by Melanie Rawn
If there were, the captains were wise enough not to voice them. When they had gone, Chay met Rohan’s gaze levelly. “Are you sure you trust this information? Sioned didn’t even tell Maarken who gave it to her.”
“I trust the information and Sioned implicitly. As to the identity—we all know that faradh’im are capable of using eyes and ears other than their own. I don’t really care how she gets the news. You’ll admit that the analysis of Jastri’s mood is probably accurate.”
“I still don’t like it.”
Davvi cleared his throat. “Roelstra has ruled the boy thus far. Can we count on his losing his hold?”
“What else can we do? Even if they can resist coming after us, then surely they won’t be able to ignore a riverbank left open to them.”
Green eyes, so like Sioned’s, danced with sudden anticipation. “We’ll see how far they’re willing to swallow the bait. After all, we can turn and attack them at any time. Chay’s made sure of that.”
In carefully planned bad order the various companies of archers, horse, and foot soldiers packed up and marched in what appeared to be any direction their captains felt like taking them. It took Roelstra several days to investigate this, and ten more to commit himself. Though he had not followed Chay’s enticing lead, he was now unable to resist Rohan’s, and it was the presence of the young prince that made the bait irresistible.
Thus things continued through high summer. Rohan ordered retreats of a few measures at a time, his forces spread in a dangerously thin line as they pulled back to the edge of the Long Sand, with some always in sight of the sea. The green hills of the Faolain Lowlands gave way to brown scrub, with golden dunes not far beyond. Yet Roelstra was cautious about extending his lines of supply and communications. Sioned reported to Maarken that Roelstra’s own men had stayed pretty much on the other side of the river, leaving Jastri’s men to explore. And Jastri was fit to be tied.
When Rohan received word that his troops were exactly where Chay wanted them, he hesitated. Desert-bred, his people knew how to live here. Jastri’s did not. Nightly he debated with Chay and Davvi the wisdom of an attack now or further waiting while the heat debilitated Jastri’s troops. He knew his own people were puzzled by his indecision. His actions at Stronghold were common knowledge by now, and they could not help but wonder why a prince who had calmly ordered his enemies butchered should now be reluctant to perform the same service for an even greater enemy.
Yet he waited. If he could save a few lives by waiting for summer to weaken the enemy, he was willing to wait. He did not fear the battle or his own death; he feared the loss of lives held in his hands, lives for which he was responsible as their prince.
It was worst at night. During the day there were reports to be heard and ploys to be discussed and the searing heat to be lived through. But at night, after the maps had been rolled up and he lay in his cot, knowing the coolness ought to soothe him into badly needed sleep, he stayed awake. He dared not rise and pace the camp, not wishing to awaken Chay, Maarken, or Tilal, not wanting the soldiers to see his restlessness. So while his body lay quiet, his mind roamed endlessly.
Thoughts of Sioned were the most painful. She had given him cool lips and a serene smile at their farewell, but had he not held her night after night during her terrible dreaming? The woman who wept and clung to him was a stranger, as alien as the one who held out chafed, ringless hands to be kissed. Yet neither was as troubling as the Sunrunner who had conjured for him in a candleflame the night before he left Stronghold.
He flinched still when he remembered the image of herself and the boy-child, the sound of her voice, deep and redolent of Fire and shadows. “What Andrade wanted from me, Ianthe will give her. But they’ll both lose, Rohan. This prince will be yours and mine. What do I care what you did with her or to her? You tell me there was rape. Didn’t she and Andrade do the same to us? Andrade used me, Ianthe used you. But they will not use our son. Believe that, Rohan.”
Yes, he believed. He saw Ianthe’s death in Sioned’s eyes, and believed. Sioned would wait out the child as if the pregnancy was her own, while Rohan destroyed the High Prince like any other barbarian.
His child. Sioned’s child. Goddess help the boy, what sort of world would he be born into? One in which his father’s wife had killed his mother, and his father had killed his grandfather. Goddess help him.
The waiting ended eight days later for Rohan. Maarken, caught very suddenly on the sunlight, recovered from Sioned’s weaving and hurried to his father’s tent, brushing past the Desert standard on its golden staff, interrupting a conference between prince and athri.
“Jastri’s on the move south! Sixty horse, seventy archers, and two hundred foot! He’s broken with the High Prince and will attack tomorrow.”
Rohan grabbed for a map. “Now we find out how good you are at strategy, Chay. All captains here at once, Maarken. Get Tilal to help you, then make it known among the troops that tomorrow we fight at last.”
Prince Jastri’s three hundred and thirty arrived from the south, unhindered by the horse Chay directed there. These merely shadowed the host, unseen. When Jastri turned east for the attack on what his scouts had reported as Rohan’s weakest position, he found three hundred facing him with the prince himself at their head.
This time there was no Faolain River to wash away the blood. It soaked into the gritty sand for hours, then was left behind as Rohan’s forces pushed Jastri’s back measure after measure toward the Faolain. But there was no escape across the river, for between Jastri and the bridges were another hundred Desert soldiers, led by Lord Davvi.
The young prince fled south whence he had come. Rohan, riding with Tilal and Davvi at his side, topped a small rise in time to see Chay’s red-and-white standard flash into view from the trees. Jastri was caught in the middle, the reserve horse thundering at him from the south, Rohan and Davvi’s troops marching inexorably at him from the north and west.
Rohan sent a man forward with his battle flag to signal Jastri an offer of his life if he surrendered at once. But Sioned and her informant had been correct; the young man was hot-tempered and very proud. He led his remnant of an army against Rohan, bellowing out his fury.
Feeling Davvi’s gaze on him, he knew his brother-by-marriage was wondering if mercy was a part of his character. He hesitated, knowing that he could order Jastri sectioned off from his troops and spared. But as he glanced at the older man he saw Sioned’s green eyes, remembered her ravaged face. Rohan lifted his sword.
Jastri’s force broke utterly. Some soldiers laid down their arms; others fought to preserve their own lives without thought of winning a larger battle already lost. Rohan had to admire the courage of these latter people, as he admired Jastri’s, even though such bravery in these circumstances was folly. He tried to fight through to the young prince, deciding that he would offer honorable treatment as befitted princes. But he was too busy defending himself and Tilal from ambitious stripling lords who wanted his head. He never saw who killed Prince Jastri.
The banks of the Faolain had long since been secured by Davvi’s contingent, so when the battle cooled at last Rohan led the way back there, Pashta snorting at the stench of death as he picked his way delicately around the corpses. Rohan’s gaze fastened on the empty bridges. Roelstra was too smart to have committed more than a handful of his own troops; he had probably ordered them back across the Faolain this morning. Neither had he risked his own precious person. Pity. Rohan would have liked to end it all here.
Chay rode up with Jastri’s ripped and bloodied turquoise standard furled across his saddle. Rohan held out his hand and Chay dropped into his palm two rings, one gold and one silver, both set with deep garnets, the gem of Syrene princes.
“I had them take him from the field,” Chay murmured.
“Thank you.” Rohan turned, called a group of archers forward, and bid them ready their arrows.
“What are you doing?” Chay hissed as flint was struck and a small fire made i
n the sand. “We need those bridges!”
“If we cross them now, we’ll be slaughtered. Roelstra’s troops are fresh, and we’re exhausted. If we leave the bridges, he’ll either use them or burn them himself to keep us from crossing. I would rather they went up with our fire, not his. Do you agree?”
The question was for form’s sake only, but Chay’s reaction surprised him. A small, hard smile touched his sweat-streaked face as he said, “It’s something Zehava would have done, you know. The grand gesture—and the warning.”
Clenching his fist around the two rings, Rohan glanced over at the archers. But before he could give the order, a cry went up from across the river, soon taken up by his own troops. Fire had spouted up from the bridges in fountains of flame.
Maarken, cheeks white beneath the dirt and sweat of battle, stood at the water’s edge, his arms held up and his hands balled into trembling fists. He called down Fire and it fed on the wooden bridges, sent dancing sparks into the reflecting water. As the sun dipped lower and shadows touched the river, the Fire blazed higher and the Desert cheered its young Sunrunner lord.
Chay whispered his son’s name, anguished. Rohan sat his horse in silence, feeling the heat of battle drain out of him, making him aware of his sore shoulder and weary muscles. There were other small hurts, shallow slices of sword and knife, insignificant in themselves. But they merged into the whole, augmented by a real grief for another foolish young princeling, and as the Fire flared he winced.
Maarken finished his work and with visible effort climbed the rise to where his prince and his father waited. “I killed no one, my lord,” he told Chay.
Seeing that the father was incapable of speech, the prince said, “You have our gratitude, and you’ve gained us Roelstra’s fear.
Look.” He pointed to the opposite shore, where atop the embankment the enemy had gathered to watch as Sunrunner’s Fire licked hungrily through the wood, glowing red-gold to create two blazing rivers of light across the cool one of dark water. He could easily pick out the figures he wished most to see: Roelstra in a deep violet robe, his head bare, black hair ruffling in the Fire-born breeze, and Pandsala, her eyes dark hollows.
“Archer,” he said softly, and a girl ran up. He gave her the gold-and-garnet ring. “For the High Prince, with my compliments.”
She grinned up at him, and beneath the bruises and the dirt he recognized the sentry he had scolded here along this same riverbank. “I’ll plant it right at his feet, your grace!”
She very nearly did. Rohan admired the consummate skill that adjusted the arrow’s flight for the weight attached to it and calculated to a nicety the desired distance. Blue-and-white fletching came to rest ten paces away from Roelstra. Pandsala darted forward. Drawing the arrow from the ground, she handed her father the ring.
Rohan held up the other one. “As I presented Princess Sioned with a token of my gratitude before she became my princess, thus I now give recognition to my beloved nephew of Radzyn.” Maarken’s eyes went wide before he bent his head and extended his left hand. “No,” Rohan said clearly. “The other hand, and the middle finger. This is the first of your faradhi rings.”
Filthy and exhausted as he was, yet Maarken’s face was shining as he raised his eyes to Rohan, man’s pride competing with boy’s excitement. Radzyn troops cheered their lord, and Maarken suddenly turned scarlet.
Rohan smiled, but as he counted up the survivors he knew how much this victory had cost him. A quarter and more of their strength had been spent in taking what they had owned to begin with. In doing so they had halved Roelstra’s forces, but they were essentially back where they had started. Chay had specified two battles, and the first was over.
A sudden instinct made him tense as a strange, familiar sensation fluttered in his chest. He looked up, breath strangling in his throat. Soaring through the sky were dragons, more than a hundred of them. The sires and she-dragons Feylin had so carefully counted had produced hatchlings, none of which had been slaughtered by a hunt. No bigger than young children, they beat their wings powerfully, keeping up with their watchful elders on the journey from the caves around Skybowl and Feruche to the cool heights of the Catha Hills in the south.
Rohan felt his throat tighten, his eyes sting. His dragons, more than he had ever seen before in his life, free and proud and alive. His dragons.
As they flew from the Desert across the Faolain, the chant began again. But it was not his name that rumbled along the riverbank, growing louder, following the dragons over Roelstra’s camp as hundreds of wings cast shadows on the violet tents. Someone knowing the old tongue had renamed Rohan, given him the single powerful word that would be his for the rest of his life.
Azhei. Dragon Prince.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Pandsala stood on a hillock, staring moodily at the storm clouds to the north. They were a distant threat for now, both to encamped troops and Sunrunners, but soon they would shadow and then drench the pastures of Meadowlord before slinking to Syr. She simultaneously dreaded and welcomed the anticipated downpour, first of autumn. Six winters at Goddess Keep had taught her to loathe overcast skies, but here in her comparative freedom, storms would keep the armies mired down and all faradh’im effectively caged—not just those ordered so by her father.
He paced beside her, still raging—though in merciful silence now—about the note that had flown in on an arrow from Rohan’s camp that morning. Prince Jastri was dead without a son or brother to assume his title, and only a sister, Gemma, left of his branch of the Syrene royal house. Rohan had proposed, and Andrade had agreed, that subject to the approval of the other princes, Lord Davvi of River Run was to be elevated to the princedom. His lineage was of the princely house; he was the heir. Young Gemma, at barely ten winters old, could not inherit without treaties stipulating that her assumption of the princedom had been agreed to by all the other princes and the athr’im of Syr. Of course, if Roelstra had had a son, he could have had him marry the girl at once, no matter her tender years. Of course, if Roelstra had had a son, he would not be in his present pass. The thought gave Pandsala grim amusement.
“Smiling?” her father sneered. “Is it the beautiful day that pleases you, daughter mine? Or the fact that that whore’s brother has been named Prince of Syr? I’ll have Rohan spitted and roasted over a Sunrunner’s Fire—and his witch with him!”
Pandsala stayed wisely silent.
“Declaring him prince and putting him in High Kirat are two different things! The Syrene lords will defend their princess—just as I intend to do! And as for her dear uncle of Ossetia—Chale will send troops. Yes. He’ll want to see Gemma as ruler of Syr.”
“But will he want to make war against Rohan?” she murmured.
“He will if I tell him to!” Roelstra bellowed. “And he’ll raze Goddess Keep as well, with Andrade in it!”
Pandsala felt she ought to say something soothing. “Surely the other princes will realize how powerful this action will make Rohan. If they don’t, you can point it out to them. They can’t acclaim Davvi until they’re all met in one place, and we’re past time for the Rialla this year. Between now and whenever Rohan is able to call a convocation—”
“He won’t be alive past midwinter!” he roared.
“Of course not, Father. Forgive me.”
His glare softened. “You have your mother’s temperament. She always spoke softly, no matter what threatened. I loved her well, you know. Goddess, if only one of you had been a son!” He frowned, then shrugged. “Another three hundred troops should be here before the worst rains begin.”
“Who has such strength on short notice?”
“My greedy friend Prince Saumer of Isel, for one. And Lyell of Waes, your sister Kiele’s Chosen, will allow him to land his soldiers in Waes. He’s decided that his interests lie with his future wife, not his dead sister’s husband in Tiglath.”
She nodded. “There was a courier yesterday.”
“Yes.” Roelstra looked grim. “It se
ems the Cunaxans want more money. The courtiers who’ve ruled since Prince Durriken’s death find the current jingle of my gold too soft a sound, and wish to hear it ring louder. If only those stupid Merida had attacked when I planned it! They were to wait until Tiglath had emptied of troops gone to rescue the princeling. They could have walked right into the city and used it as a base when Rohan was forced to split his armies to go to Tiglath’s aid. It would have worked, too.”
“The results have been livable,” she remarked.
“Barely. But now the Cunaxans want more money to supply the Merida, who should have taken their supplies from Tiglath itself.” He flicked an imaginary spot of dirt off his cloak. “They could have moved south, captured Stronghold, and attacked the Desert army from behind.”
“Rohan will have to come to this side of the river to establish Davvi in High Kirat. And then you can kill him.”
“Oh, no. Not yet. He still has his uses.” Roelstra’s expression turned thoughtful. “You’ve been useful, too, Pandsala. You deserve a reward for warning me not to cross the Faolain with Jastri, and alerting me to Rohan’s maneuvers. I know now how his mind works in war. How would you like a castle of your own, the same as your sister Ianthe?”
“Like Feruche?” She laughed. “Thank you, no. I’ve been at Goddess Keep for six years, and I’ve no desire to trade a foggy prison for a Desert one.”
“I’m told River Run is a pretty place. It was the Sunrunner witch’s childhood home, you know. It might amuse you to live there with some fine young lord as your husband.” His eyes held a gleam of cunning. “And yourself as Princess of Syr.”