Stillbright

by Daniel M Ford

  But what frightened him most, somehow, was not returning to face the paladin. What frightened him most was giving that man, that bright hard thing within him, reason to notice him, reason to judge him and find him lacking.

  So Bannerman Orin Milfair got to his feet, and started pumping them down the road. When he made it past the pickets, he could still hear the noise and alarm behind him, and he began worrying at the stitches of his patches of rank, three green circles, upon his sleeves.

  * * *

  “In my own camp!” Lionel Delondeur raged. “An assassin! That woman that follows him about, it had to be!”

  The raging, the volume of it, was a problem for Nyndstir for two reasons. First was that it was keeping him from sleep, which very little had the power to do. Second was that it meant an assassin had come for the Baron and failed. Shoulda made freezing sure, he thought to himself, as he rolled out from under the wrapping of furs he’d pulled right near the edge of a campfire. Nyndstir sat up, feeling his age, and listened to the baron yell.

  Delondeur had been in council with the sorcerers earlier that night and had taken the long route back to his own camp, and then returned at haste with a strong mounted guard all bearing lanterns.

  Not very well hidden anymore, he thought to himself, eyeing the Baron’s guards standing about in the leafless wood, lanterns forming shifting pools of light, as he stood, rewrapped his furs casually about himself, took up his axe, and went looking for something to drink.

  He didn’t wander too far, though, because he wanted to hear more of this. Why, he wasn’t sure he knew; knowing the plans of men like the sorcerers and the Baron was a good way to find yourself included in them, or dead.

  “We must hit them with everything. Everything, as soon as we can,” the Baron was yelling from inside the wagon. There was some hushed discussion, as if the sorcerers were trying to calm or dissuade him.

  Nyndstir was staring hard at the door of the wagon when it suddenly opened, and he turned back to his search for a drink. Finally among the jumble of packs he found a clay jar that sloshed promisingly, uncorked it, and had a sip.

  The Baron stormed out, cloak billowing dramatically behind him, and immediately his lantern-bearers surrounded him.

  “Why the lanterns, Baron?” Gethmasanar followed Delondeur out, the yellow trails leaking from him hanging sickly in the air behind him.

  “She calls herself the shadow. Keep it bright enough around me to banish shadows and the witch can’t find me,” the Baron huffed.

  “I see.” The sorcerer paused. Nyndstir liked to imagine that he was holding in laughter, but didn’t think he wanted to know what a sorcerer’s laughter sounded like. “No doubt we can devise a more effective protection, given time.”

  “There isn’t time,” the Baron yelled. “I want this town erased, this religious nonsense stamped out, I want Coldbourne’s head. And his witch’s, for good measure.”

  “We want the man Allystaire,” the sorcerer replied. “As well as the body of the boy, the dwarf, and the girl priestess. You may have the witch.”

  “I’ll have what I Cold-damned want,” Delondeur yelled. “You’ve been paid a lord’s ransom, thrice over, to help me get it. Make it so.”

  “We will have new Battle-Wights ready in short order. If you launch an attack as soon as you can, in force, we can have more than a dozen of them moving in to support you. Mayhap as many as a score. If your men can force the wall we’ll be able to overwhelm them in no time. Perhaps it is time you ask the religious forces with you to commit themselves.”

  Delondeur spat at the ground. “They’re observers only, or so they say. That Choiron was cagey about sending any of his so-called Dragonscales. The priest his Marynth left with me is an idiot and a coward and hasn’t more than half a dozen ceremonial guards. She kept the rest in Londray to, as she put it, stamp out the last sparks of rebellion. The Archioness says she can petition Fortune but that too many of her soldiers already spent their lives here. It’s my men, yours, your creatures, and you. It’s time you showed on the field yourself.”

  “We are waiting for certain favorable conditions. We will send the Wights. If they all prove insufficient, we will make more Wights, and eventually they will overwhelm the walls and the peasants upon them. It has never failed us before. It will not fail us now.”

  The Baron spat again, kicking at the ground. “Dead men draw no pay, at any rate. Fine. We’ll launch our attack within the turn. Get your men into it as soon as you can. I’ll leave you two riders to coordinate with our camp.”

  Freeze this, Nyndstir thought. M’not stayin’ here t’be turned into one of those things. He hefted his axe and walked off a few paces, grabbing at the fur and armor belted around his waist as if he were heading into the woods looking for a likely tree.

  Once he was outside of the wide pool of light cast by the lantern-bearers, he trotted off. He wasn’t the best or quietest of scouts he’d ever known—that’d have to be an elfling he once rode with, down from the tundra in some kind of exile—but he’d picked up some woodcraft here and there, and in the darkness, and with no proper guard kept up, Nyndstir Obertsun disappeared into the bare trees, only pausing to reach into a pouch on his belt, pick up a big handful of silver and gold links, and toss them on the forest floor.

  “Have your frozen weight back, bastards. Choke on it.”

  * * *

  Renard, Ivar, and four militiamen led away the string of securely tied prisoners. Allystaire watched them move off into the village, trying not to clench his fists hard enough to rip his gauntlets apart.

  “We’ve every right to put them in the ground,” Idgen Marte said, her voice thick. “They came here meaning to murder Mol.”

  “And Mol will decide what to do with them when this is done. And we may need them to bargain with.”

  “You already decided what t’do with their captain.”

  “He made his choice when he stabbed me.”

  She grunted and glanced down at the array of weaponry, mostly short blades, that had been stripped from the Long Knives. “What’ll we do with these?”

  “Pass them to every man and woman who wants one. Those with children especially.”

  “Allystaire!” The shock in her voice told him she had understood his intention instantly.

  “What would you have them do, Idgen Marte? If we fall, they will be tortured with exquisite care and forced to renounce the Goddess. And when they are messily killed in public, it will come as a mercy,” he whispered harshly. “If nothing else, I would spare them that.”

  “Fine. Where’s the dwarf?”

  “Doing what he can to secure some defenses about the Temple. It is time to move them into it. Lionel has probed and played at strategies with us so far. If he wants to take the walls by main force, he can do it simply by attacking in more places than we can defend. And it is what he will do next.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Do you think this is the first time he has besieged me? He is impatient by nature. The weather and the politics will make him moreso, but this is his method. Two attempts with craft, a third with a bludgeon.”

  “Fine. I’ll take the weapons over and then start going to houses and rounding folk up.”

  He nodded. “We will need all of Chaddin’s men, and anyone Renard says can manage to fight from horseback, gathered centrally. I will need Ardent and as stout a lance as can be found.”

  “I’m not your freezing squire,” Idgen Marte protested.

  “I know, but you can move faster to give out those orders than I can, and while Torvul’s potion lasts,” he said, pointing at one eye, “I want to stay on the wall.”

  She nodded and turned away into the darkness, streaking off. He climbed back up the scaffolding. One Raven and a handful of militiamen remained on guard, and he strolled back and forth among them for a few minutes.
>
  “Ya ought t’sleep, m’lord,” one of the Ravens said carefully as he passed.

  “There will be time for sleep when this is done,” Allystaire answered, with a practiced, gruff ease that he did not feel. In truth, he was scared of sleep. He felt no fatigue, no weariness of battle; the Goddess’s strength kept it at bay. But he remembered the toll he’d paid for employing her Gift in the past and did not like to think what would happen when the Song no longer filled his limbs.

  He turned his eyes out to the fires of the distant camp, wishing for one of Torvul’s looking-tubes, or another potion for his vision.

  But even without them he could see men moving, a mass of shapes too far away to be distinct. Too many shapes for a change of guard or a simple patrol. Then larger shapes, mounted men, moved to the forefront, carrying with them a bubble of light, like torches or lanterns gathered for a procession or a fete. The sound of a drumbeat, faint but regular, reached his ears.

  “I know you too well, Lionel,” he muttered. “And I am going to end you.”

  “What’s that, m’lord?” The solicitous Raven leaned towards him, trying to catch the murmured words.

  Allystaire filled his lungs with air and bellowed. “STAND TO ARMS. Delondeur moves again, in strength! To the walls, all who can hold a spear or draw a bow!”

  Did you hear that? This he directed towards Idgen Marte and Torvul. Lionel is coming for us with everything. As I knew he would.

  I’ve only just got to Chaddin. Getting his men mounted and armed will take time, thought Idgen Marte.

  That’s not enough time to get folk to the Temple, Torvul’s strained voice came back to him. I’ve only just started.

  Leave that to me. Mol’s voice sounded, clearer and more powerful than Allystaire had ever heard it.

  Then her voice again, like a herald’s through a speaking-trumpet. Folk of the Mother! Of Thornhurst! All of you to the Temple, now, with your kin. Leave behind your possessions. Now! All who can bear arms, to the walls at the side of the Arm, the Shadow, and the Wit! Worry not for your beasts, for I will send them to safety. Now move, all of you, at once.

  Allystaire knew from the reactions along the wall that all of the men gathered there heard it too.

  He unslung his shield and secured his left arm through its straps. His right hand found his hammer and slid it out, letting it come to rest head-down, haft up, on the floor of the walkway next to him. “They are going to need time, men,” was all he said at first. Then he thought for a moment, rolled his right shoulder, and said, “Any spears, rocks, throwing axes—anything that can be hurled and that we can spare, bring to me.”

  * * *

  Nyndstir had turned his course north, intending to make for the high road and the towns along it as it approached the Ash. Somewhere among them a merchant would need a guard or a tavern would want someone to calm the rowdies. Or, Cold, the greenhats in some larger town might need another man on the wall. He was never short of work in winter.

  He didn’t get a quarter mile before the thought came to him. You did their freezing work and took more weight than you tossed back.

  Nyndstir stopped, set down his axe, and leaned on it a moment. “My left stone for a young man’s wind,” he muttered, breathing heavier than he expected to.

  He turned and started walking back the way he’d come, swinging his legs in long, determined strides that ate up ground.

  “What the Cold am I gonna do when I get there? Piss on the ashes?”

  He walked on.

  * * *

  Allystaire held out his right hand and a nearby villager dropped a heavy stone into it. He cocked his arm, turned his hips into it, and sent it sailing into the night.

  His vision still brightened by Torvul’s tincture, he followed the arc it described before crashing into the shield of a Delondeur man in the formation as it moved up the road, saw him fall and cause another couple of men to stumble to the ground around him.

  All alongside him, the villagers and Ravens peppered the advancing line with bowshot, most of them simply firing into the mass. Torvul alone seemed to carefully pick his targets, and every one of the dwarf’s bolts that Allystaire followed seemed to find a mark.

  It is not going to be enough, Allystaire thought.

  The Delondeur forces had already paid in the past fighting, but so had the defenders, and it was never an equation that had favored Thornhurst. And even as they advanced, the Delondeur column began to spread out into longer lines with sizable gaps, their flanks spilling well off the path and into the rise of hills on either side.

  “Do not waste arrows,” Allystaire yelled. “Choose targets and aim, or hold!”

  What I wouldn’t give for some light horse to hit the end of their lines and turn them straight around, he silently cursed. Without the threat of mobile troops hitting their sides, they were free to string along in those loose lines and minimize what his archers could do, despite the height they held.

  Behind those lines, Delondeur had drawn up his heavy horse, fifty or better. Half a dozen banners hung above them, unreadable in the darkness even to his brightened eyes.

  With a frustrated sigh, he held out his hand again, feeling the heavy haft of a spear settle into it. Throw with the legs, through the hips and trunk, he thought, recalling long ago lessons from the previous Castellan at Wind’s Jaw, Ufferth of Highgate, Garth’s father. Even as the weapon flew straight and true, splitting a Delondeur shield and the man behind it through the thigh, he remembered a fellow page’s complaints. The spear was the weapon of the levy, the peasant, not fit for a knight’s hands.

  Ufferth, who’d looked like a barrel on legs and from whom his son Garth had gotten his fair complexion and pale hair, had clouted the boy across the head with the butt of one. And those peasants’d spit you like a capon for the cookfire, you frozen shit, he’d yelled, disgusted. A weapon is a weapon and no man is fit to be an Oyrwyn knight who disdains the one that comes to his hand at need.

  Allystaire gave his head a quick shake, snapping back to the moment. The Delondeur foot were making the final push across the last dozen yards. Rocks and other spears joined the thickening arrow fire. Nearly a score of Delondeur men dropped, but the rest rushed to the wall.

  They’d been forced to build straight, rather than with the curves or breaks for overlapping killing fields that Allystaire would’ve preferred, so with the men right below them, it was a good deal harder to get his aim, especially with the solid thicket of shields.

  The Delondeur foot swarmed to three points: the west gate, and yards away along the north and south. Allystaire would’ve bet his arms they were assembling ladders of wood and rope to be thrown over the wall.

  Idgen Marte! Are Chaddin’s horse assembled?

  Aye, she replied. And I’m nearly there.

  We cannot repel them at all three points. Cold, not even at two. And we will be flanked and overrun if we do not. Can you delay them at the southern point?

  He looked to the southern part of the wall, saw hooks tossed over its top and pulled firmly in. And quickly!

  Suddenly she was there in his sight, poised carefully atop the rough timbers of the palisade, bow in hand, leaning with a dancer’s balance over the side and shooting down as men climbed towards her.

  Hooks on ropes, with flexible ladders attached, were being thrown up at several points. One was no more than a step to his left, so he darted to it and ripped the hooks free, tossing them back over the wall contemptuously. The sound of armored men crashing back to the ground reached his ears.

  But he could not be everywhere, and it was apparent that Delondeur was throwing his main strength against the gate and the scaffold along the wall above it, perhaps four score men.

  Against which Allystaire had barely a dozen, and more than half of them barely blooded.

  “They are going to make the wall,” he yelled, years of p
ractice carrying his voice above the din. “Bowmen fall back. Spearmen to me.”

  He saw the clutch of village archers hesitate a moment, and yelled again, “Fall back twenty yards and prepare to cover us!”

  Delondeur men were clearing the wall in three places along his parapet, and the work was about to turn close. Ivar spitted one in the belly with her spear, quickly pulled it free, and then darted it down over the wall. A muted scream and then a louder muddled one as men fell back to the ground.

  Allystaire bounded to another rope-and-hook ladder, saw a helm rising above the wall, swiped at it with his shield. He felt the shock of the blow up his arm as the metal rim of his shield stove in the side of the man’s helm, and his skull with it.

  Unluckily for Allystaire, the momentum of his blow carried his target sideways off his ladder instead of down it, and more men swarmed up in his place. He ducked away a few steps, retrieved his hammer, and came back swinging.

  Where he went along the parapet, such as it was, foemen died, their skulls crushed, chests caved in, knocked back over the wall or to the ground below.

  But he was one man, and the wall was too much for him to cover alone. He saw Ivar fighting desperately, spear a blur, another Raven overwhelmed and a Delondeur footman viciously thrusting a short, broad dagger through a rent in his black mail and into his ribs.

  Allystaire fought his way there, swinging hammer and shield both in wide arcs and sending men tumbling, but the mercenary was dead by the time the paladin reached his side.

  Torvul! He wondered if the dwarf could sense the panic in his mental voice.

  Ready as we’re going to get. I’m bringing up Keegan’s lot to cover your retreat. Back wall does us no good either.

  Allystaire sucked air deep into his lungs and shouted. “The wall is lost! Fall back!”

  Something, some instinct, some sense of a battlefield bade Allystaire turn to his left and raise his shield. At nearly the very instant he did, he felt a hard thump as something bit into it and stuck. His eyes darted over the rim to see a Delondeur footman pulling another throwing axe from his belt.