Fortress of Dragons

  For a guard at his back he had those who had defended him for years; and for a man at his right he had young Anwyll, lately from watch on the Lenúalim.

  Where are you now, master crow? Taking account of this? On the ridge watching?

  I know where all my enemies are. I’ve dealt with it, thank you, faithful crow. I could use your shield just now. Anwyll’s a fine young man. But he hasn’t your qualities.

  The horizon flashed white, then dark, and the foot of the hill gave up a sudden movement of dark banners with a white device that shone like the lightning itself.

  It was the heraldry of the Sihhë High Kings carried before him, in the lines of the enemy, the black banner of the Tower Crowned.

  And before Ylesuin’s line, beside the red Dragon Banner of the Marhanen kings, shone the Tower and Checker of the Lady Regent, blue and white and gold, bright under the leaden sky.

  “Hold!” Cefwyn said, and reined in, to allow his line to assume a better order: the wings had begun to stray a little behind. “Let’s see if they’ll climb to us!”

  The line drew to a ragged stop, reformed itself in an even, bristling row of lances.

  He sorely missed the Lanfarnessemen, archers that would have taken full advantage of this height. From the right wing issued a thin gray sleet of arrows aloft, archers from Panys’ contingent, the best they had, and likely to do damage with the higher vantage.

  Back came a flight from the other direction, uphill and short, a waste of shafts.

  A solitary horseman rode out from the halted opposing line, rode back and forth, shouting something in which Cefwyn had no interest at all, except the mild hope that an arrow would do them a favor.

  There, he said to himself, seeing the glint of gold encircling that helm, there was Tasmôrden at last, taunting them, wishing the king of Ylesuin to descend into the trap he had laid.

  He would not shout back, would not give way to anger. He set Kanwy out to the fore at a mere amble, rode across the center and rode back again, gesture for gesture, leisurely as a ride through his capital. Arrows attempted the uphill shot with no better effect than before. Arrows came back down the hill, and the dull thump of impact below echoed off the rocks to their left, with satisfying outcries of anger from the enemy below.

  In the same leisure Cefwyn rejoined his wing, rode to Anwyll’s side, and pointed to a stand of brush somewhat past Tasmôrden’s line. “When we do charge, we will meet Lord Maudyn there, behind his line. Bear somewhat left. We shan’t be in a hurry until the last.”

  “Left, Your Majesty…”

  “Left, I say. Out and around his flank. There may be trenches. But there we meet Lord Maudyn, and come back east again. No driving into Tasmôrden’s center, where I most think he’s fortified. That honor is Ryssand’s.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” There was grave doubt in Anwyll’s voice.

  “Relay that to Captain Gwywyn.”

  Anwyll rode off at a good clip, met with the captain of the Prince’s Guard, who stood in Idrys’ place in general command of the king’s forces, and came back again in haste toward him, to take his place as shieldman.

  “Sound the advance!” Cefwyn cried to the trumpeter, and as the trumpets sounded, gave Kanwy rein to resume a measured advance.

  Only when he was close enough to the foot of the long descent did he let the pace increase, and set himself not in the lead, as he had done in other wars, but back with the line: his guard was around him, the Dragons beside him, and the forest of ash wood lifted at the heavens now began to lower as the ranks closed.

  He lowered his own visor, lowered the lance, took a good grip for the shock to come; and hoped to the gods the veteran Dragons evaded the brush where he wagered stakes were in place: they were too expert for such traps.

  And his leading was not to ride full tilt into the lines that offered; they evaded the rows of brush that skirted the center and met the shock of heavy horse that swept out from the enemy’s line to prevent that flanking move—met it with a crack like a smith’s hammer. Horses went down, fewer of theirs than the enemy’s, and they slid by—doing nothing to attack the entrenched line of brush-hidden stakes and pikemen. They went past the flank of the cavalry, and the heavy horse of Tasmôrden’s center, seeing the gap they had left, charged past them, going uphill, unchecked.

  Ryssand had buckled, had retreated.

  And Tasmôrden’s riders plunged up and up into that pocket of retreating men, blind to the sweep from either wing that now turned behind them.

  Cefwyn took down an opposing pikeman with the broken stub of his lance, sent Kanwy through a last curtain of infantry, and saw Maudyn’s banners coming toward him from the east, to meet him behind Tasmôrden’s line.

  More, he saw Tasmôrden’s banners in the heart of the remaining pikemen, and saw the cluster of mounted heavy horse guards that betokened a lord’s defense, between him and Maudyn.

  “With me!” he shouted at Anwyll and whatever of his own guard could keep up, and, sword in hand, he rode for that gold-crowned man in the heart of the enemy.

  The pretender to the High Kingship failed to see his approach; he shouted in vain after his charging troops, who by now had chased halfway up the hill in pursuit of Ryssand’s retreat.

  “Tasmôrden!” Cefwyn shouted, and the man turned his face toward him, a dark-bearded man in a crowned helm, in black armor, bearing the forbidden Tower Crowned on his coat and his shield.

  Kanwy went through the guard like a bludgeon, scattering unready pikemen, shouldering horses aside as Cefwyn laid about him with sword and shield; with a shove of his hindquarters as if he were climbing a hill, Kanwy broke through the last screen of defense, trampled a man, kept going. The clangor of engagement was at Cefwyn’s back: his guard was still with him, shouting for the gods and Ylesuin; and the crowned man, realizing his danger, reined full about and swept a wild blow at Cefwyn’s head.

  Cefwyn angled his shield, shed the force of it, and dealt a blow past the opposing shield. Kanwy shouldered a horse that hit them hard, bit another. Cefwyn cut aside at the encroaching guard, veered Kanwy full about as he bore, in time to intercept another of Tasmôrden’s attacks, this one descending at Kanwy’s neck.

  The sword grated past the metal-guarded edge of his shield, scored Kanwy’s shoulder. Kanwy stumbled, recovered himself against another horse, and blows cracked like thunder around them. One numbed Cefwyn’s back, but as Kanwy regained solid footing he had Tasmôrden in sight and drove his heels in, sending Kanwy over a fallen rider and through the mistimed defense of two pikemen who tried to prevent him. A pike grated off Kanwy’s armor. A man cried out and went down and Kanwy bore him past, and up against his enemy.

  Tasmôrden flung up his shield, desperately choosing defense: but Cefwyn’s strike came from the side, with Kanwy’s impetus behind it on a wheeling turn. The blade hit and hung, needing force and a twist of the arm to free it, and when Cefwyn freed the blade, Tasmôrden toppled from his saddle, helmless, a black-bearded and bloody face disappearing down into a maelstrom of horses and men.

  “Majesty!” Cefwyn heard a man shout, and saw Lord Maudyn across an ebbing rush of Tasmôrden’s forces.

  Suddenly the air thickened. The hairs of his head and Kanwy’s mane alike stood up.

  Wizard-work, he thought. A trap.

  And force and light and sound burst from the heart of the enemy.

  Lightning broke above the towers, ripped across the sky, and even at a distance the air shivered with it. “Gods bless!” Uwen said, yet to Tristen’s knowledge not a man behind them turned back.

  The child and the Lady still went before them, and still that inky flow ran along the edges of the woods, but the lightning flash had for the blink of an eye seemed to illumine men and horses, gray as morning mist, that moved where the darkness flowed.

  “I see men,” Crissand said, while above them and near at hand the towers of Ilefínian now seemed to flow with inky stain in the cracks and crevices. The darkness flowed, too, in th
e ditch beside the road, and between the stones of a ruined sheep wall. It wound itself among the thin, straggling branches of blackened, bare trees, and drifted down like falling leaves, to coalesce and run like dark fire along the ground.

  It became footprints, and the next flicker of the heavens showed ghostly riders in greater numbers.

  “Haunts,” Sovrag said, and Umanon blessed himself. Ahead of them all moved the lady of Emwy, but now it seemed banners had joined theirs, banners in great numbers, and a handful of ghostly gray riders, heedless of the trees, paced beside them toward the looming gates.

  “Lord Haurydd,” Aeself said in a muted voice, and Tristen, too, recognized the man and the banners, dim as he was under the flickering heavens. The walls of the town seemed manned, but it was uncertain whether with living Men or Shadows.

  Behind his banners, the Elwynim, the Lady’s sparrows, had come to take back their town; and the south of Ylesuin had come to defend their land against Elwynor’s wars of succession.

  Tristen turned in the saddle and looked back over the host that had come to this place, men who had left their own lands for a comfortless camp and the risk of sorcery out of the stones of walls that had known too many wars. The earth itself seemed to quake, and the gray place held no comfort.

  —At my very doors, the Wind whispered. Mauryl’s precious hatchling. Have we known one another at some time, disagreed, perhaps?

  He swung about. It was not only that voice. There was another presence, far more familiar, that drifted around the perimeter, one that taunted and mocked him and still dared not come close.

  He recalled the courtyard at Ynefel, and Mauryl’s face within its walls, as all the others had been imprisoned, all the lost, all the defeated.

  So might Ilefínian stand, as haunted, as wretched in its fall.

  “The gates are barred,” he said to Uwen, for the Wind told him so.

  —Ylesuin’s down, it said. Folly. Great folly. Will you help him, I wonder?

  In the unstable clouds of the gray space he saw a field where lightning had struck, and the dead lay all about, men and horses, and Cefwyn…yet alive, within reach of him, if only he reached out to rescue him.

  He turned his head suddenly and looked up at the walls, seeing the lure it cast him, its intention to have Cefwyn’s life and his as surely as he turned that direction, and he would not do as it wished.

  He struck at all of its presence he could reach within the gray space, he struck desperately and hard, and failed. His hold on the world weakened. His strength ebbed. It was the wards that drank it away from him.

  “Uwen,” he said, “I have to go in there. I have to open the gates.”

  “Not alone,” Crissand said. “No, my lord!”

  There was no debate. The way was plain to him for an instant, the blink of an eye, and he cast himself into it, alone, knowing only that there was within the fortress of Ilefínian a room where a banner had hung.

  And that his enemy, bent on destruction of all he loved, invited him.

  Lightning had hit, and only the fact he remembered that told Cefwyn that he had survived. He remembered Kanwy falling sidelong and pitching him to shield-side. He recalled the impact on his shield against a carpet of metal-clad bodies, and after that was uncertain whether Kanwy had risen or not: all the world was a noise in his ears and a blinding light in his vision, so bright it might have been dark instead.

  He lay an instant winded and uncertain whether he felt the sword in his hand or whether it was, like the fall, only the vivid memory of holding it.

  But his knee moved, and his elbow held him off his face.

  And if he would live, his father had dinned it into him, no matter how hard the fall, no matter the pain, if Ylesuin would survive, he had no choice but cover himself and find his guards and his horse.

  He gained one knee, levered himself to his feet with his sword, proving he did indeed hold it. He stumbled erect into a blind confusion of wounded men and horses, a morass of tangled bodies and shattered lances that turned and shifted underfoot, to a second fall and a third.

  A distance along, his eyes began to make out moving shadows, but he thought others must be as dazed by the bolt. No one attacked him, no one seemed aware of any color or banner, and he had no idea at the moment where the lines were. He had lost his helm, his shield was in two pieces, and he shed it as an encumbrance, staggering on uneven ground, but aware at last that downhill was not the direction of his own men.

  In front of him a fallen horse raised itself on its hindquarters and began to gain its feet, like a moving hill rearing up before him: his gloved hand found its shoulder and its neck and he seized the reins and tried to hold the stirrup, but the dazed horse tore away from him and veered off on its own way across the field, trampling the dead and the dying in its course.

  Damn, Cefwyn said to himself, holding an aching side and recovering with difficulty from the blow the horse had dealt him. A second time brought to a standstill and having no other sense to help him, he listened past the roaring in his ears, trying to make of the sounds he heard any known voice, any sign of his own guards or any surety of his enemies. Men moved and called to one another near him, voices lifted over the distant clangor of battle, but his ears could not distinguish the words from sounds that might be wind or thunder.

  It was a predicament, beyond a doubt, and he felt his father’s disapproval of all he had done. Headlong folly had set him here afoot and alone.

  But by the good gods, the battle plan had seemed to work. On a deep breath he recalled the successful sweep of two wings around Tasmôrden’s flanks, while Tasmôrden’s center charged uphill and Tasmôrden cursed his own men helplessly from the bottom of the hill.

  Now he recalled the encounter with Tasmôrden. Now he recalled that he had come within sight of Ilefínian, and remembered that the enemy no longer had any semblance of a king or a leader. Orders would no longer come to them. Captains must direct such fighting as remained, and for hired captains, there was no more source of gold, no reason to linger.

  But then another realization came to him…that in the bolt that had overthrown him and obscured Tasmôrden’s fall, there was no coincidence—none he accepted since he had stood on Lewen field—none, since he had claimed Tristen for a friend. The hand of wizardry was beyond a doubt in that bolt, and he was still alive—inconvenienced mightily, afoot, half-deaf and three-quarters blind, but alive, while Tasmôrden was lying somewhere below.

  He could in no wise say whether it was his wizards or Tasmôrden’s who had just set the heavens afire and brought down the hammer of heaven on the battle with Tasmôrden, but they had called the lightning on the Quinaltine roof, and he began to suspect the answer lay in a wizardous tug of war.

  Yet whatever magic had aimed or pulled the bolt this way or that, it had not hit him, and in that fact, he saw Tristen’s hand.

  He paused in that astonished thought, gazing toward the town his hazed vision could no longer find. At least he had seen it before the lightning fell…all his promise to Ninévrisë, all the ambition of his grandfather, all wrapped in one. That, and his enemy.

  But if it was folly to have charged after Tasmôrden himself, it was greater folly to stand gawping in the middle of the carnage. He could not find a horse, or his guards: he began to realize he would not find either wandering here. From the mere effort to see, his eyes streamed tears. His very bones ached, his skin felt the first instant of scalding, endlessly maintained, and he doubted any man in the vicinity of the lightning could have fared much better. He recalled a field of dead men where he had waked, and told himself he had used all the luck that wizardry had parceled out to him on this field: he could not count on it twice.

  And if downhill was the direction of Ilefínian, then he recalled the lay of the land, the spill of boulders that curved down to the flat where he had engaged Tasmôrden. That had been on the right: he knew by that which direction was east and west, where Tasmôrden’s men had been tending; and knew now wh
ere he might find a place against which to set his back and live long enough to regain clear sight.

  Determined, then, he went toward the west, where the ridge advanced outcrops of rounded stone and brush, and went unchallenged except by one wounded man nearly as blind. They hacked at one another, neither with great success, and blundered by, both shaken, both content to escape, the common soldier having no notion, perhaps, that he had engaged the king of Ylesuin.

  His dazed wits wandered: he had caught buffets like that from his father in his day: had sat down with one ear near deaf in the practice yard. He was confused from moment to moment whether it was the practice yard or the battlefield, but after that encounter his ears began to make out sounds that informed him it was no practice, and when he reached a haze of gray winter brush and crashed against a sizable boulder, he was content only to sink down beside it and catch his breath.

  Sight began to come to him, alternate with dark.

  Uphill, his banners and Ninévrisë’s still flew. Uphill, a band of moving red had swept around the blue ranks of the Elwynim.

  It was his design. Ryssand’s retreat had done exactly what he had hoped it would, and the Dragons had not perished in the lightning: they had lived, and charged back uphill. Ryssand in his compact with his Elwynim allies had started a panic retreat in his center, intending the army to break apart in confusion…but Cefwyn rejoiced to know his own plan had driven the wings both full tilt downhill instead, downhill and around, while Tasmôrden’s men had chased uphill into the pocket Ryssand gave them…breaking their line, losing contact with their own wings: too much confidence, too fast an advance. They had chased their own ally’s retreat between Ylesuin’s left wing and right, sure they had won the encounter down to the moment the jaws closed.

  And Tasmôrden, who had let his troops slip his hand, could only stand behind them and curse, seeing disaster none of his men on the hill had been able to see.