The Shadow Isle

by Katharine Kerr

  “How far is it?” Laz said.

  “Many a long mile yet. Ten nights away, or twelve, most like, if we want not to kill the wounded men by traveling too long a-day.”

  Mic sobbed once, then buried his face in his hands.

  Laz turned away to allow him to compose himself. If the muleteers won’t follow the raven, he thought, they can go on and be slaughtered without us. On the other hand, it occurred to him, dividing their force might be the worst possible move. In the morning he’d scout, he decided, and see how many of those raiders were left, and if they looked like they had the stomach for another fight. With a shrug Richt left them, striding fast back to camp.

  “Well, I have a few more tricks to play,” Laz said to Mic. “By now you must have realized that I have dweomer.”

  “I assumed so. If you can turn yourself into a bird and fly, it’s rather obvious.”

  “So much for my pitiful attempts at deception!” Laz grinned at him. “Let me think about this.”

  Mic managed a watery smile in return. I can’t do one cursed thing to stave off the ugly fate awaiting us, Laz thought, but they don’t need to know that now. As they walked into camp, an odd idea occurred to him: he might be able to ask for help. He’d been an outlaw and outcast for so long, with nothing to fall back on but his wits, that he’d forgotten the simple idea of asking for help.

  He had the black crystal. It seemed to be linked to dweomermasters among the Westfolk, and even though they were most likely too far away to reach the caravan, for all he knew someone might be nearby, someone, anyone, better disposed toward them than a pack of Horsekin raiders. That night he took the crystal and sat between the pair of trees. For a long time, while the moon rose and slowly crawled toward zenith, he bent his mind to the crystal and sent out a message of desperation.

  He wasn’t in the least surprised when no one answered.

  All that night Berwynna dreamt about Dougie, that they were back on Haen Marn, sitting among the apple trees and laughing at some jest, or lying in each other’s arms up in his chamber. She woke at dawn to a sour reality and a worse fear. Like the men, she was assuming that the Horsekin would return and, this time, win. What would happen to her if they didn’t kill her along with everyone else? She decided that rather than find out, she’d fight as best she could to ensure they did kill her. Maybe Father Colm was right about Heaven, she thought, maybe I’ll see Dougie again there. The thought was less than comforting.

  Around her the camp was waking in an eerie silence. The muleteers rose and tended the animals without speaking more than a few necessary words. Everyone grabbed their share of the breakfast rations and ate alone, as if looking at their fellows would somehow remind them how doomed they all were. Even the mules and horses ate fast, pausing often to raise their heads and sniff the air, testing the wind for enemy scent. Berwynna took a bare portion of bread and sat down on a rocky outcrop next to Mic to eat.

  “Where’s Laz?” she said.

  “Off somewhere,” Mic said. “I wish I’d never let you come with us.”

  “I came on my own. You didn’t let me, so it’s not your fault.”

  Mic tried to smile and failed.

  Berwynna left him to his silence and wished she were back home on her island, where they’d always been safe. An island. The thought struck her suddenly, that while she’d not seen a single loch or pond in days, there was more than one kind of island in the world. She stood up and considered their situation from the top of their artificial hill. In the east the forest hid their attackers, but the forest was now a good ten miles away.

  “At least we’ll be able to see them coming,” Berwynna said.

  “I suppose so,” Mic said, “for all the comfort that is.”

  “Oh, come now, Uncle Mic! We’re not dead yet, and I’ve been thinking.”

  He gave her a look of such condescending pity that she decided to keep her thoughts to herself.

  Not long after Laz appeared, pulling on a shirt as he climbed up the side of the barrow. When Richt and Mic got up to go speak with him, Berwynna trailed after to hear the news, predictably bad.

  “I spotted them, all right,” Laz said. “The slime and their swine have regrouped right at the forest verge, but they also seem to be laying low and licking their wounds. I suspect that they’re waiting for us to take to the road again. I suggest we don’t.”

  “Easier said than done,” Richt said. “If we do turn south, I know not the way. We be lost then, for certain.”

  “If we keep going west, we’ll be dead.” Laz sounded curiously indifferent to the prospect. “I counted twenty-four of them, two of whom are wounded. There are seventeen of us, with five wounded. They have sabers, and they all know how to swing them. Your men have never touched a saber or a sword in their lives. Do you like those odds?”

  “Of course not,” Mic said. “Very well, I’ll present the idea of turning south to the rest of the men.”

  “You be not in town council!” Richt stepped forward. “Present it? I be master now, and I’ll tell them.”

  “But will they listen to orders?”

  “Oh, and I do suppose you know my craft better than I do?”

  “Stop it!” Berwynna snapped. “You both be a-feared, but bickering will get us nowhere. There be somewhat else we can do. There be many a rock all round here. What if we do build a wall around our camp? The Horsekin, they would have to climb the barrow, then climb over the wall. While they try, it will be lots easier to kill some.”

  “Splendid idea!” Laz said. “They seemed to be in no hurry to leave their camp. When I left, they were roasting one of your mules, the bastards, or large chunks of it to be precise, over various fires. I suppose half-cooked mule is better than naught for breakfast.”

  “We do have higher ground than them, anyway, bain’t?” Berwynna finished up. “Dougie did always say that it makes a difference in a fight, who be higher.”

  Richt and Mic stared at her for a long moment.

  “Well?” Berwynna said.

  “You are, of course, precisely right,” Laz said. “We can also cut branches, sharpen them into stakes, and set them around on the level ground at the edge of the barrow, which means my disgusting compatriots will have to dismount and pull them up if they want to ride up.”

  “We can throw rocks at them if they do try,” Berwynna said. “If we do hit a couple of them in the head, they mayhap will have to stop. And two of the muleteers do have hunting bows.”

  “So do some of my men.” Laz gave her a lazy grin. “This might be almost entertaining.”

  “Huh!” Mic snorted profoundly. “Richt, my apologies.”

  “And mine to you,” Richt said. “Very well. Let’s go tell the others.”

  Giving demoralized men hope has something of the dweomer about it. The muleteers and the men in Faharn’s band worked so hard and so fast that soon their improvised dun wall rose to four feet high. In the morning, Berwynna filled every available container with water from the nearby stream and piled them up in the center of the circle. In the afternoon she fetched small rocks that could be used for weapons. By firelight the men sharpened branches into stakes. As Berwynna tore up a blanket to make bandages, she found herself thinking of Dougie. Her eyes would fill with tears, but she would wipe them away and go on working.

  With the first light of dawn some of the men pounded the stakes at the perimeter of the wall in a random pattern while others led the stock out to water and graze. Laz once again disappeared, then returned with the news that the raiders were just breaking their own night’s camp.

  “We’ve got a little while more,” he said. “Enough to put another round of stones on our wall.”

  “I wonder if they’ll send out a scout first?” Mic said.

  “If so, our position should give him somewhat to think about.” Laz paused, sniffing the wind like a horse. “Well, all we can do now is wait.”

  Berwynna glanced at the sky. The sun had climbed halfway to zenith.

/>   Some days previously, Rori had flown to the edge of Horsekin territory, a wide stripe of grazing land that bordered on the tundra and ice of the far north. He’d seen horse herds guarded by small encampments, a pitiful few signs of life dotting an empty expanse. Since he’d always heard the Horsekin described in terms of large numbers—the Hordes, indeed—he found the emptiness puzzling.

  When he flew south again, taking a different route, he discovered the reason. A long column of some two thousand riders, wagons, and extra horses was trudging along, heading to the south and west. He flew low enough to take a good look at them. While he saw mounted warriors riding guard, the majority of the travelers seemed to be women, children, and slaves. Blankets and animal skins covered the crude wagons, which, judging from the lumps under the lashings, looked full of household goods and supplies.

  A migration, then, they were continuing the gradual move south of the Horsekin that had led to the overthrow of Braemel and Taenbalapan. But where did this group intend to settle? Rori’s understanding was that the land around those two Gel da’Thae cities had already received all the immigrants it could support.

  That night, when they made camp, Rori amused himself by swooping down and scattering the horses, which they’d foolishly neglected to hobble, then took a turn over the camp, high enough to be out of range of their bows and throwing spears but low enough to determine that the warriors were indeed northern Horsekin. Their officers, however, looked like well-armed and disciplined Gel da’Thae. These tribes, then, were certainly heading south at the request of the rakzanir who ruled the mountain cities. It was possible that they meant to found a new city, perhaps even around that fortress he’d seen a-building earlier in the summer.

  Potentially this movement of peoples represented a threat, but there were far too many of them for one dragon to rout. Rori caught and killed one horse for his supper, then headed south to find a place to eat in peace and lair for the night. Over the years he’d become used to raw meat, but that night, chewing on cold horseflesh, stiff with rigor, made him remember feasts he’d attended in the past, where roast meats graced every table and the smell of fresh-baked bread perfumed the air. Sweeter than the food was the company of fighting men like himself, or as he’d been back then, drinking and laughing, enjoying every moment of the lives they were wagering in a long gamble against the Lady Death. Bard songs and warm fires in winter—they haunted his dreams that night.

  In the morning, when he woke, Rori put those thoughts out of his mind. With a roar, he sprang into the air and flew onward toward his rendezvous with Prince Dar.

  Toward noon he left the northern foothills behind and flew over the barrow fields. Far ahead, where the tablelands began, lay a natural stone spire that was directly north of Twenty Streams Rock. He was planning on heading south once he reached that landmark, but something nagged at him. Turn east, the nag seemed to say. For the love of every god, turn east.

  The sun had reached zenith by the time Rori surrendered to the nag and turned east. He passed over patchy forests and shallow streams, winking silver in the sun. In but a few miles on, he saw the tiny figures of mounted men at the forest verge. They were lining up in a rough marching order around a tattered red banner bearing Alshandra’s holy bow and arrows. He dropped lower, smelled Horsekin, and roared to the attack.

  Down he plunged, wings folded, until at the last moment he swooped upward, flapping hard, twisting this way and that to avoid spears or arrows that never came. When he leveled off and looked down, he saw riders on the ground and horses galloping off in all directions. A rider clung to the back of one panicked warhorse heading east down the road. Rori stooped like a falcon and struck, sinking the claws of one paw into the screaming rider. He rose high, shook the paw, and watched the Horsekin plunge howling to his death. The rest of the men below ran, rushing for the cover of the trees.

  That will give them somewhat to brood over, he thought, them and their cursed Alshandra! He swung wide to turn toward the south and Cengarn, but as he did, he spotted what appeared to be more horses farther off to the west. With a smooth heft of one wing, he swooped back. Below him he saw a large, flat barrow, further fortified with a ramshackle stone wall and guarded by a ragtag group of human beings and a pair of dwarves. He was willing to wager that he’d found the Horsekin’s prey.

  He adjusted his wings to glide down lower and circled around the hill, far enough away to avoid panicking the horses and mules tethered in the midst of the defenders. He was planning on calling out a greeting, but one of the dwarves got in before him. At Rori’s distance the voice sounded thin and faint, but he recognized it.

  “Rhodry! It’s Mic! It’s Mic! Help us!”

  “Mic!” Rori called out. “Ye gods! Here, I’ll land!”

  The entire mob inside the wall answered him with a roar of cheers. Rori glided past, turned to the west, and settled on the road downwind of the improvised fort. Mic, who’d grown stout over the years, came puffing down, staff in hand, to join him. The other dwarf followed, dressed in baggy shirt and brigga. She, Rori was startled to realize, was not a man of the Mountain Folk at all, but a young human woman with a long knife clutched in one fist. Her hair was dark, and her eyes cornflower blue—Eldidd coloring, he thought, but all the way up here?

  “Mic it is, indeed!” Rori sang out. “And here I was a-feared you and Otho had been slain by Horsekin. Long years ago now, it was.”

  “Naught of the sort,” Mic said, grinning, “but Otho’s gone to his rest, slain by old age and naught more. I cannot tell you how much it gladdens my heart to see you.”

  “No doubt. Did you know there were Horsekin raiders on the road behind you?”

  “Know? They attacked us once already, and it’s a marvel that any of us are still alive.”

  “Then it’s a good thing I scattered them.” Rori allowed himself a long rumble of laughter. “They won’t be following you any longer, I’ll wager.”

  Mic’s eyes filled with tears, but he grinned, then turned to call out the good news to the others still in the improvised dun. Rori took a good look at the lass. The calm way she looked back and the wide set of her eyes, her short but sturdy build, reminded him of someone—of Angmar, he realized suddenly.

  “Here,” Rori said in as gentle a voice as he could manage. “Do you come from Haen Marn?”

  “I do,” she said. “You be my father, or so I were told. I be Angmar’s daughter, one of them, for we be twins, Marnmara and me. My mam be well, though truly she were fair taken aback by the news that you be a dragon now.”

  “No doubt.” Rori found himself unable to say more.

  “Ah, indeed, this is Berwynna,” Mic said, “and truly, she’s your spawn, no doubt about that! Ye gods, we’ve got so much to tell you. And you to tell us, no doubt.”

  “Such as how I came by these wings?” Rori recovered his voice with a gulp and a snap of fangs. “Here, I don’t dare go any closer to your mules and horses. As long as I’m with you, the Horsekin aren’t going to attack, so you can leave them inside that wall and camp outside of it.”

  “Well and good, then,” Mic said. “I’ll go tell the others.”

  The dwarf hurried back up the hill, leaving Rori alone with this strange lass, his bloodkin. She was a pretty little thing, he decided, but nothing about her struck him as delicate. She stood with one hand on her hip, the other holding the dangerous-looking knife at an easy angle.

  “Da,” she said, “you be hurt! That thing on your side—”

  “—is an old wound. I have hopes that it will heal soon.”

  “Be there somewhat I can do for it?”

  Rori was about to dismiss the offer, then remembered that she had hands. “There is,” he said. “When we find willow trees, you can brew me up a medicine from the bark, if you’d be willing.”

  “Of course I be willing.” She smiled at him. “I be your daughter, after all.”

  Her smile reminded him of Angmar’s. The resemblance acted like a spark in the dry kind
ling that had become his heart over the years. He remembered how it had felt to love a woman, one like himself as he’d been then. The blood of two races ran in their veins, dwarven and human for her, elven and human for him. They had each lost other loves. They had understood each other’s sorrow when they’d met and found a way to assuage it for a little while. Now here was their child, considering him gravely, as small in relation to a dragon as a hound would be to a human.

  “It gladdens my heart to meet you.” Rori made his voice as quiet as he could. “But what, by all the gods, are you doing out here in the middle of this blasted wilderness?”

  “Looking for you.” Suddenly she turned away, and tears choked her voice. “My betrothed, he were with me, Da, but the Horsekin, they killed him.”

  “Oh, did they now? Don’t trouble your little heart, Wynni. We’ll have our revenge.”

  She turned back, and through her tears she smiled. “My thanks,” she said. “That eases my heart somewhat.”

  “Good. Now, here, I’ll take you and Mic back to the island. You’ll be safe there.”

  “And desert the caravan? I can’t do that.”

  Her soft words struck him like a blow. Had he really been thinking of leaving all those other men to the mercy of the Horsekin? Dalla was right, he thought. I stand in danger of losing my human soul.

  “No more can I,” Rori said briskly. “Just a passing thought. We’ll get everyone safely to—where were you all going?”

  “A place called Cerr Cawnen,” Berwynna said. “I know not where that be.”

  “A good long ways ahead of us, that’s where, at least a hundred miles away, maybe two.”

  Berwynna said nothing, but her mouth slackened, and her eyes filled with tears. With a little frown she wiped her eyes on her sleeve.

  “Then we’d best start soon, hadn’t we?” she said.

  “I like your spirit, lass, but I’ve got a better idea. Let me talk with Mic and your caravan leader. If we head straight south, we’ll reach safety far sooner. Have you ever heard of the Westfolk?”

  “I have.” She started to say more, then choked it back. A look he could only call terror flitted across her face.