Sludig had climbed down off his horse. He was kneeling beside a figure in a cloak the color of an early evening sky. It was Deornoth, and his face was very pale. Beneath Josua’s knight, half-covered by his blue cloak, a hugely-muscled Thrithings-man lay on his back, staring sightlessly at the cloudy sky, a crust of blood on his lips. With the sharpened clarity of near-madness, Simon saw a snowflake flutter down to land on the mercenary’s opened eye.
“It is the leader of the mercenaries,” Sludig shouted over the clamor. “Deornoth has killed him.”
“But Deornoth, is he alive?”
Sludig was already struggling to lift the knight from the ice. Simon looked around to see if they were in immediate danger, but the mercenaries had been lured away to some other pocket of the shifting chaos. Simon quickly dismounted and helped Sludig lift Deornoth onto the saddle. The Rimmersman climbed up and clutched at the knight, who sagged like an understuffed doll.
“Bad,” Sludig said. “He is bad. We must get him back to the barricades.”
He set out at a trot. Sisqi and the other two trolls fell in behind him. The Rimmersman steered his horse in a wide arc, heading for the outer fringe of the killing ground and comparative safety.
Simon could only lean against Homefinder’s side, panting, staring at Sludig’s back and Deornoth’s slack face bouncing beside the Rimmersman’s shoulder. Things were as bad as could be imagined. Jiriki and his Sithi were not coming. God had not seen fit to rescue the virtuous. If only this whole nightmarish day could be wished away. Simon shivered. It seemed almost that if he closed his eyes this would all be gone, that he would wake in his bed in the Hayholt’s serving quarters, the spring sunlight crawling across the flagstones outside. …
He shook his head and struggled into the saddle, legs trembling. He spurred Homefinder forward. No time to let the mind wander. No time.
There was the flash of red again, just to his right. He turned and saw a figure in crimson, sitting on a white horse. The mounted man’s helm was furnished with silver wings.
Fengbald!
Slowly, as though the ice had turned to sticky honey beneath his horses’ hooves, Simon reined up and turned toward the armored man. Surely this was a dream! The duke was behind a small knot of Erkynguardsmen, but his attention seemed fixed on the fighting just before him. Simon, at the outer edge of the battle, had a clear path. He spurred Homefinder forward.
As he moved closer, picking up speed, the silver helmet seemed to grow before him, dazzling even in the murky light. The crimson cloak and bright chain mail were like a wound on the dim darkness of the far-away trees.
Simon shouted, but the figure did not turn. He kicked his boot-irons against Homefinder’s side. She made a huffing noise and increased her pace; foam flew from her lips. “Fengbald!” Simon screamed again, and this time the duke seemed to hear. The closed helm swiveled toward Simon, the eye-slit blankly inscrutable. The duke lifted his sword with one hand and tugged at his reins to bring his horse around to face this attacker. Fengbald seemed slow, as if underwater, as though he, too, found himself in some terrible dream.
Beneath his own helm, Simon’s lips skinned back from his teeth. A nightmare, then. He would be Fengbald’s nightmare, this time. He swung his own sword back, feeling the muscles in his shoulders jump and strain. As Homefinder swept down on the duke, Simon brought his sword around with both hands. It met the duke’s blade with a shivering impact that nearly pushed Simon backward out of the saddle, but something yielded at the blow. When he was past, and had straightened himself in the saddle, he turned Homefinder around in a careful half-circle. Fengbald had fallen from his horse and his sword had been knocked from his hand. The duke lay on his back, struggling to rise.
Simon vaulted from the saddle and promptly slipped, falling forward to land painfully on elbows and knees. He crawled to where the duke still fought for balance, then rose on his knees and brought the flat of his sword against the shining helm as hard as he could. The duke fell back, arms spread wide like the wings of the silver eagle on his surcoat. Simon clambered on top of him and squatted on his chest. He, Simon, had beaten Duke Fengbald! Had they won, then? Panting, he darted a quick look around him, but no one seemed to have seen. Neither was there any sign that the fighting had been resolved—clots of figures still thrashed in the mist all across the lake. Could he have won the battle without anyone noticing?
Simon pulled his Qanuc knife from the sheath and pressed it against Fengbald’s throat, then fumbled at the duke’s helm. He worked it free at last, tugging it loose with little regard for its owner’s comfort. He tossed it aside. It spun on the ice as Simon leaned forward.
His prisoner was a middle-aged man, bald where he was not gray. His bloodied mouth was missing most of its teeth. It was not Fengbald.
“‘S Bloody Tree!” Simon swore. The world was collapsing. Nothing was real. He stared at the surcoat, at the falcon-winged helmet lying just inches away. They were Fengbald’s, there was no question. But this was not the duke.
“Tricked!” Simon groaned. “Oh, God, we have been tricked like children.” There was a cold knot in his stomach. “Mother of Aedon—where is Fengbald!?”
Far across Osten Ard to the west, far from the concerns of Sesuad’ra’s defenders, a small procession emerged from a hole in the Grianspog mountainside like a troop of white mice released from a cage. As they left the shadowy tunnels they stopped, blinking and squinting in the snow-glare.
The Hernystiri, only a few hundred all told, most of them women, children, and old men, milled in confusion on the rocky shelf outside the cavern. Maegwin sensed that with any prompting at all they would quickly dash back into the safety of the caves once more. The balance was very delicate. It had taken a great effort on Maegwin’s part, all her powers of persuasion, to convince her people even to set out on this seemingly doomed journey.
Gods of our forefathers, she thought, Brynioch and Rhynn, where is our backbone!? Only Diawen, breathing deeply of the cold air with her arms lifted as if in ritual celebration, seemed to understand the glory of this march. The expression on the lined face of Old Craobhan left no doubt as to what he thought of this foolishness. But the rest of her subjects seemed mostly fearful, looking for some portent, some excuse to turn back again.
They needed prodding, that was all. It was frightening for mortals to live as their deities wished them to—it was a greater responsibility than most wished to bear. Maegwin took a deep breath.
“Great days are before us, people of Hernystir,” she cried. “The gods wish us to go down the mountain to face our enemies—the enemies who have stolen our houses, our farms, our cattle and pigs and sheep. Remember who you are! Come with me!”
She strode forward onto the path. Slowly, reluctantly, her followers fell into step behind her, shivering despite being wrapped in the warmest clothing they had been able to find. Many of the children were crying.
“Arnoran,” she called. The harper, who had been walking a little distance behind—perhaps hoping that he could fall far enough back that his presence would not be missed—came forward, leaning against the force of the wind.
“Yes, my lady?”
“Walk beside me,” she directed. Arnoran took a look down at the mountain’s sheer, snowy face just beyond the narrow path, then quickly looked away again. “I want you to play a song,” Maegwin said.
“What song, Princess?”
“Something that everyone knows the words to. Something that lifts the heart.” She pondered as she walked. Arnoran looked nervously down at his feet. “Play ‘The Lily of the Cuimnhe.’”
“Yes, my lady.” Arnoran lifted his harp and began to pick out the opening strains, working it through a few times to let his chilled fingers warm. Then he began in earnest, playing loudly so that those behind could easily hear.
“The Hernysadharc rose is fair.”
he sang, lifting his voice above the wind that prowled the mountainside and stirred the trees,
“As red as
blood, as white as snow,
But still unplucked I’ll leave it there
For I have somewhere else to go.”
One by one at first, then in bunches, others of Maegwin’s band began to pick up the verses of the familiar song.
“At Inniscrich the violets grow
As dark as skies of early night,
But I’ll not have them, even so
For I prefer my beauties bright.
“Near Abaingeat the daisies bloom
Like stars a-twinkle in the sky,
But I will leave them in the coomb
I cannot stop; I must pass by.
“The sweetest flower of all, she grows
Where river past sweet meadow flows,
And where she blossoms I will go:
The Lily of the Cuimhne.
“When someday winter’s winds shall blow
When leaves are withered, sap is slow,
I will recall this love, I know:
The Lily of the Cuimnhe …”
By the refrain, scores of people had joined in. The pace of the marching feet seemed to increase, to match itself to the rhythm of the old song. The voices of Maegwin’s people rose until they outshouted the wind—and strangely, the wind grew weaker, as if acknowledging defeat.
The remnants of Hernysadharc marched down from their mountain retreat, singing.
They stopped on a shelf of snow-swept rock, and ate their midday meal beneath the dim and straining sun. Maegwin walked among her people, paying special attention to the children. She felt happy and fulfilled for the first time in long memory: Lluth’s daughter was finally doing what she was meant to do. Satisfied at last, she felt her love for the people of Hernystir come bubbling up—and her people felt it, too. Some of the older folk might still have misgivings about this mad undertaking, but to the children it was a wonderful lark; they followed Maegwin through the camp, laughing and shouting, until even the worried parents were able to forget for a while the danger into which they were traveling, to put aside their doubts. After all, how could the princess be so full of light and truth if the gods were not with her?
As for Maegwin, virtually all her own doubts had been left on Bradach Tor. She had the entire company singing again and on their way before the noon hour had passed.
When they reached the bottom of the mountain at last, her people seemed to gain hope. For all but a few of them, this was the first time they had touched the meadows of Hernystir since the Rimmersgard troops had driven them into the high places half a year before. They were returning home.
The first of Skali’s pickets came forward in a rush as they saw a small army descending from the Grianspog, but reined up in surprise, the hooves of their horses digging up great gouts of powdery snow, when they saw that the army bore no weapons—in fact, carried nothing at all in their arms but swaddled infants. The Rimmersmen, hardened warriors every one, undaunted by the confusion and horror of battle, stared in consternation at Maegwin and her troop.
“Stop!” the leader cried. He was all but hidden in his helmet and fur-lined cloak, and for a moment seemed a startled badger blinking in the door of its sett. “Going where are you?”
Maegwin made a haughty face at his poor command of the Westerling tongue. “We are going to your master, Skali of Kaldskryke.”
The soldiers looked, if possible, even more bewildered. “So many to surrender are not needed,” the leader said. “Tell the women and children for waiting here. Men with us will come.”
Maegwin scowled. “Fool. We do not come to surrender. We come to take our land back.” She waved. Her followers, who had stopped while she spoke to the soldiers, surged forward once more.
The Rimmersmen fell in beside them like dogs trying to herd a flock of unimpressed and hostile sheep.
As they made their way across the snowy meadowlands between the foothills and Hernysadharc, Maegwin felt anger growing within her once more, anger that for a while had been overwhelmed by the glory of positive action. Here stand after stand of ancient trees, oak and beech and alder, had been leveled by Rimmersgard axes, their carcasses stripped of bark and dragged away across the rutted ground. Skali’s soldiers and their horses had churned the earth around their camps to frozen mud, and the ashes of their countless fires blew across the gray snow. The very face of the land was wounded and suffering—no wonder the gods were unhappy! Maegwin looked around and saw her own fury mirrored in the faces of her followers, their few lingering doubts now vanishing like water drops on a hot stone. The gods would make this place clean again, with their help. How could anyone doubt that it would be so?
At last, as the afternoon sun hung swollen in the gray sky, they reached the outskirts of Hernysadharc itself. They were now part of a much larger crowd: during the slow approach of Maegwin’s folk, many of the Rimmersmen had drifted in from the encampments to watch this odd spectacle, until it seemed that the whole occupying army trailed along after them. The combined company, nearing perhaps a thousand souls, made its way through the narrow, spiraling streets of Hernysadharc toward the king’s house, the Taig.
When they reached the great cleared place atop the hillock, Skali of Kaldskryke was waiting for them, standing before the Taig’s vast oaken doors. The Rimmersman was dressed in his dark armor as though waiting for a fight, and he carried his raven-helm under his arm. He was surrounded by his household guard, a legion of grim, bearded men.
Many of Maegwin’s people now, at this late moment, felt their courage suddenly falter. As Skali’s own Rimmersmen kept to a respectful distance, so, too, did many of Maegwin’s company slow and begin to hang back. But Maegwin and a few others—Old Craobhan, always the loyal servant, was one of them—strode forward. Maegwin moved without fear or hesitation toward the man who had conquered and brutally subjugated her country.
“Who are you, woman?” Skali demanded. His voice was surprisingly soft, with a suggestion of a stutter. Maegwin had only heard him once before—Skali had shouted up at the Hernystiri’s hiding place on the mountain side, trumpeting the gift of her brother Gwythinn’s mutilated body—but that one horrid time was enough: shouting or whispering, Maegwin knew that voice and loathed it. The nose that had given Skali his nickname stood out starkly from a broad, wind-burned face. His eyes were intent and clever. She did not see a hint of any sort of kindness in their depths, but she had not expected to.
Face-to-face at last with the destroyer of her family, she was pleased by her own icy calm. “I am Maegwin,” she proclaimed. “Daughter of Lluth-ubh-Llythinn, the king of Hernystir.”
“Who is dead,” Skali said shortly.
“Whom you killed. I have come to tell you that your time is over. You are to leave this land now, before the gods of Hernystir punish you.”
Skali stared at her carefully. His guardsmen were smirking at the ridiculousness of the situation, but Sharp-nose was not. “And if I do not, king’s daughter?”
“The gods will decide your fate.” She spoke serenely despite the hatred boiling within her. “It will not be a kind one.”
Skali looked at her a moment longer, then gestured to some of his guardsmen. “Pen them. If they resist, kill the men first.” The guards, laughing openly now, moved to surround Maegwin’s people. One of the children began to cry, then more joined in.
As the guards began to lay rough hands on her folk, Maegwin felt her confidence waver. What was happening? When would the gods make things right? She looked around, expecting deadly lightnings to leap from the skies, or the ground to heave and swallow the defilers, but nothing happened. She sought frantically for Diawen. The scryer’s eyes were closed in rapt concentration, her lips soundlessly moving.
“No! Do not touch them!” Maegwin cried as the guardsmen prodded with their spears at some of the crying children, trying to round them back into line with the others. “You must quit this land!” she shouted with all the authority she could summon. “It is the will of the gods!”
But the Rimmersmen paid no attention. Maegwin
’s heart was racing as though it would burst. What was happening? Why had the gods betrayed her? Could this have all been some incomprehensible trick?
“Brynioch!” she cried. “Murhagh One-Arm! Where are you!?”
The skies did not answer.
The light of early dawn was filtering through the treetops, shimmering faintly on the crumbling stones. The company of fifty mounted knights and twice that many foot-soldiers passed yet another ruined wall, a precarious stack of eroded, snow-dusted blocks glazed with brilliant rose and shining lavender which seemed more alive than any mere stones should. They rode by in silence, then began to wind down the hillside toward the icy lake, an expanse of white streaked with blue and gray hanging behind the outermost trees like a painter’s catch-cloth.
Helfgrim, the Lord Mayor, craned his head to look back at the ruins, although it was no little strain to do so with his hands tied to the pommel of a saddle.
“So that is it,” he said softly. “The fairy city.”
“I may need you to lead me to the path,” Fengbald snapped, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t break your arm. I will hear no more about any ‘fairy cities.’”
Helfgrim turned, a hint of a smile curling his puckered mouth. “It is a shame to pass so near such a thing and not look, Duke Fengbald.”
“Look all you want. Just keep your mouth shut.” And he glared at the mounted soldiers, as if daring any of them to share Helfgrim’s interest.
When they reached the shore of the frozen lake, Fengbald looked up, smoothing his unbound black hair away from his face. “Ah. The clouds are gathering. Good.” He turned to Helfgrim. “It would be best of all to have done this in darkness, but I am not such a fool as to trust an old dotard to find his way by night. Besides, Lezhdraka and the rest should be making enough of a ruckus on the far side of the hill by now to keep Josua nicely occupied.”