Stronghold

by Melanie Rawn

  Had Andry wanted to kill?

  “Listen to me, heartling,” he said. “We all do what we must in the service of life. That’s how you must think of it. We’ve been trapped by this war. You fight by being a healer, Chayla. What others try to take, you can give back through the skill of your hands and eyes and mind.” He held her closer. “If war is darkness, then you are light. But there’s a price for it—paid in the coin of your own heart.”

  “Papa, they’re paying in blood.”

  “I know. I know.” Blood was simple and pure, like new-minted gold. It was handed over in pain and suffering, but the accounts were balanced. He had been wounded in battle several times; he understood the reckoning of that debt. But those who healed, or commanded, or had power beyond that of swords and arrows—their payments were more complex, not so easily given, not so cleanly summed.

  Chayla shivered, then sniffled and wiped her eyes. “I hate it. I understand what you said that I’m serving life by healing it—but it’s work I shouldn’t have to be doing. It’s like—it’s a corruption of physician’s work. We didn’t ask for this war. We didn’t do anything to deserve it. It’s not fair.”

  “No, it’s not. But there’s wealth enough among us, heartling, to settle accounts.” A bitter wealth of blood and heart and spirit—Goddess keep them from spending it all.

  “I shouldn’t be sitting here feeling sorry for myself,” Chayla said, tears fading from her voice. “I have to go look in on a couple of people.”

  “It’s late. Let someone else do it.”

  He knew the words were a mistake as soon as they left his mouth. She drew away and looked up at him and with her wide, sad, beautiful eyes, a little smile on her face, and suddenly he knew she was no longer fifteen winters old.

  Maarken shrugged. “I’m your father, I can’t help it.”

  “I’ll bet you’ll say the same thing to Rohannon next time you talk to him.” Rising, she leaned down to kiss his brow. “You’re the one who needs to sleep.”

  He grunted. “My daughter, the physician. I just hope kissing your male patients isn’t part of the prescribed treatment.”

  “I took an oath to kiss only the ones who’re better-looking than my father and brother—and there aren’t any.”

  He saw her square her slight shoulders as she walked away, the momentary lightness brought by her smile fading as oath lingered in his mind. He sat outside for a long while, and his wrist and leg stiffened even more with the growing cold. In fact, he expected Hollis to appear any instant with a cloak and a scold to come in before he froze. But it was Kazander who arrived with a heavy length of close-woven wool over his arm. The young man bowed low, presented the cloak, and as Maarken put it over his shoulders bowed again.

  “My lord Battle Commander, there is word from Stronghold.”

  “Oh, Goddess—it hasn’t been attacked, has it?” He started to his feet.

  “No, my lord. Be easy. The Sunrunner Morwenna conjured in Fire and Water at Stronghold today, watching the battle here. The stars give few threads tonight, but enough to weave. And the revered Guard Commander Myrdal says there is a way out.”

  “A way to defeat their rain of stones? How? Tell me!”

  Kazander bent his head again. “Forgive me, my lord. I should speak with more care. There is a way out of Remagev, by which all may escape to safety.”

  “Running—again.” He couldn’t stop the words, or the bitterness.

  “I agree, my lord,” Kazander murmured. “But . . . .”

  “Yes. Go on.”

  The young man looked up, a feral smile lifting the ends of his mustache. “I have an idea or two that might meet with my lord’s approval. The vermin may walk into Remagev—but few will walk out of it.”

  • • •

  Pol listened to Rohan outline plans for an orderly retreat. It was all he could do to hold his tongue and his temper. He is High Prince, not I, he reminded himself again and again. I can’t speak in front of the others. I must say nothing. But, Father, you are so wrong!

  Remagev would be abandoned—prepared with deadfalls. Rohan had taken Kazander’s advice about that, though probably only because Myrdal had originally suggested it. Giving up another keep, no matter how lethal a trap it became, clotted in Pol’s throat and would not be swallowed. He told himself his father knew what he was doing. But no matter how much trust showed on the faces around him, no matter how much faith he had in Chay’s and Maarken’s military acumen, to run away was cowardice.

  “Understood?” Rohan said at last, and everyone nodded. “Very well. Sioned, Hollis, Maarken, make sure our people elsewhere are informed. Especially Riyan and Ostvel.”

  “He’ll be marching across the border into Meadowlord soon,” Sioned mused. “Dear old Clutha always did have fits at the very thought of his precious princedom becoming a battlefield again.”

  “Well, Ostvel won’t get any help from Chiana.” Maarken hesitated, then cast a sidelong glance at Pol. “What about Miyon?”

  Pol replied, “I won’t waste a single arrow defending him.”

  “I can’t argue with your sentiments about his worth,” Chay said, “but I do take exception to your grasp of tactics. Cunaxan steel is as vital to an army as Radzyn horses.” A muscle in his jaw twitched as another hail of stones spattered the courtyard below, but he continued steadily, “The Vellant’im are now superlatively mounted. We must see to it that they’re not similarly armed. Rohan, what if Tallain and Jahnavi divert some of their people to Cunaxa? If Miyon’s armories are taken, the enemy could supply their people forever, using the dragon ships.”

  “Why do you think I ordered them both to stay in the north? Miyon will be defended whether we like it or not. The problem will be getting him to send his own people to help. We must convince him that we’re his best hope of holding back an invasion.”

  Hollis nodded slowly. “Jahnavi is an able soldier—like his sire.”

  “Who learned from Chay,” Walvis said.

  “Who learned from Zehava,” Chay added. “Rohan, what do you think he’d do?”

  Rohan smiled tiredly. “The only thing I lack right now is my father’s voice on the Desert wind telling me I’m losing the princedom it cost him so much to secure.”

  Pol was relieved when his mother turned the conversation. None of them could function if they started speculating on what might be. There was too much at stake dealing with what was. “When I contact Tuath, I’m going to have Rabisa take the children to Feruche. A trip across the Desert is dangerous, but a siege would be worse.”

  “What about Sionell at Tiglath?” Hollis asked.

  “Do you honestly think she’d leave?” Pol countered with a slight smile.

  Sioned smiled, too. “Even if she would, Antalya wouldn’t. Goddess, but that child is stubborn.”

  “Talya won’t leave without her mother, Sionell won’t leave without Tallain, and Tallain wouldn’t leave if you put a sword to his throat.” Rohan shook his head. “I envy them their simple choices.”

  Dangerous sands again, Pol thought, and again his mother provided the lifeline. “Now that we’ve settled Miyon’s future without his permission, I suggest we see to our own—and especially the enemy’s. We begin at dawn tomorrow, I think.” She shook her head, smiling. “Myrdal never ceases to amaze. Ninety-two last summer, and sharp as Fironese crystal.”

  Walvis folded his arms and said, “Until I see for myself, I’m not going to believe there are ways out of here I don’t know about. And secret rooms! I practically rebuilt Remagev from the ground up and I never had a clue!”

  “There’s nothing about Desert castles she doesn’t know. I was twenty-eight before she finally showed me the secrets of my own keep. And even then she didn’t show me all of them.” Rohan paused, gazing at his friend and former squire. Before he could speak again, Walvis shook his head.

  “They won’t destroy Remagev any more than they did Radzyn,” he said. The solid thunk of a huge boulder against the outer wall moc
ked him. “They won’t,” he repeated.

  “When I gave you this castle, it was almost in ruins. I don’t want you to come home to the same thing all over again.”

  Feylin laughed aloud. “Five steps into the main hall, and what Allun did to them at Lower Pyrme will seem a New Year Holiday by contrast. They won’t get far enough in to break a single dish.”

  “And even if they do,” Walvis added, smiling a little, “I need a project to occupy my old age.”

  Pol heard them with growing wonder, knowing he should not be surprised. Their words were a tribute to them—but also to his father. People would follow this man, trusting him, loving him, into any Hell he cared to lead them. They knew he would lead them back out again in triumph.

  Rohan rubbed his face briskly. “Get to your beds, then, so your wits are about you for this little welcome-to-Remagev party we’re giving them. Pol, stay for a moment, please.”

  While the others took their leave, Pol braced himself. Once they were alone, and the erratic splatter of rocks sounded even louder, Rohan blew out a long breath and shrugged an apology.

  “I know I’ve been speaking as if your people are mine. If you have objections—”

  “None. You know that.”

  “Then tell me why you’re looking so grim. Is it that I had to tell Walvis about you?”

  “No. I’m sorry for the way I acted. Maarken was right—it was childish.”

  “The oath, then?”

  “Not that, either. We both know where we stand on that.”

  “Yes, we do,” Rohan murmured. “Am I going to have to pry it out of you, Pol? Whatever differences we may have, we’re still father and son. And the work we’re involved in means we have to tell each other the truth.”

  “Father . . . .” He groped for words to tell this man he was wrong.

  Shrewd blue eyes narrowed slightly. “Ah,” was all he said.

  “We should stand and fight,” Pol said, trying to sound calm and reasonable. “Stop them before they can kill any more of our people. Deal them a blow so crippling they’ll run back to their dragon ships. Lure them into the Desert, away from their machines. It’ll be an even battle, Father. We have to fight them now. They’re setting up to conduct a long, long war. With the southern rivers as supply lines, they won’t hunger or thirst—”

  “They’ll die of both when we raid and raid and keep on raiding.”

  Pol felt his lips curl. “Strike and run, when we could finish it all with a couple of real battles?”

  Rohan looked thoughtful. “In other words, you want me to do something.”

  “Yes!” The passion of pride and anger broke through his careful respect. He sprang to his feet, almost shaking. “How can you give up Remagev, when Walvis and Feylin struggled for years to rebuild it? Radzyn is lost, and Whitecliff and Riverport—what does it take to make you do something?”

  “I cherish my freedom, Pol. It’s something you haven’t yet learned—never having been a prisoner.”

  “The freedom to run away?”

  Rohan sighed. “Freedom lies in not taking action until there is nothing else to do. But you don’t understand that.”

  “Enlighten me,” Pol said through his teeth.

  “If I order another battle, if I act to bring this war to an end, we will be slaughtered. There are too many of them and too few of us. I know what will happen. But I do not know what the consequences of waiting will be. Thus I’m not trapped. I have room to maneuver. I’m free.”

  “Free to do nothing?” Pol cried in frustration.

  “Exactly. Free as a dragon in flight. Do they fly headlong into a storm? No. They wait it out. The storm is a trap, Pol. War is a trap. By acting to bring a battle, I deprive myself of freedom of action. I trap myself and all my people—and they die for it.”

  “You were quick enough to fight Roelstra!”

  “And I did it very efficiently, too—because I had no other choice. It all became very simple, Pol. Him or me.”

  “Have you forgotten how to fight, then?”

  His father’s expression remained one of detached contemplation. “I regret having to say this about my own son, but for an intelligent man you can be a thundering great fool.”

  Pol’s spine became a sword blade. “Then explain it and cure my idiocy,” he said coldly.

  “Use your eyes, boy!” Rohan snapped, all the deceptive mildness gone. His eyes flashed and he flung one hand out toward the window where the Desert waited. “Look at it! Could someone who’s never lived in it live off it? That’s your battlefield, Pol, hundreds upon hundreds of measures of it, without a drop of water or a blade of grass or a single handspan of shade! The Desert will win our war for us. I won’t give up one life unnecessarily—not when the Long Sand will take more lives than swords and arrows ever could.” He raked Pol with a contemptuous gaze. “You’ve lived soft and fat in Princemarch for too long, woken to green fields and trees and more water than you’ll ever need. Enlighten you? Look at the Desert until you understand again what it’s like to live off it the way Walvis taught you in childhood—the way the enemy can’t. Bleak and lifeless—and the most beautiful land in the world.” He fell silent, rose to go, then turned long enough to say, “Don’t speak to me again of battles, boy, until you’ve really led one. And remember that if I have my way, you never will.”

  Goaded beyond caution, Pol lashed out. “Oh, yes, the great scheme! Peace and plenty, no swords, no war—nothing but talk and maneuver and waiting for people to see things your way! Why don’t you invite the enemy to dinner? Give them a banquet and reason with them! Or buy them off—now, there’s a thought! There’s gold enough at Skybowl. Surely you could pay them off the way you did the Merida, your first year in Zehava’s chair!”

  There was no perceptible stiffening of Rohan’s muscles, but suddenly Pol wanted to back out of reach. He should have followed this instinct. Though he was half his father’s age, a head taller, and heavier by two silkweights, Rohan suddenly had him pinned face down on the table like a side of beef with one arm crooked behind his back. His wrist was caught in viselike fingers and for a moment he thought the bones would snap.

  “Now I know you for Ianthe’s son,” Rohan hissed in his ear. “No child of Sioned’s could be so stupid! Listen to me, and listen well. If I could buy the enemy, I would do it. But I can’t. If you had the sense the Goddess gave a plow-elk, you’d see that. Don’t you understand? They don’t want our substance, they want our lives! But you’re so arrogant and eager for blood and battle—how can you scorn the lives in your care?”

  Pol struggled and got his shoulder nearly wrenched from its socket for his trouble.

  “Stay still, boy. I’m not finished with you yet. It’s a fine palace and a soft civilized life you’ve made for yourself with the peace I gave you. But you’re a barbarian. You’re the kind I’ve spent my whole life fighting.”

  Pol’s muscles spasmed involuntarily at that. Rohan tightened his grip and laughed bitterly.

  “Tell me, my civilized son, how did it feel to kill? Fires the blood, doesn’t it? That wonderful gush of omnipotence—did you like it, Pol? I did. But at least I knew what it was. Strip away the years and the deeds, and there’s your real face grinning at you, with a hundred generations of savages in its eyes.”

  “Damn you—let me go!” Pol spat.

  “So you can indulge yourself in another battle? Risk your life for the pleasure of killing some more? Ah, no. You’re too important. Doesn’t it gall you to be protected? I don’t give a damn for your hurt pride or your contempt for my methods—past or present or future.”

  “Then break my sword arm and have done with it!”

  “You’d still be able to give orders. You’d send men and women to fight and die in a battle they can’t win, just because you think you should put up a fight. I know savages. I know your kind.” Abruptly Rohan released him and turned away.

  Pol barely kept himself from collapsing onto his face across the table. He glared at
his father’s back, resisting the urge to rub his aching shoulder. “And you put me where I am, didn’t you?”

  “Perhaps you’re the right man for the work after all,” Rohan observed. “Perhaps only a barbarian can defeat barbarians.” He paused at the door and glanced over his shoulder. “Take heart, Pol. If I die somewhere along the way, you’ll be High Prince and get your chance to play the warrior. You ought to do very well—you seem to have all the right instincts.”

  “The same instincts you used when you killed my grandfather?”

  If he had expected to draw blood with that, he was disappointed. Rohan gave him a small, vicious smile.

  “Exactly the same, my son. Exactly the same.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Maarken stood at the north postern gate, a fingerflame conjured near his shoulder. “Yes, that’s it—right through here and out to the Long Sand. Meet up with the others at the ruins of Sandfall, then continue on to Stronghold. Goddess watch over you.”

  The Vellant’im directed their bombardment of stones at the walls and courtyard only. Maarken would have considered this stupid, but for the fact that they could not have guessed that yet another keep would be abandoned. He hated what they were doing—they all did—but with Rohan he believed in the strength of the Desert. Their Desert.

  He was learning not to flinch, but the irregular pounding of stones was maddening. With Kazander he prowled the barracks, selecting soldiers to ride out by night with the wounded who could sit a horse. Traveling with only the clothes on their backs and the swords at their belts, they would wait in the half-hidden shelters along the way. Six groups of twenty each departed between midnight and the black time before dawn—ten able-bodied to protect ten wounded. They rode dark horses with bridles wrapped to stifle sound. Maarken listened for alarms from the Vellanti camp that would mean discovery, but there was only the incessant, nerve-shredding rattle.

  “They use the bones and teeth of the Desert against us,” Kazander murmured as rocks danced their way down the barracks roof.