Crusade

by Daniel M Ford

  “There was the Baroness, too. Mathilde. Only young and beautiful.”

  “I don’t,” Arontis said, lifting one hand, “want to hear anymore. I don’t. I have letters to write to my sisters, and my nephews.” He stood, holding the cup out to Allystaire, who quickly set it aside. “They should have been here. Alanna especially; she has a better head for all this sort of thing than I do, and her son is the eldest grandson.”

  Until you marry Landen Delondeur or Lurezia Damarind and produce an heir to two Baronies, Allystaire thought, but chose not to say. “Goddess bless you, Baron Innadan,” he said, extending his right hand to Arontis, who took it and shook. His grip remained firm and strong for all that had happened that night.

  “That title does not sit well upon me,” Arontis replied.

  “I disagree. It does. And it will sit better in the days to come. Do what you must, sleep when you can. The border of Barony Varshyne is ten days hence, if we have perfect weather and good riding.” Which we won’t.

  He watched Arontis walk off, then turned to find Gideon climbing off his bunk. The boy came into the light, his eyes wide.

  “Allystaire.” His voice was a hoarse croak after so long spent in disuse. “The keep in Varshyne.” He trailed off, his voice dying, reached for the flagon of wine and took a sip, swishing it around his cheeks before swallowing and speaking again.

  “It is as the letter said. Besieged. Giants, berzerkers, priests of Braech directing it all. Enough of the last to challenge me, I think.”

  * * *

  As the column of men and horses formed up on the Innadan plain, Allystaire tried to push away the weariness that encroached on his mind. In Ardent’s saddle, there was no thought of his limbs failing or betraying him, but a heavy weight lurked just at the edge of his senses.

  It had been a long night.

  He had decided to let Arontis sleep, but roused Torvul first and looked over the maps with him. The dwarf shooed him away rather quickly, and now slumped on the buckboard of his wagon, with two huge skins bulging on the board beside him.

  Allystaire nudged Ardent over towards the wagon and caught the angry gleam of the dwarf’s eye. “Is that what we spoke of?”

  “No,” the dwarf replied sourly. “It’s just all the spirit I expect to drink today.” He spat over the side of the wagon and grumbled, “Of course it is! Just be careful with it. You’ll have them running till they die.”

  “I do not plan to give it to any of them today,” Allystaire said, “or even tomorrow. Best case, we do not even use it until we are on the Varshyne border.”

  “Then why did I stay up all Freezin’ night brewin’ it? And outside of Thornhurst my work is harder, you know.”

  “Because the best case is rarely what we get.” Allystaire cut him off and tugged lightly at Ardent’s reins, let the destrier trot a few dozen yards down the line. The Thornriders were an impressive sight, he had to admit, in their matching red surcoats, all bearing the Vined Great Helm. The Innadan knights mingled in their vanguard. He squinted at them, trying to make sense of the colors and devices.

  Once, and not long ago, you knew all of them by name and reputation, Allystaire told himself. If he thought on it, he could pick them out: Sir Jermin Vandelar, Sir Uriah Eastin, Sir Malart Dellin. The names sprang to his mind as he scanned three shields, the displayed arms a riot of reds and yellows, of bright greens and flowers.

  As he considered them, a trio of other knights rode from up the column towards him, led in their center by Arontis, he quickly realized. The new Baron Innadan’s armor was a marvel of craft. Grape-heavy vines, enameled in purple and green, crawled across the steel, and the great helm he wore was the very picture of that on the banner that flapped above his men.

  Arontis sat astride a deep chestnut destrier of a size with Ardent, its tail and neck both held high. When the Baron’s party drew close—about the length of one of the massive horse’s necks—the other destrier lowered its tail and stretched its neck out, drawing back the corners of its mouth and opening its jaw lightly.

  Sliding back the visor of his helm to peer down at his mount, and then at Allystaire, Arontis said, “It is not often that Gardener shows deference, Sir Stillbright. I wonder why.”

  “I would not put too much thought into how your mount acts around Ardent,” Allystaire said. “I have long ago stopped questioning it.”

  “Ardent? I know of no stallions of that line in Oyrwyn.”

  “I am sure that is not his name in the blood books,” Allystaire replied. “And in truth, I have forgotten what it was, something to do with mountains and stones and clouds, no doubt, with a lot of other nonsense appended to it. Ardent is his name.” Unbidden by him, the huge horse took a half-step forward; the other knights’ mounts took a half step back. Allystaire tsked and gave the reins a light tug.

  “I see. Do you wish to inspect the Thornriders before we set off?”

  Allystaire looked back at the three knights he’d been scrutinizing before Arontis had ridden up. “No. No time for that. I was only reflecting on the differences in arms; here in Innadan they are so much more colorful than in Oyrwyn.”

  “Well,” Arontis ventured, “it’s a more colorful country. We’re not surrounded by mountains and stones and clouds, after all.”

  “Or moors,” Allystaire added.

  “There must be beauty even in them,” Arontis countered. “And there are those who would say your own arms are quite striking, the dark blue and gold.” He leaned forward, steadying his great helm with one raised hand. Only then did Allystaire notice the bands of black silk tied tightly around Arontis’s vambraces. “How did you get the sunburst emblazoned so lightly and yet so plain? And the polish on it all.”

  “Magic,” Allystaire replied matter-of-factly.

  “Ah.” A pause. “And what is that inside the sunburst?”

  “A hammer.” He cleared his throat and Arontis sat straight up in the saddle. “Have you trumpeters to sound the advance?”

  “I do,” Arontis affirmed. “Are you certain we must leave the grooms and the pack-masters?”

  “We need to move as fast as we can, and no room for unarmed men to go into danger. Let the men care for their own animals. It will do them good. Squires can attend to the remounts and pack train, such as it is.”

  Arontis nodded. He motioned with one hand, and one of the knights beside him turned and let his horse run back down the line. In a few moments, a long blast sounded out over the camp from the back of the column. One sustained note, it rolled across the entire column, and just over three hundred knights and lances, a few dozen squires, three Barons, and two Baronesses rode off to face the Braechsworn, the tip of a spear guided by the Arm, the Will, and the Wit of the Mother.

  * * *

  While the remaining servants—many of them pages and squires Allystaire had declared too young to ride with his column—broke down the camp, Idgen Marte dogged the steps of the Barons Oyrwyn and Harlach both.

  The former insisted upon a leisurely breakfast in the company of his liegeman Naswyn. Idgen Marte left him lingering over shirred eggs served by red-eyed Innadan servants in ramekins sculpted, of course, with vines.

  She found the steps being taken by Unseldt Harlach much more acceptable. He and the dozen knights and score of other armsmen who’d accompanied him had packed up their camp quickly, if not efficiently; empty wineskins and broken crockery were notably more plentiful there. The quick dismantling of their hide tents—no silk pavilion even for the Baron—had made shadows to stay hidden in rather scarce.

  With a snorted curse, she decided to simply approach the Baron openly, letting herself appear fully in a bright pool of sunlight several paces away. When two of the scale-armored knights clustered around Harlach noticed her, they lifted longaxes in two hands, stepping in front of him.

  Idgen Marte raised her hands, the palms out, and roll
ed her eyes expansively. “I just want t’talk to your Baron. If I wanted t’do anything else, none of you would’ve seen me.”

  “I like a woman with a bit of bravado in her,” Unseldt Harlach declared as he shouldered past his men, who lowered their longaxes but did not ground them. “What have you t’say?”

  “It’s best not said in front of your men. It’ll only take a moment, but it’s in your interest.” She affected nonchalance, lowering her hands to her sides, cocking one hip, tilting her head lightly.

  “Fine.” He waved a hand at his men and they scurried away. “I mean to ride as soon as she’s had her say,” he roared.

  “I don’t trust you,” she said, “but Allystaire thinks you’ll do the decent thing in the end, and I trust him.”

  “You get right t’hte point, eh, lass?”

  She let that slide off of her shoulders. “But I also think you’ll do the thing that benefits you. If you ask me, Oyrwyn isn’t going to put his full strength into the fight. Not willingly. If you do, the other Barons’ll favor you when it’s all said and done.”

  “The White Bear puts its full strength into any fight,” Unseldt declared.

  “Aye, and what good has it done you this past score o’years? I know what the map looks like now, and what it looked like before. You’ve lost more land than any living Barony save Telmawr.”

  “I know every mile of it,” Harlach growled. “Every hill and trail.”

  “I’m not trying to shame you, m’lord. What I’m sayin’ is this: if the people in those lands you lost see the White Bear fighting harder for them than they do the Oyrwyn Mountain well, maybe they’ll start pining a little more keenly to be under the Bear’s mantle again.”

  “Might be somethin’ to what you say,” Unseldt allowed, lifting a hand to his white-bearded chin. “I left a hundred good men camped a hard day from here because I didn’t trust that bastard, and I still don’t. Or your man, in truth.”

  “Yet you’ve put yourself, and your men, into his hands. So if I were you, I’d ride as hard as I could manage to join up with him.”

  “I don’t right recall how or why I agreed to that,” Unseldt rumbled. “But there’s no going back on given word. Even so, I’ve got no good path to make time,” he said. “Got to either ride through Oyrwyn, which folk’ll take as an invasion, or march back here and then across Delondeur. Lose two days that way, and have got no supplies.”

  “What if,” Idgen Marte said, “I could make the way for you to move through Oyrwyn smooth?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Give me the word right now,” she said, “and I’ll have a message carried to Highgate on the instant. Provide you with remounts, food, and you might be a day behind Allystaire in getting to Varshyne.”

  “How do we know you’re not walking us into an Oyrwyn trap?”

  “Because if I had my choice, I’d kill Gilrayan Oyrwyn now,” she rasped. “Yet I don’t. I’m doing what I can until I do what I must. And what I can do is help make Unseldt Harlach one of the heroes of the songs that’ll be written of the weeks t’come. Trust me that far, Baron, and you won’t be disappointed.”

  Harlach watched her a moment, then nodded his great snowy head slowly. “All right. We’ll do as you say. Where’ll we meet the mounts?”

  “Gideon will let you know,” she said. “I must say this, Baron, and I hate every word of it—but don’t be afraid to kill horses as you cross Oyrwyn country. Gilrayan intends to make a stately progress back to Wind’s Jaw, best as I can tell. But even then the time will be close; if he catches wind of you moving through his lands on his mounts…”

  “To a Harlach man, the horse is just the thing that gets him to the battle faster,” Unseldt said, “so he can fight as men were meant, with his feet on the ground.”

  “Good,” Idgen Marte said. “I’ll go make the arrangements.”

  As she turned away, she took a deep breath in, and thought, I’m sorry, Mol. I’m sorry Allystaire. Better horses than people.

  She took advantage of a shadow cast by a tent being pulled down, faded into it. The world’s colors and light receded into the world of shadows that she had come to know so well, and she began pulling herself through them, dashing from one to the other faster than any eye could’ve seen.

  Even in the colorless world of light and dark that she darted through, Gideon shone like a beacon. She would have been able to find him from across a continent; from across the camp, if she had looked straight at him, she would have feared for her sight.

  * * *

  Gideon sat Allystaire’s palfrey easily, but restlessly. Traveling upon horseback or on foot seemed painfully slow to him now, when he knew he could have had himself outside the walls of Pinesward Watch in a moment’s thought.

  I could not bring an army with me, though, Gideon reminded himself. Then he closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath, but also drew in the power that seemed to float through the air, dust motes in a shaft of sunlight, and wondered if he could.

  He was driven from the reverie by Idgen Marte’s sudden appearance at his side.

  Gideon. I need you to carry another message to Highgate.

  Garth has surely already marched.

  Not to Garth. To Audreyn, and to Shary.

  What must I say?

  Horses. They need to round up as many mounts as they can as fast as they can be brought to a spot—you decide where—to meet up with Harlach’s men coming like Cold out of the mountains. They’ll need food, too. Haste, haste, haste. The Harlach men need to clear out before Oyrwyn catches word.

  Gideon called to mind the map of the Baronies he had seen from high above, picking out the trails from Highgate down into the lower country. Even as he did so, his Will was already moving back to Highgate. As he traveled, he surveyed a spot: an abandoned fort, once on the border between Oyrwyn and Harlach, he surmised. But as the border had been pushed back further, there’d been no need to keep it garrisoned. As he compared the map he looked at now, from the air, drawing a borders along the series of towers, forts, and keeps, he could see that Highgate had once formed a salient into Harlach lands, and the fort he would direct Audreyn and Shary to was thus well south and east of the massive keep, and roughly on a line of march from where Harlach’s men were camped above Standing Guard Pass. It would serve.

  He didn’t bother with illusions or with birds, this time. He found Audreyn awake and at a desk, writing, with Shary pretending to do needlework near the door leading into the room, rather than the window at the other end that would’ve actually let any light in.

  “Audreyn?”

  Shary leapt out of her chair, knives both long and slim having appeared in her hands. Audreyn raised her hand from the desk. Though she paled and started at the sound of his voice, obviously she recognized it.

  “Calm, Shary,” she said, raising one hand to the woman. “It is the Will. What do you need, Gideon?”

  “I hate to ask more of you than we already have,” he said, trying not to acknowledge the tentative curiosity the child in her womb was exhibiting to his other senses. “But it is desperate and it comes from Idgen Marte.”

  Only then did Shary’s knives disappear, but still the woman didn’t take her seat or pick up the frame she’d tossed aside, its dangling threads arrayed across the floor haphazardly.

  Audreyn waited patiently. She’d apparently taken to heart what Gideon had said in his previous visit, about brevity and questions.

  “Horses. I need you to gather up as many as you can. They do not have to be of quality; they must simply be able to bear riders. Baron Harlach is going to try to steal a quick march to support Allystaire. He and a hundred men are going to ride hard across Oyrwyn, and will need as many remounts as they can.”

  “If Gilrayan learns of it—”

  “If they move quickly enough, he won’t. He means to move as slowly as
he can. And Idgen Marte will travel with him. If anyone can safely obscure his vision it would be Torvul, but Idgen Marte is a good second.”

  “Why not just kill him and be done with it?” Shary muttered.

  “He is still the Baron of this land by right and law,” Audreyn archly reminded her, “and we will not speak of murder.”

  “It may come to that,” Giden said. “Open and direct challenge is not murder, though. But it is better if he can be convinced to serve with us, and we must expend every effort to that end as we can. For now, what we can do is gather horses, and bring them to Baron Harlach.”

  “If Gilrayan should catch the scent of this” Audreyn murmured, “it will also reveal me as a traitor. Discretion must be our watchword. I can borrow liberally from our own stables, and write to the women of nearby keeps and holds, but the messages will carry danger to all who receive them.”

  “I will come back to you this evening, and I will carry them instantly wherever you tell me,” Gideon said. “They are to be gathered near the disused border fort to the south and east.”

  “Harlach won’t like that,” Audreyn fretted, biting her lower lip. “That was the staging area for the first campaign my brother launched against him. He may see it as a slight.”

  “I am not concerned with whether Unseldt Harlach feels slighted. Allystaire marches on a foe whose numbers we cannot name except to say they are greater than our own. Many among them are empowered by the Sea Dragon, and their resolve will be great, however untested the bulk of the men are. Allystaire needs every knight, every Harlach axe, every spear and bow that can be gathered.”

  “I understand. I will start writing the messages. I should be able to muster at least threescore mounts. They will not be chargers or destriers. A few coursers at best. I cannot promise tack nor grooms nor sufficient fodder, either.”

  “Understood. And, Lady of Highgate, I fear to tell you that many of these horses will never return.”

  “Better the horses than my husband, or my brother. Or any of the husbands or brothers now riding to meet the Braechsworn.”