by Kate Elliott
He ordered the masts laid down. Hide drums beat a rhythm for the stroke, and the fleet rowed forward.
“Stronghand.” Tenth Son of the Fifth Litter gestured toward the sky at their backs. Rain-laden clouds followed them, and streaks of gray mist tied the clouds to the sea. “It is ill fortune to attack under a dark sky.”
“That is the work of the tree sorcerers. It will hinder us less than it will hinder the chieftain they seek to aid. Their magic is nothing more than a shadow beneath the midday sun.”
His ship cut the water deep, prow dipping low at each swell. His craftsmen had hammered iron plates at the stem of his ship and bearded the prow with iron spikes. As the storm closed, a strong wind came up from the south, pressing them toward Nokvi’s line. At the center of his fleet Nokvi had ordered his warriors to lash together groups of ships into greater platforms, little islands for fighting. His lighter ships he had spread to his flanks, for mobility, and at his rear bobbed a few rounder boats with unfurled sails and uncanny masts, still green and bearing leaves. In these vessels, the Alban tree sorcerers would watch the battle and ply their trade.
But it would avail them nothing. Indeed, he has already seen Nokvi’s downfall in the magic Nokvi relies upon for aid.
As the fleets closed, Stronghand hoisted his standard, and the Hakonin ships and the Vitningsey ships swung in to strike Nokvi’s flanks. At once, fighting surged fiercely from deck to deck, and as it spread, he raised his standard again for the second flank attack to commence, more ships swinging even wider to grind hulls against their enemy and sweep the ships clean. His center he held steady, shipmen gently backing their oars to hold their distance just beyond an arrow’s flight. But he could hear Nokvi’s men calling out taunts and insults. Yet neither did Nokvi order the advance; he had already readied his ships, oars pulled in, hawsers tight. He waited for the storm.
At his back, Stronghand felt the wind rise.
On the left flank, one of Isa’s ships ground up upon the reef, and a Vitningsey ship drifted aimlessly toward Big Serpent island, cleared of its crew. But some of Nokvi’s ships were floundering, too; one had caught fire, and another had but a dozen men defending the afterdeck.
The wind blew with greater strength now. The deck rocked gently under him, a reminder of the sea’s power. Hakonin’s ships had driven hard into Nokvi’s flank.
Stronghand signaled, and the cauldrons were readied as his warriors rose with a great shout, eager to plunge into the fight. Black streams of smoke rose from the center of Nokvi’s fleet; he, too, planned to use fire. Cables snaked out from ship to ship, lashing together those which would strike head-on into Nokvi’s center. His own dragon-prowed ship he kept just to the rear of the foremost Rikin platform, three ships abreast.
To the north and south, Nokvi’s ships were floundering under the weight of superior numbers, many floating without a crew, empty but for corpses. Of his own fleet, one of Raufirit’s ships had capsized and a Ringarin ship lay in flames.
The wind at their backs grew to a gale. Seawater slapped the side, and foam sprayed his face. He lifted his standard for the final time as the first sheets of rain lashed down over them.
His fleet closed. Shields locked, men braced themselves. As the two fleets neared, Nokvi’s warriors swarmed to the fore of their ships. The strongest of them loosed their arrows, but wind had reached such a pitch by now that not one flight came close to Rikin’s platforms before the arrows were spun harmlessly into the water. His own warriors shot flight after flight, as steady as the rain. Missiles struck across the length of the enemy ships, passing well over the wall of shields that ran back from each stem.
The heavy clouds swept in, and the day darkened as the first of the great platforms ground together, and the real fighting began in the middle of a violent storm. Yet it affected his own men less than Nokvi’s. It was Nokvi’s men who had to fight facing into the storm. Their vision was battered by the squall. They could barely stand up against the screaming wind while his own ships drove again and again hard against the wooden walls of their enemy and his soldiers cast stones across the gap, as plentiful as hail.
The cauldrons of pitch swung wildly, spilled smoke and hot pitch down shields and into the sea, where it sizzled and died. In this wind, fire gained him little. But it gained Nokvi less. He saw Nokvi at last, standing on the raised afterdeck of his ship, a brawny RockChild with a golden cast of skin, pure as the skeins of a SwiftDaughter’s woven skirts. He wore a multicolored girdle of silver, gold, copper, and tin, a magnificent pattern that echoed the intertwined circles painted onto his chest. Was it possible that he had taken the gods of the humans as well as their magic?
Stronghand touched the wooden Circle that rested against his chest, drew his finger around it in the remembered gesture. It is well to know your enemy, even to learn from him, but foolish to believe that he is right. With such an admission, you have only seeded the ground for your own destruction. As Nokvi had done, all unknowing.
Now, at last, Stronghand gave Namms Dale’s chieftain, Grimstroke, the longed-for signal. To Grimstroke he had offered the privilege of revenge.
They laid their ships broadside. Spikes cracked the boards of Nokvi’s ship, and all along the line ships crashed, but the creaks and groans of wood strained to their utmost was soon covered by the cries of the RockChildren who leaped the gap and set about themselves. Grimstroke pressed forward with the strongest of his men, those who had been absent when Nokvi and his Moerin brothers attacked Namms Dale and burned alive the war leader and his followers in their own hall. Fury was a great goad. Grimstroke flowered with it, such that none could stand before him. He used a wooden club lined with stone blades, and as it fell first at his right and then at his left, he crushed shield and helm, arm and skull.
But when Nokvi saw Grimstroke clearing the deck as he plowed forward, striking to each side, he himself leaped forward with his spear. As Grimstroke raised his club to strike again, Nokvi struck a handsome blow, swift and sure: he caught Namms Dale’s chieftain in the throat. But as he fell, Grimstroke swung one last time, with his dying strength, and his club caught Nokvi’s right hand at the wrist and severed it with such force that hand and spear flew over the railing and into the sea. Then, with a gush of blood, Grimstroke ceased to move.
All but the rear of Nokvi’s ship had been cleared. Running forward from the afterdeck, Stronghand saw in the battle all round him that victory was at hand. Other ships fought on, but they would yield or run as soon as they saw their leader fallen.
He let his warriors clear the way before him. He had no illusions about his prowess in battle; he was not a great warrior, nor had he ever wanted to be.
He wanted to be king over all the RockChildren. Not even Bloodheart had gained that much power.
“Kill them all but Nokvi,” he cried, and his good strong Rikin brothers made quick work of the last of Nokvi’s fine Moerin host until only Nokvi stood, lashing out with a dagger while spears prodded him back.
Stepping up between his troops, Stronghand thrust with his spear at Nokvi’s chest with all his might. The thrust pinned Nokvi’s good arm to the rudder, and he roared furiously, helplessly, as Stronghand took an ax from one of his brothers and cut off Nokvi’s other hand.
His warriors cheered, and from the afterdeck he saw the battle die, as the wind died.
He wrenched the spear out of the rudder, and swiftly, with the haft, upended the spitting and flailing Nokvi until he lay helpless, bent backward over the railing. The sea boiled at the aft of the ship where the merfolk gathered, slick backs churning the bloody waters.
“Let none of the clans stand against me,” he cried, “or they shall serve me as Moerin’s chief serves me today!”
He flipped Nokvi over the side.
Yet as Nokvi struggled against the grip of the merfolk, and as abruptly sank, as the wind died and the rain let up so abruptly that he knew no natural weather could account for it, he sprang to the stern of the ship and clambered as high as
he could, searching for the boats of the Alban tree sorcerers. A fog shrouded the northern entrance to the bay, as though the clouds that had swept up from the south had passed over the battle only to sink into the ocean. He saw a glimpse of a green, flowering mast vanishing into the mist.
Had the Alban tree sorcerers betrayed Nokvi as a way to destroy Nokvi, or had they only deserted him when it became obvious he would lose?
He ran back to his own ship, which rested on the waves free of the hawsers that bound the other ships together, and with Tenth Son of the Fifth Litter steering he set himself to the oars with his brothers as they chased the Alban boats into the fog.
Truly, they had speed and strength that would allow them to catch the Alban boats, but despite his standard fixed at the stem of the ship just below the dragon’s prow, they were lost almost at once in the dense fog. He left the oars to stand at the stem so he could peer into the mist that fell silent around them until he wondered if they had left Earth entirely. Yet he could still smell the remains of battle. He smelled a colony of petrels on an offshore cliff, and heard the shrill cries of a flock of fulmars gathering by the now-distant ships to feed on the scraps left by the merfolk. The oars beat the water. The sea soughed against an unseen shoreline.
He leaned forward into the fog. Was that a flash of light? Was that movement? Mist streamed against his face, chilling and moist, and it became so oddly silent that he thought he could hear the clash of another battle down such a distance that he knew he was dreaming. He knew he was dreaming of Alain, even as he felt the sea foam spit on his hands and the clammy touch of fog curl around his throat.
The Lions stay on the hill. Below, Prince Bayan has arrayed the cavalry to face the winged Quman riders, a host so numerous that they seem more like a flood overtaking the eastern hills. Like a flood, they charge into the Wendish and Ungrian line. He thinks he has never heard anything as horrible as the sound of their wings. Nothing, at least, since Tallia repudiated him.
Below, battle is joined on the flanks. A bolt of lightning strikes in the midst of the Quman archers, but after a swirl of confusion, they right themselves and fight on.
He can only wait and watch: soon the wounded and unhorsed cavalry will seek safety among the Lions’, and although he stands in safety now, he knows it is illusion: safety is ephemeral. Lady Fortune only waits to spin her wheel.
He wonders at his own bitterness.
“There!” cries Folquin. “There’s their standard, but is that their commander? Why does the rest of their host proudly wear wings and yet he wears none?”
“Pride,” suggests Ingo.
“Humility?” Stephen is youngest among them, still hesitant to speak his mind.
Leo laughs. “Nay, princes are not humble, Stephen. Haven’t you learned that yet?”
Then they look at him, and he sees by their expression that they are remembering what he once was. They are remembering the argument he had with Captain Thiadbold when the captain ordered him to chain his hounds to the baggage train so that they wouldn’t follow him into the battle; they are remembering, perhaps, the moment during that argument that he forgot himself and acted like a count, not a common Lion whose mother was a whore and whose fate lay in the hands of the king.
The hounds went with the baggage wagons.
“Look,” he says now. The clouds race in out of the east like seagulls flocking to shore before a storm. “There’ll be rain soon.”
“God help them,” says Ingo. They know what rain will do to a field churned by horses.
Alain can see no pattern to the battle, only movement boiling in eddies and tides that swell and ebb across the shifting line of melee. Banners jerk from one spot to another, like a boat in choppy seas. Sometimes they fall. Sometimes they rise again in another man’s hands.
Folquin gasps and points again. “He’s moving.”
Prince Bulkezu’s standard raises high. A howl rises with it, the first voiced sound he has heard from the Quman, who ride silent into war and into death except for their wings. As the wingless prince rides into the battle, horns ring out from the Wendish side.
Prince Bulkezu leads his charge at the center of the Wendish line, straight at the banner of Austra and Olsatia. Margrave Judith and her troops lurch forward to meet the enemy charge. So numerous are they that Alain feels the rumble of hooves shuddering the earth itself. Or perhaps that is only the distant roll of thunder as black clouds sweep in over the hills and the eastern horizon is sheeted in rain.
The heavily armored Wendish horses press eagerly through the Quman line, and soon enough the Lions roar with triumph as Margrave Judith, her banner bobbing beside her, bears down on the Quman standard. Wind lifts her banner until it streams out in glory. The Quman standard only bells outward, hooked to its poles at all four corners. The wingless prince is driven back, and back, by the force of their press, and around Alain the Lions break into a fervent hymn as if their voices will spur their comrades on.
“Blessed are God, who trained our hands for war.”
But they are only another sound lost in the din of battle.
The margrave’s lance glances off the head of the wingless prince, spinning his helm, and as Judith closes, throwing away her lance, he knocks his helm free and a rush of black hair tumbles loose down his shoulders. Her sword strikes true, down on his unprotected head.
But the blow never lands.
A rider plunges forward between them on a horse as white as untouched snow. A battered round shield catches the blow, and its wielder simply shifts and counters with a single smooth blow that takes off Judith’s head from her shoulders.
The Austran banner falls next, cut in two, to be trampled into the ground. The wingless prince, freed of his helmet and with his hair so shining a black that it seems a silken banner in its own right, sets to work with his sword.
And she rides at his right hand, as she once rode at Alain’s.
All along, Alain believed the Lady of Battles would appear again to him. He had not feared standing to battle because he knew she would be there, as she always had been before.
And she is there. But this time, she rides at the right hand of the enemy. Has she forsaken him? Was it all a lie? Is that her rose, burning at his chest, or only fear in a panicking heart?
The Wendish center collapses utterly as Judith’s followers flee the field.
Alone on the hill, the Lions are left exposed.
“Come, friends!” cries Captain Thiadbold, moving along the line. “We’ll pull back toward the ford in good order. Keep your shields in position. Cavalry can’t break us as long as we keep our shield wall strong.”
As the battle dissolves into a hundred melees, the wingless prince leads a charge against the Lions stationed on the hill. Bulkezu swings to the left first, along the southwest flank of the hill fort, but finding it too steep for horses he circles back. The main force of Lions has already reached the summit and started down the northern side of the hill, out of sight. The first cohort stands the rear guard, and Alain keeps step with his comrades as they retreat up the hill after their fellows. The slope below them has a shallow enough pitch that riders can press upward, even with dirt ground to mud by boots and this morning’s rain. Yet the ramparts slow their passage. The Lions, on foot, have the advantage here. Nevertheless, he is fiercely glad that Rage and Sorrow are not with him. Here, he cannot protect them.
They make it to the hilltop. Weather and time have worn the ramparts down to hummocks. In the center of the central ring of earth lies a jumble of fallen stones, and Thiadbold pulls the last cohort into the stones just as Quman riders find their way through the maze of ramparts and burst onto the summit. Spear thrusts thunk on shields. Swords chip at metal rims. But the wall holds.
They retreat through the stones. Alain sees nothing but riders pressing before him. He simply hangs on. His only prayer now is that he hold his place in line, that he not slip at the wrong moment, that his is not the shield that offers the first, and killing, gap. T
he others strike when a strike is offered. He can only grip his shield and pray. He is useless, but he strives to do his part as best he can so as not to break faith with his comrades.
He has already broken an oath to the family who raised him. He has already lied to a dying man and, by breaking trust with him, lost the very thing that man had given him in trust. He has already lost the only woman he has ever loved.
At least here and now, he can serve the Lady of Battles as he once swore to do.
Then he sees her, a woman of middle age in a coat of mail patched with newer rings of iron. Her sword is nothing fancy, only hard, good metal, made for killing. She wears no helm because she needs no helm.
The Lady of Battles has come to him at last.
But she is still fighting for the other side.
“Hold your line!” cries Thiadbold, striking with his hooked spear at the Quman just to the right of the Lady. With an effortless swing, she drives his spear away from the warrior beside her. Yet still no Quman sword or spear can shatter the shield wall.
She sees Alain.
She raises her sword and then it falls, cleaving his shield into two parts that hang together by only splinters of wood. The shield wall is breached. Now everyone will die.
But not if he sacrifices himself.
He plunges forward so that they can close ranks behind him. Faintly, he hears his name called, but they are not fools. Thiadbold’s voice rings out again: “Close the gap! Hold your line!”
For a moment, he knows triumph. Then she stabs him through, just below the ribs. His mail parts like butter before her sword. Blood seeps through his tabard as he collapses, stunned, and falls.
“But I swore to serve you,” he whispers, astonished, because he really never thought that this of all things would happen to him. He never thought that he would be the one to die on the battlefield.
“So you have.” Her voice, low and deep as a church bell, rings in his head. “Many serve me by dealing death. The rest serve me by suffering death. This is the heart of war.”
