Torisen shook himself. These thoughts did no one any good except, perhaps, his enemies. Surely, this whole thing had been a trap, but set by whom and, ultimately, for whom? Only the changers, with their affinity to Perimal Darkling and their determination to stop him, could be responsible. First, there had been the Shanir's attack at Tentir, then Grisharki's crude but nearly lethal ambush, then the carefully preserved, barely hidden post pouch. Any Kencyr would know what effect that desperate message would have. Of course, the Host would make for the Cataracts at top speed, by the most direct route. Then came an element of chance. The Highlord might not even notice how like the Haunted Lands those distant White Hills had suddenly become, much less go out to investigate. But he had, and there had been the keep waiting for him, a festering sore ready to burst. Perhaps his very presence had triggered that eruption. Perhaps the changers had counted on that.
Below, red light spilled out of the tower's door and down the steps into the courtyard. More light and then flames poured out of the south window between the bars. The hall must be an inferno by now. The pyric rune only affected dead flesh, but flesh in turn could kindle wood. How many dead there must have been.
Flames, fire, fire-timbers, Tentir . . .
"Now, what would really frighten you, I wonder? Shall we find out?"
"Child of Darkness! Where is my sword? Where are my . . ."
Yes, he had been frightened to hear that dead mouth repeat the words of his nightmare, but not half as scared as the real thief of the sword and ring would have been. But who could have taken them?
Then he remembered the cloth that he had snatched from inside Ganth's coat. It was still in his hand. He unfolded it. It wasn't a proper mourning cloth at all, just a square of fabric ripped out of someone's shirt. In the exact center was one dark stain, the mark of blood kinship. But he was the only surviving member of Ganth's immediate family unless . . . unless . . .
Jame, the Shanir, the Child of Darkness, his sister—she had returned. For a moment, all Torisen felt was numb shock. Then he abruptly sat down on the hillside and began to laugh, helplessly, almost hysterically.
"My lord?" It was Kindrie, sounding scared.
"No, no, I haven't lost my wits—I hope. The fools! All that work, and they set their trap for the wrong twin!" He choked down his laughter. "We've got to get back to camp or I really will come unstuck. But how?"
"Walk, I suppose."
"More than three hundred leagues?"
"Less, I hope," said Kindrie hastily, as if afraid Torisen would start laughing again. "After all, the child couldn't get that far from her physical remains. We've got to follow her back and keep exactly to the path she marks, or I'm afraid it will be a very long walk indeed."
"Yes . . . yes, of course."
Torisen rose and followed the child's shadow as it danced ahead of them. He was still struggling to regain his mental balance and, he suspected, not doing a very good job of it. He knew he had frightened the Shanir badly. Kindrie was still keeping his distance from him, as if from something dangerous and unpredictable, which was just how Torisen felt. He turned suddenly on the young man, who shied violently away.
"Just now, you sounded rather strange. Are you all right?"
"Y-yes, lord. It's just the rune burned my tongue a bit. I'll heal."
"You always do, don't you?" Even to Torisen, that sounded like a sneer. Trinity, what was wrong with him?
Kindrie took the question seriously. "So far, lord, yes. I may not be strong, but I'm apparently tougher than I look—a family trait. My grandmother was a Knorth, you know." He shot a sidelong look at Torisen. "I know that that doesn't give me much claim on the house of Knorth, but some pride does go with it. You shouldn't have sent me away with Donkerri at Wyrden."
"God's teeth and toenails! I saw what Caineron did to you back at Tentir because of me. D'you think I wanted to put you in danger again? But now I have anyway, and you've put me under a deeper obligation than ever."
He spoke with such bitterness that Kindrie flinched. "Oh, please! Don't think of it that way. It's true that you are my natural lord. I can't help that; you can't change it. But if you don't want to acknowledge my claim, I-I'd rather that it was forgotten."
"Very noble, but that hardly discharges the obligation, does it? For someone who says he only wants what I can freely give, you certainly keep finding ways to put me in your debt."
He turned on his heel and went on after the child's shadow, limping a bit more than before, leaving Kindrie to flounder after him. Damn and blast. For years, he had avoided the Shanir and lulled himself into thinking that he had gotten over his irrational aversion to them. Now here he was, deeply obligated to one and paying him back with words savage enough to have come from his mad father. Ganth was glowing ashes behind him. Why in Perimal's name did his shadow still fall across his son's life?
Kindrie gave a sharp cry. Torisen spun around to find the Shanir sprawling on the ground behind him at the edge of a mist-filled hollow. In trying to catch up, he had cut too close to the hidden ground and apparently tripped on something. Mist swelled up around his legs. He couldn't seem to rise.
"Oh, for God's sake," Torisen said in disgust and went back to help.
"My foot!" the young man gasped as Torisen grabbed his arms. "Something has a hold on my foot . . . ah!"
He was jerked back, almost out of the Highlord's grip. Torisen braced himself and heaved, nearly freeing the Shanir. A hand rose out of the mist. Its skin hung about it like a tattered glove, exposing white sinews and a flash of whiter bone. It was clutching Kindrie's ankle. Kindrie gave a bleat of terror. Then both Kencyr fell, as the hand suddenly released its grip and a dark figure surged up out of the mist.
Kindrie sprawled across Torisen's legs. He thrust the Shanir aside, out of the way, barely in time. The thing from the mist blotted out the stars. It fell on him, its cruel fingers fumbling for his eyes, his throat. It stank of death. Somehow he managed to brace his foot against it and flip it over his head. It landed heavily. He went after it before it could recover, caught it in a headlock and, with a quick, lateral twist, broke its neck. It convulsed, throwing him. He rolled nearly into the mist before coming up short in a fighter's crouch. Clearly, however, the brief battle was over.
"That should at least slow it down some," he said unsteadily, and drew a sleeve across his face. The cloth stank from the creature's touch.
Kindrie stared at the twitching body. "B-but it's still alive!"
"Moving, yes; alive, no. You can't kill something that's already dead."
"It's another haunt?"
"Yes. These hills are rotten with them. I used to hunt them occasionally when I was a boy. More often, they hunted me." His head snapped up. "Listen!"
Far away over the hills, a horn sounded, and another and another.
Torisen sprang up. "The camp—it's under attack!"
He raced off toward the sound with Kindrie stumbling after him. Ahead, clouds rolling out of the west cloaked the sky, and distant thunder rumbled. Mist was swelling up even more thickly in the hollows, sending tendrils snaking up the lower slopes. The hills were becoming islands in a dim white sea. The fires of the Jaran's camp crowned the next rise. Torisen scrambled up the steep slope toward them. Suddenly, dark shapes emerged from the grass all round, ringing him with spearpoints.
"Here now, watch that!" he snapped, pulling up short.
"This one talks," said a voice from the shadows. "Maybe it will tell us what it is."
"Gladly! I'm Torisen Black Lord."
"There certainly is a resemblance," said another voice. "Perhaps it's a changer, or maybe an 'uman. Remember, there's a reference in the fourth canto of the Randirean saga to one who changed into a bat."
"No, no—that was only in the aberrant version . . ."
"Kirien, help!"
"What in Perimal's name . . ." said Kirien's voice from above. "Luran, why are you holding the Highlord at spear point?"
"Oh. Sorry, my lord."
>
The spears swung around to cover Kindrie as he staggered up the slope. Torisen knocked them down. "Sorry. That's not an 'uman either—whatever that is. I've never been the subject of an academic debate before," he said to Kirien as he joined her on the hilltop. "It's a singularly unnerving experience. Now, what in all the names of God is going on?"
"Confusion, primarily."
"That I can see. What are all these horses doing up here? You must be playing host to at least a quarter of the remount herd."
"Under the circumstances, we can hardly begrudge them the room. About ten minutes ago, the lot came stampeding up the hill. Then our guards on the lower slopes shouted up that they were under attack. They were gone by the time we got there—yes, completely. Then these . . . these things started coming up out of the mist. There! Do you see that?"
It was hard to see anything below now that clouds had swallowed the moon. Beyond the circle of fires, beyond the Kendars' double shield-wall, Torisen could just make out a horde of dark figures swarming up the lower slopes. They coalesced into a silent wave that beat and tore at the wall of shields with voracious hands and ignored the bite of spear and sword. The wall swayed but held. As the moon broke free for a moment from the advancing stormclouds, the wave receded as silently as it had come, leaving behind nothing but mist.
From off to the south came a battle cry, rising, falling.
"That's the Coman," said Torisen sharply. "What's that idiot Demoth up to now?"
"Whatever it is, he tried it after the first assault, too."
"Ho, Kirien!" The shout came from the next hilltop, which the Jaran also held. "Are you still there?"
"That's my great-uncle. Ho, Kedan! Where else would I be? Your shield-wall held?"
"Of course. But damnit, how can we fight what we can't even name? 'War with the What's-it'—ha!"
"Not 'ha,' " Torisen shouted across at him. "Haunts!"
"Ancestors preserve us," said Kirien softly. "Our own un-burnt dead from the White Hills . . ."
"Perhaps, perhaps not." Someday, he might tell her about the Haunted Lands, the other possibility, but not tonight.
"But if they're haunts, we can't kill them, we can't even wear them down. Have we lost already?"
"No."
There had to be a way. The pyric rune would ignite every piece of carrion within half a mile, but Kindrie clearly hadn't the strength to speak it again, and the idea apparently hadn't even occurred to the other priests, wherever they were. But did they really need the rune?
"Fire," he said to Kirien. "Get torches."
Below, the double row of Jaran Kendar waited. Singer Ashe limped restlessly back and forth behind the second line. By rights, she shouldn't have been even that close because of her maimed leg, but the battle horns had reminded her that before an axe cut her military career short, she had been a randon, one of the elite. She wondered where Harn was. In their days together, first as cadets and then as one-hundred commanders, she had always covered his back, knowing that he forgot it when the berserker rage seized him. The best way to manage Harn Grip-Hard, she had always maintained, was to give him a good clout on the head before any major battle. Anything to slow the man down a bit.
Then the moon again disappeared, this time for good. The shadow of the storm rack rolled eastward over the hills, dipping, swelling over hollow and crest. Darkness came in its wake, and the nearing rumble of thunder. The front line tensed.
"Here they come again!"
The wall closed, shields locking with a crash. The Kendar leaned into them against the mute fury of the assault. Nails scraped on steel. Hands groped over the top of the shield-wall, clutching at heads and hair. The second line of Kendar opened ranks to slash at them. Their shields were still down when a wave of haunts broke over the first line, swarming on top of each other, rolling over the Kendar. Ashe saw them coming.
" 'Ware their teeth!" she cried, and limped back a pace to gain room for her staff.
A haunt crashed into her. The impact knocked the staff from her hands and her off her feet. Bodies piled on top of her. Their stench, their loathsome touch—it was like being at the bottom of a mass grave, but all the corpses moved. Sharp nails tore at her clothes. Teeth locked in her arm, which she had thrown up to protect her throat. They were all fighting to get at her.
Then light exploded between the chinks of bodies. A great hissing arose, and the limbs about her thrashed wildly, trying to disentangle themselves. She caught a knee in the stomach and was still doubled up, gasping for breath, when the mound of haunts above her broke apart.
"Harry them home, but stay out of the mist!" shouted a familiar voice over Ashe's head. Hands pulled her up. "Well, singer, how goes the song?"
"Highlord?"
She blinked at him with fire dazzled eyes. His face seemed to float ghostlike before her, black clothing and hair melting back into the night. Torches blazed everywhere, and everywhere the haunts were in retreat.
"The song?" Ashe repeated. "At least this time it won't be a dirge."
"Oh well. The night isn't over yet. You stay clear from now on, though, and have a physician look at that arm. Remember, you're the one who's going to immortalize us all."
"Lord!" The hail came from downhill. "My lord, the mist!"
Torisen spun around and plunged off down the slope.
Ashe sat down heavily. "My arm . . . ?" She looked in dull wonder at the shredded, bloody sleeve.
Below, Kendars ringed the hollow, staring at it. They made way for Torisen. Ground fog still seethed in the depression, but now it seemed to be lit from within, its shifting surface fitfully aglow.
"Lord, is it on fire?"
"I don't think so. No, look. It's the brambles."
Now they could all trace the arabesque of stem and skull-shaped flower etched in fire under the white surface of the mist. The mist began to melt away in the growing heat, leaving behind only ashes and hard-packed earth. The door between the White Hills and the Haunted Lands had closed. In a nearby camp, a horn sounded, then another and another, signaling the end of battle. Now it was time to count the cost.
Torisen walked alone through the camp, hollow by hollow. Either his cry for torches had carried or others had come up with the same solution, for every depression had recently been fired, and some were still smoldering. Apparently no encampment had been overrun. Most were now clearing the hilltops and taking down any standards that might attract the lightning flickering closer and closer in the black bellies of the storm-clouds. As he passed under Lord Danior's camp, Holly came down to meet him.
"Only three guards killed and two missing," he said proudly. "That's not bad for my first battle, is it? Lots of people got a bit mauled, though."
"Keep an eye on them. Haunt bites infect easily and make haunts of their victims after death. There's the Coman standard, still up. Now what . . . oh my God."
Ahead lay another smoking hollow, surrounded this time by a four-foot bank. In its midst, rising out of the very earth as if to clutch brambles now reduced to ashes, was a hand.
"Why, someone's been buried alive!" Holly exclaimed.
He jumped down into the hollow before Torisen could stop him and grabbed the hand. It came away in his grasp. There was no arm attached to it, no sign of a body on or beneath the ashes. The earth itself seemed to have sheared it off.
On the lower slopes were many more bodies, some still twitching, others all too still. Many had been gnawed almost beyond recognition. Korey stood among them, rigid with fury, facing Demoth. The upper slopes were dark with silent, watching Kencyr.
"You have no right!" That was Demoth, nearly shrieking. "I lead the Coman! I order attack or retreat, or anything else I damn well please! You're nothing, do you understand? Nothing!"
"What's happened here?"
They both spun at the sound of Torisen's voice.
"He ordered my people back!" raged Demoth. "He fired the hollow, against my express orders!"
"And he sent Kendar down into the m
ist to fight. Three times."
"Sweet Trinity. How many lost?"
"Over a hundred, and as many killed on the slopes," Korey said angrily. "This is as much your doing as his, Highlord. You insulted the honor of the Coman by appointing this . . . this bungler. You insulted me."
He drew a knife.
Torisen had turned to Demoth. "I was wrong, and your kinsmen were right: You aren't fit to lead."
He turned back and saw first the knife, then Korey's thunderstruck expression. He put his hands on the young man's shoulders. The knife point pricked him through his coat, just under the ribs.
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