Empire of Grass

by Tad Williams

  Simon was not entirely certain he believed that the countess had been as daunted as she suggested. Despite her slender frame, he thought she looked like the sort of woman who might take up a cudgel to lend the sailors a hand. “In any case, you are welcome in Erchester and the Hayholt,” he told her. “Please, let the Lord Chamberlain lead you and your fellow nobles to your chambers. I hope you will be able to join us for this evening’s meal. The cooks have laid on something special, I’m told—is that not right, Jeremias?”

  His old friend winced a little at being called by his first name in front of visiting nobility, but gamely stepped forward and performed an intricate bow. “His Majesty speaks the truth, Countess. The kitchen has produced a catalog of wonders!”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I do hope it is not all fish, though. I have had my fill of that on the voyage.”

  The Lord Chamberlain’s smile faded, but he rallied himself and bowed again. “I am certain you will not be disappointed, Countess. Please follow me . . .”

  As the Perdruinese courtiers came forward to join their mistress, Jeremias turned to one of his servants and told him in a piercing whisper that the kitchen had better provide something other than seafood for the night’s meal, then replaced his smile and led the guests toward the residence.

  “And you and I will have a chance to talk soon, I hope,” Yissola said to Simon. “On our own, of course, without all the trouble of crowds and advisors and other such busybodies. That is not too much to ask, Your Majesty, is it?”

  “Not at all,” he said, so quickly that he could almost feel Tiamak’s disapproving stare. “I’ll make sure such a meeting is arranged.”

  “I am very, very sorry that Queen Miriamele could not be here,” Yissola added. Simon thought her voice was a very pleasant instrument indeed. “I have admired her since I was a child.”

  “I am sorry too,” he said, “but as you know, the situation in Nabban is quite complicated just now.” Simon felt the need to add something more. “She would have been most pleased to meet you, Countess.”

  It was the first thing he had said that afternoon that did not feel entirely truthful.

  47

  A Duty to Die Well

  “It is the duty of every nobleman to show lesser men how to meet Death,” Aelin’s father had often said. These words were very much on Aelin’s mind as he and his companions made their way down the hill on the far side from Naglimund, pursued by White Foxes, demons out of old stories.

  His father Aerell had not been allowed a glorious death—he had been taken by flux and had died voiding himself from every orifice. But even so, he had done his best to live up to his own credo, refusing anything but water and sending away the priests of Dun who had come to sing prayers over him and daub his face with woad.

  “If the gods recognized me in this life, they will not need my face painted blue to know me when my time comes!” he had declared. A fierce man, Aerell had refused to unbend even as death came, and at the end had sent even young Aelin and his mother away because their weeping disturbed him.

  Now Aelin had the chance his father had been denied, to die bravely in battle as a lesson for lesser men—but very few lesser men remained. With his squire Jarreth dead in the rubble of Naglimund’s outwall, Aelin had only two companions, Evan the Aedonite and Maccus Blackbeard. The Norn enemies who had followed them out through the shattered wall were close behind, spread out and calling to each other across the hillside with strange, birdlike cries. Only the thickness of the trees prevented the Norns from feathering them with arrows. Evan had already been struck just above the shoulder blade. Maccus had pulled the shaft out again but the youth was bleeding steadily and barely able to stay in his saddle. Aelin knew that soon he and his men would be driven into an open place and then slaughtered.

  Through a break in the close-leaning trees below he caught sight of a broken stone tower looming between the trees, and thought he could see tumbled stone walls beyond it. Aelin knew from his great-uncle’s travel tales that ancient ruins lay on the far side of the hills from Naglimund, though he had never seen them; he felt a momentary pulse of hope. If they could find their way through the knotted undergrowth and close-crowding trees they might be able to find somewhere among the broken walls they could make a stand.

  “Down there!” he said in an urgent whisper, pointing. “Out of your saddles. Lead your horses and head for the broken stones.”

  “That is a heathen place,” said Evan weakly. “An old, Godless place. There is evil there.”

  “There is evil behind us,” Aelin reminded him. “And that evil has arrows. I’ll take the ruins. Haste!”

  He helped the youth down and took the blood-slicked reins of Evan’s horse. The Hernystirmen stumbled over roots, crashed through blackberry brambles that tore their clothes and skin, and ducked beneath branches that swiped at their faces like witches’ fingers. Aelin could hear cries along the hillside as the Norns hurried to flank them. He led his men and the horses past a wall and into the bracken-choked remnants of an enclosed courtyard, only to discover half a dozen hooded figures waiting for them there with drawn bows.

  “Throw down weapons!” said the tallest of these. His Westerling was crude but still understandable, his voice strangely hushed.

  Aelin readied himself to charge, but young Evan, weak with loss of blood, swayed and then collapsed to the ground beside him. Maccus, seeing it was hopeless, bent over and gasped for breath, his sword-point drooping toward the damp ground.

  “Throw down weapons,” the leader said, more harshly. “And quiet.”

  The birdlike calls passed by in the near distance. A few heartbeats later, Aelin heard answering calls, but these came from even farther down the hillside; they became fainter even as he listened.

  He was not certain what was happening. He looked at Maccus, then at Evan where he lay senseless on the ground, rain running down his pale face. “Very well,” he said, and dropped his blade. “Spare my men and you may do as you wish with me.”

  “We will do what we wish to all of you,” the tall one said. “The decision is not yours to make.” He threw back his hood to reveal the narrow, high-boned face and uptilted eyes of one of the immortals, though his skin did not have the corpselike pallor that Aelin had expected: this was not a Norn, but a Sitha. His face was hard, his mouth tight-lipped like a carved figure of one of Hernystir’s old, grim gods, and his short hair was speckled white and black. “But our task is not to harm you. Rather, we must bring you to our mistress. She was told by our scouts that mortals were pursued by Hikeda’ya.” Their captor tapped himself on the chest. “I am called Liko the Starling. You are prisoners, now. If you make noise or try to run, it will go badly for you.”

  Aelin was confounded. “It seems we have no choice. But who is your mistress, that she cares what happens to mortals like us?”

  “It is not for me to say what her cares might be,” the Sitha with white and black hair replied. “All I know is that the mistress of high and ancient Anvijanya told me to find you and bring you to her. Save your questions, mortal. I will not answer them.”

  * * *

  The river was full of Thrithings-men, howling like wolves as they splashed toward the Erkynguard camp. Some of them had brought their horses and used them to keep from being swept away by the sluggish but strong current. The swiftest of the grasslanders had already reached the pits and sharpened stakes that served as the camp’s outermost barrier, and were hacking their way through the stakes with their axes.

  All over the camp the alarm was spreading. Erkynlandish soldiers came running, most without armor, or with only a helmet, some not even carrying weapons but only what they had been able to snatch up when they heard the sentries’ cries—sticks, stones, even iron spits from the camp cookfires.

  Porto was terrified for Levias, but before he could turn back toward the tent where his wounded friend was rec
overing, a bearded clansman came shouting over the low wall, quickly followed by several more. Several Erkynlanders beside Porto were still fitting arrows on bowstrings and were unprepared to defend themselves. Porto was grateful he had been wearing his sword, but did not think he could do much except be hacked to pieces trying to protect his fellows.

  Too old, too tired, too many days in the wilderness, he thought, but managed to sink his first two-handed swipe into the leg of a grasslander who was doing his best to murder the guard sergeant. The Thrithings-man, who had pinned the sergeant’s sword with his hilt, now turned on Porto, his paint-daubed face stretched in a terrible mask of pain and fury. As he lifted an ax to strike back, the guard sergeant finally managed to draw his poniard and shove it into the man’s side, then stabbed him twice more in the ribs as the grasslander staggered and dropped to his knees.

  The sergeant kicked the man in the head with a muddy boot and the Thrithings-man fell to the ground and lay still.

  “We need more men!” the sergeant said. “They are climbing over their own dead to get across the wall here.”

  Porto was already out of breath, but he could see that the sergeant was right: the fence of stout logs had been built around a great chunk of stone in the riverbank, a slab of rock bigger than a wagon bed, and because they could not dig through it or set fence posts in it, the engineers had left an inward angle in the barrier. The guards on either side had moved in to defend that angle, but the grasslanders had recognized a weak spot and were beginning to swarm toward it in numbers. But that was not the only danger. The barbarians coming up out of the river were loosing arrows and spears. Even as Porto looked to either side to see where help might come from, one of the guards beside him fell back with an arrow in his face, shrieking like a scalded child.

  “Here, men!” shouted the sergeant. “Erkynlanders, to me! Here, and push the bastards back!”

  Those who could hear him rallied to the wall. Porto did not have time now to think about his aching limbs, about Levias helpless in the tent, about lost Prince Morgan or anything else. Bulky shapes in animal skins clambered over the barrier, bearded faces that screeched like demons swarming toward him out of the darkness and rain. He set his shoulder against the sergeant’s and did what he had to do.

  Time passed for the aged knight, not as in a nightmare, but as in a fever dream, a great sliding jumble of confused impressions. The grinning, painted faces seemed endless—surely every Thrithings-man in the north was attacking the camp! For a little while the attacking grasslanders flowed over the wall like a wave overtopping a dyke, and Porto was separated from the sergeant and all those on his right side. He heard a chorus of shouting behind him, though he did not dare look to see what was happening; moments later the Thrithings-men who had forced their way past him came staggering back, tripping over each other as they retreated. Porto stabbed one in the side with the point of his sword but the bearded wild man seemed barely to notice, because a great shoving mass of armored Erkynlanders was forcing the invaders back against the barrier. A moment finally came when Porto could look up as these new troops hacked their way through the barbarians, and what he saw gladdened his heart.

  It was Duke Osric himself leading a crowd of new Erkynguards wielding long pikes. Most of the Thrithings-men had thrown their spears already; few of them could stand against the surging mass of helmeted soldiers. Osric stood tall in their midst, though he alone was not wearing a helmet. The duke’s hair was flattened against the sides of his head by the rain, his bald crown gleaming wet. He jabbed his spear over and over into the mass of retreating Thrithings-men, who were being pushed back against their own fellow warriors; every time he pulled it away, blood ran black from the leaf-shaped spearhead. Osric’s face was a mask of pure fury, his eyes so wide Porto could see the whites of them even through the rain and darkness.

  He looked, Porto thought, like one of the old gods of the past, before the Aedon came to make mankind gentle. A warrior god who would punish all who came against his people with blood and fire. It was only later, when he had time to consider it, that Porto thought there had been more than anger in the duke’s face. There had been a kind of madness there, too, one that would not be quenched by a single battle.

  The attack failed at last. Once the Erkynguards were roused they were too many for the grasslanders, who fell back and ran toward the river. Several floundered and were shot down, but the rest fled back across the night-dark grasses toward the trees and their camp.

  The fighting finally over, Porto drank water until he thought he might be sick, then went to find Levias. His friend was safe and had slept through it all, thinking it another fever dream. Together they offered God their thanks, then Porto went out again, so weary he could barely stand.

  As the first of dawn’s light turned the horizon first a smoky violet, then pink, and the sky began to whiten, Porto trudged across the camp. The rains had finally ended. Water ran everywhere in muddy rivulets, making wider and wider flows as they joined and continued toward the river below, so that in a few places Porto had to wade through ankle-high streams to make his way. Bodies were already being dragged from the places of fighting beside the fence, some of them so trampled in black muck that they did not look human. He was told that perhaps four score of dead Thrithings-men remained in the camp, but that not even a quarter that many Erkynguardsmen had fallen. The soldiers who gave him this news seemed to think this something to celebrate, but Porto knew otherwise. The grasslanders who had attacked the camp had not been prepared for war. Few of the mounted ones had even reached the walls, so the barbarians had mostly been fighting on foot, and almost none of the corpses wore armor. Yes, the Erkynguard had repelled the attack, but it had been a chance battle, not real warfare, and Porto’s side had been in a fortified position on the high ground.

  They do not understand the savagery of these folk, he thought. They do not guess at the numbers of them who live on these wild plains. His mood was dark. Perhaps I am too old for fighting, he thought. Perhaps I am just too old.

  Near the center of the camp he found Duke Osric and his knight-officers in counsel beside a high, roaring fire. Someone recognized Porto as having been close to the spot where the attack began, and he was called over to tell his story. But when he told of the arrow that had flown from somewhere in the camp—the arrow that had started the battle—Osric seemed to dismiss it as of little account.

  “Daily the barbarians have thrown spears and flown arrows against our barricades,” the duke said, then drank deeply from the goblet in his hand. He still wore his armor, which was heroically bespattered in blood and mud. “As if it were some festival.” He spat. “It was only a matter of time until someone returned the favor. These folk are savages, and savages only understand one thing—a fist of iron.” He lifted his own gauntleted hand as if to demonstrate, then brought it down hard on the log he had chosen as his seat. “We came in peace, as the king ordered. Now we will show them what it means to bargain in bad faith.” Duke Osric’s cheeks were full of color, though the battle had ended at least an hour earlier. Porto, who had swallowed nothing but water, could not help thinking the duke was more than a little drunk.

  Walking along the perimeter of the camp, watching men putting things to right after the battle and the heavy rains, he saw a group of guardsmen gathered around a pair of new arrivals at the gate opposite the river. He was still a good distance away when he recognized the short one on horseback.

  Astrian sat high in the saddle like a triumphant general accepting accolades from his men. Olveris stood beside his own horse, but that was because another man was in his saddle, a thin figure in torn, soiled clothes.

  “Ho, look, it is our old friend!” Astrian cried as Porto approached. “We hear you have won a fierce battle here, but we ourselves have not been idle! See, we have brought someone to the feast you might recognize—Count Eolair, the High Throne’s lord steward!”

  The slumped,
frail-seeming figure was indeed Eolair, Porto saw, but thought the count did not look as much like a rescued man as like someone who was still a prisoner. The Hernystirman’s gaunt face was days unshaven and his dark-circled eyes had the stare of someone who no longer cared where he was or where he was going.

  “Astrian did it all by himself,” said Olveris with heavy mockery. “Ask him. I do not think I was even in the same country.”

  “And Porto fought in a war!” Astrian’s good cheer was undaunted. “I am sure that just like you, my terse friend, he acquitted himself bravely from a safe place in the rear guard.”

  “You see, he does not change,” said Olveris, but Porto could not take his eyes from the count. Eolair was at least as old as Porto, and every line in his face showed it. He looked as though he could barely sit straight and his stare was fixed on nothing, as though he had seen too much of the world and its ways.

  “I am glad you two have returned,” Porto said. “And you, my lord Eolair. We all give thanks to God for your safe return.” He bowed to the count, then turned and began walking away toward the tent where Levias waited.

  “Stop!” said Astrian. “We have much celebrating to do! We will open a jug of the duke’s brandy. Where do you go?”

  “To my bed,” he said without turning. “Usires Aedon give you all health.”

  Dismayed in ways he could not fully understand, Porto made his way back across the camp, walking slowly, feeling every ache now that his blood had calmed. When he reached the tent he found the wounded knight was asleep again, resting peacefully, a Tree on a leather cord clutched in his fist. Porto curled his long limbs so that he could lie down across the base of Levias’ pallet. As soon as he put his head on his arm, sleep took him suddenly and utterly, like a river pike swallowing an unsuspecting fish.

  * * *