On the ice behind them, the ravens were already feeding on the fallen. The birds hopped and pecked and argued raucously among themselves. Half-hidden by the mist, they might have been tiny black demons come to gloat at the destruction.
Sesuad’ra’s defenders limped up the hillside, leading their panting mounts. Although he felt curiously numb, Simon was still pleased to see that more of the Qanuc had survived than just those he and Sisqi had led off the ice. These other survivors rushed forward to greet their kin with cries of happiness, although there were sounds of keening sorrow, too, as the trolls counted their losses.
For Simon, an even greater joy came when he saw Binabik standing with Josua. Sisqi saw him, too. She leaped down from Simon’s saddle and rushed to her betrothed. The two of them embraced at Josua’s side, heedless of the prince or anyone else.
Simon watched them for a moment before staggering on. He knew he should look for his other friends, but at the moment he felt so battered and wrung out that it was as much as he could do just to put one foot before the other. Someone walking beside him passed him a cup of wine. When he had drunk it off and handed the cup back, he took a few limping steps up the hill to where the campfires had been lit. Now that the day’s fighting had ended, some of the women of New Gadrinsett had come down to bring food and to help care for the wounded. One of them, a young girl with stringy hair, handed Simon a bowl of something that faintly steamed. He tried to thank her, but could not summon the strength to speak.
Although the sun was just now touching the western horizon and the day was still quite light, Simon had no sooner finished his thin soup than he found himself lying on the muddy ground, still wearing all of his armor but for his helm, his head cushioned on his cloak. Homefinder stood nearby, cropping at the few thin stalks of grass that had survived the general trampling. A moment later Simon felt himself sliding down toward sleep. The world seemed to tilt back and forth around him, as though he lay on the deck of some huge, slow-rolling ship. Blackness was coming on fast—not the black of night, but a deep and smothering dark that welled up from inside him. If he dreamed, he knew, for once it would not be of towers or giant wheels. He would see screaming horses, and a rat drowning in a rain barrel.
Isaak, the young page, leaned close to the brazier, trying to absorb some warmth. He was chilled right through. Outside, the wind strummed on the ropes and poked at the rippling walls of Duke Fengbald’s vast tent as though seeking to uproot it and carry it away into the night. Isaak wished he had never been forced to leave the Hayholt.
“Boy!” Fengbald cried. There was an edge of violence in his voice, barely contained. “Where is my wine?”
“Just mulling, Lord,” Isaak said. He took the iron out of the pitcher and hurried to replenish the duke’s goblet.
Fengbald ignored him as he poured, turning his attention to Lezhdraka, who stood by scowling, still dressed in his bloodied leather armor. By contrast, the duke was bathed—Isaak had been forced to heat innumerable pots of water on the one small bed of coals—and wore a robe of scarlet silk. He had put on a pair of doeskin slippers, and his long, black hair hung on his shoulders in wet ringlets. “I will listen to no more of this nonsense,” he told the mercenary captain.
“Nonsense?” Lezhdraka snarled. “You say that to me! I saw the magic folk with my own eyes, stone-dweller!”
Fengbald’s eyes narrowed. “You had better learn to speak more respectfully, plainsman.”
Lezhdraka clenched his fists, but kept his arms at his side. “Still, I saw them—you did, too.”
The duke made a noise of disgust. “I saw a troop of dwarfs—freaks, such as can be seen tumbling and capering before most of the thrones of Osten Ard. Those were not the Sithi, whatever Josua and this scrub-woman Geloë might claim.”
“Dwarfs or fairy-folk I cannot prove, but that other is no ordinary woman,” Lezhdraka said darkly. “Her name is well-known in the grasslands—well-known and well-feared. Men who go into her forest do not return.”
“Ridiculous.” Fengbald drained his cup. “I do not quickly mock the dark powers …” he trailed off, as though some uncomfortable memory was clamoring for attention, “… I do not mock, but neither will I be mocked. And I will not be frightened by conjuring tricks, however they may affect superstitious savages.”
The Thrithings-man stared at him for a moment, his face suddenly gone serenely cold. “Your master, from what you have said before, has dabbled much in what you call ‘superstition.’”
Fengbald’s return glance was equally chilly. “I call no man master. Elias is the king, that is all.” The moment of imperiousness quickly dissolved. “Isaak!” he called petulantly. “More wine, damn you.” As the page scurried to serve him, Fengbald shook his head. “Enough quibbling. We have a problem, Lezhdraka. I want to solve it.”
The mercenary chief folded his arms. “My men do not like the idea of Josua having magical allies,” he growled, “—but do not fear. They are not womanish. They will fight anyway. Our legends have long told us that fairy blood spills just as man blood does. We proved that today.”
Fengbald made an impatient gesture. “But we cannot afford to beat them this way. They are stronger than I thought. How can I return to Elias with most of his Erkynguard dead at the hands of a few cornered peasants?” He tapped his finger on the rim of his goblet. “No, there are other ways, ways that will assure that I return to Erkynland in triumph.”
Lezhdraka snorted. “There are no other ways. What, some secret track, some hidden road as you talked of before? Your spies did not come back, I notice. No, the only way now is the way we have started. We will beat them down until none are left.”
Fengbald was no longer paying attention. His gaze had shifted to the door flap of the tent and a soldier who stood there, unsure of whether to come in. “Ah,” the duke said. “Yes?”
The soldier dropped to one knee. “The captain of the guard has sent me, Lord …”
“Good.” Fengbald settled back in his chair. “And you have brought with you a certain person, yes?”
“Yes, Lord.”
“Bring him in, then wait outside until I summon you again.”
The soldier went, trying to hide a look of dismay at having to stand outside the tent in the jagged wind. Fengbald threw a mocking glance toward Lezhdraka. “One of my spies has come back, it appears.”
A moment later the tent flap opened again. An old man stumbled in, his ragged clothes speckled with snowflakes.
Fengbald grinned hugely. “Ah, you have returned to us! Helfgrim, is it not?” The duke turned to Lezhdraka, his good humor returning as he played out his little show. “You remember the Lord Mayor of Gadrinsett, don’t you, Lezhdraka? He left us for a while to go a-visiting, but now he has returned.” The duke’s voice became harsh. “Did you get away unseen?”
Helfgrim nodded miserably. “Things are confused. No one has seen me since the battle started. There are others missing, too, and bodies still lost on the ice and in the forest along the hill’s base.”
“Good.” Fengbald snapped his fingers, pleased. “And of course you have done what I asked?”
The old man lowered his head. “There is nothing, Lord.”
Fengbald stared at him for a moment. Color rose in the duke’s face and he began to rise, then sat down again, clenching his fists. “So. You seem to have forgotten what I told you.”
“What is all this?” Lezhdraka asked, irritated.
The duke ignored him. “Isaak,” he called, “fetch the guard.”
When the shivering soldier had come in, Fengbald summoned him to his side, then whispered a few words in his ear. The soldier went out through the flap once more.
“We will try again,” Fengbald said, turning his attention back to the Lord Mayor. “What did you find out?”
Helfgrim could not seem to meet his eyes. The old man’s weak-chinned, reddish face worked as though with some barely hidden grief. “Nothing of use, my lord,” he said at last.
Fengbald had evidently gained control of his anger, for he only smiled tightly. A few moments later, the tent flap bulged once more. The guard came in, accompanied this time by two more guardsmen. They were escorting a pair of women, both of middle years, with threads of gray in their dark hair, both of them grimy and dressed in threadbare cloaks. The ashen, fearful expressions of the women changed to startlement as they saw the old man who cringed before Fengbald.
“Father!” one of them cried.
“Oh, merciful Usires,” the other said, and made the sign of the Tree.
Fengbald surveyed the scene coolly. “You seemed to have forgotten who holds the whip hand, Helfgrim. Now, let me try again. If you lie to me, I will have to cause your daughters pain, much as it troubles my Aedonite conscience. Still, it will be your conscience that will suffer most, for it will be your fault.” He smirked. “Speak.”
The old man looked at his daughters, at the terror on their faces. “God forgive me,” he said. “God forgive me for a traitor!”
“Don’t you do it, Father,” one of the women cried. The other daughter was sobbing helplessly, her face buried in the sleeve of her cape.
“I cannot do other.” Helfgrim turned to the duke. “Yes,” he said quaveringly. “There is another way onto the hill, one that only a few of the folk there know. It is another old Sithi track. Josua has put a guard onto it, but only a token force, since the bottom of it is hidden by overgrowth. He showed it to me when we were planning his defense.”
“A token force, eh?” Fengbald grinned and looked triumphantly at Lezhdraka. “And this track, it is wide enough for how many?”
Helfgrim’s voice was so low as to be almost inaudible. “A dozen could march abreast, once the first few cubits of brambles are cleared away.”
The mercenary captain, who had listened quietly for a long time, now stepped forward. He was angry, and his scars showed white against his dark face. “You are too trusting,” he snarled at Fengbald. “How do you know this is no trap? How do you know that Josua will not be waiting for us with his whole army?”
Fengbald was unmoved. “You grasslanders are too simple-minded, Lezhdraka—did I not tell you that before? Josua’s army will be busy trying to fight off our frontal assault tomorrow—far too busy to spare any more soldiers than his token force—when we go to make our surprise visit on Helfgrim’s other road. We will take a sizable company. And just to make sure that there is no treachery, we will take the Lord Mayor with us.”
At this, the two women burst into tears. “Please, do not take him into battle,” one said desperately. “He is but an old man!”
“That is true.” Fengbald appeared to consider the point. “And hence he might not be afraid to die, if there is some kind of trap—if Josua’s force is more than token. So we will take you, too.”
Helfgrim leaped up. “No! You cannot risk their lives! They are innocent!”
“And they will be safe as doves in a dovecote,” Fengbald grinned, “as long as your story has been true. But if you have tried to betray me, they will die. Quickly, but painfully.”
The old man begged him again, but the duke slouched back in his chair, unmoved. At last the Lord Mayor went to his daughters. “It will be well.” He patted them awkwardly, inhibited by the presence of cruel strangers. “We will be together. No harm will come.” He turned to Fengbald, anger showing beneath his trembling features; for a moment his voice almost lost its quaver. “There is no trap, damn you—you will see—but there are a few dozen men, as I said. I have betrayed the prince for you. You must show honor toward my children, and keep them out of danger if there is fighting. Please.”
Fengbald waved his hand expansively. “Never fear. I promise on my honor as a nobleman that when we hold this dreadful hill and Josua is dead, you and your daughters will go free. And you will tell those you meet that Duke Fengbald keeps his bargains.” He rose and gestured to the guards. “Now take them all three away—and keep them separate from the rest of their folk.”
After the prisoners had been removed, Fengbald turned to Lezhdraka. “Why so silent, man? Can you not admit you were wrong—that I have solved our problem?”
The Thrithings-man seemed to want to argue, but instead reluctantly nodded his head. “These stone-dwellers are soft. No Thrithings-man would betray his people for the sake of two daughters.”
Fengbald laughed. “We stone-dwellers, as you call us, treat our women differently than you louts do.” He walked to the brazier and warmed his long hands over the coals. “And tomorrow, Lezhdraka, I shall show you how this stone-dweller treats his enemies—especially those who have defied him as Prince Josua has.” He narrowed his lips. “That cursed fairy-hill will run red with blood.”
He stared into the gleaming embers, a smile curling the corners of his mouth. The wind wailed outside and rubbed against the tent cloth like an animal.
13
The Nest Builders
Tiamak stared at the still water. His mind was only half on his task, so when the fish appeared, a dark shadow flitting between the water lilies, the Wrannaman’s strike was far too late. Tiamak stared down at the handful of dripping vegetation in disgust and dropped the clump of weeds back into the muddied water. Any fish in the vicinity would be long gone now.
They Who Watch and Shape, he thought miserably, why have you done this to me?
He moved closer to the edge of the waterway and sloshed as delicately as he could down to the next backwater, then set himself in place to begin his wait once more.
Ever since he had been a small boy, it seemed, he had gotten less than he wanted. As the youngest of six children, he had always felt that his brothers and sisters ate better than he did, that when the bowl came at last to Tiamak, there was little left. He had not grown up as large as any of his three brothers or his father Tugumak, nor had he ever been able to catch fish as well as his swift sister Twiyah, or find as many useful roots and berries as his clever sister Rimihe. When at last he had found something he could do better than anyone else—namely, master the drylander skills of reading and writing, and even learn to speak the drylander tongues—this also proved too small a gift. This scurrying after the knowledge of drylanders made scant sense to his family, or to the other residents of Village Grove. When he went away to Perdruin to study in a drylander school, were they proud? Of course not. Despite the fact that no other Wrannaman in memory had done it—or perhaps because of that—his family could not understand his ambitions. And the drylanders themselves, all but a very few, were openly scornful of his gifts. The indifferent teachers and mocking students had let young Tiamak know in no uncertain terms that no matter how many scrolls and books and learned discussions he devoured, he would never be anything better than a savage, a performing animal who had mastered a clever trick.
So it had been for all of his life until this fatal year, his only meager comforts found in his studies and the occasional correspondence of the Scrollbearers. Now, as if They Who Watch and Shape sought to pay all back in a single season, everything that came to him was too much—far, far too much.
This is how the gods mock us, he thought bitterly. They take our fondest wish, then grant it in such a way that we beg to be released from it. And to think that I had stopped believing in them!
They Who Watch and Shape had set the trap neatly enough, of that there was no doubt. First they had forced him to choose between his kin and his friends, then they had sent the crocodile that forced him to fail his kin. Now his friends needed to be conducted through the vast marshlands, in fact depended on him for their very lives, but the only safe route would take him back through Village Grove, back to the people he had forsaken. Tiamak only wished that he himself could have learned to build such a faultless snare—he would have eaten crabs for supper every night!
He stood hip-deep in the greenish water and pondered. What could he do? If he returned to his village, his shame would be known to all. It might even be possible that they would not let him go again, holding him as a
traitor against the clan. But if he tried to avoid the wrath of the villagers, he would have to go leagues out of the way to find a suitable boat. The only other villages close to this end of the Wran, High Branch Houses, Yellow Trees, or Flower-in-the-Rock, were all farther to the south. To go to one would mean leaving the main arterial waterways and crossing some of the most dangerous stretches of the entire marsh. Still, there was no choice: they had to stop in Village Grove or one of the farther settlements, for without a flatboat Tiamak and his companions would never reach the Lake Thrithing. As it was, their present craft was leaking badly. They had already been forced to make several dangerous trips across the unpredictable mud, carrying the boat around places in the waterway that were too shallow.
Tiamak sighed. What was it that Isgrimnur himself had said? Life seemed nothing but difficult choices these days—and he was right.
There was a flirt of shadow between his knees. Tiamak swiftly darted a hand down and felt his fingers close around something small and slippery. He lifted it high, holding tightly. It was a fish, a pinch-eye, although not a very large one. Still, it was better than no fish at all. He turned and pulled up the cloth sack that floated beside him, anchored to a thick root. He dropped the wriggling thing in, tightened the drawstring, then lowered the sack back into the water. A good omen, perhaps. Tiamak closed his eyes to make a short prayer of thanks, hoping that the gods, like children, could be confirmed in good behavior by praise. When he had finished, he gave his attention back to the green water once more.
Miriamele was doing her best to keep the fire going, but it was difficult. Since entering the marshes they had found nothing that resembled dry wood, and the small blazes they had been able to light burned fitfully at best.