by Ellyn, Court
“Horseshit, you’re standing uphill.” To prove that his little brother was still his little brother, Leshan wrapped Laral in a headlock and dragged him, laughing, from the ring of firelight. The long, hard months that stood between them shrank away. They struck out across the benighted field. Thyrra had set long before the sun had, and Forath reigned alone, casting red and black shadows across the foot-torn grass. “You should see her, Laral. Tírandon. I can’t wait until you see. It will be some years before she’s finished, but she stands proud again.”
“I hear she has two walls now instead of one.”
“Aye, and bridges, Laral. Sky bridges connecting the inner towers to the outer. Or she will. She’ll never be breached again.”
Laral had studied too much history to hope that none would try. “And Ruthan? You didn’t bring her with you.”
Leshan stopped beside a broken hedgerow, as if the little sister he knew so well still merited deep consideration. “She didn’t want me to come, but she knew better than to insist I bring her. She sleeps in her own bed now and stopped sucking her thumb, but she still sees things. Things she doesn’t want to see.”
“You don’t think she actually saw Mother killed then?”
“Not with her physical eyes, no. She foresaw enough to hide, and that’s what saved her.”
“And you, sir? How are you?”
Leshan chuckled, shaking his head. “Mother bless you, Laral, I’m your brother and you almost old enough to be knighted. Call me by name.”
“Yes, sir.”
Laral expected him to evade the question, but after ambling further along the hedgerow, Leshan said, “I regret. I hurt Da, and I hurt you, and I’m sorry. Learning how to balance my fear, my hate, and my conscience became too hard, so I stopped trying. I became a murderer because of it, and I let you see it.”
“But it wasn’t murder,” Laral exclaimed, remembering the three Zhianese squirming and dying in their blood on the flagstones of Bramoran. “It was justice. They tortured and killed our people.”
“Justice is fairness. They killed our people, yes, but we killed theirs. And at the time, they were unarmed and bound. I should’ve fought them fair, but I was too afraid, too overcome with hatred to care about honor.”
“And now?”
Leshan only shrugged.
“If you still feel this way, why did you come back?”
“A man hopes for redemption, I suppose. And my brother is here. And … well, never mind.”
“Tell me.” Laral couldn’t see Leshan’s eyes in the dark until he looked up at the moon rising high over the trees. He gazed inward, perhaps taking stock of courage or the past or the future.
“Ruthan said she saw my death. In her vision, I didn’t die defending Tírandon. Not from behind the walls anyway.”
“Then you have to go back!” Laral cried, startling a covey of quail from under the hedge. “Go home, sir, please.”
Smiling, Leshan set a hand on Laral’s shoulder. “And keep hiding? No.”
“Did she … tell you how?”
“I didn’t ask.”
Laral had never heard more contentment in his brother’s voice. He would not die a coward. That was enough for Leshan. They started back to camp in silence, the moon casting their shadows, tall as legends, across the red grass before them.
~~~~
The hospital tent stank of blood and dying flesh. Coughs rattled the air, and men and women groaned in agony. Surely a tempting place for the rágazeth. Thorn thanked the Mother-Father that he hadn’t glimpsed the shadow in some weeks. Other than the night before the peace conference, he had seen it leaking through trees along the river, and later, darting through a stand of neglected corn as the Aralorri host mobilized from Nathrachan.
Thorn didn’t understand. Saffron’s ward might be enough to protect him, but why didn’t the rágazeth attack the hordes of soldiers instead, as it had the duke and the Elarion? Was the suffering and chaos of battle enough to sate its hunger?
Waiting for the thing to make its move, to spring upon the wounded or upon Thorn himself, turned his stomach into knots and put his nerves on edge. He rarely ate, sick with the anticipation, and slept standing in the way of the dranithion, his staff always within sight. Kelyn’s tale of the rágazeth’s attack at Windhaven emphasized the fact that Zellel had amplified light with the crystal orb to fight the thing. Thorn didn’t know how to perform the same working, but he would have to try.
The surgeons and orderlies finally learned to ignore the strange, dragon-clawed staff, propped against the supply tables. At first, those blood-smeared men and women had avoided the staff and Thorn both, speaking to him only when he asked where they needed him most. It took some days of constant ministering to the wounded before they began to trust him and seek his aid.
He couldn’t save them all, that was his only regret. Still, his hands dispersed infection and mended veins, broken skulls, and slashed organs that would have resulted in many more deaths. Fewer ash pouches were sent home because he had listened to Aerdria. For that, he was glad he’d come.
When the order came down the hill that Aralorr’s host would move out in the morning, the surgeons went into a frenzy sorting the wounded. Who could return to the line? Who was strong enough to ship back to Nathrachan for convalescence? Who was not? Thorn helped load stretchers into the backs of transport wagons, then divided the supplies that would go west with the fighters from the supplies that would stay behind. Tedious, sweaty work done by the dim light of moth-plagued lanterns. Near midnight, the head surgeon found him stacking boxes into the back of a supply cart and laid a hand to his forearm. “M’ lord? Get some rest. You’ve been on your feet for three days straight.”
Scrubbing a hand over his face, Thorn said, “If I stop, I might not be able to start again.”
“All the more reason.”
With aching shoulders, he sank into a folding chair near the mouth of the hospital tent and popped the cork on the flask of Elaran mead. He agreed to rest, but he couldn’t afford to grow lax. His Veil Sight swept the campground as far as Ulmarr Town to the south and the castle ruins in the north. So many lifelights drifting around, like overgrown fireflies at midsummer. Many more remained stationary, tight to the ground, where soldiers and squires slept in bedrolls. But no shadow flitting erratically, on the hunt, among the tents or burned buildings.
The mead warmed his blood, sank into his tired muscles, and before he could stop them, his eyes drifted shut. In a nightmare, a man screamed and Thorn woke with a start. The surgeon grabbed his shoulder. “My lord, come see.”
The old man led him through the cots of the hopeless cases to the area reserved for recovering soldiers. A crowd had gathered in the light of a lantern, orderlies and soldiers well enough to stand on their own two feet. On a cot lay a body whose eyes and mouth were still stretched wide in terror.
“He was returning to his regiment tomorrow,” said a pikeman who was maybe as old as eighteen. “How could he just up and die?”
“Did anyone see anything?” Thorn asked, dreading their replies.
“I was sleeping right next to him, m’ lord,” said an archer with a bandaged burn on the side of his face. “He’d been joking about taking bets, about how long he’d last before he ended up here again.”
“I turned down the lanterns,” the surgeon said, “so the men could sleep.”
“There weren’t nothing!” the archer declared. “All I know is, I woke to him screaming. By the time we got the lantern lit, he was … like this.”
Blood roared in Thorn’s ears. He barely heard the surgeon ask, “Your healing couldn’t have saved him, I suppose?”
“No.”
“You know what killed him?”
Goddess spare him, he was cold suddenly. So cold his teeth chattered. “Keep the lights burning from now on.”
Leaving the pavilion, he grabbed his staff and headed out into the night. Atop Ulmarr’s last tower, he could see clear to the horizon. Still n
o sign of the rágazeth. Where was it hiding? In one of the darkened shells of the town, likely, where Thorn’s Veil Sight might not find it. He should go looking for it, but he had to admit, he was afraid of wondering those dark, narrow alleys where it might catch him alone.
“My Thorn?” Saffron’s voice startled him. Her soft golden light was a comfort, however. “I’ve brought news for your brother.”
“Can it wait till morning?”
“He needs to be prepared.”
Ducking into the War Commander’s pavilion, Thorn jostled Eliad’s shoulder. “Go wake him.” The squire rolled off his cot without fully opening his eyes and brushed through the flaps into Kelyn’s quarters. Thorn waited for him outside, where he could keep watch on the shifting darkness under the stacks of rubble.
Kelyn joined him, tugging a cloak about his shoulders. He shuddered against the chill and seemed too alert to have been asleep long. “The ships?”
“No. The Warlord just arrived at Brengarra with fresh reinforcements. Looks like a full thousand. Mostly Zhianese and men from Haezeldale. They’re on their way.”
Kelyn’s great sigh clouded in the cold. “I expected resistance at the Crossroads, but not Goryth himself. Shit. Well, they’re not making it easy on us.”
“I’ll … I’ll help you however I can.” The words hurt so badly that Thorn thought his mouth might bleed.
“Saffron spoke to you?”
Thorn nodded. “If Leshan can set aside his fear, I can set aside my principles.”
A slow grin banished the worry on Kelyn’s face. “I don’t think it will hurt too terribly. You might even enjoy it.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
~~~~
70
A red brand, so hot that the air quivered around it, slid from the darkness. Goryth anticipated the searing pain, tried to squirm away, but chains across his ankles, across his chest, strapped him securely to the table. Nor could he open his mouth to call for help. He searched for the one who held the brand, feared the young arrogant face twisted by that evil grin, but it wasn’t Lander. Not this time. Lady Andett’s death-glazed eyes stared past him. Bruises blackened her naked breasts and thighs. A rope of yellow hair squeezed her throat. She made raspy gasping sounds as she neared the table. On her shoulder perched a gargoyle the color of ash. Black veins pulsed obscenely under its skin. Growling, the imp bared rows of dagger-shaped teeth and nibbled little bites from Andett’s cheek. The dead woman felt nothing and let the gargoyle go on feasting. She lowered the brand over Goryth’s left hand. His fingers caught fire and curled up like leaves tossed into a furnace. He screamed. Or tried to. All he could force from his throat was silent agony.
The gargoyle growled, louder now. On translucent, veined wings, it flapped down from the woman’s shoulder. Talons pierced deep in Goryth’s burning arm. Needles of pain. Opening that fanged mouth impossibly wide, the imp savaged Goryth’s belly, growling, growling.
He woke with a shudder, a cry of terror stifled behind his lips. The pain in his arm faded quickly, pain in a hand no longer there. Beyond the sound of his heart hammering in his ears, he heard the gargoyle growling still in the dark, and Goryth remembered where he was. Thunder rumbled high on the summit of Tor Roth and shook the windows of Brengarra.
Three hours of sleep was all he demanded on a night between marches. He didn’t know how much time he had left before his squires arrived to wake him, though he felt he hadn’t been asleep long. Sleep till they come, he told himself, but the sight of the woman’s dead eyes kept flashing through his brain with the insistence of lightning, and the constant growling of the thunder and clattering of the glass set his teeth to grinding. He’d get no more sleep this night. With the next shudder of the pane, Goryth surged from the bunk, wrapped his stump in the towel from the washstand, and punched out the glass.
Across the courtyard, the sentry walking the wall called out, “My lord? What trouble?”
Goryth spat out the window. “Ach, shag your mother and be off.” Bad enough suffering from lack of sleep on a three-day march from Brynduvh with that boasting, slave-buggering Saj’nal at his side, but this time Shadryk had ridden along, too. The White Falcon wasn’t content to learn of his victory from behind castle walls. He would see it for himself; as a result, Goryth had had no end of questions. Bless the boy for his interest in Goryth’s decisions, but if he trusted his Warlord, he ought to keep his damn mouth shut. Goryth didn’t have the subtle skill with words to tell his king just that without overstepping his place, so the window and the sentry suffered for his lacking.
The stars still shone brightly, the eastern horizon as dark as the western, when the wardens at the gate raised a shout. “Courier with messages for the Warlord!” Just as well. Goryth shrugged into his clothes, mail hauberk, and boots. On his way from the barracks, he nudged his squires with his steel-wrapped toes. If he was awake, damn sure they would be, too.
Groaning, the two pimple-faced youths asked, “Are we late? Orders, sir?”
“Breakfast! Move it.”
He met the courier at the barracks door, snatched the dispatch from his hand. Lord Jaeron reported his fallback from Ulmarr. Goryth released a round of expletives. The primary reason he had brought his host east instead of leading them north again to Leania was because of Jaeron’s inability to oust the Aralorris from Ulmarr. Seems he’d arrived not a day too soon. On the back of the missive, Goryth scratched his orders. The angry globs of ink turned each word into the vilest of curses: Abandon Crossroads. Meet my host on highway from Brengarra. No rest.
Rather than find a fresh rider to deliver the message, Goryth frog-hopped the same courier to his frothing horse and tossed him back into the saddle, then made a quick round of the barracks, waking his commanders. “Get up, you lazy-arsed swineherds! Jaeron’s in trouble. We gotta go save his arse.”
Word spread quickly inside the walls and through the camp beyond. Soon the clank and shout of waking soldiers and the whicker of irritated horses wafted through the windows of the great hall with the stifling stink of cookfire smoke. Goryth took his breakfast at the lower tables. Stiff brown bread from the night before and cold smoked mutton. His squires knew not to make him wait for anything hot and fancy.
“Bit early, isn’t it?” Shadryk stood over him in a green dressing robe. “You said dawn.”
Bugger your questions and your sleep, Goryth wanted to say. Instead, he stood from his meal and said, “Things change, sire. Aralorris broke through Jaeron’s defenses, and I have no doubt they’ll be on the march sometime today. You plan on joining us?”
“I do. Is Jaeron dead?” He glanced over his shoulder. Little fawn-eyed Bethyn lurked in the doorway, listening in, her pretty brown hair a tumble about her face. Goryth wasn’t blind to how the king looked at her, or he might take an interest himself. But, then, some delicate thing like that would surely break in Goryth’s hands. More’s the pity.
“He lives,” he replied. “He wrote the dispatch himself. It was done in a hurry though, so we need to move.”
Saj’nal blustered into the great hall among a cloud of slaves who worked feverishly to finish buckling on his armor and clasping his cloak and tying his shoes. He hadn’t patience enough to let them dress him in his pavilion. Goryth failed to stifle a groan, but Saj’nal was shouting too many demands to hear. “What is this? O Mighty Warlord, what has happened?” He kicked the slave who shuffled along on his knees, trying to set the buckles of the prince’s boots in order. He dressed like a Fieran now, but for the shaved head and red silk turban. “Get off me, you sons of dogs. Food! Get me food. Eggs! Not those puny chicken eggs. Goose eggs! Those brown spotted ones. Go!”
He bowed before the White Falcon and shut his mouth long enough for Goryth to explain why he had been robbed of a few hours of sleep.
“I had not thought Brengarra men cowards,” Saj’nal said. “The Father curse their bones.”
“Your men, too, fled Ulmarr, Highness.”
“My men
do not retreat,” the prince declared. “You will see! I ordered them ‘Never retreat, or I will flay you alive.’ They know I keep my word. If Brengarra runs, my men are dead, gone in honor to the Father. I will bet my crown on it. When we meet these Aralorri scorpions, my men and I will stand, you will see.”
The White Falcon grinned as if he were willing to take the prince up on that bet.
“Good,” Goryth said. “You just volunteered to make the first assault.”
“Yes! We are tired of hiding in barracks and ditches in the dirt. We will stop these scorpions before they march closer to your white city, O Falcon. And if the Black Crow is with them, we will take his head. This battle! I swear it. And you will have your crown.”
“I will hold you to that vow,” said Shadryk.
Goryth reined in a sigh of disgust for the arrogant fool and demanded, “Stop jabbering about it and go prepare your men.” In more diplomatic tones, he added, “We’ll need many barrels of Dragon bile, Highness. See that they’re loaded in the wagons.”
When he’d gone, Shadryk asked, “Did the dispatch say anything else?”
Aye, that Lady Drona had been wounded and rendered useless by Lander’s pikemen, and that Jaeron had broken under the onslaught of rough riders from Tírandon. A thousand curses upon Lander and his progeny. If Saj’nal meant to aim for the Black Falcon’s head, Goryth had another target entirely in mind. Twenty years of nightmares had to stop.
“Goryth?”
He started. “No, sire. Nothing else.”
~~~~
Near noon, Aralorr’s host clanked past the tattered remains of the White Falcon’s great green conference pavilion. Stakes had given way, poles had slumped, and half the roof had caved in. Riding beside Kelyn, King Rhorek spared not a second’s glance in its direction. Such a cold determination on the Black Falcon’s face Kelyn had never seen. His people seemed to share it. Pushing farther into Fiera than ever before, they would either march out again victorious, or not at all. Did the common pikeman contemplate that possibility as he marched across the long miles? Kelyn tried not to, but he’d awakened this morning with an ill feeling. Nightmares. A shadow had lain heavily upon his chest whispering his name. A voice like the raking of leaves whose life has been leeched out. He feared it was his death stalking him. Did it wait at the Crossroads or Brynduvh or a lonely field somewhere in between?