As Sicard whirled, aghast, Brice aimed a vicious kick at one of the logs burning in the fireplace, sending up a shower of sparks as he, too, turned on the archbishop.
“Loris, I don’t care if you are an archbishop—you’re a pompous ass!” he said, restraining Sicard with an arm across his chest. “No wonder they couldn’t stand you in Gwynedd anymore.”
“Watch your tongue, Trurill!”
“Brice, please!” Caitrin interjected. “Sicard, I beg you.…”
“Your pardon, madame, but he goes too far,” Brice returned. “We’re going to win this one, Loris. If, that is, you and your goddamn Connaiti mercenaries do what they’re supposed to do.”
“They will do what they are paid to do,” Loris said icily. “And if the army under my Lord Sicard does what it is to do, McLain will be lured into a trap from which there is no escape.”
“He’ll not escape!” Sicard snapped.
“Just as that MacArdry boy did not escape, when you were responsible for his security last fall?” Loris retorted.
Young Ithel flushed bright red and jumped to his feet.
“I want Dhugal MacArdry’s blood!” he cried.
“You’ll ride with Brice and harry the Haldane army,” his father replied. “I’ll deal with my dear nephew—and McLain.”
“You may have the boy,” Loris said. “You may even deal with McLain in the field—though I hope you will not have to kill him outright. I have a special fate planned for our dear Deryni bishop-duke. If he’s captured, he belongs to me!”
“You’d best capture him first, then,” Sicard said, turning away in disgust.
They continued to bicker for several moments, tempers wearing ever thinner, until a page’s knock on the door announced the arrival of Bishops Creoda and Judhael, both wearing scarlet copes over their priestly vestments. Old Creoda looked venerable and stately in the full panoply of his bishop’s regalia, but Judhael’s cope seemed more the royal mantle than the ecclesiastical trapping as he came forward to bend and kiss his aunt’s cheek, prematurely silver hair gleaming like a crown already as he passed into the sunlight surrounding her. If he noticed the coolly resentful looks he received from Ithel and Brice, he did not acknowledge them.
“Your Royal Highness,” said Creoda, making Caitrin a solemn bow, “the procession to escort you to the Mass of Leave-Taking is ready to depart. Your loyal subjects await you.”
Flashing Loris a withering glance, Caitrin rose and shook out the folds of her gown.
“Thank you, Bishop Creoda. We are ready to join them.”
As she adjusted the coif veiling her grey hair, Sicard brought her a casket from across the room, kneeling on one knee for her to take out the crown inside. The rubies and sapphires studding the golden circlet flamed in the sunlight, endowing her plain, tired features with a classic and regal dignity as she set it on her head. In that instant she looked every inch the queen she hoped to be, and all in the room sank to their knees to do her homage—even Loris.
“You shall rule a sovereign and reunited Meara, my lady—I swear it!” said Brice, seizing her hand to kiss it fervently.
“Aye, madame, you shall!” came Creoda’s enthusiastic agreement, and Judhael’s, and Loris’ more restrained one.
Then her husband was escorting her from the chamber, Loris and his clerics preceding her, Brice and Ithel bringing up the rear and muttering quietly between them as they watched the proud archbishop go before them.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The horseman lifteth up both the bright sword and the glittering spear.
—Nahum 3:3
The weeks that followed quickly brought home the rigors of war to rebels and Haldane supporters alike. Aware that a joining of the Cassani and Haldane armies would spell an end to Mearan hopes, the Mearan commanders proceeded with their agreed strategy of harassment and potential entrapment, Brice and Ithel harrying and laying waste in the south and east to slow Kelson’s advance while Sicard and the main Mearan army played a game of cat-and-mouse in the north, beginning the maneuvers they hoped eventually would lure Duncan’s Cassani levies into a trap. The first encounters were not what either Gwynedd commander had expected, puzzling Kelson in particular.
“I thought we’d get more traditional resistance here in the south,” he told Morgan, when they had finished repelling yet another nighttime raid on the periphery of their camp. “We’ve never seen more than a few hundred men at a time. I begin to wonder whether we’re dealing with an army at all.”
Morgan set his teeth as he watched a lancer sergeant put down a foundered chestnut mare, one of nearly a dozen horses deliberately hamstrung by the enemy in the skirmish just past. Blood fountained black in the torchlight, and young Brendan buried his face against his stepfather’s side.
“I don’t think we are, my prince,” Morgan said softly, comforting Brendan with a hand stroking his reddish gold hair. “Each new engagement shows signs of different leadership. My guess is that Sicard has split at least part of his army into fast, mobile raiding parties, hoping to wear us down with these hit-and-run raids. It’s a typical border tactic.”
“Sire! Your Grace!” Kelson’s squire, Jatham, approached them at a run. “Duke Ewan took a prisoner, but he’s failing fast. You’d better hurry if you want to get any information out of him!”
They ran with Jatham to where a battle surgeon was working zealously over a ghost-pale man in border leathers and plaids, trying to staunch a gaping belly wound. The man was sobbing for breath, rigid with pain, hands clawing futilely at the wad of bandage the surgeon was pressing to his wound. Archbishop Cardiel knelt at the man’s head, putting away his holy oils, but he drew back, tight-lipped, and shook his head as Kelson thumped to his knees beside him and laid hands along either side of the man’s head.
“He isn’t going to make it, Sire,” said the battle surgeon, Father Lael, catching the man’s wrists and restraining them as Morgan crouched opposite and thrust one hand underneath the blood-soaked bandage, the other slipping smoothly inside the front of the leather jerkin to monitor the pounding heart.
The man’s struggles weakened as Kelson began to block the pain, but it was as much from a deteriorating condition as any easing of his agony. Blood was pulsing from between Morgan’s fingers with every labored heartbeat—so much that Morgan wondered how the man had lasted this long—and in a desperate attempt to at least slow the inevitable, he eased his hand deep into the wound, clear to the last set of knuckles, and began to call up his healing talent.
“It’s no good. I’m losing him,” Kelson whispered, closing his eyes as he tried to force his mind past the barriers of fading consciousness that, even now, were melting into the darker, more tenuous mists of death.
“So am I,” Morgan answered.
He did his best to send healing across the link, and felt the power begin to stir in him; but abruptly he came up short, gasping, as if he were a fish flopping helplessly in a too-small container, and waterless besides. It was too late.
He stopped trying, and the sensation ceased. The man sighed softly, twitched, and was still. Morgan did not attempt to intrude on what Kelson was doing; only blinked and drew himself a long, steadying breath to reorient as he raised his head, paying no mind to the reactions of the others watching.
“So,” Kelson whispered, taut and just a little indignant as he raised his head and blinked, focusing with difficulty on Morgan’s face. “He was Grigor of Dunlea’s man. God, I didn’t know he’d betrayed me, too!”
Sighing, Morgan pulled his hand slowly out of the dead man’s body. The stench of blood and sundered bowels made him particularly grateful for the basin of clean water and the towel that Conall offered him, kneeling expectantly between him and Kelson.
“Are you really surprised at that, my prince, given the border tactics we’ve been seeing?” Morgan murmured, mechanically washing his hands as he continued settling back into normal consciousness.
Duke Ewan crouched down beside the king and held
out a piece of bloodstained tartan.
“Aye, an’ here’s another border token, Sire. D’ye recognize the sett, Alaric?”
At Morgan’s negative, Ewan grimaced and tossed the bloody plaid contemptuously over the dead man’s face.
“MacErskine. An’ one o’ my scouts swears he saw old Tegan O Daire. Sicard’s recruited goddamn outlaws!”
“More likely, Brice of Trurill’s recruited outlaws,” Kelson retorted, getting wearily to his feet. “He and Grigor of Dunlea were always like two kernels on the same ear.”
Morgan said nothing as he dried his hands and laid the towel over Conall’s arm with a nod of thanks, but he relayed his and Kelson’s growing suspicions to Duncan a few nights later, when they made one of their increasingly regular contacts via deep Deryni trancing.
We begin to suspect the main Mearan army isn’t in the south at all, he told Duncan. So far, all we’ve met are skirmish bands—no more than a hundred men or so at a time, and they never strike in the open. Sicard may have their main strength in the north, hunting you.
While Brice and his minions slow you down? Duncan replied. That could well be. We have yet to encounter an actual army ourselves, though we see occasional signs that large bodies of men have passed. They can’t afford to let our two armies meet, though.
That’s for certain, Morgan agreed. Where are you now?
South of Kilarden, well into the great plain. Like you, we’re fighting a will-o’-the-wisp enemy that strikes in the dark and out of the setting sun—Connaiti mercenaries for the most part, though we see the occasional episcopal knight. Jodrell’s gotten it into his head that they’re under joint command of Gorony and Loris, though no one’s seen them yet.
“Then, where is Sicard?” Kelson asked aloud, when the contact had been broken, and he watched Morgan prepare to banish the Wards Major. “If we haven’t seen him, and Duncan hasn’t seen him.…”
Shaking his head to fend off further discussion until he was done, Morgan blew out the candle set on the camp table between them and put on the signet ring he had just used as a focal point for concentration. All around them, barely discernable against the redder glow of a lantern hanging from the tent pole, the dome of the warding he had raised to shield them glowed a cool, gentle silver. It pulsed briefly brighter as he raised both arms to shoulder height on either side, empty hands upraised, and drew a slow, centering breath.
“Ex tenebris te vocavi, Domine,” Morgan whispered, slowly turning his palms downward. “Te vocavi, et lucem dedisti.” Out of darkness have I called Thee, O Lord. I have called Thee, and Thou has given light.
“Nunc dimittis servum tuum secundum verbum tuum in pace. Fiat voluntas tua. Amen.” Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy will. Let it be done according to Thy will.…
As he lowered his arms, the doming light faded and died, leaving only four pairs of dice-sized polished cubes set towerlike, white atop black, at the quarter-points beyond their chairs. Two of the four sets toppled as Kelson leaned down to retrieve them, too precariously perched, on the straw matting of the tent’s floor, to stand steady without the balancing effect of magic. Morgan sat back in his chair and sighed, wearily rubbing the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, as Kelson stowed the ward cubes in their red leather case.
“It gets harder each time, doesn’t it?” Kelson murmured, setting the box beside the blown-out candle.
“No, I just get more tired.” Morgan sighed again and managed a smile. “It’s never been easy, though, and this particular talent was never meant to be used regularly over this kind of distance—at least not this often.”
As he closed his eyes and began to run the beginning steps of yet another fatigue-banishing spell, trying to will away his growing headache as well, Kelson interrupted his train of thought with an explosive sigh.
“Damn Sicard!” the king muttered under his breath. “God, how I wish this stupid war were over!”
Lethargically, Morgan nodded and tried to regain the track of his spell, surrendering to an uncontrollable yawn. When, as he tried to keep from putting head down then and there and simply passing out, he nearly knocked the ward cubes off the table, Kelson reached across to seize a handful of his tunic.
“Are you all right?”
Morgan nodded yes, but he could not seem to make his eyes focus on Kelson’s face.
“Just a little after-reaction,” he murmured, and yawned again. “It’s been building over the past week. I don’t sleep well after these sessions.”
“And of course you wouldn’t dream of telling anyone, would you?” Kelson released him only long enough to come around and hoist him to his feet, royal hands set firmly under one elbow.
“Too much fatigue-banishing, isn’t it?” the king went on indignantly, as he read the evidence at close range and propelled Morgan toward the camp bed set opposite his own. “And you were about to do it again, weren’t you? Well, you’re going to sleep tonight if I have to fight you every step of the way.”
Morgan managed a wry smile as he let Kelson help him to the bed, but his knees all but buckled under him, and he lay down far faster than he had intended.
“No fight, my prince. I’ll save that for the Mearans,” he promised, a groan escaping his lips as he opened his mind to the king and let the pressure go.
“That’s right,” Kelson whispered, touching fingertips lightly to Morgan’s forehead. “Release it all and sleep. You’ve done enough for a while. You aren’t the only Deryni around here, you know. In the future, I’m going to insist you let me share more of the burden.”
Not if it impairs you, came Morgan’s groggy protest, only barely sensed, even mind-to-mind.
We’ll discuss it when you’re rested properly, Kelson replied. Now go to sleep.
And Morgan did.
They moderated their contacts with Duncan after that, letting Kelson carry the link alone from time to time and alternating the energy drain so that neither was too depleted from any single operation.
Meanwhile, the uncertainty of the tactical situation only increased, and frustration along with it.
“How can we fight an enemy we bloody never see!” Kelson complained, as they skirted the mountains west of Droghera and headed north, still encountering only token harassment from isolated war-bands. “Having two thousand men doesn’t do us a lot of good if we can only use a few hundred at a time.”
Nor, as they penetrated deeper into the Mearan heartland, was the enemy’s increasing scorched-earth policy reassuring.
“We haven’t any real provisioning problem just now,” General Remie reported at a staff meeting one evening, as he and Kelson’s other key commanders gathered outside the royal tent. “As long as we can find forage for the animals, we can feed the men until, say, Midsummer or a little later with what we’re carrying. This large an army moves slowly, though. I wonder whether we might not be better off to take a lesson from the enemy and break into smaller, more manageable warbands. In this part of the country, we could do it with very little danger, and far more effectiveness.”
The general staff thought it a fine idea, and Kelson agreed. By the next morning, the army had been parcelled out among four semi-autonomous commanders: Duke Ewan, Generals Remie and Gloddruth, and Morgan, Kelson riding with the latter. By the end of the day, the war-bands had dispersed half a day’s march apart, stretched across the line of advance. Regular couriers kept the units in touch, and skirmishes with the formerly phantom enemy began to yield more definite results, and to produce more desperate countermeasures.
“I’m afraid we’re going to see more and more of this,” Morgan said to the king, one sultry June morning when they had been gone from Rhemuth for a full month.
They were riding a track through yet another field burned to keep it from Haldane use, approaching the outskirts of what once had been a prosperous village of some size. The stubble still smoldered to either side of the track, but smoke curled from behind soot-smudged walls and reeking
roofs as well.
“I think this is the worst so far,” Kelson agreed.
Thus it had been for the past week, enemy devastation no longer confined to ruined fields and ransacked storehouses, as in the beginning, but now being extended to the very citizenry of Meara. Each day had found the Haldane warbands passing through more gutted villages and towns, peopled by ever more pitiful refugees—common folk, the ultimate losers in any war—who must try to scratch out a living after both sets of soldiers were gone, and cared little what king sat on what throne, so long as they and their children might live unmolested and without hunger.
Kelson could feel the eyes of the survivors upon him as he, Morgan, and a small escort rode into the town, Jatham leading with the bright Haldane banner. A lancer unit had already swept in ahead of them to secure the area and deal with any enemy stragglers, and the townspeople were beginning to appear in doorways and windows. An old man spat at the sight of them, and a hollow-eyed woman suckling a baby at her breast glared at Kelson from the shattered doorframe of a burned-out cottage.
Sick at heart, Kelson lowered his eyes in helpless shame for his warrior caste, wishing there were any other way than war to keep the peace.
“This is almost the worst part of war,” he murmured to Morgan, as they let their greathorses pick their way through the rubble-strewn street. “Why do the common people always have to suffer for the folly of their masters?”
“A grim but constant trapping of war in every time, my prince,” Morgan replied. “If we were as desperate as the Mearans apparently are becoming, we might well—”
Suddenly he stiffened and broke off, standing in his stirrups to peer ahead.
“What’s wrong?” said Kelson, following his gaze.
At the end of the street, a score of lancers’ mounts waited by the foot of steps leading to the entrance of a modest but noble church, the building giving way to cloister walls and a domestic range off to the left. The wall was breached in several places, a gate of iron grillework dangling crazily from its hinges, and smoke curled lazily upward from the cloistral buildings beyond.
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