The logic was irrefutable. While Danry was separating his men from the general mob, one of Yvmur’s riders came up to him.
“My lord? I saw your son fall. He’s dead.”
Danry could only stare at him for a long, numb moment. The lad wasn’t much older than Cunvelyn himself.
“We’ll all be dead soon enough,” Danry said at last. “I’ll see him in the Otherlands.”
That night, about two hundred men out of the original thousand took the cold ride west. The horses were too weary to do much more than walk, and no one pushed them, because they had little hope of finding more if they foundered them. They rode until they could ride no more and made a camp of sorts in the wild forest around midnight. Around a sputtering campfire of damp twigs and sticks, the remnants of Eldidd nobility gathered and tried to plan.
“We’ve got to find shelter away from the coast,” Gatryc said. “We’ll stretch his cursed supply lines thin that way. He won’t dare follow us all the way into our territory. Let him take Aberwyn! We’ll take it back again.”
“True-spoken,” Ladoic put in. “And Danry here knows the wild forest around Cannobaen.”
Danry realized that everyone was turning to stare at him. In his numb grief he couldn’t understand why.
“So I do. And that’s our best hope, right enough.”
They all nodded. With a sigh, Gatryc cradled his bandaged arm and stared at the ground. While the others talked, Danry began thinking about his son, remembering the little lad who used to toddle to him with outstretched arms and lisp a few words. When someone caught his arm, he looked up dazed.
“Did you hear that?” Leomyr said to him.
“What? You’ll forgive me, my lords. Cunvelyn fell in that battle.”
There was a quick wince of sympathy from every man there. Leomyr let him go.
“We were wondering how soon the Deverrian will hang the king,” Leomyr said. “I’m wagering he won’t wait.”
“Oh, I agree with you, for what my opinion’s worth.”
“And the king has no heirs.” Gatryc’s voice was faint. “If we want to keep the throne in Eldidd, we’d best have a man to sit on it, hadn’t we?”
Like a hot dagger through wax the words cut through Danry’s exhaustion.
“It’s a noble thing to honor a friend,” Gatryc said. “But Pertyc Maelwaedd holds the future of Eldidd in his Badger’s claws. Do you think you can persuade him to the right way of thinking?”
When Danry hesitated, Gatryc gave him a thin smile.
“I doubt if you can,” the gwerbret went on. “Danry, believe me, it aches my heart to say what I have to say. But we have to have his lad. Adraegyn’s the king of Eldidd the moment Cawaryn dies. I’ve no doubt that the Deverrian knows it as well as we do. We’re sending a warband ahead of us, the men in the best shape on the best horses to go fetch him from his father’s dun. Leomyr will captain them, because that way he can stop at Dun Gwerbyn and pick up his fresh men and suchlike. The rest of us will follow and fight a rearguard action. Keep the Deverrian too busy to make a quick strike west. And you’re staying at my side. We need your battle wisdom. Besides, I have no desire to make you watch the events at Cannobaen.”
Although it was nicely said, Danry knew that he was being put under arrest.
“My thanks, Your Grace. Though he’s betrayed us, Pertyc was my friend once. I don’t want to see him die.”
This was just unexpected enough to put everyone off guard. As they stared at him, Danry summoned a bitter smile.
“Well, by the black ass of the Lord of Hell, what do you think? That I can see the death of all my hopes, of my king, and of my own son, and still love the traitor who brought this all down upon me?”
“I think I’ve misjudged you, my friend,” Gatryc said. “Well and good, then. Here, my lords, there’s nothing more to be said. Get what sleep you can.”
As he strode off, Danry was aware of Leomyr watching him, but he had no strength to worry about the man. It’s all lost anyway, Danry thought, all we can do is die with a little bit of honor. Around three campfires huddled the thirty-seven men he had left out of his warband of a hundred and twenty. Danry spoke a few words to them, then rolled himself up in his cloak. He fell asleep on the icy ground to dream of his son and Pertyc, the two things he loved most in the world, one already lost, the other doomed.
Danry woke long before the rest of the camp, when the moon was setting among the icy stars. He got up, moving stiffly, and looked round for the guard that he knew Gatryc had posted over him. In the dim light, he could see the young rider huddled on the ground and snoring. Danry crept past without waking the lad. In a clearing the horses were tethered; the guard there was asleep, too. Danry found his own chestnut gelding, still bridled, and led him away through the forest. Once they were clear of the camp, he set the horse’s bit and mounted bareback. He was going to have a long, hard ride to Cannobaen, but he was determined to warn Pertyc and die at his side. In his muddled state of mind, it all seemed perfectly just: he was leaving his men and horses with his allies to make up for this betrayal.
Since the horse was tired, Danry let it walk along the west-running road while he tried to think. He could lie his way across Eldidd, he supposed, claiming fresh horses and food from his erstwhile allies’ duns on the pretext of bringing them the terrible news. The road here ran through trees, which soon would thicken into a remnant of the wild forest. He would cut straight across country, he decided, to the dun of Lord Coryn, one of Mainoic’s vassals. Then he heard the sound behind him: men and horses, coming fast. He clung to his horse’s neck and kicked it as hard as he could, but the horse could only manage a jog. When he looked back he could see a squad gaining on him.
At first Danry thought it was Deverry men, closer than any of them had expected, but as they approached, he recognized Leomyr in the moonlight. It was a pathetically ridiculous race of exhausted men on exhausted horses, trotting after one another with barely the strength to yell. Sick in his heart of the farce, Danry turned his horse and rode back to meet them. Leomyr’s smirk made him draw his sword. The six riders ringed him round, jostling uneasily for position in the dim light.
“I thought so,” Leomyr said. “You’re a good liar, Danry, but not quite good enough. You’re never reaching the Badger’s hole.”
Danry shouted and kicked his horse straight for him, but a rider intervened. With two quick cuts he killed the man, swung round him, got one good blow on someone else—he couldn’t see who—before he felt the fire, slicing open his back as the five remaining riders mobbed him from flank and rear. The pain came again, burning through his shoulder to the bone, then stabbing from the side. The dim night road was swimming and dancing around him, spinning, spinning, spinning as horses reared and men yelled. The trees were swooping and falling. Danry hit the road hard, tasting dust and blood as he choked. The road went dark. He saw a light burning in the dark, but it was a light that never shone on land or sea. In it he saw his lad, reaching out to him.
The news was such a shock that for a long while Pertyc felt as muddled and sick as someone suffering from a bad fever. He was lingering over his breakfast that morning, dreading the thought of archery practice in the rain, when Nevyn came striding into the hall. The old man pulled off his wet cloak and tossed it to Adraegyn.
“They’re coming, my lord. Leomyr and eighty men, but the rebellion is over, whether the idiots will admit it or not.”
When Pertyc tried to speak, no words came. Nevyn went on, rattling off the news: the king had marched, caught the rebels by surprise, and torn them to pieces. A few desperate men were left to regroup out in the forest and fight to the death.
“And this morning, King Aeryc hanged young Cawaryn,” Nevyn finished up. “Ye gods, this all took me completely off guard! I was only idly looking for news, and found a boiling kettle spilling soup into the fire. Here I thought we had another month before the king even arrived in Eldidd.”
“So did I,” Pertyc stammered ou
t. “How close is Leomyr?”
“A day’s ride.”
Pertyc could only shake his head in bewilderment. Halaberiel, who’d apparently seen Nevyn’s arrival, came hurrying up to the table of honor.
“And what are we going to do about the women?” the banadar said. “It sounds like there’s not a dun in Eldidd where they’d be safe.”
Pertyc nodded, glancing around. Aderyn was standing in the doorway and watching Nevyn with his blank owlish stare.
“We can’t send them into the forest,” Nevyn said. “Well, I guess they’ll just have to stay here, and we’ll simply have to hold the siege until the king can lift it.”
Pertyc found his tongue at last.
“Easy to say, not so easy to do. If the archers hold them off, they’ll probably try to fire the dun. You know, ride as close as they can and sling torches over the wall. We’ve got mounds of firewood stacked all everywhere, you know, for the beacon.”
“I sometimes marvel at the gods.” Halaberiel was grinning to take the sting out of his words. “Here they gave you Round-ears heads that are as big as ours, but they forgot to put any brains in them. You’ve got two dweomermen on your side.”
“And what does that have to do with anything?”
Halaberiel rolled his eyes heavenward to beg the gods to bear witness to the aforementioned lack of brains.
“He means that if Leomyr tries to fire the dun,” Nevyn broke in. “It won’t burn.”
“Now here, are you telling me you can command the fire?”
Nevyn glanced around, pointed to a wisp of straw on the hearth, and snapped his fingers. The straw burst into flames. When he snapped his fingers again, it went quite stone-cold out. Pertyc felt like fainting dead away.
“I thought I’d shown you that trick. Now, my lord, I suggest we prepare for the siege.”
At last Pertyc rediscovered how to talk.
“One last question. Have you seen Danry in your scrying?”
“Well, I have, my lord. It aches my heart to tell you this, but Danry’s dead, and so is his elder son.”
Pertyc wept, tossing his head to scatter the tears away.
“Ah, ye gods, I knew it would happen when he chose this rotten road, but it hurts, my lord. Was it in battle?”
“For his son, it was. But Danry … well, Leomyr and six men murdered him on the road. I think that Danry was trying to get free and warn you the rebels were coming, but of course, I can’t know for certain.”
“It would be like him, to think of me.” He heard his voice shake and swallowed hard, then turned to face the great hall. “Men, listen! When the rebels start riding for the gates, Lord Leomyr of Dun Gwerbyn is mine. Do you hear me? No man is to send an arrow his way until I’ve had my chance at him. Now let’s get to work. We’ve got to warn the villagers and farmers, and we need to start distributing the arrows to our stations on the walls.”
The day passed in a confusion too frantic to leave Pertyc time to mourn, but late that evening he walked alone in the dark ward and thought of Danry. He would have given his right arm for a chance to kiss him farewell. His wife had always accused him of loving Danry as much as he loved her; it was true enough, he supposed, although he’d never loved Danry more, either, not that she’d believed him. Wrapped in the loss of both of them, he climbed up the hundred and fifty steps of the Cannobaen light, because the tower view could often soothe him. On the platform up top, the beacon keeper crouched beside the fire pit and fed split chunks of log into the leaping flames. At the far edge Halaberiel was leaning on the protective stone wall and surveying the dark swell of the ocean, spattered with silver drops of moonlight. Pertyc leaned next to him and watched the waves sliding in, touched with ghostly foam, so far below.
“Well, Perro, looks like you’re ready for your uninvited guests.”
“As ready as ever I can be. There’s still time for you and your men to head home, you know.”
“There’s not enough time in a hundred years for that. I was thinking about your wedding, and …”
“You know, Hal, I don’t really want to remember just how happy I was then.”
“Fair enough. We should probably be thinking about our enemies instead. Nevyn says they’re still a good bit away, camped by the road to the north.”
“Well, I take it the old man knows what he’s talking about.”
“He’s keeping a strict eye on them.” Halaberiel turned slightly, and in the leaping light from the beacon fire behind them Pertyc could see that he was close to laughing. “Nevyn says to me, ‘That bunch of bastards took me by surprise once, and I’ll be twice cursed if they do it again!’ The old man’s a marvel, isn’t he?”
“You could say that twice and only be half true.”
Long before dawn, Pertyc got his men up and positioned them by the glow of the Cannobaen light. The line of archers sat on the catwalks, hidden behind grain sacks stuffed with wet beach sand for want of a proper rampart. When he gave the signal, they would stand up, ready to attack, and hopefully, surprise the enemy good and proper. Pertyc took the position directly over the gates, but although he kept his bow out of sight, he leaned on the wall as if he were waiting to parley. As they waited, no one spoke, not even the elves. Slowly to the east the sky lightened; slowly the beacon fire paled and died away. Up on the tower, the lightkeeper gave a shout.
“Dust on the road, my lord. It’s coming fast.”
In a moment or two, Pertyc heard horses trotting along, a lot of horses. Leomyr, insolently unhelmed, riding easy in his saddle, led his warband of eighty men off the coast road and toward the dun. When they stopped, some hundred yards away and just out of bowshot, Leomyr had the gall to wave, all friendly like, before he rode a little closer and yelled at the top of his lungs.
“Open your gates. Don’t be a fool, Badger! This is your chance to be king of Eldidd.”
“Eldidd already has a king. His name’s Aeryc.”
With a shrug, Leomyr turned in his saddle and began shouting orders to his men. By chance, most like, they kept out of range as part of the warband peeled off and ringed the dun round while the rest bunched behind Leomyr on the path up to the gates. Toward the rear of the line, men dismounted and hurried to a pair of pack mules. They brought down a ram—a rough-cut tree trunk tipped with iron, which Leomyr must have fetched from Dun Gwerbyn on his way. Obviously he’d never even considered that Pertyc would surrender. Eight men, dismounted but still in full armor, caught the handles of the ram and stood ready.
“One last chance,” Leomyr called to Pertyc. “Surrender?”
“You can shove that ram where you’ll enjoy it.”
Leomyr shrugged, settled his pot helm, then turned to wave his men forward. Slowly the line advanced, the armed riders escorting the ram with Leomyr off to one side shouting orders. The men moved cautiously, slowly, since they and Leomyr expected that at any moment the gates would burst open for a sally out. Pertyc smiled, judging distance. As the riders came closer, they drew their swords, but they kept looking up at the walls, as if they were puzzled.
“Pertyc, curse you,” Leomyr called out. “Won’t you even parley?”
“Here’s my parley.”
Pertyc raised his bow, aimed, and loosed, all in one smooth motion. The arrow sang as it flew, striking Leomyr in the shoulder. Pertyc grabbed another, nocked it, loosed again, and saw Leomyr reel in the saddle as the arrow bit through his mail and sank into his chest. With a shout the other archers rose, nocked, and loosed in a slippery whisper of arrows. Pertyc heard Halaberiel laugh aloud as his shot knocked another man clean off his mount.
“Try to spare the horses!” the banadar yelled in Deverrian, then howled out the same order in Elvish.
In the boiling panic that erupted out on the field, Leomyr tumbled over his horse’s neck to the ground. Horses screamed and reared; men shrieked and fell and rushed this way and that. The men carrying the ram threw it to the ground and raced for the road, but only two of them made it. Pertyc was only aw
are of the dance of it: loose, pull an arrow, nock and loose again, leaning effortlessly, picking a target, bracing himself as the last of the enemy warband charged the gates, simply because they could think of nothing else to do. As the wave swept forward, Pertyc had the satisfaction of seeing Leomyr’s body trampled by his own men. Halaberiel yelled in Elvish; his men swung round to aim directly into the charge. The arrows flew down; men and horses dropped and whinnied and swore and bled. Finally Pertyc could stand this slaughter of the helpless no longer. He lowered his bow and began screaming at the enemy.
“Retreat, you stupid bastards! You can’t win! Retreat!”
And simply because he was noble-born and they were hysterical, they followed his orders and wheeled round to flee. With shouts and curses Halaberiel called off the archers and let them go, flogging a last bit of speed out of their sweating horses as they galloped for the road. Swearing, Pertyc realized that it was over. Nothing moved on the field but wounded horses, struggling to rise, then falling back.
“Open the gates, lads!” Pertyc yelled out. “Let’s see what we can do for the poor bastards they’ve left behind.”
His men cheered, laughing, slapping each other on the back. Pertyc fought to keep from weeping. He’d never expected his idea to work so well, and as he looked at the carnage below him, he suddenly understood why Eldidd men had ignored the existence of longbows for so many hundreds of years. With one last convulsive sob, he slung his bow over his back and climbed down the ladder to the cheering of his men.
Pertyc set some of the men to carrying what few wounded there were into the dun, then ordered others to start burying the dead and putting badly wounded horses out of their misery. He himself found Leomyr’s mangled body and dragged it free of a tangle of dead animals. He laid Leomyr out flat, crossed his arms over his chest, then rose, staring down at the corpse.
“I hope you freeze in the hells tonight.”
He kicked Leomyr hard in the side of the head, then went back inside the dun. Adraegyn came running and grabbed his hand.
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