Selamis had gone first red, then white, then red again. “It’s not my fault,” he said, glaring at Gird. “I can’t help it that I know figan soup when I hear of it, or what the things are. Or that the better— the merchants and such are comfortable with me.”
“No, I suppose not.” Gird was half-ashamed that he’d let his temper loose, but the silent support of the marshals, who had never liked Selamis that much anyway, stiffened him. “What is your fault is the way you use it. If you’re one of us, be one of us; don’t be smirking in your ale when you know something we don’t.”
From the traders he found out where the king’s army had been all this time. It seemed that after reaching Gird’s village, they had had word from Gadilon about an army harrassing his domain—an army headed by a terrible, cruel commander named Gird. Gird thought back to his near encounter with the brigands in Gadilon’s forest, and managed not to laugh. The king’s army was busy, the traders said, in the south and east, convinced that that was the main peasant force. And the traders had heard only vague rumors of trouble in the north until they were near Brightwater—and then the rumor had said the trouble was up on the River Road, near Grahlin.
“We were near Grahlin,” said Gird, not specifying when, or why they’d left.
“I don’t expect the king has heard that yet,” the trader said. “Sier Sehgrahlin has much of the old magicks, but not the way of calling mind to mind. Even if he could, the king could not hear, nor any with him. There’s no one much left with that, but the king’s great-aunt, and she’s too old to matter.”
“Where is she?” asked Gird.
“In Finyatha, of course, in the palace. Amazing lady; she came to the market there once, when I was a boy, and my grandfather sold her a roll of silk from the south. She looked at me and said ‘Yes, you may pet my horse,’ and my grandfather clouted me for presuming. I never asked; she saw it in my mind. She told my grandfather so, and he said I shouldn’t even have been thinking it, and clouted me again.”
“What was the horse like?” asked Gird, suddenly curious.
“A color I’d never seen; I heard later it was favored in Old Aare: blue-gray like a stormy sky, with a white mane and black tail, and what they called the Stormlord’s mark on the face, a jagged blaze that forked. But it was the fittings that fascinated me: that white mane was plaited in many strands, each bound with bright ribbons that looped together. The saddlecloth was embroidered silk—I was a silk merchant’s child, I could not mistake that. Then when she mounted, she sprang into the saddle like a man—and rode astride, which the horse nomad women do, but no merchant woman I had known. My grandfather told me later all the magelords do, men and women alike, but they think it is presumptuous in lower ranks.”
Gird returned to the topic that seemed to him more important. “But if she is the only one—and the sier Grahlin has no such powers—then his messengers must find the king’s army before the king will know and come north?”
“Yes. If he even calls for him: did you not know that Sehgrahlin is the king’s least favorite cousin? They have been rivals for years; Sehgrahlin refused to send his troops on this expedition, although he has some up north, guarding against the horsefolk. He will not like to ask the king for help, that one; he will do his best to drive you out of his domain with his own powers.”
He had done that, Gird thought, but what more would he do? He asked the merchant, who shrugged. “He might help Duke Pharaon—they’ve hunted together a lot, and he once loved Pharaon’s sister—but he married into the Borkai family. Those he would help, but they lie away north of you, north and west, right on the nomad borders.” The trader knew what the gnomes had not—or what they had not bothered to teach Gird—which lords lived where, and how they were related. Gird had Selamis write it all down, although he suspected Selamis might know some of it already. Then he asked about the one magelord family the gnomes had mentioned, and the trader’s expression changed. “Marrakai! Where would you have heard about them? They’re not even in Finaarenis; Marrakai’s a duke in Tsaia. No magicks, that I know of, but probably the best rulers in both kingdoms: honest, just, and put up with no nonsense. If that brigand you say is using your name wanders into Marrakai lands, he’ll find himself strung high before he knows it.”
The trouble with towns, Gird realized when he had been there a hand of days, was that they were harder to leave than villages. He would like to have had a town allied to him—but he could not hope to protect Brightwater against a full army. No army had come, but one might. Their barton had grown, swelled with sudden converts, but he didn’t trust that. The newly elected council of merchants and craftsmen wanted him to stay (one told him frankly that it was cheaper to feed his army than pay the bribes and taxes of the earlier rulers) but he had not won his war. When the gnomes sent word that it was now time to redeem his pledge to help them at Blackbone Hill, he was glad of the excuse—but he left most of his army near Brightwater, under the command of Cob, whose broken foot was nearly healed.
Chapter Twenty-six
Under a milky sky, the crest of Blackbone Hill loomed dark and inhospitable. Gird had expected the darkness, but not the shape, which made him think uneasily of a vast carcass, half-eaten. Sunburnt grass, like ragged dead fur, seemed stretched between the gaunt ribs.
“There’s them says it’s a dragon,” Wila, his guide, said nervously. Clearly he thought it was something. Gird forced a grin.
“If ’tis, ’tis dead, long since.”
Wila shook his head. “There’s bones, up there. All black, black inside and out. Seen ’em myself.”
“Dragonbones?” Despite himself, Gird shivered. No one had seen a dragon, but the tales of Camwyn Dragonmaster proved that dragons had lived, and might still. Even the lords believed in dragons; one of the outposts up on the western rim was called Dragonwatch.
“Dunno.” Wila paused, and hooked one foot behind his knee, leaning on his staff. “All the bones I seen was too little, unless a dragon has almighty more bones than other creatures. If they’d been normal bone, I’d have said fish or bird—something light, slender. But black like that—and no one could think that hill’s just a hill, like any other.”
Gird glanced upslope again: true. Something about the shape of it, malign and decrepit, made the hairs on his neck crawl. “Why’s anyone live here, then?” he asked.
“Well, now.” Wila switched feet, and leaned heavily into his staff. Clearly this was a question he’d hoped to answer. “In the old days,” he said, “before the lords came out of the south on their tall horses, this was uncanny ground. The Threespring clans claimed the east side for spring sheep grazing—it’s not so bad then, with new grass and spring flowers. The Lady tames all, you know,” he added, and dipped his head. Gird nodded, and swept his arm wide, acknowledging her bounty. “Then the Darkwater bog folk, they claimed herb right to the western slope, and the land between rock and bog.”
“Herb-right to that?”
“Aye. In the old days, that is, when the Darkwater bog folk gave half the herbalists in this region, they gathered the Five Fingers from that very rock, the Lady’s promise to redeem it, they said.” He peered closely at Gird. “You do know the Five Fingers—?”
Gird nodded. “But where I come from, only the wise may say the names—I have heard, but cannot—”
“Ah—yes. I forgot. You’re from the overheard, aren’t you?”
“Overheard?” Gird hadn’t heard that term. “Where the kuaknomi overhear the blessings and overturn them. That’s what I was taught, at least. Where the kuaknomi overhear, only the wise may say the name of any sacred thing, lest a prayer be changed to curse.”
“They don’t come here?”
“Well—there’s them as says Blackbone Hill has felt their touch, but aside from that, no. We have the truesingers here, the treelords.”
“Elves?”
Wila snorted, then coughed. “That’s coarse talk of them, lad. What they call themselves is truesingers. Sinyi, in thei
r tongue.”
“You speak it?” Gird could almost forget the coming battles for that.
“A bit.” Wila put both feet on the ground, and picked the staff up. “Best be going, if we’re to be past the Tongue by dark.” And despite Gird’s questions, he would say no more about elves, but led the way at a brisker pace than Gird expected from someone his age. What he did say, briefly and over his shoulder, had to do with the human settlement now nestled at the hill’s steeper end. “Lords forced it,” he said. “Broke apart the Threesprings clans, and settled a half of ’em here, and put in two brothers from the bog folk, and set them all to digging in the hill. Came out as you’d think: fever and death, broken bones and quarrels, but the lords want what comes out the mine shaft, and never mind the cost. Send more in, when too many die. It’s a hard place, Blackbone, and no hope for better.”
“But the barton—”
“Oh, well. The barton’s together, and they’ll fight—they’re good at that. Come the day—”
Come the day, Gird thought, and no one will have to live in a place like this, ever again. The black, disquieting hill loomed higher as they plunged into one of its gullies, angled downslope, then up and across to another. He had been days coming here, after the gnomes’ message arrived, passed from one guide to another.
Blackbone was as bleak as its hill, a cramped village of dark stone huts locked in by steep slopes. It stank, not with the healthy smells of a farming village, but with rot that would never become fertility, human waste and garbage piled on barren stone. A thin dark stream writhed behind the row of dwellings, too quiet for its rate of flow. Wisps of sulphurous steam came off it. As a mining village, it had no farmsteads; the barton, Gird found, had adapted to circumstances, and met in the mine itself.
“They dunna come ’ere,” said the yeoman-marshal, Felis. “They come to the outside, we got to haul it that far, and load their wagons. Inside they dunna come.”
Gird found it hard to endure even the outer tunnel, as daylight faded in the distance. Now he was out of sight of the entrance, sweating with fear, and hoping the barton would think it was the heat. Around the gallery where they drilled, torches burned, smoking. In that dim and shaking light, the men and women looked like nightmare creatures, monsters hardly human. He had already noticed that they were all grimed with the black rock. Now their eyes glittered in the light, the whites unnatural against dark-smeared faces. He glanced up, seeing the dark rock overhead far too close.
One of the women grinned, teeth white against the darkness. “You’re no miner, eh? The rockfear gripes you?”
No use to pretend. “It does. I’m a farmer, used to no more than a bit of roof between me and the sky.”
She laughed, but not unkindly. “At least you don’t lie. Lead us out to fight, then, and you’ll be free of this rock.” The emphasis on “you” caught his attention.
“And you? Do you want to stay here?”
“Nay—but what do I know of farming? I’d go to other mines, could I.” Some of the faces nodded agreement, others were still, with a stillness Gird had never seen.
He had no time to wonder at that, for the detailed plan of battle had to be made that night. Now that he’d seen for himself the shape of the land, the way the dark rock loomed over the wagon road into Blackbone, he could mentally place his few archers where they could do the most good. The barton members nodded when he spoke, but he wondered if they understood at all. None of them were archers. Most of them had never been out of Blackbone in all their lives. They knew digging and hauling, enough carpentry to build ladders and simple boxes, and not much more. They’d been drilled with picks and shovels. Gird felt the edges filed onto the shovels and wished he could have such metal for better weapons.
One of the men nodded. “They ’ad to give us good steel, see, or it wouldn’t be no use against this rock.”
“But no smith,” said the woman who had asked him about rock-fear. “They brings us the tools, but takes no chances we’ll make swords.”
Deep in the ground, away from natural light, Gird lost track of time and would have gone on all night, but they had candlemarks for measure, and brought him back out to sleep under the sky. He almost wished he’d stayed within, for the air stank worse than in the mine itself, and he felt smothered.
The next day, his troops arrived. None of them liked Blackbone Hill. He saw the looks sent his way, noticed how they angled away from the line of march, as if they didn’t want to set foot on that dark stone. He hated it himself, felt a subtle antagonism through his bootsoles. What if he was wrong? What if the power of Blackbone turned against them, preferred the lords? The gnomes had said it would not, but they were, after all, rockfolk. Their goals were not his goals.
Threesprings barton, kinbound to Blackbone, had sent twenty-seven yeomen, the largest contingent. They were all darkhaired, dour, barely glancing at Gird when he spoke to their yeoman marshal. A third of them were women, all as tall and thickset as the men. Longhill, barely a day’s march away, had sent fourteen: its best, the yeoman marshal assured Gird. Deepmeadow, Whiterock Ridge, Whiteoak, Hazelly, and Clearspring had been on the march two days each. Some of them had never been so far from home; they clutched their weapons and foodsacks as if they expected the rocks to sprout demons. Westhill, the most veteran of this lot, had marched four days across the rolling hills. Their sturdy cheerfulness heartened the novices more than Gird could; he did not explain that Westhill had no village to return to, for the lords had burnt and salted it over the winter.
Blackbone barton greeted these allies with restraint—or, as Gird saw it, with total lack of enthusiasm. A few words passed between the Threesprings yeoman marshal and a Blackbone man, a mutter of family news, as near as Gird could make out, but nothing more. Longhill clearly expected no better; the yeomen smirked and sat quietly without attempting conversation. The others, barring Westhill, clumped up nervously and stared roundeyed from the taciturn Blackbone yeomen to the higher slopes of Blackbone Hill. Gird made his way from one barton to another, doing his best to reassure and cheer them.
Blackbone barton itself actually broke the ice with a contribution to the evening meal. Short of supplies as it was—as any remote mining village without farmstead support would be—the village nonetheless made a very potent brew and had saved it, as their spokesman said “For the day.” Now the chunky little jugs passed from hand to hand, raising spirits or at least numbing fears. Gird, mindful of watchful eyes, took but one pull at a jug before passing it on. The story of his drunken rage had traveled farther than he had; he knew he dared not risk another, and certainly not before a battle.
By dawn, he had them all in position. They looked fewer in the morning light, when he knew an enemy was coming, and the land itself looked larger. Could they possibly hold the narrow throat, choke the lords’ soldiers from the village?
Eight bartons. Near two cohorts, by his new reckoning, though he had none of his marshals along. And there, coming along the stone-paved trade road, were the mounted infantry, the archers he feared so much, the light cavalry, and—he squinted—and a small troop of the lords themselves, mounted. So—so the gnomes had been right. Whatever they got from the Blackbone mines was important enough to bring them out themselves. He could not read their devices, or recognize them by the colors they wore; the traders had told him all that, and Selamis had written it down, but Selamis was not here to remind him. Lords were lords, he thought to himself, and what difference did it make if he faced sier or duke or count—any and all would be glad of his blood, and he of theirs.
Because he was looking for it, he noticed that the lords’ troops also disliked the touch of Blackbone Hill, and veered slightly until sharp commands brought them back. He told himself that the horsemen would have trouble on the slopes. Would horses, too, flinch from Blackbone? He hoped so; they were ruinously outnumbered otherwise. Perhaps he should have brought some of his regular troops—but there would have been no way to move that many that far without oppos
ition, and he had had no time for additional battles. He looked over at Wila, who could see down into the cleft where his few archers waited, and held up his hands three times. Wila passed the signal on. If they could take the archers out, then his people could stand against a charge. Horsemen couldn’t spread wide on that uneven slope. He hoped.
The clatter of hooves and boots rang loudly from the stones on either side of the track. Gird kept his head down, trusting his carefully placed archers to choose their targets wisely. He heard the twang of one bowstring, then another, then shouts from below. So it began, again, and he squeezed his own hands hard an instant, fighting down that last-moment fear that caught him every time. He stood, and waved his arm.
In that first scrambling rush downslope, Gird could see that his archers had done their work well; many of the lords’ archers were down. Arrows flicked by, close overhead. A few of those below had found cover, and returned a ragged flight. Someone beside him staggered and went down, hands clutched to chest. Ahead of him, the front line of yeomen, with the best weapons, had engaged the mounted soldiers, unseating many of them and killing horses. The slope and sunrise gave them advantage, and Gird’s archers continued to pick their targets wisely.
“Get the lords!” he bellowed, reminding them.
But the attack lost momentum, foundered. No arrows found the lords on their tall horses; Gird could have sworn he saw arrows slide aside, as if refusing to menace the magelords. The lords themselves drew no weapons he could see—not then—but their soldiers regrouped with amazing speed. They paid no attention to the wounded and fallen among them, striding over bodies as if they were merely more rocks. Gird had called for all his bartons to attack when he thought he saw the enemy crumbling, but now he had no unseen reserves, and the ground no longer favored him. Either his people were spread out along the road, outnumbered at each point, or he could call them to clump on the road itself, and try a frontal attack—exactly what he had not wanted to do with the weapons he had available.
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