The Gathering of the Lost

by Helen Lowe

  One attacker turned out to have been only stunned and leapt to his feet with blade and teeth bared when Carick grabbed his shoulders. It was Malisande who killed him, knocking aside the knife with the flat of her snatched-up ladyspike, then thrusting the point through the attacker’s chest. “That felt good, after the Rindle,” was all she said, as they threw the body onto the pile of attacker dead. The corpses all looked human beneath the hides and unkempt hair, Carick noted, with no sign of beast-men yet. He snatched another look at the struggling line along the parapet and wondered why, since the hunters’ uncanny powers might well tip the balance against the defenders.

  Malisande hesitated when he said so, the shoulders of the next body propped against her knees. “Some powers are stronger at different times of the day—or night. It may be that.” But she did not sound certain, and Carick wondered if she, too, had noticed the way the beast-men held back from attacking Raven. He turned another attacker over, feeling the emaciation beneath the rags—and reflected that the beast-men might simply be relying on numbers prevailing in the end, and so not placing themselves at risk.

  “Or,” Malisande said, “they may fear us. They know we have power, too, after this morning—and those heralds are something more than I’d expected.” She resumed dragging the body clear, but he caught her considering look, one that said, as clearly as if she had spoken out loud: And then there’s you . . . Before he could reply, she straightened, gazing up at the wall. “It’s over.”

  She was right. The wrestling, shoving combat was done, all the defenders crouched below the parapet again.

  “Repulsed,” Brania said from the gate. The fair-haired herald, too, had been posted there—the reason, Carick was almost sure, that the gate had held. His eyes searched both wall and yard, looking for faces he knew. The squires’ dead were relatively few, compared to the attackers, but Tibalt was among them, the moth-shaped birthmark livid on his cheek. Carick swallowed hard, because he could still see the dirt on the squire’s gloves from trying to shift the gate such a short time before. Yet now Tibalt would never return to Normarch, or take his rightful place as a knight of Emer.

  Emer was not the River, with its long tradition of peace. Carick had known that before he accepted the Duke’s invitation, but now, experiencing the reality for himself— “War and death,” he whispered, shaking his head.

  “Is what the Northern March still is,” Ghiselaine said simply. Raven had ordered her well back, away from the fighting, but now she was helping with the wounded and the dead. Her expression, as she surveyed Tibalt, was set. “Once it was the same throughout Emer. And now we are fighting for the peace of the north again.”

  “Of all Emer,” Audin said, walking down the steps from the wall. Raher and Girvase were with him—and Carick finally saw Hamar, half a pace behind with Jarna in his shadow. But the squire’s normally open, cheerful expression was stone, his arms and torso caked in dried blood beneath fresh splashes from the recent fighting. Carick felt his own expression tighten. He was not sure he wanted to know who or what that old blood belonged to, and made himself focus on what Audin was saying. “If we lose you, Ghis, it will mean civil war again, as like as not.”

  “And the north could well be lost.” Hamar’s tone matched his expression, each word bitten off.

  Audin nodded. “Emer would be cut off from the River and lose the overland trade to Ishnapur that has grown again with the peace.”

  “Or looked at another way,” the herald Tarathan said, descending from the wall behind them, “the River would then be isolated, cut off from the lands to the south.” His dark voice compelled attention, and this time it was Hamar who nodded.

  “That may well be what our enemies are trying to achieve with all these attacks.”

  No one said anything. They all knew that without Normarch, the north would fall. Carick frowned, because most people on the River—if they thought about Emer at all—would consider it only in terms of a remote backwater. Few would dream that events here could harm them or put the River at risk.

  Ghiselaine’s expression hardened, and for the first time Carick saw the shadow of the rulers who had held Ormond against the rest of Emer for centuries. “Then I had better stay alive.”

  “You had.” Audin looked as though he wanted to draw her close, although he did not move. “And we must hold here.”

  Raher gave a short bark of laughter. “Despite limited supplies and no knowing when relief will come.”

  “If it comes at all,” Malisande muttered, glancing toward the sunset sky, and Carick remembered her speculation that the beast-men’s power might be stronger at night.

  “We hold,” Hamar said harshly, “or we die.”

  “Another night for Karn,” Girvase muttered, but the fair-haired herald, who had come to join them, shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “Throughout Haarth, tonight belongs to Imuln.”

  They ate a scanty meal in what would once have been the fort’s main hall, all aware that another attack could come at any moment. Ser Raven expected it, in fact, Audin told them: it was why the knight wanted everyone to eat and rest in shifts.

  “He wants us to dig out the latrine—and a pit for the bodies as well,” Raher said gloomily. “Says we can’t have them rotting in the yard. But digging’s no work for a knight.”

  A few of the squires grinned at that, but the atmosphere was subdued. The fair-haired herald’s name—Carick finally learned, as Audin turned to speak with her—was Jehane Mor. She and Tarathan had been returning from a long journey through Aralorn, then around into Lathayra, when their path crossed that of the were-hunters. Since then they had been running and dodging through the hills, trying to reach Normarch and safety.

  Much as I did, Carick reflected—except that I was not pursued by beast-men. Or were-hunters, as the heralds had called them. His memory stirred at the name, as though he had heard it before. Perhaps there had been a reference in some book he had read at the university, or someone had told a story with were-hunters in it, the summers he worked on the River barges—but Carick could not place the recollection. He looked up to find Hamar watching him. “Not quite what you expected, I imagine, when you left the River?”

  Carick shook his head. “I don’t think anyone expects beast-men. Were-hunters,” he amended, with a quick glance at the heralds.

  “Beast-men, were-hunters.” Girvase’s voice was hard. “What does it matter what you call them? They still did for Darin.”

  The screams, Carick thought. Audin leaned forward. “You were together?” he asked. But it was Hamar who answered.

  “Girvase and I met up with Darin after he’d sent Aymil back.” He ran a hand through his hair. “We agreed to separate again and scout further ahead, then rendezvous at the road. But a wind gust must have brought the beast-men Gir’s and my scent. We fled, but they’re faster than a horse in the woods and caught us, pulling my mount down. We fought free, but more beast-men were coming.” He shrugged. “They would have done for us if the heralds had not arrived.”

  Carick glanced at the blood on Hamar again, then away, but could not shut out the series of vivid images that flooded across his mind: the dead horse, and Hamar and Girvase with their backs against a rock; the heavy musk of the beast-men as they came in with raking claws and bloodied canines; the shimmer of power in the air. One beast-man circled, leaping onto the rock above them—and Tarathan of Ar rode out of the trees, shooting it in mid-leap.

  Girvase had been frowning down at the stone floor they were all sitting on, but now he looked up. “I agreed to ride and warn the rest of you while the others tried to draw off the hunt. I met Darin again just before we both reached the road, but his horse had gone lame—and the beast-men came at us just as we saw your cavalcade.” His face twisted. “Darin yelled at me to ride on, to warn you.”

  “You had to ride straight down that hillside,” Jarna said softly. “Even with a sound horse, Darin could never have done that.”

  “Not many
of us could.” Hamar’s grimness eased, into a quick smile for Jarna before he looked across at Girvase. “But Darin would have known you had a chance.”

  “He was riding Onyx,” Raher protested. “That would give anyone a chance.”

  “Not you,” Hamar retorted, “even on Onyx the Sure-Footed.”

  But Girvase, Carick thought, still looked haunted. He wondered if the squire would always hear the screams from the hill—assuming any of them survived this siege.

  Girvase stood up. “I’m going to check on Alli,” he said, then glanced at Jehane Mor. “I won’t disturb her.”

  The herald nodded, but said nothing. Audin cleared his throat. “We should get back to the wall, relieve the others. Hamar—”

  Hamar nodded. “I know. The pit for the bodies.”

  “I’ll help,” Carick said, beginning to rise. A horn sounded, blowing the alarm, and he was almost knocked over as both the squires and heralds rushed for the door. The damosels, too, were grabbing their weapons as Malisande steadied him.

  “I fear what’s coming in the dark hours,” she muttered as they emerged into the dusk-filled yard.

  We all do, Carick thought—before plunging into another nightmare round of clearing away bodies and dodging arrows as they hailed down, only to gather them up again. And this time, the second attack was followed almost immediately by a third, including an assault on the gate.

  “Fire!” Aymil yelled from the wall. “They’ve gotten brushwood against the gate and set it alight.” Soon there was a chain of damosels with any vessel that would hold water, including dead men’s helmets, while Brania and Ilaise came staggering with the other half of the rain barrel.

  “Dirt,” Malisande said, grabbing up the shovels. She and Carick dug furiously, piling earth onto cloaks and hauling them to the rampart, where they tipped their contents onto the smoking brushwood below. The torches across the plateau were like a galaxy of baleful stars in the gathering night, and dark shapes swarmed beneath them, pressing toward the walls. Inside the fort, Jehane Mor knelt on the makeshift barricade, her gloved palms flat against the braced gate. Her face was expressionless—but even as Carick turned to fetch more dirt, the brushwood fire collapsed and the herald’s eyes opened, meeting his.

  Carick reeled, dizzy again, and had to clutch at the wall beside the stairs to stay upright. Keep going, he told himself, hoping no one else had noticed and thought him weak or afraid. Later, when the assault finally fell back, he picked up one of the spades and began digging the pit Raven had asked for. Ghiselaine called Malisande to help with the wounded, and although Brania brought one of the pitch torches to light his work, she wedged it into a gap between the lean-to and the stable and did not stay.

  The torch’s light was sullen, but steady enough, and once it was clear that the next attack would not come soon, both Hamar and Tarathan arrived to spell him. “You’ve done enough,” Hamar said. “You need to rest.”

  What about you? Carick wanted to ask, knowing they were setting a different standard for him. But when he looked at the blisters on his palms, he decided to just be thankful for the respite—and once he sat down on the mounting block by the stable door, the weariness that hit him was so great he thought he might never stand up again.

  Hamar and Tarathan worked in a steady rhythm and the digging went more quickly, but although the night was growing cool, both were soon sweating and stripped to the waist. Hamar, Carick could not help noticing, still had skin unblemished by wounds, while the herald carried old scars. Blade cuts, in fact—and here Carick sat up a little, despite his exhaustion, as he recalled how Tarathan had always been in the thick of the fighting on the wall. Not, he reflected, what the River expected of a herald at all.

  Although what sort of life did heralds lead, really? Were they born to the gray, or could someone like Tarathan of Ar have had another life before joining the Guild? Carick sighed, stretching out his legs—and nearly tripped Malisande as she walked past. Her eyes flashed at him, gold in the torchlight, but Marten joined them before Carick could apologize.

  “Ser Raven says you’re wanted,” the guard said. “All of you, up on the wall.”

  An all-out attack must be coming, Carick thought, groaning inwardly as he pushed himself to his feet and crossed the yard. Raven and Solaan were waiting at the top of the gate stair, their faces masks of sweat and grime and blood, with Girvase close by on Solaan’s left. The remaining defenders were scattered around the wall and their numbers looked pitifully thin. Soon they would be too few to hold the perimeter, even with the limestone bluffs to protect much of it. Carick shook his head to push such dark thoughts away, then jumped as Jehane Mor came quietly up the stairs behind him. “What’s happening?” she asked.

  “They pulled back into the woods after the last attack,” Solaan said, “but now they’re massing again.”

  “Ay, they’re something more than an outlaw rabble.” Carick followed Raven’s gaze out to the dark bulk of hill and forest, with the horde’s torches massed along what he guessed must be the road. “They may look wild, but the way they’ve pushed those attacks there has to be at least a stiffening of trained fighters amongst them.”

  “That would better explain their numbers as well,” Girvase said. “Even if they have recruited every outlaw band between here and Aeris.”

  “Any sign of a ram yet?” Hamar asked. He had pulled his shirt back on as they crossed the yard and was buckling on his armor.

  Raven shook his head. “They’ll have to cut down a tree and will want daylight for that. Solaan thinks something else is stirring out there.”

  The Hill woman, Carick saw, was watching the heralds, who both had their heads turned, studying the horde. “The were-hunts?” Tarathan asked.

  Solaan nodded. “I fear so.

  Carick glanced at Malisande, who had also feared what would come during the darkest hours. But Solaan’s gaze remained fixed on the heralds—or more correctly, Carick realized, on Jehane Mor. “Tonight belongs to Imuln,” the Hill woman said, repeating the herald’s exact words from after the first attack. “I do not ask lightly,” she added, and Jehane Mor nodded without looking around.

  Ask what? Carick wondered. He shot a glance at Raven, but the knight was as impassive as the heralds behind his grime. Hamar finished strapping on his sword. “Solaan’s right,” he said. “Something bad is brewing. I can feel it, too.”

  Carick stared toward the road again and saw that bonfires had been spaced at intervals amongst the army of torches, with dark shapes bulked around them. A gout of flame leapt up from the central fire, silhouetting bestial heads and grotesque helms—or were the two one and the same?

  “They’re stronger at night,” Malisande said, half under her breath. “We may need Alli . . .” Her voice trailed off again, but her arm brushed Carick’s and he felt her tension. Solaan’s focus remained on Jehane Mor. As though she’s waiting for something, Carick thought, and despite fear and danger he remained aware of the detached observer within himself—waiting, too.

  Beyond the wall, a howl rose and fell away, followed by a series of yammering shouts from the horde. A second howl came, wilder and more ferocious than the first, and Jehane Mor finally turned to Solaan. “I fear you are right about what’s coming,” she said calmly. “And that only a great working will prevent the worst.”

  Solaan hesitated, and Carick could not shake the sense of a second layer of meaning to the communication between herald and Hill woman. But Jehane Mor was already studying the surrounding wall. “The gate is the weakest point so I will need to remain here, with the rest of the Seven spaced evenly around the perimeter—and Tarathan farthest from me. Hamar, you stand with him.” Hamar nodded. “Solaan and Carick will take the positions on either side of me.”

  I don’t belong in this, Carick thought. I’m a River scholar, a student of logic and reason, not an Oakward adept with powers born from Emer’s dark past. All I’ve really done is help Alianor; she’s the one with the power. He wanted to pr
otest—but looked around at the others’ grim faces and remained silent.

  “Malisande.” Jehane Mor’s eyes rested on the dark-haired damosel. “I need you on Tarathan’s other side. Girvase, you take the place one along from her.”

  The howling across the plateau had risen to a crescendo as the herald spoke, and showed no sign of abating. The bonfires were flinging out vermilion flame, and a pack of five or six beast-men paced around each conflagration. Carick stared, puzzled, then rubbed at his eyes before looking again. One of the beast-men padded away from the central fire toward the fort—then howled and circled the blaze again. This time Carick was sure of what he had seen: the monster’s silhouette had expanded as it moved around the flames. All the beast-men, he realized, were growing larger with each circuit.

  And when they were large enough—Carick’s skin crawled, knowing that the fort’s low walls would prove no barrier to the giant were-hunters. The horde surrounding the bonfires swayed and growled, foreseeing the same moment. Jehane Mor, however, turned her back on them completely.

  “This working is called Seven,” she said, “and is sacred to Imuln, which means that it is also an invocation and those performing it must stand upright. So we will need a psychic shield to fool the eyes that watch us.” She looked from Girvase to Hamar. “Normally concealment would be my role, but tonight I must be the summoner. So you two will have to do it.” The squires nodded, their expressions serious.

  And me? Carick wondered. His throat was dry and his palms sweating, but he kept his voice steady. “Are you sure I can play the part you want?”

  Jehane Mor considered him. “There is power in you,” she said finally, “although it has only begun to unlock. Keep your mind focused, but open to mine, and the rest will happen of its own accord.”

  Carick was not sure he liked the sound of that, as though he would be giving up control over himself. But there was no time for argument. The beast-men were still growing, and the shouting from the massed attackers had built into a dull roar. The others moved to their places, crouching low beneath the ramparts as they waited for Jehane Mor’s signal. Carick fought to keep his mind clear and his breathing steady, blocking out the sound of the horde. He wiped his sweating palms and noticed that a fine mist had begun to rise above the open ground. The horde surged forward and then back again as black figures, antlike beside the growing bulk of the were-hunters, threw more fuel onto the bonfires. The flames leapt redly up and the were-hunters howled in unison.