by Court Ellyn
The squires’ chatter evolved into an argument. “I want to deliver the sword,” Bryden cried. Solandyr’s weapon was wrapped in oil cloth. The boy held it by the haft and the point. Haldred’s large hand gripped it in the middle. If he raised his arm, he’d be able to lift the younger boy a foot off the ground. Kelyn understood the true nature of the dispute. Whoever took the sword to the dwarven smith for an inspection and a lick at the wheel didn’t have to stand in manure while saddling a testy warhorse.
“Flip you for it,” said Hal, digging a coin from his pocket.
Kelyn was about to trounce both of them for petty bickering when the chamber door eased open and Rhoslyn poked her head in. “May I interrupt?”
“Boys, take it outside,” Kelyn ordered.
Hal and Bryden bowed hastily for the duchess, then rushed from the room.
Rhoslyn wore riding leathers instead of a dress and a chainmail hauberk instead of a corset. It was too big for her narrow shoulders, but she set a fine example for the rest of the people staying behind. A wide leather belt cinched the hauberk at her waist and bore the weight of a short sword that she didn’t know how to use. When Kelyn chose the items for her yesterday evening, she’d requested a bow instead, though it had been years since she practiced on the range. “Keep both on hand,” he’d said, handing her a training bow with a light draw. Her eyes had been flat with fear, her mouth tight with repressed arguments, and he saw that she understood his reasons for giving her a blade. If the ogres trapped her in the castle or in the tunnel, a blade would provide a quick death.
This morning she held the fear at bay with a determined smile. A bundle was clenched under her arm. “Did you get any sleep last night?” She conducted a quick inspection of his face. Did he look as haggard as he felt?
“A couple hours.”
She clucked her tongue.
Out in the corridor, the squires continued their argument. A coin bounced, ringing along the tiles. The rush of feet was followed by a groan of defeat from Bryden.
Kelyn shook his head. “Hal will have to help him with the horse anyway. Bryden’s too short to saddle it by himself. You needed something, Duchess?”
“Just a moment alone with my husband before he rides to glory.”
Kelyn laughed. “I should’ve wakened you an hour earlier then. Too late, you’ll muss me.”
A pleasant shade of pink fanned across Rhoslyn’s cheeks. “No, silly. I … I brought you something.” Her fingers fidgeted; her eyes were indirect. “You may be angry with me. I didn’t consult you, and you may think I’m overstepping my bounds.”
Now he was really intrigued. “Are you going to let me see what it is?”
She shoved the bundle at him. “If you don’t approve, you don’t have to …”
Kelyn unwrapped the paper and saw a square of folded black fabric. He found the edge and flung it out. It wasn’t a cloak as he’d first thought, but a banner with ties along the short side for fixing it to a pole. In the center flew Ilswythe’s sword-wielding falcon—in red.
“I set Lura to working on it. And Aisley was a great help. The girl is talented with this sort of thing. Goddess knows I’m not.” The embroidery was fine and tight and detailed. “It’s not quite finished, as you can see.” One of the feet and part of the left wing had yet to be filled in. “But no matter. A commander needs a banner, and Valryk’s colors won’t do.”
How right she was. “But why these colors?”
“You think it’s quite shocking?” Kelyn saw the doubt surface in her eyes as she reexamined her choice. “Black is for our mourning. Red for betrayal and bloodshed. Let no one forget.”
His free arm swept her close. While preparations churned outside, Kelyn lingered in the scent of her hair, the circle of her arms, the gentle comfort of her presence. What would he have done without her all these years? When her embrace slid away, he grabbed her hand, saying, “I know what to do with the old banner. Come.”
The sun had barely crested the peaks of the Drakhans when Kelyn and his duchess stepped up to the crenels atop the main gatehouse. Thorn and King Arryk, Queen Briéllyn and her bard awaited them. They peered over the wall, admiring the sight below. Their ragtag army was drawn up in formation. It filled the hillside between the castle gate and the river’s edge and spread in a half-moon around the wall. Were they enough? Kelyn remembered the silver light and the youth’s touch. His shoulder still tingled with it. His doubts ebbed. They were enough. And if each man and woman fell, the arms of the Mother-Father were waiting on the other side of the darkness.
“Look at you!” he called across the sea of upturned faces. “You have accomplished the extraordinary. You have borne the worst and risen above it. You have proven that peace among our peoples, between our realms, is possible. If we, the proud people of the West, stand together, who can stand against us?”
A barrage of cheers shook the towers.
“The enemy we face is a terror out of legend. Of that, I will not lie. They believe they have the strength to wipe us out. But we have fought them before! We are still here! The men and women who faced this scourge three thousand years ago are the heroes we sing of still. You are the heroes your grandchildren will praise in song. You are the brave, the stalwart, the unbent. When we face our enemy on the field, you will neither fear nor flee. Together we will stand, and together we will turn back this tide.”
The outcry of more than a thousand voices sounded confident. Perhaps they believed the impossible. Morale was high, at least. Kelyn waved his hands for a word more. In one of them he held Ilswythe’s banner, the black falcon on cerulean that had flown over this castle since its founding. Among the crowd, he found young Lord Daxon at the head of the Brengarra militia. “People of Fiera! Rejoice that your king rides with you today, instead of against you. As for me, I will no longer bear the colors of a man who murders his own people and calls it a fine new age. Thus, I, Kelyn of Ilswythe, do formally renounce Valryk as my sovereign.” His fist opened, and the black falcon plummeted. A hush descended with it.
“Brother…,” Thorn whispered. Astonishment had stolen his voice. Kelyn understood why. A man’s colors weren’t just part of his wardrobe, weren’t just a flag flying atop his roof. They went before him, announcing his presence, his authority, his name, his lineage. To throw them away…? If Thorn argued, Kelyn would tell him, “We are not our colors. They only speak for us. Under the circumstances, Da would approve. Else I couldn’t do it.”
Far to the left of the gate, sitting a horse before his highland warriors, Eliad unbuckled his sword belt and whipped off his cerulean surcoat. The black falcon upon it perched atop a mountain peak. He flung it to the ground, spat, and rode his horse across it, stamping it into the sod.
Kelyn raised the new banner. “This! This is the pennant you will follow. Black for sorrow, black for the loved ones we have lost. Red for the blood they shed, red for rage, red for vengeance, red for justice!”
The roar of voices struck his ears like a thunderclap. It sounded more animal than human, like the roar of a dragon.
Thorn grinned. “Lothiar will hear them in Bramoran.”
“Let him hear,” Kelyn said. “He has cornered a scorpion. Even if his boot crushes us, he will feel the sting before the end.”
~~~~
Part Two: Tírandon
Hope rides silver wings
A shadow upon the hill
Hear the voice of madness
The rallying cry of thunder.
—from Chants of Fire
by Byrn the Blue
23
From the hill above Thunderwater Ford, little appeared to be out of the ordinary. Brengarra Castle crouched at the foot of the rumbling slopes of Tor Roth. Beyond the ivy-shrouded towers the waterfall cascaded, a tumble of silver lace. Across the long yellow ribbon of highway, the town lay quiet, as if napping in the afternoon sunlight. A closer inspection revealed the truth. The castle gate gaped open, like the slack mouth of a corpse; not one sentry walked the
walls. The streets of the town, too, were empty. A scrawny dog trotted around the wainwright’s shop and disappeared into an alleyway. Pigeons wheeled over the roof of the hall where Laral met with the town fathers once a month. These were the only signs of life. The lack of the ordinary sounds rolling up the hill, the lack of carts and matrons and shopkeepers scuttling along the cobblestones gave Laral the sickening impression that the veins of his home had been opened by a cruel blade and its remains left to rot in the sun.
His hope faded fast. He might have ridden east for Zeldanor, instead, and the roads that climbed into the mountains. But maybe, just maybe Wren and the children had escaped as Arvold had. Maybe they ran home. So he’d ridden south, galloping his horse to a froth, just short of killing the poor animal.
Late on the second day he’d passed Tírandon’s towers. The stone, stolen from Ulmarr’s ruins, blazed atop the battlements, flame-red in the light of sunset. How he’d wanted to stop, fetch a fresh horse, see if his sister was alive, but according to Thorn, Tírandon was still beleaguered by a siege. Narrow lanes had led him and his companions wide around the battleground and across the rolling green plain to Midguard Tower. The palisades had been reduced to charcoal, the barracks a collapsed heap of burned timber and stone. There was no sign of the garrison or their captain. It was Ilswythe all over again. Laral knew things were bad, but seeing ruin after ruin left his heart heavy and cold.
“If the ogres have attacked Midguard,” Kalla observed as they rode past the collapsed wall, “stands to reason they would’ve attacked Briar Tower, too.” Thorn said the Fieran forces were crossing the Bryna and amassing at Briar. Laral doubted a single soldier among them still lived.
The bridge spanning the river between Midguard and Athmar was occupied. The ogres didn’t bother hiding anymore. From a ridge that overlooked the river bottom, Laral had counted a dozen ogres milling about a campsite at the northern end of the bridge. More ogres tromped ponderously back and forth along the quarter-mile span of stone. “I fancy a swim,” Drys said. They crossed downriver from the bridge, holding onto their saddles and letting their horses do most of the swimming. Laral’s mount was so tired that he had trouble keeping his head above water. Encouraging words urged the poor creature on. Once Laral was on Fieran soil, he ached with the desire to race home, but he decided not to press his luck. He and his companions led their horses into the foothills of the Shadow Mounds and hunkered down for the night. They dared not risk a fire, so close to the ogre camps, so their clothes were still damp when they woke the next morning. The sweat of a fourth day’s ride meant Laral’s underclothes were wetter still as he rounded the ancient time-carved roots of Tor Roth and looked down on Brengarra. My mail will rust. A strange thought to surface as he nudged the horse toward the fortress. What does a knight never neglect? Sword, horse, armor, self. In that order, sir. But he didn’t care if the iron rings rusted to powder and sloughed off him like old skin. Andy…
They weren’t here. He knew it in his bones. He had wasted four days chasing a fool’s hope. He could be heading into the mountains by now if he had dared to look reality in the face.
The streets were eerily quiet. A shutter banged slowly in a breeze. A dog barked. A panicked chicken answered. The sounds echoed against the castle’s curtain wall, plaintive voices begging for answers. But the castle offered none. The open gate spoke as loudly as any omen. No timber palisade, this. Brengarra’s walls were strong, twenty feet thick in places and forty high. He had trusted them to keep his family safe. Blood, dried to the color of rust, splashed the curve of the gatehouse tower. It was the only sign left of the violence. Rain, likely, had cleaned away any other traces. How had the ogres gotten in? There was no sign of a siege, no abandoned machines, no broken doors. A clever ogre might have used the veil to sneak inside to raise the portcullis, or the monsters might have sniffed out the escape tunnels.
Laral was about to nudge his horse through the gate when a voice startled him. “My lord? Is that you?”
Turning in the saddle, Laral found a portly man in sweat-stained clothes lurking in the shadow of the town hall. He crept into the sunlight on the far edge of the highway, squinting as much from uncertainty as from sudden exposure to the glare. Laral turned his horse to show the man the sigil on his chest. “Oh, Goddess’ bones be praised!” the man cried and dashed across the highway.
Underneath a ragged beard and unwashed hair beamed a familiar face. “You’re the miller!” Laral cried. “My boy Andy swims with your boys.”
“Yessir.” The man nodded exuberantly, but despite his smile, a desperate plea screamed in his eyes.
Laral dismounted and gripped the man’s thick shoulders. “Are they alive?”
“Her Ladyship? The young’uns? I don’t know. My boys are gone. My eldest was killed, down there when the attack started.” A jut of his chin indicated the shallow waters of the ford. “He knew some of the soldiers you’d stationed there. They played dice. I found the dice.” He dug in a pocket, raised his palm to show Laral three wooden dice marked with a falcon, a sword, and a skull. With a blocky finger, the miller turned over the skull until the dice showed a rose instead. “The rest of my boys are gone. I don’t know where.” The hollowness in his voice made the words sound as bleak as midwinter.
“But Andy, Lesha, Lady Bethyn?”
The miller gave a feeble shake of the head. “I ain’t seen ‘em. We were having a town meeting, discussing this very thing. Everyone saw the smoke rising from down near Haezeldale. Many folk wanted to leave, but Her Ladyship said leaving wouldn’t keep us safe.” The man’s voice cracked. “Then it was happening to us. A mess of panic it were. I saw my Jarrel down by the river. He … he was the bravest boy I ever saw. But I couldn’t find the others. I ran home, but my boys weren’t there. I hid in the basement for three days until … until …” The miller dropped his face into his hands and sobbed. “All gone. Everyone gone. And, me, what did I do? Hide like the coward I am!”
Laral gave the man’s shoulders a gentle shake. “Master Arvold told me the ogres took everyone prisoner. Did you see this?” It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his steward, but Arvold had been anything but lucid.
“Aye, during the panic. Trains of ‘em, coming from that way.” The miller waved an arm, taking in the rows of grapevines to the southwest. So the ogres had collected people from Haezeldale as well. Maybe from the outskirts of Brynduvh, too. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people on foot … they’d be moving slow.
Hope flared. “How long ago? When did the ogres march through?”
“Two weeks? Three? ‘Tweren’t long after you left, sir.”
Weeks? Would any sign of the captives last so long? One wrong turn and he’d never find his family.
Over his shoulder, he overheard Kalla ask Drys, “What could ogres want with live prisoners? They’d be more trouble than they’re worth.”
Drys’s whisper wasn’t delicate. “Cattle, what else?”
Kalla answered with a soft, miserable sigh. As dreadful as the facts were, Laral had to be thankful that the ogres hadn’t treated the people of Brengarra as they had those of Ilswythe. He imagined Bethyn hanging from a meat hook in the lord’s hall and went lightheaded.
“They killed all the soldiers first thing,” the miller added. “Anyone who put up a fight. My boy Jarrel was only sixteen, but they killed him anyway. All he had was a club he’d made hisself, but that didn’t matter to them. Cut him near in two.”
Laral gulped, composing himself. “You … you buried the bodies?”
The miller leveled a contemptuous glare. “There weren’t no bodies,” he spat. “When I came out of the basement, things were just like you see now. Only … redder.”
In a haze, Laral led his horse through Brengarra’s gate. The miller followed uninvited. Desperate for company, perhaps, after dwelling with ghosts so long. The clopping of hooves resonated inside the abandoned courtyard. Ravens perched on the battlements, drawn by a sickening odor. It was the same fog of decay tha
t had clung to Ilswythe’s corridors.
Laral dropped the reins, braced himself for the worst, and charged up the steps into the keep. Just as the miller said, there were no bodies. But here, the rain had not washed away the signs. Sticky puddles of blood cloyed on the tiles. And flies, flies, flies rose in swirling clouds each time he took a step.
Kalla made a gagging sound as she entered the keep.
The miller took one whiff and ran back into the courtyard to retch.
“They made a stand here,” Drys said.
Tables and chairs had been stacked to form a barricade at the bottom of the main stair. There was another wall of furniture farther in, near the door to the old lord’s hall, and another inside the hall itself. The latter had been a strong barricade made from most of the heavy oaken tables that had lined the feasting hall, but the ogres had broken through it, too. Oddly enough, Laral’s chair sat beside the hearth, just as he’d left it. I can squire for you, Da, I’m strong enough… Laral squeezed the finials on the back of the chair, squeezed until his palms throbbed and the wood creaked. The pain silenced the memory.
“What is that?” Kalla asked, tilting her head. “A music box?” She backed into the corridor and peered up the staircase.
Drys followed her, turned back to Laral and nodded. “Music.”
Laral lunged from the lord’s hall and stuttered to a stop at the foot of the stairs. He held his breath to listen. A note, a chord tumbled down the staircase. “A lute.” Laral took the steps two at a time. “Lesha! Wren!” He ran along the family wing, pausing to glance into several of the rooms. Nothing appeared to be missing or broken, nor were there signs of bloodshed here. Either the ogres rounded everyone up on the lower floors, or someone had cleaned up the place. He paused outside Lesha’s room. It was empty. And the music had stopped. “Answer me! Where are you?” At the end of the corridor lay the music room, where his girls practiced every morning as the sunlight slanted strong and clear through the windows. The music had to have come from there.