The Spirit Stone

by Katharine Kerr

  ‘Well, if there are any gods, I thank them,’ Sidro said. ‘And if you’re telling me the truth.’

  ‘Sisi, I wouldn’t lie about something like that.’

  ‘Oh, wouldn’t you? You lied when you told me you’d warned them that the Lijik army was coming. It crossed the ford without anyone there to stop it.’

  ‘What? I told you, first of all, that I was working a complicated spell without ever having done it before. Second, even if the stone showed them what I wanted to show them, your holy fools had to interpret the omen. Don’t blame me if they got it all wrong.’

  ‘Well, that’s true, isn’t it? I’m sorry.’

  He scowled at her, then continued. ‘It was an interesting flight over Zakh Gral this time. I wasn’t the only raven there, though the others were either ordinary birds or else very very small mazrakir.’ He paused for a grin at his own jest. ‘I’ll wager on the former. Ravens always seem to know when the gods of war are going to feed them. Oddly enough, I didn’t frighten them. Usually I do. It’s my greater size, I suppose, or else they can tell I’m not a real raven. But the prospect of a nice bloody battle seemed to make them fearless.’

  Laz stood watching her with his hands clasped behind him, elbows cocked like wings, head tilted a little to one side. Sidro suddenly wondered if his sorcery would someday transmute him into a real raven. She could remember some odd warnings in the scrolls Hazdrubal had brought with him from the Black Isles, but the idea struck her as too grotesque to take seriously.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, nothing, really. It’s just the thought of all the bloodshed.’

  ‘Ah. Well, I’ll hold my tongue about it and other morbidities, then. Here, I need to go talk with Pir. I’ll be back shortly.’

  As soon as he left, Sidro sat down at the table and scried for Lakanza. This time Laz had been telling the truth. She saw Lakanza sitting inside a tent, with a man kneeling in front of her—Evan! That little viper, Sidro thought. How dare he speak to her! She saw that indeed, the other priestesses sat near her as well, except for Rocca. When Sidro thought of her former rival, the image built up quickly: Rocca alone in the shrine, prostrate on the floor before Alshandra’s altar as she prayed, her hands tight-clasped.

  Get out of there, you fool! was Sidro’s instant thought. Rocca apparently heard nothing. The black pyramid sat on the altar, high above her head. Although Sidro stared into its twin for a long while, Rocca never approached the gem. Without it, Sidro couldn’t reach her mind. When she felt utterly unexpected tears in her eyes, she gave up trying.

  ‘I don’t hate her any more,’ Sidro said aloud. ‘I wonder why?’

  Salamander slept little that night and woke well before dawn. He got up, grabbed his clothes, and left the tent to dress outside to avoid waking Clae. Although he knew that he could stay in the relative safety of the camp without anyone questioning his honour, he went out to the horse herd just as the eastern sky was turning an opalescent grey. He saddled and bridled his roan gelding, then led him back to the road. ‘Sorry, old lad,’ Salamander said to the horse. ‘I can’t sit here and wonder what might be happening to Rocca. Let’s hope our friends win the battle, or we might both end up as Horsekin slaves.’

  Salamander mounted up and headed back towards Zakh Gral. High overhead, the dragons circled, black and silver in the rising sunlight, like omens from a nightmare.

  Just at dawn the army of the two princes woke, gobbled whatever food they could find fast, then armed. Since he’d been chosen to ride in the second wave, Gerran saddled up his horse. The commanders had laid out a simple enough battle plan. Let the Horsekin sally as promised, then let the dragons and the archers disrupt their cavalry while the Mountain Folk set fire to the fortress. After that—Gerran smiled at the thought. No one could predict what would happen after that, no matter how many commanders discussed the matter.

  The archers set up a secure position behind their waist-high stakes off to the army’s right flank. The Mountain axemen and the swordsmen, Deverry and Westfolk both, who would fight on foot ranged themselves in the front lines, facing Zakh Gral, while the men who’d fight on horseback took up a position well back from the field. Off to the left the dwarven engineers fussed over Big Girl and her little sisters, four more bellybows mounted on wooden stands, though these would shoot only ordinary bolts to defend their position from a Horsekin charge.

  Inside the fortress horns sounded. From his distance Gerran heard them as thin cries, like puppies whining. He rose in the saddle and watched the huge doors of the fortress inch open. Between them he could see horses—riderless horses. He swore under his breath as he realized what was about to happen. From the fortress screams went up, shouts, the banging of drums and the clashing of sabres. Panicked horses plunged out of the fortress and galloped straight for the unmounted men in the front lines.

  (Continued)

  The archers loosed a flat volley into the herd. The lead horses reared, screaming, with arrows in their chests, and fell, kicking and writhing, but the rest leapt over their bodies and charged forward. Another flight of arrows hissed into the herd. As blood spilled onto the ground, horses slipped and went down, but still others carried the charge forward. Drums sounded overhead; the dragons swooped down from the side and roared. Horses scattered, turned aside, went plunging and neighing to the south and north as the dragons harried them.

  A handful of massive warhorses still galloped straight into the scattering swordsmen. Men fell, crushed and broken, as the centre of the line broke. In the chaos came Gel da’ Thae, advancing in lock-step, spears level, like some huge scythe aimed to mow down the broken ranks facing them.

  ‘Ah horseshit!’ Gerran screamed. ‘Fuck the plans! Red Wolf, to me!’

  He kicked his horse hard and headed for the battle. Howling warcries, the warband followed. They dodged through the retreating swordsmen and slammed into the flank of the Gel da’ Thae line before the spearmen could wheel and reform their shield wall to face them. Gerran slashed, yelled, swung back and forth at every head or arm he could see. His horse reared, kicked out with its front hooves, came down hard on one fallen spearman. When his horse reared again, over the swirling mass of shields and spears, Gerran caught a glimpse of Mountain axemen, slashing in from the other flank. He could hear arrows, hoped they’d overfly him and his men, heard Ridvar’s men shouting ‘Cengarn! Cengarn!’ behind him as the second wave of horsemen slammed into the breaking ranks of the spearmen.

  A Gel da’ Thae thrust his spear at his horse’s neck. Gerran leaned, swung, cracked the spear just in time, then clubbed the man on the helmet with his backswing. The man went down under the hooves of another Deverry man’s horse. In the welter of dying horses and dying men on the blood-soaked ground, the spearmen slippedand staggered. They’d lost any chance of reforming their shield walls, and with that loss they began to lose their lives as well.

  Gerran kept cutting, leaning, fending off spear thrusts with his shield, while his horse kicked and bit, plunging onward. He saw the enemies only as faces and shoulders, the gleam of helmets and the spurt of blood as swords struck home. The warcries behind him told him that his men followed close behind him. Suddenly he smelled smoke—a lot of smoke—thick clouds of it eddied down, flecked with burning. The spearmen broke utterly, throwing shields, running for their lives, only to find themselves facing Mountain axes. The horsemen cut them down from behind as fast as the dwarves cut from the front.

  Gerran broke through the line at last, nearly rode into a volley from Westfolk archers, and turned his horse barely in time. Here and there on the field Gel da’ Thae spearmen had formed up into desperate clusters and squares. Horsemen rode around and around them, trying to break in while axemen shouted at them to get out of the way. Deverry and Westfolk swordsmen faced off with the near-berserk Horsekin, who screamed wordlessly as they attacked without the slightest thought or skill.

  Behind it all Zakh Gral blazed. Ashes fell, swirling down upon the dying and
the victors alike, white ash, black cinder, and here and there flecks of burning bark or scraps of cloth. Men swore as the burning kissed them. The wooden walls had turned into solid flame. Over the crackle and hiss of burning wood, Gerran heard the boom and crack of stones splitting under heat or falling as the beams that supported them burned through.

  Almost over, Gerran thought, and we’ve won. At the edge of the battlefield he dismounted to rest his blowing, foam-streaked horse for the rout sure to follow, then took off his helm and padded cap to shake sweat from his hair. He heard someone moan and looked around. Nearby lay a pair of dead horses, a grey killed by sword cuts, and a chestnut, who’d fallen on top of the other, pierced with arrows. As he watched, a Horsekin soldier stood up from behind this shelter, dragging to his feet a wounded comrade, who moaned and staggered, leaning on his friend, his broken right leg trailing. Blood ran down his side.

  The unwounded man stared at Gerran, his mouth working. Gerran settled his helm and drew his sword, but the fellow made no move towards him, merely stared as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He’d lost his helm; a greyish-brown colour streaked his tangled mane of hair, and the tattooed skin around his eyes pouched in wrinkles. He wore no breastplate, either, though Gerran saw the marks on his leather jerkin that indicated where one had been.

  ‘You come back,’ the Horsekin said in stumbling Deverrian. ‘You come back from Deathworld.’ His voice failed.

  ‘What?’ Gerran was too surprised to say aught else.

  ‘You come back,’ he stammered. ‘Red hair. I remember.’

  Suddenly Gerran understood. ‘You killed my father. I’m the son.’

  The Horsekin let his wounded comrade slide down to sit behind the barrier of dead horses. He drew his falcata, took a step back, stooped without looking away from Gerran, and came up with a shield in his left hand. Gerran hoisted his own shield down from the saddle peak and slid his left arm into the straps. Every detail of the scene—the aging warrior, the dead horses, the blood and the spill of horse guts across the ground—glowed in a peculiar light, preternaturally sharp, edges drawn like lines bitten into metal.

  Gerran walked around the dead horses. The warrior spun to face him, but he made no move to charge. Gerran hesitated briefly—the man had no helm, no real armour—but in his mind he heard his mother screaming over and over as men slid the bundled corpse of his father down from his saddle. He feinted in to the right side. The Horsekin turned, falcata ready, shield up for a parry. Gerran feinted again, then risked a quick dart forward. Just as Gerran hoped, the Horsekin stepped back, slipped in the spilled guts of his horse, and went down.

  One quick stride, and Gerran stood over him, sword at the ready. The Horsekin tried to bring up his sword and drag his shield part-way over his chest, but Gerran kicked the shield away and struck, plunging his blade down into the man’s chest. Leather split, cartilage cracked, blood gushed. The Horsekin’s breath came in one last blood-flecked rattle.

  ‘If you see my da in the Otherlands,’ Gerran said. ‘Tell him I avenged him.’

  He swung around and with a backhand strike cut the throat of the Horsekin with the broken leg.

  ‘And one for my mother,’ Gerran whispered. ‘Tell him that, too.’

  Two menservants trotted up, slid the body of an unconscious man onto the wagon’s tailgate, then trotted off again. Ranadario stepped forward to grab the man’s legs and hold him down. A skinny lad, his brown hair plastered with blood and sweat, he lay so still that at first Dallandra thought he was dead, but his eyes flicked open, and his mouth moved with pain. His left arm lay at an impossible angle—two impossible angles, she realized, crushed twixt elbow and wrist, then mangled again twixt shoulder and elbow. She grabbed a knife from the array of supplies on the wagon bed and cut away the remains of his padded jerkin and shirt, both of them slippery with blood. Jagged pieces of bone stuck out of what was left of the muscles on his upper arm.

  ‘The arm’s going to have to come off,’ Dallandra said, ‘or you’ll die.’

  His mouth framed soundless words that she took as meaning ‘well and good then’.

  From close behind her she heard someone sob, just once, hastily stifled. She looked around and saw a skinny lass in a dirty dress staring at the wounded man.

  ‘He’s my brother Tarro,’ the lass said. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Grab his good arm and hold it still,’ Dallandra said. ‘Think you can do that? You might get very sick from watching.’

  ‘I won’t. I saw lots worse, you know, when the raiders took our village.’

  ‘Well and good, then. He’s got to hold still.’

  Her patient had fainted again, a blessing. Dallandra took her sharpest scalpel between her teeth and a threaded needle in her right hand and set to work. The joint lay mostly exposed by cuts from a falcata. She dug into it with the fingers of her left hand and found the pink tendons among the white cartilage. Tarro woke, screaming. He arched his back in agony, but Ranadario and the lass held on and hauled him down again. Dallandra leaned onto his chest with her left elbow to pin him further. He kept screaming and tossing his head from side to side, but the three of them could keep him motionless enough for her to work.

  First she stitched the major blood vessels shut above the joint, then tossed the needle aside. She spit the scalpel into her hand, steadied it, and cut the tendons. With her fingers she separated the cartilage and cut again, disjointing his arm from his body much as she would have disjointed a leg of mutton, but she took care to leave a flap of skin all round. Blood oozed from tiny veins rather than gushed. Tarro fainted with one last scream.

  Ranadario grabbed the remains of the limb and tossed it onto the heap of other dead flesh on the wagon bed, whilst Dalla held a thick linen pad to the wound with her left hand and pressed hard. With the right she grabbed a waterskin of herbal brew, then removed the pad and washed the joint and the flap of skin. A small hand gave her a fresh needle, threaded with a single linen strand. The sister seemed as composed as if she’d been a chirurgeon. She was in shock, more likely, but Dalla had no time to worry about her at the moment.

  ‘Please don’t die,’ the lass whispered to her brother. ‘Please, Tarro, don’t die.’

  ‘He won’t,’ Dallandra said. ‘The bleeding’s nowhere near as bad as I feared it would be.’ Probably, she thought, because he’s already bled half to death.

  But only half—once she’d stitched the wound, puckering the skin around his new stump like the end of a sausage, Dalla laid her hand on his face, cold and pale, but not deathly cold and bloodless, though his eyelids did have a bluish tint. If nothing more happened to the wound, if it stayed free of infection, he probably would live. She washed it all down again, then bound it with clean linen.

  The menservants trotted forward. Dallandra turned to the lass. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Penna, my lady. My thanks for helping him.’ She ran off, following her brother as the servants carried him away.

  Ranadario grabbed a waiting bucket of water and sluiced down the blood-soaked tailgate. Dallandra moved away from the gore flecked run-off and looked around. Head down, Salamander was striding along the lines of wounded men. She could guess whom he was searching for.

  ‘Ebañy!’ Dallandra called out. ‘Rocca’s not been brought in.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ He raised his head to look her way. ‘Of course you are. I’ll go look in the fortress.’

  ‘Not now, you howling dolt! It’s too dangerous.’

  Salamander ran off, heading for the battlefield.

  ‘Shall I go after him?’ Ranadario said.

  ‘No.’ Dallandra shrugged. ‘He won’t listen, and the wounded need you more.’

  Salamander had been trying to scry for Rocca, only to have the smoke and the vast etheric disturbance of the battle defeat him. The etheric doubles of the men who had just died drifted helplessly across the field. Their spilled blood gave off life-stuff in waves of mist. The burning, too, filled the air around
it with swirling vortices of astral energy. Finally Salamander gave it up. He could stand waiting no longer and went physically to the battlefield, where he crept around the battle’s edge from the north.

  Around him the fighting flared sporadically, just as a fire appears dead only to burst into flame when a servant stirs the ashes. Here and there Horsekin warriors made a stand, only to be cut down by Deverry men in twos and threes. An arrow whistled close by him—far too close, and Salamander began yelling out Prince Dar’s name in Elvish to make sure the archers realized he was no enemy. Once he stumbled over a dying man and apologized without thinking before he hurried on again.

  The wooden walls of Zakh Gral still blazed when Salamander reached them. The heat drove him back, a searing second wall, far more impassable than mere wood and stone. A memory from his brief time there surfaced. He ran down to the cliff edge on the north side of the fortress and found what he was remembering, a breach in a stretch of half-finished stone wall, probably left for a postern gate. The stone blocks now lay cracked and steaming, but he could pick his way through. The heat still clawed at him. He gasped for breath and pushed himself onward.

  Once he got inside, he stopped running and considered his position while he panted for breath. Where would Rocca have gone? Eventually, she would try to flee, but he knew that she’d never leave without making sure the sacred relics were safe. He ran towards the little stone shrine, or rather, what was now the ruins of the shrine. The dwarven fire had burnt out the roof beams, and the roof itself had collapsed. Flames had cracked and blackened the fine stonework.

  All around it lay dead and dying Gel da’ Thae. They had tried to save their goddess’s shrine and failed as Westfolk arrows rained down, killing the lucky ones outright. The others—the bitumen mixture had stuck like fangs to their flesh wherever it had struck them. Tiny flames still danced on blackened faces and arms turned to cinders. One man raised his charred head and called out to Salamander, ‘Kill me, kill me! For her sake!’ Salamander broke into a run and hurried past. Here and there an overturned bucket lay in a pool of water, but the black fire floated, still burning, in the puddles.