Days of Blood and Fire

by Katharine Kerr

“Of course.” Cadmar looked round him, startled as a man coming out of a faint. “Well all sit. Ye gods. Don’t know what’s wrong with me, trotting back and forth like an old ram who sees a young one in his pasture.”

  When Jahdo pulled out a chair for her, Jill sat gratefully. She could only hope that the noble-born would let her tell her news and leave fast. But as the plans and the arguing dragged on, so did the evening, hot and seemingly endless.

  Daralanteriel and his men had indeed traveled a good score of miles through rough country that day, hunting the gray deer. Although he’d wanted to push hard and return to Cengarn, their horses were exhausted from the chase, and unlike their elven masters, they couldn’t see with only starlight to guide them. He may have been a prince, but he was always mindful that in the current situation of the Westlands, his men were his equals in everything but name. When they shouted him down, he listened and eventually agreed to make camp, especially once they’d found a perfect spot, a sizable clearing with grazing for the stock and a nearby stream. Since the night was so hot, and light a luxury to those with elven sight, they dispensed with lighting a fire.

  Although the rest of the men jested and laughed, pleased with the chance to spend a night in open country, Dar felt his bad mood settle round him like a wet wool cloak. He kept to himself, brooding at the edge of the clearing. The wheel of stars was turning toward midnight when, a few at a time, the men stretched out on the grass to sleep. Dar’s lieutenant, Jennantar, came and found him where he’d been sitting, on a dead log off among the trees.

  “We’d best post a guard,” Dar said.

  “Why? Jill’s been scrying and suchlike for weeks now and never seen a trace of an enemy.”

  “Oh, I know, but I’ve got the strangest feeling round my heart. I don’t like this. We should have gone back.”

  “My prince, we couldn’t get back,”

  “Well, then, we never should have ridden so far.” Dar got up, suddenly furious. For the first time in his life he wished that he had the power of one of his fabled royal ancestors, to speak once and be obeyed. “I told you this afternoon! We needed to get back.”

  “But that stag! I’ve never seen a stag like that, all white, and with horns that big.”

  “Well, neither have I, but he gave us the slip in the end, anyway, didn’t he? So here we are, way out in the middle of nothing and no stag to show for it.”

  Jennantar merely shrugged at the luck of the hunt. Dar had the brief thought of slapping him, caught himself, and let out his breath in a long sigh.

  “Something’s truly gnawing at you, isn’t it?” Jennantar said.

  “Yes, and I don’t know what.”

  Just as he spoke Dar felt a cold ripple down his back, as if an icy hand had stroked him. He threw up his head like the stag, listening. Something was moving in the woods nearby. He never thought, merely yelled.

  “Wake up! Arm!”

  And that was the only reason that any of them lived. Dar drew his sword and rushed among his men, kicking them awake, while a cursing Jennantar grabbed his hunting bow and slung his quiver. All at once torches flared, war cries shrieked, and a party of armed warriors came rushing toward the clearing. The elven hunters had barely enough time to get to their feet, grabbing for bows and swords, before the enemy was upon them, huge hairy beings, reeking of horse sweat. Later Dar would realize that there’d been easily fifty of them, but at the moment, there was no time for thinking.

  “Meradan!” Jennantar howled. “The Hordes!”

  When he shot with a hiss of a hunting shaft, and the lead warrior screamed and crumpled, clawing at his abdomen, the others hesitated, giving the elves the briefest of moments to fall back round their prince. Jezryaladar had a bow as well, and he and Jennantar loosed another round, then another, as the Gel da’Thae warriors reformed and charged again. The two elves in front went down, hacked and bleeding, but the line held. At the rear of the charge someone threw a torch into the pile of saddle blankets and other gear; greasy flames shot up and crackled with a foul blast of smoke. Dimly Dar heard horses neighing in terror, and the sound of hooves pounding and dancing.

  “Ranadar avenge us!” Dar shouted out the ancient war cry of his house. “To the hells if need be!”

  The enemies screeched a babble of foreign words. Dar could put together a bare impression of their huge size and of manes of hair, long and braided, glittering with little charms and beads, before they charged again.

  At close distance the bows were useless. Jennantar and Jezryaladar had no choice but to fall back and circle round the pack, hoping for a clear shot in the ghastly light of the fire creeping through the grass, as the rest of the men, unarmored and outnumbered, fought to the death. Dar was barely conscious of where he was and what he was doing; he was all instinct, slashing, parrying, dancing in for a stab and whirling back, his innate grace his only shield as the clumsier Gel da’Thae hacked and swore. When something rolled against the back of his legs, Dar jumped and twisted round, found Farendar lying dead in a pool of blood, and killed the warrior who’d stabbed him with one thrust to the throat.

  As that Gel da’Thae went down, Dar jumped over his corpse and charged the grunting warrior behind. The fire caught the dry shrubbery at the edge of the clearing and flared up high, sending a wave of yellow light over the clearing. The Gel da’Thae facing Dar screamed in terror, threw his sword onto the ground, and began howling out a trio of incomprehensible words over and over. All Dar could assume was that he was terrified of fire, that they all were, because suddenly the enemy was breaking, running, throwing down their weapons, and howling in panic as they raced away through the woodlands. Panting and sobbing for breath Dar spun round. Jennantar still lived, pulling a wounded man away from the spreading fire. Jezryaladar came running, grabbing the fellow’s feet.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Dar yelled. “Is there anyone else? Get across the river!”

  The only other man alive was Devalanteriel, and he was bleeding all down his side, and coughing up blood, too, as he stood weaving, trying to keep his feet. Dar threw an arm round him just as he died, crumpling forward onto the grass. The fire was roaring in a circle half round them.

  “Dar!” Jennantar screamed. “Get out of there!”

  Dar sheathed his sword and ran, splashing into the shallow river, stumbling across in water up to his armpits,letting it wash his friend’s blood away — It was so hard to breathe that he thought for a moment that he’d been wounded; then he realized that he was sobbing aloud. At the far bank Jennantar grabbed his arms and hauled him ashore. He too was weeping.

  “Forgive me,” he kept saying, over and over, “I should have listened to you. Forgive me.”

  “No time for that now.”

  He knelt down by the wounded man—young Landaren—and found blood soaking his tunic. When he pulled the gory cloth back, the wound proved superficial, a sideways slash across ribs and skin.

  “He’s been smacked across the head, too,” Jezryaladar said. “But I don’t think his skull’s broken. He’d have died if it was, when we were hauling him through the water.”

  Dar nodded, drawing his dagger, and began cutting a reasonably clean strip of cloth from his own tunic to stanch the wound.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said while he worked. “I don’t know where they came from, but there’s bound to be more. Oh, by the Dark Sun herself I Carra!”

  For a moment he could neither move nor speak, just from his sheer terror on her behalf. With a sob he caught his breath.

  “I’ve got to get back to Cengarn.”

  “Don’t be a fool.”

  The voice sounded so hollow, so strange, so much inside his own mind that he shrieked, twisting round to look. A little ways away from their group and as far as possible from the river hovered a pale blue shape, mostly human, though strangely smooth and transparent. It was slight and frail, probably feminine, though the shape of its head indicated cropped hair. The others had seen it, too. Jennantar trie
d to speak but could only make a strangled sound.

  “Jill!” Dar whispered. “Ye gods, are you dead then?”

  “I’m not.” Her words echoed in his mind again, “I came in the dweomer body to warn you, and I see that I’m much too late, Dar, the enemy’s marching for Cengarn. Can you reach Calonderiel? Your horses have stopped bolting and are herding, well, some of them, anyway, just beyond the river to the south,”

  “Well have to try, then, won’t we?”

  When he glanced at Jezryaladar he realized that the others had heard nothing,

  “It’s Jill,” he said. “I can hear her speaking,”

  They merely stared, glazed and trembling,

  “Jill, those Meradan, they’re afraid of fire. Can’t you use that against them?”

  He could feel her amusement, rather than hear her laugh, though a bitter feeling it was.

  “It wasn’t the fire. I saw the whole fight, and I only wish things were so simple. It’s you they’re afraid of, Dar, Once they could see you clearly, they thought you were the children of their gods, and that they’d just committed a horrifying sacrilege by killing sacred beings. But their leaders will disabuse them of the notion soon enough.”

  “What? I don’t understand! No one can kill a god.”

  “No time to explain, I’m exhausted, and I can’t keep this up. Get to Calonderiel, Bring as many elven warriors as you can, but don’t go rushing right into the sieging army. Send scouts.”

  For a moment longer he could see her, speaking and gesturing, but he could not hear. She grew thin, transparent, wisping away like smoke in the fire, then gone,

  “If Jill’s dead,” Jezryaladar whispered, “then everything’s lost,”

  “She’s not and it isn’t! That was dweomer, you dolt, not her ghost.”

  For a long moment none of them spoke. Across the stream the fire was dying down as it reached damp forest and green summer wood. Landaren groaned and stirred.

  “Lie still!” Jennantar snapped. “Don’t even try to sit up.”

  “We can’t move him far, can we?” Dar said. “Not right away. Listen. Jill said that there’s some of the horses not far from us. Hide Lan somewhere, see if you can get some of the Wildfolk to guard him, and then go fetch the stock. Start moving south, but very slowly, a few miles at a time.”

  “Now just wait. What are you—”

  “I’ve got to try to see if I can make it to Cengarn and Carra before the siege closes round.”

  “You idiot! You royal dolt!”

  “I’m a dolt? If you’d only listened to me we wouldn’t—”

  The moment he spoke Dar regretted it. Jennantar reeled back, turning his head as fast as if he’d been slapped with the flat of a sword.

  “Jenno, I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”

  “Wasn’t.” Jennantar’s voice was barely audible. “You’re right. I wish I’d died instead of the others.”

  Dar tried to speak, found no words, tried again, and then got to his feet, shuddering as if he could physically throw his botched words off and away.

  “I’m heading out now,” he said. “If I don’t catch up with you in three days, ride for the south with all the speed you can.”

  Jennantar nodded, staring at the ground. Jezryaladar rose.

  “Don’t you want a horse?”

  “I’ll be harder to find, slipping through the woods on foot.”

  Jezryaladar nodded, considering something.

  “You should have one of the bows,” he said at last.

  “I’ll take it, truly, but only a few arrows. You’ll need them more.”

  He waited, desperately searching for something to say to Jennantar, while Jezryaladar counted out their meager stock of arrows and gave him ten, a full quarter of their hoard, to take along with one of the bows. All at once one of the old stories of days of the Seven Kings came back to him, and the wise words of some councillor or other in the long-dead Vale of Roses.

  “Jenno,” he said. “No man can turn aside another’s fate, not even me, and I’m a prince of the last of all the royal houses. We were all instruments of Fate today and nothing more. If you forgive me my fault, I’ll forgive you yours.”

  Jennantar looked up with tear-filled eyes.

  “Done,” he whispered. “And my thanks.”

  “And you have mine.”

  That said, Dar could turn and leave, heading upstream by the last light of the dying fire.

  For two hours Dar kept moving fast, driven by sheer rage for his dead men and terror for the safety of his wife. He kept to the trees, moving from shadow to shadow in the moonless night, concentrating on making no noise, pausing often to listen. Eventually his exhaustion caught up with him. He began stumbling, kicking dead wood, cracking branches like shouts in the night. He found a thick tangle of shrubs and young growth where he could work his way inside to a profoundly uncomfortable but relatively hidden gap, too small to be called a clearing. By sitting just right and curling himself round his drawn-up knees he could drowse in relative safety, though he woke often from dreams of blood running through creeping flames and the sound of Meradan, the demons of the days of old, shrieking as they charged.

  Dar woke to a cry in the real world, but one far distant in the graying dawn. For a long while he sat dead-still, listening, but no other cries reached him. Slowly he began to move, working each cramped muscle in turn, letting his circulation return, until he could get up without making noise and work his way free of his shelter. All round him the oak forest was coming to life in the dawn, the leaves shivering in a rising wind, the birds singing and flying. Here and there he could sense animals rustling through the underbrush. They would warn him by falling silent if the clumsy Gel da’Thae came trampling through the woods.

  All that morning he worked his way north, keeping to the wild country and angling round to the east, where a rise of hills and forest would shelter him. Every time he felt hungry or tired, he would think of Carra, and her danger drove him worse than any spur or whip. Yet in the end, he found her beyond his reach and protection. Late in the day he came free of the forest, just at the crest of a rise. Down below him a rocky hill fell away to a little valley and a stream, then rose again to a grassy crest, bare except for one scraggly copse of second-growth saplings. By his reckoning Cengarn would lie not far beyond. Although he debated crossing the open country, he knew that time was slipping away.

  He gathered his strength and ran, leaping downhill, letting his momentum carry him through the shallow water, racing uphill with his heart pounding and his breath coming in big gulps to plunge at last into the relative safety of the copse. There he could pause to catch his breath and look ahead. Sure enough, Cengarn’s familiar hills rose about a mile away, topped with their walls and towers. Yet, far off in the distance across the plain he saw what seemed to be a cloud of dust or smoke ringing the city round in one vast swirl, moving and pulsing, glittering with points of light reflected from metal. For a long time he stared, bewildered,until he realized that he was seeing an army. The siege of Cengarn had begun.

  “Carra!” He forced himself to whisper, though he would rather have howled like a madman. “Carra!”

  He turned on his heel and trotted off downhill, heading south to rejoin his men. Though he had only his rage alone to guide him and his men and keep them safe during their long hard ride to Calonderiel’s camp, he knew it would be enough. If the gods had any heart for justice, soon he would ride back at the head of an army. He vowed it deep in his very soul, that his dead men would be avenged—a hundred deaths for each of theirs.

  “There’s one thing I simply don’t understand,” the chamberlain said. “How do these creatures think they can possibly win this siege? My lord Cadmar’s called in his alliances—two other gwerbrets in Arcodd alone, and another in northern Pyrdon, and in this grave need, they’ll be gathering all their vassals. And if they can’t lift the siege, then the High King himself will march. It’s not just a question of his highness honoring
obligations, though we know he will. His interests demand a secure northern border.”

  “We know it,” Jill said. “They don’t.”

  “But Lord Tren—”

  “Is probably being ignored. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he’s good and sorry that he betrayed Gwerbret Cadmar, now that he’s seen who his new allies are.”

  The old man turned to give her a look of pure surprise. In the hot summer sun Jill and Lord Gavry were standing on the catwalks of Dun Cengarn, looking over the town and out to the besiegers beyond. The army spread out round the walls in a vast flood of men and horses. Red banners fluttered; armor and swords winked and glinted in the noontide. Jill estimated that there were at least three thousand men, though many of those at the rear would be servants and horse handlers. For all that she’d survived many a war, every one of them had taken place on the kingdom’s borders in poor provinces, and she’d never seen such a large army in her life.

  “I doubt me if Tren knew before,” Jill went on, “about his fellow devotees of this new goddess not being ordinary men like him. Weren’t we all taken by surprise when we found out that the Hordes were real enough and still a threat?”

  He nodded, sighing a little in agreement. Jill shaded her eyes with her hand and peered into the enemy camp. So far, at least, no one had seen one single piece of siege equipment, not one ballista or catapult, not so much as a ram. Whether this was a good omen or an ill one, she didn’t know.

  “How fares the Princess Carra?” Lord Gavry said.

  “Better. She steadied down somewhat when I told her that her husband still lived, and breakfast seems to have done her some good after all those hysterics.”

  “My good sorcerer, please! Don’t be so harsh with the lass, because, truly, a lass she still is, and carrying her first child, too.”

  “Well, that’s true spoken. Tell me, how long do you think the town can hold out?”

  “Months if we have to. The trouble will come later, if the farmers never get to plant the year’s second crop.” All at once his voice cracked. “It’s going to be a hard winter for Cengarn, a hard, hard winter indeed.”