The Copper Crown

by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

  "What use can the Ard-rian really have for us? Your own methods of communication--not to mention telepathy--are far superior to any we could offer, you have great skill with language, and so O'Reilly is not needed. Your own warriors--well, we are no Fians, as you have seen, and not needed there either. I haven't been in real combat in years, and even when I was, it was mostly from the deck of a ship."

  Macsen listened sympathetically, but in the end shook his head with a smile.

  "It is nothing to fret yourself over, Theo," he said. "Aeron keeps no hounds that cannot hunt. She has good use for both of you, doubt it not."

  "My cousin spoke truly," said Aeron, later that day, when she had dropped back in the line to ride beside Haruko herself. "Did you not listen, Theo, when I said I would need the benefit of an out-Wall point of view, and that you would be for me those eyes? And, too, you and O'Reilly are my friends. You gave up much to stay here with us, and I do not forget it."

  All along the route of march, they had been greeted by folk flocking to the Royal Standard, who came to cheer their passage and kiss Aeron's hand. Haruko, who was by now able to read her fairly well, saw what torment she was suffering, but he could think of nothing to do for it, and realized that if he noticed, those closer to her must have seen it long ago. So he said nothing, and did nothing, but it troubled him that it had to be so.

  By the fourth nightfall, when they came to Ath-na-forair, Aeron was weary beyond speech, in body and in mind, and she retired almost immediately to the hastily refurbished rooms at the top of the keep. Gwydion made as if to go after her, but Melangell shook her head, and followed Aeron herself.

  But even in the privacy of the solar Aeron did not seem disposed to deliver herself of her cares, and finally Melangell broke the long uneasy silence.

  "Aeron, speak and be solaced. What so troubles you?"

  "I can endure betrayal, invasion, war," said Aeron after another long pause. "What I think I shall never learn to endure is being beloved of my people. They ask for nothing, cousin, except the simple fact of my existence." She laughed. "Simple!" she repeated with savage irony. "Whatever I do is right in their eyes, so long as it is I that do it. They come to kiss my hand no matter what it has of late been set to, and if not my hand... Did you see, some today actually kissed my boot in the stirrup, or my sword in its scabbard, or the hem of my cloak--whatever was nearest to their grasp. And when it comes at last to battle, they will die shouting my name for their ros-catha." She stood up, on the verge of losing the iron grip of self-control that she had closed, like a gauntlet, around her emotions ever since that hour in her chamber of magic with Gwydion.

  Melangell had never seen her so unstrung; not even when Rohan, ashen-faced, had brought Aeron the news of her terrible accession to the throne, had gone to his knee before his own sister, not even then had Aeron been so openly anguished as now. But--

  "You are the Ard-rian, Aeron," she said quietly, all the soul-soothers at her command in her voice. "There is no higher nor more worshipful calling in Keltia. If the people are to be strong enough to throw back the invader, where then are they to find that strength save from their Queen?"

  "So Gwydion says, too," said Aeron almost indifferently.

  "Well, then! Do you doubt us both?"

  "I doubt only myself, Meleni," she said, using the diminutive Melangell had not heard since the days of their childhood. "And I wonder how my father would have dealt with this..."

  Melangell said desperately, "Of the two of you, Aeron, it is he, not you, would have been the more like to torment himself with what-ifs. Or so at least all of us have thought... until now."

  Aeron's mouth quivered as if her cousin had struck her, then she looked sideways at Melangell and laughed.

  "That was a near hit, kinswoman. And a shrewd touch... doubtless inherited from your father." Suddenly fired with mercurial cheer, she spun about, hair whipping after her like a sparkling comet. "Enough! I need not fight myself as well as Jaun Akhera... is the company yet in the hall? Then let us go down again to join them."

  *

  It was during the course of the marchra that O'Reilly, who had for some time been performing various small services for Aeron, was formally asked to become the Queen's personal squire. O'Reilly leaped at the offer, but the development was not viewed with equal delight by all observers.

  "O'Reilly is much attached to the Ard-rian," remarked Sabia to Haruko, at the nightmeal next evening at Dundrum.

  "A bad case of hero-worship," muttered Haruko. "I'd thought she was old enough to have outgrown that sort of thing."

  "Nay, most of us feel the same, you know; even those of us Aeron honors with her friendship. It is natural and right to look up to the Queen simply for that she is, after all, the Queen, but the more so for that she is Aeron."

  *

  On the sixth day they came at last to Rath na Riogh, farthest from Caerdroia of all the line of fortresses that stood like an iron rampart along the Great Glen.

  "Rath na Riogh," said O'Reilly dreamily, looking up at the towering walls of honey-colored stone. "That means Fort of the Kings. Look, there's the camp."

  Haruko followed the direction of her pointing hand, but the camp would have been hard to miss...

  At the mouth of the tributary glen where the castle stood guard was broken land leveling off to high moors, and in other times the empty sweep of the bracken-covered uplands would have been bleak indeed.

  It was not empty now. For as far as Haruko could see, the plain was thick with tents and the dome-like structures called clochans favored by the Fianna. Horse-lines snaked in and out around the perimeters, and he could see the quartz-hearths set up for evening. It was staggering, and he said as much.

  O'Reilly nodded agreement. "And these are just the troops for the first battles; not the reserves, even, or the forces that remained to defend the City, or the battalions in the other cities on this planet--not to mention the other planets. Everybody's a warrior here, men, women, probably children, too... But we have to go up there." She jerked her chin up toward the castle; the gates had been opened, and the first riders of the marchra were already passing between.

  Rath na Riogh, like most of the castles along the line of the Avon Dia, royal or otherwise, had been built in the early days of Keltia, long centuries before the raising of the Curtain Wall, when civil war and alien attack had been all too familiar realities to the folk who lived in Strath Mor.

  There had been more people on the Throneworld then than now. In those earliest years, only Tara itself, then later Erinna and Gwynedd, had been settled by the first emigrants from Earth. But nowadays, the greatest part of the Keltic population lived on the other worlds to which they had spread so long ago, and Tara's present inhabitants numbered perhaps only a hundred million. Caerdroia itself was home to fewer than a quarter million.

  The Rath itself was by far the largest of the Strath fortresses also; and in all Keltia only Ardturach, on Erinna, Turusachan itself and Gwydion's own seat of Caer Dathyl on Gwynedd were of greater size. Laid out in the classic four-towered pattern, with concentric walls around a faha and central keep, Rath na Riogh, Fort of the Kings, commanded the entrance to the Great Glen, and therefore it had been chosen by Aeron and her generals to anchor the first defense of the Keltic throneworld in seven hundred years.

  *

  "What a great place to put a castle!"

  O'Reilly draped herself precariously over the crenelations. From here at the top of the keep, she could see far downplain to where the Avon Dia, in its descent from its sources high up on the slopes of Mount Keltia many miles to the east, began to broaden from an upland stream to a real river, flinging itself over the Lithend to pass between the huge double scarp of the Cliffs of Fhola. Those cliffs, sheer and fluted, formed an east-west running palisade for twelve miles on both sides of the river that long ago had carved them through the volcanic plain. Beyond cliffs and river alike, lost in blue distance, the mountains of the Stair rose up, snow-crowned giant
s forty miles away, and, far northeast on the very edge of sight, the outliers of the elf-haunted Hollow Mountains.

  "Some view." Haruko had joined her, and he was still more than a little breathless from the long climb. "And good ground for a fight."

  He handed her a leather-covered flask. "Here, I brought us some shakla."

  O'Reilly sipped gratefully at the bitter, chocolate-tasting beverage.

  "Thanks--I could use the caffeine." She cupped cold fingers around the warm flask. "Now what?"

  He shrugged. "Now we wait. Not for long, though. The armada is only a day away, probably less. Desmond told me the Imperials should lose forty per cent or more of their ships before they got here, and so far they say that estimate's holding. But we've lost a lot, too."

  "But--"

  "I know, I know. You don't have to tell me." Any soldier knew it: Nobody invaded anybody else unless they were absolutely sure of any of three things--surprise, superiority of weapons, or numerical advantage. The first was out now, of course, but that still left the other two up for grabs.

  Haruko thought about the coming battle. Hand-to-hand combat had been the rule in interstellar warfare for more than a millennium now; planetary governments had learned, after some appallingly harsh lessons, to limit their warfare so, since there was apparently as little hope as ever of ceasing it altogether. All nuclears, all laser weaponry save laser swords and long-range siege guns, any kind of remote-control slaughter, even simple blastguns, were strictly proscribed by galactic covenant in combat situations, and the penalty for flouting that law was planetary annihilation. Keep the gore in war, he thought bitterly, it might even help to keep the peace.

  But even the Imperium and the Phalanx dared not break the convention, and so the coming engagements would be fought in the ancient, accepted style, with the remove of bloodshed limited to the distance between one sword and another.

  "Now that you're the royal squire," he heard himself saying, "I presume you'll be fighting beside Aeron."

  "Beside Aeron? What are you talking about?"

  It was his turn to be surprised. "She will be fighting personally--you mean you didn't know?" Judging by the shocked face O'Reilly turned to him, she had indeed not known, and he was instantly repentant.

  "You're kidding."

  "I'm sorry--but no, I'm not kidding, and I was appalled too. Morwen told me about it, a long time ago. It's a matter of Keltic law: Aeron cannot legally ask of her people anything she's not prepared to do herself. She can't be Queen otherwise." He shook her arm lightly. "It's not so unusual, really. And you don't imagine for one minute they'd ever let anything happen to her, do you? Morwen? Gwydion?"

  "I have never heard of any monarch of any world in the known universe going personally into battle," said O'Reilly flatly. "And Aeron's not likely to let anybody keep her out of anything she wants to get into."

  Too true, he thought; but he hardly needed, or wanted, to say so.

  *

  Gwydion stepped out onto the rampart and looked up at the sky. The day was burning itself to death. The sun, only a few minutes from setting, was balanced on the horizon; but the splendor, far from dimming, was spreading even as he watched. Even around into the east, the sky was rose and gold and opal, while the west was so bright he could not gaze directly into it, and the light it cast upon the fortress walls was clear and hard as crystal.

  It seemed to cast a silence as well as a light; he could hear the horses nickering down in the lines, and the thud of a siege engine far out upon the plain.

  O'Reilly had come up beside him, and Slaine also, but neither woman spoke in the enormous hush, and as he looked around the battlements he could see against the glow other dark figures silhouetted, all looking west as they were.

  Up on the keep's central tower, there was one that was not dark but blazed like a torch. Aeron's hair, loose around her, was a cloak of flame to her knees, and the huge crimson cloud-wings that spread north and south from out of that heart of burning light cast a glory over her face.

  Her mind was not on the sunset, though, but rather closer: about ten light-seconds out from Tara, where the Keltic fleets fought the invaders for the space around the Throneworld. And fighting them magnificently, too, she thought, though her heart contracted at the thought of the staggering losses already incurred. So soon in the fight, and already she had had news of the deaths of many known to her-—

  A shout went up, and she turned her back on the sunset to look east, into the huge blue-gray dimness that veiled the plain off to her right. Then came her first sight of that which they had all foregathered upon the battlements to see: a faint wildfire trail, arcing down through the amethystine sky to disappear many miles away behind a swell of the rolling uplands. She knew well what it was: the first of the Imperial landing craft plummeting in free-fall to earth, from the troop carriers in parabolic orbit around the planet.

  We came to meet them, she thought, and now they are here ... Still, they came not so easy, for all that; she could see blue-white lances beginning to rise from the plain, volleys from the long-range laser-cannon batteries sited by the Fianna to shoot down the troop shells as soon as they entered atmosphere. Yet for every gliding sliver that was blown into flaming sparks, five more came safely to land.

  She had earlier consulted with Gwydion and the other commanders, with the result that the Keltic dispositions had been somewhat altered; so that most of the key detachments were now spread out in a mighty arc across the Strath entrance, one point of the iron sickle anchored upon Rath na Riogh, the other at the Cliffs of Fhola.

  As soon as the invaders were well entrenched, she knew, they would send her an embassy to arrange a parley, and then she and Jaun Akhera would come face to face at last. What would he be like? As he himself had done some months before, she had studied all available information on her royal adversary. Eight years older than herself--the same age as Rhodri, came the inescapable computation--Jaun Akhera had been named Strephon's official heir and successor only a year ago. Truly, he had used that year to good advantage, she thought somewhat sourly. She would wager crossics to cheese the invasion had not had origin in the brain of Strephon, devious though that brain surely was...

  She spun on her heel, so sharply that her spur grated on the stone, and went down the tower stairs to the rooms she had taken for her own use. There was no point remaining to watch: Soon enough would she see for herself what those falling sparks had brought to Tara.

  *

  At first light the next morning Aeron rode to the front with her commanders and her guard. Their path lay through the heart of the miles-deep encampment, and, man or woman, galloglass or general, every warrior who could manage a few moments away from duties came down to cheer their progress. O'Reilly, who as squire rode directly behind Aeron, beside Rialobran who bore the Royal Standard, was nearly ill with excitement, and, as Aeron halted often to greet many warriors known to her and many more who were not, nearly deafened by the tumult.

  At last they came to the far edge of the camp, where, across five or six miles of gently sweeping moor, the enemy's own tents were clearly visible. Here on a little rise of ground a pavilion had been erected, and Aeron retired within, accompanied by her officers, to await the Imperial embassy.

  She did not stay within for long, though, and the sun was not yet high when a small party of riders approached from the far camp. Aeron, who had watched through a field-glass since the group was first sighted, lowered the instrument and straightened, still gazing out across the plain.

  "My purple cloak," she said, not turning, and behind her O'Reilly vanished into the tent. When she returned with a darkly gleaming armful of imperial purple, Aeron pulled a thin black surcoat embroidered with the royal arms over her lorica and raised her hands to her shoulders. O'Reilly laid the cloak edges into her fingers, and Aeron buckled the jewelled clasp at her throat. Thus attired, she waited.

  Under the eons-honored ensign of the white flag, the riders halted at the base of the litt
le hill, and their leader, with his flagbearer, approached on foot to where Aeron stood with her commanders about her.

  "Hail, Queen of Kelts!" he called. "I am called Garallaz, and I bring Your Majesty the salutations of my Lord Jaun Akhera, Prince of Alphor, Heir to the Throne of the Cabiri. May I come?"

  At a curt nod from Aeron, he covered the remaining distance to the top of the knoll, dropped to one knee and extended to her a silver-bound diptych. Aeron made no move to take it, and it was Gwydion who instantly reached out a gauntleted hand. After a moment's hesitation, Garallaz relinquished it to him.

  Gesturing Garallaz to rise, Gwydion broke the seal of wafer-thin gold, scanned the tablet's contents, then held it for Aeron to read.

  "It seems we are bidden to a parley," said Aeron pleasantly. "According to what is set down here, I may bring with me six companions to a spot I choose myself. All negotiations will be conducted in Englic as a neutral tongue, and Jaun Akhera will ride to meet me with six companions also."

  "You must come yourself, Majesty," said the envoy, nervously, for he had heard tales of the Keltic queen's chancy temper. "Not send any deputy in your place. My master shall do likewise."

  "I will come."

  But Garallaz, more nervous still, spoke again. "Forgive me, Majesty, but you must leave all weapons behind. Your escort may remain armed, of course. But you may not. My lord insists on this, and he too will be unarmed."

  That troubled Aeron not at all, who had learned long since that if the power is not in the arm that wields the sword, it will never be in the sword itself. But her friends were vexed. She cut them off with a warning glance, then unhooked her glaive from its battered, silver-studded baldric and handed it, together with the sgian from her boot-top, to Struan Cameron; the huge claymore from the saddle scabbard she gave to Grelun, who stood by, holding the reins of her horse.