by S L Farrell
As they did now.
Kayne had Rodhlann’s men direct the building of walls of broken rock across all the narrowest points of the road. He had no illusions that the makeshift barriers would stop the Arruk: what had happened at Bunús Wall and at their first skirmish the day before had left no hope for that. But at worst, they would slow and stretch out the invaders; at best, it would force Ennis to use the Heart to open the way, which meant that the Heart would have that much less power when the real battle came, and give the Clochs Mór a chance to deal with him.
Kayne set Fingerlander archers near the barriers to pick off the Arruk that they could and make it more imperative for Ennis to use the Heart. Beyond that, they did nothing.
High up near the Narrow’s highest point the road opened up slightly in a long twisting canyon, with side canyons leading off to both west and east. There, he set the Daoine forces, and they waited. Fingerlander runners came and went during the day with reports: the Arruk force had reached the first barrier; Ennis had eventually used the Heart, and the Svarti with the spell-sticks had raked the hillsides with the archers as well. They’d come to the second barrier, but they simply swarmed over and around the wall; it hadn’t stopped them at all. At the third wall, Ennis had used the Heart again . . .
The runners had all returned. Rodhlann and the Fingerlander archers had come back as well, their quivers emptied. The High Road was littered with the corpses of Arruk struck down by Fingerlanders in their high ledges and hiding places, but the dead were but a few buckets of water stolen from a river that pushed on, unnoticing and uncaring. Kayne sent the Fingerlanders to the fletchers in the camp to replenish their quivers, then sent some to the Narrow’s heights and the rest to their places with the foot soldiers.
Astride his horse on a small rise to one side of the High Road, with his greada, Alby, Edana, and Rodhlann beside him, Kayne blinked into a spray of rain. The banner of the Rí Ard, set with all the colors of the Tuatha, flapped wet and heavy alongside him on a long pole. The weather matched his mood; he wondered if Séarlait were not responsible, weeping for him with the Mother. “The world cries for what will happen here today,” he said.
“You still have no hope?” Edana asked, and Kayne shook his head, sending droplets scattering from the ends of his hair.
“Not without Lámh Shábhála. And even then, without the rest of the Clochs Mór . . .” He shrugged. “I wonder if the Songmasters will sing of this one day . . . those Daoine who are still alive. The Arruk, from what I’ve seen, don’t seem to make songs.”
“They just pound on their Mother-damned drums,” Rodhlann grumbled. “We heard them all through the mountains of the Finger.”
“Let’s hope that we don’t hear them through all the Tuatha,” Kayne’s greada said, “nor in Inish Thuaidh.” Kyle MacEagan shifted his weight uncomfortably on his mount, fingering the stone around his neck. “The Order’s mages are ready and our gardai are in position, Kayne,” he said. “Alby and I should be with them.”
“Go with the Mother, Greada,” Kayne told him. Leaning toward the man, he grasped Kyle’s arm and nodded to the silent Alby, watching from his horse nearby, who looked uncomfortable in the steel-ringed armor he wore. Kayne wanted to give his great-da some word of comfort, but there were none he could speak. His great-da let the hood of his clóca fall from the plumed leather helmet he wore over his balding and grayed head, and swept the folds back from the scabbard of his sword. “I’ll find you on the battlefield, great-son,” he said, and kicked his heels into his horse’s side, galloping swiftly away with Alby at his side. Rodhlann followed a moment later, with a grim nod to Kayne. Edana and Kayne remained on the hill: as the drums pounded, as in the distance the gray fog darkened with the vanguard of the Arruk force. Kayne could feel his own heart beating in time. His blood sang in his body.
“We’ve both lost too many of our family and our friends already,” Edana said to him. She was peering down at the defenders to where those wearing the gray clóca of Dún Laoghaire were gathered, where Padraic—his leg splinted and padded, and clad in his green clóca—waited for the battle. “Here, we can take our anger and our grief for those we’ve lost and use them as our swords. How can the Arruk stand against that?”
Kayne smiled at her: this longtime friend of his mam, the woman he’d gone to often as a child when his mam wasn’t there, who had cuddled him and kissed his skinned knees and elbows as if he’d been one of her own children. “Thank you, Aunt. I hope you’re right.” He could see the individual motes of the Arruk now, could see the waving cloth of their banners and the swaying of the officers’ litters. “We’ll know very soon, won’t we?”
He pulled the flag of the Ard from the ground. Taking the stout pole in his hands, he waved it high. From down the lines of the Daoine defenders, banners waved in response.
The drums of the Arruk quickened, and in the rain came the sound of their challenge. The howls were like the screams of the Black Haunts, circling in the clouds above and waiting. The Arruk war drums slowed again, sending a different, more urgent beat as they saw the Daoine force ahead, as the archers on the walls of the canyon began to fire clouds of arrows through the rain. Kayne, from the hill, waved his banner once more; this time a cry went up from the mounted Daoine.
They charged.
He knew that if they hoped to cut down the Arruk force and hold them as long as possible, then they could not meet them where the Kralj could bring the full brunt of his army against their own outnumbered troops. In this position, the Daoine had the advantage both of attacking from higher ground and having the ability to maneuver in the open plain, while the Arruk were still compressed within the walls of the pass. They could attack the Arruk from three sides: from canyons to the east where Kayne had placed the Fingerlanders and the remnants of his da’s original troops; from the west, where the Inishlanders waited; with the main flanks from the north with all the Tuathaian gardai and troops. Already the Inish and Fingerlanders had come against the Arruk: he heard the clash of steel and the howls of the Arruk mingling with the war cry of the Inish. He started to kick his own horse into motion when he felt Edana’s hand on his arm.
“A commander’s place is behind his troops.”
“That was never Da’s belief,” Kayne told her gently but urgently. “And that’s my brother we ride against. I want—I need—to be there when they reach him, when the Heart opens.”
“I’ll go with you,” Edana told him. “You’ll need Demon-Caller.” She smiled into his beginning protest. “You’re not going to tell me that a Banrion’s place is behind the troops, are you?”
“No,” he said. “Not here. Not now.” He nodded. “We ride, Aunt.” He kicked his heels into the stallion’s ribs. “For the Daoine!” he shouted, and the wind took his words as the horse leaped forward, Edana and the gardai around them following.
As he galloped toward the chaos of the battle, Kayne took Blaze in his hand, opening it with his mind and letting the landscape of the clochs mingle with the vision of his eyes. The fighting was fiercest near the center of the pass where the Arruk were thickest. In his mage-sight, Kayne could see the flickering of spells being cast from the Svarti’s spell-sticks, matching the minor fire of clochmions and slow magic of the Order of Inishfeirm and the Riocha. To his far left was Rodhlann with the cold fire of Winter, the sight of Séarlait’s Cloch Mór bringing the grief back hard to Kayne’s chest; to the far right, he could glimpse the ruddy conflagration of Greada with Firerock. Close by, somewhere just ahead, blue lines snaked and whipped toward the Arruk: Padraic with Snarl.
Around them, through the gray-seeming sight of his eyes, he could see the hand-to-hand fighting of swords against Arruk jaka. Despite the efforts of the Clochs Mór, the Arruk were threatening to break the Daoine line, and Ennis had yet to appear with Treoraí’s Heart. Kayne plunged into the fray, using Blaze to scatter the Arruk that stood in his way. The beast that lived inside Edana’s cloch Demon-Caller strode alongside him, a horned, dark c
reature roaring challenge, and it plucked up an Arruk in either hand and smashed them together, casting the bodies aside as it grabbed for two more of the creatures.
The onslaught of the additional Clochs Mór had an immediate effect: the first line of the Arruk sagged and broke, and the Daoine held a momentary clear space for a few breaths. But more Arruk charged from the confines of the pass to take their place. They pushed those Arruk back as well, and from a hundred Daoine throats came a cry of savage victory: premature, Kayne knew, but he yelled with them, urging the Daoine foot soldiers forward, wondering if they could plug the gap that was the Narrows, if they could fill it with Arruk bodies in a barrier of their own dead. A Svarti spell-stick loosed lightning at Kayne; he felt the attack and flicked the bolt aside with a burst from his cloch, turning the spell back on its owner. The Svarti screamed and vanished under the continuing flood of its own kind. A hand of Arruk charged him en masse, screaming; he cut them down in fire and blood. For a breath, he was alone on the field, and from his vantage point on his warhorse, he could see the canopies of the Arruk officers’ litters. He could see the flags of the Kralj’s litter not far back in the canyon, and another litter next to it with a Svarti’s insignia fluttering from its poles.
Ennis . . . He knew it even before he felt the Heart open in his mage-vision: a looming red-black darkness, throbbing in time to the drums, and behind it the shadow of the boy who wielded it. The Heart lifted like a vast storm wall in front of them, its immensity dwarfing the Clochs Mór of the Daoine and making the lightning from the spell-sticks of the other Svarti seem like the sparks from a flint.
He wondered again at the depth and strength of the Heart, and if his mam had known what she held.
The appearance of the Kralj and his Svarti rallied the Arruk. The drums began to beat harder, and their jaka flashed in time, and now it was the Daoine who were forced to give ground. “Hold!” Kayne shouted to those around him. “We must hold!” If the line broke, if the Arruk pushed out from the vise of rocks and into the wider section of the Narrows, their numbers would overwhelm the Daoine.
The war drums boomed in mocking answer; the Arruk howled. The bloody wall of the Heart gathered itself like a tidal wave on the horizon, rising and lifting as if ready to crash down on them.
The drums beat as one, then went ominously silent. In the silence, the wave broke.
The pulse from the Heart knew neither ally nor foe. Indiscriminate, wild, it swept all before it. It smashed to ground near the front ranks of the Arruk and pushed north, taking with it screams and broken bodies. “By the Mother!” Kayne heard Edana gasp as the fury cascaded toward them. Kayne barely had time to place a shielding wall of mage-power between himself and the mad surf of dead and wounded. He felt the impact pounding at his mind through the cloch, the wall nearly collapsing in shock. Then it was past him and fading. Kayne gasped, blinking into the rain that now soaked a field of dead—Arruk and Daoine both—for several strides around him. He could feel Edana near him, but the mage-demon had vanished under Ennis’ assault.
The power in the Heart reminded him too much of Lámh Shábhála. That would have taken everything in a Cloch Mór and more. Perhaps that was all he had, and he’s used it up . . . But he knew already that this faint hope was misplaced: they could not win here, not with the Heart against them, and he despaired of being able to reach Ennis. Images and memories of his brother surfaced—smiling, laughing, always so proud of his big brother, always wanting to be like him—and he shook his head at them
He wondered if he’d have the strength and resolution to strike Ennis down. He wondered if the chance would come at all.
A growl, too close, brought him back. Several Arruk had leaped from the canyon toward him and Edana, alone now after the Heart’s attack. The mage-demon, restored, roared and charged at them; Kayne sent hissing gouts of fire to them. Those closest went down, but more were coming, an endless stream of them. “Close the line!” Kayne shouted to the gardai behind them, and slowly they moved to obey, as if mesmerized by the carnage and violence before them. Kayne could see the Kralj now, fighting with his entourage around him, and there . . . there was Ennis.
He could see his brother, astride another Arruk’s shoulders as if he were riding the creature. A garda rushed at Ennis—it was Garvan, Kayne realized, a shield lashed to his broken arm—but the Arruk with the boy cut Garvan down with a stroke of his jaka. Then Kayne lost sight of Ennis as more Arruk came pouring out from the gap, the drums beating furiously, the banners waving, and Svarti howling their chants and spell-lightning—pale after the Heart’s brilliance—slashing through the Daoine troops.
The mage-landscape was flooded with the power being expended here: the Clochs Mór and clochmions arrayed against the spell-sticks of the Svarti, and there . . . in the center, all the energy swirling around it like a storm sea around a terrible, huge whirlpool, was Treoraí’s Heart, gathering itself again, pulling in the power it held and feeding on itself, ready to burst out once more.
Kayne clutched Blaze desperately, but he’d already used most of the energy stored within the stone, and he knew it was the same for the others.
“We can’t stop him,” he heard Edana call. “Kayne, he’s too strong.”
“I know,” he told her. “The army’s yours, Aunt. Be ready to retreat to the top of the pass. We’ve done all we can here.”
“Kayne . . .”
In answer, he kicked his horse, screaming the caointeoireacht na cogadh in defiance, and riding ahead into the line of the Arruk. He used Blaze liberally, not caring that the stone would soon be exhausted, riding against the storm he felt gathering. He pushed the Arruk aside, clearing a path for himself and arrowing straight for Ennis. He could see his brother now, not a dozen strides from him, and Ennis turned to him at the same time, Treoraí’s Heart in one hand, the remnants of an Arruk spell-stick in the other. “Ennis!” Kayne shouted to him. “Ennis, you have to stop this!”
The boy seemed to look at him, and Kayne wanted to believe that there was a flash of recognition in Ennis’ eyes. But just when Ennis’ mouth started to open, a change came over the boy’s face, even as Kayne used the last reservoirs of Blaze to push aside the remaining Arruk between himself and his brother. The Arruk who carried his brother stared at the horse and rider that confronted them, its eyes wide and almost frightened. Ennis blinked and his gaze went hard; his mouth closed and the lips set themselves in a tight frown. The spell-stick came down and he pointed the riven end directly at Kayne.
He spoke a word, and the word was in the Arruk tongue.
Kayne, with the wisp of energy left in Blaze, felt Treoraí’s Heart erupt and flare outward, and he could do nothing to stop it.
“Ennis!” the rider shouted toward him. “Ennis, you have to stop this!”
The blue ghost to which he had bound himself shuddered with the call, threatening to shatter around Ennis. Since the battle the day before, when he’d felt his da’s Cloch Mór outside the stone, since he’d glimpsed what seemed to be Kayne with the riders set against the Arruk, he’d clung to the pattern as if it were a log in the middle of a tempestuous ocean, his only chance for life.
“It’s not your brother,” Isibéal’s voice insisted in his head, in the blue ghost’s head, as she had since he’d seen him. “That’s what they want you to think. Kayne is dead. It’s a trick, my dearest one; a nasty, terrible trick. They want to kill you. They want to kill you as they did me. They want the Heart for themselves.”
“Let me talk to Mam. She’d know. She’d tell me,” he’d cried back to her.
Isibéal and the ones he’d killed with the Heart, hands upon hands upon hands of them now, shouted back denial to him. “No, you can’t talk to her. You must listen to us . . .”
But Ennis stared at the rider and he saw someone who must be Kayne, and he hesitated. Around him, a dozen ghosts of himself appeared, futures unglimpsed, and he began to slip away from the chosen pattern. He felt the chill of the wind, felt the cold rain on
his face and body, felt the terror of the battle and the uncertainty, and all the emotions threatened to overwhelm him. Kurhv Kralj, a few strides away, was howling at Ennis: “Kill him! Kill the stone-bearer bluntclaw!” The Kralj waved his well-blooded jaka and shoved an attendant out of the way. Ennis knew that the Kralj would rush toward Kayne himself.
“Ennis Svarti!” Cima called up at him. “What should I do?”
His breath coming fast and panicked, Ennis forced himself to hold onto the blue, shoved himself back into the constricted shell of the pattern. With the effort, the panic began to subside. “There . . . That’s better, isn’t it, my darling . . .”
“Aye,” he wanted to whisper, but his lips could not move because the blue ghost would not allow it. He turned Treoraí’s Heart in his hand, glancing at the facets that in his mage-vision were almost too bright to bear, and he took the energy in his mind, letting it gather in the ruined spell stick. “Stay!” he said to Cima and Kurhv Kralj both, and pointed the spell-stick at the false Kayne.
He imagined all the power rushing out and smashing the foul pretender, obliterating him so that his deception would be revealed for the sham it was.
As he released the attack—far stronger than it needed to be, but the ghost demanded it—he felt something else, a new presence, and even the blue ghost looked up in surprise and alarm.
58
Death in the Family
“THERE!” SEVEI SHOUTED, and Kekeri folded his great leathery wings and fell like a stooping hawk from the air. Sevei let herself tumble from the dragon’s back, the lashing of wind and rain an agony. She took Lámh Shábhála in her hand and wrenched it open in her mind. The world shifted around her.