Then he turned to Gereth. “Thank you,” he said simply. “Thank you for what you have done. Will you ask me again to think kindly of your duke?”
After a second, Gereth found his voice. “Your Majesty, I do ask that.”
“Then I will,” said the king. He nodded to the Harivin captain. “The blue suite. This man is my honored prisoner. I want him under close but extremely courteous guard.” He did smile, then. “Challenging as such an order may be to carry out.”
As the captain bowed acknowledgment, the king said to Gereth, “I will speak to you again. Soon. I am favorably disposed to hear anything you have to say. But I will ask you to be patient.”
“Your Majesty,” Gereth answered, bowing. “Of course.” He was surprised to find himself smiling—he had found little to smile about during the past days. He nodded to the young prince. “Your Highness.”
Tirovay Raëhema returned his nod, looking faintly puzzled. “Should I know you?”
“You don’t know me at all,” Gereth assured him. “But I am very glad to see you recovered, Your Highness.” He was. The young prince’s recovery was one good thing, one excellent thing, to save out of the difficult, painful disaster of the previous days. He wished he could tell Kehera Raëhema that her brother had been freed of the Irekaïn Power and had recovered.
Perhaps Torrolay Raëhema would allow him to write a letter. Even if he could not bring himself to write to Innisth, he could write to Kehera. Yes. That would be . . . He could do that. He would ask.
Though not just yet. It was clear Torrolay Raëhema had no time for anything but his son just now.
19
Lord Laören Peris felt uneasy. It wasn’t clear to him exactly why. He knew there was no danger in this little operation. Certainly not to himself. The six companies of regular soldiers the king had loaned him would see to that—not to mention the king’s servant and sorcerer, Gheroïn Nomoris. The king had set a deep tie in Gheroïn, which Laören might have been jealous of, except very soon he would hold a deep tie himself
Besides, forcing the tie and becoming a sorcerer had done very little for Gheroïn’s personality or manners, in Laören’s opinion. He’d known Gheroïn Nomoris for years, off and on, and he’d always had a sense of humor until late last year when the king had granted him the tie. Shame to ruin a man who’d been a decent companion. Still, it was well worth sacrificing Gheroïn to make a sorcerer, if he could in turn force the Eänetén Power to abandon that stiff Maèr provincial and set its deep tie in a loyal Irekaïn lord instead. Which Laören had no doubt the sorcerer would do.
Yet he was still uneasy. The closer they’d come to Eäneté, the worse his uneasiness grew. And he didn’t know why. Provincial in the worst sense of the word, not merely lacking in but contemptuous of sophistication . . . Sullen peasants, all of them, including the Maèr Eänetaì. It would be a pleasure to humble him. Oh, Gheroïn might pretend to think the Eänetén Power a somewhat difficult Immanent, but Laören wasn’t concerned about that. Mastering a recalcitrant Immanent was undoubtedly akin to mastering a disobedient woman, and he was quite accustomed to such pursuits. Besides, when all was said and done, Eäneté was a province of middling age and size. He was quite certain he would enjoy mastering its little Immanent.
The mountain road was clear. There was no problem there. The weather was good, considering it was the twentieth day of the Iron Hinge Month. It might be unpleasantly cold, but there hadn’t been snow for days and travel was easy enough. Off to the left rolled pastures, empty stubble as far as the eye could see, snow clinging to the yellowed winter grasses, patches of ice glittering where the land was low and marshy. On the right, the low hills marched up to meet the mountains, black leafless forest giving way in the heights to bare gray stone. Far too much empty land, altogether a dismal scene, but Laören’s senior captain had pointed out that nothing could move close to the road among those naked trees without being seen, so that was something.
Laören glanced sidelong at Gheroïn. The man rode with his eyes turned steadfastly forward, as though thoughts of wine and women never entered his mind. Laören found him unsettling. No doubt that accounted for his general unease.
“Eäneté province begins just around the curve of that next hill,” Gheroïn said abruptly. His voice and manner expressed neither pleasure nor anticipation.
Indeed, it was a most disconcerting flatness of manner. Laören nodded acknowledgment and thought privately that, truly, it was not an Immanent that would have suited him at all well.
At least the tedious part of this little exercise was nearly past. Once on Eänetén land, Gheroïn would break its rebellious Power, set the tie into Laören, and they would all enjoy a leisurely journey to the central town, where no doubt it would take the rest of the winter to put affairs in proper order. Laören did look forward to seeing the arrogant Eänetén duke on his knees. He would have to make sure his captains understood Innisth terè Maèr Eänetaì must be taken alive and unharmed. Though the man would not be Eänetaì by then, of course.
Then they breasted the hill, and Laören looked down the curve of the ground into Eäneté.
Along the east side of the road, the land rambled off for a long way in harvest stubble and frozen marsh. To the west the forest had been hewed back for only a short distance before the slopes grew rocky and the land too poor to be worth the effort. In the road, and to each side of it, waited men.
They had constructed a barricade of logs cut from the nearby forest and sharpened. It was nothing horses could charge into, certainly, especially with a shallow trench hacked out of the frozen ground before it. But behind this barricade was merely a scattering of soldiers in their Eänetén gray, and with them, a scarcely larger number of townsmen and farmers less well equipped—pitchforks and axes as common among them as swords.
But the Eänetén duke himself was not there. Laören looked for him at once and was both disappointed and relieved not to find that tall cold-eyed lord among the defenders.
“Few horses, not that they’ve much use for horse in their position,” murmured Laören’s senior captain, Criof. “And their numbers are certainly paltry.”
“Excellent,” Laören agreed, wondering why the captain was bothering him with such trivial details instead of just going on and dealing with it. “I’m sure they’ll give you no trouble.”
The captain said apologetically, “Well, it may take a bit longer than we’d like, my lord. All that land east of the road is too damn wet to take our horses through. The animals would go through the ice more like than not and break their legs. And then that wood on the other side is nice cover for hidden soldiers.”
“Well, then?” Laören demanded. “Don’t tell me you can’t take them, Captain.”
“Of course not, my lord. It’ll be easy enough. Just slower than it might have been had they chosen worse ground. Unless—” He glanced sidelong at Gheroïn. “Unless His Majesty’s sorcerer can break through their line for us, my lord?”
“Not until I set foot on Eänetén soil,” Gheroïn said impassively.
Laören shrugged. “It seems we’ll have to do it the hard way.”
The captain sighed, not quite audibly. “So, then. I’ll set one company to guard against that wood, just in case. Then I’ll send a company of foot through the marsh. They’ll be slow, but the Eänetén commander won’t be able to ignore them. That’ll draw defenders off the road, and leave four full companies to get through the barricade, not that so many will be necessary. Once we get a few men set on the other side to hold off the Eänetén soldiers, we’ll have that barrier out of the way fast enough. Then we’ll be able to bring in the heavy horse for one mop-up sweep, and that’ll be that.”
“Whatever you like. Just make a way for us into Eäneté.”
“Yes, my lord,” Criof acknowledged. “If you would please retire a little way back along the column, my lord. It wouldn’t do for you to take an unlucky arrow.”
Laören certainly agreed with that. He re
ined his horse away. Gheroïn didn’t follow, but no doubt he could judge such matters for himself and certainly Laören wasn’t going to argue with him.
At first, Criof’s plan seemed to be working perfectly, though of course Laören had not paid much attention to the details. The Irekaïn detachment of foot troops picked a careful way into the frozen marsh, swinging wide out of bowshot and preparing for a quick advance. As he clearly had to, the Eänetén commander separated some of his men from the main body of the defenders and sent them a short way into the marsh, which would surely weaken his frontal defense . . . or Laören supposed so; he felt in general such matters were best left to soldiers, who had nothing better to do than consider tactical matters.
A few Irekaïn soldiers fell; the first defenders as well, and suddenly it was impossible to make out anything clearly amid the chaotic struggle on and around the road. He supposed his Irekaïn soldiers would shortly trounce those upstart Eäneténs . . . and then Captain Criof sounded the withdrawal. The staccato beat of the call sang out above the clash of battle below. At first Laören wasn’t certain of the meaning of that call, but then the Irekaïn soldiers began an orderly retreat, guarding themselves and taking their wounded out with them.
Laören pressed his horse forward toward Criof. “Captain!” he said. “What is this? Do you not understand the urgent necessity to make a way for the king’s sorcerer into Eäneté?”
“Look again, my lord,” Criof said in a tight, abrupt tone. Laören was half minded to reprimand the man, but he did look again . . . and then forgot the man’s insolence.
Where Irekaïn men had fallen and died, they still lay. But where Eänetén defenders had died on Eäneté soil, they did not stay dead. Or not quite in the usual way, at least. Laören watched one man, mortally wounded, throw his head back and die, coughing blood. And his body blurred, and at once, fast as thought, there was a large ash-colored wolf struggling to its feet where the man had lain. The wolf tilted its muzzle to the sky and voiced the long singing cry of northern winters, and in its wild voice there was nothing left of the man it had been.
Laören found this difficult to believe. The Immanent might have taken up its dead, certainly. But it was only a provincial Power, a lesser Power. It should not have been able to reshape its dead and pour them back into the world. Yet all through the ranks of the defenders there were now wolves, two dozen or more mist-colored animals with savage yellow eyes. They flowed over the low barrier the Eänetén men had constructed, heading directly for the Irekaïn soldiers.
“Just how strong is the Eänetén Power?” Laören said to Gheroïn Nomoris. “You didn’t tell me it was Great! Can’t you stop it doing that?”
“I warned you it was recalcitrant,” Gheroïn said coldly. “Of course I can stop it. Once I set foot within its precincts.”
Laören glared at him, then turned to Captain Criof. “Do something!”
Captain Criof said to his signaler, sounding perfectly calm, “Instruct all archers to fire on those animals at once,” and the young man lifted his horn to his lips with hands that trembled. Arrows sang through the air. Many found their targets. With very little effect. Laören was looking directly at one immense wolf when it was struck by three arrows in quick succession. The wolf was solid enough to stop the arrows’ flight. But unlike an ordinary wolf, the arrows did not seem to bother it very much. They certainly did not slow it down. That wolf, and all the others, continued to pursue the retreating Irekaïn soldiers. The soldiers, from an orderly retreat, began to move a great deal faster, and with a great deal less concern for the order of their ranks. Here and there two or more soldiers, working together, managed to hack a wolf to pieces. But there were a lot more men dying out there than there were animals.
But then Gheroïn Nomoris moved at last. The king’s sorcerer rode forward, took out a short dagger no longer than his palm, and threw it out toward the wolves. It struck the earth almost directly in front of the lead wolf, which tumbled off its feet as it met some unseen barrier. The wolf scrambled up again, snarling. All the other wolves pressed forward, but none seemed able to pass the knife where it stood in the ground. Nomoris continued forward, and the wolves fell back before him, retreating finally back beyond the barricade. There, they did not fawn on the men as dogs might have, but formed instead a separate pack of their own, on the side where the leafless forest made its closest approach to the road.
“Well, that’s all right, then,” Laören said, trying to sound as though he had never been even momentarily concerned.
“While they are off Eänetén soil, I can break them. Not on Eänetén soil. Not until I too can stand on that land and break that Power entirely.”
“Of course, of course. You must clear a way past that barrier, Criof.”
“I understand.” Criof cleared his throat. “It will be more difficult than I anticipated.”
Laören gave him an incredulous look.
Criof cleared his throat again. “Of course we shall succeed, my lord.” He regarded the field, considering. Then he said to an aide, in a clear, carrying voice, “Pass orders back that the men are to fight to cripple. Not to kill, as they can avoid it; the men are less dangerous than the wolves. Our men must work in pairs on those cursed wolves. If they keep their heads, they can cut them apart.”
The aide saluted and reined away.
The second attempt to break the Eänetén barricade was very different in tone from the first. The Irekaïn soldiers were much grimmer about it. Laören leaned forward, trying to make sense of it. The wolves were a threat, obviously, but as Criof had said, two or three men working together could cut them down. And the Irekaïns had soldiers to spare, for the wolves and the Eänetén men besides. It was inevitable, then, that the barricade would be broken. It was inevitable that Gheroïn Nomoris would ride forward, dismount, step over the invisible line that separated Eäneté proper from all the lands to the east, and raise his sword with a hiss of triumph, ready to plunge it into the dark earth at his feet.
But he never completed this gesture, because suddenly a man in the uniform of a Pohorin soldier ran forward between his fellows, caught Nomoris by the arm, spun him around, slammed a long, slender knife up under his chin, then lifted him entirely off the ground and cast him down onto the earth.
In the space of a single heartbeat, while Laören stared in astonished dismay, a young black sapling taller than the height of a man and as big around as a man’s wrist burst from Nomoris’s body. It reached upward with slender branches, carrying the sorcerer along with the force of its swift growth. Nomoris hung there, limp, struck through the body by the graceful branches of the young tree, his eyes open and blank, the knife still jammed into his skull. Where drops of his blood fell, red and full, onto the dark ground, the cold earth smoked. Flowers, white as snow or death, sprang from the bare twigs of the new tree with all the power and life of a remembered spring. Though the Irekaïn Power had raised him once, Laören found himself unable to believe it would be able to do so again. No, this time the king’s sorcerer was truly dead.
Then Laören cried out, as an immense cold pressure closed around him. He had just time to understand that this was the Great Power of Irekay, cast out of Gheroïn Nomoris and seeking another mortal body in which it might anchor itself, another body with the eyes and mind of a man. He had just time to understand that, and then Irekaìmaiäd crushed his mind and heart and soul and he vanished within the endless white winter.
Verè Deconniy, commander of the one company of Eänetén soldiers left in Eäneté proper and thus by extension of all the townsmen and farmers as well, watched with amazement as one of the Irekaïn soldiers killed the sorcerer, as the black sapling struck upward through the sorcerer’s body, as the tree burst into flower, its blooms white as winter. Other saplings rose among the dead, thickening into young trees, black branches shining with a glaze of ice, flowering despite the season. Among the Irekaïns, someone sounded the retreat; the stuttering notes echoed in the appalled pause that ha
d gripped both sides . . . and Lord Laören, safely back from the violence and death, toppled from his horse as though arrow shot.
Verè only wished the man had been shot. Probably he had merely fainted. That suspicion was nearly as satisfying, in its way.
He had been appalled to see Laören in command of those troops; sickened at the idea that Laören, of all men, had been appointed to take the lordship of this province. He had not been at all certain he could prevent that, with the limited resources His Grace had left for defense. Then the Eänetén Power had risen, and he had become more confident.
And then Gheroïn Nomoris had ridden forward and Verè had known, dismayed, that even the Eänetén Power might not defeat the Irekaïn sorcerer and that if it could not, he had no way to prevent anything of the disaster that would come down on Eäneté.
And now this.
His Grace had told him. He should have trusted his orders. His Grace had said right out plainly, When our Immanent is roused, the dead of Eäneté are not likely to rest. Even some of the living may be taken up. A man from Tisain may be a better choice for commander, when Eänetaìsarè rouses. It hadn’t been . . . enough of a warning. Not enough for him to honestly be prepared for . . . this. But he suspected that nothing could have been enough. Not for this.
The wolves had gone, at least. Melted away into the winter woods. Verè was glad of that. A man born and bred in Tisain had little fondness for wolves; not like the Eänetén townspeople who sometimes killed calves and left them for the wolves. He understood that custom better now.
Though at least there would be no need to form a burial detail. The bodies of the fallen Irekaïn soldiers could be left where they lay. He imagined the wolves would drift back to this killing ground once the soldiers had gone. Actually, he would have preferred not to imagine it.
The soldiers that remained on their feet were more of a concern. The surviving Irekaïns were definitely retreating, but Verè thought it deeply unwise to allow them to regroup. And he wanted, for both personal and professional reasons, to be sure of Lord Laören. He glanced around, taking in the men he had left. He could wish the wolves had not gone just yet, actually. His men were still outnumbered . . . though with the Irekaïns so thoroughly unnerved that might not matter.
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