Jill had just come out on the landing near his chamber when she met Jahdo, the bard’s servant and guide. He was a skinny little lad who couldn’t have been more than ten summers old, and messy at that, with his torn and dirty clothes and shaggy dark hair.
“Oh, my lady!” Jahdo blurted. “You must have seen. The dweomer cloud! All those men and horses!”
“I certainly did. I’m coming to talk with your master about it.”
“That gladdens my heart. He’s truly troubled, and I’m dreadful a-scared.”
Apparently the boy had lit the candles in the wall sconces before leaving the chamber, because the wedge-shaped room danced with pale light. Meer was sitting on a carved chest near the window. When Meer was standing, he towered at seven feet tall, but now he sat slumped, his long arms lying heavy across his lap. His skin was as pale as milk in contrast to his black hair, as coarse and bristling-straight as a boar’s. At the bridge of his enormous nose his eyebrows grew together in a sharp V and merged into his hairline. His hair itself plumed up, then swept back and down over his long skull to cascade to his waist. Here and there in this mane hung tiny braids, tied off with thongs and little charms and amulets. The backs of his enormous hands were furred with stubby black hair, too, and wisps showed at the neck of his loose Deverry shirt. His face, however, was hairless, merely tattooed all over in a complex blue and purple pattern of lines and circles. When the door slipped out of Jahdo’s grasp and slammed, the bard didn’t even bother to turn his head toward the sound.
“Meer?” Jahdo said. “It be Jill.”
At that he did move, growling a little as she walked over and raising his head. His eye sockets were empty pools of shadow in the uncertain light.
“I take it,” Jill said, “that Jahdo described the nasty little show we had earlier.”
“He did,” Meer rumbled. “I don’t mind telling you, good sorcerer, that my heart lies heavy and cold within me. Ah, ye gods, how could ye have deserted us, how could ye have handed us over to these impious hordes! Why, oh why, won’t you strike this false goddess dead, as justice and reason both demand?”
It was a good question. Jill only wished she had an answer.
“Well,” she said aloud. “The gods have minds that none of us can fathom, mortals that we are.”
“True, true. Mayhap they test us, to find the strength of our devotion.” Meer shook his head with a jingle of charms and beads. “Alas for these wicked times, that a demoness should flaunt herself in the light of the holy sun!”
“Er, well, true-spoken. I’ve come to ask you about somewhat, good bard. There were a good two thousand men holding the siege before today, and Alshandra’s just added hundreds more to her army. How many more warriors can the Horsekin muster? Cadmar has allies, true, but we’re up here on the edge of the kingdom, and human settlements are sparse.”
“Ill news, sorcerer, ill news indeed! What about this High King of yours?”
“We sent messengers before the siege began, but who knows if they reached safety before Alshandra noticed them? If they’ve been captured, it’s up to Cadmar’s allies now, to send more, I mean. And the heart of the kingdom lies a long, long way away. The High King will come if need be, and he’ll bring plenty of men with him, but it could take months.”
Jahdo whimpered, then stuffed the back of one hand in his mouth to keep himself silent.
“I see.” Meer considered for a long time. “Well, the Horsekin are spread all over the northern plains. They can muster a horde of warriors, truly, ten, twenty times the number sieging us now.”
Jill felt so faint that she had to sit down. She perched on the edge of the bed and clasped her hands between her knees. Meer smiled, as if blind or not, he knew perfectly well the effect he was having. He raised one hand in the air.
“But fear not! The warriors can muster all they wish, but only a bare portion of them will ever attack us.” He paused, then dropped his oracular tone. “It’s the horses, Jill, not the men. No Horsekin warrior fights on foot unless he’s desperate and dying. You’ve seen our horses. Bred for war they are, and bred that way for hundreds, nay, for an aeon of years! Can a horse such as that eat grass alone and still carry his armored master into battle?”
Jill laughed, just softly under her breath.
“Up on the high plains?” she said. “Is grain easy to grow?”
“Hah! Only on the southern borders. Besides, no Horsekin nor Gel da’Thae either would ever farm. Farming is for slaves. And slaves are what the Horsekin keep to raise what little grain they have. Another thousand horses, I’d say, and no more can these savages muster.”
“Savages? That reminds me of somewhat I wanted to ask you. You keep calling them that, but they know siegecraft, they carry good weapons, and as far as I can tell, they’ve got the best-organized army I’ve ever seen.”
“What does that have to do with anything? Savages they are, who will not worship the true gods and who follow the false.”
“Well, you see, among my people the word savage means a poor sort of person, a brute, truly, someone who lives wild and roughly.”
“Ah. I knew it not. Well, brutes they can be, cruel and loathsome, and given to whoring after strange gods, but poor they are not, exacting tribute everywhere they can, stealing from some, trading with others.”
“And what about their armies?”
“They live for war and study war and have given their hearts to war. Every man watches his nephews from birth to see which are fit for war and which will be gelded for other crafts.”
“Gelded?” Jahdo burst out. “You mean like horses and steers?”
“I do, lad, I mean just that. Savages I called them and with some reason. And their women share out the best men, that their daughters may be fit to lead by the council fire and their sons to fight on the battlefield.” Meer tossed back his head and keened, a wail that rattled the bronze sconces. “Alas, that the gods have handed over our lives to such as this, to spill them or to enslave them as they will!”
“The war’s not over yet, good bard. So far we’ve still got our lives, and we’ll win yet.”
“Ah, hold your tongue, mazrak! I know you lie only to spare my grief, but lie you do.”
“About what?”
“I know not our sins, for lo! what man can ever know the telling of his people’s sins, but the gods have deserted us, sure enough.”
“As you wish, then.” Jill got up. “I’d best get down to the great hall and tell the gwerbret about the horses.”
Before she went to bed that night, Jill went up on the roof and renewed the seals again, just as the astral tides were changing from those of Elemental Water to those of Elemental Earth. When she was done, she lingered for a few moments, staring out at the Horsekin camp, dark and silent under the stars. They would have set guards around, of course, but she couldn’t pick out a trace of movement from her distance, until she looked east.
At the end of the ridge, a long ways away from the pale shapes of the white tents, she saw a tiny point of light moving, back and forth, forth and back, as if it were a lantern held in someone’s hand as that hypothetical someone paced out of sheer nerves. Jill walked to the edge of the roof and watched the light while she sent her mind out, almost randomly, to see what traces of feeling she might pick up from the lantern-bearer. For a long time nothing, and then it seemed she felt the touch of another mind on hers, nothing as strong as a greeting or a thought, just an awareness of a human being— and male, at that—as if she were in a room and had sensed someone enter from a door behind her.
The man remained unaware of her. At moments she lost the feel of his presence; at others it returned with a waft of emotion. He was troubled, disgusted even, by something— what it might be this primitive scrying could never tell her. The disgust, however, mingled itself with regret, a thoroughly human wishing that things were otherwise. Occasionally the point of light would stop its restless traveling, and at those moments she would clearly perceive that he was l
ooking up at the dun and longing to be inside it. Could he perhaps be a slave? It was unlikely that any slave would be wandering around by himself at night.
Eventually, with one last sending of regret, the man walked away, the lantern swinging beside him. Briefly a tent glowed as he carried his lantern inside; then he must have blown it out, because there was only darkness. Jill sighed, wondering if she’d ever know who he was. She doubted it.
On a huge heap of cushions made of purple-dyed leather and strapped together with golden, tasseled cords, Rakzan Hir-li was lounging, his enormous body dressed only in a long tunic of rough brown cloth. Over a small pillow his bleached mane of hair spread out, all braided and greased and studded throughout with beads and charms. His heavy blue eyes dropped under their furred brows, and now and then he yawned, exposing his long teeth, filed to points, but Lord Tren of Dun Mawrvelin knew better than to think him sincerely drowsy. While they finished the rations of bread that did them for a breakfast, the lord sat on a leather stool in front of the Horsekin warleader’s couch, while behind it stood two human slave-soldiers, each armed with a long spear. The long, narrow tent itself was draped with purple and gold hangings, once splendid war booty, now smoke-stained and as greasy as then-owner. Morning light came through in dim slits.
“The muster is now finished,” Hir-li pronounced. “And I can’t keep putting my captains off. They come to me and ask, is not the purpose of war to attack?” He paused for a sly smile. “What do you suggest that I tell them?”
“That the purpose of a siege, my lord, is to wait and force terms.”
Hir-li scowled, making the purple and blue tattoos covering his face ripple and swell.
“So I see, so you see, but they do not see. I think me that we must have a little blood to satisfy them.”
“As my lord wishes, of course, but Cengarn is a rock. If a man keeps kicking a rock, which breaks first? The rock or his foot?”
Hir-li laughed, nodding agreement, sitting upright in a motion strikingly supple for one so large.
“It’s a good saying, Lord Tren, a good saying. Among your own people are you considered an eloquent man?”
“Among my own people, my lord, I am considered exactly nothing.”
The rakzan raised a furry eyebrow, then smiled.
“And so you’ve joined with us.”
“It’s one reason. My brother’s death weighs upon me, for another. He was killed in Cengarn by a stinking mercenary. I don’t care if they called it fair combat or not.”
“Ah, of course. Rhodry. The famous silver dagger.”
“I don’t care if he’s famous, either. I want him dead.”
“The high priestess told me of this.” Hir-li considered, his scarred and patterned face unreadable. “I will warn you. There’s another thing my captains say, that you don’t worship Her with all your soul.”
Tren started to speak, but Hir-li held up a hand for silence.
“I am not asking you for any answer or protest. I merely repeat what they say.”
“For that, my lord, you have my sincere thanks. And has the high priestess said the same thing?”
Hir-li never answered, merely got up and turned toward the back of the tent, where a human eunuch crouched beside a battered wooden chest. The rakzan spoke in his own language; the slave scurried forward with a long sleeveless surcoat, crusted equally with gold thread and sweat, and helped his master into it. Over the coat Hir-li strapped a heavy leather belt with a bejeweled lunette at the front and his gold-hilted saber at his side. He sat again to allow the servant to pull on his high leather boots, while Tren waited, saying nothing. At last the rakzan spoke in Deverrian.
“One of your men tried to desert last night.”
Tren rose without thinking.
“He will have to be turned over to the Keepers of Discipline. It would be best if you didn’t argue.”
“I understand. Did my lord think I would argue?”
Hir-li considered, sucking a long fang.
“I don’t know what to think of you, Tren, except for two things. One, you’re valuable. Two, most men grovel around me. You look me in the eye and try to keep to your old ways.”
“And is that a good thing or a bad?”
The rakzan smiled, briefly.
“Most men would never dare ask that, either. Come along.”
They stepped out into the bright sunlight glaring off the welter of white tents and threaded their way through the captains’ camp, as the grouping on the ridge was called. Here and there they met a slave, carrying water or some such thing, who hurriedly dodged out of the warleader’s path before he could swing a massive paw their way. Although at well over six feet tall Tren towered among his own people, his head came only to Hir-li’s shoulder. Tren was a lean man, too, a dagger to the rakzan’s sword, with the long muscles of a swordsman and a narrow face, narrow gray eyes, oddly slender ears, and short-cropped hair so pale it was close to white. Although no one had bothered to tell him why, the Horsekin considered his coloring a good omen.
“One more thing,” the rakzan said abruptly. “Last night I looked out of my tent and saw you walking back and forth at the end of the ridge, carrying a lantern.”
“So I was.”
“Why?”
“I couldn’t sleep, and the camp’s too crowded to walk in the dark.”
Hir-li said nothing, leaving Tren to wonder if he believed what was, after all, the simple truth. Sleep, and particularly the act of falling asleep, had become a nightly torture, when he would lie alone in the dark of his tent with only his remorse for a companion. How had he been such a fool, to follow his brother Matyc into treachery? If only he had known just whom he was allying himself with, if only he’d seen more of the Horsekin than those few prophets, religious men all, talking of wise things, telling wonderful tales of a goddess who deigned to come into the world to meet her worshipers face to face. If only, if only—the words ate into his honor like burrowing worms.
Slaves had smoothed a rough road and cut a few dirt steps down the side of the ridge to give the captains an easy walk down into the main camp. At the foot of the ridge, on the east side of Cengarn in the level plain, lay a parade ground. Into this vast circle of open land the subordinate officers of the Horsekin’s minutely organized army came each morning to receive orders and to make their reports to the rakzanir or captains. As Tren and Hir-li made their way downhill, Tren could see those officers, the Keepers of Discipline, standing waiting, while all around the edge of the circle a crowd was gathering. In the long boredom of a siege any show was welcome.
Stripped naked and tied hand and foot like an animal ready for slaughter, there lay at the officers’ feet a human being, a blond fellow, young—Tren’s stomach wrenched when they came close enough for him to recognize Cadry, a man who’d ridden in his warband from the time he was little more than a lad. He was aware of Hir-li, watching him slantwise in appraisal.
“That’s the man?” A life filled with secret hatreds and resentments kept Tren’s voice rock-steady.
“So I’ve been told. We’ll see what the Keepers say.”
They stopped on the other side of the bound man from the Keepers, each of whom wore a long red surcoat over his tunic and boots. One of their number, with a purple feather pinned to one shoulder, stepped forward and began delivering his report to the rakzan. Even after weeks in the Horsekin’s company, Tren could only decipher the odd word or two of their speech. Finally Hir-li cut the man short with a wave of one massive hand.
“He says that just before dawn they found this fellow trying to creep out of the encampment, over on the north side where the terrain’s rough enough to give a man a chance to hide,” Hir-li said. “They have witnesses.”
“Indeed?” Tren looked at Cadry. “Do you deny this?”
Cadry wrenched himself around like a caught fish and managed to get his elbows under his back. He propped himself up enough to tilt his head back and look Tren full in the face.
“I
do not, my lord. If you had any honor left, you’d do it yourself. Ah, by the true gods! If you had any honor, you’d lead us all out, away from these stinking creatures and back to our own kind.”
Tren’s life and the life of every man in his warband depended on his reaction. He kicked Cadry in the mouth so hard that he heard tooth and bone crunch under the blow.
“Hold your tongue, you blaspheming dog! Have you forgotten about Her?”
His eyes filled with tears, Cadry flopped back on the ground and bled. Tren set his hands on his hips and merely looked at him, saying nothing, showing nothing. Hir-li said a few sentences to the Keepers, but Tren, of course, had no way of knowing what. For all he knew, Hir-li was inventing rather than translating his words. The leader of the Keepers replied briefly.
“They ask if you have objections to his death.”
“Tell them I demand his death,”
Hir-li repeated—something. The Keepers nodded, grunting in what seemed to be satisfaction. On the ground Cadry sobbed once, then lay still, his eyes fixed upon the sky, so pure and far above them all. Hir-li glanced at the officers and barked an order that seemed to displease them, from the way they glowered.
“I told them to kill him fast,” Hir-li said to Tren. “To get it over with, as your people would say.”
“Indeed? Why?”
Hir-li grinned hugely.
“No wonder you speak to me of rocks, Lord Tren. Your heart is made of one.”
He turned and spoke to the Keepers, who went on looking sour. All around, the Horsekin in the crowd groaned and muttered, as if in disappointment. Hir-li considered them, then suddenly laughed and shouted, bellowing a message as loud as he could. The Keepers cheered, the waiting warriors cheered, laughing, drawing swords in a sudden rattle and holding them high, cheered again, “Hai Hai Hai,” until the sound and the news spread through the entire camp.
Days of Air and Darkness
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