Crown of Vengeance (Dragon Prophecy)

by James Mallory Mercedes Lackey

  “You need Lightborn for that, not warriors,” Nadalforo said. “I can guess at his strategy, though. Mangiralas is a Less House, but a wealthy one. They go to war rarely—they have what they want, and what everyone else wants, too.”

  “Horses,” Princess Nothrediel said.

  Nadalforo inclined her head. “And they have the Summer Truce, to which War Princes come and where tongues wag freely. Aranviorch probably knows more about what’s going on among the Hundred Houses—your pardon, my lord, the Ninety-and-Nine—than anyone else.”

  “No,” Vieliessar said slowly. “The Astromancer knows at least as much. The commonfolk from every domain come to the Sanctuary. I grant you, children know little of the treaties and alliances their War Princes may enact, but they know if it has been a good year or a bad.”

  “On their farms,” Rithdeliel said, with heavy emphasis.

  “The farms tithe,” Vieliessar said. “And the nobles come to the Sanctuary for Healing, and they, too, speak unguardedly.”

  “We aren’t fighting the Sanctuary,” Gunedwaen said.

  “Not today,” Vieliessar agreed. “So. Aranviorch knows much. And of his knowledge, he wishes to delay battle, thinking I shall not be here in two years’ time. I refuse. What next?”

  “If he meant to surrender on your terms, he would just have accepted them and been done,” Rithdeliel said. “You’re already nearly on his border. He doesn’t have time to send for help. And Mangiralas isn’t client of any of the High Houses anyway.”

  “And no one attacks them,” Nadalforo said, “because of the horses. No one wants to risk offending its War Prince and being shut out of the Horse Fair.”

  “Since we’re going to attack, where will they meet us?” Vieliessar asked.

  “Here,” Nadalforo said, pointing to an area on the map. “The Plains of Naralkhimar, where the Fair is held. Flat, good for fighting, and a sennight from the keep. He’ll want to keep the fighting as far from there as possible.”

  “Defeat him there and push him back toward his keep. The closer he gets to it, the more likely he is to surrender,” Rithdeliel said.

  “A good plan,” Vieliessar said.

  * * *

  “It isn’t what you plan to do, is it?” Nadalforo said. She’d lingered after the others had left. “Sit on the Plains and let him hammer you while he waits for reinforcements?”

  “As a matter of fact, it isn’t,” Vieliessar said. “While he’s fighting my army on the Plains, I’m going to take his keep and his horses. And then we’ll see if he’s willing to be reasonable.”

  “If you can perform such a miracle, he’d be a fool not to be,” Nadalforo said.

  “I shall require your help,” Vieliessar said, and Nadalforo smiled.

  * * *

  Three sennights later, Heir-Princess Maerengiel and Ladyholder Faurilduin, who was also Aranviorch’s Chief Warlord, met Vieliessar’s army on the Plains of Naralkhimar. Mangiralas must be very confident of the victory, Vieliessar thought, seeing the Heir-Princess’s banner, for only two children had been born of Aranviorch’s and Faurilduin’s long marriage: twins, a boy and a girl. The girl, younger by a score of heartbeats, was heir.

  Virry and her archers stood unseen between the destriers awaiting the charge of the enemy knights. When the horns rang out and the drums thundered, the knights of Oronviel did not move.

  The enemy charged anyway. Their center was mounted on black horses, all as alike as grains of wheat, and their coats were dark as shadows in the dawn light.

  Let them stand, let them stand, Vieliessar thought, her thoughts almost a prayer, for stillness in the face of an enemy’s charge went against every instinct of the komen. And let my infantry survive as well, she added, for there was no place for them to stand save in the ranks of mounted knights, and no direction for them to retreat but between the galloping destriers when her own line moved.

  Closer came the enemy, and closer, and the ground shook with the pounding of hooves. Then, just as Vieliessar began to fear that Virry had left it too late, she heard a shrill whistle and the archers stepped forward, moving as one. Moving with quiet precision, they nocked arrows, loosed them, drew more arrows from their quivers, nocked, aimed, and loosed again.

  The first rank of Mangiralas’s charge dissolved into chaos. Horses fell, dead or wounded, flinging knights from the saddle with as much force as if the animals had hit an invisible wall. The banner of the Heir-Princess fell to the ground.

  The riders in the ranks immediately behind the lead knights collided with the downed animals. More horses fell, more knights were unhorsed. Some riders tried to jump the tangle of bodies and a few made it. Most did not. Virry and her archers turned their attention to the knights. Anyone afoot became an immediate target. Through an eye-slit, above the armored collet, through the narrow flexible plates of armor which protected the midsection, under the arm—anywhere the armor was weak, an arrow from the walking bow could pierce it to wound or kill.

  The forward momentum of Mangiralas had been halted. Now Vieliessar gave the signal and Bethaerian blew her horn. The call was taken up by other knights-herald throughout Vieliessar’s army, and Virry’s infantry used those few precious seconds to begin their escape.

  Then the army charged.

  The Oronviel cavalry split immediately, galloping around the tangled mass of dead and wounded. If everything went perfectly, Oronviel would attack from behind before Mangiralas recovered from the shock of its disrupted charge.

  But even as Vieliessar’s knights galloped forward, the Mangiralas forces were retreating and reforming with fluid grace.

  It was the beginning of a long day of fighting. Vieliessar’s forces suffered brutal casualties, for the Mangiralas komen were brilliant riders, and fought with the fury of those who had suddenly discovered war was a costly and terrible event. Destrier and knight moved as one creature, and each taille seemed to know the thoughts of all its members without need for warhorn or signal call. Vieliessar had advantage in numbers, which was all that kept her casualties from being heavier than they were, for exhausted companies of her knights could leave the field for a candlemark or two of rest. But when Mangiralas sounded the retreat a candlemark before sunset, she was glad enough to signal the nearest knight-herald to echo it.

  That was not Bethaerian. She had not seen the captain of her guard for a long time. Her banner was now carried by Janondiel.

  She took reports from her captains as Avedana helped her out of her armor. How many dead, how many wounded, how many horses killed, how many knights could fight again tomorrow. She’d barely pulled off the last piece of her armor when one of the sentries came to tell her Mangiralas had sent a messenger. She dropped into a chair, barefoot, filthy, still in her aketon and mail shirt.

  “By the Light, I hope they come to offer Mangiralas’s surrender,” she groaned to Aradreleg. “Let the messenger of Mangiralas enter,” she said.

  The messenger who entered wore, as she expected, the green robe of a Lightborn.

  “I am Camaibien Lightbrother,” he said. “I come from Faurilduin Warlord, who is wife to the War Prince of Mangiralas.”

  “Greetings to you, Lightbrother,” Vieliessar said. “I am sorry you see us in such disarray, but the battle is but recently over, as you know. Tea? Cider? No? Then I would hear your words at once.”

  “Ladyholder Faurilduin demands you withdraw from Mangiralas at once, that you deliver to her to do with as she chooses those who unlawfully slew our knights with arrows as if they were beasts of the forest, that you pay to Mangiralas such teind as War Prince Aranviorch shall choose to assess, and that you acknowledge you have offered battle in bad faith, outside the Code of Battle.”

  “No,” Vieliessar said.

  There was a moment of silence. Camaibien Lightbrother looked very much as if he wanted to ask her if she actually meant that, but restrained himself. “Have you any further message for Lady Faurilduin?” he asked at last, his voice crisp with anger.

&
nbsp; “Say to her that Mangiralas is still welcome to surrender, on the terms I have previously offered. And tell her if she has slain any prisoners she holds, I shall kill her whether she surrenders or not,” Vieliessar said.

  “I … shall give her your words, Lord Vieliessar,” Camaibien said tonelessly.

  She waved her hand, giving him leave to go.

  Komen Bethaerian was not found among the living, or the wounded, or among the dead on the field, nor did Mangiralas send a further message to say it surrendered.

  * * *

  On the second day of fighting, Vieliessar stationed Virry’s archers at the deosil edge of the field, among several companies of knights positioned as if they were a relief force. This time the infantry had palfreys waiting behind the companies of knights, for the archers were far from the camp. When the call to charge was given, the knights of Mangiralas moved forward at a sedate—even cautious—walk.

  When the archers began firing on their flank, Vieliessar and her knights charged Mangiralas at a full gallop. They struck for the tuathal side of the ranks of horsemen, out of range of the archers. Mangiralas’s center tried to take advantage of that, thinking they could strike Oronviel’s midsection while it was unprepared for battle, but the rear ranks of the Oronviel cavalry weren’t just blindly charging after the knights ahead of them. At the signal, they wheeled and struck the center of Mangiralas’s line head-on. And as soon as the archers were away and safe, the “reserve” companies took the field, butchering their way through Mangiralas’s deosil flank.

  That evening, Mangiralas fought all the way to dusk. They did not send an envoy.

  “We can’t keep doing this,” Aradreleg said that night, when Avedana had finished removing Vieliessar’s armor. “We can’t!”

  “How many wounded?” Vieliessar asked, wincing as she felt her ribs. They’d been bruised yesterday and she’d been hit in the same place today. She was only lucky her armor had held.

  “Too many,” Aradreleg said grimly. “Here, let me—”

  “I’m fine,” Vieliessar said.

  “If you’ve learned to Heal yourself, I’m Queen of the Starry Hunt,” Aradreleg snapped.

  “You’re exhausted,” Vieliessar protested, but let Aradreleg have her way. She had to fight again tomorrow. “How many of our wounded have died?”

  “None—so far,” Aradreleg said. “But everyone injured, stays injured. We don’t have enough Lightborn for anything else.”

  “It will be over soon, one way or the other,” Vieliessar said wearily.

  “You’re right about that,” Aradreleg said. “Because in another day or two, you’ll be outnumbered.”

  * * *

  On the third day, when the call to charge was given, the two lines of knights faced each other and nobody moved. Then someone in the Oronviel lines laughed and Mangiralas charged. Their line was ragged, and their knights startled at shadows, jerking at their destrier’s reins so the animals danced sideways, but this time no archers attacked them.

  Today Mangiralas devoted all its energy to the banner of Oronviel and the War Prince in silver armor who fought beneath it. Three times in the first candlemarks of fighting Vieliessar was unhorsed as her destrier was slain beneath her—she lost Sorodiarn, Grillet, and another whose name she never learned. Each time a horse fell beneath her, one of her guard gave up a mount so she might ride. Each time, Vieliessar could see Ladyholder Faurilduin only a few yards distant, fighting desperately to reach her and end her life before she could gain the saddle again.

  Near midday, when the fighting was at its heaviest, Vieliessar heard a flurry of signal calls. Mangiralas, calling for a new attack. They’ve figured it out, she thought, already too exhausted for anything but determination. Any prisoners they’d taken—and she must hope Mangiralas held prisoners, for both Princess Nothrediel and Prince Monbrauel were missing—could have given up the bit of information that would have let Faurilduin learn that Oronviel’s camp held many wounded, and few Lightborn to tend them.

  But Vieliessar had known her secret would eventually be guessed, and so today she had held back two hundred horse and all her infantry and kept them close beside her camp.

  She hoped they would be enough.

  The press of the fighting was so heavy no messenger could reach her to tell her what had happened. When Mangiralas next signaled, she was so dazed with fatigue that at first all she could think was that she’d failed, that Mangiralas was signaling for a parley-halt to discuss the terms of her surrender. But as the call repeated over and over again, she finally made sense of it.

  They’re retreating.

  We’ve won.

  * * *

  As they rode back to the camp, she saw the bodies of those who died defending the camp—and attacking it.

  Horses—some dead, some panting pitifully as they lay dying from an archer’s arrow. Knights dead of sword cuts, or crushed beneath a horse, or battered to death by a destrier’s hooves.

  And among them, bodies that were not clad in bright armor.

  “Ah … no,” Vieliessar said, sighing. The infantry were to have retreated once they’d taken their toll of Mangiralas’s knights. But some had not. They’d stayed, continuing to loose their deadly arrows at the enemy as the moments in which they could escape trickled away. Then, even when their arrows were gone, they had not run, for Vieliessar saw none clad in the chain mail and surcoat of infantry who had died with their back to the enemy.

  “All honor to them,” Orannet said quietly.

  “All honor,” Vieliessar echoed.

  When she reached it, she saw that her camp was untouched.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  AN EMPIRE BOUGHT WITH MAGIC

  Houses rise from Low to High, fall from High to Low, flee into the East, or are born from ambition and the fires of war. And whether a thing of scant centuries or able to boast a founding lost in the shadows of the fall of Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor, every one is the whole. If all the Hundred Houses save one were to vanish like mist in morning sun, nothing would be lost, so long as one House survived.

  —A History of the Hundred Houses

  “You’ve looked better,” Nadalforo said, walking into Vieliessar’s pavilion.

  “I’ve been on the field for three days,” Vieliessar answered. “They killed my horse. Three times,” she clarified. She was so tired she was light-headed.

  Nadalforo picked up the pitcher on the table and sniffed at it to check its contents, then poured Vieliessar a cup of watered beer. “Drink this,” she said. “It must have been some horse, but never mind. You have thousands to choose from now. You could even ride Aranviorch into battle, but I don’t advise it.”

  Vieliessar started to giggle with relief and exhaustion, then covered her mouth with her hand to stop herself. “You got him? Them? All of them?” she asked. Beer was better than water when one had been laboring long and hard in the hot sun, but even diluted, it made her giddy.

  “We got Aranviorch out of his keep—not that hard, once you’re inside they think you belong there—and your Lightborn got everything with hooves within fifty miles of the keep. Aranviorch is here somewhere. The horses are heading for Ivrithir. I hope you trust Atholfol.”

  “Yes. We won.”

  “Don’t sound so surprised, your lords will think you didn’t intend to,” Nadalforo advised. “Now I’m going to bed. The only time I’ve been out of the saddle in the last ten days was when we were breaking into the keep.”

  “Go,” Vieliessar said. “And Nadalforo … thank you.”

  “I am your sworn vassal,” Nadalforo said, bowing.

  * * *

  It had been an outrageous gamble, but the only true way of winning not merely a battle, but a war. Aranviorch wished to fight far from his Great Keep to protect his herds, for they were the wealth and power of Mangiralas. It didn’t matter how many of his nobles Vieliessar slew or captured if she did not have the War Prince himself. And he could easily gain allies against her if he used h
is herds to bargain with.

  So Vieliessar had conceived a double trap. She’d sent nearly all her Lightborn to bespell—and steal—every single animal Aranviorch owned. And she’d sent her former mercenaries to take his keep and bring him to her. Doing that had left her with barely enough Lightborn to keep those seriously wounded in battle from dying—and not enough to Heal the less badly injured so they could fight again the next day.

  But I have Mangiralas’s Lightborn now, she thought. And I have Mangiralas.

  Victory left her—as she thought it always would—mourning those who had died so she could gain it. She could not say the cost was too high. But it saddened her. She sent Harwing Lightbrother to the Mangiralas camp to summon Ladyholder Faurilduin to make her formal surrender. Harwing had never done envoy work before, and he was so nervous that Aradreleg finally wrote out for him what he must say. He regarded the sheet of vellum owlishly before nodding and saying he would say it off just as it was written. He walked into the center pole of the pavilion as he was leaving, and then simply fled.

  “Will your Storysingers include that, when they make their songs of this day?” Aradreleg asked, trying hard not to laugh.

  “I don’t think they’d believe it,” Vieliessar said gravely. “Oh, and now I must go and see War Prince Aranviorch.” She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.

  “No,” Aradreleg corrected. “First you will bathe—you smell like a wet horse—and then you will eat, and then I will find Brinnie and see if she knows the location of the chest with your gowns and second-best jewels. Then you will dress, and then you will have War Prince Aranviorch brought to you.”

  * * *

  “Where is my son?” Aranviorch demanded the moment he was brought into Vieliessar’s pavilion. “Prince Gatriadde—where is he?”

  “Why do you think I have him?” Vieliessar answered, just as bluntly.

  “Because he was taken from the keep when I was. I want him brought here at once!”