Damanja moved back to her tent. There was a strange, hazy quality to her surroundings, even apart from the fog, and while she remembered every word the crow had said to her, she was half-convinced that she’d been sleepwalking this whole time. Her night shift lay in a heap at the foot of the bed, and when she sat down on the cot, the blanket was still warm. Apparently, only minutes had passed since she’d awakened in a trance, pulled on her clothes and boots, and gone outside.
Go back to sleep. You were dreaming. Or maybe hallucinating.
Except there was a bloody scratch on the back of her hand. Could this possibly be real? And did it matter if she was dreaming, anyway? She should obey the crow just to be safe.
Her sword was under her bed. She knelt and reached for it, and when her hand wrapped around the sheath, it felt hot and slick to the touch. It seemed somehow darker than the surroundings, a thing made of ink and shadow.
The sensation passed, and it was only a sheathed sword in her hand. She strapped the sheath to her back and pulled the buckles tight against her chest. Armed, there was no point in staying within the tent, so she went outside again. If this wasn’t a dream, where were her guards, where was the watch ready to cry a warning and wake the camp?
“Am I awake?” she said, more to hear her voice than anything.
It sounded real enough. And she was more alert than she’d been, with the hazy feeling drifting away moment by moment.
The fog, on the other hand, grew ever stranger. Instead of a single, low-settling mass, it looked more like thick, pale cords twisting between the tents. A spectral light rose from her camp until it almost seemed like early dawn.
The crows had increased in number. Big, heavy crows from her own fiefdom, and the small, darting, more numerous crows of Lord Balint. Among them were the sleek crows with a grayish tint at the end of their feathers that had once followed Lord Zoltan, but were now aimless and leaderless.
The twisting fog continued to solidify as it climbed the hill, and she saw faces in the gloom. Men, horses. A thicker fog was behind them, driving them forward. As the first footmen came up the hill toward her, the fog melted away from their faces. They stared at her with blank, clouded eyes, awake but not seeing.
Damanja reached back and touched the hilt of her sword. It felt cold and slippery in her hand. Something told her not to draw it—not yet—and she pulled her hand away.
The foot- and horsemen stopped about forty feet away, where they spread into a half-moon shape that enclosed her on either end, with the tent behind her. There were maybe a dozen riders and roughly twice that many on foot, close to forty men in all.
A thicker band of fog forced its way between the men and horses, until it, too, began to dissolve. When it was gone Lord Balint stood in front of her, a grim expression on his face. He held a massive war hammer.
“After all this time, we meet,” he said. His voice was thick and raspy, and she noted a puckered scar at the base of his throat, where an arrow or a spear must have pierced him and left his voice permanently damaged. “Who knew it would be so easy? I might have done it years ago.”
“How did you do that?” she asked. “Was it a sohn from the mountains who showed you how it was done?”
“Nobody taught me,” he said. “It came to me. A gift from the demons and demigods that rule this land.”
“But someone had to explain how it worked. Did the crows whisper it to you?”
“Crows?” He scowled. “They talk in squawks and bobbing heads. No, I saw it in a dream, and when I stretched out my hand, I made it happen.”
She thought about how the crow had perched on her wrist and spoken in clear words. Not into her mind, either, but actual speech. Could it be that she understood them, but her rival did not? Could it be that he had simply stretched out his hand and made it happen, as he claimed? Did they each have their own gifts?
None of that explained how he’d learned it. Or how she’d learned her own miraculous deeds, for that matter. She wondered if it was what Miklos had called the sowen, a gathering of natural auras that gave the sword masters of the mountain temples their power. Damanja’s father had taught her of the connection between a crow and its lord, and how its soul would be bound to her, and she supposed this was much the same thing.
Her strength seemed to be growing with every fight. She’d gained power after seizing Belingus, and again after defeating the assassins who’d tried to murder her in her bed. As that thought occurred to her, she realized that Balint had been growing in power, as well. Perhaps with different powers.
“You sent people to kill me,” she said.
“I did. And I’ve come to kill you now.”
“Then why haven’t you yet?”
His eyes flickered past her shoulder, before settling on her face. “Because I’ve decided to give you a chance. Bow before me now, acknowledge me as your lord and master, and surrender your crows. Give me Zoltan’s lands and your own fiefdom. You will serve me, collect my tolls and taxes, and be among my most trusted advisors.”
Damanja snorted. “A glorified tax collector, is that what you’re offering?”
“You were expecting me to ask for your hand in marriage?”
“Why not? That’s the usual way of things when a man wants to steal a woman’s property. He at least makes a pretense of equality. And she can comfort herself thinking that at least her firstborn child will be heir to the throne.”
This brought a low, rasping chuckle from Balint. “As someone who notoriously seized lands from Zoltan through the gambit of an arranged marriage, it’s not surprising you’d go there first. But no, there’s no offer of matrimony. Those days are past—it will be pure war and bloodshed for the foreseeable future. Marriage would be pointless.”
Again his gaze darted past her shoulder. He was looking at her sword hilt, jutting above her shoulder. As he did, he changed his grip on his hammer, and it seemed to shift and move, her gaze struggling to hold it still.
“You’re not offering out of the goodness of your heart,” she said.
“Of course not. My army is stricken with boils. My troops are dying. So are yours. I have other enemies to my north and west, and there are hungry crowlords to your south, as well. Regardless of which of our armies triumphs, the winner limps home bloodied and perhaps fatally weakened for some treacherous enemy to swoop in and claim the spoils.”
“A fair point. So why should I bend my knee to you, instead of the other way around?”
Balint lifted his war hammer and gestured at the spearmen and riders in a half-circle around her. “Isn’t this answer enough? You can bow to me or I’ll cut you down.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“You’re no sword master. You can’t defeat forty men. Demons melt your soul, you couldn’t even defeat me. I’m bigger and stronger, and have fought at the head of my armies for years, while you sit and maneuver your forces safe behind a screen of archers.”
“Are your men even alive?” she asked. “Look at them, staring at me with mouths agape. Eyes like glass. They look like the dead raised from the grave. They’ll fall back into the grave just as easily.”
Balint glanced behind him and seemed to take in the expressions on their faces for the first time. Uncertainty flickered in his eyes. This was as new to him as it was to her, she thought. Neither of them knew what was happening, or what they were capable of.
He turned back around. “Then you’ve made your decision? You choose to die instead of surrender? I always thought you were more sensible than that, Damanja. They said you knew how to negotiate when it served your purpose.”
“And they say you shun negotiation. You take what you want, isn’t that right? Isn’t that why they call you Stronghand?”
His hands twisted around the handle of his war hammer. “That’s right. And you’d better remember it, too.”
“Fine, I’ll remember it. So why aren’t you taking, why are you offering? Is it because you’re afraid you might die?” Damanja forc
ed a confident smirk to her face. “I’ve grown in power, too. Did you know that I killed a warbrand from the mountains?”
This was a lie. Mostly a lie, anyway. She’d begun to suspect that Miklos had been something other than he’d claimed, and the crows had whispered that he’d taken up with the bladedancers. After that, he’d disappeared into the fire and ash clouds. She had no idea if he were still alive or not.
“Is that so?” Balint didn’t sound impressed, and she knew she’d overplayed her hand. He’d had his own contact with the sword temples, she knew.
“Leave now. Let me consider your offer.”
“I have you in my hands now,” he said. “Why would I let you go?”
As if in answer to Balint’s question, the crows flying about over Damanja’s sleeping army began to caw and screech. They had been circling in three roughly equivalent flocks: Damanja’s, Balint’s, and Zoltan’s. Now, two of the flocks had organized into one and were attacking the smaller force. That force was Balint’s. Zoltan’s crows had apparently thrown in their lot with her own.
“Because of that.” Damanja gestured at the crows flying over the hillside.
Balint lifted his war hammer overhead. “Kill her!”
His men and horse had been standing as still as a row of stringed puppets hanging from hooks. Now they shook their heads, blinked and looked about them, and then fixed on Damanja. Limbs moved and jerked to life. She staggered backward even as they moved toward her, more alert and confident with every step.
The sword!
Damanja reached back and drew the warbrand falchion. When she held it in front of her, shadows wrapped around the blade and sent tendrils to blacken her surroundings. Everything turned dark, even the half-moon overhead, which looked like a veil of silk had been drawn across it.
Balint’s charging horsemen changed course and pounded past her. Men thrust in the air with spears and swords, their blows wild and random. Those few enemies who chanced in her direction turned at the last moment to slash ineffectively at phantoms that seemed to dance around them. They couldn’t seem to penetrate the veil of shadow surrounding her.
If Damanja had known that would happen, she could have used the moment of confusion to flee. But she was so startled by the strange cloaking effect of the sword that she wasted valuable seconds admiring it and wondering if it were her own power or that of the sword. And how could she control it? As it was, she only managed to back up a few steps, until she was next to her tent.
“She’s over there, you idiots,” Balint cried. He seemed the only one who wasn’t blinded by the shadows rippling off her sword blade. “Up by the tent!”
The enemy crowlord shouted and ordered, and got men behind her before she could flee, their spears lowered to block her path. They still couldn’t see her—that much was clear from how they flailed about—but they had her hemmed in. Shadows continued to extend from the end of her blade, which twisted in her hand, difficult to control.
A crow fell from the sky and landed at her feet. One of Balint’s. It landed on its back, opened its mouth as if to gasp for air, and emitted a puff of sulfurous smoke before finally bursting into flames. Another flaming crow fell, but dissolved into cinders before it hit. More crows were falling all around. Some were hers, but most belonged to the enemy. She almost gagged on the bitter, rotten-egg smell.
Cries finally went up from her army. They were awakening from whatever Balint had done to put them down. Trumpets and drums followed the initial shouts of alarm, and men and women poured out of tents, dragged on jerkins and mail shirts, and grabbed their spears and bows and swords. Someone spotted the intruders on the hillside, and fresh cries went up to defend their crowlord. Her soldiers came running toward her in twos and threes.
It would take time to rouse enough forces to challenge forty well-armed enemies. The first pair to arrive, in fact—these being members of Damanja’s personal guard, whom Balint had somehow sent off from her defense—fell with spears in their bellies. Enemies hacked down the next wave of her soldiers as well. But the arrival of friendly forces drew the enemy’s attention, and they could no long search for Damanja nor pin her against her tent.
Her first thought was that the battling crows had awakened her troops. Instead, she thought it more likely that Balint’s spell had fallen away at the same moment he’d roused his own men to fight. He’d sent his forces creeping through the fog like sleepwalkers, but couldn’t order them into battle without returning them to consciousness. That action allowed Damanja’s army to be roused in turn.
Standing in the midst of this developing fight, Balint raged and cursed at his men to stay the course, to keep Damanja hemmed in and move together until they’d cut her down. But the din was too loud, and his men were too busy fighting for their lives to give him heed.
“You shouldn’t have awakened them,” she cried out to Balint, who came toward her, hammer gripped in front of him, his posture wary. “Or better yet, you should have stayed in your own camp and sent an emissary under a white flag to offer surrender.”
“My only mistake was not coming alone,” he said with a growl. “I’d have crushed your skull like a rotten egg and been done with it.”
“Give up,” she urged. “Surrender. It’s not too late.”
“It’s too late for one of us. You. You’ll be dead, and your army will collapse.”
“But you’ve already lost. Look around you.” Damanja gestured with her sword. “Your crows are dying. Isn’t that sign enough that you’ve been abandoned?”
She was only trying to buy time for her troops to charge the hillside and send arrows into throats and spears into bellies. Hem Balint in from behind, do to him what he’d been trying to do to her.
But he was having none of it. He shoved his way past a pawing, snorting horse and came at her with his hammer held high. His forearms bulged from the weight, and he seemed so big and powerful that she was sure he would shatter her weapon with the first swing. She lifted the falchion, planted her legs, and braced herself for the crushing blow.
The hammer smashed into the blade of her sword with a clang like a broken bell. A shock wave rolled through her arms and shoulders, and she fell to her knees with a gasp. The blade itself held. Balint leaned in with a feral sound midway between a growl and a chuckle.
One hand dropped from the handle of his war hammer and came for her throat. “Now you’ll see why they call me Stronghand,” he rasped.
She attempted to duck away, but he got hold of her and squeezed. She tried to draw a breath through the pain, but could not. Lights seemed to pop behind her eyes.
Shadows swirled around their weapons. Her sword was growing longer and blacker, until it seemed nothing more than shadow. An ethereal thing, no more substance than a thought or a wish. It slid through Balint’s war hammer, through his hands, and passed completely through his chest and came out the other side.
Balint’s eyes widened in shock. His hand stiffened at her throat, its fingers splayed wide open. Damanja broke free and gasped for air through a throat that felt like it was on fire. Her sword fell to the ground as she scrambled away from her tormentor on hands and knees.
Balint collapsed and rolled onto his back. Gloved hands tore at his mail shirt, which looked unharmed at first glance, yet when he pulled at it, the links gave way like shreds of rotten linen. He clenched his tunic below, and it, too, fell into dust. The chest below was a blackened mess. His fingers dug at the flesh as he moaned in agony, and it came apart, muscle and bone alike.
Damanja lifted herself to her feet even as Balint continued to writhe in agony. She picked up her falchion by the hilt. At least she thought it was the hilt; the sword looked and felt like an oily thing of shadow. It continued to twist and writhe in her hands like a living creature.
Balint’s men carried on the fight even as their lord lay dying. They’d knocked down her tent and formed a determined wedge of footmen and riders, which currently held the high ground. The way to the rear lay open, with onl
y lightly guarded lines in that direction. There was nothing to stop them from battling clear of Damanja’s army and escaping into the night.
So why were they holding position atop the knoll instead of fleeing?
Hundreds of lights converged on the outer ranks of the camp, men with torches in hand. Balint must have set his whole army in motion. Cut down Lady Damanja, then rout her forces in the chaos. Both the Zoltan and Damanja fiefdoms would lie helpless before his army, which would be free to pillage and burn. And now, even though their crowlord had fallen, the army was set upon completing their ambush, and her army, while awake, was unaware that they would shortly be attacked from the rear. The resulting slaughter would be the same.
Balint tilted his head back and screamed. She’d almost forgotten that he was still alive. He was writhing in pain, and suddenly exploded into what looked like a million tiny black moths.
The moths turned into burning cinders as they fluttered past her face. They swirled about her, faster and faster, then fell against her like a burning rain. When they struck, they melted through her skin.
Damanja cried out in pain, thinking this was one final attack by her enemy, his revenge that would take her with him. But the attack of tiny burning cinders had scarcely ended when a charged thrill raced through her skin and muscles, so strong she almost gasped with the power of it. She looked across the battlefield and could see every person, friend or foe, as a tiny spark of light against the night sky. Threads connected them to each other, and it seemed she could almost reach out and tug at them if she wanted.
Was this what Lord Balint had seen? Had she somehow stolen this power when she’d slain him with the shadow blade?
Balint’s invading army burst into the midst of the camp with a collective roar. Damanja’s own forces were still rousing themselves from their tents, and those who’d managed to pull on boots and grab weapons faced the hillside where their crowlord had found herself under attack, their backs to the attackers. The enemy fell upon them, and her troops began to fall by the dozen.
Shadow Walker (The Sword Saint Series Book 3) Page 8
