Dark of the Moon

by P. C. Hodgell

  Soon, the ferrymen would be busy carrying the Karkinoran army fifty at a time over to the west bank battlefield and undoubtedly making more money in a day than they usually did in half a year. War was proving good business for Hurlen.

  Just beyond the ferries, where the Silver met the Tardy, the water broadened almost into a lake studded with about thirty islands, ranging in size from Grand Hurlen to rocks barely ten feet across. All of them had been hollowed out millennia ago, perhaps to serve as dwellings for some long-forgotten religious order. The work was far cruder than that of the Builders, and much older. Later generations had built up the walls, first with stone blocks, then with wood. Stone bridges connected the lower stories. Two of them also extended to about fifty feet of each bank, ending in wooden drawbridges. The wooden spires rising above the islands' masonry were laced together with catwalks. Laundry fluttered like bright banners from them.

  The Host pitched camp in the Upper Meadow opposite the city. The Highlord's tent was barely up before Burr began pressing Torisen to rest. For this solicitude, he got a ringing snub. It was five days since the near-fatal crisis, not that Torisen realized (on a conscious level, at least) that it had been so serious. In fact, he remembered very little of it and, for once, virtually nothing about his dreams. Mostly, he tried to forget the whole thing. It was enough for him that his leg no longer hurt and that he felt blessedly sane again, if physically a bit fragile.

  Because he wanted to forget, it irritated him that Burr, Ardeth, and the Wolver had all been watching him so closely these past few days. Even Kindrie had been hovering just on the edge of his notice, looking so washed-out that on a sudden impulse Torisen had ridden over to demand if he felt all right. That, to a Shanir. It was all very strange.

  Here was Burr again, mulishly offering a posset.

  "You know I hate that stuff," Torisen snapped.

  "Just the same, my lord."

  Torisen looked at the cup of wine-curdled milk, at his servant's scarcely sweeter expression, and suddenly laughed. "All right, Burr, all right. I've been rude enough for one day."

  Just then, a guard appeared at the inner door to announce the approach of Prince Odalian. Torisen went to the outermost chamber of his tent to greet the Karkinoran ruler, reaching it just as Odalian entered. The Prince paused briefly in the shadow of the tent flap. Torisen also hesitated, suddenly tense without quite knowing why, but then forced himself to relax as the other stepped forward. Whatever impression he had received in that brief moment when shadow lay across Odalian's face, it didn't fit this slim young man with his diffident manner. They greeted each other formally and made polite conversation while messengers went to summon the rest of the High Council. The Prince congratulated Torisen again on his third year as Highlord. Torisen, rather cautiously, felicitated the Prince on gaining Caineron's daughter as a consort.

  "If it's done anything to bring the Kencyrath and Karkinor closer together," said Odalian, "I'm glad. It has occurred to me, though, that a stronger connection might be even more beneficial to us both."

  Torisen agreed in principle, thinking that the Prince was probably just finding out how slight a claim he actually had on Caineron. "What do you have in mind, Highness?"

  "Well, my lord," said the young man diffidently, "I was rather thinking of subject ally status for my country."

  "But that would make you practically our vassal," said Torisen, surprised.

  "Would the Council approve Karkinor as a full ally?"

  "No. We've had rather bad luck with both subject and full allies. Some people blame my father's defeat in the White Hills on their treachery." As he spoke, Torisen realized he wasn't too eager for any such connection himself, but that might just be Ganth's savage bitterness speaking. He made an effort to be open-minded.

  Odalian had been thoughtfully sipping his wine. Now he looked up again as if just struck by an idea. "What if the potential ally was to accept blood-binding?"

  This time Torisen was really startled. "Highness, that's a rite hardly ever practiced these days even within the Kencyrath. Anyway, you need a Shanir blood-binder to do it properly. Otherwise, it's just a symbolic act. But if you were willing to undergo it," he added, trying to be fair, "it might impress the more traditional members of the High Council. Trinity knows what your own people would think of it, though. We'll wait and see. There's one great-granddad of a battle to win first."

  At that point, the rest of the Council began to arrive. Only Caineron had met the Prince before. He greeted him now with all the jovial condescension of a father-in-law, but as he stepped back, he looked momentarily puzzled. Something about Odalian's face, the color of his eyes . . . no. Of course they had always been gray. Caineron prided himself on his good memory.

  Burr was serving wine and cakes when Lord Danior burst into the tent. The messenger hadn't found him in his camp because he had ridden ahead some three miles to the edge of the escarpment.

  "The Horde is in sight!" he exclaimed. "It's like . . . like a black carpet covering the plain, and the sky is black above it!"

  Caineron started, spilling his wine. "We must arm the camp!"

  Danior gave him a scornful look. "Oh, it probably won't get here until sometime tomorrow. Plenty of time—but oh, Tori, you should see it!"

  Torisen put down his posset, still untasted. "I think we all should," he said grimly.

  It was a fair-sized group that rode south some ten minutes later. Each lord had his full war-guard with him now, ranging from Danior's ten to Caineron's fifty. Odalian's retinue had also joined the cavalcade, as well as twenty of Torisen's randons, all trying to look inconspicuous. Harn had apparently impressed on them that they were not to get in the Highlord's way for fear that even at this late date he would dismiss them out of hand.

  The road ran along the river to the head of the Mendelin Steps, but they all rode down through the meadows. Torisen had come this way fairly often, traveling between the Southern Host and the Riverland, but he had never regarded this terrain before as a possible battlefield. Now he felt as if he were seeing it for the first time. Between the upper and middle meadows was another set of stone steps called, predictably, the Lower Hurdles. The lowest step was quite steep in some places, constituting nearly a six-foot drop. The middle field narrowed to a bottleneck at its southern end, hemmed in by the river and by woods.

  The woods struck Torisen as rather odd. For one thing, even as they approached, the individual trees were hard to distinguish, as if mist obscured them. Also, rabbits startled by the horses jumped toward their cover only to stop at the last moment, as if they had run into a wall.

  Beyond the bottleneck was a small lower meadow that ran almost to the stony edge of the escarpment. The Mendelin Steps began here, level with Eldest Island, which split the river into two channels. The much narrower western channel descended in two falls, the first about one hundred feet high. The second, at the edge of the escarpment, plummeted twice that far into a cauldron of seething water at the Cataracts' foot. The stairs followed in two steep flights, separated by a level stretch at the foot of the first cataract. The entire gorge was about one hundred and fifty feet wide, and the steps forty. Tears-of-Silver trees overhung it on both sides.

  Beyond the trees, beyond even the second, higher falls, the escarpment jutted out in a stony promontory over the plain. The Wolver crouched at its edge, the wind ruffling his fur. Torisen dismounted and went out on the bare cliff head to stand beside him. The others followed.

  The great southern plain spread out nearly three hundred feet beneath them. Close to the curving cliff wall to the left, where the Silver bent southeastward in its course, grass and trees were green. Farther out to the south, the yellow marks of drought began. Farther still, and yet frighteningly close, the ground turned black. The blackness was moving. It crept forward ever so slowly, like a stain, sometimes breaking into individual dots but mostly coming in a solid mass that was miles wide and stretched back out of sight. Storm clouds followed it. All the sky to
the far southwest was as black as night but shot with sudden forked tongues of lightning. Back under the shadow of the storm, the darkness on the ground sparkled with a million torches. The faintest growl of thunder, like a muttered threat, reached them there on the cliff despite the Cataracts' roar.

  "Now that," said Brandan, "is moderately impressive. So what do we do about it?"

  "Go home?" the Wolver suggested, without looking up.

  "Tempting, but not practical. I think you were right, Torisen: that lot out there is a knife leveled at our throats. Best to meet it here."

  "Yes, but what can we do?" Caineron sounded almost peevish. "A fine thing to drag us all this far and then shove that in our faces."

  "As I see it," said Torisen slowly, "we have three chances to hold them . . ."

  "On the stair," said Danior.

  "In the lower meadow," said Korey of the Coman.

  "At the first set of hurdles," said Essien and Essiar together.

  Torisen smiled at this eager chorus. "Yes. If they get into the upper meadow, we'll probably be overrun. That, on the whole, would be unfortunate. Stepped, rubble-work barriers at the foot of each flight of stairs should help."

  "I'll see to it," said Harn, and went off to do so.

  Kirien had been staring out over the plain, frowning slightly. "Yes, but how long can we hold them in any event? There are so many. Of course, none of this falls within the scope of my studies, but it seems to me that if they simply keep coming, in the end we're all the dog's dinner."

  "It would perhaps be better," murmured Randir, without looking at her, "if those without experience held their peace."

  Oho, thought Torisen, glancing at them sideways. She's already gotten under her grand-uncle's elegant skin, and he hasn't even realized yet that she isn't his grand-nephew.

  Ardeth had also been gazing out over the plain, wrapped in his own bleak thoughts. Now he turned to Randir. "My dear Kenan, surely you would make some allowance for an intelligent comment even from a novice—or was it the intelligence of this one that upset you? The lad is quite right: we can only hold them so long. Our sole hope, it seems to me, is somehow to turn them back or even aside. This escarpment runs a good five hundred miles in either direction. If they turn west, that puts them on Krothen's doorstep or, even better, on the Karnides'; if southeast, there's Nekrien. Even if I were three million strong, I wouldn't care to tackle the Witch-King in his own mountains— or anywhere else, for that matter. But the big question remains: how do we turn them?"

  "Kill so many that they give up," said Danior.

  "I doubt if the death of even a million would discourage them much," said Torisen. "Remember, the Horde is really a vast collection of tribes that have never done much before but chase and eat each other. If we knew what united them now, we could strike at that. I only hope we learn while fighting them, and learn in time."

  Odalian had half-started at these words, and Torisen caught the sudden movement. When he turned, however, the Prince only gave him a bland smile. "These abstractions are rather beyond me. Perhaps, though, you would like to continue this discussion in the hospitality of my camp?"

  "Go on ahead," Torisen said to the others. "I'll follow."

  They went, leaving the Highlord and the Wolver in silence on the windy cliff, looking out over the plain, while Torisen's war-guard waited at a tactful distance.

  "You've never commanded a really big battle before, have you?" the Wolver said at last.

  "One this big? Nobody has. But, of course, you're right. I was only a one-hundred commander at Urakarn. After that, things were lively enough in the Southern Host, but we didn't tend toward pitched battles." He sighed. "It feels like a lifetime since we last sat in Krothen's guardroom, discussing the ethics of love and war."

  "This is different," said the Wolver, still staring out. "This is real."

  Torisen snorted. "You're telling me."

  He half turned to leave, then paused, looking across at the island that split the Silver. The larger, higher cataract was beyond, filling the air with mist and thunder. The projecting cliff where he stood gave a glimpse of it, but even a better one of the island's head. Untold millennia ago, unknown hands had carved a giant face there. Its smooth forehead rose almost to the island's shaggy crown of trees. Its chin disappeared into the boiling cauldron of spray below. In all, it was more than three hundred feet high. Some claimed that the founders of Hurlen had been responsible for this too, that, in fact, it was the reason for Hurlen. Perhaps they had meant it to honor a king, perhaps a god. Ages of wind and water had left it characterless, ageless.

  "Grimly, long ago, when we were talking about the Cataracts, you said that if we ever came this way together, you would show me something very old, very special."

  The Wolver growled. "I must have been drunk."

  "You were. Very. I wouldn't remind you now except—well, you can see what we're up against. If there's anything about this terrain that will give us the slightest edge, I want to know about it."

  "I don't see how it can help." He rose and shook himself. "But all right."

  They went back the way they had come, with the Wolver trotting beside Storm and the war-guard trailing along behind. Torisen wasn't really surprised when he saw that they were headed for the woods. Storm went about a hundred feet under the overlocking boughs before halting, stiff-legged. The Wolver seized his bridle. He drew his thumb slowly down the length of the stallion's face, turning the sharp nail inward at the last minute to draw a drop of blood, which he flicked to the ground. Storm tossed his head, snorting with indignation.

  "Do you have to do that to me, too?" Torisen asked.

  "And send you into battle tomorrow with a bandaged nose? Burr would never forgive me."

  "You had better wait here," Torisen said to his guard.

  They looked perturbed.

  "My lord," said the oldest of them, "if we let you out of our sight, Harn Grip-Hard will nail our ears to the nearest tree."

  "I think, on the whole, you had better wait."

  "Yes, my lord," said the guard unhappily.

  Torisen and the Wolver went farther in. It was an eerie place, full of leaf-filtered light and mist drifting between gray-trunked trees. Close as the Cataracts were, no sound of them penetrated here. Ferns dripped. Storm's hooves thudded on deep leaf mold. The bluff loomed ahead of them. Occasional breaks in the leaf cover gave glimpses of its wooded heights. Ahead stood a bare Host tree. As they approached, a swarm of pale green leaves fluttered down through the mist, golden veins flashing, and settled on its naked boughs. Beyond, the bluff scooped inward, whether by art or nature it was hard to tell. The resulting hollow was about one hundred feet across at its lower end and somewhat deeper than that. It had rather the shape of an egg with the opening at its smaller upper end. Ferns covered its floor. Mist roofed it.

  The Wolver stopped, almost cowering, at the hollow's threshold. "This is the heart of the woods," he said. "This is sacred ground."

  His voice woke the ghost of an echo in the hollow, as if other voices had caught his words and were whispering them from wall to wall.

  "Strange, definitely strange," said Torisen. "But sacred to whom?"

  "To the people of rock and stone, who built Hurlen and carved Eldest Island, who were masters here millennia before your ancestors came, before mine learned to walk like men. There's a legend that they used to bring their enemies here and . . . and shout them to death."

  "How?"

  "I have no idea. It's just an old story. There are a lot of stories about this place, some pretty grisly. There were terrible forces awake in Rathillien once—gods, demons, I don't know. None of our words seem to fit them. They still sleep in places like this." He crept backward, shivering. "Let's go, Tori. We don't belong here. No one does, now."

  Torisen sighed. "I suppose not. Too bad. I'd hoped we could make some use of this place." He began to turn away, then suddenly spun back. "BOO!" he shouted at the top of his voice, into the hollow.
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  "Yawp!" squawked the Wolver, and shot five feet straight up into the air, coming down again in his complete furs.

  The echoes of both their cries boomed from cliff wall to cliff wall, multiplying into a wild cacophony of shouts, fading again into silence one by one.

  The Wolver cowered wild-eyed under the ferns, all his fur on end. "Gods, Tori, don't do that!"

  "Sorry. Just testing."

  "For what?"

  "I don't know. Anything. But you were right: There's nothing for us here. Come on, let's go partake of Prince Odalian's hospitality. Maybe he can cheer us up some."

  They went, but the last faint echo of their voices remained, murmuring from cliff to cliff, and some dirt dislodged from half-obscured carvings on their heights came rattling down.