Trials of the Twiceborn (The Songreaver's Tale Book 6)

by Andrew Hunter

“I wish you’d let us help against the Chadiri,” Garrett whispered, casting a wary glance toward the line of Astorran footmen who seemed to be taking a great interest in whatever the King’s Gatewarden was saying to the strange young knight.

  Sir Baelan shook his head. “This is Astorra’s day,” he insisted, “A day for Astorrans... all Astorrans to stand against those who have defiled our honor.”

  “There sure are a lot of redjacks down there,” Garrett sighed, looking across the field toward the red legion.

  “Then no Astorran shall be denied ample opportunity for glory this day!” Sir Baelan said, raising his voice loud enough to be heard by the eavesdropping soldiers nearby.

  A great “Hurrah!” went up from the ranks at Sir Baelan’s words.

  “Just be careful, all right?” Garrett sighed quietly.

  “We shall fight, shoulder to shoulder with your people soon enough,” Sir Baelan whispered, “but today is our day... a day of redemption.”

  Garrett nodded. “What about Anders and the other guys?” Garrett asked, “I’ve been hoping I won’t run into them. You seen them around?”

  Sir Baelan laughed, his eyes going toward the center of the Astorran cavalry, far along the hillside to their left. “The Holly Briar has been given the honor of the first charge... in deference to their loyal service to the crown,” he said quietly, “I doubt very much that you will meet any of them this day, or, perhaps, any other after this.”

  “Whose idea was that?” Haven chuckled.

  Sir Baelan went a little pink, and his eyes fell. “The King saw the wisdom of council in this regard,” he answered modestly.

  “How is... the King?” Garrett asked, trying to make the question sound casual.

  Sir Baelan’s eyes rose again, full of admiration. “I have never seen him so,” he answered, “It is almost as if his father’s spirit has returned, but... no, it isn’t that exactly... He is a man, made anew. It is as though the wound has lanced the sickness from his heart, as a leech draws poison from the veins, and he is healed by its harm.”

  “I’m glad he’s feeling better,” Garrett offered hopefully.

  “My thanks to you,” Sir Baelan sighed, laying his hand on Garrett’s pauldron, “My country’s thanks as well, though they may never know you as the bringer of their salvation.”

  “Yeah, well,” Garrett said, squirming again beneath his gambeson, “It’s probably best that everybody just forgets about the whole thing.”

  Sir Baelan nodded and sighed again. “It must suffice that we alone know the service you have done Astorra, I and the King you have returned to us. This great deed, I shall never forget.”

  “Yeah,” Garrett sighed.

  A blast of trumpets brought a welcomed coup de grâce to the conversation, and Sir Baelan quickly excused himself to mount again and ride toward the center of the Astorran lines.

  “He still doesn’t know,” Haven whispered to Garrett, once the knight was gone.

  “There’s nothing to know,” Garrett mumbled, “Everything worked out fine... Everything’s fine.”

  “You’re sweating, Sir Perdle,” Haven chuckled.

  Garrett mopped the exposed patch of his brow with the leather cuff of his gauntlet. “It’s just condensation,” he muttered.

  “Of course, it is,” Haven laughed, “Well you’d better start thinking some happy thoughts, because the grass is starting to look a little wilty.”

  “Oh fesche!” Garrett cursed, looking down to notice the dark patch of dead grass between the pointed toes of his sabatons. He hopped back a few steps, distancing himself from the stain. He looked up, blushing, as stifled laughter rippled through the ranks of the footmen nearby.

  “You think they saw?” Garrett gasped.

  Mink, or Luma, Garrett couldn’t be sure which it was in their human forms, leaned close and whispered, “It’s all right... They just think you wet yourself.”

  “Oh... good,” Garrett said with a frown.

  “Perfectly understandable, given the odds against us,” Haven said, gesturing toward the Chadiri lines.

  Garrett looked as well, and then really did feel a bit like soiling himself. Great columns of black smoke belched up from the Chadiri lines as the red-armored soldiers ignited vats of burning pitch alongside the great war-machines they had arranged, overlooking the valley.

  “What are those?” he asked.

  “Ballistae, catapults, they probably sowed the field with caltrops the night before... I would have,” Haven said, observing the enemy’s defensive lines with admiration, “not to mention the archers, and... ooh! Is that a trebuchet? I always wanted to see one of those!”

  “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Garrett scoffed.

  She sidled even closer to him now with a wicked grin on her face. “Well, look at it this way, Sir Perdle,” she whispered, “At least when you do have to reanimate the whole of Astorra, you can comfort yourself with the knowledge that they all died gloriously with smiles on their faces.”

  “Hmn,” Garrett grunted before chuckling quietly to himself.

  “What?” Haven asked.

  “I was just imagining a whole army of smiling zombies,” he whispered.

  “Ugh,” she groaned, “now I’ve got to find a way to get that image out of my head.”

  Garrett pulled her close and kissed her as best he could, though his raised visor clattered against the steel brow of her barbute. A dull thud sounded as Haven let his shield drop to the grass beside her.

  “Sir Perdle!” she mumbled into his lips, “What will the Astorrans think?”

  Another blast of trumpets, louder this time, interrupted Garrett’s happy thoughts. Haven pulled away with a silly grin on her face, though her gloved fingers wriggled into his gauntleted grip between them.

  A great cheer swept through the Astorran ranks as Inglefras burst from the lines with Cabre astride his back. The huge warhorse pounded the hillside as the King rode along the line with his sword held high. His dark hair streamed behind him, his steel crown dark against his pale brow. He wore armor of mail and plates, polished to mirror brightness that flashed in the sunlight, and Inglefras’s silvery coat gleamed, nearly as bright. Together they moved as one, man and horse, riding as though for the pure joy of life and freedom, and Garrett could feel the almost palpable surge of spirit that spread through the Astorran ranks at the sight of them.

  “My people!” Cabre shouted, his voice loud enough to be heard at the farthest reaches of the line, “I come before you today to ask your forgiveness!”

  A hush fell across the crowd as the young king slipped from Inglefras’s saddle and fell to his knee upon the grassy hillside.

  “I have failed in my duty to protect you!” Cabre shouted, his voice filled with a resonant power that sent a little shiver through Garrett’s spine.

  The Astorrans shook their heads in disbelief, but none dared break the silence.

  “I have failed to be the man that my father... that my mother would have had me become,” Cabre shouted, “You deserved better than I gave you.”

  Cries of dismay now rose from the Astorran ranks.

  “I ask your forgiveness,” Cabre cried, “and the forgiveness of all who suffered while I did nothing to save them.”

  Garrett felt a little twinge of something inside, though he could not quite explain what it was. For the first time since Haerad’s death, he felt something, not quite hateful, when he looked at the man who now wore Haerad’s crown.

  “I rise now, as if from a tomb,” Cabre cried, standing again, “and, if you will have me, I would be honored to ride with you this day... I would ride with you, in defense of those who cannot defend themselves... in honor of those we carry forever in our hearts... in the trust of those, yet unborn, who would inherit a free Astorra, unsullied by the evil that lies now before us.”

  Another cheer rose from the Astorran lines at his words.

  Cabre swung back up into his saddle again, and Inglefras tossed his black mane as
he wheeled beneath his king, anxious to join battle with the enemy below. Cabre turned his horse back to face his countrymen again. “I call now upon not only you brave soldiers of Astorra,” Cabre shouted, “but on the very spirits of this land, the ancient voices of wood and stone and air... to cry out against this hated foe and drive it from our home!”

  Inglefras reared beneath him as Cabre thrust his sword high into the air, and a deep tremor shook the hillside beneath their feet.

  Startled cries rose from the Astorrans as the very earth seemed to answer to the King’s call.

  “Fear not!” Cabre shouted, “For the land itself cries out against this foe who has stained its green fields with the blood of the innocent. It cries out for men of honor to answer its call and cleanse this stain from our fair land... Will you ride with me this day?”

  Cabre turned to look across the field toward where Garrett stood, watching him in awe.

  “This day, we make things right again,” Cabre shouted, “For all Astorrans.”

  The voices of men now shook the hillside as lances and swords and axes and shields lifted high along the lines, and armored horses nickered and stamped their hooves in anticipation.

  Garrett looked across the valley to where the Chadiri lines bristled with equal enthusiasm, their backs protected by the thick forest, impassable to the Astorran cavalry. The black smoke of pitch fires rolled across the sky to veil the sun as the droning chant of the Chadiri war hymn now reached the ears of the Astorran host.

  “Astorra!” Cabre screamed, the power of his voice sending little tingles through Garrett’s gut.

  “Astorra!” roared the ragged voices of the knights and footmen arrayed along the hillside as they surged forward into battle.

  Inglefras whinnied and reared again and then nearly dove forward down the hill into the shallow valley, leading the charge of the Astorran knights.

  “Shouldn’t he let the other guys go first?” Haven asked as the foot soldiers to their left surged downhill after their king.

  “I’m not sure the Chadiri could even kill him now at all,” Garrett mused, watching Cabre ride, now at least four horse lengths ahead of his closest knights, “I’m not even sure how you kill a ghast... Maybe Max knows, since he invented them.”

  “Well, you might want to ask him, the next time you see him,” Haven chuckled as she watched the Astorran charge, “in case Cabre gets any ideas about expanding his territory.”

  “Starweaver’s on our side,” Garrett sighed.

  “Maybe,” Haven grumbled, “and you’re assuming Starweaver’s in control down there.”

  “That didn’t seem much like Cabre giving that speech,” Garrett protested.

  “Well, whoever’s in charge of him,” Haven said, “what are we supposed to do if, once he routs the Chadiri, he turns his eyes south? I mean, with a voice like that, he could... Look! There goes the trebuchet!”

  Garrett cringed as he watched the enormous Chadiri war machine drop its massive counterweight, swinging its long wooden arm to hurl a flaming barrel of pitch far across the valley floor. The fiery projectile tumbled down among the charging ranks of Astorran knights, and men and horses disappeared in a sooty ball of orange flame as it exploded.

  “Ooh!” one of the ghoul sisters exclaimed as Mink and Luma sat down on the hillside to watch the show.

  Now the other war machines loosed their flaming missiles into the Astorrans, but still they charged, undaunted, toward the line of red shields and spike-filled pits along the Chadiri front lines.

  “Well, Cabre may live, but I don’t see how the rest of them are going to...” Haven’s voice trailed off as a bone-chilling shriek rose from the forest behind the Chadiri lines.

  That sound still gives me chills, Brahnek Spellbreaker’s voice whispered in Garrett’s mind.

  “What is it?” Garrett murmured aloud.

  The battle cry of the war-bred, Brahnek answered, a sound not heard since the dragon wars, perhaps, but a sound you will never forget.

  Garrett watched as the woods behind the Chadiri vomited out a shadowy mass of twisted boggarts, mingled with the ghostly forms of goblins and trolls. The towering shade of Crookjaw the ettin strode before them, wading into the Chadiri rearguard with great sweeping blows of his spectral fists that sent red-armored men fleeing in terror before him.

  “I thought the Chadiri were supposed to be brave,” one of the sisters, Mink or Luma, laughed.

  “Anybody can be brave until a boggart sinks their teeth into them,” Haven chuckled.

  “Those aren’t boggarts,” the other sister said, pointing across the field.

  Garrett let out a surprised breath as he watched a flock of wisps spill from the woods behind the boggart horde, and, beneath them ran centaurs and fauns and other living fae, screaming their defiance as they ran toward the packed Chadiri lines.

  The wisps fell among the Chadiri defenders like bright rain, rising from the earth again as fiery blue ghosts in the shapes of screaming elven warriors while the living fae scrambled over the Chadiri war machines, pulling and smashing them apart.

  Cabre and the other knights had nearly reached the Chadiri shield line by now, and Garrett watched in horror as Inglefras and hundreds of other horses charged up the hill, heedless of the bristling spikes in the pits before them.

  “Kilkaelam!” Cabre’s voice roared across the field, and Garrett gasped in wonder as the earth shook again.

  The entire Chadiri front line slid downhill nearly twenty yards as the dirt beneath their feet churned and crumbled like an avalanche of freshly-tilled earth, spilling down to fill the spiked pits with chunks of sod and the wriggling bodies of the Chadiri shieldmen.

  The Astorran cavalry crashed over them like a breaking wave. Inglefras and his fellows struggled for a moment, churning, knee-deep through the loose soil as they rode over the fallen war priests.

  Haven let out a disappointed sigh as her trebuchet now groaned and twisted in the grip of fairy magic. Its long wooden throwing arm sprouted green branches from a dozen places, and flowered vines sprang up from the earth to pull it down.

  The Astorran footmen arrived last to the battle, joining in with ghosts and fairytale creatures alike as they battered down the remnants of the Chadiri occupation forces.

  Finally, when the clashing of steel had at last subsided, the weary Astorrans stood, looking at their strange new allies across the bodies of the fallen. Then all eyes turned toward the pale young king astride his mud-spattered warhorse.

  Cabre raised his battle-tarnished sword high above his head as a trio of wisps slowly descended to play upon his crown like golden fire, as they had done, so long ago in the cavern of bones.

  “Our peoples, united, for now and always!” Cabre shouted, “This I swear! Now and always!”

  “Now and always!” shouted the voices of men and ghosts and fae.

  Garrett smiled as he turned and walked away.

  “We aren’t staying for the party?” Haven asked as she and the sisters followed him over the crest of the hill.

  “It’s not our party,” Garrett said.

  “That’s your victory down there,” she said.

  Garrett shook his head. “I never wanted that,” he said.

  “Still... where would they be without you?” she asked.

  Garrett smiled at her as she walked beside him.

  “Where to now, Songreaver?” Luma asked, she and her sister having shed their human guises.

  “South,” Garrett answered, “to the real party.”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  The Village of Plank

  “I’m gonna look ridiculous,” Warren groaned as his father stooped to tie the blue silk ribbons around his son’s furry ankles. Bargas had Warren perched atop an overturned armoire in the corner of the parlor of the Mayor’s house.

  “It’s tradition,” Bargas growled as he reached up to wrap a third ribbon around Warren’s neck. “How did she say to tie this?” he mumbled to himself as he struggled t
o work the intricate knot with his claws.

  “You want some help?” Garrett offered.

  “I got this!” Bargas hissed, pulling the knot tight around Warren’s neck.

  “Too tight!” Warren gasped.

  “Hold on!” Bargas rumbled as he tried to work the knot loose.

  “You look like a gallowgloom,” Diggs mumbled through a mouthful of pie as he sat, sprawled across the old Mayor’s chair with the skulls still nailed to its armrests.

  “Nope,” Warren said, hooking a claw through the neck ribbon and snapping it apart.

  “Dammit boy!” Bargas cursed, “I almost had it!”

  Warren took a deep breath, enjoying his renewed airflow, and shook his head. “I’m not doin’ the neck ribbon.”

  “It’s tradition,” Bargas repeated.

  ‘How do you know?” Warren protested, “How does anyone know what their traditions are?”

  Bargas shrugged. “It’s important to Ym,” he said, “That’s good enough fer me, and it should be good enough fer you... especially tonight!”

  Warren’s shoulders sagged as he accepted defeat, and Bargas fetched another ribbon.

  “Now don’t break this one,” Bargas said, “It’s the last one we got.”

  “Tie it on right, and I won’t have to,” Warren mumbled.

  Bargas slapped Warren’s ear with the flat of his palm and then began tying the last ribbon around the sullen ghoul’s neck.

  “You look fine,” Garrett said, giving his friend a cheerful smile.

  “Yeah, Warren,” Diggs laughed, spitting chunks of sugary crust as he tried to keep a straight face, “You look fine!”

  “Shut up Diggs,” Warren simmered.

  “Everybody shut up an’ let me concentrate!” Bargas barked. The massive gray ghoul screwed up his face, squinting his eyes as he pinched the ends of the delicate blue ribbon between the tips of his iron-hard digging claws. With a final grunt of effort, he pulled the ribbon tight and then stepped away with a satisfied sigh.

  Warren leveled a single claw at Diggs’s face as the brindle-furred ghoul opened his mouth to speak again.

  “It looks very... traditional,” Diggs said, lifting his paws inoffensively.