Crown of Vengeance (Dragon Prophecy)

by James Mallory Mercedes Lackey

  “We still have to take the tower,” Nadalforo reminded her.

  “You may kill all who will not swear,” Vieliessar said, turning away.

  The Warhunt moved across the battlefield, finishing the dying destriers and helping the wounded fighters. At Nadalforo’s command, the enemy knights who surrendered were disarmed and gathered together, to be guarded by her warriors until Vieliessar could take their fealty oaths. The rest were being executed without ceremony.

  Vieliessar glanced toward the tower. The upper windows were lit. Servants still inside. Probably the tower’s commander. They were out of bowshot here unless someone in there had a forester’s bow. She sighed with weariness. If the tower’s defenders would not surrender willingly, the Warhunt could force them out. And any of the tower’s defenders would know its second entrance. Even if that were barred, they could destroy the door and it would be easy enough to repair.

  But moments later, when she called upon him to surrender, Lord Karamedheliel gave up Oakstone Tower without further battle.

  * * *

  To become a Warlord—as he had not once, but twice—one studied every aspect of war. A war was a living thing, like a beast, a tree, a child. In Farcarinon, Rithdeliel had owned a library of scrolls that spoke of war—not just the reality of it, but the theory, for the battles the War Princes fought were mere squabbles, as if a child went from babe to toddler over and over, and never became adult. To see the full scope of war, one must turn to xaique. A pretense of war, fought because there were no true wars to study.

  As the middle game of xaique involved defeat and loss, so did the middle game of war.

  To retreat across the Mystrals with her army and all the folk who looked to her had been an audacious move, for it cut Vieliessar’s enemy off from its supply lines. Rithdeliel would have welcomed a continuance of the string of victories with which her campaign began, but he knew, as Vieliessar did, that many of those triumphs had been built upon the stones of Vieliessar’s boldness and the High Houses’ inability to see her as a threat. Now they saw, and that advantage was gone. She had frightened her enemy badly enough that its alliance of War Princes was desperate enough to take counsel from one not yet of their rank. One as audacious as Vieliessar, and as brilliant.

  That had cost her, and dearly, but one defeat was not the end of the war. Their supply train was captured, but it was intact, and what was stolen once might be stolen twice. Their army was scattered and suffering, but it, too, might well be intact. And if it was not …

  Lord Serenthon had fought the High Houses nearly to a stand against odds of a hundred to one. The daughter surpassed the father as the ice-tiger in her glory surpassed the kitten on the hearth. So long as Vieliessar High King lived there was a chance of victory.

  It was Rithdeliel’s duty to save her army so she could claim it.

  It was day when they began their northward march. It was dusk when they reached the first of the manor farms. The destriers grazed their way through the last of the standing grain, reducing the snow-covered fields to stubble and muck. Both horses and riders were agonizingly thirsty, but the riders kept their mounts from taking more than a few mouthfuls of water at the stream. If the beasts foundered, it was as much a loss as if they died. There were miles yet to go.

  To all the Jaeglenhend commonfolk who approached the army and begged to be allowed to travel with and serve the High King and her army, Rithdeliel made certain the same word was given: the army rode to take Jaeglenhend Great Keep, and all who wished to serve the High King were welcome.

  They will know we are coming, Rithdeliel thought to himself. But who will know? Who has Nilkaran left to defend his keep—and who remained after Iardalaith Lightbrother brought the Warhunt here?

  “They’ll devour everything we’ve stolen down to dry bones,” Thoromarth said.

  “They’ll steal the countryside bare as well,” Rithdeliel replied. “Drive our stolen livestock, incite their kin to flight and mutiny, and give us warning of any foe.”

  “Ah, well, that’s all right,” Thoromarth said with a grunt. “For a moment I was worried you hadn’t thought this through.”

  Rithdeliel used the halt to pass orders among the commanders. Many of his orders were not orders, precisely: the army’s warriors were commanded by nearly two tailles of War Princes, and most of them were here. But he could suggest, and he was the High King’s Warlord. And so, when they rode on, the army scattered, becoming a broad and rambling line of forage barely less destructive than a raging fire. The commonfolk followed, driving the living wealth of the manor farms before them: horses, cattle, sheep, goats. With dawn, the army left the last farm behind and gathered itself together again. Half a day’s ride in the distance, silhouetted against the grey morning sky, stood the towers of Jaeglenhend Great Keep.

  At noon they were seen by the tower watch—which told Rithdeliel the tower watch was not as he would have had it—and there was a distant thunder of drums and baying of horns. Two marks past noon, the battered, weary, and truncated army of Vieliessar High King arrived at Jaeglenhend Great Keep on their exhausted and footsore destriers. They had no bright banners. Their armor was filthy and their surcoats were ragged, and more than half their number still bore some unhealed injury.

  None of that mattered. What mattered was that they stood before the gates of Jaeglenhend Great Keep and their knights-herald put their warhorns to their lips and called to Jaeglenhend’s defenders to come and die. The sound of the horns died away into silence, and then the silence lengthened. When it began to seem that they would all simply go on staring at each other forever, Rithdeliel growled and pulled his helm free of its armored collar.

  “Do you intend to surrender or not?” he shouted up to the battlements. They were crowded with folk—and if Jaeglenhend had archers upon the walls, its attackers had Lightborn standing ready to cast Shield at the first sight of an arrow in flight. “Don’t make me wait all day!”

  There was a whispered conversation that he could not make out because of the distance, then some shifting and scuffling. At last a young woman—a girl, really, if she’d flown her kite in the Flower Moon Festival more than two years hence, it would be a wonder—pushed forward.

  “Why should we not wait?” she called. “We are here and you are there! And my father will come back and kill you all!”

  Rithdeliel turned to the Lightsister beside him. “Is there anyone here who has gone as envoy to Jaeglenhend? Who is she?”

  “I will ask,” she said, and slipped from her saddle to move on foot through the motionless ranks.

  “Indeed we are here,” Rithdeliel answered with an assumption of cheer. “And here we remain. Your orchards will feed us well—and give us excellent firewood to roast your sheep and cattle!”

  The girl on the battlements opened her mouth to respond, but the man standing beside her—he had the look of someone who’d been Captain of Guards since before Nilkaran’s greatsire was whelped—leaned toward her and began speaking urgently in her ear, sending dark looks in Rithdeliel’s direction.

  “She is Princess Telucalmo of Jaeglenhend,” a breathless voice announced at Rithdeliel’s knee. He glanced down; the Lightsister had returned, bringing another Lightborn with her. “I am Taraulard Lightbrother. I was born here.”

  “Did you serve at court?” Rithdeliel asked quickly, for the Green Robes saw everything. But the Lightbrother shook his head.

  “My lord held a manor in the Tamabeth Hills. He—I—and his household rode to join the High King last spring.”

  “Is she Nilkaran’s heir? How old is she?” Rithdeliel demanded.

  “No. His heir is Heir-Prince Surieniel. He is six. Princess Telucalmo is ten years older,” Taraulard Lightbrother said quickly. “She is betrothed into Vondaimieriel. She was to have gone to them this Harvest.”

  That explained why Princess Telucalmo was here instead of serving as Nilkaran’s squire, or riding in his taille. Finfemeras would consider it a personal insult if Nilkaran g
ot the bride of one of his sons slaughtered before the wedding. And because Nilkaran had ridden out thinking it would be a simple matter of ordering the High King to leave his lands, the highest-ranking lord within his great keep was a prince too young to leave the nursery and the lord who commanded it was a princess who had never fought a battle.

  “Princess Telucalmo!” Rithdeliel called up to the battlements. “Come forward! Unless you are too frightened to face me!”

  The taunt worked. He’d been certain it would. She pulled away from the man beside her and leaned over the battlements so far he thought she might fall.

  “I’m not afraid of anything!” she shouted. “My father—”

  “Isn’t coming,” Rithdeliel answered, and a great noise rose as everyone began talking at once. He waited for it to stop, then said, “He is with the army that came from the west. We are here. How many days’ provisioning have you there in the castel, Princess of Jaeglenhend?”

  Princess Telucalmo didn’t answer him. Rithdeliel didn’t think she knew. It would have been amazing if she had. He knew such things because it was a Warlord’s business to know them. Harvesttide—the end of War Season—was the time when larders were barest. And the castellan had to know that most of their spell-preserved stores were rotting, though Rithdeliel didn’t know if the Court did.

  The question was asked for show, and it did its work. Soon enough the battlements were cleared of spectators and only the castel guards were left. “I do not recognize your livery,” one of them called down. “Is that what bandits and oathbreakers wear in the west?”

  “Perhaps you can tell me that—if you make it across the Mystrals alive!” Rithdeliel called back. “I will take your surrender, but only if it is made without a fight.”

  “As the princess says—we are in here!” the guardsman answered, grinning.

  Half of any battle was waiting. Rithdeliel had never much cared for it. He sent most of the army back to the village. The craftworkers had left their livestock behind, and the herds driven up from the manorial estates had followed close behind the army. Soon the savory scent of roasting meat filled the air. Someone brought him a piece of meat wrapped in a piece of bread, and water for his destrier. Someone on the wall—he couldn’t see who—loosed a few arrows. They struck nothingness and fell harmlessly to earth.

  It was late afternoon, and the shadows were stretching long, when Rithdeliel finally saw and heard what he’d been waiting for: galloping horses and the flash of armor, the drumming of hooves. The group must have fled through a siege gate on the far side of the castel. He spurred Varagil toward them, and the double-taille he’d kept mounted and waiting through the long afternoon followed, but the Warhunt was quicker still. Rithdeliel and his meisne had barely rounded the near wall of the castel before two of the horses in the party broke away, turned, and began galloping toward Rithdeliel’s forces. One palfrey carried a slender figure in blue-lacquered armor; the next, a woman carrying a small child before her on her saddle. A third figure followed almost at once—the guardsman Rithdeliel had seen speaking to Princess Telucalmo on the battlements.

  The rest of the riders could have escaped, but they were guardsmen, leaving the Great Keep in an attempt to get the princess and the Heir-Prince to safety. After a moment’s confusion they came galloping toward Rithdeliel and his meisne.

  Rithdeliel plucked Heir-Prince Surieniel from his nurse’s arms and flung the startled child to the nearest of his komen. Surieniel screamed as he was carried away and Rithdeliel closed with Princess Telucalmo.

  If she’d been riding a destrier, if she’d been a seasoned knight, it wouldn’t have been nearly so easy, but she was still hammering her heels into her palfrey’s sides and sawing at the reins, unable to understand why it would not obey her. She saw the danger too late: he dragged her from her saddle and the Warhunt released her palfrey. With no rider to control it, the beast sped away.

  Rithdeliel passed Princess Telucalmo to one of his komen despite her shrieks and struggles. As the knight galloped away, Rithdeliel drew his sword and spurred Varagil into the castel guardsmen. They should have retreated as soon as they saw their cause was lost, but every disaster the High King had faced in Jaeglenhend had originated in Nilkaran’s lords being more terrified of him than they were of death. Outnumbered more than ten to one, palfreys and chain mail against destriers and plate armor, Jaeglenhend’s guardsmen fought to the death.

  * * *

  After the battles, the flight, the privation of the past days, the surrender of Jaeglenhend Great Keep was almost anticlimactic, but here at last Nilkaran had done their work for them. The castel’s servants and remaining defenders all knew that having lost the Heir-Prince to the enemy meant their deaths. Opening the castel gates was their only chance for life, so they took it.

  The keep was not large enough to house even the portion of Vieliessar’s army which had taken it, and its larders were in as much disarray as Rithdeliel had suspected. But it offered shelter, and the surrounding farms had given them supplies, and there was no harm in being crowded if one was warm and fed. He set the craftworkers of the village to replacing the army’s lost supplies, and the commons who had followed them from the manor farms to building an earthworks that encompassed the nearer fields and the castel itself. He did not expect it to provide a great deal of defense, but it would break a charge, and it would keep them busy.

  Then he set about gathering the army back together.

  Lord Vieliessar’s army.

  The High King’s army.

  * * *

  The Alliance army prepared for march three full candlemarks before dawn. Its enemy’s baggage train followed behind its own, and the mingled herds followed both. Vieliessar’s Lightborn, in disgrace for their rebellion, were set to ride between her supply train and the herds, where the komen who guarded the herdsmen could guard them as well.

  It was still snowing.

  The Houses of the Alliance took turns supplying the rear guard, and today House Rolumienion had that dubious honor. Since the end of the disastrous Surrender Parley Theodifel of Rolumienion had heard nothing but talk of the High Houses banding together and their lords cherishing each other as kin. And he had never been so grateful to be the eldest child of a minor lord, for the Lords Komen and their princely masters had done nothing but feud among themselves, and it had been a rare day, even on the march, when a Challenge Circle was not drawn.

  When the herd beasts stampeded—first the goats, then the sheep, then even the cattle and the palfreys—there were many signs made against sorcery, for the herders suspected the rebel Lightborn had been responsible. Theodifel galloped up to the Lightborn and rode beside them. But he could not tell if any of them were working Magery, so he summoned his komen and went to give aid to the herders, for the loss of the herds was the loss of food, remounts, and draft animals.

  It was noon before the herd beasts were finally collected and calmed and willing to be driven quietly at the rear of the caravan once more. On his return to the tail of the caravan, Komen Theodifel saw at once that the Lightborn were no longer there, but his first thought was that they’d taken advantage of the confusion to ride ahead, for who would follow a baggage train if they did not have to? A moment’s reflection told him such an easy answer was folly: the loyal Lightborn would not permit the rebels to join them, and if they were simply riding beside the wagons farther up the column …

  … the hoofprints of their palfreys should be visible in the snow. And they were not.

  They were gone.

  * * *

  Heir-Prince Runacarendalur of Caerthalien was an excellent knight, a skilled general, a loyal vassal, and a reasonably dutiful son. He was kind to the servants of his household, courteous to his vassal knights, and gracious to the nobility of his father’s court. He held his temper when he would rather lose it, he was tactful when he would rather be honest, and he told the truth when he would prefer to lie. He did not mistreat beast or child, he did not create factions, or jo
in them, or permit them to form about him, and he did not—usually—drive Lord Bolecthindial to threaten to lay him in chains and throw him in the nearest dungeon.

  “Will you ask Lord Nilkaran to grant you the loan of Jaeglenhend, Father? For if you mean the dungeons of Caerthalien, they—”

  “Be silent!” Lord Bolecthindial roared. “I will not be mocked by my heir!”

  They stood facing one another, scant handbreadths between them, in Lord Bolecthindial’s pavilion. Lord Bolecthindial’s servants, attendants, and guards had all been dismissed, and the door-flaps were laced shut. Their conversation was utterly private.

  Fortunately.

  “No—you let Prince Serenthon’s heir do that!” Runacarendalur shouted back.

  Bolecthindial struck him with a closed fist. Runacarendalur staggered back, falling to one knee. Blood dripped from his mouth and soaked into the pattern of leaves and flowers in the thick carpet. He stayed down, digging his fingertips into the carpet’s pile. It was better to concentrate on the pain than to think of rising up and choking the life from his father.

  Of course, his father was armed and he wasn’t. So if he did what he so longed to do, he might solve the problems of everyone in camp at a single blow. Not that they’d have any way of knowing it.

  Three days ago they’d been on the verge of unconditional victory. Two days ago Runacarendalur had been stopped from delivering the decisive blow to Vieliessar, her army, and her mad ambitions when the Council of War Princes who ruled over the army—a council! was there a madder notion between Sword and Star?—had forced him to break off the fighting because the prisoners had set fire to the encampment. Today the Lightborn who’d sworn fealty to Vieliessar had vanished as if they’d dissolved into mist. Because of that, the army had covered so little distance they might as well not have struck the camp at all—and even that didn’t matter, because that self-same do-nothing Council could not decide whether to pursue Vieliessar or her army, and so pursued neither.

  At last he ran his tongue over his split lip and pushed himself to his feet. “Tell me you’ll listen. Or I’ll go to Manderechiel and see if Aramenthiali will.”