by Ellyn, Court
His father pressed from the other direction. A Fieran pikeman ran at his back. Keth didn’t see him coming.
“Da!” Kelyn shouted. The song of steel drowned out his voice. Da’s head snapped back as the pike struck home. The Fieran tore it free, ready to lunge again, but Da spun and buried the edge of his sword deep in the man’s ribs. That was all he had in him. He collapsed to a knee.
Kelyn spurred Chaya over a pair of Fierans, grabbed his father by the back of his surcoat and hauled him up behind the saddle. They raced back to the hill that had sheltered them during the long night. Halfway up the slope, Kelyn helped his father dismount and set him in a shallow wash, free of the wind. Da couldn’t seem to catch his breath. “Don’t … don’t burn me on this damnable hill. That one.”
The stones of Slaenhyll peered at them darkly.
“My helmet,” he gasped. Da’s fingers must’ve lost feeling. He fumbled with the buckle. “Take it.”
Kelyn helped him, near panic, recalling the tale of his grandfather’s death, how Kynor had given Keth his own red-plumed helmet during the Battle of the Bryna. “I can’t wear it.”
“Do it,” he insisted. “They mustn’t think … they’ve lost their commander. They’ll break and rout. Put it on. My colors too.”
Kelyn tossed aside his helmet with the black plume of the Guard, and helped his father out of the blue surcoat. Blood slicked the back.
“Your mother …”
“I know, Da,” Kelyn said, feeling numb inside. “I’ll tell her.”
“And Kieryn.” His eyes strayed to the north, harboring a desperate plea. “Tell him … proud …”
Kelyn choked back a sob. “I’ll tell him.”
“Go on. Hurry,” Da breathed, barely discernable, his face as gray as the sky.
“I don’t want to leave you alone.”
Da squeezed his arm. “This battle isn’t waiting for you, son. And I don’t want you to see …”
Kelyn buckled on the helm with the red plume and secured his sword belt around the blue surcoat wet with his father’s lifeblood, then turned his gaze to the broken lines of Fieran infantry.
~~~~
Keth felt the shadow of his son pass over him. Yes, he would tell her. Died well. But what would that matter to Alovi when she would be so angry at him?
She was dancing. For him alone. A light shone behind her; no, the light was all around them. And her hair, long in maiden’s waves, floated with the grace of wind and water. The grace of blood in his veins. Part of him. But the light grew until he could no longer see her. Someone called his name, and he stepped out of waves of pain, into the light.
~~~~
Kelyn rode back to the battlefield, sorrow transforming into a fury and a hatred that later he recalled with fear. As soon as he reached the melee of blades and flame, Fierans and Zhianese rushed for the red plume. He cut them down, losing awareness of time and place and numbers of bodies he laid low. He could see only the spear-point dark with his father’s blood. His father’s eyes dull with pain, pleading with his son to fight on. The falcon blade blocked and plunged, but Kelyn no longer felt the impact of steel on steel, steel on flesh, nor did he hear cries of pain. The half-naked outlanders, the Fierans in green uniforms, lost their faces, became merely dummies to swing a blade at.
Fewer and fewer ran his direction. Then they were running away from him. He chased them on foot. When had he dismounted? He didn’t know.
Catching a straggler, he swept high. The head rolled, hot Fieran blood splashed his face. A hand grabbed his shoulder. He spun, sword arching. It struck a shield blazoned with a silver chevron. “It’s me!” someone cried. Kelyn stared at the dark eyes and sweaty face for a moment before he recognized his foster-brother.
“Breathe, Kelyn,” said Leshan. “The Warlord is pulling them back. He must’ve decided it wasn’t worth it. It’s true, most of the Fieran division will rot here. He wasn’t expecting such a loss, surely.”
Kelyn watched the tail end of the Zhiani mercenaries covering the flight of their Fieran allies. They followed the course of the Blythewater, but after they licked their wounds they would turn east and rejoin the rest of the invasion.
“Kelyn?” asked Leshan, softly, cautiously. He was frowning at the red plume and the bloodstained surcoat.
Kelyn said nothing, but turned and wound a path back through the field of bodies. The squires had appeared from somewhere. They gathered up their wounded lords and helped drag the Aralorri dead into a neat line. They avoided the Fierans calling for aid. The Zhiani wounded were oddly silent. A point of honor, perhaps, not to beg aid from conquerors. The victors hadn’t the resources with them to take prisoners. Kelyn heaved a downward blow to finish the Fierans and Zhianese writhing in the mud.
Leshan followed silently, leaving this task to those with stomach for it, while behind streaks of soot and blood, he mourned the loss of his foster-lord.
At last, they climbed the hill. King Rhorek knelt beside the body of his friend. Someone had closed Da’s eyes and laid a cloak over him. Laral held his head on his lap and, with a fragment torn from his tunic, cleaned some of the blood and dirt from Da’s face, from his hands. Finding Kelyn at his side, the squire raised swollen gray eyes. They pled for reassurance. But Kelyn regarded him coolly. There was a warning in that glare, an order.
Laral smeared the tears from his cheeks, indulged in a deep, wet sniffle, and bit his lower lip to stop his chin from trembling.
Satisfied, Kelyn looked for Lissah among the gathered Falcons. Please, Ana, let me find her alive. He met her eye across the gathering, and she pressed through to get to him. She said nothing, nor did she weep, but squeezed his hands and held his glance, waiting for him to confide in her or hold her or break. He did none of these.
“Are we to continue on to Graynor?” he asked.
Lissah glanced at Rhorek. His back was to them, and his shoulders shook with silent sobs. “His Majesty hasn’t said. I don’t think he knows yet what we’re to do.”
“Burn our dead first,” Kelyn muttered, looking at the formidable slopes of Slaenhyll. He would need help. “Where’s Eliad?” He found the boy speaking excitedly with a pair of wounded Falcons. Lady Briéllyn cleaned their gashes and burns with water from a skin.
“… she should be made a Falcon,” Eliad was saying. “She wouldn’t let any of those men near me. And then one of ‘em tried to take her away, but Laral killed him, and …” Kelyn glanced back at the older squire, still scrubbing carefully, tenderly at stains. Leshan had joined his little brother and spoke quietly with him. Laral nodded, but no longer cried. Ana, forgive me.
“My lord Kelyn?” Captain Jareg broke in softly. “You have my deepest condolences.” He spoke with a vastly different tone than he had this morning. Kelyn had been called ‘lord’ all his life, simply because he was his father’s son, but Jareg now spoke the word with the same note of respect that men and women had reserved for Keth. Things had happened so fast, his grief so deep, that he hadn’t realized: he was now Lord Ilswythe.
Dizziness swayed him, and he turned away from the Guards captain.
Jareg moved on, touched the king lightly on the shoulder. “Sire, we need to get the wounded out of the weather. Somewhere close.”
Rhorek scrubbed a hand over his face and stood. “Lanwyk. We’ll go to Lanwyk Manor and rest for a few days before …” He saw Kelyn nearby and beckoned him closer. “Goddess, you look like him. It’s like going back twenty years. I can’t …” He hadn’t the composure to say the rest.
Kelyn unbuckled the War Commander’s helm and offered it to Rhorek.
“Keep it,” he said.
“I’m barely nineteen, sire.”
“Your father couldn’t have been twenty-five when Kynor gave it to him.”
Kelyn ground his teeth. “No.”
Rhorek took the helmet, shrugged. “Then I’ll wait.”
“The war won’t wait.” Da was right about that. He pressed a hand to his wound. It had begun to
send throbs up his neck and down his left arm, its revenge for being ignored so long.
Worry for his friend’s son creased Rhorek’s face. “Let’s see to our dead.”
~~~~
The Zhiani and Fieran corpses were piled together and doused with their own Dragon fuel and set alight. Over the roar of the fires, Leshan was heard laughing at the irony. We wielded one of the Dragons himself, and when it was empty, he tossed the leather bag onto the flames. “Burn, you mother-loving bastards!” he cried, whacking at the smoldering bodies with his sword. He didn’t notice the sidelong glances cast his direction.
~~~~
Kelyn helped carry his father to the top of Slaenhyll. A fire had started burning deep in his cheeks, but he paid it no mind. He had thought his father’s fascination with the hill of stones disturbing, but now understood he had foreseen his death in its shadow.
A train of squires and knights piled brush amid the standing stones, and deep into the evening the body of the War Commander turned the dreaded Hyll into a beacon. Kelyn stood on the slope, watching the ash rise and the fire scorch the inner faces of the stones. He hoped the black marks would remain for many a year, as a testament to his father’s passing.
~~~~
41
Goryth seethed. A humiliating start to the invasion. Though the Aralorris were outnumbered and exhausted, they had fought with a fury Goryth had rarely seen. He thought the Falcon Crown was in the bag when the War Commander had to be carried from the field, but he had returned, fighting more maniacally than before. And King Rhorek was suddenly gone. Half his Guard must’ve whisked him away somewhere while the other half covered his flight, and Goryth had missed it! He’d been trying to rally his infantry, but they were lost, scattered, only a third of them lost. The Zhianese had fared better, but Goryth feared to lose them, too. He had ordered fallback. Ah, he hated to give ground so soon after crossing into Aralorr. He was even more angry at himself for being diverted from his main objective.
The red stallion beneath him felt his rage and behaved more nastily than usual, snapping at any horse and rider that ventured too close.
Prince Saj’nal rode just out of range. “My Dragons!” he whined. “Damn these Aralorri jekkyls! It’s a good thing we have many Dragons left. All is not lost.”
Goryth leveled a hateful glare on the prince. “You promised me the Falcon Crown.”
“This king is wily, but not to worry. We will find him and when we do—”
“That may have been your only chance, princeling!” He had finally had enough of the boy’s arrogance and delusions. “You will never find one better and you failed. So shut your hole until you’ve done something worth boasting about.”
“You cannot speak thus to the sons of Osaya!” Saj’nal’s face flushed the color of his headdress. “I will take my men and sail home.”
Goryth’s lip curled. “Just like a babe crying for his mother’s tit. Do it and be damned, prince. We’ve won wars without the likes of you taking our glory, and we’ll do it again. Go ride with your men who give a shit about your lies. I don’t want to hear one mewling sound out of you until Tírandon falls.”
Saj’nal stared wide-eyed and dumb, hands all but paralyzed on the reins.
Goryth reached for Contention, thirsty in its back-scabbard. “Move!”
The prince tugged the reins and wheeled his golden stallion for the ranks of his own people.
Now Goryth could think in peace. The Plain of Tírandon stretched out long and flat, marred by the ruts the supply wagons had carved into the mud. The path was easy for the division to follow. A thin, misty rain obscured the horizon, but on occasion Goryth caught a whiff of smoke, not of campfires or hearths, but of thatched roofs burning. Shapes, dark and twisted, emerged from the icy haze. Shaggy black kine, their throats cut, lay where they had died. Captain Wess and Lord Jast were carrying out their orders thoroughly.
Ahead lay the gates of Tírandon. Had the main body of the invasion force arrived yet? It wouldn’t be long now. Goryth remembered the towers and walls well, and the musty reek of the dungeons. He was chained there only a short while before King Daeryk ransomed him and several others, but those few weeks were enough to haunt his nightmares. How often did he wake in a cold sweat because he saw the red-hot iron approaching him from the dark? And the other instruments, applied to instill the greatest pain, the deepest humiliation. At the other end of them, a haughty young face, reveling in the pain he inflicted. “Don’t like that?” the lordling asked, mocking. “How about this? No? Well, that will teach you Fierans not to cross the Bryna.” Lander might’ve been twenty at the time, not yet come into his inheritance, but he had been given full rein over the prisoners of war, to extract information from them. Goryth had talked. He couldn’t recall the lies he had made up to make the pain stop, but he had talked and talked.
He wasn’t riding back to Tírandon to do any talking, but there would be plenty of screaming.
~~~~
The wounded were laid upon litters or set atop horses for the slow ride north. Kelyn stayed in the saddle by sheer force of will, insisting he was no casualty. Lissah rode beside him. Her wound was a burn to the tender skin of her forearm; she had raised it to shield her face from the Dragon fire. She packed ice-coated leaves in the scorched tatters of her sleeve and rode on, gritting her teeth against complaint.
Exhaustion and fever and the throbbing in his shoulder caused the ride to seem longer to Kelyn than it was. He dozed, unable to keep his eyes open, while Lissah’s grip on his arm kept him in the saddle.
Cinched to his belt, a pouch embroidered with Ilswythe’s sigil. Inside, a handful of his father’s ashes. Kelyn had found it tucked away under his father’s armor. But he couldn’t give it to some stranger to deliver. He intended to give it to his mother himself.
Lanwyk Manor stood amid rich farmland within sight of both the Barren Heights and the dark expanse of Avidan Wood. The great hall was old, small, and ill-kept, but it was enough to accommodate the worn and wounded soldiers. The lord of the manor, as old and decrepit as his house, was astonished to receive the king; he opened his larder and apothecary storage gladly.
Lady Briéllyn assumed control of the servants and squires, turning them into orderlies. The household physician took on the daunting task of surgeon. The wounded were sorted, the worst cases lined up for treatment on the high table.
Kelyn denied the gravity of his injury and the fever in his face and sat shivering on a pallet against the wall. Eventually an old cook made her way to him. She helped him out of his surcoat and mail. Kelyn found he could no longer lift his arm on his own. He had sat still for too long and the wound had stiffened. The woman clucked her tongue at the sight of the broken arrow shaft protruding from his shoulder. “Why aren’t you on the table yet, m’ lord?”
“I’m in a hurry,” he said. “Can’t linger here.”
“A hurry, is it?” she asked, cleaning the blood and grime from around the shaft. The water had silverthorn dissolved in it. The wound soon grew blessedly numb. “Ripe for gangrene, you are,” she said and clucked. “Don’t think you’re going anywhere. Rest easy.”
She moved on and Kelyn found himself chuckling. Lissah once said she hoped he would die of gangrene. Maybe she’d get her wish after all. But not yet. He had to ride home. He had to tell Kieryn …
Briéllyn passed, arms full of clean linen. Kelyn hailed her. She humored him, but wore the mark of impatience on her brow.
“How soon can I get out of here?” he asked.
Briéllyn stooped and inspected his shoulder. “That does not look good,” she said. “As soon as the cutting table is free, we’ll put you on it and dig that out.”
Kelyn scowled. “You have a wonderful gift with words, m’ lady. They’re a narcotic for my pain. How soon?”
“A couple of hours, maybe. We still need to finish the job for some half-severed limbs.”
“You don’t attempt tact, do you? Listen, I can’t wait around here for—”<
br />
“You’re not leaving like that, my lord,” she said, “so get the idea out of your head. You’re burning up with fever besides, which tells me that hole is infected, so just relax and try to sleep.”
She hurried away with her linens, and Kelyn smote the back of his head against the wall in frustration.
Eliad led Lady Ulna to a pallet nearby. Someone had stitched up her cheek and packed herbs and gauze over it. She cast Kelyn a ghost of a glance.
“Gyfan?” he asked.
She indicated the burn station across the hall. “We tried to roll under the Dragon fire, but he came up too soon.” Her lips had trouble shaping the words. The dose of medicines must have numbed half her face. “Some of that spit splashed him, shoulder to eyebrow. He looks worse than I do.”
Kelyn swore and sank back against the wall. Eliad knelt beside him. “You need anything, m’ lord?”
“No,” he replied, glum, then added, “A blanket. I’m freezing.”
Eliad’s eyebrows jumped. Freezing? With a fire crackling in a central hearth and all these bodies moving around, the room broiled. But Eliad didn’t ask questions and fetched a thick woolen blanket. Kelyn tucked it under his chin and rolled into a ball on the floor, mindful of his shoulder, and tried not to feel the emptiness in this small, crowded hall. An emptiness where his father should be.
“Wake me at dark, all right?” he requested and slept.
~~~~
Across Lanwyck’s small bailey, Leshan read the worry in his father’s face. Lander spoke with Garrs, who kept his weight off a gashed leg, and Captain Arqueth, whose burnt hands were swaddled in linen. Consulting in frantic whispers, none of them looked happy. Nearby, Laral listened in, horror in his big gray eyes. What tale could scare his brave little brother so?
Leshan had words for Garrs anyway, so he approached. His father saw him, and his worried expression smoothed over. More, he gripped Laral by the shoulder, warning him to keep his mouth shut.