Coärin’s men closed around him, and from the other side a company of Eänetén soldiers. Etar led that company, and Innisth was sorry for that; he knew distantly how unlikely it was that these men would survive even a few moments longer. He was glad Caèr Reiöft and Gereth were both safe in Viär. Except if he himself fell here, none of them would be safe for long. He wished he believed Eäneté would hold if he fell.
It would hold for a little while. He believed that. If whoever took the tie could master it. Otherwise, probably not.
He could hardly believe he was actually here, doing this. The surge of his mare beneath him, the thud of her hooves, the reins in his hands, the bitter wind in his face, none of that felt real. He seemed to have been riding forever across this battlefield, the double-headed Winter Dragon standard snapping in the bitter wind, its hollow standard-bearer, its mockery of a horse. All seemed a dream, distant and unreal. A nightmare.
Here on this ground, before the pale-gold walls of Raëh, where all of its opponents had gathered, the Irekaïn Power would finally win. Innisth knew he could not defeat it. For all his brave words to his wife, he knew that not even all the Fortunate Gods together could make the chance turn now. He had intended to bind Eäneté to Raëh, and only then face the Great Power of Irekay. Now he found no way to do that. Eänetaìsarè had the will and the affinity for destruction, but it did not have the sheer hammering strength it needed to destroy Irekaìmaiäd. Raëhemaiëth possessed the deep-rooted strength but not the savagery.
The men of Eäneté who fell here did not rise from the earth with the song of wolves in their mouths; they did not rise at all, or if they did, it was with the hollow eyes of the walking dead, to follow the terrible Dragon standard. Raëhemaiëth was still shielding its folk from that obscenity. But Eänetaìsarè could not prevent even that.
Eänetaìsarè could never have invested a true tie in a dozen men or more and mastered them all, could never have embodied hundreds of dead men and forced them to rise. No, the Power of Irekay would win. Innisth knew it. It would use the bitter chaos of midwinter to cut itself free of the bonds of earth and leave in the end nothing but ice lying on this field of battle; frozen earth and frozen men, and an endless winter that would in the end bury even the tallest towers of Raëh. It would become a God. Men, such as survived, might even pray to it. Though probably not for mercy.
The standard-bearer met Innisth’s attack with his standard, thrusting with its pole as though with a spear, the flying banner cracking like a whip. Innisth blocked that blow, his sword ringing like a bell, but cold struck up his arm to the shoulder; his mare leaped aside or he would have fallen in that moment. He was conscious mostly of irritation: how embarrassing to go down in the very first moment of battle! It was insupportable. He laid the rein against his mare’s neck and she whirled and leaped courageously forward, and he ducked under a second blow from the standard and cut at the monstrosity’s legs. But the standard-bearer blocked his blow and the double-headed dragon-horse snaked one long neck down and sideways, snapping with fanged jaws, and bit his mare at the base of her neck.
The mare tried to dodge at the last moment, but she did not have room to get out the way. She screamed as piteously as a child as the monster jerked her off her feet, reaching for her throat with the fanged jaws of its other head. Innisth barely leaped clear as she collapsed and rolled, thrashing her long legs in an agony of effort.
The standard-bearer laughed and swung his banner high, the two-headed Dragon snapping out to its full length on the cold wind. Staggering to his feet, Innisth lifted his sword. Eänetaìsarè’s heat and fury surged through him, but the standard-bearer laughed again and strode forward, and behind Innisth the black mare blew out a cloud of bloody foam and died.
Innisth, unexpectedly consumed with grief and rage, flung down his sword, snatched a slim-bladed little dagger into his hand from a wrist sheath, took a single step forward, and flung it into the standard-bearer’s face, where the helm left a gap for the man to see through. The standard-bearer did not shriek. He hissed like a cat, jerked the knife free, and reined his double-headed beast around, his standard sweeping up and around. Blood spattered from the white banner and curled around the hand of the white rider. Innisth could not tell whether it was real blood or whether it was the blood that dripped from the painted jaws of the Winter Dragon on the banner. In a moment, he knew that standard would slam down like a club and it would be his blood. He did not even have another knife.
But before the standard-bearer could strike, Riheir Coärin brought his horse leaping over the corpse of the black mare and swung his sword in a great overhand blow as though he meant to cleave through the very earth; he struck the monstrous double-headed horse across the back right behind the saddle. It tried to rear but fell, screaming, its rear legs failing; but its rider twisted clear and landed on his feet. Coärin swung again, not at the rider but again at the dragon-horse, this time cutting one of its heads nearly off. The beast thrashed, tearing at the earth with clawed forefeet, but the white-clad standard-bearer stepped out of the way and lifted his banner in both hands. Coärin’s horse reared, shrieking, and bolted. Coärin, cursing as his horse carried him away, flung Innisth his own sword, hilt first. And Innisth put out his hand and, to his own astonishment, caught it.
30
Kehera perched in front of Tageiny on his horse, leaning forward tensely, her hands gripping the animal’s mane until her fingers ached. Verè Deconniy and a small company of Eänetén soldiers kept near at hand. She was both glad of their protection and sorry to hold them here when her husband needed them, but she knew if she tried to order them away from her, they wouldn’t go.
She was trying to make sense of the battle. She didn’t understand anything she saw, and knew she wouldn’t have even without the curtains of snow that came and went on uncertain winds. It was daylight, but a strange, dim daylight; the obsidian winds of midwinter rushed high overhead, veiling and unveiling the racing skeins of cloud. Captain Deconniy looked anxious and grim, so whatever order he perceived below, he plainly did not like it.
Kehera might have joined the battle herself—not by lifting any ordinary weapon, of course, but by carrying her tie across the field so that Raëhemaiëth could rise and put its will out into the world through her. She wanted to, with a savagery foreign to her and yet familiar, which she knew came from the Eänetén Immanent. But she had never studied tactics; she would not have known where to go or what to do. To her, the battle seemed to consist only of scattered, indistinguishable knots of struggling men and horses. Men shouted and screamed, and metal crashed and rang, and the long singing notes of bronze horns rang out over all, and above that came dimly the roaring of the high midwinter winds.
She could recognize banners here and there, from Harivir and Emmer, and nearer at hand the Wolf of Eäneté. But she could not understand the patterns made by those banners. Except she could see that some of the men out there, especially near the Dragon banners, were fighting even though they were dead. She could see it, or maybe Raëhemaiëth knew it and she could tell through her tie. She knew that dead men rose against their own friends and brothers. It was horrible. It was obscene.
Innisth would support Tiro and stop that horror. Maybe. If he could. Now that she saw the immense field of struggling men and the distant walls of Raëh beyond, she could not imagine how Innisth would even find her brother. She looked helplessly for Quòn, but she couldn’t see him, either.
She had spun the bridge that had brought Innisth and all his people here. She had insisted they must come here to Raëh. And now everyone else was out there in that battle, and Tiro was somewhere out there, or more likely up on the walls of the city, the tie to Raëhemaiëth rising furiously through his mind and heart, and she could do nothing to help any of them. Almost she wished she had held the ruling tie, that she held it now. But her brother was the one who had gathered up bindings to so many lesser Immanent Powers. Tiro had to be the one to hold Raëhemaiëth now.
> It was unbearable.
Perhaps she might find Tiro and Innisth. Perhaps through her tie she might find them both. Then the two of them might work together after all. If her brother knew Innisth was willing to try to work with him, that might make some kind of difference. Anyway, Kehera could not bear to sit here and watch men struggle and die a stone’s short throw away and do nothing. She said to Tageiny, “Can’t we get closer to the city?”
“We can try—” he began to answer, and then Verè Deconniy flung out an arm, making a short, inarticulate sound of fury and terror, and Kehera, caught by the note of horror in his voice, leaned forward to peer in that direction and saw, terribly clearly even across the distance that separated them, as Innisth met the standard-bearer and his terrible double-headed dragon-horse.
If Kehera had been on her own mount, she would have sent it in that direction. Perhaps that was why Innisth had carried her across the bridge on his own mare and then set her before Tageiny’s saddle: because he had known she might do something like that and wished to forestall her. She could tell at once that Tageiny would not listen to her if she told him to take her into the battle, and anyway, she could tell that even if his horse leaped into a full gallop at this moment, they could not possibly come there in time.
Deconniy’s horse half-reared at his heavy hand on its reins, but he jerked it down again, cursing under his breath. She knew he wanted to go almost as badly as she did, but of course Captain Deconniy also knew there was no time for either of them to do anything. He had flung up one arm to stop all his men, who shifted and groaned as though they couldn’t bear it. Kehera knew exactly how they felt. She tried to slip down to the ground, but Tageiny grabbed her arms and wouldn’t let her go. Kehera wanted to hit him, though she knew it would be stupid and unkind, but in the brief struggle she lost track of what was happening.
Then she heard Deconniy shout and whipped her head up again in time to see Innisth’s beautiful black mare torn down by the double-headed white horror and Innisth himself disappear from sight.
Quòn said behind them, his voice as coolly disinterested as ever, “It’s odd, isn’t it, how chance and fortune shatter across every field of battle?”
They all whipped around.
Quòn was sitting calmly astride a chestnut horse, bareback, with neither bridle nor halter on the animal. To Kehera’s astonishment, Eöté was sitting before him. The girl was wearing her plain rose-brown gown and light house slippers. Her hair was bound neatly back with a ribbon, and her expression was perfectly tranquil. She might have been sitting before a peaceful fire with embroidery spilling across her lap, not perched before a sorcerer at the edge of a muddy field of battle that stank of blood and rang with terror and rage.
“Eöté!” exclaimed Verè Deconniy, horrified. He snapped, “Wait there!” to his men, then flung himself down from his horse’s saddle and took a long stride toward his wife. But she turned her head and fixed her wide, peaceful gaze on him, and he jerked to a stop. “Eöté?” he whispered.
“Every now and again, I chance across someone with the capacity to take a tie to the Gods,” said Quòn, his tone too flat to be called gentle. “It is never wise to ignore such a chance. Eöté wished for nothing more than to renounce the world and herself, thus making room for the voice of the Fortunate Gods. Finding her was a stroke of fortunate chance, if you would say such matters are governed by chance. I suspect we will need her before the end. Or if we do not, then we will likely have come to an unfortunate end.”
“I’m perfectly well,” Eöté told Deconniy. “I was tired of being afraid all the time. I was so tired of being afraid. Now I’m not. I’m not afraid of anything anymore.” Her voice, though still light and pretty, had flattened and taken on a kind of remote indifference. She looked at the young captain as though she did not quite remember who he was—or as though she did remember, but did not recall why she should care.
He stared at her, stricken.
“The battle has not ended,” Quòn said calmly, ignoring them both. “It’s time to seize the chance. The Fortunate Gods have made this moment, and Raëhemaiëth and Eänetaìsarè have entered it, but without mortal blood and will, the Immanent land cannot forge this chance into the future we must have.”
Kehera was terribly afraid she understood what he meant. She hurried to take Tageiny’s hand and let him lift her back astride his horse. “We have to go!” she said to Deconniy, sharply determined that he wouldn’t stop her, that no one would stop her. She cast only one last uneasy glance over her shoulder at Eöté’s calm, pretty face, which already held so little of ordinary life and mortality, and then she waved imperiously, commanding everyone forward.
A tight defensive line of Coäran and Risaèn soldiers hemmed Innisth into a close circle, not meaning to pen him into a personal battle with the standard-bearer, but not allowing him any way to retreat. If retreat had been possible. Innisth rather thought it was not, now.
The standard-bearer laughed, stepped forward, and set the butt of his standard hard against the ground not twenty feet from Innisth. The mud froze, cracking with frost. He said, in a voice Innisth heard in his heart, in the place he should have heard no voice but that of Eänetaìsarè, “What will you yield to me? All the little Powers of the south? They all ride upon your heart and soul. Have you balked me only to come to me here and yield them all unto me?” It was not in any way the voice of a man, and it made no effort to disguise the fact.
“Methmeir Irekaì,” said Innisth, lifting Coärin’s sword. “Is that you? I think not. No, I do think not. Irekaìmaiäd has taken you and wears you like a mask. It has consumed your soul and speaks with your voice. No doubt you deserved your fate, but did you have to let your cursed Power free to ruin every other kingdom as well?” He stepped forward deliberately. He was not good with swords, but he lifted it anyway, calling upon Eänetaìsarè, and the Powers of Coär and Risaèn and Viär, and to the smaller, crueler Powers of Kimsè and Tisain. Heat and strength ran through him and straightened his spine; heat ran down his blade, which seemed suddenly lighter in his hands.
“Eänetaìsarè,” whispered the cold voice. “You are known to me. You are mine. I will imprison your fire forever beneath my winter. You will burn only for me. I will consume you.”
Innisth set his teeth and began to step forward again, though he knew he could not win this battle. But then his wife’s voice called his name sharply behind him, far too close. He spun about in furious horror and found Kehera herself leaping down from her man’s horse. Beyond her, Quòn carried another girl he half recognized before him on a chestnut animal, with Verè Deconniy and his men surrounding them all in a tight protective formation. Innisth could not believe Deconniy had brought Kehera into this battle, and swore a silent oath to destroy him for it—by the man’s grim expression, he knew exactly what the duke was thinking—but there was no time now, and Innisth knew rationally that the chance was unlikely to present itself. Blood spattered Kehera’s face, but she seemed unharmed. And unafraid, though the hollow shell of the Pohorin king stood right there, so small a distance away. Methmeir Irekaì started to speak, or the Irekaïn Power started to speak through him, but Innisth did not listen. He commanded Kehera fiercely, “Get away from this field!”
His wife ignored this command, as he had known she would. But she said—and this he had not expected—“Use me! Use Raëhemaiëth! Here on this field—here where blood from my people has spilled out on the earth—take the tie from me, use it, here where it is strongest of all!”
Methmeir Irekaì strode forward, the Winter Dragon snapping over his head, the blank white winter in his hands. But Quòn set his woman companion down—the woman was Eöté, Innisth realized at last, with mild astonishment, but he had no attention to spare for her. Quòn had sent his chestnut horse mincing forward, between the hollow king and the rest of them. The animal sidled and took tiny reluctant steps and tried to rear, upset by the cracking banner or by the blood that spattered from the painted jaws, a
nd Quòn swung one leg over its hindquarters and leaped free, letting it go. But he turned as the horse raced away and walked steadily toward the hollow king.
Quòn had a knife in his hand and a cool, intent look on his face, and walked forward to meet what was left of Methmeir Irekaì like a man walking to meet a friend, or a lover. For some reason Innisth did not understand, Irekaìmaiäd hesitated and even drew back a step, but then it laughed and strode forward again. That terrible whisper came again, not from the dead king’s throat and tongue, but through him in some other fashion. “What little God do you carry? I will devour it.”
“Innisth!” Kehera cried. “He can buy us a chance, but we have to turn fortune our way! Take Raëhemaiëth!”
Innisth’s awareness narrowed until he was aware only of his wife and the tie that sang in her and through her, and of the ferocious urging of his own Eänetaìsarè. He drove Coärin’s sword into the frozen ground, the heat of the sword carrying the blade deep into the ice-struck earth. Then, reaching out, he took his wife’s hands in his. He gripped her hands and looked into her face, into her fearless gray gaze.
Then she took back the tie to Raëhemaiëth, and he took Raëhemaiëth through her. Eänetaìsarè reached through him and through her and mastered Raëhemaiëth as it had mastered lesser Harivin Powers, and Raëhemaiëth, though it was here in this place of its strength, lowered all its defenses and yielded its will. It brought with it a tie to every surviving Power of northern Harivir and southern Emmer—even one Immanent Power from Kosir, and how that one had survived long enough to be bound into Raëh, Innisth had no notion.
Far to the south and east, in the heart of its strength, Eänetaìsarè rose and kept rising. Innisth let go of his wife’s hands, turned, and strode directly toward the hollow king and the terrible Immanent Power that had consumed him. But then he paused. Quòn, his face blank and still as though he listened to something no one else could hear, was sinking to his knees. Methmeir Irekaì had struck him through the chest with the spear-tipped standard. The man’s blood sprayed across the Dragon banner, but Quòn, though he sagged to the ground, did not seem to be yet aware of his own approaching death. Though the knife had fallen from his hand, his expression had not changed. Something strange echoed in the air around him: as though the very air were changing to crystal. When he set his palm flat on the ground, it rang as though he had struck a bell. Above, the sky darkened like smoky crystal as the obsidian winds came screaming down. Winter dragons rode those winds, two and three and four . . . five, more dragons than Innisth had ever imagined seeing in one place: many-headed and monstrous, their breath cold as midwinter, their wings sharp as glass, their voices the voices of the winter winds. They brought storms and killing cold and sharp-edged winds before which nothing could stand, and Innisth knew they would destroy everything living, tear down Raëh, and then go on to hammer down all the northern kingdoms until nothing remained but the violent winter and the dragons that rode the winds. It was the Iron Hinge of the year, and he knew the world would never come to the other side of these dark days and rise back toward spring.
Winter of Ice and Iron Page 56