Fury of the Falcon (The Falcons Saga 5)

by Ellyn, Court

  Drona huffed. “Apologies, sire. We’ll rout these bastards soon enough.”

  Arryk shifted in the saddle, uneasy as he surveyed the battlefield. “No Elarion. We should’ve brought Miraji with us. Just a few could help us turn the tide here.”

  Drona bowed a departure. “I’ll inform Kelyn’s son to request Miraji specifically, sire.”

  It was as if Arryk’s unease was a prediction. In days after Laral would wonder at it, tormented. The white cloaks, brilliant under the noontime sun, provided too tempting a target perhaps. Or maybe the Mother-Father was merely calling in dues.

  The horses stamped and fought the reins suddenly. A rank wind wafted. Laral’s skin prickled; his ears rang. He reached to unsheathe Contention, but only feet away the air shivered and parted, and the ogres were upon them. A hammer like an anvil crashed down upon his horse’s skull. The ground rose fast. Laral rolled to his feet and danced free of the Mantles trying to form a cluster about their king.

  The hammer swung wildly, as if the ogre were beating a path through grain. A gray scaly patch of skin twisted half of the ogre’s snarling face. A dozen more followed him, divided left and right and surrounded the Mantles.

  Contention sliced low, hamstringing those great tree-trunk legs, then high at vitals as the ogres toppled.

  “To the king!” came a shout. Drona rallied her troops in reserve, her request for Miraji never delivered. A company of Fierans charged, roaring.

  Pikes buried deep and swords slashed. A dog whined, and the whining stopped on a high-pitched crescendo. The mighty hammer swept, crushing man and horse. Red-stained white strewed the ground. A spread of cloaks like trampled snow, one of them trimmed in ermine.

  Laral bellowed a protest. “Arryk!” Where was he? One of the cloaks shifted. A sword jabbed out and pierced the scarred ogre’s foot. A moment of relief as Laral realized that many among the mound of Mantles still lived. Arryk was buried beneath them.

  The scarred ogre brayed and tore his foot free, leaving a toe behind. He raised the hammer over his head, aiming for the center of the pile of Mantles. Contention found bare skin under the ogre’s armpit. The ogre whirled in surprise, fist leveled. Laral scrambled back, narrowly missing a crushed face. The hammer followed and crashed across the greatsword. The blade flexed, then snapped. A foot-long shard of jagged steel remained.

  Before the ogre hauled the hammer’s cumbersome weight back again, Laral made a running leap and jabbed the broken blade under the ogre’s jaw. The hammer fell, landing solid on its head. As blood pumped from his throat, the ogre wrapped both arms around Laral, raising him off the ground, squeezing, squeezing.

  Ah, Goddess, his spine would snap. The heel of his hand smashed against the moonstone gargoyle, ramming the broken blade through vertebrae. The ogre’s arms dropped limp. Laral shoved free as the creature collapsed.

  Fieran militia fell upon the corpse. Anger and fear drove their pikes long past need. Twelve ogres lay dead. None of the enemy squad had escaped. Woodbine lay among them, a blade through her ribcage. Daisy sniffed the wound and lay down, whining, beside her sister.

  The Mantles untangled themselves. Those who could run raced through camp crying, “Orderly! Orderly!”

  At the bottom of the pile, one of the Mantles didn’t move. He wore the captain’s winged helm. For an instant, Laral thought Rance had been slain, like so many of his brethren. Then Laral saw his shoulders shaking and heard the sobs. There was a whistling sound, exactly the sound Andy had made in the moments before he died. The blood drained from Laral’s head, and he dived to his knees at the king’s side.

  Rance pushed himself up, and his breastplate was slick with blood.

  Arryk had taken the hammer full in the chest. His splendid hutza armor, the breastplate and the cascade of scales, had shattered like glass. Pieces of the dark steel lay scattered around. Shards like shrapnel were embedded in his abdomen, among misshapen ribs. And that awful whistling as he struggled to breathe.

  A wail went up as the Fieran militia saw who lay among the casualties.

  “No, no, sire, no!” cried Drona, falling down at Arryk’s feet.

  “Daryon,” Laral said. “He’ll mend you, sire. Hold on.” He cast about the astonished gathering. “Someone fetch that bastard, now!”

  “I’ll go.” Still in the saddle, Kethlyn peered over the heads of the militia. He turned his horse and galloped away as fast the animal could carry him.

  ~~~~

  Kelyn ducked into the green pavilion, half a step behind the avedra. Though he hadn’t been summoned, once he heard the name on his son’s lips and saw the despair in his eyes, Kelyn had left Sha’hadýn in command of the field and come anyway.

  Only half the Mantles guarded the pavilion. The other half lay among enemies or in the hospital tents. Two surgeons consulted in a tight huddle, shaking their heads.

  The king’s sleeping quarters were partitioned behind a silk flap. Drona stood gray-faced at the foot of the cot. Laral paced manically. When he saw Daryon, he shouted demands.

  Kelyn had half-expected Kethlyn’s news to have been exaggerated. A king cutting his finger or stubbing his toe was often treated as an ordeal. This time, Kelyn decided the messenger had underestimated the scope of the danger.

  Lacerations latticed Arryk’s chest and belly. Bones were not where they should be. Pink froth bubbled at the corner of his mouth. A rattling wheeze squeezed from his throat. Broken bits of metal lay at the bottom of a water-filled basin. Larger shards still protruded from the king’s flesh. The surgeons were arguing how best to extricate them.

  The abyssal liquid, Kelyn realized. It ravaged the dwarven magic that turned the steel to hutza. Of course.

  Ah, Goddess, he’d ordered the dwarves right into the middle of the black mist. He’d thought himself so clever. Too late. If he ordered the dwarves to move to different ground, their armor would disintegrate under an ogre onslaught. The mist that doomed them was now their only protection.

  Daryon knelt beside the cot. His hands settled lightly on Arryk’s belly, his chest. After a brief inspection, he groaned, sat back on his heels, muttered something.

  Laral alone heard. “Don’t tell me that, damn you. You saved me, and who am I? Save him!”

  The avedra rounded on him. “This isn’t a single stab wound, Laral. There’s nothing left intact. You understand? This will take hours! Ribs are piercing organs, what am I supposed to do about that?”

  The pained wheeze changed rhythm. Arryk’s mouth moved. Laral leaned closer. “Letters, what letters? The letters you told me about?”

  Arryk raised a slow hand, found his undershirt had been cut away. “In my shirt. My shirt.”

  Laral fetched the bloody ruin from the ground, fumbled around inside it, and tore free two folded parchments pinned to the inside. “I have them.” The White Falcon’s seal was pressed into Aralorri blue wax.

  The king’s hand beckoned. His glance fell on Drona and Kelyn both. Together they rounded the cot and knelt side by side. Across from them, Daryon took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and got to work.

  “Living … past my time,” Arryk gasped.

  Drona laid a hand to his shoulder. “Later, sire. Let the poppy wine work. Sleep.”

  He shook his head. “Supposed to die. At Bramoran. Your daughter … defied a Goddess. Everything I wanted … never to be.”

  “Are we to read the letters, sire?” Laral asked, examining the elegant hand on the envelopes. “One is addressed to Raed, ‘Lord Chancellor and … and Regent.’ The other to—” His eyes widened a fraction. “The newly elected sovereign of Aralorr.”

  Again a shake of the head. “Right time will come. Letters will start a war. Or stop one. Honor my words. Laral? Laral?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Make this happen. Or I leave nothing of worth. Forgive me … my dream.” His breath caught in his throat and his pupils widened. Daryon’s hands leapt away. The avedra shuddered and hid his face. The White Falcon breathed his spir
it into the light, and there was no one to call it back.

  ~~~~

  38

  Carah raised her face to the noontime sunlight dancing through leaves. Had anything felt as glorious as the warmth of the sun on her skin, or smelled as fine as green-scented wind? Water burbled from the earth, and a great cottonwood tree arched over the spring, shedding fluff as delicate as fairy lace.

  The avedrin gathered at the source of the Leathyr River. They discarded filthy outer garments and scrubbed their skin with handfuls of wet earth, then doused themselves clean in the pool. They had escaped into the wonder of a moon-laden night. The slow emerging of dawn had been kind, but now the glare of full daylight ached in sun-deprived eyes. The shade beneath the tree provided relief.

  Other than Doc and Jaedren, Rhian and Carah, only three avedrin had won free: the Doreli man who had taken offense when asked if he had skill enough to incinerate an ogre; a youth with the sleek black hair, bisque-pale skin, and almond-shaped eyes of an Hereti; and a Dovnyan woman whose coloring was so fair that Carah thought her a wraith or an albino.

  The two avedrin who had clung to each other in the Pit had fallen together. When the chieftain of Fire Spear dived in among the fleeing avedrin, his great paw had crushed the skull of one of them. The other had fallen, screaming, across the body, and a blade had silenced the screaming.

  Carah hadn’t witnessed it; Doc told the sad tale when they tallied their numbers at sunrise. The flight from Brogula Kaem had devastated their strength. All night they had traveled, but dawn revealed they had hiked only three or four miles. The craggy face of the Kaem glowered within sight of the spring.

  Uncle Thorn explained that the Regulars formed a barricade below the ugly up-thrust of rock, to hinder the ogres from pursuing. Not that many ogres showed interest in reclaiming Lothiar’s lost prisoners.

  When first they arrived beneath the great spreading tree, Laniel had helped Carah step down into the chill, clear water of the pool. “Was our rescue worthy of a tale or two?” he’d asked.

  She’d laid a hand to his cheek, her thumb tracing the green stripes curling over his cheekbone. “It was. Dragonslayer.”

  He’d pressed on a smile, but sorrow crouched in his eyes. His troop, too, was diminished in number. Danellys, who had lost her twin at Bexby Field, had seemed intent on seeking out a blade. Claws had opened Tarathien’s throat.

  Even now, Ynora and Jevanyth and several others gathered some distance away from the spring, facing the Kaem, inconsolable. They keened in harmony.

  Azhien and Lianthyr drifted among the avedrin, tending wounds and fevers with what few herbs they carried in their packs. A light touch brushed Carah’s shoulder. “Hungry?” Azhien offered her a steaming cup. In the coals of a small fire, a kettle bubbled. The Elarion had snared rabbits to boil.

  Carah peered into the cup. The broth was thin, but smelled far better than turnip mush. “I’d box you for one of those rabbit haunches.”

  Azhien’s smile was apologetic. “Not yet.”

  He was right. Food more substantial than broth might make her ill. She took the cup, grateful, and drank it down. She sighed. A dash of salt, a hint of wild onion, an herb she couldn’t name. Delectable.

  When the cup was empty she rinsed it in the spring, refilled it with cold water and carried it to Doc. He sat cross-legged at the edge of the shifting shade, the sun on his back. He rocked and hummed softly, one hand stretched out. A soft glow enveloped his fingers as they hovered over Jaedren’s face. The boy lay curled in the grass at his knee.

  Doc took the cup, muttering thanks, and tilted up Jaedren’s head. “Drink, kid.” The blade had narrowly missed cleaving open the boy’s skull. An angry gash slanted down his forehead, across his left eye and cheekbone.

  When Jaedren had drunk his fill, Doc lowered him down again. “Sleep, eh?” The Ixakan turned to Carah, miserable. “I cannot save his eye.”

  They had both tried. Bone and flesh mended more easily; an eye, it seemed, was too intricate. Maybe, given time and hours of painstaking work, maybe then.

  Pain and fever sapped Jaedren’s spirit. He clutched Carah’s tin cup, refused to part with it. The baernavë key rattled inside. “They killed my fairy,” he muttered. His good eye opened and peered up at Carah. “They killed Aster. They put her in a box and she died.”

  Carah smoothed away a lock of hair blowing across the gash. “I know, dearest.”

  Rhian’s Zephyr, too, was lost. How many others? On their flight from the caverns, the avedrin had not discovered where Lothiar stowed the tiny prisons. Carah imagined fists as small as juniper berries beating on baernavë hatches, their light slowly dwindling, like candle-flames deprived of air.

  Saffron hovered over the banks of the Leathyr, vernal light flaring like a star. What was left when a fairy died? wondered Carah. A brittle husk? A puff of breath? A dark hole? Nothing?

  “Hush, kid.” Doc’s fingers pressed Jaedren’s eye shut. “Dream of her, and she’ll live again.”

  Jaedren whimpered. “I can’t. Hurts too bad.”

  Carah beckoned Saffron and gave her the nod. The fairy blew a soft crocus-scented breath across Jaedren’s face. The whimpers trailed away, his shoulders relaxed, his eye closed, and he slept.

  “Can I bring you broth, Doc?” asked Carah, rising.

  He released a great breath, many burdens shedding from his shoulders, and looked her in the eye. “My name is Idéha Kembe.”

  The restoration of his hope was like leaves budding from ashes. Carah smiled, delighted.

  Once Doc and his patient were comfortable, Carah eased down the reedy bank and knelt beside Rhian. Since arriving at the pool, he hadn’t left the water. He sat waist-deep, hands open to let the current pass through his fingers. He stared listlessly into the gentle eddies, past the reflection of leaf-patched sky, past the sandy bottom, at nothing. Carah wrapped an arm about his chest, set her chin on his shoulder. Fire burned under his skin. “With your fever you shouldn’t stay in the water. You’re already chilled.”

  He appeared not to hear her. Had he entered the trance again? Carah inspected his eyes. They were not dilated. Wet hair clung to his neck, faint still with the smell of an ogre den. Carah’s fingers raked it back.

  Only then did he stir. He inhaled deeply, and his hand rose from the water to clasp her arm to his chest. “I dreamt I swam in the sea. Deep in the dark waters. The oysters opened for me, to give me their pearls. And the seal … she … she had your eyes.”

  Carah pressed her lips to his temple before her sob broke free. She wanted to hold onto him, but it would be like holding water in her fist. To heal, the Son of the Sea would have to return to the sea. One day soon, she would have to open her hand and let him go.

  “Come out and let the sun warm you.” She pried him to his feet and helped him onto a sunny stretch of bank. She brought him a cup of broth and ensured he drank every drop, then he stretched out in the tall grass and let the sun lull him to sleep.

  Some of the others were not so relaxed. With deep suspicion, the Hereti youth watched the Elarion as they keened, as they passed by in silence. He muttered in his own language, something sharp and bitter.

  Nearby, the Doreli man shaved a heavy growth of beard with a borrowed dagger. The hostility in the youth’s voice compelled him to lower the blade. “Anyone-a speak-a this babble?”

  Doc shrugged. “He says we’re in a fine fix. Prisoners again of the same.”

  “What nonsense!” Carah declared.

  “Let it go, love.” Laniel stooped to remove the kettle from the coals, poured broth into a cup. “He’s sick with fear. Surely you can detect that.” He was right. Waves of fear rolled off the youth and put a knot in Carah’s belly.

  Laniel offered the cup to the Hereti. “We’re taking you to a place where you can heal. Then we’ll find a way to get you home. Tell him that.”

  The youth glared at the cup, at the hand offering it, at Laniel’s face that resembled the face of another. If he heard Doc
’s translation, it didn’t change his conviction. Laniel set the cup beside him. “That’s the last of it. A starving man is a fool to waste it.”

  The Dovnyan woman tip-toed forward. “H-how? To get us to home.” She pointed at Carah. “This girl … she say we come around the world. Dovnya, my home, across the Great Fire Sea. East or west? We are travel here in … in …” She snapped her fingers to express the words she did not know.

  Laniel set a gentle hand on her arm. “I don’t know. Whether by ship or by portal, you will see your families again.”

  The ritual keening broke off suddenly. “Brannië!” cried Ynora, turning to face the shade. “Naenion.” Bows slid free of back harnesses; strings stretched into place.

  Nimble as a stag, Laniel leapt up the western bank. Carah scrambled after him. She craned her neck, but it didn’t help her define the trouble any better. The hills sloped down toward the marshes of the Gloamheath, and the Kaem rose from the ogre-blighted valley. She discerned movement, a gray smudge approaching across the far grasses, more than a mile away.

  Laniel squinted across the sunlight. His sharp eyes saw the truth of the matter. “Myol, I knew we’d lingered too long.” Twice he and Uncle Thorn had urged the avedrin to leave the clear, sweet waters of the spring, and twice they had pleaded to stay.

  He shouted toward the cottonwood tree. “Dathiel! We must get them moving.”

  Uncle Thorn peeled himself away from the twisted trunk, yawned and stretched.

  Beside the pool, the avedrin stirred. Rhian jolted from sleep all too quickly and stumbled sideways, faint. Doc scooped up Jaedren, who slept undisturbed, swaddled in Saffron’s spell.

  “No, please,” cried the Dovnyan woman. “I cannot walk more. Please.”

  “Ogres are tracking you,” Laniel insisted. “If you stay, you will be captured again. Or killed outright. My sister’s camp is two miles downstream. You will be safer there.” He and Thorn had agreed to bring them to the spring instead, so they could weep and bathe and rest in solitude rather than surrounded by Elaran soldiers whom they had no reason to trust.