The healing left Carn gray-faced and shaking. He leaned against his knees until his tremors stopped. “I will go …” He paused for breath. “… go help the rest of the wounded now.” He straightened and picked his way down the mound, lurching from side to side as if he were drunk.
Roran watched him go, concerned. Then it occurred to him to wonder about the fate of the rest of their expedition. He looked toward the far side of the village and saw nothing but scattered bodies, some clad in the red of the Empire, others in the brown wool favored by the Varden. “What of Edric and Sand?” he asked Harald.
“I’m sorry, Stronghammer, but I saw nothing beyond the reach of my sword.”
Calling to the few men who still stood on the roofs of the houses, Roran asked, “What of Edric and Sand?”
“We do not know, Stronghammer!” they replied.
Steadying himself with his hammer, Roran slowly picked his way down the tumbled ramp of bodies and, with Harald and three other men by his side, crossed the clearing in the center of the village, executing every soldier they found still alive. When they arrived at the edge of the clearing, where the number of slain Varden surpassed the number of slain soldiers, Harald banged his sword on his shield and shouted, “Is anyone still alive?”
After a moment, a voice came back at them from among the houses: “Name yourself!”
“Harald and Roran Stronghammer and others of the Varden. If you serve the Empire, then surrender, for your comrades are dead and you cannot defeat us!”
From somewhere between the houses came a crash of falling metal, and then in ones and twos, warriors of the Varden emerged from hiding and limped toward the clearing, many of them supporting their wounded comrades. They appeared dazed, and some were stained with so much blood, Roran at first mistook them for captured soldiers. He counted four-and-twenty men. Among the final group of stragglers was Edric, helping along a man who had lost his right arm during the fighting.
Roran motioned, and two of his men hurried to relieve Edric of his burden. The captain straightened from under the weight. With slow steps, he walked over to Roran and looked him straight in the eye, his expression unreadable. Neither he nor Roran moved, and Roran was aware that the clearing had grown exceptionally quiet.
Edric was the first to speak. “How many of your men survived?”
“Most. Not all, but most.”
Edric nodded. “And Carn?”
“He lives.… What of Sand?”
“A soldier shot him during his charge. He died but a few minutes ago.” Edric looked past Roran, then toward the mound of bodies. “You defied my orders, Stronghammer.”
“I did.”
Edric held out an open hand toward him.
“Captain, no!” exclaimed Harald, stepping forward. “If it weren’t for Roran, none of us would be standing here. And you should have seen what he did; he slew nearly two hundred by himself!”
Harald’s pleas made no impression on Edric, who continued to hold out his hand. Roran remained impassive as well.
Turning to him then, Harald said, “Roran, you know the men are yours. Just say the word, and we will—”
Roran silenced him with a glare. “Don’t be a fool.”
Between thin lips, Edric said, “At least you are not completely devoid of sense. Harald, keep your teeth shut unless you want to lead the packhorses the whole way back.”
Lifting his hammer, Roran handed it to Edric. Then he unbuckled his belt, upon which hung his sword and his dagger, and those too he surrendered to Edric. “I have no other weapons,” he said.
Edric nodded, grim, and slung the sword belt over one shoulder. “Roran Stronghammer, I hereby relieve you of command. Have I your word of honor you will not attempt to flee?”
“You do.”
“Then you will make yourself useful where you may, but in all else, you will comport yourself as a prisoner.” Edric looked around and pointed at another warrior. “Fuller, you will assume Roran’s position until we return to the main body of the Varden and Nasuada can decide what is to be done about this.”
“Yes, sir,” said Fuller.
For several hours, Roran bent his back alongside the other warriors as they collected their dead and buried them on the outskirts of the village. During the process, Roran learned that only nine of his eighty-one warriors had died in the battle, while between them, Edric and Sand had lost almost a hundred and fifty men, and Edric would have lost more, except that a handful of his warriors had remained with Roran after he rode to their rescue.
When they finished interring their casualties, the Varden retrieved their arrows, then built a pyre in the center of the village, stripped the soldiers of their gear, dragged them onto the pile of wood, and set it ablaze. The burning bodies filled the sky with a pillar of greasy black smoke that drifted upward for what seemed like miles. Through it, the sun appeared as a flat red disk.
The young woman and the boy the soldiers had captured were nowhere to be found. Since their bodies were not among the dead, Roran guessed the two had fled the village when the fighting broke out, which, he thought, was probably the best thing they could have done. He wished them luck, wherever they had gone.
To Roran’s pleased surprise, Snowfire trotted back into the village minutes before the Varden were to depart. At first the stallion was skittish and standoffish, allowing no one to approach, but by talking to him in a low voice, Roran managed to calm the stallion enough to clean and bandage the wounds in the horse’s shoulder. Since it would be unwise to ride Snowfire until he was fully healed, Roran tied him to the front of the packhorses, which the stallion took an immediate dislike to, flattening his ears, flicking his tail from side to side, and curling his lips to bare his teeth.
“Behave yourself,” said Roran, stroking his neck. Snowfire rolled an eyeball at him and nickered, his ears relaxing slightly.
Then Roran pulled himself onto a gelding that had belonged to one of the dead Varden and took his place at the rear of the line of men assembled between the houses. Roran ignored the many glances they directed at him, although it heartened him when several of the warriors murmured, “Well done.”
As he sat waiting for Edric to give the command to start forward, Roran thought of Nasuada and Katrina and Eragon, and a cloud of dread shadowed his thoughts as he wondered how they would react when they learned of his mutiny. Roran pushed away his worries a second later. I did what was right and necessary, he told himself. I won’t regret it, no matter what may come of it.
“Move on out!” shouted Edric from the head of the procession.
Roran spurred his steed into a brisk walk, and as one, he and the other men rode west, away from the village, leaving the pile of soldiers to burn itself to extinction.
MESSAGE IN A MIRROR
The morning sun beat down on Saphira, suffusing her with a pleasant warmth.
She lay basking on a smooth shelf of stone several feet above Eragon’s empty cloth-shell-tent. The night’s activities, flying around scouting the Empire’s locations—as she had every night since Nasuada sent Eragon to the big-hollow-mountain-Farthen Dûr—had left her drowsy. The flights were necessary to conceal Eragon’s absence, but the routine wore on her, for while the dark held no terrors for her, she was not nocturnal by habit, and she disliked having to do anything with such regularity. Also, since it took the Varden so long to move from place to place, she spent most of her time soaring over much the same landscape every night. The only recent excitement was when she spotted stunted-thoughts-red-scales-Thorn low on the northeastern horizon the previous morning. He had not turned to confront her, however, but had continued on his way, heading deeper into the Empire. When Saphira had reported what she had seen, Nasuada, Arya, and the elves guarding Saphira had reacted like a flock of frightened jays, screaming and yammering at each other while darting every which way. They had even insisted that black-blue-wolf-hair-Blödhgarm fly with her in the guise of Eragon, which of course she had refused to allow. It was one thi
ng to permit the elf to place a water-shadow-ghost of Eragon on her back every time she took off from or landed among the Varden, but she was not about to let anyone other than Eragon ride her unless a battle was imminent, and perhaps not even then.
Saphira yawned and stretched out her right foreleg, spreading the clawed fingers of her paw. Relaxing again, she wrapped her tail around her body and adjusted the position of her head on her paws, visions of deer and other prey drifting through her mind.
Not long afterward, she heard the patter of feet as someone ran through the camp, heading toward Nasuada’s folded-wing-red-butterfly-chrysalis-tent. Saphira paid little attention to the sound; messengers were always hurrying to and fro.
Just as she was about to fall asleep, Saphira heard another runner dash past, then, after a brief interval, two more. Without opening her eyes, she extended the tip of her tongue and tasted the air. She detected no unusual odors. Deciding that the disturbance was not worth investigating, she drifted off into dreams of diving for fish in a cool green lake.
Angry shouting woke Saphira.
She did not stir as she listened to a large number of round-ear-two-legs arguing with each other. They were too far away for her to make out the words, but from the tone of their voices, she could tell they were angry enough to kill. Disputes sometimes broke out among the Varden, just as they did in any large herd, but never before had she heard so many two-legs argue for so long and with so much passion.
A dull throbbing formed at the base of Saphira’s skull as the two-legs’ shouting intensified. She tightened her claws against the stone beneath her, and with sharp cracks, thin wafers of the quartz-laden rock flaked off around the tips of her talons.
I shall count to thirty-three, she thought, and if they have not stopped by then, they had better hope that whatever upset them was worth disrupting the rest of a daughter-of-the-wind!
When Saphira reached the count of seven-and-twenty, the two-legs fell silent. At last! Shifting to a more comfortable position, she prepared to resume her much-needed slumber.
Metal clinked, plant-cloth-hides swished, skin-paw-coverings thudded against the ground, and the unmistakable scent of dark-skin-warrior-Nasuada wafted over Saphira. What now? she wondered, and briefly considered roaring at everyone until they fled in terror and left her alone.
Saphira opened a single eye and saw Nasuada and her six guards striding toward where she lay. At the lower end of the slab of stone, Nasuada ordered her guards to remain behind with Blödhgarm and the other elves—who were sparring with each other on a small expanse of grass—and then she climbed the slab by herself.
“Greetings, Saphira,” Nasuada said. She wore a red dress, and the color seemed unnaturally strong against the green leaves of the apple trees behind her. Glints of light from Saphira’s scales mottled her face.
Saphira blinked once, feeling no inclination to answer with words.
After glancing around, Nasuada stepped closer to Saphira’s head and whispered, “Saphira, I must speak to you in private. You can reach into my mind, but I cannot reach into yours. Can you remain inside me, so I can think what I need to say and you will hear?”
Extending herself toward the woman’s tense-hard-tired-consciousness, Saphira allowed her irritation at being kept from her sleep to wash over Nasuada, and then she said, I can if I so choose, but I would never do so without your permission.
Of course, Nasuada replied. I understand. At first Saphira received nothing but disjointed images and emotions from the woman: a gallows with an empty noose, blood on the ground, snarling faces, dread, weariness, and an undercurrent of grim determination. Forgive me, said Nasuada. I have had a trying morning. If my thoughts wander overmuch, please bear with me.
Saphira blinked again. What is it that has stirred up the Varden so? A group of men roused me from my sleep with their ill-tempered wrangling, and before that, I heard an unusual number of messengers racing through the camp.
Pressing her lips together, Nasuada turned away from Saphira and crossed her arms, cradling her healing forearms with cupped hands. The coloring of her mind became black as a midnight cloud, full of intimations of death and violence. After an uncharacteristically long pause, she said, One of the Varden, a man by the name of Othmund, crept into the Urgals’ camp last night and killed three of them while they were asleep around their fire. The Urgals failed to catch Othmund at the time, but this morning, he claimed credit for the deed and was boasting of it throughout the army.
Why did he do this? Saphira asked. Did the Urgals kill his family?
Nasuada shook her head. I almost wish they had, because then the Urgals would not be so upset; revenge, at least, they understand. No, that’s the strange part of this affair; Othmund hates the Urgals for no other reason than they are Urgals. They have never wronged him, nor his kin, and yet he loathes Urgals with every fiber of his body. Or so I gather after having spoken with him.
How will you deal with him?
Nasuada looked at Saphira again, a profound sadness in her eyes. He will hang for his crimes. When I accepted the Urgals into the Varden, I decreed that anyone who attacked an Urgal would be punished as if he had attacked a fellow human. I cannot go back on my word now.
Do you regret your promise?
No. The men needed to know I would not condone such acts. Otherwise, they might have turned against the Urgals the very day Nar Garzhvog and I made our pact. Now, however, I must show them I meant what I said. If I don’t, there will be even more murders, and then the Urgals will take matters into their own hands, and once again, our two races shall be snapping at each other’s throats. It is only right Othmund should die for killing the Urgals and for defying my order, but oh, Saphira, the Varden will not like this. I have sacrificed my own flesh to win their loyalty, but now they will hate me for hanging Othmund.… They will hate me for equating the lives of Urgals with the lives of humans. Lowering her arms, Nasuada tugged at the cuffs of her sleeves. And I cannot say I like it any more than they will. For all my attempts to treat the Urgals openly and fairly and as equals, as my father would have, I cannot help but remember how they killed him. I cannot help but remember the sight of all those Urgals slaughtering the Varden during the Battle of Farthen Dûr. I cannot help but remember the many stories I heard when I was a child, stories of Urgals sweeping out of the mountains and murdering innocent people in their beds. Always Urgals were the monsters to be feared, and here I have joined our fate with theirs. I cannot help but remember all that, Saphira, and I find myself wondering if I have made the right decision.
You cannot help but be human, said Saphira, attempting to comfort Nasuada. Yet you do not have to be bound by what those around you believe. You can grow beyond the limits of your race if you have the will. If the events of the past can teach us anything, it is that the kings and queens and other leaders who have brought the races closer together are the ones who have accomplished the greatest good in Alagaësia. It is strife and anger we must guard against, not closer relations with those who were once our foes. Remember your distrust of the Urgals, for they have well earned it, but also remember that once dwarves and dragons loved one another no more than humans and Urgals. And once dragons fought against the elves and would have driven their race extinct if we could have. Once those things were true, but no more, because people like you had the courage to set aside past hatreds and forge bonds of friendship where, previously, none existed.
Nasuada pressed her forehead against the side of Saphira’s jaw, then said, You are very wise, Saphira.
Amused, Saphira lifted her head off her paws and touched Nasuada on the brow with the tip of her snout. I speak the truth as I see it, no more. If that is wisdom, then you are welcome to it; however, I believe you already possess all the wisdom you need. Executing Othmund may not please the Varden, but it will take more than this to break their devotion to you. Besides, I am sure you can find a way to mollify them.
Aye, said Nasuada, wiping the corners of her eyes with he
r fingers. I will have to, I think. Then she smiled and her face was transformed. But Othmund was not why I came to see you. Eragon just contacted me and asked for you to join him in Farthen Dûr. The dwarves—
Arching her neck, Saphira roared toward the sky, sending the fire from her belly rippling out through her mouth in a flickering sheet of flame. Nasuada staggered back from her while everyone else within earshot froze and stared at Saphira. Rising to her feet, Saphira shook herself from head to tail, her weariness forgotten, and spread her wings in preparation for flight.
Nasuada’s guards started toward her, but she waved them back. A patch of smoke swept over her, and she pressed the underside of a sleeve over her nose, coughing. Your enthusiasm is commendable, Saphira, but—
Is Eragon injured or hurt? Saphira asked. Alarm shot through her when Nasuada hesitated.
He’s as healthy as ever, Nasuada replied. However, there was an … incident … yesterday.
What kind of incident?
He and his guards were attacked.
Saphira held herself motionless while Nasuada recalled for her everything Eragon had said during their conversation. Afterward, Saphira bared her teeth. Dûrgrimst Az Sweldn rak Anhûin should be grateful I was not with Eragon; I would not have let them escape so easily for attempting to kill him.
With a small smile, Nasuada said, For that reason, it is probably better you were here.
Perhaps, Saphira admitted, and then released a puff of hot smoke and lashed her tail from side to side. It does not surprise me, though. Always this happens; whenever Eragon and I part, someone attacks him. It’s gotten so it makes my scales itch to let him out of my sight for more than a few hours.
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