A Time of Exile

by Katharine Kerr

  “Well, Melaudd’s an honorable man. He won’t let all four hundred men charge a tiny warband like that. Probably just half of the army will ride in the first wave, and then we’ll see what happens.”

  “That’s a little better, anyway.”

  As the Bear clan’s sworn men, Cinvan and Garedd were in that first wave when the army rode out on the morrow. Four hundred horseman jammed onto a narrow strip of ground tend to spread out, and the day was hot with the last of false summer, too, making the animals a little lazy and the men overconfident, with the end result that the line of march was over a quarter mile long as it wound its way toward the battle. At the time, since everyone assumed that the men in the rear would take no part in the fighting, it worried no one that they had no way of seeing what was happening in the van, if indeed anyone even thought of it. Cinvan and Garedd, riding some twelve ranks behind Tieryn Melaudd and Lord Dovyn, had as much of a view as they needed, especially since their route rose and fell to give them the occasional high ground. It was on one of these small rises, in fact, that they got their first good look at the elven line.

  “Are they daft?” Melaudd said it so loud that Cinvan could hear him over the muffled clop of hooves on grass and the clinking of battle gear.

  “Must be,” Garedd muttered in an answer unheard by their lord.

  The elven swordsmen were dismounted. In regular ranks they stood some hundreds of yards ahead in a crescent formation, its open and embracing end toward the oncoming Bears. To one side of them was the lake itself, and on the other, a line of sharpened wooden stakes pounded at regular intervals into the slope, with the points slanting uphill.

  “Clever, that,” Cinvan said grudgingly. “We can’t outflank them and ride them down.”

  “Just so. But wait a minute, what’s that behind them? Looks like a crowd of women.”

  “With stakes in front of them, too. What?! By all the ice in all the hells, what are those females doing there? Are they going to cheer their men on?”

  “Savages, these people. That’s all I can say. Howling savages.”

  “Look.” Cinvan pointed uphill. “There’s some more men, running into position, but they’re not swordsmen. Oh, ye gods, they’re carrying bows.”

  “So what?”

  All this time, the army had been traveling forward, a little faster now, the men pressing their horses to close the line and bunch together into a tight formation. Cinvan saw silver wink as Tieryn Melaudd blew his horn for his men to draw swords and ride ready to charge. Up ahead the elven line held steady, waiting, the swordsmen rock-still as the horsemen trotted forward, and forward again, until they were only some hundred yards from the mouth of the crescent. All at once a distant voice cried out in Elvish; at the signal it seemed that a wind swept through the waiting Westfolk and made the line shudder in a long flex like grass before a storm. Bows swung up, arrow points winked and glittered, there was a sound, a rushy hiss, a whistle, a flutter, as over a hundred cloth-yard arrows arced up high, then plunged down at full force into the mail-clad riders and their unarmored horses.

  Screams burst out as horses reared and staggered, and men fell, some bucked off, others stabbed and bleeding right through their mail. Again came the hiss and rush of death; Lord Dovyn’s horn blew in a long sob for a charge, then cut off in mid-wail as a third rain stabbed into the ranks. Horses were panicking, and worse yet, Ming; charging was impossible as the dead or merely wounded bodies of men and beasts alike began to litter, then block the road. Carrying an empty, blood-streaked saddle, young Lord Dovyn’s horse burst free of the mob at the van and staggered uphill. Again the arrows, ever again—screaming out every foul oath he knew, Cinvan tried to force his horse through the mob by sheer will to reach the wounded tieryn’s side. All around him riders were trying to break free, to turn out to go up the hill or splash through the shallow edge of the lake, but inexorably behind came the press of their own allies, who could see nothing of the slaughter ahead, who only knew by the sound of things that the Bear clan was in danger and who out of sheer force of a deadly honor were rushing forward to join the battle and thus to trap the men they were trying to save.

  Again the arrows, again and again, and now the Westfolk were cheering and screaming. As he reached the front rank and caught up with Melaudd, Cinvan saw that the women he’d so despised were archers, too, raining death down as hard as their men as they aimed at the exposed positions to the flanks. He wanted to weep—there was no time—the sword in his hand was useless—he went on cursing as the arrows came flying, again and again and again.

  “Cinno! They’re trying to desert us!” Garedd yelled. “The allies! They’re pulling back!”

  Cinvan turned his head to shout an answer just in time to see Garedd die, spitted through the chest by a broad-head arrow that snapped the rings of his mail front and back. With a cough and bubble of blood he fell sideways, only to be trampled by the horses of other Bearsmen as they desperately tried to turn and flee. Hissing and whistling, the deadly rain came again. Cinvan’s horse screamed and reared, kicking, as hard iron grazed its flank, but it came down able to stand. Silver horns rang out: retreat, retreat! in a blare of hysteria. Still untouched, Cinvan wrenched his horse around and kicked it into one last burst of gallop. He could see Tieryn Melaudd’s broad back just ahead and followed it blindly, unthinkingly, right into the shallow water at the lake edge. Behind him he could hear a few more men cursing and yelling as they splashed after to skirt the battle and turn round the archers’ position.

  “To their camp!” Melaudd screamed. “Trample it! Vengeance! To their camp!”

  Then the tieryn laughed, a madman’s howl, a keen of grief, equally mad. Out of loyalty alone Cinvan followed his lord while his mind screamed against the dishonor of such a low trick.

  As best he could with his left hand, Aderyn was organizing his packets of herbs to treat the wounded when he heard the horses coming. His first thought was that the elven side had lost and was retreating; then he heard the battle cries, Eldidd voices, shrieking in rage and hatred. Dallandra screamed and came running toward him.

  “The Bears! They’re heading here!”

  “Get into the forest. Run!”

  She obeyed without a moment’s thought, racing through the tents. Aderyn started to follow, then turned back. If he abandoned his medicinals, wounded men would die. He could see the horses by then, a squad of some fifty out of an army of four hundred, heading in a cloud of dust straight for the defenseless camp. Distantly he could hear elven war cries, chasing after. He grabbed his heavy packs, then froze in sudden panic as the lead horsemen swung round and headed straight for him, swords flashing, slashing the tents, hooves pounding, kicking, trampling bedrolls and cooking pots alike in empty revenge. Aderyn knew he should run, could hear his own voice speaking aloud and begging himself to run, but the panic bit deep and froze the blood in his veins like snakebite as two horsemen charged, closer, closer, closer.

  “Not the councillor!” A third horseman burst past a tent and swung by him at an angle to meet the others. “Turn off!”

  Swords flashed; one of the charging men screamed and pitched over his horse’s neck.

  “I said turn off!”

  The second horseman did just that, dodging back the way he came, only to meet elven riders as Halaberiel led his swordsmen, mounted now, into camp. Dust plumed with the battle cries as the last few Bearsmen fled, screaming and cursing as they headed south. Aderyn’s rescuer turned his horse to follow, then pulled his blowing horse to a stop and slumped in the saddle. Aderyn ran to him just in time to catch him as he slid to the ground in a welling of blood. An arrow had pierced his mail just at the armpit, where the arteries were pumping his life away. Aderyn pulled off his pot helm and eased the padding back from his death-pale face: Cinvan.

  “A councillor and an unarmed man,” the lad whispered. “Couldn’t let my lord disgrace himself a second time.”

  Then he died with a stiffening and a shake of his whole body.r />
  “Are you all right?” It was Halaberiel, rushing over, bloody sword in one hand, helm in the other, blood flecking his face and pale hair.

  “I am. Are we retreating?”

  “Retreating?” Halaberiel howled with laughter. “We’ve carried the day, man! We slaughtered the ugly lot of them!”

  Aderyn wept like a child, but as he looked into Cinvan’s glazed eyes, he wasn’t sure if his tears were joy or grief.

  In that last battle in the camp, fought against men sworn in their hearts to die and put an end to shame, the elven forces took casualties, but with only nine elven dead and some twenty wounded against the hideous human losses, Halaberiel was right enough to claim a complete victory. All that day Aderyn and Dallandra worked over the wounded with a swarm of volunteers to help them until the two of them were as gory as corpses themselves. By moonlight they swam in the lake shallows to wash themselves clean, then returned to the camp to find the dead laid out, ready for cremating on the morrow. Dallandra was so weary and heartsick that she crept into her tent to sleep without even a bite to eat, but Aderyn, who was used to battle wounds from his apprenticeship, joined in the victory feast. Since in honor of the battle Halaberiel decided that they could squander seasoned wood and build a proper bonfire, light blazed and danced through the camp along with music from drum and harp. Drunk and howling, the banadar’s own warband ran from group to group of celebrating elves, while Halaberiel himself sat off to one side on a pile of cushions and merely watched. When Aderyn joined him, Halaberiel handed him a skin of mead. Aderyn had a few cautious sips to ease his aching muscles.

  “Over a hundred Round-ears escaped,” Halaberiel said abruptly. “All men from the rear of the line, so they were probably Melaudd’s allies rather than Bearsmen. Think they’ll raise an army and come back for revenge?”

  “I don’t. Melaudd’s other son will rage and bluster and try to call in alliances, but who’s going to join him after this? And he himself can’t have more than a handful of men left—the ones that stayed behind on fort guard, no more.”

  “Good. We’ll leave marking the death-ground for later, then. I want to ride before the winter rains come in earnest.”

  “Indeed? Ride where?”

  “South.” Halaberiel gave him a tight and terrifying smile. “To wipe out that settlement west of Cannobaen.”

  Aderyn stared in helpless confusion.

  “I’ve learned somewhat today,” Halaberiel went on. “These bows of ours are good for bringing down more than the gray deer. Never again am I going to creep around and humble myself to the dog-vomit Round-ear lords. Eldidd they may have, but no more.” He threw back his head and laughed aloud. “Not one stinking cursed inch more, by every god of both our peoples!” Then he let his face soften. “My apologies, Aderyn. I forget that I’m talking about your folk. There’s no reason for you to ride south with us when we go. You and Dallandra can just rejoin the alar and wait for us there.”

  Aderyn rose, staring blankly into the leaping fire.

  “Unless you’ll be leaving us?” Halaberiel got up to join him. “Never would any man of the People nor a woman either stop you if you choose to ride away, even if you go right to our enemies and warn them.”

  Aderyn turned and walked off, heading blindly for the meadow beyond the campground, only to stop abruptly when he reached it. Out on the flat the warbands were dancing, winding in long lines through a scatter of tiny fires. The People danced single-file, arms held rigid shoulder-high, heads tossed back while their feet skipped and stamped through intricate measures in time to the drum and harp. Over the music wailed voices, half a keen of grief tonight, yet half a cry of triumph. When the revelers drew close he could see sweaty, impassive faces bob by in a surge of quarter tones, wavering and rising like the firelight; then with a sway and shudder the dancers spun past and were gone. Halaberiel came up behind him and laid a paternal hand on his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” the warleader said. “But that dun has to be destroyed. We’ll spare the women and children, of course, and every man’s life that we can.”

  “I know.” Aderyn found his voice at last. “What can I say? I’ve already seen my people muster an army to attack you, haven’t I? If it weren’t for your longbows, they would have slaughtered you like cattle.”

  “Just so. But you didn’t ride west to watch men die, either. Do you want to go back to Eldidd? I’ll give you an escort if you do.”

  For a moment Aderyn wavered. Even though he’d promised Nananna that he’d stay, he knew that she never would have held him to the promise under these circumstances, when the action at Cannobaen might lead to a full-fledged war. If it did, he belonged with his own kind, he supposed. His revulsion welled up, almost physical: his own kind, who broke their word and murdered and swaggered and enslaved and stole other men’s land all in the name of honor? He saw then that he could never go back to Deverry and take up some sort of community life, not even as a healer and herbman. But what else was left for him? The life of a hermit on the edge of the wilderness? He could see himself turning into a recluse, hoarding his secret knowledge for its own sake until the knowledge turned bitter and drove him mad. Halaberiel waited patiently, his eyes shadowed in the flickering light.

  “You’re my people now,” Aderyn said. “Here I stay.”

  Then he strode forward and took a place at the end of a line of dancers. Although the only steps he knew were from Deverry ring dances, they fit in well enough as the line swept him away across the meadow. All through the long fire-shot night he swayed and bobbed to the wail and the pounding of the music until it seemed in his exhaustion that he had no body left at all, that he floated with the elven warriors far above the grassy meadow and the dark. Yet toward dawn, when he was stumbling toward his tent, Aderyn realized that he would stay behind when the warband rode south. There were other healers among the elves; one of them would have to take his place for the slaughter out west of Cannobaen.

  Everyone slept late that day, then woke, cursing and weeping, to the grim task of burning their own dead and giving Melaudd’s army a decent burial in long trenches—after the bodies of men and horse alike had been stripped of every bit of metal, whether armor or tool. Out of respect for the prejudices of the noble-born, Halaberiel ordered Melaudd, his son Dovyn, and the two allied lords who’d died with them buried in a separate grave, though he did make sharp remarks about the foolishness of men who worried about their corpses. They packed and sodded a shallow mound over all the burials, too, and chipped the story of the battle onto a rough stone plaque. The job took days, and all during it, scouts rode out to the south and east to keep an eye on the Round-ears. Aderyn and Dallandra worked from dawn to dusk and then worked some more by torchlight as they tried to save the wounded horses as well as the wounded men. The elven casualties would mend fast, especially compared with the human beings, and without a trace of infection in all but the worst cases. The riders who had once ridden for Tieryn Melaudd were another matter entirely. Their worst cases all died; the rest were as sullen and misery-wrapped as only defeated men living on the charity of the enemy can be. Aderyn tended them alone to spare Dallandra the job.

  “And I appreciate it, too,” she remarked one morning. “But what are we going to do with them? They’re prisoners, I suppose. Is Halaberiel going to use them to bargain terms or suchlike?”

  “There’s naught he wants to bargain for, he says, so he’ll just release them.” Aderyn hesitated, studying her pale face and the dark shadows smudging under her eyes. “How do you fare, Dalla? You’ve been working yourself blind.”

  “It keeps me from missing Nananna. And if I’m tired enough, I don’t have bad dreams.”

  “Dreams about her, you mean?”

  “Not truly.” She turned away and seemed to be studying the white clouds billowing up from the south. “I hope we leave here soon. Winter’s on the way, sure enough.”

  Aderyn saw that he’d been shut out of some mental chamber as surely as if she�
�d slammed a door in his face.

  When the camp did break, Halaberiel divided his forces. The least-skilled warriors escorted the prisoners south to the Eldidd border, where they’d leave them before turning west to rejoin their alarli. The best of the fighters went with the banadar on a forced march for the treaty-breaking dun beyond Cannobaen. Aderyn, Dallandra, the elven wounded, the injured horses saved from the battle, and a small escort of those archers who were simply sick of fighting headed back west to the place where they’d left the rest of the alarli—left them years ago, or so it seemed to Aderyn, back in some other lifetime. The day they marched, it rained, and it kept raining, too, a good long period of drizzle every day as wave after wave of clouds swept in, dropped their burden, then rolled on. Since with so many injured people and animals along, their small column moved a scant twelve miles a day, by the time that they did rejoin the alarli, those waiting for them were frantic for news. When they rode up, in fact, a huge wail of grief went up from the camp, because everyone assumed that they were the only survivors of some horrible defeat. Once the truth went round, everyone was as much furious as relieved.

  “Isn’t that just like the wretched banadar!” Enabrilia snapped. “He never even sent them a message!”

  “My apologies, truly,” Aderyn said. “If I’d known, I would have sent someone on ahead. We just assumed—”

  “That Halaberiel had thought to tell them. I know, I know. Not your fault. The grazing’s getting really poor around here, by the way.”

  “Well, we’ll move out tomorrow. The banadar wanted everyone to head for the winter camps. He said he’d find us there.”

  “Good. With this rotten weather we’ve been having, winter can’t be far away.”

  At that point Aderyn realized that she and the others in the camp were treating him as Halaberiel’s second-in-command and taking his orders without question, just as they took Dallandra’s. Whether he felt himself worthy or not, these people now considered him a Wise One.