by Janet Morris
“He will be better, for this day,” I grunted, and stepped back from my work. Chayin had Saer calmed. The great dapple stood with his head low. Only his distended nostrils betrayed his excitement.
Behind Chayin, the stars were fading. Between the appreis I could see the first presaging green in the east. And I saw also a certain misting, like a dust cloud up from the south.
I took Guanden’s reins from Sereth and touched his arm.
“Look south,” I advised. He did, squinting in the dark as if it were already day. He turned back to me, his face only shadow play, and offered me a boost up onto Guanden’s back. The threx snorted and squealed, and kicked both legs straight out. I slapped him hard between the ears, and he calmed and stood trembling.
Sereth approached the dun warily, put his hand upon my thigh.
“Stay close to Lalen. Do not try to keep with me. I will be near.” He squeezed my leg, and turned to Krist.
Chayin brought Saer up so close that our knees brushed. Guanden four-stepped, and I raised my hand in warning. His rolling eyes saw, his ears flicked back, and he reconsidered, satisfying himself with a defiant squeal that shook, his belly between my legs.
I watched Sereth, dark shadow sliding graceful against Krises blackness, and as I did so, dawn colored his forth. It was very still, but for threx sound, as if the creatures of the plain held their breath in expectation.
Jaheil walked his red beast to us, Celendra bound to his saddle by her wrists. He swung up behind her as the first ray of the sun broke over the plain and set his mount’s coat aflame. I had been before a Parset in battle once, I recalled. But I had not been bound, and I had been armed. Celendra’s gag, and her chald, were no longer upon her.
Sereth swung upon Krist, and that beast only stood, proud and wise, beneath his master’s well-loved weight. Sereth stroked him briefly, speaking low to those back-turned ears, then brought him up on my left. Lalen, riding some brown threx, a male of good size, joined us. There were perhaps twenty left within the circle of Jaheil’s appreis.
“Shall we see to the fruitfulness of the soil, Sereth?” Chayin broke the silence, his face colored with dawnfire. Not waiting for answer, he wheeled Saer and was gone.
“As best we can,” the Ebvrasea rejoined, turning Krist’s head to follow.
So we came out onto the plain of Astria, and the forming three yras made way for us through their midst. Once, such a war would have been fought upon Silistra with a hundred men for every one of our seventy-one. In those times, we were of formidable number. Now, in the north, no more than fourteen are ever joined on a commission. Upon the plain of Astria, we were very many, our seventy-one.
Formed, the tiasks upon the outside, a swathe of picked men bisecting the circle, we moved south. Slowly did that circle move. Even slower for us in the midst of it. I counted my breaths, and they were precious. Harness creaked and jingled, hoof falls cadenced my heart. The sky was tiered fire, between clouds like racked blades. Bloody was that sun’s rising into the greening sky, like a reflection from the chaos to come.
Hemmed in as he was, Guanden gave me little trouble. As I bent to set my razor-moons, I saw Sereth’s sidelong scrutiny. Upon my other side, the right, was Chayin. The cahndor smiled to himself, his body rolling with Saer’s stride. Before us was Jaheil’s red threx, and Wiraal upon a gray. Behind came Lalen and Nineth, in crackling tension. They had apparently been acquainted previously. I wondered briefly how Aje the crell had fared at the hands of Nineth, tiaskchan. Then I forgot them.
At a place indistinguishable to me from any other upon the plain, Chayin roared his force to a halt. Scattered here and there were some few stands of trees, but none within a quarter-nera. Approximately that distance behind lay the appreis.
In that circle, he held them. We faced every direction, silent, ready. Blades took the sun’s rays. The new day sparked off Sereth’s cloak, off the Shaper’s spiral.
I twisted in my saddle, marking what the men watched in the lightening day. Over the greening plains of Astria they swept, surely thrice our number, a band of dark shapes. Before battle is joined is a time that moves most slowly. One’s pulsebeats might be bells tolling enths. We watched them come, at full speed, across the plain.
I remember the smell of the air, heavy with moisture. Of the threx and leathers and steel, and of our battle sweat upon us. My palms wept. I wiped them continually upon my thighs. The hilt of the straight-blade I carried was comforting, warm. I stared at them, at the mist above their heads.
When they were close enough that the banner of Menetph, and of Coseve, Itophe, and Nemar, could be seen, and their threx’ hooves roared like the Falls of Santha, Chayin shouted his men ready. And shouted again, as he twisted in Saer’s saddle. His desert-trained eyes had detected them, even before the watchful tiasks; Slayers, perhaps a hundred, fell upon us from the east.
Bursting from the circle’s forward edge, the tiasks doubled themselves easterly, that they might meet the northern men. Up from west of south came the army of Hael, of Omas of Coseve and Locaer of Itophe, and they were uncountable.
As the first wave hit us, Parsets screaming, threx squealing, the sky turned to deepest night. Blades flashed unseen, men and beasts roared in terror, and the battle was joined. I screamed too, amidst my protectors, thinking I had gone blind. There was no moon in that night, only the stars, glittering cold upon us.
Guanden thrashed and heaved under me, wrenching my arms. I heard the weapons of the out-edged men, whirring. Screaming, the circle split. Upon code word in the darkness, Chayin’s force, blind, opened before the slayers, who drove through us toward Hael’s attacking throng.
For a moment, all thought flown from me, I struggled to hold Guanden in that shadowy corridor of death. Behind me surged the first of Hael’s vanguard, before the oncoming Slayers. “Estri!” I heard, and searched the voice in the darkness even as I whirled Guanden from between them. So close did I come to my ending there, in that battle deafness, that I saw the eyes of the first Slayers gleam, and Guanden’s rear took a glancing sword cut. Into our ranks Guanden plunged, our people closing around me. I had time to sink a razor-moon, then another, and then someone grabbed Guanden’s head. I almost cut the hand away, before I saw it was Lalen.
“There!” he shouted. I went, reining Guanden, reeling between the fighting men. Out of the dark a threx’ head came, teeth huge and dripping. I closed my eyes and brought my blade down. It squealed and was gone. Lalen’s threx, upon my left, skittered beside us, flesh shield. His blade sang above my head; even did he thrust it between my breasts and Guanden’s plunging neck. To the far edge he headed me, where Chayin and Hael fought off from the rest, their beasts upon their hind legs. One glimpse I had, as the sky exploded in flashing sheets of colored lightning—Chayin, with Hies head, Sereth, his blade raised in mid-stroke, against four.
Then the dark, and a new blinding: light. From the fiber of the sky it came, roaring a roar that made men drop their blades and put hands to their ears, that made threx bolt, oblivious of their riders. Raet/Uritheria. The height of the highest tower of Astria it was, flapping great wings translucent in the sky. Then stronger. Seething noncolored light, the atoms of creation in it not yet cooled, it opened its great fanged mouth and turned its singeing breath upon the struggling men. Its clawed feet grabbed riders from their saddles. Its wings made gales that blew threx from their feet. I smelled flesh burning. Hair, crisped to ash, floated upon the air.
Guanden threw me from his back in his terror, as if I never existed. I lay where I had fallen, oblivious to the hooves raking the sod around me. I fought for breath.
And found it. Found myself. Rolled upon my back, to see the sky. A shadow fell over me—Lalen, dismounted, his steel flying in my defense. He straddled me. I sought Wirur, winged hulion, great fanged carnivore, where he held court in the sky, and he was there for me. I called my fate, and in my sight between those stars that made him, a million new stars came into being. More, and the battle faded. Bone
, for a moment, framework of bone in the sky, and then I was there.
I peered down through my slitted eyes upon the plain of Astria, twitching my tufted ears to the sound of men dying, of roasted threx, of Raet and his cacophony of death. Then I saw him, my enemy, and I breathed breath of acid ice from my nostrils upon the land. I tore myself, with a great wrench of muscles, from the firmament. Behind me, a keening, began as what was not time and space rushed through that hole. I growled to myself, at first wing’s flap, as my hulion quarters tensed to take spring upon the earth. Those horny pads of mine touched dead and dying, crushed them as they froze to tinkling ice shards.
Raet/Uritheria saw me, raised gory head upon sinuous neck. The men and threx were as yits, upon which we stepped. Uritheria rose up from his play. I opened wide my fanged mouth and jumped for him, ice-breath before me, meeting flame, combusting. His great leathered wings snapped under my stiff-spread paws. Claws dug, into those useless wings, my own flapping for balance. I sought his neck. Closed upon air. Writhing, twisting, screaming, he turned his head, straining, to snap at my throat. I was not truly quick enough. I felt his burning teeth, deep. Enraged, I tore my flesh from his bite and screamed into those eyes. Blinded, the ice crystals that were once orbs glittered upon his scintillant scales. A roar of pain singed me; knives in my ears made me wish deafness. Those great jaws closed upon my shoulder. I twisted back my head, and bit out Uritheria’s throat, He quivered, his teeth grinding upon my bones. The roaring became a gurgling, the gurgling a pulse. He did not fall. He faded. His jaws locked upon me in his death throes. I stood, looking around me, until those teeth were out of my shoulder, back where they belonged reformed into the space they once had been. I licked my chest. It pained me. Raet/Uritheria faded, his substance sucked up by the continuum from which it had been stolen.
From my great height, calmly I observed the tiny men, all fallen, upon the place that had been the plain of Astria. It was a different place; the nightday-sky here flickered undecided, and, sometimes the day was no Silistran day. Upon their backs and stomachs the fallen rolled and crawled, the ground heaving under them. A great circle, some hundred neras in diameter, had my standing place as center. And beyond it—a sharp drop—lay the rest of the Silistran lands. And I knew, though I had not seen it, that those edges were sheer and clean, and devoid of life. Whatever had stood there, stood no longer, destroyed by the convergence of alternate, planes—Astria had not come back to time-space, fully. The hole that with its suction had brought about this disjoint in time still wailed.
The sky raged with storms of light. The men screamed and cried and called upon their gods, for each had been dragged from sequential time. They cowered, the bravest of them, at the cold. The atoms of their being had been hurled from one universe to another, and there is great pain in that returning. I felt sorry for them. Almost gone was Raet/Uritheria. In my throat I felt a rumbling growl of pleasure. I sniffed his presence, what was left of it. A great, concussive explosion filled the sky with white light, then another, off near the north star. I purred to myself when I realized how far into space the disruption extended. Far enough. Anything coming upon those convergent alternatives would be translated into energy, the constituents of which are the common denominator of life.
I lowered my head, that I might see how they fared, the little ones, when Raet/Uritheria no longer bound me there with his jaws. I saw my body and it called. With a farewell it could not hear, I let my rightful place, that hole yet to be plugged, take me.
Easier than descending, it was, fitting back into that space between the stars. I licked my damaged shoulder once. My tufted ear tasted star breath, my tail flicked into place. And the keening of the rupture ceased, settling the balance once more.
My shoulder hurt terribly. I tried to rise. I could not move my arm. Pain made my sight grainy with red dots. When I could, I closed my eyes, that they might not burn and tear, And then the rain began. I felt it, falling sharp upon me, bouncing. Sluggish, I tried to think what it could be. Through my pain, I realized only that ... that I could not think. Eyes closed, the pelting of sharpness upon me, I struggled to my knees, and to my one good arm’s support. I wondered dully if I could crawl with only one arm. Then I wondered where I would crawl.
Eyes, open for me! They did so, grudging. The ground I saw, beneath my dangling head. And upon it, a dozen small crystals, glowing apulse on the grass. Helsars. A rain of helsars, as the shifting edges of time-space rubbed each other in their settling.
With what little strength I could muster, I raised my head. The plain of Astria was ablaze with them. Atop the bodies, men moaned and murmured to their wounds. Women crawled about upon their hands and knees. In places, threx stood, four legs spread wide, weaving. And some helsars, I saw, those brightest glowing, had already found their pupils. So many. Enough for the whole of Astria. I began, slowly and without understanding, to crawl through them. It was a hobbled crawl, upon only one arm, over dead and dying, and some who fondled helsars even in their pain. All of these had been where one must go, and returned to claim what they had created there. No helsar attached itself to me. One, and only one, is the rule.
But I did not understand that, as the day came once again upon the plain of Astria. I only crawled, in my pain, among the wounded. The sod, torn up, was muddy with the blood of man and beast, and my good hand was covered with a gory clay. What I sought, I did not know until I found it. All I knew was the ground, still heaving under me. It threw me to my back a dozen times, like some unbroken threx. It made the helsars jitter and dance upon the grass. It made women, even men, cry in fear. That and the wind: deracou, perhaps, is as strong. It ripped at us, pushing the weak down to the ground. It pelted men with helsars; certain men, certain helsars.
My knees were bruised and torn. In my shoulder were great toothmarks; in places my flesh was chewed pulp. At one point I stopped and regarded it. It occurred to me that I must stop the bleeding.
I did so, and was too exhausted to do more. Then I crawled on.
I put my good hand upon a dead man’s chest, riddled with arrows I had not seen fly. I looked at the face that was not there. I shuddered, seeing the vacant stump of the man’s neck. He wore upon him a green device. I stared at it, thinking of why I should mark it. Some of my fog lifted from me then. It was the device of Coseve; more, of its cahndor. And I crawled over the body of yellow-eyed Omas of Coseve, whose head lay nowhere about.
Then only did I seek Sereth. I screamed his name across the plain. None answered me. I found strength to rise to my feet, and stumbled among them, the wounded and the dead. Up ahead were threx, a dozen of them, still standing. I ran there, hoping, crying, calling Sereth’s name over and over.
It was by the threx, they were. Chayin, leaning upon Saer, heavily, cut in a hundred places, his cloak gone, torn for bandage. At his feet were three heads, disembodied. A little way from him, Jaheil bent over Celendra. His left arm was in a sling wet with blood. He turned his head at my stumbling approach. The cahndor of Dordassa had no left eye. I screamed, and put my good hand to my mouth, biting it.
For I saw him. He lay face down on the grass, the Shaper’s cloak still upon him. Krist stood with all four feet over him, his eyes rolling, froth dripping red from his mouth. The beast was badly injured. A broken sword hilt protruded from his chest.
“Estri!” Chayin croaked, reaching out a hand to stop me. He staggered toward me, forgoing Saer’s support, and had barely the strength to hold me back.
“The beast is crazed. Let him be. Sereth is dying; he would not want to see you pummeled before his eyes.” I could feel Chayin wavering. His voice was husked with pain.
“No! He is not! I will not allow it!” I screamed, and tore myself from his grasp. He looked at me, shrugged, and limped painfully to Saer. He leaned there, tears unashamed upon him, watching.
“Krist,” I called softly, extending my good hand. “Krist; it is me. Estri. Let me help him. Let me see him.” And it was not what I said, but the tone,
and my mind-touch, what little there was to spare. Krist snorted and tossed his head. He let his bared teeth come together, cocked his head to me. He extended his great-jowled jaws, chin which his reins dangled. I scratched him, as I had seen Sereth do, where neck meets head. He groaned pitifully, snuffled my hand. “Sssh,” I told him. “It will be over soon.” For that valiant beast, it would be over within the enth.
But he let me back him from his stance over Sereth. At his master’s feet, Krist was content to stand, his brave head raised, ever watchful.
I was beside him, upon my knees. His face was to me. With my left hand, my good one, I brushed his blood-matted hair from his eyes. They were open.
“Estri,” he said softly. He coughed. “Little one, come here.” And he raised his arm, that I might be under it, against him. I saw what wound he had sustained.
“Sereth,” I sobbed, “oh, please, no.” And I crawled into the shelter of his arm, against his blood-soaked side.
“Do not be sad,” he said. “The sun is again upon the land.”. And he kissed my temple, and his eyes closed. Pressed to him, I shook with loss. I could not breathe; my chest choked me, my guts froze into a tight fist. And I went into him, with all I had. Of my diminished life force, I gave him all there was. I turned him, somehow, and pounded upon his chest, and gave until all I saw were gray shadows before me. Until I could no longer hold my body upright. As I fell forward, atop him, in the grayness I heard voices, somewhere above.
“There they are! Take them!”
And something shimmered toward me out of the mist.
IX. “I Am the Hest and the Sort”
It hurt, very much, whatever they were doing. I could not see. My whole head seemed constrained. Sound other than breathing was muffled, and breathing itself was a great effort. My shoulder, surely, would soon consume me.