The last syllable fell away, bringing horror which unravelled into a horrible, jerking spasm. Diegan squeezed his eyes closed, undone.
‘Daelion pity,’ he wrenched out. The final breath past his lips ripped through tears of regret, for his bequest could never reach Lysaer s’Ilessid now. His dedicated love and devotion, every pain he had tried to spare his liege and his friend, had all passed for naught.
‘Fatemaster witness, that was ill done,’ murmured Caolle. He raised the coiffed head of Avenor’s Lord Com mander from his knee and laid him to rest on turned earth. Habit let him dash the wet blood from his knuckles on his leathers; no stranger to death, he watched in resignation as a fly settled on the trickle of bright scarlet that bled through teeth and lips, still twitching in spasm from a desperately fought passage out of life.
The swathe of shadow across his shoulders shifted as the Companion scout who cast it stepped aside to spit in the dust. ‘How was I to know the murdering dandy was planning to call the retreat?’
Caolle twisted aside from Diegan’s body. His hard gaze bored up into a face too young, too bitter, too scarred by early carnage to embrace the concept of mercy. ‘You couldn’t know, lad. Now it’s too late.’ Drenched in sweat and scraped in a dozen places from his mad rush down the scarp, the clan war captain completed a reflexive tally of the slain, shot down in their wretched scrabble over wrecked earth to gain firm footing. One in a squire’s tunic barely showed the faintest first shading of a beard. Caolle sighed. Ath knew, he’d seen worse in his time.
But the ending an arrow had bought his townborn counterpart now left him bitter. Burdened by queer regret, Caolle straightened up to leave.
‘I only pray you learn how to pity,’ he said to Jieret’s Companion. ‘It might one day save your life from becoming what mine has, a futile pursuit of old hatred.’
‘You always said it’s the hate that keeps us alive,’ the scout returned.
‘Once, I believed that was true.’ In the sad recognition he faced a younger version of himself, Caolle raked back a stickied tangle of slate-coloured hair. ‘I’ve since learned there are better ways.’ But sooner than any, he knew: if not for his service to the Prince of Rathain, the lesson would have slipped his grasp entirely.
The war captain who had survived the brutal massacre at Tal Quorin, whose very tactics had helped decimate those ranks of Etarrans, found a priceless irony in the thought that, at the end, his hope and a citybred Lord Commander’s last wish should be alike to the very bone.
He, too, felt that if his liege came to die, everything he had struggled to accomplish in life would be rendered brutal and meaningless.
Arithon s’Ffalenn was young Jieret’s legacy. Without him, hope died for the northern clans. Rathain’s old blood could never emerge from their lives as hunted fugitives to reclaim their heritage if no prince lived to be crowned under Fellowship auspices at Ithamon.
To the scout still stiffly awaiting orders, the war captain said in tart dismissal, ‘Unless you want to become a cinder in yon upstart princeling’s accursed fireballs, we’d best take cover on the ridge.’
Late day threw slanting, orange light across the vale of Dier Kenton. A blue-tinged, premature twilight lapped the scoured face of the scarp, cloven down to its steely flanks of shale. The surface offered only brittle footholds. All the known, safe trails to the passes were utterly scoured away.
Of five teams of scouts sent out to seek an alternate route, two came back not at all. One pair limped in with losses and the others brought relentless bad news.
They reined in lathered horses before Prince Lysaer s’Ilessid, chalk-faced and hawking up dust. ‘No path, your Grace. The day’s lost. We’ve been blocked in by the slide.’
Climbers on ropes might make the attempt on the precipice, but no means existed to move armed men and eighty spent mounts over the cliffs to find the passes. Lysaer s’Ilessid regarded the sheer walls, deaf to the echoes of stamping horses, the murmurs of complaint from the ranks. No matter how determined, no matter how brave, his defeat at Dier Kenton Vale was complete. All the powers of his gift could not offer a way to reconnect the royal company with the troops who fought to win through, who even this moment pressed the attack to pin Arithon’s forces against the mailed teeth of a war-host which no longer existed.
One hundred men and the ninety-six odd survivors who had straggled in after the rockslide were all he had left at hand. The prince reined back a raw need to swear. A troop of a thousand in fit form would have been too few to cover such a broad sweep of open territory. The enemy could slip through their lines at whim after nightfall; Lysaer could not be everywhere with his gift, to safeguard each sentry from archers.
The horses were spent; the men, heartsore and grieving. The bare dell where the company gathered offered neither water nor safety to pitch camp. Lysaer knew this, just as he was aware of the surreptitious glances of his officers, who fretted and watched him, but dared raise no voice to address him.
The look on his face hammered iron, he sat his saddle in stillness before the razed face of the rim wall.
Never in his life had he dreamed of a downfall on this scale.
The campaigns and the ships his royal father had wasted to s’Ffalenn predation on Dascen Elur were insignificant before today’s toll of dead at Dier Kenton. Worse, perhaps, was the way his given gift of light had been hobbled and rendered helpless. Throughout, he had been unable to act in defence of his troops. Rancour stabbed deep, for that. Somewhere beyond these rotten scarps of shale, for cold surety, Arithon s’Ffalenn still worked shadows and sorcery. His heart knew no word for mercy. With total impunity, he would wreak what ruin he could upon the rest of the allied warhost.
Diegan would have understood his liege lord’s smouldering rage; Avenor’s bold Lord Commander, found dead of a clan scout’s arrow on the same violated earth, when Ath’s own miracle had spared him untouched from the first fury of Arithon’s rockfall. Lysaer felt as stone, beyond tears or regret. If this moment of grim impotence made him burn for revenge, he was never the fool to show weakness before the eyes of disheartened men.
Turn about,’ he said, his voice burnished level, and his trappings filmed over with bitter dust. ‘We must withdraw altogether from Dier Kenton Vale. Tomorrow we’ll seek another route past the ridge to regroup with Lord Keldmar s’Brydion and the garrison divisions out of Jaelot.’
Lysaer wheeled his cream charger, every inch the unconquered prince. For Arithon s’Ffalenn had not won the day, never so long as his s’Ilessid enemy was left alive to take the field and men sworn to rid the land of evil remained whole enough to muster and march.
The officer of the royal guard had the temerity to ask whether the beaten remains of the warhost could be assured of retreat back to Forthmark.
His question received the freezing glare of Avenor’s prince front on. ‘We shall not be going back. Never as long as we have living allies from Jaelot and Alestron left to fight. What happened here was no accident.’
In a candour that held no apology for the turned ground, the razed stone, the doom of all his proud war-host, Lysaer added in terrible quiet, ‘Twenty-eight thousand men died because one sorcerer lured them onto trapped ground with clever tactics, then pulled down a mountain to kill them. There will be no retreat and no safety. Not until this one ruthless criminal has been overthrown and cut dead.’
As his weary war-horse stumbled over a loose fall of shale, the prince gave on the reins from numbed habit. Above the metallic skitter of hooves and the rattling chink of loose rock, he summed up in ironclad resolve. ‘Had I the same number to spend over again, I would do so for the same cause. Our losses here prove the true scope of the danger. With all of Athera set at risk, how dare I count a few thousand deaths as anything less than worthwhile? There can be no end. Never until Arithon s’Ffalenn is fully and finally brought down.’
Field of Fear
Assured by Caolle’s scouts that the slide had effectively bottled the remains o
f Lysaer’s assault force behind the cliffs of Dier Kenton, Dakar the Mad Prophet rolled his eyes heavenward and mumbled a disjointed prayer of relief. At least one aspect of Arithon’s damnable scrying had seen itself through without mishap. With the frontline threat of Desh-thiere’s curse thwarted through natural barriers, there now remained only the two garrison companies the Prince of the West had appointed to corner Arithon’s forces from behind. These were engaged in mounting a sweeping advance on the slopes behind the rim wall of the vale.
The commander entrusted with one arm of the flanking assault hailed from the city of Jaelot. Shadows and archers would hamper his bid to close access to the corries from the south.
To Dakar fell the joy of dispatching the north wing of troops, led onto the field by Keldmar s’Brydion, brother to the Duke of Alestron.
Since the morning’s first signal to march, the hardbitten mercenaries had pressed in remorseless formation over gullies and fractured ground, harassed by spurious ambushes upon their scouts, and picked off singly by tribal bowmen. These would pause in the brush brakes and loose their one shot, then slip unseen through the scree. The duke’s seasoned captains had been stung by small losses until even the most stolid of veterans were wont to fire crossbows into the furze when wind roused a ruffle of movement. They thought back on the thundering interval while the ground had quaked to some distant, cataclysmic disturbance and swore as uneasiness chewed their nerves. Through the shadeless afternoon, they fought and bled and advanced, hating the empty furlongs of baked moss and tough scrub grass, grazed the incongruous green of new velvet in the hollows where sheep had been pastured.
The rise toward the north pass from Dier Kenton Vale raked up in forbidding, open rock, razed clean of brush by leaching summer winds and harsh gales. Cover was non-existent. Each step a man took scattered rattling shale, and the lowering light steeped every pocket of rock with shadow which could mask concealed archers. Alestron’s men-at-arms met the challenge in grim confidence, determined in discipline as the landscape was hostile to their presence.
Curled like a dried leaf in a cleft near the summit, Dakar admired the drill as ten polished companies of pikemen re-formed to begin the last ascent. Their sharp, block phalanxes rearranged into wedges, with fanned lines of armed bowmen and skirmishers sent ahead to clear the gulches before them.
Keldmar disdained the finicky use of horns. His orders rang out in bullish shouts, interspersed with oaths and obscenities. Despite his pungent temper, the s’Brydion army moved into place like oiled clockwork. Their staff sergeants were brutes with a deathless love of fighting, to whom the noise and gut effort of war was the very sinew of life.
The cohorts seethed upslope like boiled vengeance. Dakar puffed flushed cheeks until his beard bristled up like a blowfish. Beyond the passing malice of a bar brawl, he had small love for risks that favoured the chance of getting maimed. At drinking or dice, or for charming paid wenches, he would have had a fair contest against Keldmar s’Brydion. On a field of battle, the odds made a fool’s wager, unbalanced enough that the Fatemaster’s furies would laugh themselves stupid in prostration.
The ultimate bungle, the Mad Prophet thought. A crazed man’s machinations had ensconced him here with an armed band of clan scouts whose lives all relied on his wits. His Fellowship master would have buried his face in his hands and groaned for their faith in the ridiculous.
A scuffle over rock, then a clipped password to a scout. The last tribal archer scrambled in, breathless for respite. To the Mad Prophet, in passing, he threw the tired comment, ‘It’s high time you came. We can’t stay them on this slope. No cranny a strayed sheep could hide in.’
Dakar rolled him a grimace, then said to the clansman who lingered, prepared to become the bearer of return messages, ‘Tell Arithon to allow me two hours.’
‘That’s sundown,’ the scout said, his wolfish eyes on the immense force of mercenaries who tackled the scarp in practised order. ‘You’ve cut things damned fine. If the advance isn’t stemmed before nightfall, our people are going to start dying.’
No matter how skilled, shepherd archers could not use bows in the dark. Once cornered in hand-to-hand battle, the s’Brydion mercenaries would hack their small numbers to ribbons.
‘Well, here’s thanks in advance for your proud vote of confidence,’ Dakar said, morose and punch-drunk with fatigue.
He scrubbed sweaty palms upon his tunic and chafed. At the moment he felt good for nothing beyond craving for pillows in a cathouse beside some sultry doxy. The wistful heat of wishes could scarcely stir him to desire; not with hard Vastmark shale chewing dents in his backside, and the withering sun limning the hungry steel teeth of the s’Brydion warhost.
No imagination was required to picture how Keldmar would rejoice to see one plump, dishonest gem peddler impaled arse down on a pike.
Inspired to a wicked bent of afterthought, Dakar smothered down a chortle. To the dubious scout who awaited, he said, Take my message. If you don’t want to spoil your humourless thinking, don’t for a second look back.’
The clansman went his way, dour and unmollified, while Dakar gazed with fresh interest downslope.
The troops from Alestron could scarcely be pleased. Theirs was an honourless assignment, to labour in sweating files to scale a face of stripped rock, then engage a sneaking band of shepherds scarcely worth blisters to dispatch. Sun-baked and footsore from a punishing day in full war gear, pricked at each step by whining, small tempests of hostile arrows, many of their number would be inwardly longing to quit the field for missed comforts.
Others would be irksome and cantankerous, hot for a thumping bloody skirmish with living foemen they could hack to twitching rags to relieve a lethal measure of frustration.
Dakar bit his lip, his eyes half-closed in anticipation. The spells which exacted the least effort were fashioned illusions, the inconvenient, tangled little bindings designed to hook a man’s thoughts and sow from them the dreaming recreation of whatever lust held his heart.
From the ground underfoot, the Mad Prophet selected a stub of shale to use as a stylus. The runes he scribed like tiny seeds upon the air broke into motes, a haze fine as spider’s silk caught to a sheen of dimmed silver. The light sparked and multiplied and strewed on the wind, a scarcely visible dusting of energies that by their drawn nature would gravitate and form to the dictates of human desires. For effect, and by way of fair warning, the Mad Prophet laced his finished work through the blank coils of the fogbanks which gathered to descend and girdle the heights after sundown.
In typical fashion for all his maligned practice, some permission or small cantrip skimmed awry. The spell assumed an unruly life of its own and unreeled like blight to gnarl the peace of Ath’s order.
Downslope, the men-at-arms under Alestron’s banner marched squinting against the stabbing glare off scoured shale. Their feet were blistered, their backs sore from the rub of gambeson and chain mail. Thirsty and sweating, held to position by short-tempered commanders, their cohorts of mercenaries ploughed ahead in dogged competence. The first startled shout from the skirmish line bristled them into close shield rings, ranked fifty abreast and three deep down the rise.
Which snapping, precise discipline did them small good as an uncanny mist fanned across the mountainside before them. It engulfed the rocks just ahead of their position, glutinously thick and glimmering a sickly, pale green.
While men murmured and shrank and fingered talismans bought for small silver from dealers in arcane charms and herbals, Keldmar took a brash step forward. Just shy of the gesticulating vanguard he poised, hooked out his broadsword, and sliced at the yielding green mass.
Nothing happened. He repeated the move, then added a whistling swing, yanked off his left gauntlet, and skimmed bare fingers down the steel. The metal proved neither hot nor cold to his touch.
‘Sorcerer’s illusion,’ he pronounced in contempt to the staff officers attendant on his orders. ‘Foolish, to think we’d be cowed.’ He hai
led the veteran in charge of the advance scouts. ‘Send in your best team for a look. If they find nothing and return, we press on as planned.’
The wait passed in uneasy fidgeting. Men checked their weapons, tightened straps on their helms, or shrugged to rub pressure sores under the shoulders of their mail. No sound creased the quiet beyond the distant whistle of a wyvern; no movement beyond the heat waves rippling off day-warmed rock. Twitching off the hunch that they were as sitting targets, captains reviewed their divisions and watched Keldmar, who scratched his chin and with rankled impatience eyed the mist that never moved.
The scouts returned, unscathed and puzzled. ‘My lord, we found nothing. Just more queer fog and sharp boulders. The sun’s out and clear just four hundred yards higher up.’
‘Well then,’ said Keldmar, satisfied. He strode forward in bearish distaste, first reduced to a hulking outline, then to a blurred shadow within the bilious green mist.
‘Step lively, soldiers!’ shouted the captain by the standard-bearer. Too brave to abandon their lord to his own devices, the whole mass of the army had no choice but to muster shrinking nerves and try to follow.
The mist had no scent, no texture beyond the expected clammy pall of heavy moisture. Tinged gruesome colours in its sickly embrace, men started and swore and made grumbling complaint to bolster their faltering courage. The lack of visibility masked their officers’ view of the flanking phalanxes. If some soldiers flinched from odd flickers of light, half-seen at the edge of strained vision, if now and again the chink of loose rock beneath someone’s step raised an infinitesimal spark of glimmerance, soon enough they decided the uncanny gloom was harmless. Their talk lapsed to jokes and their thoughts drifted off into boredom.
Dakar’s insidious tangle of seals fixed on longings for distant wives and wenches; of dinner at a trestle and a foaming draught of ale in the camaraderie of a warm taproom; of a soft feather mattress after a hot bath, and uninterrupted sleep. Reality blurred and daydreams became manifest. The next thing men knew, they saw what they craved, in powerful, alluring fits of vision.