The Hero And The Crown d-2

by Robin McKinley

  The common soldiery of the North was more frightened yet. They saw that their leaders did not like this blue flame that dazzled their eyes and, if it came too near, parted their queerly jointed limbs from their thick bodies; and so they scrambled to be free of the thing, whatever it was; and the blue light only rippled farther and farther out from its center, and spread all around them. Frequently it felt like teeth at their throats, and their brown-and-purple blood soon tinged the ethereal blue a darker shade; and sometimes it fell from above them, like the lashing hoofs of a war-horse; and their own dying cries were in their ears, and a high singing note as well that they had never heard before, although in it were also the sharp snarls of the wild mountain cats, and the dangerous baying of a yerig pack, and the shrill screams of a fighting stallion.

  The blue dazzled Aerin’s eyes too, but it was a useful sort of dazzlement because it seemed to break the Northerners’ clumsy movements into arcs whose sweep she could judge so precisely that as they tried to escape her she knew just where to let Gonturan fall across them. She did not think of how many she killed or maimed; she thought of them only as obstacles that must be overcome that she might rejoin her own people. Merely to let them part before Talat’s trampling hoofs, as they showed a great willingness to do, was not enough, for they might then close in again behind her; and so Gonturan fell, and rose and fell again, and Aerin’s blue-brightened eyes watched and followed, and looked ahead to where the Damarians were making their last stand. She had one landmark to guide her, one of the tall standing stones that marked the last uphill stretch of the king’s way into the City; the one of the four stones that did still stand. But she could no longer see Tor or Arlbeth. Nor did she often dare raise her eyes to look; for there were those who stood to oppose her, who as they tried to step out of her way still showed the glint of metal, to disembowel Talat if they could, or hurl a poisoned throwing knife at her from behind; she could not spare her vigilance. Her army kept pace with her; a swathe they were cutting through the Northerners; occasionally she saw, from the corners of her eyes, a cat body, or a lean dog shape, fling itself on the twisted helm or misshapen body of a Northerner; but then at once she had to aim Gonturan for another blow. There was a high-pitched hum in her ears, though she could still hear the hoarse shouts of the Northerners, and the harsh ugly sound of the words of their language in those shouts.

  And across the battlefield, near the City, the beleaguered Damarians looked up to see what was suddenly causing such consternation in the ranks of their enemies. Looked up: and strained their eyes, for what they saw was a blue sea rushing toward them, a white crest at its peak where it reared to break. But the blue surface rippled more like furry backs than like water, and the rearing white crest was a war-horse, and a sword blazed blue in his rider’s hand; he carried no shield and wore no armor, but he seemed not to need it, for the Northerners fled before him, and only his sword’s quickness stayed their flight, and slew them as they sought to escape.

  The white horse neighed with war fury, and the yerig bayed, and the folstza cried their harsh hunting cries, and nearer and nearer the rushing blue army came; and the Damarians, some of them, found themselves fearing this unlooked-for succor, and wondered what the white rider planned for them when he had cut his way so far; for there was no doubt that he drew near them, as if their City’s gates were his destination; nor was there any doubt that he would succeed in arriving there.

  But there was a muffled exclamation from Tor. “To me! Quickly!” He urged his tired Dgeth forward, and his excitement gave her new strength. “Follow me! It’s Aerin!”

  Only a few followed him; but whether this was for weariness or deafness, or fear of the blue thing, or fear that the blue thing was or was not Aerin-sol, it was impossible to say; but one of those who followed close on Dgeth’s heels was the messenger who had once brought news of Maur’s terrible waking to the king.

  Aerin knew her arm was tired, but it did not seem to matter; Gonturan found the necks and vitals of the Northerners with her own keen edge and merely drew Aerin’s arm with her. Then Aerin heard her name called, and she shook her head, for she was imagining things; but she heard it again. It occurred to her that it sounded like Tor’s voice, and that perhaps she was not imagining things, and she looked up, and there was Tor indeed. Heavy ranks of Northerners separated them yet, and even as their eyes met, a riding beast, mottled yellow and with forked hoofs and the ears of a cat, reared up between them, and Aerin saw the one-eyed queen hanging from its throat, and two of her followers leaping for purchase at its flanks. Hamstrung, it fell kicking, and the queen pulled the rider down, and Aerin watched no further; and then Talat kicked and leaped sideways, and there was work for Gonturan again; and for a moment she lost Tor.

  She called his name, this time, and at last she heard him answer; he was to one side of her now, but when she turned Talat that way the battle seemed only to drag him farther away. Then the Crown, which had clung to her shoulder all this time as if by its own volition, shook loose and ran down her arm, and struck Gonturan’s hilt with a clang.

  “Tor!” she cried again; and as his face turned to her, she tossed the Crown over the hilt, to the tip of the sword, swept the blade upright, and—flung the Hero’s Crown across the evil sea that churned between them.

  Gonturan blazed up like a falling star as the Crown ran her length, and as it wheeled into the air it in its turn burst into flame, red as the sun at noon, red as a mage’s hair; and Tor, dumbly, raised his own sword as if in salute, and the Crown caught its edge, swung, hissing, round the tip, and fell to circle his wrist. Any Northerner might have killed him then, for he dropped his shield, and his sword arm was stretched out immobile as he stared at the glowing red thing hanging from his arm. But the Northerners were afraid of it too; they had seen enough of strange Lights, and the blue one they already knew to be fatal. And the white rider had thrown this thing from the wicked Blue Sword.

  Aerin shrieked: “It’s the Crown, can’t you see? PUT IT ON!”

  Tor looked up again; Aerin was quite near now, and then she was beside him, banging her calf painfully against his stirrup as Talat pranced and pretended to be taller. She yanked his arm down, pried his fingers loose from his sword hilt, shook the Crown free; pulled his head down toward her and jammed the Crown over his temples.

  Chapter 23

  AFTER THAT THE DAY belonged to the Damarians, for between the White Rider and the Scarlet there was no hope for the Northerners. But it was nonetheless a long and bitter day for the victors, and they lost many more of their people before it was over, including many simple folk who had never held weapons in their lives before, but who preferred the deadly risk of the battlefield to the terrible passive waiting to hear the final news. The Northerners, too, were slow to acknowledge defeat, even after they knew there was no chance left of their winning. In this war no captives were taken, for a captive demon is a danger to his jailer. It was not till evening drew near, and Talat was limping heavily with weariness, and Aerin held on to her saddle with her shieldless hand, that the remaining Damarians began to be able to gather at the foot of the king’s way before the City gates, and lay down their arms, and think about rest. The Northerners were fleeing at last, fleeing as best they might, on three legs, or four, or five; some crawled. What Damarians had yet the strength pursued the slowest and gave them the last blow of mercy, but as darkness fell they left their treacherous enemies to the shadows, and crowded around the fire that had been built near the last standing monolith.

  There was little rejoicing, for all were weary, bone-weary, death-weary; and they had had so little hope that morning that now in the evening they had not yet truly begun to believe they had won after all. And there were the wounded to attend to; and all those still left on their legs helped, for there were few enough of them. Many of them were children, for even the healers had taken sword or knife by the end and gone into battle. But the youngest children could at least carry bandages, and collect sticks for the fi
re, and carry small skins of water to fill the great pot hung over the fire; and as there was no child who had not lost a father or mother or elder brother or sister, the work was the best comfort the weary remaining Damarians could give them.

  Aerin and Tor were among those still whole, and they helped as they could. No one noticed particularly at the time, but later it was remembered that most of those who had felt the hands of the first sol, her blue sword still hanging at her side, or of the first sola, the Hero’s Crown still set over his forehead, its dull grey still shadowed with red, recovered, however grave their wounds. At the time all those fortunate enough to feel those hands noticed was that their touch brought unexpected surcease of pain; and at the time that was all any could think of or appreciate.

  Perlith had died on the battlefield. He had led his company of cavalry tirelessly through the last endless weeks, and his men had followed him loyally, with respect if not with love; for they trusted his coolness in battle, and learned to trust his courage; and because even as he grew worn and haggard as the siege progressed, his tongue never lost its cleverness or its cutting edge. He died on the very last day, having come unscathed so far, and his horse came back without him after darkness had fallen, and the saddle still on its back was bloody.

  Galanna was holding a bowl of water for a healer when Perlith’s horse came back, and someone whispered the news to her where she knelt. She looked up at the messenger, who was too weary himself to have any gentleness left for the breaking of bad news, and said only, “Thank you for telling me.” She lowered her eyes to the pink-tinted water again and did not move. The healer, who had known her well in better days, looked at her anxiously, but she showed no sign of distress or of temper; and the healer too was weary beyond gentleness, and thought no more about it. Galanna was conscious that her hair needed washing, that her gown was torn and soiled—that her hands would be trembling were it not for the weight of the bowl she carried; that someone had just told her that Perlith was dead, that his horse had returned with a blood-stained saddle. She tried to think about this, but her mind would revert to her hair, for her scalp itched; and then she thought, I will not see my husband again, it does not matter if my hair is clean or not. I do not care if my hair is ever clean again. And she stared dry-eyed into the bowl she held.

  But the second sola was not the worst of their losses. Kethtaz had fallen in battle too, and everyone had lost sight of Arlbeth for a time—just at the time when Aerin and Tor met and Aerin forced the Hero’s Crown over Tor’s head. They two looked for him anxiously, and it was Aerin who found him, fighting on foot, a long grim wound in his thigh, so that he could not move around much, but could only meet those who came to him. But his sword arm rose and fell as though it were a machine that knew no pain or weariness.

  “Up behind me,” said Aerin; “I will carry you back to the gates, and they will find you another horse”; but Arlbeth shook his head. “Come,” Aerin said feverishly.

  “I cannot,” said Arlbeth, and turned that his daughter might see the blood that matted his tunic and breeches to his right leg. “I cannot scramble up behind you with only one leg—in your saddle without stirrups.”

  “Gods,” said Aerin, and flung herself out of the saddle, and knelt down before her father. “Get up, then.” Arlbeth, with horrible slowness, clambered to Aerin’s shoulders, while she bit her lips over the clumsy cruel weight of him, and while her folstza and yerig kept a little space cleared around the three of them, and he got into Talat’s saddle, and slumped forward on his old horse’s neck.

  “Gods,” said Aerin again, and her voice broke. “Well, go on, then,” she said to Talat; “take him home.” But Talat only stood, and looked bewildered, and shivered; and she thumped him on the flank with her closed fist. “Go on! How long can they hold them off for us? Go!” But Talat only swerved away from her and came back, and would not leave, and Arlbeth sank lower and lower across his withers.

  “Help me,” whispered Aerin, but there was no one to hear; Tor and the rest of them were hard pressed and too far away; and so she raised Gonturan again, and ran forward on foot, and speared the first Northerner she found beyond the little ring of wild dog and cat; and Talat followed her, humbly carrying his burden and keeping close on his lady’s heels. And so they brought Arlbeth to the gates of his City, and two old men too crippled to fight helped his daughter pull him down from Talat’s saddle. He seemed to come a little awake then, and he smiled at Aerin.

  “Can you walk a little?” she said, the tears pouring down her face. “A little,” he whispered, and she pulled his arm around her shoulders, and staggered off with him; and the two old men stumbled on before her, and shouted for blankets, and three children came from the shadows, and looked at their bloody king and his daughter with wide panicky eyes. But they brought blankets and cloaks, and Arlbeth was laid down on them by the shadow of one of the fallen monoliths at his City’s gates.

  “Go on,” murmured Arlbeth. “There’s no good you can do me.” But Aerin stayed by him, weeping, and held his hands in her own; and from her touch a little warmth strayed into the king’s cold hands, and the warmth penetrated to his brain. He opened his eyes a little wider. He muttered something she could not hear, and as she bent lower over him he jerked his hands out of hers and said, “Don’t waste it on me; I’m too old and too tired. Save Damar for yourself and for Tor. Save Damar.” His eyes closed, and Aerin cried, “Father! Father—I brought the Crown back with me.” Arlbeth smiled a little, she thought, but did not open his eyes again.

  Aerin stood up and ran downhill to where Talat waited, and scrambled onto him and surged back into the battle, and the battle heat took her over at last, and she need think no more, but was become only an extension of a blue sword that she held in her hand; and so she went on, till the battle was over.

  Arlbeth was dead when she returned to him. Tor was there already, crouched down beside him, tear marks making muddy stains on his face. And there, facing each other over the king’s body, they talked a little, for the first time since Aerin had ridden off in the night to seek Luthe, and her life.

  “We’ve been besieged barely a month,” Tor said; “but it seems centuries. But we’ve been fighting—always retreating, always coming back to the City, riding out again less far; always bringing a few more survivors from more burnt-out villages here for shelter—always fighting, for almost a year. It began ... shortly after you left.”

  Aerin shivered.

  Tor said, and he sounded bewildered, “Even so, it has not been so very long; wars have lasted years, generations. But this time, somehow, we felt defeated before we began. Always we were weary and discouraged; we never rode out in hope that we could see victory.” He paused a minute, and stared down at the shadowed peaceful face of their king. “It’s actually been a bit better these last weeks; perhaps we only adjusted finally to despair.”

  Later they spoke in snatches as they tended their horses and helped elsewhere as they could. Aerin, numb with shock and sorrow, did not think of her father’s last words to her, and did not think there might be special healing in her hands, or in the hands of him who wore the Hero’s Crown; for that was something else that Luthe had forgotten to teach her. And so she went merely where there was a cry for an extra pair of hands. But somehow she and Tor managed to stay near each other, and the presence of the other was to each a comfort.

  Aerin thought of a black tower falling as she tucked blankets, of the Hero’s Crown no longer on the head of one who worked to do Damar evil as she pinned bandages; and as she crouched for a moment near the great campfire that threw wild shadows on the walls of her City, she thought of words spoken by another fire: How could anyone be so stupid as to bring back the Black Dragon’s head as a trophy and hang it on a wall for folk to gape at?

  Abruptly she turned to Tor and said; “Where is Maur’s head?”

  Tor stared at her; he was dazed with grief and exhaustion even as she was, and he could not think who Maur was.

 
; “Before I left, I asked that Maur’s head be put somewhere that I need not look at it. Do you know where it was taken?” There was urgency in her question, suddenly, although she herself did not know why; but the urgency penetrated the fog in Tor’s mind.

  “In—in the treasure hall, I believe,” Tor said uncertainly. “I’m not sure.”

  Aerin reeled to her feet, and a plush-furred black head was at once beneath her hand, propping her up. “I must go there.”

  “Now?” Tor said unhappily, looking around. “Then I’ll go too .... We’ll have to walk; there isn’t a fresh horse in all the City.”

  It was a brutally long walk, almost all uphill, for the king’s castle stood at the City’s peak, a lower Hat-topped shoulder within the encircling mountains. Several of Aerin’s army came with them, and the tallest ones silently supported Tor, and he wonderingly stroked the heads and backs he found beneath his fingers. “A long story you have to tell me,” Tor said; it was not a question.

  Aerin smiled as much of a smile as her weariness allowed. “A very long story.” She was much too tired to weep any more, but she sighed, and perhaps Tor heard something in that sigh, for he edged a yerig out of the way and put an arm around her, and they toiled up together, leaning on each other.

  The castle was deserted. Tomorrow many of the sick and wounded would be brought here; for this night they would stay by the fire at the foot of the king’s way, for even the hale and whole had no strength left, and there had been no one in the City during the last days’ fighting; all had been below, doing what they could.

  Tor found candles, and by some wonder he still carried his flint. The castle was eerie in its silence and solitude and darkness; and Aerin’s tiredness drew little dancing designs at the corners of her sight and pulled the shadows closer in around the candlelight. She found she had to follow Tor blindly; she had spent almost her whole life in these halls, and yet in but a few months she had forgotten her way through them; and then horribly she remembered climbing centuries of stairs in a darkness very like this, and she shivered violently, and her breath hissed through her teeth. Tor glanced at her and held out his free hand, and she took it gratefully for she had been all alone on those other stairs.