“Cer Falyn!” Shona called as she approached, picking her way through the lines. “You must have heard the signals. What do you make of them?”
Morne turned to face her. “The cipher is Cer Eian’s,” she said. “He’s calling for us to move against Castar from behind while his force attacks. We’re to be the anvil to his hammer.” Her eyes moved over Shona’s shoulder. “You found him. Good.”
Josen pulled away from the men supporting him and limped to Shona’s side. He trembled on his feet, and put a hand on her shoulder to steady himself, but that he could stand at all was a good sign. “If you know the signal, what are you still doing here?” he demanded. “Zerill said she would come if she could, and she has! They need our help!”
It was hard to believe that a very short time ago he’d been ready to surrender, but there was no doubt about what had made the difference: Zerill. In the years Shona had known him, she’d seen far too many people caught up in the force of Josen’s personality, but as hard as every one of them had tried—as hard as she had tried—she’d never seen anyone manage that same hold over him. Not until Zerill. She had better be here to save us, because he won’t do anything to stop her if she isn’t.
Morne frowned. “You know as well as I do that the swamplings wouldn’t simply let Eian go. If he is here, it is with them, and he may not be acting of his own will. We will move when I know this isn’t a swampling trap.” She pointed to her left, and Shona followed the gesture. Not far away, two pale white faces stood amid a circle of knights. Verik and Azra. Two men held each of them by the arms, but only Azra was struggling. Verik looked too tired to fight.
“What are you doing?” Eroh darted out from behind Shona and approached the other swamplings; Goldeyes hopped from his shoulder and took flight, circling low overhead. “Let them go!”
The knights moved to block his way, but none laid a hand on him. On their faces, Shona could see their long-standing hatred of swamplings fighting with awe at those Windwalker eyes.
Eroh didn’t try to push through; he only turned those golden eyes on Cer Falyn. “Please,” he said softly. “Zerill promised she would come. It isn’t a trick.”
Morne met the boy’s gaze with a slight frown. “We will see.”
This could go very badly. Shona could feel the anger and despair hanging almost tangibly in the air; too many hands rested on sword-hilts, and too many eyes flicked constantly to the swampling prisoners. Nervous mutters drifted throughout the ranks. These men had been through too much in one night, seen too many of their friends and brothers die to the Deeplings. They needed a reason why, and in the stories of the Peaks, swamplings were always to blame. What will they do when they see a swampling army marching across the farming flats? What will the swamplings do when they see us holding these two prisoner? A single wrong word, a single wrong movement, and all that fear could easily become violence, allies or no.
“Think about this, Falyn,” Shona said with all the patience she could still muster. “We can still—”
“Have you lost your mind?” The words exploded out of Josen’s mouth as if holding them in for the past few seconds had been causing him physical pain. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he didn’t seem to have noticed the tension, or else he didn’t care; he’d never been very good at holding his tongue. For all that he’d changed, he hadn’t changed that much.
Insulting her isn’t the way to change her mind, you idiot. But Shona couldn’t openly gainsay him, not without undermining his authority as king. He couldn’t be seen as her puppet. All she could do was try to guide him in the right direction. Which was anything but this. She stepped lightly on his toe and gave a slight shake of her head.
Josen jerked his foot away and ignored her, jabbing a finger westward. “Your lord general is calling for aid! Or don’t you care what happens to him?”
Cer Falyn set her jaw and balled her fists. “Of course I—” She stopped, took a breath, and went on in the affectless voice of a woman willing herself not to shout. “Eian entrusted me with the lives of his men, and I mean to honor that. The swamplings could have made him give up that signal by force, or found some way to decipher it for themselves. They’ve always been clever for savages, particularly at crafting an ambush. They might have sent the Deeplings, not Castar. When it was only a small few, I could accept the risk, but if they mean to march an army into the Plateaus, I need to know what they have planned. And these two are going to tell me.”
“They can’t tell you about something that doesn’t exist,” said Josen. “You’re wasting time on imaginary threats when there is a real one right in front of you!”
“Am I?” Morne gestured at Azra. “This one has already threatened your life once.”
“She wasn’t…” Josen trailed off with a huff of frustration. “That was different!”
Cer Falyn looked to Shona; apparently she’d decided that Josen was beyond convincing. “Think about this: if we help them defeat Castar, what happens after? What if they decide to take what they’ve always wanted? We have too few men to drive them back, and no walls left to keep them out.”
“Even if it is a trap, does it matter?” Josen cut in again, and gestured across the fields toward the crimson mass of Castar’s army. “He has four men for every one of ours. We can’t beat that alone. If the swamplings aren’t on our side, we’ve already lost, it’s just a question of who actually kills us. The only way we win is if they came to help. We can’t let them do this alone!”
It was a decent enough argument, but he’d missed the point. He hadn’t caught the flash of shame in Cer Falyn’s eyes.
Shona realized with a slow, cold horror, what was happening. “She isn’t looking for a way to win,” she said softly. “She wants to side with Castar.”
Morne lifted her chin with something like defiance, but she could barely meet Shona’s eyes. Her voice was almost pleading. “You must understand—I have a duty to the people of the Peaks. I loathe Lenoden Castar as much as you do, but we have a future with him on the throne. I can’t say that for certain if the swamplings take the Plateaus.”
Josen said nothing for a moment, just stared at Cer Falyn in disbelief. And then, abruptly, he snatched Aryllia’s Crown from Shona’s hand—she’d all but forgotten she was holding it—and slid it over his brow.
“Wait,” Shona said. She could already tell what he meant to do: the absolute worst thing he could. “Don’t—”
It was too late; there was no stopping him now. “I am still your king! I order you to fight!”
A murmur ran through the ranks, and there was some motion among the nearest army men and militia—lowborn soldiers, the sort who had always loved Josen. But fear of the swamplings was a powerful force among the people of the Nine Peaks, and there was more grey than blue within earshot. She knew some of these knights by name—Eldon Demant, Hughan Heln, and others from Greenwall’s Stormhall—but they had been Eian’s men, and that made them Cer Falyn’s now. They held their positions, and the rest of the men followed their lead, looking to their commander for guidance. A word from Cer Falyn, and disagreement could turn to open revolt. And Josen, for some fool reason, had decided to force her hand.
Don’t make it worse, Falyn. Shona pointedly caught the other woman’s eye and tried to will that thought into her head.
It didn’t work.
“We go nowhere until I have the answers I need,” Morne said, and though she was openly defying her king, her eyes remained fixed on Shona. “If defeat is the only choice left to us, I will not let the swamplings take this mountain.”
Josen gripped Shona’s arm. “Do something,” he whispered urgently. “Zerill is behind that signal. I know she is. I don’t know how she did it, but it’s her, and she brought her people with her. We can’t just abandon them. You have to make Morne listen.”
“Oh, did you want her to listen?” Shona muttered back. “The way you were going about it, I wouldn’t have known.”
At least he had the sense to look embarras
sed.
Both he and Morne were watching her now, each expecting her to make the other see reason. Perfect. They’ve argued themselves into an impossible position, and now they want me to make it right. And to do it without undermining the king’s authority or bringing on a rebellion. Well, that had been her agreement with Josen, hadn’t it? He wore the crown, but since they’d left Greenwall, he and Morne and a great many others had deferred to Shona’s judgement. And at any other moment, she would have been glad of it—she’d been fighting for that kind of respect all her life.
But just then, she had no idea what to do.
Her chest ached with the need to throw every last soldier at the man who had stolen her family from her, but to demand obedience now would only ensure the opposite. And worse, there was truth in what Morne said. Castar would at least spare those who laid down their swords; if the swamplings had come seeking vengeance, they wouldn’t be so merciful. Josen insisted they were there to help, but it made no real sense to trust a people who had every reason to hate them. Why should they be able to put aside old hatreds any better than we are? And if the swamplings took the Plateaus, it might well mean the end of the Nine Peaks. The loss of the farming flats alone would doom thousands to starvation, and without a center or a leader, there would be endless struggles over power and resources. No single duchy was self-sufficient enough to survive without the others.
On the other side, she had nothing but Josen’s blind faith, but she badly wanted that to be enough. She wanted to believe the way he did that all of Zerill’s strength and will could amount to something. That one woman’s voice could convince an entire people to put aside their old traditions and old wounds. She wanted to believe that there was still a chance to find justice for her family, or at least vengeance. She wanted to believe as badly as she’d ever wanted anything. But she’d always considered herself a rational woman, and she knew that the things she wanted had more to do with feeling than reason. Particularly the last. Lenoden Castar had taken her mother away, and her father, and she needed to see him pay. The idea that he might win after all of that was anathema to her, a constant scream in the back of her head.
Is it worth risking everything to see one man dead? She wanted it to be. And if it wasn’t, she didn’t know if she could bring herself to say it.
She looked at Morne’s prisoners, hoping for some sign that might convince her one way or the other. Eroh still stood freely outside the circle of knights, looking in helplessly. Verik slumped in the grip of the men who held him, but he returned Shona’s gaze with dark, sad eyes.
Azra wasn’t so docile. She squirmed and pulled against her captors, and when she saw Shona looking, she shouted in her stilted speech, “Not let Abandoned die for you! We kept promise!”
And that was as true as anything Morne had said. Not one of the swamplings Shona had met over these last turns had yet failed to live up to their word—they’d risked everything to bring Josen home. Lord of Eagles, I wish that was enough to be sure.
At that moment, Eian’s horn sounded once more, and when Shona looked west toward the sound, Castar’s men were moving. Distantly, she could hear raised voices, the sound of steel and the steady rhythm of moving feet. And she could see something else, just emerging through the gap in the Queensgate: a new force spilling into the farming flats. She couldn’t make out individual features from so far away, but two things were plain when she looked at them all together: pale skin and pale hair, impossibly white in the morning sun. A low murmur of frightened voices rose among the gathered men at the sight. A sight none of them—and Shona included herself in that—had ever believed they would see.
An army of swamplings stood upon the sovereign soil of the Nine Peaks.
A slight tremor passed beneath her feat, followed by a far-off rumbling, and an instant later, great clouds of dust rose into the air above the two distant forces. It took her a moment to understand that it had to be some sort of deepcraft; she still wasn’t used to seeing such things.
“It’s starting, Shona,” Josen whispered urgently. “Please. If we don’t move now, we’ll still be standing here when they start dying.”
And that made the decision for her. She couldn’t just stand by and watch while people died.
Not again.
“Cer Falyn…” Shona hesitated, but only for a moment. She didn’t know if this was the right choice or if she just wanted it to be, but it was the only one she could make. Spirit of All, let her listen. This isn’t going to work without her. “The king has made his will clear. This is a chance we have to take. I am asking you to take it with us.”
Morne clenched her jaw and balled her fists. “Lady Shona, you can’t… I know what Castar has done to your family, but you cannot let that blind you. We cannot trust the fate of the Peaks to swamplings! You are not seeing this clearly!”
“Probably not,” said Shona. “But are you? You would put aside any chance at victory and surrender to a traitor. Can you honestly say that your feelings toward the swamplings haven’t influenced your judgement? I don’t think any one of us here today can claim a clear head or an unclouded eye. How could we? Already we’ve watched the first Deeplings since the Rising climb the Queensmount, seen the first enemy force in living memory marching across our fields. Now an army of swamplings is walking through our gates in full daylight. There is no sane answer to that. All we can do is make a choice, and pray. And between hope and desperation, I choose hope. Castar is only the lesser of two evils if we accept that both are evils to begin with. I choose not to. I choose to believe that these swamplings came here to help us.”
“And if they didn’t?” Morne asked. “There is too much at stake to ignore that risk. Let me question the prisoners first, at least!”
Shona shook her head. “No. We owe them better than that. I understand the risk, but if trust must be earned, these two and others like them have done a great deal to earn it. We are only here because a swampling woman brought Josen back to us. Without her, we wouldn’t have known Castar was a threat at all until it was too late to stop him. And you yourself told me that Verik saved hundreds of men when the Queensgate fell. If this was all a trap, why would he do that?” She glanced at Verik as she said that, and this time he smiled, just slightly—no more than a quirk at the corner of his lip, but it was almost enough to make her believe what she was saying. “But if you can’t trust them, at least trust Eian. I don’t believe he would give that cipher to our enemies, whatever they might have done to him. Do you?”
Morne regarded Shona silently for a moment, and then slowly shook her head. “No,” she said. “That… that I can trust. He wouldn’t betray the Peaks. Not for anything.”
“Then he must be with them by choice. And that can only mean one thing.” Shona looked west across the fields toward the ruin of the Queensgate, where the battle was already beginning under the light of the newly risen sun. Where an ending would be written, for better or for worse.
“Ready the men,” she said, and prayed that she’d given Cer Falyn enough reason to obey. “Our allies are calling, and we are going to answer.”
Zerill
Zerill led her people through the remains of the wall and into the light.
It hurt her eyes, but she knew it would be worse for the others. None of them had spent more time in the light than she had. From behind the mountain peak, the sun shone at the highlander’s backs, but it was high enough that she could bear it as long as she didn’t look up. Squinting through the brightness, she took stock of the enemy.
Just beyond the broken wall, the highlanders waited, black outlines of men against the brilliance shining behind them. And this was nothing like the ragged line that had retreated up the road. Rank upon rank of Storm Knights stood ready for battle, with thousands of soldiers behind them. The main body of Castar’s force, armored in steel and born to the light.
The easy part was over. Now the Abandoned faced a battle they could easily lose.
But there was nothing to b
e gained by hesitation, and the Lighteyes had the front for a reason. They were ready for the sun, as much as anyone born beneath the mist could be.
With her kin beside her, Zerill raised her spear, and advanced.
The ground trembled underfoot, and at a dozen places along the highlander line, gouts of dirt and stone erupted into dark-skinned faces. Knights shouted, covered their eyes, staggered back. The Makers’ assault was perfectly timed—the highlanders fell into confusion just as the Abandoned reached them.
Zerill found herself grinning as she met the enemy, or at least baring her teeth in something like a grin. Save for her splinted fingers, her wounds were nearly healed, but the memory of them remained—it was time for Castar to pay for that. And for Azlin, and for so much more. But this wild euphoria went beyond just vengeance; she was far from the only one smiling, even under searing light and against perilously steep odds. The Abandoned had been forced for too long to hide in the dark. Now the day had come to walk in the sun.
At long last, they were bringing the fight to the highlanders’ mountains.
The Storm Knights were still blinking their eyes clear of dust and wiping blood from their brows, and they were unaccustomed to fighting armored foes in equal numbers—their purges had long been shows of overwhelming strength against men and women wearing only hides. Zerill killed the first man who charged at her easily enough, though he was little more than a silhouette against the sunlight—her spear had a greater reach than his sword, and she knew from years of experience the perfect spot to slip the point between mail and helm. In those first moments, dozens more like him fell under the sheer force of the Lighteyes’ charge, the weight of a fury that had been building for centuries. The Abandoned poured through the wall to take the newly won ground, spreading along the highlander line.
The Swampling King (The Windwalker Legacy Book 1) Page 88