Springwar

by Tom Deitz

  And to bring bodies closer to fuel what must be done, a more rational part of her appended.

  A casual sweep of steel smashed another lock, and the follow-through took down a pillar of the arcade.

  Stones rolled into the courtyard.

  And then she was back at Eddyn’s cell.

  She skidded to a halt, breath coming fast, heart pounding, as every sound within a shot echoed in her ears.

  And every smell and image.

  Strynn loomed large as a giant, where she prodded expertly at one final lock—the one that prisoned Eddyn’s left arm. He was conscious, too—enough to open his eyes and moan.

  Strynn’s eyes were huge, her mouth tense with frustration.

  “Hurry!” Merryn rasped—though it took a day to sound.

  Strynn tried to. The picks flashed and clicked, and then the clasp broke free. “Done!” she cried, trying to get a shoulder under Eddyn, while the other hand sought frantically for the gem.

  The first soldier was in the arcade now—a young man, half-armed, and seriously drunk, to judge by what Merryn could smell on his breath. She leapt toward him, sword bright against the sky, as the blade stole flame from the bonfire.

  A slash, a flare of lightning—and he collapsed. His fellows slowed. Two turned to run.

  Merryn started after them—

  Arms reined her back, hands moving expertly to pin her in a wrestling hold she’d learned when she was nine. Fingers pried at the sword. “Merryn! Enough! We have to get out of here.”

  She tried to retain the weapon—but it would not be held. Strynn wrenched it away. She whirled as she felt that precious power start to ebb. Saw Strynn’s blazing eyes …

  Strynn slapped her—hard. Pain bloomed through her like dye in water.

  “Now! While they’re waiting.”

  Merryn started to protest, but Strynn tugged at her with all the strength she possessed, and Merryn felt herself dragged inside, where a naked Eddyn lolled in a clumsy slump on the side of the bed.

  “Help me!” Strynn gasped.

  Merryn blinked, but then instinct took control, and she sat down at Eddyn’s side, while Strynn took the other. Red flashed in Strynn’s hand: the gem and the blood that woke it. Another red ghosted around: the fire.

  “There!” A man yelled, impossibly close.

  Merryn reached for the sword, but it wasn’t there. And where anger and arrogance had been, fear rushed in, as she realized she was weaponless in a burning building with half a drunken army bearing down upon her.

  And then Strynn was grabbing her hand, with Eddyn an awkward, stinking mass between them, and pain bright in her palm.

  An armed man appeared in the doorway, grinning. Before he could take another step, however, Strynn’s will reached out and tore into Merryn’s mind, finding the one thing there it needed.

  Out!

  Away!

  Back to Tir-Eron—though that was a secondary consideration.

  Reality wrenched and whirled. And all the wonder of the Overworld was back: the cold, the heat, the pleasure, and the pain. Maybe Eddyn was there, but if so, he was no more linked to them than their clothes might have been.

  Behind them, dimly, Merryn sensed a rush of cold air, as their panic sucked all the heat from the men who pursued them, leaving them cold as ice before the fire. One died—she was sufficiently linked to know that.

  She recoiled reflexively, and Strynn, who was the only rational mind among them, seized that and used it to bear them home.

  Darkness …

  … then light again, but the softer light of a moon.

  They were back in the War Court—a few strides from where they’d begun.

  And Eddyn was with them. Cold as death, but breathing.

  Merryn looked at Strynn, who was meeting her gaze with as grim an expression as Merryn had ever seen her bond-mate wear. “This stays with me,” she gritted, shoving the sword into her belt. “You can get a healer, or I can.”

  “I’ll go,” Merryn replied meekly.

  “Get two.”

  Merryn started off at a near run, then froze abruptly, and turned. “I hope Gynn knows what he’s in for. I hope to Eight Avall knows some way to truly master that thing.”

  And then she was gone: a pounding of boots in the night.

  Strynn watched her go—then took a deep breath, eased Eddyn down to the stones as carefully as she could, and threw her cloak over him. That accomplished, she found an unused water trough and threw up—copiously.

  When the healers finally arrived, she was sitting calmly by Eddyn’s side, staring at the increasingly thick flakes of a late-season snow.

  She had taken three baths before Avall returned to their suite, just before sunrise.

  “Eddyn’s back,” she mumbled.

  “I heard,” Avall replied stonily. “Merryn told me. It was a brave thing to do, but also very stupid.”

  “Fate and Balance,” Strynn said for no reason. She let her lids slide closed and did not open them until noon the next day, when her escort downriver pounded on the door.

  CHAPTER XXXIII:

  WAITING

  (ERON: SOUTH OF ERON GORGE-HIGH SPRING: DAY XII-NIGHT)

  Lord Commander …?” The voice was tentative, as though the title stuck in the speaker’s throat. Or as though he were deathly afraid, which he well might be, speaking as he was from the door to Lynnz’s suite in this sprawling ruin that passed for a headquarters. Lynnz resisted an urge to give the man cause for that fear. His hand eased to the geen-claw dagger at his belt, just in case. It had sounded like Lord Morrill, one of his half brothers-in-law. Which could be good or not.

  Lynnz sighed and glared up from behind the desk at which he’d been studying supply manifests. It was Morrill, indeed—one of the few people given permission to meet with him directly.

  The king was indisposed, so rumor said. Too busy to meet with more than a handful in person. Once they took Tir-Eron, which was to say Eron itself, then the king would show himself. So the story ran.

  Morrill took a step into the room, inclining his head in what was a bow to equals, not that of subject to king. Yet.

  “What is it, Morrill?” Lynnz snapped, reaching for a pot of hot cider laced with spirits. The fire popped obligingly, as though to stress his demand.

  Morrill—who, like Lynnz, was wed to one of Barrax’s sisters—always looked grim, but at the moment he seemed less so than usual. “Lord,” he began, folding his arms across his chest, “the weather-witch says that not only has the snow ended, but that it will be warm as true spring by tomorrow morning.”

  “He says this, does he?” Lynnz growled. “Then why didn’t he predict this cursed-be snow to start with?”

  “That one is dead,” Morrill observed wryly. “This one seems more competent.”

  “Or more eager to please. Or more eager to lie to the enemy and tell him what he wants to hear.”

  “This one,” Morrill purred, “was sent by your allies.”

  Lynnz could barely suppress his rage. “Allies, indeed! We haven’t heard a word from them since they came slinking into Barrax’s camp with all that talk of secret alliances and such. It’s just my luck I found out—drinking with the king does have its advantages.”

  “Lord, I believe the rest of the clan are still under arrest.”

  “Not all of them. They can’t be.” Lynnz leaned back in his chair, studying the map before him, letting his gaze drift now and then to the darkened window. As if to taunt him, a few snowflakes drifted down, close enough to the mullioned panes to see.

  “That may be the best place for them, though, if you think about it. If things go as they might, we could be fighting in Tir-Eron this time tomorrow. If we were to free them …”

  Lynnz glared at him. “Would you trust men who go against their King?”

  A brow quirked upward.

  Another glare. “I meant open defiance, not necessity of the moment.”

  “As you say, lord.” Morrill bowed again,
mockingly.

  “Thank you for your report,” Lynnz said coldly. “I will see you in the morning.”

  “Your lordship intends to attack?”

  “As soon as it is light. We dare not give Gynn any more advantage.”

  “Get some rest, lord. It appears you need it.”

  Lynnz nodded dismissal, and, when Morrill had departed, rose and strode through a door to his left, and thence through another set of doors. These let onto the second-highest parapet of what had once been, someone had told him, a royal summer hold. Before the plague had rendered such luxuries superfluous.

  Cold hit him as his boots crunched on snow the sweepers had missed. He shivered and drew his cloak around him as he made his way to the nearest embrasure and gazed out into the Eronese night.

  If I could crave one boon of the Gods, Lynnz thought with a shiver, it would be to never see snow again.

  Certainly he was seeing enough of it now: It was High Spring—the beginning of the light half of Eron’s year, just past the equinox—and men back in Ixti would be working bare-chested and barefoot, already complaining of the heat.

  But here—he was staring not at the lush green foliage that had greeted his victory at South Gorge, but at a late-season snowfall that had begun five days earlier and forced them to take shelter in these heights, instead of pressing on to Tir-Eron.

  Not that such a respite was necessarily bad. He’d pushed his army hard—especially since the rout at South Gorge—and Gynn’s soldiers had been forced to retreat north, as Ixti’s army drove them ever closer to their capital and the heart of their realm. They’d fought like madmen, too, but there was an odd lack of cohesion in Eron’s ranks as well, or perhaps a confusion, as though no one were precisely in control.

  Still, Gynn had had war thrust upon him; Lynnz and Barrax had had seasons in which to prepare.

  But if not for stolen Eronese supplies, he’d be in dire trouble now.

  It was full dark, but the moon was bright, shining on ramparts where snow still shelled most horizontal surfaces, for all the blizzard had stopped earlier that day.

  Trouble was, that moon also shone on thigh-deep snow in the valley before him. And it shone on what he’d been told had been another royal castle and was now Priest-Clan’s summer hold, clinging to the heights opposite, which heights were the last barrier between his army and Tir-Eron.

  That fastness—roughly four shots away—seemed to glare at him, too, poised as it was on an equal height to this, with but twenty shots of clear land between its back and the gorge itself.

  Which was goal enough for one war. Once he’d taken Tir-Eron, he’d stop for a while, consolidate what he’d gained, beef up the sea war. And pick off the Eronese fastnesses as the season permitted.

  That was his main advantage. Cold it might be, and the weather miserable, and he and the army nearly two thousand shots from home. But there was no end to them; indeed, sources said, new recruits were being fed into one end of the vast supply line faster than he exhausted them.

  Whereas close to a third of Eron’s population was still snowbound. He chuckled at that. Folks from the northern holds might well return to Tir-Eron to find it in the hands of the enemy. He wondered if they’d surrender peacefully, or if he had an extended war on his hands.

  He’d be meeting Gynn soon, in any case—probably tomorrow, if he knew his adversary. And although torture was his specialty, Lynnz knew that the best way to subdue something past doubt was to cut off its head.

  After all, he still had Prince Kraxxi. There was no royal heir in Tir-Eron.

  And, if things went as he hoped, soon no Council of Chiefs to elect one.

  Unless, of course, they could make that decision without their heads attached to their bodies.

  Rrath peered around yet another snow-crusted boulder, and saw yet another sweep of snow-covered plain. It was a cold night, though not so dire as the last several had been, when he’d grown so chill huddled in his cave he’d thought he might freeze to death—since he, like everyone, had been caught unaware by the late-season blizzard.

  As best he could tell—from a great deal of spying, lurking, and general overhearing—its sole virtue had been to buy the King time. Gynn’s first battle had dispirited him—all agreed on that. He’d rallied as best he could, but his early loss had forced a slow retreat into open country, where Ixti’s larger army could stretch his to the limit. He’d resisted valiantly, but in vain—until he’d reached Priest-Hold-Summer, which was the only remaining place to make any useful stand. Most of the land south of Tir-Eron consisted of long rolling ridges running almost due east and west, covered with grass and used for forage during the summer—though those closer to the city still retained their forests, and that closest south was almost, but not quite, a true mountain. Not that dissimilar to the situation at South Gorge, actually; Barrax would have to win through a guarded pass or go around. And the latter led through a marshy lowland that didn’t rise to open plains until close to the sea.

  But that wasn’t Rrath’s concern.

  No, once he’d amassed enough information, mostly from haunting pubs that catered to the unclanned (which Rrath, in effect, had become), he’d had one thought in mind.

  Geens.

  Not the ones back at Priest-Hold in Tir-Eron, either, but another, larger population that had long been housed in secret near the very hold in which His Majesty might well be making his final stand. A breeding population.

  Why he was concerned with the scaly beasts, he had no idea. Indeed, they might not even be there now, given the chaos that had marked the last eighth. He’d only seen them once, and that with Nyllol.

  They could be dead, for all he knew. And even with the court effectively on top of them, there was still a good chance no one outside his clan knew they were present.

  But he had to know how they fared. People—he no longer trusted them. They were at once too simple and too complex. Eager to manipulate, but blind to manipulation: both sides of which art Rrath had experienced too intimately.

  Geens, however … you knew where you stood with them. They … Well, they never loved you, but at least you knew how any one-on-one encounter with them would resolve.

  So Rrath, who had nothing else to do and no loyalties to anyone any longer, was acting on impulse alone.

  Steeling himself, he stepped from behind the rock and marched off across the plain. It was night, but the place was alive with campfires, for most of Eron’s army was bivouacked between the south rim of the gorge and Priest-Clan’s Hold. The bulk, of course, was farther on: clumped about the foot of the small mountain atop which the hold was situated, and climbing in ever thicker numbers up that slope, so that the whole ridge looked like a dark forge with embers showing through the black. The bulk was straight ahead, where the hold guarded the pass. But smaller concentrations showed to east and west, where forces had been massed to protect the flanks. To the right, where the nearest bridge across the Ri-Eron lay, Rrath could see a steady line of flickering lights where, even this late, forces continued to filter in from north and west and east.

  Closer in …

  The nearest camp wasn’t far away, a square of tents around a small fire, with the banner of one of the fishing holds flying above it. Whalers from the mouth of Mid Gorge, he imagined. The army was vast and shifting and not well organized, for all the Eronese prided themselves on such things. And this close to the gorge, there were few sentries, nor much need for any. Once Rrath got inside the camp proper, he’d have no trouble. His countrymen all looked alike, and most of this force were male and within ten years of his age. He could wander from camp to camp with impunity. And once he reached the ridge that bore the hold … Then he had another option entirely. One few in his clan knew about, and none outside, so far as he was aware.

  So two hands passed, and midnight raced two of the moons up the sky, as Rrath syn Garnill made his way through his country’s camp. Someone hailed him once, and he stiffened, until he realized it was a case of mi
staken identity. Once, too, he shared a cup with a drunken young man, since that was the only way to dispose of the fellow. Finally, he accepted a kiss from a clanless woman someone had smuggled into a camp of Brewers. He kissed back—then, on impulse, had her quickly. And didn’t regret that indiscretion. Tomorrow they might all be dead.

  Eventually, he found himself at the camp’s western edge, where a series of boulders thrust up from the earth. It was an abrupt shift of terrain and there were few campsites about, so he had little trouble making his way past the last one—though he did have to mumble something about needing to piss to the bland-faced young woman on sentry duty—to disappear among the tumbled, snow-shrouded stones. The laurel and rhododendron that would normally have sprouted between those boulders had been harvested for firewood, but the trees above and around them had not. Rrath therefore had a fairly easy time making his way with no source of light save the moons.

  The ridge rose to his left, ever more abruptly, and he angled toward it until he came to a place where a sheer wall of stone rose up from the woods. He followed it west, running his hand along the rock to brace himself, for the forests were darker than the plain, and he could no longer see nearly as well as heretofore.

  So it was that his hands informed him of what he’d found before his eyes did.

  A cleft in the rock, through which a slender Eronese man could squeeze.

  It was no secret—not really. This close to a major city, there was no way young Eronese folks would not have found it—not with centuries of afternoon rambles to provide time and opportunity.

  But what he sought … Almost no one knew about that.

  A deep breath, and he slipped inside the fissure, still working by feel as he followed the tight squeeze first left, then right. Soon enough it opened into a small cavern, which he sensed by a change in the air, for the place was utterly black. A quick fumble at his waist produced a candle and quick-fire to ignite it, and in the flare of golden light, he made out another fissure.