Crusade

by Daniel M Ford

  Symod laughed, laughed at the foolishness of mercy, the weakness in it.

  “Stillbright keeps our man in his camp and likely in his confidence,” Symod roared to the assembled men, not working to keep the laughter from his voice, the victorious delight from his features. “We will still know everything that we need to know. Jorn! Send a messenger to your brothers commanding the body of the army. They are not to engage Stillbright, only to keep him bottled up on those hills. Circle around him. We will march out and meet him at our leisure.”

  “What of this keep behind us? It stands unspoilt. It is an affront to the Sea Dragon.”

  “We can destroy it once the paladin is dead.”

  Jorn snorted, but he turned, flicking a gauntleted finger against the blade of one of the axes thrust into his belt.

  “Pack this up,” Symod said, “pour the water back into the jar. Preserve as much as you can. I have one last bit of business to attend.”

  He found his own tent with hasty steps, pulled it shut. The fire in the brazier had gone low, but not out, so he seized the short metal poker that leaned against it and stirred it to life, then reached up to stroke the amulet around his neck.

  Symod wasn’t sure why fire was necessary to contact the Eldest, but he was glad it didn’t need to be too well-fed. The peat bricks burning in the iron gave a steady heat, but not much flame.

  It was but a moment before he heard that dry voice echoing around him.

  “Symod. Have you the paladin?”

  “We have him trapped. Cornered like a fox in a hole. Soon he will be laid across my saddle. Yet our task would be easier if you would come to us.”

  “What of the boy?”

  “He doesn’t seem to be a factor.”

  “I can feel the power he expends from here. The boy is too dangerous. He is the Negation. I will not come close enough for him to know me. You must kill him, or contain him.”

  “We have seen and heard nothing of him. Only the paladin and perhaps the dwarf. Not even the woman.”

  “What of our plan, then?”

  “It may not be necessary,” Symod whispered in answer. “We can destroy him in open battle.”

  “Like all who play at soldiering without knowing war, Symod, you think that victory lies in weapons and numbers. Likely, he sees a greater picture. Do not hesitate if you see the chance. Do not contact me again until the boy is dead or gone.”

  “As you say.” Symod felt the contact break and fancied he felt blood flowing in his arms and hands once more.

  The Choiron tried to shake off the Eldest’s criticism with a snort. “What more is there in war than weapons and numbers? What is there besides which side has gathered more strength to itself?”

  With another, more convinced shake of his head, Symod set out to order the breakdown of his camp.

  * * *

  Allystaire felt like he was running through a river that was freezing around him, with his hand outstretched towards the falling Rede.

  He would never, ever move fast enough.

  And then a nimbus of soft golden light surrounded the former monk, stopping him in mid air. It raised him up, carried him back to safety on the hillside, set him gently down.

  Allystaire turned to see Gideon riding up on his palfrey, one hand outstretched, and Torvul following along behind on his poor winded pony. The guard of wild men lagged a few paces behind, but came doggedly after.

  “I think,” Gideon said, through clenched teeth, as he concentrated, “that Symod is seeing what he wants most to see.”

  Allystaire came to Rede’s prostrate side, but Gideon raised a suddenly wordless cry as he reached for the man.

  “Don’t,” the boy said, “don’t disturb the illusion. Don’t wake him up. Symod will break the contact soon.” He waited, bobbing his head lightly, then gave it a sharp confirming nod. “There.” He gestured to the dwarf, who ran to Rede’s side, producing a tiny sharp instrument and a flask that Allystaire well knew contained ikthaumaunavit from his belt.

  Rede lay quiet, breathing shallowly, while the dwarf’s deft fingers first set aside the flask and then began feeling along his stomach and sides. With the tiny pointed knife, Torvul made a small cut in the man’s robes. He opened the flask, poured a tiny drop over the tip of his knife—really just an angle of razor sharp metal at the end of a small wooden rod, no bigger than a pen—and then over Rede’s skin.

  As delicately as Allystaire had ever seen anyone wield any kind of blade, Torvul made a tiny cut on Rede’s thin stomach. Blood welled up, and the dwarf swept his finger over it, sniffed, and then lightly tasted it. He spat, took a sip from his flask, and shook his head.

  “They put salt-water in him, aye. I don’t know how. Sewed a tiny bladder of it into him, I think, or made him swallow it, mayhap. Enough has leaked into him to damage him, and to serve their purposes, but not to kill him. Could be it was enough to drive him mad.”

  “It is an abomination,” Allystaire said. “We need to cut it out of him.”

  Gideon cleared his throat, looking at Allystaire cautiously, waiting for permission.

  “What is it, lad?”

  “I don’t think you should. I don’t think you understand,” Gideon said, “when Symod looks through his eyes again, as he surely will, I can control what he sees.”

  “How sure are ya of that, boy?” Torvul rose to one knee and then pushed himself up, having held a small cloth with a dab of potion against Rede’s tiny cut until it stopped bleeding.

  “As sure as I am in the course of the sun,” Gideon said. “I will have to watch him, for Symod’s presence. But so long as I can do that, showing Symod what I wish him to see is no great challenge. It is just illusion.”

  “Couldn’t ya just fly over Symod’s camp and do what’er it was ya did to those Gravek.”

  “No.” Allystaire and Gideon answered Torvul at the same time, the former simply curt, the latter turning pale and wide-eyed.

  “I understand what you say, Gideon,” Allystaire went on, “but we have not the men to stand up to Symod’s force, not the Braechsworn and the Dragon Scales and the Gravek, not all together. We need to fall back and stay alive.”

  “I can have more men here in two days,” Gideon said suddenly.

  “How?”

  The boy let out a deep breath. “Garth is not far away with two hundred horse, including knights. I can make his route faster. I think. I will find a way. Trust me.”

  “Garth was not ordered out by Gilrayan.”

  “No. I asked him,” Gideon said plainly. “I knew you wouldn’t, because you fear starting a war there, and what will happen. But we need to win this fight, Allystaire, and he has already marched, and we can deal with the consequences later, as we must. But the thing is done.”

  “You should not have done this without clearing it with me, but you are right,” Allystaire said. “It is done. The stone is cast and we will have to manage the fall. Fine. Let us arrange it.” He bent down and picked Rede up in his arms. The man stank of brine over unwashed flesh. Mattar came immediately to his side to take charge of the unconscious form.

  “You need t’get back,” Mattar muttered. “See to the defense. Those Braechsworn were marching when we rode off, aye? Cold knows where they’ll be now.”

  Allystaire nodded and took up Ardent’s reins again. Even the huge and uncanny destrier had lowered his head and his ears, bowing in weariness. He stroked the giant neck with his bare left palm before sliding back into the saddle.

  Andus Carek, silent all this time, said, “I will walk back, if it’s all the same. The horse could do with a rest. Besides,” he said, raising his parchment, “I find it easier to make notes on foot than in the saddle.”

  Torvul took his pony’s reins by the hand, cocking his head to one side as if listening for a distant sound, then gave his head a shake. “Why we’re c
arryin’ Symod’s own livin’ scrying pool back into our own camp, somebody’s gonna have to explain t’me. Twice, mayhap.”

  “I will use small words,” Gideon said as he took his palfrey’s reins in hand.

  CHAPTER 51

  Faith in the Road

  On the descent from Wind’s Jaw, Idgen Marte found herself wishing, more than once, that the Goddess had touched her own courser the way she had Allystaire’s monster of a warhorse. She was forced, time after time, to pause and walk her horse instead of riding him. She had to lead him down steep trails, when she wasn’t even sure where she was going.

  And when she had to stop the first night, when she was restless and full of energy and wanted nothing more than to join with Allystaire again—and hopefully Andus—she had to let him rest, feed him, brush him.

  Typically she was not frustrated with these tasks, or with any tasks she turned her hand to. But she wanted Wind’s Jaw behind her and an enemy in front of her, not endless mountain trails.

  By the light of her small fire, carefully hidden, she read the map she’d stolen from Wind’s Jaw before leaving. If she was on the right of these damnable mountain trails she’d be coming down out of the mountains early in the morning and be able to make better time moving across the moors, provided she could find a road.

  She looked to her horse, its head lowered where she’d picketed it and faced the unhappy prospect that she might have to sell or trade him.

  Her sleep that night was slow and fitful, and she set off the next morning before the sun was well in the sky. Her reading of the map was true and she descended out of the mountains by midday, looking at a broad stretch of moor and bog that was, if anything, less appealing to look upon than the grey sameness of the Oyrwyn mountain ranges.

  She saw the smoke of a village in the distance shortly thereafter, having only seen a few clusters of mean peat-digger’s huts on the moor so far that day.

  At the very least, she thought, you need to eat and so does the horse.

  “Never named you,” she murmured to the courser, as she led him by the reins. “Probably oughtn’t to do it now,” she added.

  She almost stopped and backed away when she saw the green-surcoated men in the village’s center, the handful of horses grazing on the green.

  Then she saw the Harrier Hawk inscribed on the surcoats they wore over their armor, bands of metal riveted into hard leather, and she practically ran to them.

  One of them, lightly bearded, a black armband tied around his upper arm, spoke up as she approached. “We’ll ‘ave to have that mount,” he called out. “M’lord of Highgate and Coldbourne needs remounts. I’m authorized t’pay a fair price in silver, more if it’s trained.”

  Idgen Marte only just stopped herself from rolling her eyes in disgust. “Where is your Lord of Highgate and Coldbourne?”

  He merely blinked at her, as if stunned that someone was asking him questions. No more than nineteen and wearing a Chosen Man’s armband, she thought. They start ‘em young out here.

  “We’ll ‘ave the horse,” he started again, “wi’ silver or iron,” and this time she shook her head and gave a little laugh, which stopped him cold.

  “Chosen boy,” she said, “if you lay a finger on me or my horse, you’ll only hope you live long enough t’regret it. Now tell me where Garth is so I can catch up to him.”

  There were gasps from the knot of soldiers, four of them, when she used their lord’s name familiar. “Sorry,” she muttered, “Garth, Lord of Highgate and Coldbourne. Tell me. Where.”

  One of them, younger-looking even than his Chosen Man, pointed west. “A half day’s hard ride thataway,” he said. “Who’re you?”

  “I am Idgen Marte,” she replied, “the Shadow of the Mother.”

  He nodded slowly. “I thought so. I thought I saw ya in Thornhurst. In the winter. Would ya, when ya get to the Barony men out there, tell ‘em Coldbourne is comin’ as fast as we can.”

  “Then make it faster,” Idgen Marte said, when she swung back into her saddle. “Stop harrying these people for their draft animals, which’ll be useless in a battle anyway.” She waved a hand at the small village, where people in patched laborer’s clothes stared at the soldiers with a mix of wonder and fear. “If you want to join up with the Barony host, remember that these’re the very folk we’re out to defend. Start by leaving them the means to tend their crops and do their work, for the Mother’s sake.”

  The soldiers still gawped at her. The chosen man’s beard bristled, or almost so, when he jutted out his chin. “Now see here, we’re duly ordered to—”

  “And now you’re ordered to leave the animals here. And the silver you paid, if you did at all, because these folk need it more. When this battle’s over, I’ll come back here and check,” she said, then lifted one hand to point at the animals they had gathered up. “I better see every one of these beasts here at the plow. If I don’t, I’ll know who to look for, aye?”

  With that she turned and trotted off, only once stealing a quick glance back to see that the village folk were leading their horses away.

  She leaned down close to her horse’s neck. “A half day’s hard ride, and then you rest. I promise you that. Rest and fodder and water.” She let it build up slowly to the run, but she intended to let him gallop as long as he might.

  * * *

  While Idgen Marte raced along the roads of Allystaire’s old fief, the paladin himself sat in a hasty camp with Gideon, Torvul, and the Barons, listening to Ruprecht Machoryn try not to yell as he waved his hands and reddened his cheeks.

  “A traitor! A dowsing rod for the Braechsworn, and you let him live,” Machoryn yelled. “Absurd. He must be tried and hung.”

  “Ruprecht,” Allystaire said, “that man is not a traitor. He is the key to our victory, if you would but be silent and listen.”

  “I will not be silent!”

  “Ruprecht,” Arontis snapped, “close. Your. Mouth.”

  The Machoryn Baron seemed too stunned at the imposition to actually close his mouth, which hung open, but he did stop talking. Allystaire to seized the moment, unfolding the map on his lap and holding it up.

  “Here,” he said, drawing his finger not upon a hill, but upon an old dry riverbed that snaked out from east of their current position.

  * * *

  Idgen Marte saw the lagging elements of Garth’s force before the sun sank down into the moor. She gave her courser one last run to catch up with them, hailing them with her ragged voice. The men riding on rearguard, wearing the barred gate surcoat that marked them as Garth’s men, did not recognize her as had the one in the village, so she gave them no time to protest as a pair of them turned to face her. She handed her reins off to one of them and vanished from their sight before they’d had a chance to so much as ask a question.

  She jumped shadow to shadow—past a few supply carts, trudging footmen with heavy mattocks on their shoulders, and a column of knights and riders that was smaller than she’d hoped, but nearly a match to the one Allystaire had ridden away with if she was any judge—till she found the van, and the banners at its head.

  Idgen Marte had to admit that Garth was a fairly fine-looking figure in his armor, helmetless, blond braids framing his pale, strong face. She could see what Audreyn saw in him.

  She also took some delight in the shock that split his features, widened his eyes, and set his horse briefly rearing when she appeared in front of it. The knights around him drew swords or shook out flails, but were calmed when their lord raised his hand to them and inclined his head to her.

  He composes himself quickly, she thought. Not unlike Allystaire, I suppose.

  “Shadow. To what do we owe your appearance?” His voice was calm, measured, but the tightness she saw around his eyes showed her fear. He fears awful news, she thought.

  “The fact that your Baron is a coward, a schemer,
or both,” she said. There were some grumblings at that, a few weapons raised again, one knight who looked barely old enough to shave spouting some nonsense about a challenge.

  She merely spat in front of her boots and ignored it, hooked her thumbs on her swordbelt and addressed herself to Garth, as if they were the only two on the road and hundreds of armed men weren’t surrounding her.

  “Whichever it is,” she said, raising her voice with an effort she tried not to think too much on, “he still sits in Wind’s Jaw, gathering his swords. Doin’ nothin’, marchin’ nowhere. I saw no further point in sitting around his keep and drinkin’ his sour beer.”

  “What news, then? Have you been in touch with Allystaire?”

  She shook her head, trying hard to keep the movement as casual as her posture. “Not since the night. They intended to draw Symod out this mornin’,” she said. And given that was turns ago, I ought to have heard something. Unless…No. She dismissed the doubt as quickly as she had it, fought the urge to wrap her hand around her sword’s hilt for reassurance.

  “We need to get a move on, Garth. You’ve got to abandon your baggage and leave the footmen behind you.”

  Garth shook his head, the knights behind him mimicking him. “Absolutely not. You cannot go to war unprepared to feed or arm your men and beasts, and horse alone win few battles.”

  “Cold, it’s like I can hear Allystaire telling me these things,” Idgen Marte said, tossing her head and biting her lip. Then, leveling her eyes at Garth, she said, “And they would be true, if we were going to war, but we’re not. We’re going to a battle. Mayhap two. Could be it’ll become a war, and if it does, the wains and the footmen’ll have plenty of time to catch up.”

  “Even leaving behind the footmen,” Garth said, “and the wains, we’re still three days away at best.”

  “If we ride safely,” Idgen Marte, “which we can’t afford to.”

  “Shadow, if we ride to a battle, we have to get there in a condition to fight.”

  “Garth,” she snapped, “Allystaire is outmanned. Maybe five-to-one. There are more of Braech’s berzerkers arrayed against him than he has men with him. The longer we take, the more certain his defeat becomes. And if he does fall, if Symod is victorious, how many more will flock to him? Could be there are Islandman ships even now heeding the call of war and heading to Delondeur’s coast. How many men in Oyrwyn, how many warbands, how many Harlachan revere Braech and will come to his winning banner? Symod will not stop with Allystaire, or with Thornhurst. The Baronial peace won’t last because there won’t be any Baronies. Right now his force is a river pushing against a dike that’s only just been built to hold it back. And if that one dike breaks, the entire sea will come against us.”