The Spirit Stone

by Katharine Kerr

  ‘A full year, and sometimes a moon beyond that.’

  And thank the gods for it, too, Dallandra thought. There’s no reason for Cal to know yet.

  At dawn the next morning Arzosah and Rori flew back to the army with the news that the Galan Targ lay close ahead. Dallandra realized with a coldness around her heart that the battles for Zakh Gral were about to begin.

  As the army made its slow way towards the ford of the Galan Targ, the two princes, the avro and the gwerbret rode together, talking back and forth, at the head of the line of march. Lesser lords, such as Gerran, rode some distance behind, out of earshot, though Gerran could see that some kind of argument was talking place. He noticed as well that Kov, Grallezar and Calonderiel rode just behind the commanders, close enough to lean forward and shout things into the conversation. Around noon, when the army came within sight of the river, the commanders called the usual halt to feed their men and rest the horses, then sent the dragons ahead to scout.

  Gerran and Salamander walked a few hundred yards away from the camp to a low swell of ground from which they could see the ford. At this point the river stretched broad and shallow, maybe fifty yards across but not more than four feet deep. Big grey stones marked out a safe route across.

  ‘Someone made this ford, I’ll wager,’ Gerran said. ‘They must have widened the channel to let the water spread out.’

  ‘It does look like that,’ Salamander said. ‘The hard work was doubtless all done by slaves.’

  Gerran snorted in disgust.

  On the other side of the river scrub grass and weeds covered an area of uneven ground that stretched towards the west for about a hundred yards. Beyond lay scruffy second-growth forest. This weedy terrain, as far as Gerran could tell, rose to heavily wooded hills at some middle distance. In the heat of the summer’s day, the river murmured, and insects swarmed along its banks. Otherwise nothing moved, but the hair on the back of Gerran’s neck rose. Someone was watching him. He looked up, shading his eyes with one hand, then laughed. Salamander caught the gesture and did the same.

  ‘It’s just a raven,’ Gerran said. ‘I’ve seen one following us now and then.’

  ‘It’s a raven, all right.’ Salamander sounded so alarmed that Gerran shot him a puzzled glance.

  ‘Ravens do follow armies,’ Gerran said. ‘They always seem to know when a feast’s on its way.’

  ‘Oh, true spoken!’

  Salamander’s tone struck Gerran as oddly brittle, but his face gave nothing away. Gerran looked back up and studied the raven—a strangely large bird, he realized. All of a sudden the raven croaked and flew, darting away as fast as its wings would work and heading north to the forest cover. Gerran heard a sound like a distant drum, coming closer.

  ‘The bird’s got good ears,’ Gerran said. ‘It doesn’t seem to like the dragon’s company.’

  ‘Sensible, I’d call it,’ Salamander said, grinning. ‘Shall we go back to camp?’

  The dragon turned out to be Arzosah, returned with the news that Rori was scouting out the fort itself and would bring back information shortly. Gerran overheard Kov ask Salamander for an introduction to the black wyrm. Since he’d always wanted to meet her, he followed them out to the sunny spot where Arzosah was resting. She greeted them all graciously and listened with attention when the envoy showed her its staff.

  ‘None of those runes are Dragonish,’ Arzosah said. ‘Those four peculiar ones, though—I did see somewhat very much like them once, cut onto rocks up in the north country.’

  ‘You don’t think they’re a different form of Horsekin writing, do you?’ Kov said.

  ‘I don’t, because that far north none of the Horsekin know how to read and write. It’s a Gel da’ Thae trait, writing. Let me think—where was—by a river. That’s all I can remember, alas. It was in the wilderness somewhere, a big river that was flowing south. Not very helpful, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Still, my humble thanks for allowing me to impose upon you,’ Kov said.

  ‘Ah, what nice manners!’ Arzosah swung her enormous head towards Salamander. ‘That banadar person could take lessons.’

  ‘What counts now,’ Salamander said, suppressing a grin, ‘is crossing the river we know and see. We’ll have time later for worrying about the rivers we know not, if the gods kindly allow us all to live long enough.’

  In the event, the army crossed the ford without incident. Although the Mountain Folk grumbled about the depth of the water, they eventually got their carts across dry by hoisting them up, six men to a cart, and carrying them. By the time everyone had crossed and reformed the line of march, the sun hung low in the western sky. The army found, running parallel to the river, a decent road of gravel and hard-packed earth mixed with some sort of binding substance that none of the Deverry men or Westfolk had ever seen before. Envoy Kov, however, knew exactly what it was.

  ‘Rhwmani stone, we call it,’ Kov told Gerran. ‘I don’t know why, but that’s its name. We make it, too, but I’m shocked to see that the Gel da’ Thae know the secret.’

  The Rhwmani road turned out to make travelling a fair bit easier for cart and horse alike. The army, however, had marched for only a mile or two when the silver dragon reappeared, circling high over the line. One massive paw dangled under him.

  ‘Is he hurt?’ Gerran asked Salamander.

  ‘He’s not,’ Salamander said. ‘He’s carrying somewhat. His dinner, most like.’

  Rori came to earth a decent distance away among the brush and scrub growth off to the west. When the order came down the line to halt and make camp for the night, Salamander dismounted and called to Gerran that he was going to speak with the dragon. Gerran swung down from the saddle, tossed his reins to Clae, and followed the gerthddyn out of simple curiosity.

  As they approached, Gerran realized that the dragon’s prey was no deer or cow, but a Horsekin warrior, lying sprawled on the ground in front of the silver wyrm. Blood oozed from the corner of his mouth and stained the sides of his pale tan brigga. A few drops spattered his linen shirt as well. Salamander hurried forward and in Elvish spoke to the dragon, who was sitting on his haunches like a giant cat, tail wrapped around his front paws.

  ‘Is he dead?’ Gerran was speaking to Salamander, but the dragon answered in perfect Deverrian.

  ‘He’s not,’ Rori said. ‘Fainted dead away, but not truly dead. You’d best disarm him while he’s still out.’

  The Horsekin carried a sword on a baldric rather than on his belt. The peculiar scabbard, lozenge-shaped and reinforced with strips of brass along its edges, hung across his lap, an odd angle for a weapon. When, however, the Horsekin stood or rode upright, Gerran realized, it would lie to one side but horizontally, the hilt near the rider’s hand, the point safely free of leg and stirrup. He unbuckled it, laid it down next to him, and pulled the man’s dagger from his belt as well. He looked up to see the dragon watching him.

  ‘You are?’ Rori said.

  ‘Gerran of the Gold Falcon. My honour, I’m sure, to meet you.’

  Rori’s cornflower-blue eyes considered him—sadly, Gerran realized. ‘You won’t remember me,’ Rori said. ‘Ah well. Take a look at that blade, Gerran. You’re in for a surprise.’

  When Gerran drew the sabre from its scabbard, he swore aloud. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this,’ he said.

  The weapon, about four feet long overall, had a hilt that was more of a handle—a squared-off loop of steel decorated on one corner with a horse’s head in silver. The blade was not only curved, but towards its point it swelled to a sharp angle before tapering again. When Gerran laid a cautious finger-tip on the edges, he found it dull on the outer but razor-sharp on the inner. He slipped his hand in to the loop and gave the sabre an experimental swing. Thanks to the extra weight near the tip, it snapped around with extra force to match. If you rode a fleeing man down, Gerran realized, then swung at his neck, his head would come half off his shoulders with one smooth stroke.

  ‘It be called a falcata,’ Gr
allezar said from behind him. ‘Nasty little things. Very effective from horseback.’

  Gerran rose, his hands full of the falcata and Horsekin dagger, and made her an awkward bow. Dallandra had accompanied her; she nodded at Gerran, then hurried past him to kneel down beside the wounded Horsekin, who was just coming around with a few mumbled words.

  ‘A scout,’ Rori said. ‘The others got away. I wanted you all to have a close look at that sabre. Arzosah’s off hunting, so she’ll keep a watch on the enemy camp.’

  The Horsekin moaned and tried to sit up. He looked around him, saw Dallandra and the dragon, and fainted again.

  ‘He’s lost a lot of blood,’ Dallandra said. ‘Your claws, I assume.’

  ‘I tried to keep from killing him, but without thumbs, it’s wretchedly hard to be delicate.’

  ‘Well, he’ll live. He won’t be trying to escape, either.’

  ‘I suppose that gladdens my heart.’ Rori sighed in a melancholy way. ‘I never appreciated thumbs before, I’m afraid. The things one learns too late!’

  Although Gerran had certainly believed Salamander, that the dragon had once been a human being, he hadn’t truly understood what that might mean to the dragon himself. He did then, and bile rose in his throat. He covered the feeling by turning away and calling to Salamander.

  ‘The princes will want to see this falcata,’ Gerran said. ‘I’m cursed glad we know what we’re facing. Can you take it to them?’

  ‘The princes and the gwerbret are on their way here to listen to Rori’s report,’ Dallandra said. ‘Gerran, Ebañy you’d best leave those weapons with Grallezar and go back to camp.’

  At sunset, the commanders summoned every lord of the rank of tieryn, as well as Calonderiel and Brel Avro, for a council. It was long after sunset when Cadryc returned to the Red Wolf camp and squatted down next to Gerran at his fire. While they talked, they kept a look-out for the gwerbret or any of his men.

  ‘They’re ready for us, all right,’ Cadryc said. ‘They had a good scatter of scouts posted. The black dragon saw two men riding like the Lord of Hell was chasing them. They reached the fortress just after dawn today. Not long after a small army rode out. They’re marching up from the fortress towards our position. They were some ten miles away, the last Rori saw of ’em.’

  ‘I’m not surprised, your grace,’ Gerran said. ‘You can’t hide an army this size under a blade of grass.’

  ‘True spoken. That arrogant cub Ridvar was surprised, or he pretended to be. He had the gall to suggest we might have a traitor in our ranks.’ Cadryc snorted profoundly. ‘Looked right at me, too, the ill-got little—’ He swallowed the last word and snorted again. ‘The dragon put him right, he did. Said he’d never known the Horsekin to be either blind or stupid, and especially not both at once.’

  ‘We bested Ridvar over your grandson. It’s the honour of the thing that won’t let him drop it. Eventually the prince and his councillor will talk some sense into him.’

  ‘So we may hope. Cursed if I know how I’m going to get through the next few years with him as my sworn overlord.’ Cadryc paused to chew on the ragged ends of his moustache. ‘Be that as it may, lad, there was a blasted lot more shouting than sense at that council. It boils down to this. If we insist on riding to battle, the dragons can’t join in. How can they spook the Horsekin mounts without doing the same to ours, eh?’

  ‘We’d best fight on foot, then.’

  ‘Just so, but some of the lords cursed near shat at the very idea. Gwivyr was the worst, prattling about the honour of trueborn noblemen and how only peasants walk and suchlike.’

  ‘Did you see the falcata?’

  ‘I did.’ Cadryc turned grim. ‘That was the one point in Gwivyr’s favour. If we’re unhorsed, and the dragons can’t disrupt the Horsekin cavalry, well then! We’ll all be eating at the Lord of Hell’s table, eh? If we’re not carved up as the main dish.’

  ‘Most likely. So what do we do, your grace? Wait for them, or go to meet them?’

  ‘Both. In the morning, we move the camp a few miles south, fortify it with ditches and the wagons, then draw up our lines beyond it and wait. We’ll have the horses in reserve, the banadar tells us. His men know how to bring them up to the front lines in a hurry.’

  The camp woke with the dawn and made a short and hurried march south. While the Mountain Folk and the servants did the hard work of assembling what fortifications they could between the wagon train and the approaching army, Prince Voran and Gwerbret Ridvar walked through the Deverry camp, telling those who would fight where they would be in the line of march and where they would stand. Prince Dar and Calonderiel did the same for the Westfolk.

  Gerran saw many a noble lord shaking his sceptical head once the commanders had turned their backs. In the end, Tieryn Gwivyr got something of his way; he would lead a mounted squadron held in reserve. Either it would swoop in at the end of the battle to cut down any Horsekin stragglers, or else it would guard the Deverry retreat. Although Gwivyr grumbled about missing most of the fight, even he had to admit that he’d talked himself into his position.

  The black dragon returned around noon with evil news. The Horsekin had made a forced march late into the yesternight. Now they’d drawn up their ranks much closer than anyone had expected.

  ‘Not more than two miles away, Arzosah tells us,’ Cadryc said. ‘Ready or not, lads, the fight’s on.’

  None of the Deverry men in the army had ever walked to war before, nor had the Westfolk swordsmen. When the time came to leave camp, they formed up in pairs in a more or less straight line, but by the time they came within sight of the Horsekin, they had bunched up into a straggling mob. The dwarven axemen, far more disciplined, marched in good order behind them, while the Westfolk archers ambled along to either side of the main body in no particular formation. Gwivyr’s mounted squadron brought up the rear from a good quarter of a mile back. With him rode the two princes, Warleader Brel, and Gwerbret Ridvar, but Gerran noticed Banadar Calonderiel walking with his swordsmen.

  On a slight rise of rocky ground the enemy waited, their ranks formed into a narrow front between the river on the Gel da’ Thae right and the scrubby woodland to their left. Front and centre stood lines of spearmen, arranged so that the oval shield each man carried on his left arm provided some protection for the right side of the man next to him. They held their spears at a slight angle, a glittering hedge of death. At a quick estimate Gerran guessed that there were about five hundred of them, mostly human beings—the famous slave soldiers of the Gel Da’ Thae. To either side, wings of heavy cavalry sat on their horses, circular shields on their left arms, falcatas drawn and ready in their right hands. Gerran had no time to count them or even to estimate their numbers.

  Some fifty yards from the Gel Da’ Thae front line, the Deverry swordsmen stopped walking to form up ranks as best they could. A few spearmen chuckled at what appeared to be this messy excuse for an army across from them; others took it up; the chuckles blossomed into full-blown howls of laughter when the cavalry joined in. In the midst of their scorn they apparently never noticed the dwarven axemen pivoting off under cover of their taller fellows and heading into the forest to the west.

  Gerran heard the men around him muttering in rage, but they held their places as they’d been ordered to do. He himself smiled, just briefly. The Horsekin had made a mistake by enraging the Deverry ranks. Among the enemy sour brass horns sounded. The Horsekin spearmen held their position, but the cavalry began to move forward. Apparently their commander had decided that they might as well charge this disorganized bunch of human bumpkins and Westfolk deer hunters and get the battle over with.

  From a distance came the sound of two enormous pairs of wings, beating the air. The cavalry horses tossed up their heads, sniffed the wind, and began to prance and tremble. The Horsekin laughter stopped. Gerran looked up, looked around, and saw the dragons flying up from the south. On the Horsekin side horns sounded again. The spearmen began to close ranks and move forward
as the cavalry tried to turn away or back their mounts to the flanks of their army, but they were caught twixt cliff and woodland. The horses were rearing, tossing their heads and fighting for the bit while their riders fought just as hard to control them.

  With a roar that split the sky the dragons swooped down in a long arc. The horses went mad, kicking, plunging, throwing their riders, bursting forward into the ranks of the spearmen where they kicked and bit anyone in their way. The spearmen began to curse and yell; some turned out of line to avoid the plunging hooves. Here and there a man screamed as he went down to be crushed by the out of control cavalry. The dragons flew some yards above the spear points of the infantry, swooped up and away, then turned for another plunge down, this time from the north. Some of the mounted men got their horses under control just enough to allow the spearmen to get free of them, but the infantry’s rear ranks had been pushed out of position.

  While the dragons were turning, the Westfolk loosed their first volley of arrows. The shafts hissed as they rose into the air, then whistled down in a long arc of death, piercing the cavalry’s mail, striking their unarmored horses. Horses screamed and reared, only to fall, throwing their riders. The Gel da’ Thae spearmen flung up their shields in a well-practised manoeuvre to protect themselves. They’ll be our part of the job, Gerran thought, us and the Mountain Folk.

  Over the screaming of Horsekin and the agonized neighing of their horses, brass horns blew desperately, signalling—what? Gerran had no idea, but the riders seemed to be trying to reform their ranks. Unfortunately for them, the dragons had completed their turn. The rain of arrows stopped. The two great wyrms swooped down again and destroyed the last bit of the cavalry’s morale. The few men still horsed gave in to their struggling mounts and let them run downriver. The silver dragon banked sharply, changed direction with a flapping of huge wings, and took off after them, while the black dragon scattered the few horses that remained on the battlefield. She flew too far above the spearmen for them to do more than shake their weapons in her direction.