“Impressive,” he said. “But slow. Very, very slow.”
Duergar snarled and levelled his wand, the end of it already orange-red like the mouth of a furnace. Then the thing spat a crackling globe of fire. Gemmel replied with the Dragonwand, and flaring streaks of energy and heat laced the smoky air of the hall. Pillars erupted with flame-cored smoke, fabrics flashed to crumbling ash. All was searing light and noise and colour.
Aldric went flat against the floor and shut his eyes.
*
“If Aldric and the old man can do anything, they’d better do it soon,” Dewan muttered to the king as he stared at the encircling shields. “What I wouldn’t give for a clear charge across the plain. I’d scour the ridge clean of Kalarr and—”
“Dewan, old friend, stop dreaming.” Rynert’s face was grim. “We’re finished, and you know it. If the fog hadn’t blown away, if Andvar hadn’t broken ranks…”
“If, if, if! Stop using that stupid little word, Rynert! If you give up now, you might as well use your tsepan. We’re not beaten until cu Ruruc can ride across this slope without fearing for his dirty life, and he can’t do it yet.”
The ranks contracted a little more, swords and spears flickering about the iron-rimmed shields. Arrows slashed through the air and Kalarr’s host drew their noose another notch tighter. More of the king’s men died. Rynert settled his own shield on his arm, drew his taiken and made to throw the scabbard away. Instead he laid it across his camp-stool.
“I’ll collect this later,” he told Dewan with a wry grin that fooled neither of them. “I wouldn’t want the tooled leather to get scratched…”
*
The mercenary captain turned to look for more approval on Kalarr cu Ruruc’s face and his smile evaporated, because the sorcerer’s features were pale and pinched, and though his mouth moved no sound came out. “My lord? My lord, are you unwell?”
Kalarr jerked like a man awakening from nightmare and stared at the soldier with wide, wild eyes. “Something’s happening. Something’s going wrong. I can feel it. Finish them! Hurry!” His voice rose to a scream of fury. “I won’t lose this time! Not again!”
Horns wailed and war-drums thundered while messengers galloped across the plain with orders to hasten the killing. Kalarr watched them go, the glazed dullness of his eyes seeming to see other things and other places. Then a perceptible shiver passed through the traugarin and they faltered in their advance.
Kalarr reeled, recovered himself and twisted round to glare towards Dunrath. He swayed in his saddle again and the mercenary captain grabbed his arm, then flinched away from the snarl of feral rage that twisted his master’s face.
“My lord,” the man yelled, his voice hoarse with panic, “what’s the matter?” Kalarr ignored him. He rode to the crest of the ridge and stared at the distant spike-edged shadow of the fortress.
“The chant,” he shouted. “Continue the chant. The charm’s failing, damn you! Ignore Talvalin and continue the chant! Duergar, you’re betraying me!” Kalarr’s roan stallion reared and squealed as its rider sawed savagely on the reins, filled with a sudden need to hurt. “Renew my host, you Drusalan bastard!” he howled, and rode like a storm for the citadel.
*
Aldric lifted his head in the sudden shocking silence and looked from side to side before he dared stand up. Duergar’s wand was gone, the Dragonwand was on the floor behind Gemmel, and both men had their open hands raised as if pressing against a great weight. The air between them rippled and distorted with currents of energy, and the first to weaken would die in the same instant.
“Take Ykraith and use it, Aldric!” Gemmel’s voice strained to be heard above the high, eldritch howl of power. “Use it now!”
Aldric might have protested that he didn’t know how, but there was no time for questions and Gemmel would never have given such a command without good reason.
“Abath arhan, Ykraith!” he shouted as he had done in the Cavern of Firedrakes, scooping the spellstave from where it had fallen. If there were other words, none came. Instead a low rumbling sound more felt than heard tore the shimmer of enchantment apart like a cobweb in a high wind. Duergar staggered and levelled his hand to deliver the Invocation of Fire, but Aldric parried instinctively with the Dragonwand as if it had been a sword and the billow of sorcerous flame splashed impotently against an invisible shield just feet short of where he stood.
“Duergar,” he said. “Look at me.”
The necromancer cringed as if threatened with a whip, then lowered his arms to his sides. Aldric stared at him, trembling. He had rehearsed what he would say when this moment finally arrived, high-sounding noble phrases practiced over and over. But in all that practice he had been holding an honourable taiken, not a spellstave thrumming like a living creature. Now none of those fine words mattered and his voice was passionless and weary beyond belief.
“I bring you a gift. The thing you’ve cheated and defied and used for far too long.” He raised the Dragonwand until it aimed straight at the Drusalan’s chest. “I bring you Death.” Nothing happened, and Duergar licked his lips then let out a harsh bray of laughter.
“You can’t!” he sneered. “You don’t know how to—!”
A sound like a storm through trees drowned out his scorn as Ykraith took Aldric’s stored-up hatred and amplified it into a dazzling pulse of force. The crystal flame of the dragonhead flared intolerably bright and sent that force swirling across the hall to enfold Duergar Vathach in a white-hot embrace. His skin split and blackened, his flesh flaked until the bones showed through, and his charring skull gaped in a soundless shriek as a tongue of living flame licked his calcined teeth. The fierce glare dimmed and faded into nothing. A twisted, flaking charcoal thing lay shrivelled in a puddle of its own still-molten grease. It was no bigger than a doll and it sizzled, sounding and smelling like meat too long in the pan.
Aldric took a deep breath, coughed on the horrible savoury smoke clogging his nostrils, and stabbed the Dragonwand into the floor. He felt drained, and sick, and fouled. Duergar’s last words had been right; he didn’t know how to use it and never had, but the spellstave had used him. No-one could deny he had fulfilled the oath made to his dying father, but now, too late to undo what he had done, he was certain that the most brutal vengeance of his imagination would have been more honourable than this.
He wondered if it was that way every time.
*
The silence and the stench of death hung heavy over Radmur Plain. King Rynert’s soldiers remained in a tight mass along the crest of Embeyan Hill, because moving from their positions meant walking ankle-deep in a morass of rotting corpses.
The fighting was over, because Kalarr’s mercenaries, appalled, outnumbered and most importantly, without an employer, were in panicked flight, and there was no one else left standing under the winged-viper banners. One minute, his victory had been a foregone conclusion. Then between one sword-swing and the next the bulk of his army had dropped where they stood, like thousands of string-cut marionettes, as weeks or months of decomposition caught up with them all at once.
“Gemmel-an was right, Lord King,” said Dewan ar Korentin. “Kill the master and the puppets die.”
Rynert fingered his nose tenderly, wondering if it was broken or not. The last few minutes of the battle had been a savage brawl very different from the dignified, elegant combats outlined in the war-manuals.
“There’s a stink about this whole business, Dewan, and it’s more than just the filth out there.”
“You’re being suspicious again. Aldric-arluth took oath to kill the Drusalan necromancer, and he succeeded. That’s all.”
“All? Perhaps.” Rynert gave no sign of noticing what was now Aldric’s correct title. “We should get to Dunrath as fast as we can. Kalarr’s still unaccounted for, and he was last seen heading for the fortress. I don’t want to go from battle to siege in a single day. And don’t forget what I said about Baiart Talvalin.”
Dewan nodded,
then issued rapid orders for disposal of the carrion fouling the hilltop. Those orders involved wood from Baelen Forest and oil from Dunrath, to prevent another necromancer at another time finding the same raw material as Duergar had done.
“The old Overlord Erhal should have done this in the first place,” he said, then shrugged. “But he was killed, of course.”
“So he was, Dewan.” Rynert signalled for remounts. “So were many people, then and today. My concern is with who’s still alive.”
Dewan ar Korentin watched, expressionless, as the king mounted a horse and cantered away. He hadn’t said “inconveniently alive”, at least not aloud, but the word had been there all the same.
Ar Korentin wondered whose inconvenience King Rynert meant.
*
“Aldric?” The voice from behind him wasn’t Gemmel’s, and he drew Isileth as he turned. “Go ahead,” said the man in the doorway. “I would welcome it.”
“Baiart.” Aldric lowered the taiken but didn’t sheathe it. Not yet. “Baiart, before Heaven, why?”
Baiart Talvalin walked forward into the smoke-diluted sunlight coming from the shattered windows. “Why indeed? Aldric, telling you the whole story would be more than I could stomach. The short answer is, I wanted to live. They caught me that first time when I came back from Cerdor, and they gave me the choice of life as their figurehead or… Or Undeath as one of Duergar’s creatures. I chose life. Existence, rather.”
What Aldric saw in his brother’s face made him look away.
“I’ve been dead for years, but Kalarr never confirmed it even when I played the drunk to make him angry. He did worse than that. He laid a spellbond on me to make me harmless.” The word came out like a whimper of pain. “I couldn’t kill him, I couldn’t kill Duergar, I couldn’t even kill myself. He left me able to wear my tsepan every day, Aldric, and I couldn’t use it. He took away the only privilege I had left.”
That was when Aldric returned Widowmaker to her scabbard, because the longing in Baiart’s eyes whenever they glanced at the long blade was making him shiver.
“Baiart is the son of a clan-lord.” This time the voice was Gemmel’s. “He has the right.”
“No. No, I won’t.” Weeks ago, in a bruising burst of fury, Aldric had imagined himself watching Baiart die without a qualm. Times had changed. He had changed. “I can’t. Not my own brother.”
“You don’t have to. Give him your own tsepan. There were never any spells on it. Otherwise you’ll be a witness at his execution, because for all sorts of reasons, King Rynert will insist.”
“His what? He’s kailin-eir, entitled to—”
“To something you can’t refuse me, Aldric,” Baiart was almost pleading. “Not for the sake of our past, we never had one. For the sake of my future.”
Aldric had no memory of handing the dirk to Baiart or his sword to Gemmel, but he must have done, for the old enchanter came back moments later with both weapons in his hands.
“It’s over,” he said gently. “And Widowmaker is still clean.”
Aldric looked at the taiken, and it was several long seconds before he sheathed it by his side again. He didn’t touch the tsepan at all.
Baiart was covered to the chin with one of the few wall-hangings to survive the sorcerous combat of… Was it really only ten minutes ago? His eyes were closed and his features had relaxed from whatever pains had twisted it. Aldric looked down at his brother and realised he was alone at last. Alone like Gemmel, utterly, irrevocably alone. The thought no longer frightened him as once it had done. He went down on one knee, lifted a corner of the tapestry and lightly, as if not to waken him, laid it over Baiart’s face.
*
“Is everyone in this damned fortress dead or deaf?”
The speaker was a tall man in full battle armour covered by a leather cymar, with a light flail tucked through his belt and a taiken slung across his back. His war-mask hung from loosened straps at his neck, revealing the moustached, sweaty face of someone in a hurry.
“Who are you, kailin?” Aldric was ready for any answer except, perhaps, the one he got.
“I’m a courier from the battlefield. Rynert is victorious, and cu Ruruc is dead.”
The news, delivered so dry and flat, gave Aldric little satisfaction. Duergar’s death and the manner of it had made him sick of slaughter, and with Baiart’s suicide following so soon after, his mood was introspective and his thoughts elsewhere.
“This place is Duergar Vathach’s citadel,” said the courier. Steel chains rang as he tugged the flail from his belt and looped its strap round his left wrist while he shot suspicious glances at every shadow. “Where is he?”
“Also dead,” said Aldric. “I killed him.”
Gemmel came up beside him with the Dragonwand in both hands, holding it so one of them covered the Echainon stone. A spark of realisation sprang to life in Aldric’s gloomy mind, and he made a tiny gesture of acknowledgement with one hand.
No horseman could have covered the distance between Radmur Plain and Dunrath if he’d waited till the fighting was over. Even riding his mount into the ground, this warrior must have started out a good ten minutes before knowing which way any victory would go. Under that blue leather overrobe the courier’s armour was vermeil red, and all the associations of the colour fought for prominence, each all too close to the reality standing in the doorway. Most significant of all, there was no tsepan at his belt. Any warrior facing battle would make sure he carried one as a last resort. But not a wizard who had met death before, whose necromancer ally treated death as a harvest, and who hated Alba, kailinin, and everything they honoured.
“You must be Talvalin,” the man said as he stalked up the hall, examining the extensive, still-smoking damage. “I’ve heard about you, ilauem-arluth.”
Aldric braced his feet a little wider and kept a careful eye on the flail swinging from the courier’s wrist. Only Gemmel knew the rank had become his. Or someone who realised the significance of the shrouded body on the floor. Someone like the scarlet-armoured kailin facing him.
Someone like Kalarr cu Ruruc.
“I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time, Lord Aldric,” the man said. “To give you my commiserations. To give you my compliments. To give you my congratulations. To give you this!”
Despite unease, despite anticipation, that slow, deceptive repetition nearly worked. When the flail slashed at Aldric’s face it almost took him by surprise. Almost, but not quite. In his eagerness Kalarr had come too close, and as he ducked under the stroke Aldric threw his armoured weight against cu Ruruc’s belly, shoulder foremost.
Breath went out of the sorcerer’s lungs in a throaty grunt and he staggered backwards, dodging the savage jab of armoured fingers at his eyes by pure luck and mere inches. The steel-sheathed hand chopped under his chin, where the flexible coif gave less protection against percussive blows, and left him coughing, dazed and shocked. Full battle harness made the man who wore it into a weapon, and even an empty fist became as deadly as a mace.
Kalarr swung his flail again to make his adversary back off, but Aldric caught its chains on one upraised forearm. They coiled around it, their spiked tips rattling impotently a link-length short of doing harm, and he wrenched the braced arm backwards. Kalarr’s flail came out of his grasp like a tent-peg from wet earth, there was an instant’s resistance as its leather strap took the strain, then it snapped and the flail whirled away overhead to clatter down somewhere out of sight.
Even before it landed, Aldric’s hand was on Widowmaker’s hilt.
“Ye must naymore bear weaponis at yer wrist, cu Ruruc,” he said. “Ye han nay luck there-by.” His Elthan accent was heavy and archaic, close to how it would have sounded the last time Kalarr met an armed Talvalin clan-lord and a deliberate reminder of what had happened then.
“Don’t play games!” shouted Gemmel. “Draw and finish him!”
“Let be, altrou. Everything in good time.”
The changes that came and went
in his foster-son’s voice made Gemmel take several long steps backwards as his sorcery-trained senses read its cause. He moved clear of where the inevitable clash would happen, and very well clear of Isileth Widowmaker, whose hunger had become as tangible as heat or cold.
“Not too far!” It was more an order than a request. “Watch this bastard for magic. If he tries anything besides steel, obliterate him.”
Kalarr’s eyes narrowed, wondering if Aldric’s performance was all hollow bravado or something more. Then his thin lips writhed into a grin and he released the taiken across his back. As the scabbard dropped to his belt, Kalarr put hand to hilt in a practiced movement.
“I need no spells, Talvalin.”
“From your past showing, pestreyr, you need something.”
Kalarr flicked a warning glance at Gemmel. “Don’t interfere with this,” he said. The enchanter shook his head.
“I wouldn’t dream of it. But I hope you know how to use your sword.”
“I’ve forgotten more about the taiken than this fatherless brat ever learned. He’s dead, old man. And so are you.”
“I don’t think so.” He opened his hand and Kalarr gaped at the blue crystal, whole and undamaged in the long black staff. “I have the Dragonwand, with the Echainon spellstone restored to its place. And Aldric has a sword. Have you looked at it? Look more closely.”
Aldric saw Kalarr give him full attention for the first time, and it provoked a mirthless smile within the shadows of his war-mask. He gripped Isileth Widowmaker’s long hilt, gave it the fractional twist needed to free the blade, and drew with a faint whisper of steel that for a second was the loudest sound in the hall. Louder than the beat of his heart, louder than the blood whose rushing filled his ears. And far, far louder than the tiny indrawn gasp as cu Ruruc realised what Gemmel meant.
“Isileth,” he whispered, and flexed his sword-hand as if an old, long-forgotten hurt had seared it.
“Isileth,” echoed Aldric, and said nothing more. The time for words was past. Instead he unhooked the taiken’s scabbard from his weapon-belt and pulled its cross-strap so it rose slantwise to his back, well clear of his legs. Then with as much care as if under instruction from an intolerant tutor he moved into the Boar’s Guard, blade slanted low to rip up at his opponent’s belly, and waited for Kalarr’s first move. There was no honour-bound need for a fair fight, no reason why he shouldn’t step aside and let Gemmel use the Dragonwand to finish this. No reason at all, except for the leaden sickness in his gut after Duergar’s death by magic. Aldric didn’t want to feel that again, even second-hand.
The Horse Lord (The Book of Years Series 1) Page 30