Crusade

by Daniel M Ford

  “Will you attempt to stand in my way?”

  “No,” Evolyn replied. “I am not strong enough. Following the Sea Dragon does not make me wish for death like a berzerker who will chant in joy when he is slain.”

  “It is not often that anyone attempts to gainsay the Knowing,” the sorcerer replied, and she sensed a dry chuckling underpinning the words. “It is amusing. Yet you also understand your limitations, and you may yet prove useful. For now, be gone. I must speak with your better.”

  Evolyn turned and walked from the house with as much speed as she could muster without sacrificing her dignity.

  By the time she reached the front door, the rest of the rooms growing dark behind her as she walked, she thought she heard Symod’s voice, faintly, answering the Eldest’s.

  CHAPTER 32

  Letters

  Allystaire sat alone in his room in the Inn, reading again the message the Innadan couriers brought. He’d found them standing nervously under Harrys’s baleful eye, with the rest of the squires standing close. It had struck him then just what a collection of brutish-looking louts he had taken it upon himself to turn into knights, but they had done nothing more to the Innadan messengers than watch.

  He’d insisted, once the nature of their arrival had become plain, on turning the day to celebration, calling for wine and music while he’d taken the messengers aside to talk.

  Gradually, Torvul, Idgen Marte, Mol, and Gideon had all joined him with the messengers, but most of what had been said and done had passed in a blur from the moment he’d opened the letter, sealed with wax of Innadan red, with the Vined Helm imprinted upon it. The same letter he now read at his bedside.

  Allystaire Stillbright,

  The Peace Congress you propose will proceed at Standing Guard Pass as soon as all parties arrive. Attending will be Unseldt Harlach, Landen Delondeur, Byron Telmawr, Ruprecht Machoryn, and Loaisa Damarind. I will play host. I propose that the meeting take place at the very juncture of my own lands with Harlach and Oyrwyn so as to remain as neutral as possible. Machoryn and Damarind are far removed from our particular struggle but have an interest in seeing our long-standing squabbles ended and have agreed to attend largely at my request for something resembling a neutral party. I have heard nothing from Varshyne, but I expected to hear nothing from Varshyne. It may well be there are no Varshynes left.

  We have no definitive word from Gilrayan Oyrwyn. I, for one, don’t trust him and fear that he may see six other Barons as too rich a prize to ignore. Being something of an expert on him, I hope you can share some insight with us when you arrive.

  In terms of retinues, I propose that we be modest. Every Baron will want to bring his favored knights. I should put the number at no more than a score, and perhaps twice that many in total lances or other troops. Even at half these numbers we need not fear bandits, but some of us will insist on fearing one another.

  I ask that you make haste to Standing Guard Pass, and bring your companions with you. Perhaps wait, if you can, for the young Baroness Delondeur. If you were to arrive with her, it would legitimize her in the eyes of Oyrwyn and Harlach, make them less likely to try and take advantage.

  I will not pretend that it might not be dangerous for you here. Unseldt is not likely to forget how many chunks of his lands you sliced away for Gerard Oyrwyn over the years. If young Oyrwyn comes, he may wish to try and enforce some sentence upon you. Byron Telmawr is not likely to forget that you killed his father outside the walls of Aldacren. I will do what I can to keep them in the spirit of the thing, but I will need you to be convincing.

  I will see you at Standing Guard Pass, Allystaire. I have long felt that the best thing I could do with my life was to see peace become the rule, rather than the exception. I will not pretend I will see wars done away with in my lifetime, but I am prepared to put all that I can, and all the life that I have left, into ending this one.

  Baron Hamadrian Innadan, Keeper of the Vineyards

  There had been other letters, copies of the confirmation from other Barons, and one from Cerisia apprising him of Hamadrian’s poor health. “I am not going to allow you to die with this work undone, Hamadrian,” Allystaire whispered, as he picked up the Archioness’s letter once more, scanned it, catching the light floral notes of her scent still upon the thin sheet of paper. “I will need you more than you will need me.”

  Come as quickly as you are able. Have Gideon bring you, if he can work that miracle again. If you do not hurry, Hamadrian may not be among us any longer.

  Allystaire put the letters away and stood, went to his wash basin on its stand, and splashed his face, beginning to think about sleep.

  “How long can we wait for Landen?”

  He tried not to show the surprise, but it was too sudden and startling. He whirled to the far corner of the room and found Idgen Marte lounging against the wall, arms crossed over her chest, one foot up against the wall and the other thrust out on the floor. He could just make out her grin in the lamplight.

  “Will you ever get tired of doing that?”

  “Cold, no. Now answer the question.”

  Allystaire sighed, and pulled his shirt over his head, folding it carefully before setting it on a stool by his bed. “See if Gideon is willing to look in on him from the air, let us know where she is. That will give us an idea of how long we have to wait.”

  “Could the boy not simply move us all about the way he did Cerisia?”

  “I am loathe to ask that of him. Simply moving one woman and her horse, and then himself, drained him badly. How much to move all of us to Landen, or to Standing Guard Pass? Frankly, I am not sure I want anyone else to know he can do that.”

  “Can’t keep hiding the boy forever, Allystaire,” Idgen Marte said quietly. “He’s goin’ to have t’play a part in this, like it or not.”

  “I know,” Allystaire said. “Idgen Marte, of all the ways everything could go wrong, all the ways I could fail, the one that frightens me the most is the possibility that I will lead him the wrong way.”

  “You’re a father t’him, Allystaire. He’ll follow you anywhere, do whatever y’ask.”

  “I know, and that is what terrifies me. What are the limits upon him? Like unto the dawn, Idgen Marte. Those were Her words. And that it was my greatest task to see that he is not a false dawn.”

  “Are we even bringing him to the congress then?”

  “Of course,” Allystaire said. “First, he needs to learn how to deal with people of power. Second, if everything goes badly, it is best to be holding the biggest hammer.”

  “I s’pose.” Idgen Marte gestured to the letter Allystaire had recently set aside. “Cerisia? Still pinin’ away?”

  “No,” Allystaire said. “Urging that we make haste.”

  Idgen Marte said nothing, only raised an eyebrow with an eloquence that most orators would have envied.

  Allystaire sighed. “Hamadrian Innadan is dying.”

  “Why?”

  “Why do we all die? He is old, and the world has asked a great deal of him. He is among the last of his generation left. Him, Unseldt Harlach, Joeglan of the Horned Towers, a few other knights, perhaps. Men my father’s age, and my father is dead a long time now.”

  “Is it simply age, or is he ill?”

  “Something in the wind, she says. Trouble breathing, a bloody cough.”

  “Cold,” she swore. “Sounds like the consumption. Still, your gift has healed worse.”

  “It has,” he said. “In younger men, or children. I will do everything I can for Hamadrian Innadan if I get to him in time. But I fear there is only so much I will be able to do.”

  “Enough o’that,” Idgen Marte spat. “I hear any more vague presentiments of doom from you and I’ll kill you myself. We’re on the cusp of doing something grand, Ally. A few months ago you stood on the steps of the Temple and proclaimed that you’d st
op a war that’d been going longer than you’d been alive and I told you that was a foolish and impossible thing. And you’re doing it anyway.”

  “No agreement has been signed. No accord has been made.”

  “Old enemies are sitting down to make one because you asked them.”

  “Hamadrian Innadan asked them.”

  “On your behalf,” Idgen Marte said. “And they’re coming because they fear you. They know that Delondeur opposed you, and they know what happened to him.”

  “I do not want to start a revolt, Idgen Marte. I have no desire to depose Barons and raise other men in their place. That path is too blood-soaked for our purpose.”

  “Then what comes after the peace?”

  “I do not know,” Allystaire said. “Whatever we can make of it.”

  “Cold,” she said, weariness creeping into her voice. “If we effect a peace, can’t we take a rest?”

  Allystaire smiled faintly. “We gave up on rest when She called us, Idgen Marte.”

  She snorted. “You did,” she said. “Not me.”

  “Nothing is stopping you from resting right this very minute.”

  “Nothing except a boy who hungers for music lessons the way a sot does for wine,” she said, “and then a bard who’ll want to keep me up half the night asking questions.”

  “Asking questions?” Allystaire’s words were flat and deadpan, his eyebrows lifted lightly.

  “There isn’t the man born who can keep me awake that long any other way,” Idgen Marte shot back. “Even if he is young and enthusiastic.”

  “That,” Allystaire said, raising a hand, “is as much as I should hear.”

  Idgen Marte snickered. “Prude.”

  “Hardly,” Allystaire said. “I just have to be able to look both of you in the eye tomorrow.”

  “Does it bother you, then?” Idgen Marte’s tone turned serious. “He’ll not distract me from my charge.”

  “Throughout these months, Idgen Marte, I have learned that there is little in the world that will distract you from your charge,” Allystaire said. “And no, it could never bother me. Take what love and what joy you find, never regret it, never apologize for it. If we are going to change the world, we need to start by loving it as much as we can.”

  “Love the world in order t’save it,” Idgen Marte said. “That’s a long way from the man I met in a shanty town tavern, who acted as if he’d just as soon tear it all down. With his bare hands, if he had to.”

  “And I will, if I must,” Allystaire said. “I learned all my life that Oyrwyn men were made of stone and ice, and I have my life trying to make myself live as though it were true. I know now that it is not, but the stone and the ice are part of the reason She ordained me. Knowing that, I cannot let go of them.”

  “One day, Allystaire,” Idgen Marte said, “She’ll let you rest. Let you put down the hammer and take off the armor and do as you will. She loves you too much not to give you peace.”

  “I love Her too much to ask for it,” Allystaire said. “Her work will always need to be done. If not here in Thornhurst, then up in Oyrwyn, or in Varshyne, or fallen Vyndamere, or the islands, or Keersvast, or the tundra.”

  “I’m not goin’ to the tundra,” Idgen Marte teased. “Too much sun for too much of the year, and then not enough. No shadows. Now sleep, or I’ll sneak back in here with a club.”

  “I will,” he assured her. She turned as if to leave, and he said, “I do have a question to ask, if I may?”

  She turned around, one hand on a hip.

  “How does it feel to have taken up the lute again, to make music?”

  Even in the dim light thrown by his lamp he could see her eyes close, read the way she breathed. He wasn’t surprised then, at her answer.

  “Like I have back a piece of myself that was cut away long ago. Not a finger or a toe, not even a hand or an eye. Something far more important.”

  He nodded and stood. “Then I am glad you have it back.”

  “Isn’t there anything like that for you? Something you gave up, and want back? Something you wanted that was barred to you?”

  Allystaire thought a moment. “Only Dorinne,” he said finally, quietly. “And she is gone.”

  “I’m sorry, Ally.”

  “It is alright,” he said. “I have let go of my bitterness and my anger towards my father and Gerard Oyrwyn. They are just as lost to me as her, so to be angry benefits no one. All along I should have been angry at myself. I should have had the courage to listen to love, not to duty.”

  “Hard way to have to learn that lesson,” Idgen Marte said quietly. “I’m still sorry.”

  He shook his head again. “No. Now, love and duty are one and the same to me. It is not a bad place to have found. Now go to your lessons. Tutor.”

  Idgen Marte grumbled but vanished from his sight all the same. He looked between the bed and the floor and decided, for once, to choose the bed. He stretched out upon it, crossed his legs at the ankles, and found sleep, with dreams that varied between the glowing and golden skin of the Mother, and the lightly freckled skin of the woman in his memory.

  CHAPTER 33

  Banners and Pigeons

  In Barony Innadan, and all of the Baronies that bordered it, small companies of knights began moving slowly towards Standing Guard Pass, each of them bearing with them the great standard of their Baronies. From an ice-rimmed mountain fastness, the White Bear of Harlach moved south. The Vined Helm of Innadan awaited the Manticore of Damarind, and the Mailed Fist of Machoryn just outside of the Vineyards, and the three planned a stately and congenial progress west. The Fox of Telmawr slipped northwards at the head of a fairly ragged band of war-weary knights.

  The Delondeur Tower had the longest journey to make, across the length of the Barony it represented and through the Thasryach mountains into the bargain. Most of the Baroness Landen’s train was made up of knights or lords she had not seen in some time, including both Lords of the Tide, as she had come to think of them: Carrinth of Ennithstide and Lamaliere of Tideswatch.

  Both of those lords were older than Landen, part of the generation of Delondeur knights who’d come up as squires under her father and had known her as a child. She didn’t trust them, and, Landen was fairly certain, they didn’t regard her with an overabundance of affection. The tide lords often rode side by side, kept counsel together during the day and, at times, well into the night.

  Lord Intarnis of the Salt Cliffs was the last of the major Delondeur liege lords, and closer to Landen’s age, and they rode at the head of the column of lances, with the train of servants, baggage, extra mounts, supplies, and footmen behind them. The Thasryach loomed large ahead of them, but at the pace they rode, Landen feared it would be the better part of another day before they reached it.

  She gnawed at the thought that this was all taking too long as Vandyr Intarnis was reminiscing with her over some moment from their shared squirehood.

  “I didn’t know a quintain could hit a lad in the fork,” the tall, mail-clad man was saying through his laughter. Landen chuckled along for appearance’s sake, tried not to look back at the tide lords.

  Vandyr cleared his throat and pulled his horse close to Landen’s. “Don’t worry over them, m’lady,” he muttered, shifting in his saddle in order to bring his mouth closer to Landen’s ear. “Just be your father’s daughter and they’ll fall in line.”

  “What worries me, Vandyr,” Landen muttered back, “is that I cannot be my father’s daughter, not as you mean.”

  “What really happened with your father, then?”

  “Everything I told you when I summoned you,” Landen said. “He went mad with power and tried to destroy one of our own villages, full of our own people. The paladin killed him. And he deserved to be killed.”

  “Paladin, eh? Heard the stories. Can hardly credit it. Felling giants wi
th one blow, tearing apart armor with his bare hands.”

  “They are not stories, Lord Intarnis, or not all of them,” Landen replied. “I have seen the man perform feats of strength that would stagger you.”

  “Well,” Vandyr said, “there was Sir Goddard Bainsley. I did see his body when they brought it home.”

  “What of him?”

  “As it is told, Bainsley was pressing in a village and the paladin drove off his entire company. Bainsley challenged him to single combat and the paladin hit him so hard that his own armor warped and cut off his arms.”

  Landen shuddered slightly. “If you credit the stories, Lord Intarnis, credit the nature of the paladin as well. He is why I cannot be my father’s daughter.”

  “You sound as though you fear him, m’lady.”

  Landen turned to face Vandyr squarely. “I do,” she said. “And before you say anything else, know this. We are going to meet him at this Congress. After you have seen him, spoken to him, looked in his eyes—I want you to tell me if you fear him as well.”

  * * *

  While seven Barons rode towards Standing Guard Pass, drawn by the appearance of a paladin, or of the chance to see their fellow lords face to face, perhaps to steal a march on them, one Baron, many hundreds of miles to their north and west, was living the nightmare in front of him.

  Barony Varshyne had never been as renowned as Oyrwyn, its neighbor to the east. Nor had it ever had the size or the prosperity of Delondeur and Tarynth to its south, even before the former had swallowed the latter. When Vyndamere had fallen to rampaging Islandmen it had seemed only a matter of time till Varshyne—often called Vyndamere ‘s little brother—followed it.