“What are they doing over there?” Vieliessar demanded irritably, glaring at Nilkaran’s camp in the distance.
“Sleeping,” Thoromarth said simply. “Why not? Nilkaran doesn’t expect to find you waiting in his courtyard when he awakes. He expects to send an envoy with the declaration of his intentions while his army drinks its morning ale. Then he’ll march, expecting you to fling yourself onto the field without studying the lay of it, so he can cut your force to thread and string with half his meisne while he smashes your camp with the other half.”
“I grieve at the thought of how disappointing he must find me,” Vieliessar answered sardonically.
“I could go to Lord Nilkaran’s camp to tell him we demand he meet us in battle,” Ambrant Lightbrother said.
His mother snorted. “I don’t have so many children that I wish to lose one. Give it another half-mark,” she said, regarding the sky with a measuring look. “Then we can let him know we’re here.”
“Perhaps he’ll invite us to breakfast,” Thoromarth said dourly.
“If I’d ever waited to be invited over your borders, you old bandit, Oronviel would’ve smothered under its herds of sheep long before Lord Vieliessar came,” Atholfol said.
“If the two of you want to shout a little louder, we won’t need warhorns to let Nilkaran know we’re here,” Vieliessar said tartly, and both princes laughed.
Autumn was a season of dawn-mist and frost. Even as the sky lightened, the world remained colorless. The destriers were saddled and brought onto the line. The stamp of their hooves and clink of their bridles was muffled by the mist. When the sky had brightened enough that sparks of fire could be seen beneath the lacquered surfaces of armor, Vieliessar signaled the knights-herald. As one, their raised their warhorns, and the mellow handful of rising notes that were the summons and challenge to the enemy rang out. Come and fight—Come and fight—Come and fight—
As the echoing sound died away, Vieliessar urged her destrier forward at a slow walk. “Come,” she said. “I do not mean to give Nilkaran a spacious battlefield to work with.”
* * *
At the end of the day’s fighting, Vieliessar could claim no victory. Nilkaran had put just enough knights into the field to keep her occupied, while keeping back the majority of his force to defend his camp. Somewhat to her surprise, he did not send a meisne against her camp, but it was frustrating that when she called for a fighting retreat at midday, she wasn’t even able to entice the enemy to follow her, despite retreating encumbered by carts filled with her wounded. By mid-afternoon she’d retreated far enough that Nilkaran’s komen had given up all pretense of offering battle and had ridden back to his retreating supply train. She called a halt and sent a messenger to her camp, with orders to move as far east as they could before sunset.
“Is that wise?” Rithdeliel asked quietly.
“Dendinirchiel’s element should have reached the camp this morning,” Vieliessar answered. “And Kalides Brabamant and Brethrod Cirdeval were right behind her. We can’t let the Alliance catch us in these foothills.”
“I would have said otherwise,” Rithdeliel commented. “It’s good terrain for an ambush.”
“It’s good terrain to isolate portions of your enemy’s force and hold them while you bring up enough horse to slaughter them,” Vieliessar countered. “I think that must be what they intend. The nobles who follow me are inconvenient; their lands have undoubtedly been promised away. Slaughter the komen and the princes and the Alliance will believe it can reclaim the commons.”
Rithdeliel sighed, wordlessly acknowledging the truth of her argument. “Onward, then,” he said.
The next day she discovered Nilkaran had fled, leaving his army in the care of Warlord Handeloriel while he rode south-east with a handful of grand-tailles. Vieliessar knew Nilkaran didn’t trust Handeloriel any more than Nilkaran trusted anyone, but he must have given him very explicit orders, for Warlord Handeloriel circled constantly through the eastern Tamabeth Hills. No matter what she did, Vieliessar couldn’t force him to a stand. When she attempted to break off, to see if laying siege to Nilkaran’s vulnerable Great Keep would gain her the battle she sought, Handeloriel immediately moved to harry her vulnerable baggage train.
And then she ran out of time.
Three days after her first battle with Nilkaran, the armies of the Alliance invaded Jaeglenhend in force. Only the fact that her army had continued moving east saved it from being destroyed immediately. A little thought led Vieliessar to the realization that it was likely that the Alliance had asked its Lightborn to widen the path through the Mystrals so that their army and its baggage train had room to maneuver.
Even the most conservative Lightborn could be pressured into doing that much. And I know whose mind crafted such a clever plan.
Vieliessar called for retreat, knowing two War Princes could not agree with each other, let alone twelve, and knowing that the longer she kept the Alliance in the field, the greater the possibility they would begin to fight among themselves. As she fell back, she expected the Alliance’s komen to charge and engage, using their traditional tactics: gallop madly into the enemy for the joy of the charge, then fight a series of single combats governed by antique rules of honor.
But the Alliance komen did not charge in force. The Alliance commander held back a portion of his troops and, under the cover of the charge, used it to cut Vieliessar off from her vulnerable baggage-train. When he’d done that, he continued to allow her superiority on the field as he drove her wagons and herds back toward the Alliance lines.
At the same time, the Alliance Lightborn struck.
The bright day dimmed rapidly as clouds boiled up over the crown of the Mystrals. The air was chokingly thick with Magery as Vieliessar’s Warhunt Mages vied with the Alliance Lightborn—a battle of Magery waged side by side with one of flesh and steel. She had to admit it was an elegant tactical compromise. Most of the Lightborn with the Alliance would refuse to use Magery on the battlefield. But they would see working the weather as only a small compromise with Mosirinde’s Covenant.
In time her Lightborn might have prevailed, but most of the Warhunt was still on its way back from Jaeglenhend Great Keep and the storm had a momentum of its own. It was all her remaining Lightborn could do to keep the Lightning drawn from its clouds from hitting Vieliessar’s army.
Soon the rising wind was filled with snow. The battlefield became shrouded in white as the out-of-season blizzard strengthened. The sound of the warhorns and signal whistles was muted and garbled by the snow and the wind, making it impossible to pass orders reliably. Visibility was so poor that no one could see the banners carried by the knights-herald.
The storm stripped away every advantage Vieliessar possessed. The snow distempered the archer’s bowstrings so they could not loose their arrows; her infantry slipped and skidded on the icy ground. Vieliessar was forced to abandon pursuit of her baggage train and deploy her knights to guard her infantry’s retreat, for the enemy, identifying her weakest point, eschewed combat with their fellow komen to attack the infantry instead.
The infantry’s horses had been lost with the baggage train. The Warhunt could not Call them back, for the whole of the Alliance army stood between the beasts and their summoners. The injured died where they fell, or clung grimly to their saddlebows and rode after the fleeing infantry.
Even then, Vieliessar might have stolen the meat of victory from defeat’s cookfire. But Lord Nilkaran had rejoined his army and led it against her defenseless wounded and fleeing foot soldiers. All she could do was retreat, retreat, retreat as she tried to keep her army intact.
She’d never been so grateful for sunset and an end to the day’s fighting. She spent the night trying to find the scattered elements of her army. Near dawn, Vieliessar made the only choice she could. South of Jaeglenhend, the Uradabhur became league upon league of primal wilderness. Nilkaran would still have a declared border, for a border was necessary for the setting of Wards, but he wo
uld either have stripped the border towers of their defenders entirely, or left them with so few that the members of the Warhunt still with the army could easily overpower them. The order went to all warriors she could reach, by Lightborn or by Lightless messenger: retreat on a south-southeast salient. Do not regroup. Do not engage the enemy.
The border keeps would provide food, shelter, and defense. The forest beyond would return the advantage to Vieliessar, for the Alliance komen could not use cavalry in forests so dense a rider could barely pass through them.
If they could reach it.
But if the first day of the battle had been bad, the next was worse. The Alliance had brought its pavilions and supplies up to its battle lines and were able to attack again as soon as there was light enough to see.
Her komen’s destriers were cold and hungry, making them irritable and difficult to control. Her army was dazed and groggy from a night without shelter. The blizzard had been raging for nearly a full day and the snowdrifts were deep. Today the horses of both armies floundered ponderously through the drifts, and it was as if the komen fought in slow motion through the still-falling snow.
But they fought.
Vieliessar had long-since abandoned the idea of fighting to a victory; all she hoped for now was to retreat with her army. Iardalaith’s force had rejoined her during the night, but every spell they tried—she tried—against the attacking knights or their mounts simply didn’t work. Their Lightborn must have been Warding everything that breathed for sennight upon sennight to have Warded so many thousand komen and horses. The only spell that was of any effect was Shield, and to ask her Lightborn to hold it along the entire line of skirmish, for candlemarks, was to ask them to doom the land.
* * *
“You have to use Dispell!” she shouted to Iardalaith over the clamor of the battle.
She’d ridden back through her lines to give Firthorn a brief respite from the fighting. Most of the Warhunt was gathered at the rear; being willing to fight was not the same as being able to defend oneself on a battlefield.
“Do you think I haven’t thought of that?” Iardalaith snapped. “Even if we could, we’d be helpless afterward!”
“Which do you like better—helpless or dead?” Vieliessar demanded. The only thing saving them so far was that the Alliance komen couldn’t charge their lines at speed. Vieliessar had only been able to find about a third of her army before the day’s fighting had begun; the force she commanded was outnumbered two to one.
“You can be both if you have to retreat and we’re too drained to protect you!”
“Think of something.” She wasn’t certain he could hear her. Just as well. She spurred Firthorn away before she was tempted to repeat herself more loudly.
A candlemark later, near midday, the storm finally broke and the clouds rolled back, but Vieliessar could feel the Weather Magery in the air like a dull ache behind her eyes; there would be another storm by sunset. As the temperature rose, the surface of the snow became veiled in mist. Pools of water lay in the hollows of the drifts, flaring like burning silver in the sunlight. When the temperature dropped again, the water-sodden snow would freeze into solid ice. In winter, palfreys and mules wore studded shoes to keep them from slipping on frozen ground. The destriers would have no such protection. There had already been several casualties on both sides as warhorses had slipped in the churned mud of the battlefield and gone down hard enough to break a leg.
The Alliance had remounts available—some of them Vieliessar’s, taken as spoils of war.
In the distance, she could see the pavilions of the enemy. For a moment she dared to hope: what Lightborn could see, they could affect, and Fire was the first spell every Postulant learned. But even Tangisen Lightbrother, who swore he could kindle a stone into flame, could not set the enemy’s tents alight.
She could feel failure and defeat prowling around the edges of the battle like wolves starved by winter’s cold. She didn’t think she’d done anything to tempt the Silver Hooves to punish her pride, but They could see into her heart, and oh, there had been a bottomless wellspring of hubris there. Child of the Prophecy. Amrethion’s Chosen. Uncrowned High King. She was being punished for every arrogant thought she’d ever had. Her meisne could not hold the enemy off until dark—each candlemark saw their losses multiply as exhausted warriors made fatal mistakes. They might survive another night in the open, but they would not be able to fight at the end of it. The Alliance could defeat her without even needing to engage: her komen would freeze to death.
Then—inexplicably—she caught the scent of smoke upon the air and heard the distant clamor of horns—retreat, retreat. The Alliance began to disengage.
She turned and looked: their camp was burning.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TO FLY BEFORE THE STORM
It is one thing to die for the High King’s cause, a second thing to know you died turning a Flower Forest to dust, and a third thing to know even that wasn’t enough.
—Iardalaith Warhuntsman, Of the Beginning of War
“We didn’t do it,” Iardalaith said. “I wish we had. But … no.”
The exhausted army moved in sluggish retreat. Vieliessar didn’t know how long this respite would last, but they must use it while they could. A mile to the west, six thousand of the enemy—all wearing Caerthalien colors—sat motionless watching their flight, the only Alliance warriors still on the field. Someone panicked, Vieliessar thought with as much satisfaction as she could summon under the circumstances. She’d gathered her commanders to her and now rode with them on the tuathal side. This might be her only chance to give them orders and hear their reports. Too many who had gone into battle two days before were missing now. Gunedwaen, she hoped, was with some other element of her scattered troops, but she did not know.
“There’s more than one way to set something on fire,” Nadalforo pointed out, answering Iardalaith. “You can use a torch, for example. People do.”
“But why would they set fire to their own pavilions?” Prince Frochoriel asked, sounding dazed.
“They didn’t,” Nadalforo said. “At least, I’m willing to make that wild leap of imagination. The Alliance might not be outnumbered by Lord Vieliessar’s commonfolk, but it’s a near thing. And I’ll prophesy further and say none of those commonfolk wish to be returned to slavery.”
“You seem to be remarkably conversant with the mentality of farmers and Landbond,” Rithdeliel said irritably. His shield arm was bound against his side by pieces of his surcoat; the arm had been broken in the morning’s fighting, and there was neither time nor power to Heal it now.
“Yes,” Nadalforo answered blandly. “Aren’t I?”
“By whatever cause, their camp is burning. But it only buys us a little time,” Vieliessar said sharply. “Even their commanders quarreling among themselves won’t save us. There’s another storm coming. We can’t go on like this.”
“If you have any suggestions, I’ll be more than happy to entertain them,” Rithdeliel answered, exhausted exasperation shading into anger.
You won’t like it. Vieliessar bit back the words. Rithdeliel would like anything that promised a chance of victory. No komen wanted to die in battle as much as they wanted to live to fight the next one, and if Rithdeliel were taken alive, Bolecthindial would make an example of him. Rithdeliel had betrayed his sworn master, and it didn’t matter that Thoromarth had forgiven the treason. Bolecthindial would not.
“They want all of us,” she said, glancing around to include all the commanders with her and, by extension, the army. “But they want me most of all. If I make it look as if I’m abandoning you, they’ll think it’s more important to capture me than to continue fighting you. At least I can draw off enough of their force to give you a better chance.”
“You hope they want to capture you,” Rithdeliel said, without a ghost of irony.
“They do,” Vieliessar said with grim certainty. “You can’t torture a corpse.”
“At last yo
u see reason,” Iardalaith said. “Of course they want to torture you to death. They’ll make a Festival Fair of it.”
Iardalaith’s observation gained him nothing more than a weary smirk from Rithdeliel. “You flee, they follow,” Rithdeliel said. “Well enough. Why don’t they slaughter all of us while they’re at it? It’s hardly as if they don’t have enough komen to do both.”
“They’re fighting among themselves. You know they are,” Vieliessar said. She could not believe the commander whose brilliant tactics had nearly destroyed her would have been such an idiot as to break off the battle when the Alliance was so close to victory just because there was a fire in camp. Inspiration became certainty as she spoke. “When the Alliance retreated, Caerthalien remained on the field. It looks like Caerthalien’s been directing the battle so far. I think their komen will follow me.”
“And that will set the fox among the doves,” Thoromarth said with grim satisfaction. “Who holds you prisoner holds all your lands as well.”
Nadalforo made a noise of pure exasperation. “Arilcarion War-Maker is long dead, fool! You know the rest of the Alliance won’t meekly hand the West to Caerthalien!”
“You know that and so do I,” Thoromarth said equitably. “And I promise you, it won’t stop Aramenthiali from turning on Caerthalien.”
“So if Caerthalien follows Vieliessar, Aramenthiali will follow Caerthalien?” Iardalaith asked, sounding faintly disbelieving.
“Of course,” Atholfol said, sounding surprised he was asking. “If they can fight free of Cirandeiron, of course.”
“Not that it matters,” Rithdeliel said. “They’ll easily overtake us.”
“No,” Iardalaith said, “they won’t. Leave that to the Warhunt.”
“Nor do you accompany us,” Vieliessar said to Rithdeliel. “I ride with Stonehorse and a grand-taille of the Warhunt, no more. It must appear to any who watch that you have abandoned me—or I you—in defeat.”
“Yes,” Rithdeliel said thoughtfully, nodding. “You ride south?”
Crown of Vengeance (Dragon Prophecy) Page 48
