Stronghold

by Melanie Rawn

  The by now familiar twang of stressed wood and ropes warned them an instant before stones hurtled down. Rohan cursed and tightened his grip on his horse. The chaos he’d so carefully planned against began to invade the courtyard, borne on screams of fright. Many people went down; everyone else ran for cover.

  “Damn! We’ll have to move even faster than—” Rohan suddenly stood in his stirrups and yelled Chayla’s name. She had run out into the courtyard to help the wounded. More rocks pelted from the night sky; Chayla and those trying to retrieve the injured huddled with arms over their heads until the rain stopped.

  Relnaya darted out to where Chayla was staunching blood from a child’s head wound. The Sunrunner picked up the little boy in one arm and hauled Chayla to safety with the other.

  All at once an almighty crash hit the main gates. Rohan yelled a warning up at Walvis, wincing as iron-reinforced wood shuddered again.

  “I heard!” came the shout from within the gatehouse. “Close the inner gates—I’m almost done!”

  He called Dannar over and told him to speed things up at the passage. The squire jumped at the next shock and darted through the tense crowd. Rohan willed everyone to stay calm, to keep from shoving each other and turning this into an enemy victory.

  He caught sight of Hollis taking the stairs two at a time, long tawny braids flying. She was supposed to have left with Chay and Tobin, but it was a little late to yell at her for it now. She disappeared into the gatehouse and a few moments later the battering at the gates stopped. Just visible over the walls was a yellow-white glow. Sunrunner’s Fire.

  He reined his horse around and rode up and down the line of nervous people, hoping his presence would be enough to settle them down again. Thus far they had not panicked—but he knew how quickly it could happen.

  So he smiled and told them, “They’re busy running after the others and running away from Lady Hollis’ hospitality. I can’t understand that, personally—don’t they know how cold it gets here at night? She’s only seeing to their comfort. Just move along and watch your heads, you tall ones, once you’re mounted up—or make sure you get a very short horse!”

  They laughed up at him and he grinned back. No, he hadn’t lost his touch.

  Sioned finally arrived, gasping for breath and with a wicked gleam in her eyes. “I would’ve been here sooner, but it took me a long time to get the knack of breaking the bowls right.”

  “Would you care to explain that?” he asked as Dannar led her horse up and she swung into the saddle.

  She laughed, well aware of the people around them who listened. “When it became clear they weren’t going to wait until morning to invite themselves in, I put the leftover paste to excellent use. Beth and I left pots of it over hot coals. By the time the pottery breaks from the heat, we’ll be gone—and the Vellant’im will be breathing the most horrible stuff you could imagine. Beth is putting the last bowls in the glass furnaces now.”

  “You are the most cheerfully vicious woman I ever met!”

  “I do try not to disappoint you,” she said with a sweet smile.

  Sioned had finished the spell that eased fear. Rohan leaned precariously over to kiss her in gratitude. Whistles and applause made his cheeks burn, but panic laughed away would not threaten again. Not for a little while, not until they were beyond the walls and had to rely on other protection.

  “Damn it, Hollis, come on!” Walvis’ voice came from within the gatehouse.

  Dannar grabbed two horses and led them to the wall. Walvis was down first, and jumped into the saddle from the steps. Hollis was close behind him. The glow of her Fire was gone outside. It wouldn’t be long before the Vellant’im began battering the gates again. But Walvis’ fierce grin told the story as he rode up. The Vellant’im would walk into a Remagev rife with deadfalls—if they had the courage to explore past the gatehouse ceiling’s burning rain.

  There were sounds of battle outside now, steel on steel. “They’ve found where we’re getting out,” Hollis said. “Let me go up and help.”

  “Not necessary,” Rohan told her as another glow crept over the walls. “Look. And listen.”

  The ringing of metal stopped. Scant moments later the whispers came back from the front of the line: Princess Tobin and her granddaughter were at work with Fire.

  “Tobren?” Sioned exclaimed. “When did she learn—and why am I complaining?” she interrupted herself in disgust.

  “Is the arcade rigged?” Rohan asked, and Walvis nodded. “Then let’s go.”

  The diversions had worked, for the most part. The enemy was divided and riding in four different directions; Fire would keep them at bay while Rohan’s group escaped; Remagev itself would take plenty of casualties as it collapsed and smoked and rained glass shards. He was protecting his people while giving the enemy ample opportunity to destroy itself, both here and out in the Desert.

  But in spite of knowing he had done all he could, in spite of a lifetime of keeping peace with laws instead of a sword in his hand, a part of him still had fierce, proud memories of battle. It had ignited his blood at Radzyn and now stung him again. To kill those who were killing his people, the world he had created, his life’s work—Goddess, how he wanted to be Pol’s age with a sword in his hand.

  Sioned wrapped her dark cloak more closely around her and rode outside the walls to take over the Fire conjuring. She would lecture them later on the folly of what they’d done. Or perhaps not—for arrows were flying through her wall of flames, shot blind, and if one of them struck her . . . .

  She spared a puzzled frown for the fact that the iron did not stab as it had with the ros’salath. But this was no weaving. It held none of her essence. She was not bound into it as she had been into the complex working. But it was hard work just the same, and she was grateful when hands took her reins and led her horse along for her.

  The hands were Tobren’s. She shared a saddle with her grandmother, who had not yet regained enough strength in her hands to guide a horse. The admiration in the child’s eyes for Sioned’s easy skill was born of intimate knowledge of faradhi ways. Still, Tobren was wary of her. Goddess only knew what Andry told his children about the Sunrunner High Princess. When Hollis joined them and said, “I’ll take the Fire. You’re the only one who can weave starlight,” Tobren’s face clenched like a fist.

  Sioned spun cool white light and surveyed the turmoil in the Vellanti camp. Their numbers had been substantially reduced by chasing after the other groups. She ranged a little farther, counted pursuers, and by the time her lord rode up had a heartening report for him.

  “About forty are after Pol, fifty after Sethric, and Maarken takes the prize with nearly seventy.”

  Rohan’s eyes reflected Hollis’ Fire. “Then Pol’s about evenly matched, Sethric outnumbers them—and I pity anyone who crosses Maarken’s path.”

  “I don’t feel sorry for them at all,” Tobren stated as she yielded Sioned’s reins. “I wish I was a real Sunrunner—I’d do like Papa and kill them!”

  Tobin’s eyes closed briefly; Sioned glanced away. It was Rohan who answered the girl.

  “Your father is a very brave and clever man, Tobren. But it must grieve him to use his gifts in so terrible a thing as war.”

  “The Goddess chose Papa and made him Lord of her Keep. If she didn’t want him to use his gifts, she wouldn’t have given them.”

  The logic was inarguable—but that didn’t make it any less wrong. Rohan knew there was no way to convey that to this proud child, even though his sister’s eyes pleaded with him to say something—anything. He drew breath to make a try, but all at once was incapable of saying anything at all. The rush of wings was in his head, the tingle along his bones, the strange instinctive sureness that a dragon was near.

  The roar of an enraged sire was unmistakable. Hollis was so stunned that her Fire sputtered down to a mere trickle of hip-high flames. But there was light enough to see the dragon by—and the Vellant’im. To a man they leaped from their horses and
prostrated themselves on the sand.

  “I don’t believe it,” Sioned breathed.

  “It’s Azhdeen—he must be looking for Pol.” Rohan shook himself. “Take the Fire from Hollis and get these people moving! We may not have long.” He kicked his horse to the line of Sunrunner’s Fire. Standing in his stirrups, he lifted his arms high and in a terrible voice bellowed, “Azhrei!”

  Sioned had a dangerous urge to laugh. It grew stronger as Chay started singing as loud as he could. The song was taken up by hundreds of voices—a ballad over thirty years old, fulsome in its praise of Rohan’s virtue, strength, and cunning. She knew at once why Chay had chosen it: azhrei figured prominently in the chorus, the one word they could be certain the Vellant’im understood.

  So, under cover of Sunrunner’s Fire and a self-serving song and the angry howls of a dragon anxious about his human possession, they escaped Remagev.

  Chapter Twenty

  “So they got away,” Rinhoel said. “Too bad.”

  His mother cast a quick, nervous glance at the door that had just closed behind Rialt. “Hush! We’re on shaky enough ground without his overhearing remarks like that!”

  “Oh, come now, Mother! It’s all legal. The treaties say that whenever one princedom attacks another, the rest must go to the victim’s defense. There’s nothing anywhere about being attacked by outsiders.” Rinhoel snorted. “Trust Pirro to think up something like that, anyway, to justify his cowardice.”

  “But it works just as well for Cunaxa and Firon as it does for Fessenden—and us. Only we’re not cowards.” Chiana paced the glass and velvet audience chamber, the mourning gray she wore for Patwin billowing in stiff silk folds around her. “If Rohan wins, we lose everything. He’s always won before.”

  “It’s time he lost for a change. Do you want Princemarch or not?”

  The blunt question went to the heart of ambition and resentment and fury nurtured for a lifetime. All of it spurted forth like poison from a lanced wound. “Yes. By the Goddess—yes!”

  “Then act like it. We have allies now. What they want for themselves coincides nicely with what we want for us. If we work together, we can have everything. Pirro gave us a legal excuse to withhold active support—as if we needed it, with our own borders threatened!” He laughed softly. “Not even dear Aunt Naydra dares scold us for not sending our armies to Syr or the Desert. And everyone understands why we’ve called up the levies. No one needs to know they’re meant to seize, not defend.”

  Chiana subsided into a velvet chair. “You’re right, my treasure. You’re right. Forgive me. But the only times I ever tasted victory were when I married your father and when I gave birth to you. I can’t help my nerves.”

  “Mother, this time it won’t be just a taste. We’ll both be drunk on it for the rest of our lives.”

  She smiled. “I count marriage as a victory only because it gave me you.”

  “I didn’t think it was because you adored the Parchment Prince.”

  “Rinhoel!” She giggled at the nickname bestowed on Halian for his uselessness. Before she’d married him, he had chafed against his father Clutha’s iron rule that kept him powerless. For a time after the old man finally died, she’d thought Halian would actually rule Meadowlord. But the habit of idleness was too ingrained by then. Chiana had spent about half a year regretting it while she nearly foundered in unaccustomed statecraft, until one day she realized she was more of a prince than he would ever be. Thus she encouraged his pursuit of pleasant diversions—and ruled Meadowlord as she liked. And she liked it very much. For fifteen years now Halian had signed what she gave him to sign and read aloud what she gave him to read during law courts. The Parchment Prince.

  Rinhoel dismissed his father with a wave of his hand. “Discussing dear Papa is a waste of time. We have other things to talk about. Rohan’s on his way back to Stronghold. Tilal and Kostas will soon be bogged down in winter mud. Storms have sent Arlis back to New Raetia after only one skirmish in Brochwell Bay. But there is a place where fighting is not impossible in winter. Do you remember that miserable summer I spent at Remagev two years ago?”

  “Not as vividly as you do.”

  “Well, yes,” he admitted with a grimace. “A killing climate, all of us dumped into a barracks without thought of rank or position or birth—but that wasn’t as bad as the so-called training. Free labor for Lord Walvis, more likely, cleaning that ancient pile and mucking out stalls.” He shrugged off the memory. “But I did make an interesting acquaintance there. And he showed up here a few days ago. I let him cool his heels and then met him in town last night. But today our friends from the south arrive, and I thought Birioc might make a useful addition to our conversation.”

  Chiana frowned. “I don’t recall your mentioning him. Who is he?”

  “Nobody, really,” was the casual reply. “Just one of Miyon’s bastard sons—by a Merida woman.”

  She choked. “A Cunaxan prince? Merida? How did he ever get into Remagev?”

  “By lying, of course. Cunaxans are all liars, and the Merida are worse than Cunaxans. He got in claiming to be the heir of some minor holding on the Desert border. That played right into Walvis’ pretty idea about making us all one big happy continent.”

  “The notion of a peasant,” Chiana observed.

  “Actually, it wasn’t that big a lie about the holding—Miyon gives crown properties to his mistresses to provide his bastards with a name.”

  Chiana nodded. “Meiglan’s mother held Gracine Manor until she died.”

  “Birioc’s mother got a place called Catchwater. But she didn’t live to see it. It’s all rather pathetic. He says his mother was a princess of the Merida, but that’s probably another lie. Her people sent her to Miyon to get themselves a royal heir. He didn’t know what she was or he wouldn’t have touched her—not even Miyon is that stupid, to give the Merida a claim on him. But the child was born, the mother died, and the servant who raised Birioc was Merida, too.”

  “Quite an indoctrination, I should think,” Chiana remarked. “I trust he sacrificed honor to survival and did not receive the chin-scar.”

  “What do you think?” he snorted.

  “I see where this leads. Miyon still doesn’t know his son’s real heritage, does he?”

  “Not a whisper of it. He’s younger than our dear future High Princess—about twenty-one now, I think. He stayed the whole year at Remagev because his father ordered him to. Miyon wanted to know exactly what goes on there. What the ass doesn’t realize is that his half-Merida son got an education in warfare and leadership that won’t be to his father’s advantage.”

  Chiana thought all this over, then bit her lip. “Rinhoel . . . I agree this Birioc could be of use. But the Merida were the sorcerers’ trained assassins.”

  “I know that,” he replied impatiently. “But when the Vellant’im finally march on Stronghold, Birioc’s people can keep Tallain and Jahnavi too busy to come to Rohan’s aid. The Desert is the only place you can fight a war in winter. A Merida attack on Tuath and then Tiglath would serve our purposes—and Miyon’s. And the Merida’s.”

  Admiration shone in her eyes, but still she wavered. “The reasoning is flawless, my love, but . . . sorcery?”

  “If the Merida could work spells, do you think Rohan would be High Prince? Do you think he’d even be alive?”

  “But the Vellanti battle cry—”

  “They haven’t done any sorcery either. I’m convinced that they can’t. Why use up so many lives in war if you could weave a spell and kill the way Andry did at Goddess Keep? The Vellant’im aren’t here to soften us up for death by sorcery, Mother. If diarmadh’im were going to do anything, they’d have done it. Personally, I think that wherever these people come from, the sorcerers are all dead. It’s just something they shout to remind them of past victories and inspire them to new ones.”

  “You may be right. But it’s puzzling just the same.” She pushed it aside and spoke more briskly. “Very well. I’ll see Bi
rioc. What should I call him?”

  “He’s hungry. A ‘my lord’ here and there will feed him.”

  “No, make it ‘Prince Birioc’—for his mother’s sake, if not his father’s.”

  Rinhoel went to her side and kissed her cheek. “You’re the wisest woman in the world—as well as the most beautiful.”

  “You’re not a bad liar, yourself.” But she smiled fondly up at him, adding, “High Prince Rinhoel.”

  • • •

  High Prince Rohan escaped Remagev but not pursuit. Pol’s dragon abandoned the area soon after everyone was out, and shortly thereafter the Vellant’im dared lift their faces from the sand. It took them a while to recapture their horses—Radzyn animals familiar with dragons on the hunt ran like fire through a hayloft—and this gained Rohan a little more time. But pursue the enemy did, though not in great numbers. It was Sioned’s opinion that his “mighty azhrei” performance had scared most of them witless.

  “I’m surprised Azhdeen stayed as long as he did, after he was unable to find Pol,” she mused.

  Tobin’s black eyes sparkled with laughter. “Liked the music.”

  “Do you think so?” Rohan asked, then shrugged. “It’s as good an explanation as any, I suppose.”

  Tobin leaned over in her saddle behind Tobren and poked her brother with a cane. “Feylin’s legends!”

  They stared at her until Betheyn chuckled softly. “None of you has gotten that far, but we were reading it the other day. There’s a very old story about a virgin princess who saved herself from becoming a dragon’s dinner by singing him to sleep.”