Crusade

by Daniel M Ford

  The giantkin’s mace, swung with considerable force, rebounded off the shield Allystaire raised, and then the priest’s head described an arc in the air, flying dozens of yards, knocked clean by one swing from the hammer.

  The Gravekling broke and ran when their priest died, and the paladin and his Order won their way clear to the Barony ranks.

  * * *

  Between the death of the priest, the blunting of their charge, and the dozen or more of them that lay dead or dying on the field, the Gravekmir seemed, at the moment, to have had enough.

  Allystaire watched as the Gravekling moved among them, threatening and imploring, but none of the true giants seemed spoiling for any more of the fight.

  “Back to the circle,” Allystaire ordered, “tend to the wounded and plot our next course.”

  He and Ardent both still shook with energy, and once again they outpaced the others. He slid from the saddle and had to put one hand on his mount’s neck when they reached the top of the hillock.

  The ranks of men formed up were pale-faced, spattered with mud and blood in almost equal measure. No cheer went up at his approach, for the giants were still all too real a presence on the rolling country before them. The Barons, led by Arontis, parted ranks to meet him. The new Baron Innadan was wiping the blade of his sword with a rag. Like the men around him he was filthy, though he appeared unhurt, as did Landen behind him. Unseldt Harlach had a rag bound across his forehead and another around one arm, while Loaisa held her left arm close against her body.

  “Form up the wounded,” Allystaire ordered, forcing steadiness into a voice that wanted to shake, “and bring them to me for healing.”

  “There’ll be wounded still out along the field,” Arontis said. “Should we send a party?”

  “Mattar, Miklas, Gaston, Johonn,” Allystaire said. “Go. Move as swift as you can. You find a wounded man you can move, bring him to me. If you cannot, call for Gideon. We will need to move them all, fast. The main body of Islandmen is moving this way and we are not prepared to fight them. We will have to retreat into the hills.”

  Behind him, the men whose names he called jumped from their saddles and scattered out towards the field, running with almost unnatural speed.

  Landen counted men and horses, her eyes flitting from saddle to saddle and her head bobbing lightly. She looked suddenly up at Allystaire, brows knitted in worry. “You’re short a man. The village lad.”

  “He is a knight,” Allystaire responded quickly, “not a village lad. And we have no time to grieve about it. This should not have happened. They came straight for you, with Gideon trying to lead them astray, and now the weight of Symod’s army comes as well. How did they know where you were?”

  While he spoke, officers and bannermen were forming wounded men into a line around him. He spared little time to look at them or examine their injuries; he simply held out his hand and placed it against their heads, or arms, wherever skin was exposed. He did not have to dig deep to find the common threads to draw on in order to pour the Mother’s Gift into them. They had stood with him in common cause, taken up arms to defend not only their own, but those they did not, and would never know.

  It was not at all hard to find what he needed to heal them.

  Arontis and the other Barons were looking at one another in confusion over Allystaire’s query, none having found the words to answer.

  “Is it possible,” Loaisa said, “that they have someone that can do as the boy does? Scout ahead?”

  “There is no one alive on this world, perhaps no one ever, who can do what I do,” Gideon said, “and my name is Gideon, not the boy,” he added, almost petulant. “At least,” he then said, already chastening himself and lowering his eyes, “I do not think it possible. Priests of Braech have their ways of scrying, but they all involve water. They are not prophets or diviners.”

  “It is a problem to consider as we move,” Allystaire said. “Get to your mounts.”

  “Surely we’re not abandonin’ this place,” Unseldt protested. “We’ve repulsed their giantkin, let the rabble of Islandmen come.”

  “The rabble of Islandmen outnumbers us considerably,” Allystaire said, “and that does not count the Dragon Scales, whom Symod seems to be holding back.”

  “They could be runnin’ over that keep as we speak,” Torvul ventured.

  Allystaire bit off a curse and resisted the urge to ball up a fist and smash it into his own armor. “I do not understand what he is after. Does he want the castle? Me? All of us? He is not acting coherently, not by our standards, but that is because we do not understand his objective.”

  “Don’t need to understand his objective to kill him,” Unseldt offered.

  “But we do if we are to defeat him,” Allystaire replied. “Form up. Get mounted. We need to move off, and fast. If you have foundering or wounded horses, bring them to me; my gift will heal beast as well as man.”

  The Gravekmir, unable to be coaxed closer to the lances or the strange gouts of fire any longer, had begun retreating out of Teague’s bowshot. Allystaire turned to face them, counting their numbers: fewer than thirty, now, with many huge corpses beginning their slow and messy unraveling on the muddy fields that stretched before him.

  But from what Allystaire could make out, more than a score of surcoated and armored figures lay dead, perhaps two.

  That is an exchange we cannot afford, he thought, choosing not to give the words voice. As if he were listening though, Gideon looked to Allystaire, then away, lowering his eyes. Allystaire didn’t press him, instead, getting back in Ardent’s saddle and riding towards the string of wounded men his knights were bringing back.

  CHAPTER 50

  Eyes and Sight

  Andus Carek considered himself possessed of a certain practical kind of bravery. Surely, he was no coward; life on the road was no place for the craven.

  Still, as he perched on a wooded hillock behind the battle, pen in hand, some part of him felt keenly the possibility that he was more coward than he would like to admit.

  He told himself he was a fool, that he had no knowledge of spear, lance, or longaxe, that his songs and his knives were not likely to be of much use against a giant.

  Unless, he mused, one was in the process of swallowing me, in which case I could perhaps cut my way free of it. He squinted forward, trying to make out the scale of the brutes, and dismissed the idea with a shake of his head.

  He scribbled furiously during the battle, filling up two precious sheets of parchment, despite how his lettering had grown smaller and smaller as the days had rolled on, in an act of conservation.

  There had been, on the whole, more to write than he’d expected.

  Behind him in the little wood, restive horses stamped and whickered. Separated from their riders, and sensing the anxiety of the few men detailed as grooms, the animals could not stay still or quiet, but they’d been brought too far from the battlefield to smell any blood.

  Even from a distance, the appearance of Allystaire on the battlefield was impossible to miss, and Gideon before him, of course. Andus Carek even felt he heard the strains of distant music as the powers they wielded were written large on the field below him. The boy was something haunting and evasive, something that changed itself moment by moment. Allystaire was a strong, forthright melody. Almost militaristic, never making excuses for itself, loud, inescapable.

  He despaired of capturing them merely on a lute, as opposed to the grand harps of home, or an organistrum, or several instruments together.

  Andus Carek felt himself dreaming on the combination of multiple lutes of different sizes and string numbers, when a robed figure hurried past him, fleeing away across the hillside.

  It was the former priest, Rede, clutching a hand to his mouth, scurrying away. Instinctively, Andus Carek pushed away from the tree he leaned upon and rushed after. He wasn’t sure what to make
of the man who was once a monk, and who seemed to have a touch of prophet in him.

  Idgen Marte had told him that Rede was a sad and cursed man, but had also said, with pity, that he was their responsibility, hers and Allystaire’s. She had spoken of him with a mingling of pity and disgust that seemed to him entirely singular; she was a woman who made her judgments quickly and insightfully and rarely changed them much.

  Andus Carek came upon Rede fallen onto all fours on the soft, loamy ground, as if he’d run smack into a tree and collapsed.

  “Rede? Are you ill?”

  The priest didn’t answer. His body heaved and wretched. Andus Carek came to his side and kenlt beside him. “Can I get you water? Wine? Stale bread to settle your stomach?”

  The monk turned to look at the bard with one hand clenched around his mouth. Liquid was seeping between the fingers. Enough light filtered down through the pines above them that Andus Carek could see that Rede’s hand was spattered with blood, but an inexplicable scent of brine wafted from it.

  Rede lowered his hand and stammered out, “I have to go. To run. Don’t let him find me. Don’t. Not till I’ve taken my eyes. Got to take them, pluck them. Can’t see, can’t keep seeing.”

  He scrambled to his feet, the lower half of his robes and his exposed, stick-thin legs stuck all over with needles. Andus Carek shot after him and seized one arm, finding it dangerously thin. “Come now, man, let there be no talk like that. Come with me.”

  With a strength Andus Carek would not have credited from the plainly starving frame of the man before him, Rede tore himself free and dashed off.

  Faced with the choice of chasing after Rede, or finding Allystaire and Gideon, the bard turned and started making his way hastily down the hillside.

  * * *

  Allystaire had just finished healing a crushed hand and arm, the man they belonged to lying insensate and barely breathing in Johonn’s arms, when he heard shouting from behind him.

  When he saw Andus Carek coming at him the best speed he could manage through the column of soldiers and knights who were shuffling up the hill the bard was trying to descend, Allystaire wanted to shout for joy. The paladin hurried towards him, extending his arms wide.

  “Oyrwyn has come then, and Idgen Marte? Cold, not a moment too soon.”

  The confusion that wrinkled the bard’s dark brow dampened his enthusiasm.

  “Ah. Sir Stillbright, I did not travel here with her, more’s the pity. Events necessitated that I, ah, accompany Baron Harlach as he cut across Oyrwyn territory. I have not had word from her. Does Gideon not know when Oyrwyn troops will arrive?”

  “They have not moved, according to his last report, which was last eve,” Allystaire said. “They were still sitting in Wind’s Jaw.”

  “Damn. That does complicate matters. At any rate, I just noticed the man Rede. He appears the worse for wear.”

  Allystaire felt a cold knot form at the base of his spine. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean he appeared to be coughing up blood. And that he smelt strongly of the sea, of brine, which struck me as odd.”

  The cold knot flooded up to the top of his scalp, where it became a steady red heat.

  “Show me,” Allystaire said, running for Ardent and flinging himself into the saddle. He swung Andus Carek up into the saddle behind him, as gently as he might with the Strength still in his arms, though still the man grunted and cursed. “Teague, Mattar,” Allystaire yelled, “with me.”

  Gideon, he mentally called, find Rede. Tell me where he is.

  He kicked his heels into Ardent’s hindquarters and despite the extra burden of Andus Carek, the horse tore up the hill like a bird on the wing.

  * * *

  Gideon had lost himself in the thought of what he had done, of the awful soundless wailing, the unendurable panic of the Gravekmir whose souls he had ripped away.

  He was trudging up the hill along with Torvul and his own silent, wild-eyed guards. The only one that would speak to him was Keegan. Surprised at how automatic the acts of walking, riding, sleeping, and eating had become even in his scant few days on what could be termed a campaign, Gideon was able to let his mind replay the incident, trying to determine how he felt about it and whether he would do it again.

  Burning them was, if anything, crueler, he was thinking, when those thoughts were interrupted by the fist-like blow of Allystaire’s voice in his mind.

  Gideon, find Rede. Tell me where he is.

  Sighing, the boy gestured to the guards around him and sat down upon the muddy hillside. Torvul, resting his crossbow over one shoulder and cocking one head to the side, said, “What is it?”

  Gideon shook his head and then let it loll forward on his chest, sending only a portion of his essence into the air, taking wing and spiraling upwards over the hillside and the pine woods that stretched along its crest and beyond.

  Allystaire and Torvul stood out to him, of course, but he looked for other sources of power, no matter how faint. Rede was easy to pinpoint, running north along the crest of the hill.

  But something was wrong.

  Gideon swept closer to him, sensing the tiny spark of power that moved within him, the remnants of whatever Gift Urdaran had once bestowed him, if the Inward Eye could be called a gift in truth. How the Will sensed it was something more like taste or scent that it was sight; he’d felt it in the man before, and now it was wrong, it was different.

  It was tainted with seawater.

  Gideon resisted the urge to reach in with his Will and pluck it out, for he was certain than in so doing, he’d end Rede’s life.

  Allystaire, he reported as he winged back towards his slumbering body. He is moving north along the crest of the hill. And he is tainted. Braech’s touch is upon him.

  He felt, more than he heard, the rage born of betrayal through his connection to the paladin.

  Suddenly he was back in his own body. “Torvul,” he gasped as he sat up. “Come with me. Now!”

  The dwarf spat to the side of one boot. The column had passed them by. Only they and their horses remained on the gradual ascent.

  “Crest of the hill, moving north along it, less than half a mile,” Gideon said in a rush as he scrambled for his tired palfrey. “It is Rede. He’s how they found us. He’s their divining pool.”

  Torvul’s eyes shot open so wide beneath their craggy brows that Gideon half-fancied he could hear them snap. “I’ll be Cold-damned. I never thought—”

  “Don’t think, just ride!” Gideon, with an unexpected horsemanship, had the palfrey winding up into its signature steady canter, forcing the rest to catch up with him.

  * * *

  Allystaire reined up and let the bard down, slid from the saddle himself, his armored boots sinking slightly into the needle-strewn ground. Even he could read the signs of Rede’s footprints and the impressions where the man had fallen to the ground, where Andus Carek had said they’d find him. Now Teague and Mattar rushed before him to follow the track he left.

  Apparently it wasn’t hard. The archer and the pioneer traced it without a word, though both armed themselves as they walked. Neither made a sound, instinctively knowing where to set their feet down amidst needles, fallen branches, stones, and soft earth.

  All their care was for nothing, though, as Allystaire tromped along behind them, making enough noise for five.

  Quickly, the two knights led the paladin and the bard on a northeast path, moving to the other side of the long hill. Here it thinned out, its gentle slope disappearing, becoming a kind of ridge. The pine trees fell away until they were walking on a slope of bare rock that led down a hundred paces or so to a dry stone-strewn ravine.

  And balanced precariously on one small boulder, bracing himself as if to jump, breeze whipping his robe around his thin legs, was Rede.

  “Rede,” Allystaire yelled, holding up a hand for
the others to stop and trudging forward. “Why? Why betray us?”

  “I did not,” the man shouted hoarsely, bending at the waist and wrapping one arm around himself. “I did not, not knowingly. When you let me go at Grenthrope, they found me. The woman, the Marynth Evolyn, she took me to Symod and he, he did something, I didn’t know what. I had told them I would seek you out again if they ever let me go, that I would make amends, that they’d have to kill me. And instead they did something so much worse,” he yelled, raggedly, his voice echoing down the slope.

  “They made me their instrument. I did not know. I could not have known.” He pleaded now, his voice a screeching wail, his eyes leaking tears across his dirt-smeared cheeks and blood-spotted chin. “You gave me back my eyes, but they gave me back the Inward Eye, knowing how I would try to use it. And now both of them have betrayed you.”

  “What do you mean, Rede? Explain to me.”

  “Symod,” Rede roared. “He sees through my eyes. He knows what I know. I did not, until now, I did not realize. I am sorry, Arm. I lack the courage to pluck them out again. I cannot go willingly back to a life of darkness. But I can do this.”

  Once more the man braced himself as if preparing to jump and dash himself on the rocks.

  Allystaire shouted wordlessly, took a few running steps towards the precipice, but he was too far, and too slow.

  Rede hurled himself into the air, arms and legs flailing as if attempting to keep him aloft, but he plunged downwards.

  * * *

  Miles away, still in the camp outside Pinesward Watch, Symod stared into his scrying bowl, a dozen other priests of Braech joined together around him in a circle, feeding him the strength of their Will.

  In it, he saw the scene unfold through Rede’s eyes. Laughed as he saw the paladin plead with him, promise him healing, saw Rede shaking his head, until Allystaire, fool that he was, came on to the rock next to him and took Symod’s own scrying tool by the hand and led him away.