Crown of Vengeance (Dragon Prophecy)

by James Mallory Mercedes Lackey

  It wouldn’t be enough to allow her to escape without doing battle.

  They crossed from Keindostibaent into Sarmiorion as Woods Moon became Hearth, and once more the needs of Vieliessar’s Lightborn lay heavily upon the Flower Forests. Magery could no longer be used for the homely comforts her princes had been used to. The power they could draw from the Flower Forests must be reserved to protect them from the enemy.

  The weather had held for sennights—a minor miracle, with all the Weather Magery the Lightborn of both sides had worked—but now it turned at last, and neither side had the ability to stop it. The snow should have decreased the influx of refugees flocking to Vieliessar’s banner, but did not.

  Ladyholder Varelotiel had joined her lord while the Alliance force was still in Jaeglenhend, bringing all of Sarmiorion’s Lords Komen and their whole meisne. Glasswall Free Company rested quietly upon its grant lands as its Ladyholder prepared to march. Captain Natrade told Varelotiel she had no interest in riding to war in winter and since Varelotiel hadn’t wanted to take the time required to persuade Glasswall’s commander to accept such a contract, she’d ridden west without them.

  As soon as she’d left, Glasswall Free Company besieged and sacked Sarmiorion Great Keep before riding west as well. Those they left behind were helpless without their masters to keep order, easy prey for any who chose to set themselves in a position of rule—or those outlaws who saw the chaos in the Uradabhur as an opportunity to enrich themselves. The folk of Sarmiorion rallied to Vieliessar.

  Sarmiorion’s outcast servants and abandoned laborers approached the Alliance army, begging for food, for shelter, for their War Prince and Ladyholder’s protection. They were driven away again and again, but the desperate persisted … and the truly desperate tried to steal. In the stillness of the night, screams from the Alliance camp would carry across the space that lay between the two encampments, going on for candlemarks until at last they became too faint to hear. Each night the screams would begin again.

  It was worse, somehow, not to hear those screams because of the bespelling of her pavilion’s walls. Vieliessar found herself awakening in the night, straining her ears against the silence, knowing she’d hear nothing but the breathing of those sleeping around her. When the weather had turned, every pavilion had become a dormitory, for to sleep out of doors was to court death.

  Another sennight would see both armies in Niothramangh. I would not wish to be Mengracharth Niothramangh, Vieliessar thought grimly. He has many choices, none of them good. If he didn’t surrender what the Alliance demanded, he’d be named rebel and outlaw. If he gave all, his own people would starve. Let his people starve, and they would join the roving bands from Sarmiorion, Keindostibaent, and Jaeglenhend. Try to save them—and his domain’s wealth—and make Niothramangh a target for the Alliance and every outlaw in the Uradabhur.

  She was not certain what she herself would do in his place.

  When the war is over, she told herself again and again, finding it within her mind even when she was thought she was brooding on other things. When the war is over …

  But of course, when this war was over, another would be poised to begin.

  * * *

  “I say all we need to do is turn and attack them,” Atholfol Ivrithir said stubbornly, getting to his feet to lean across the table.

  “That’s your answer to everything,” Thoromarth said. “It won’t necessarily work.”

  “You’re blind as well as imbecile,” Atholfol snapped. “The vanguard of their army and the fantail of ours are barely five miles apart now. Let them close the distance further, and they’ll attack us in force.”

  “They’ll try, certainly,” Rithdeliel said.

  Vieliessar’s pavilion was so crowded there was no need to kindle the stove for warmth, and at that, only her most senior commanders were present. Each day, after combat practice, cavalry drill, and a meal, she gathered some of her commanders to her, doing her best in each sennight to meet with all the commanders in her army, from the War Princes who had pledged to her to the komen who commanded but a single taille of knights. But it was in the council of her senior commanders that the army’s decisions were made.

  “They’ll manage,” Gunedwaen said to Rithdeliel. “Atholfol is right: let the distance between us narrow any further and the Alliance will attack in strength. But I’m not certain attacking them is the answer.”

  “Why not?” Atholfol demanded irritably.

  “Line meets line,” Gatriadde Mangiralas said. “They’ll attack in line because there’s less danger of riders being fouled if one of the destriers goes down on the ice. We respond in line for the same reason, and also to block a flanking maneuver. But either we commit twice their numbers—and we don’t have twice their numbers—or they get around the end of our line and reach the supply wagons.” Gatriadde had gained a great deal of self-assurance in the last several moonturns; he no longer looked to anyone for approval before he spoke.

  “If I were in charge of the Alliance forces, I’d skip the fight and go straight for the supply train,” Nadalforo said. “That nearly finished us last time. They won’t make the mistake of keeping the wagons intact again.”

  “We have Wards on the oxen,” Rithdeliel said.

  “There are a dozen ways to destroy wagons without involving witchborn. Throw a torch into them. Shoot their drivers. Shoot the teams—or, if you want to start a stampede, throw acid on any of the ox teams. They’ll smash half the wagons to kindling before you can kill them,” Nadalforo said.

  “They’d never,” Rithdeliel said. “Arilcarion said—”

  “Oh, High House Warlord!” Nadalforo said, laughing. “Do you think it matters what some dead clerk wrote in a moldering scroll?”

  Most of the komen looked shocked, but a few of those present, mostly the former mercenaries and the infantry captains, were smiling or trying to hold back laughter. Vieliessar would not laugh: she knew as well as any how hard it was to set aside the lessons of a lifetime. But there was one truth Arilcarion had not set down in his scrolls: The purpose of war is to win.

  “I was the first to cast aside the Code of Battle,” she said. “It is true the Alliance has followed, but it does so without imagination. It merely does all Arilcarion forbade.”

  “Like slaughtering helpless prisoners,” Komen Diorthiel said sourly. “At least it was not the komen who committed such an atrocity.”

  “They are still dead,” Dirwan said sharply. He was the captain of the infantry, and his units had suffered the heaviest losses during the battles both in Jaeglenhend and in the West. Any who were captured had been tortured to death.

  “The fact remains: komen expect to fight other komen,” Vieliessar said gently. “While you and all you lead understand that victory is not always sheathed in the scabbard of battle, the komen of the Alliance will resist performing the tasks of ‘mere servants who are not true warriors.’”

  This time everyone joined in the laughter, as she meant them to. Even if the Alliance thought to destroy her wagons, she doubted they could persuade their komen to attack laborers and oxen instead of their fellow knights.

  “Someone will figure out how to get it done sooner or later,” Nadalforo said. “We have been lucky thus far that no one there is truly in charge. If I were Runacarendalur of Caerthalien, I’d do whatever I must to gain sole permanent command of their army. I’m sure he’s thought of everything we have.”

  So am I, Vieliessar thought grimly. Each day she survived was a new amazement to her—were their positions reversed, she would have drawn a blade across her own throat moonturns ago. But either her Bond with Prince Runacarendalur was not complete or the destiny that had surrounded her from the moment she set foot on this road protected her. I care not which is true, so long as one or the other is!

  “We have a few days yet to decide how to face their attack when it comes,” Vieliessar said. “And to discover a way to widen the space between us. Iardalaith, find Lightborn to ride with th
e wagons, if you will. Lord Atholfol, it is a good thought to guard them so. But even if we turn aside any attacks, there is yet another matter we must settle. Soon enough we must turn south.”

  She had become certain that she could not find the location of Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor from within any of the domains. Thurion had said the search would require power, and the defense spells of the two great armies drained every Flower Forest within their range. But south of the Uradabhur domains were lands claimed by no House. She had charted every landmark her dream-visions had given her. The ghostlords had ridden north and west in pursuit of Pelashia’s children. So she must go south and east.

  And surely there was a Flower Forest somewhere in that uncharted wilderness.

  If there is not …

  “You can’t take an army into the forest,” Thoromarth said simply. Beyond the Southern Pass Road lay forest dense enough to give cover to a sortie party. And forest that dense would be impassable to the supply wagons.

  “We shall do so when the time comes,” Vieliessar said, with more confidence than she felt. “My lords, find me a way to either move us faster or slow the Alliance. And now I give you all good night.”

  Her commanders—princes, Lords Komen, Lightborn, mercenaries, outlaws, and commonfolk—rose from the table or stepped away from the walls. Slowly the pavilion emptied. Almost before the last had gone, Drochondeur, Master of the Household, bustled in at the head of a small army of servants to prepare the outer chamber of her pavilion for night. Vieliessar retreated to her sleeping chamber to let them work. Little had been settled, but she hadn’t expected more. She had an idea of what she might do about the Alliance attacks. The rest must wait on inspiration.

  And upon my belief that there is a Flower Forest south of the borders. Or I have led my army halfway across the world to die.

  * * *

  Vieliessar shifted in the saddle, pulling her heavy cloak more tightly around her. Her new destrier grumbled his displeasure, mumbling at the bit. He was a burly bay stallion with a vicious temper; after the third time he’d tried to bite her, she’d named him “Snapdragon,” since no one knew his name. She’d chosen him for his strength and stamina rather than his sweet temper—temperament had never yet gotten a knight through a battle alive.

  The day was dark and the air was heavy and wet, smelling of snow. The Lightborn of both armies had lost the power to shift the weather long since. Inevitably, the day would come when they must either allow a blizzard to strike—or drain the Flower Forests of the domain to dust to move it.

  But not today, Vieliessar thought. Not today.

  “Ah. There. At last—I was getting bored,” Nadalforo said cheerfully.

  Vieliessar looked behind her. Two grand-tailles of knights had moved out from the enemy vanguard.

  “Inglethendragir,” she said, finally identifying the colors.

  House Inglethendragir had risen from Less House to High at the end of the Long Peace. Its device was three silver wolves on a purple field—this acknowledged that its elevation had come by the erasure of Farcarinon. Randragir Inglethendragir had replaced the silver leaves of his previous device with Farcarinon’s silver wolves..

  “There’s a surprise,” Nadalforo said. “I would have expected them to send one of the Less Houses. Perhaps no one likes Lord Randragir very much.”

  “They’ll like him less a candlemark from now,” Vieliessar said, and Nadalforo laughed.

  Nadalforo raised the signal whistle to her lips and blew a complicated pattern of notes. Vieliessar reined Snapdragon to a stop as the former mercenary companies detached themselves from the line of march and formed into two ranks facing the enemy. Inglethendragir’s grand-tailles broke away from the vanguard and began to move over the ice, spreading from column into line as they did. When they were in formation, they moved to a trot.

  “Are you ready?” Vieliessar asked Terandamil.

  “We are,” the Master of the Archers replied.

  Inglethendragir advanced. Vieliessar’s force waited. The belling of her banner on the wind—the High King’s banner defiantly displayed—was the only movement. The attackers moved from trot to canter to gallop and still Vieliessar’s force waited.

  “Now,” Terandamil said.

  In one smooth movement, infantry stepped from behind the second rank of destriers and moved into the open spaces between the first rank. Once they had been favored servants of their domains, huntsmen and foresters. Each carried a forester’s bow. Terandamil had not honed their deadly skill, for that was a thing only years could do. But it was Terandamil who had told them they were warriors.

  They loosed their arrows, and the shots came so close together that the release of the bowstrings was like a rippling chord of harpsong. Three heartbeats later another volley of arrows sang forth, and three heartbeats later, another. The music of the third volley was drowned out by agonized screaming. The ice had grown bright and slick with blood. At the ends of the enemy line a few wounded destriers thrashed.

  Most of the rest were dead.

  The enemy center was still intact. Some of the knights tried to rein in and turn back. Their mounts skidded and slipped—some fell, and over all the other sounds, in a freakish heartbeat of silence, there was the sound of a leg bone breaking, loud and sharp. Others galloped on, or tried to turn at the gallop, simply did their best to slow down.

  Whatever they did, nothing saved them.

  Terandamil’s rangers nocked and loosed, nocked and loosed, and the long, heavy arrows flew low over the ice in flights as regular and inexorable as the beats of a war drum. Behind the lines of mercenaries a line of palfreys waited, each with a rider already in its saddle. As the archers ran out of arrows, or when a string or bow snapped, that archer retreated. Each archer moved with calm precision, though the bitter cold numbed bare fingers and made bowstrings brittle. Each arrow struck its target: the destriers—and only the destriers. Warhorses were precious and nearly irreplaceable. The fewer warhorses the Alliance possessed, the fewer komen they could send against her. And when Terandamil’s archers were done, the Alliance had two grand-tailles less.

  When all the destriers were dead or dying, the archers walked away, quietly, without display. It was as much a warning to their noble comrades as it was to their enemy.

  The attack was over so swiftly the Alliance commanders had no time to ride to Inglethendragir’s aid—or summon their Lightborn to Shield them. A few single knights rode out from the Alliance column and loosed arrows, but the horseman’s bow had less range than the forester’s bow, so the shafts fell harmlessly to the ground. The destriers of Inglethendragir lay slewed across the blood-smeared ice. Some riders had been thrown, some had jumped clear as their mounts went down, some still lay trapped beneath the dead and dying animals. A few moved with daggers to end the lives of the still-suffering beasts.

  “It would be funny if it weren’t so sad,” Nadalforo said quietly, watching. “Even if you lose, it’s the end of the komentai’a. Everyone now knows a meisne armed with forester’s bows can slaughter a troop of knights any time it chooses to. That won’t make them massacre their foresters. They’ll all scurry to find and train them. We’ll be facing them ourselves if this war goes on long enough.”

  “It won’t,” Vieliessar said. It can’t.

  “As I say, Lord Vieliessar, I hope you win,” Nadalforo said. She reined her destrier around and trotted after the army.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  WIND AND DUST

  For the road is long and the world is wide

  The wind is cold and the way is dark

  When again shall I see her, Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor, beloved who has turned her face from me?”

  —Perhael Storysinger, Perhael’s Song

  That night Terandamil’s archers celebrated their victory and the rest of the infantry joined them. The komen and their lords withdrew to their own precincts and the mood of the encampment was unsettled. Vieliessar made a brief visit to the victory feas
t, then spent a long, fruitless evening pouring over maps of the Uradabhur before retiring to her sleeping chamber.

  Sleep did not come. Her mind was too full of problems. The arming of the commons to fight beside the komen had always been the point on which her army could fracture. Only the Light could raise one of the commonfolk to the level of the Lords Komen. The lords of the Hundred Houses had been convinced the Light was Pelashia’s Gift: rare, valued, mysterious. They had even been able to blind themselves to the fact that the mercenary companies, whose warriors were the equal in skill of any komen, had held more former farmers than former knights among their ranks.

  It was harder to unsee a forester’s skill turned to a tool of war, but everyone knew mastery of the forester’s bow was a task of years; not even Lightborn spellcraft could change that. But the pike can be learned in a few sennights of practice, and the infantry have already proven their worth in battle. They cannot stand against charging warhorses—but even komen do not do that unless they must.

  Nadalforo would tell her she was worrying about things that would not matter if she lost. Rithdeliel would tell her this would only last for a brief while, for Vieliessar knew that in his heart, he could not accept the idea that war would never again be a contest of skills that were both art and homage. Gunedwaen …

  He would tell you victory is as much a battle as war. I only wish Arilcarion had written a scroll about that!

  * * *

  By Snow Moon, storms battered both armies mercilessly, and no matter what the Alliance did, Vieliessar did something unexpected, as if she played gan when they played xaique. And victory slid further from their grasp each day.

  They could have won. While they were still in Jaeglenhend, they could have won—if Vieliessar were dead. Her death would have left her army leaderless. Disheartened. They could have spent the winter picking it to pieces.

  After Jaeglenhend, Runacarendalur would have cut his own throat gladly. He could not. He’d tried many times to end the life that would end hers.