-winged, powerful and alive, strength flared in her.
A voice—hers!—shouted, "Run to the tunnel! Now! Run now!"
She shouted looking at Brand, at the outlaws as though across a wide plain. He opened his mouth, and her own words came out, like an echo. The echo shattered the image, and the world she returned to was breaking apart.
The walls shook. The stony floor of the cave trembled. From the ceiling, stalactites hung by gods creaked and fell. The forest of stalagmites trembled as though in a storm’s own wind. One cracked at the base and tumbled, crushing an ogre.
Someone screamed, "Earthquake!"
And someone else shouted curses and howled, "Magic!"
Brand grabbed her by the arm and dragged her up from her knees. He staggered, bleeding from a head wound, but he was strong. All her muscles buzzed and burned. Her head seemed filled up with fire. No matter where she looked, she saw the phoenix, and it seemed it no longer hung from Brand's neck. She saw it in shadows, on the floor as she ran; she saw it in the space where a tall pillar of stone had stood, in the gap between splitting stone.
Brand shoved her hard, pitched her into the darkness of the tunnel. The roar of the roof falling drowned out his shouting, but she knew he shouted at her, some question, some desperate plea.
"Make it Stop!"
The plea screamed in all her bones, in her blood, in the deepest part of her where she felt the agony of stone breaking. Make it stop!
With trembling fingers, Elansa reached for the sapphire. Brand pulled back, and then he held. He suffered her touch, and she saw that wasn't easy for him. When her fingers brushed his skin as she took up the phoenix, she felt him flinch. Still, he didn't back away, and he stood very still when she whispered her prayer, giving her thanks to the god who had heard her.
Then, the silence of the earth. The quiet of stone. The weeping of water, a spring loosed into the cavern In that silence, Elansa heard the ragged breathing of outlaws, the groaning of someone wounded or amazed. Brand's fingers touched hers, then pried them one by one from the sapphire phoenix. She thought he would surely take the talisman from his neck, perhaps throw it away in fear. He did not. He took it back, and he tucked it into his shirt.
And how not? Would he put such a weapon into the hand of a prisoner? Of course not. He would hold it, if not to use, then to keep her from using it.
Char went past her, very carefully, and looked back into the cavern.
"Y' brought down the world," he said, his voice hushed with awe. "Girl, y’ brought it right down on their heads."
All around her Elansa heard the breathing of outlaws caught in the dark Humans, none could see her but Ley and Tianna and Char. The dwarf had the best sight, and he looked at her as though he were seeing something fair and foul.
"Char," Brand said. "Do you know where we are?"
Char grunted.
"Is that or no?"
Again, the dwarf grunted. "That’s no. The way we took into the cavern is all choked with"—he snorted-"all choked with what she did. There's another, but… well, it ain't where I was thinkin' to go."
Fear pricked along Elansa’s neck.
"Don’t worry about that," Brand said. "That tunnel go south?"
"So far as I can see."
"All right then. You just lead on, and don't turn aside from any water you find."
The dwarf said nothing, but he did as he was asked.
Lindenlea stood in a field of black and dun, on grass-less earth littered with burned buildings, charred beams and foundation stones scattered. The bodies of the slain lay untouched by any who had survived. It had been the same in every little village or luckless farmstead the hobgoblin had taken his army through. He'd been active in the last, weeks, but his pattern had been strange.
No, she thought, looking around her. The strange thing was that there should be a pattern at all. He'd burned and raided in a determined line, straight along the edge of the Qualinesti border, but never close enough to draw the attention of the elven scouts stationed along the edge of the forest. She'd kept her forces strong and alert, riding the length of the border herself, spending no more than a day or night at each camp and making certain the bright wall of elven soldiery kept to the letter of her command. It did not matter what the hobgoblin did beyond the border of the forest, and no one was to mount sorties against him. As long as Gnash knew how the elven border bristled with blades and hard-eyed warriors, he would keep his distance.
And so he had. The progress of his raiding traced against the sky, seen in smoke. Only days before, Gnash had deviated from his pattern. The hobgoblin had turned east within sight of the first bright peaks of the mountains. The deviation had piqued Lindenlea’s curiosity. A scout had said that he'd seen a burning deeper into the borderland and not along Gnash's usual line.
A
t the head of a troop, Lindenlea had ridden out to see what she could see. They had found this place, this broken and binned place that had only days before been one of those stubborn little villages clinging to a crossroads, remembering, perhaps, older days when travelers came through to eat at the inn or trade goods from Abanasinia or Tarsis. Not many did come—these were not hospitable lands—but those who could afford armed escorts did, and they came to this place. Lindenlea thought the name of it was Well’s Cross.
Or had been Well’s Cross. There was nothing left worth sticking a name to now.
Her soldiers had scoured the place looking for at least one living creature and found none until, at the far end of the ruined village, Feslan Oakbeam had sung out, shouting "Got some!"
He'd found a clutch of children shivering in the cellar of one of the houses at the outskirts. They were weeping among the roots and the preserves and the pickle barrels.
Wind-stung and shivering, Lindenlea watched as Feslan hustled a survivor along the village street. Feslan was a warrior bold, not unaccustomed to the sights that lay all around him—the hacked corpses, the feeding ravens. But he was a father when he wasn't that, and so it was a father's hand that turned the boy away from sights, a father's hand that kept him walking straight on the road, past ruin. When Feslan stopped him before his commander, the boy's eyes were wide in his white face. Perhaps he'd never seen an elf before now, or anyone not of his mean little village.
"My lady," Feslan said in Common, his hand on the boy’s shoulder. "This one will talk."
Lindenlea looked down at the boy, looked him right in the eye. She didn't waste time on false sympathy or pretend to empathy. This was a human after all. What could either of them know about the other?
"Tell me, boy," she said, a warrior tall and stern. She gestured, sweeping the village around, causing the boy to look where Feslan had not let him. "Who did this demon work?"
Lips trembling with shivering or fear, the boy started to speak. He managed a squeak, then had to swallow.
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