The Sea of Time - eARC

by P. C. Hodgell

  But for how long? Jame wondered.

  By now, hopefully, Brier had alerted Harn Grip-hard. The bulk of the Southern Host would come as soon as it could, but it would take time for a significant number to descend the Escarpment, and then how many horses had the cadets left them to reach this new battlefield?

  Two miles for the cadets to cover, eight for the Karnids, but the former had spent a good half hour getting ready. Who would reach the gap first?

  The mountain spur loomed ahead, its steep sides bristling with stunted trees and shrubs. Opposite it was a slope of rocky debris, reaching from the valley floor halfway up to a giant bite taken out of the Escarpment’s rim. Sunlight climbed both. Beyond, westward, the sky was still dark enough to show scattered stars, although building clouds soon obscured them.

  Ah. The cadets were pulling up just short of the gap, with no Karnid yet in sight. They had won their race, for whatever good that might do them.

  Jame hauled back on the reins, but the rathorn only tossed his head in irritation, almost unseating her, and plunged into the Kencyrs’ back ranks. Horses squealed, fighting to escape his rank scent. Some threw their riders and bolted back toward Kothifir. Others collided with their mates and fell in tangles of thrashing limbs.

  “Sorry,” said Jame to startled faces as she bucketed past. “Sorry, sorry, sorry…”

  She emerged through the broken front line to face a crescent of nine senior randon who had turned to observe her precipitous arrival.

  “I don’t believe it,” said the Caineron, scowling. “Where did she spring from?”

  None of them looked pleased to see her, Ran Spare least of all.

  “You should turn back, Lordan,” he said. “This is no exercise.”

  There was a jostling among the riders. Timmon emerged on her left riding a palomino, Gorbel to her right on a sturdy dark bay. The Ardeth wore hardened leather with rhi-sar inserts over gilded chain mail; the Caineron, a full suit of unornamented black rhi-sar. Most of the other cadets had donned less, down to mere padded jackets, depending on the wealth of their respective houses. Jame began to feel overdressed. She also felt rising anger.

  “Why the Caineron and Ardeth Lordan, but not the Knorth?”

  Death’s-head fidgeted under her. He wanted to get past these blockheads and at the enemy, whoever that might be. The officers’ horses stirred uneasily.

  “For one thing,” said Ran Spare, “you see what effect that monster of yours has on our mounts. Are we to sacrifice the entire cavalry for one rider?”

  He rode toward her as he spoke, calming his nervous mare with the touch of his hand. Death’s-head’s nostrils flared with interest. Pray Ancestors that she wasn’t in season.

  “For another, have you ever fought in that armor? I thought not. For some reason, you’re also dripping wet. Worse, where is your helmet?”

  Jame touched her bare face, shocked by memory. The helm with its fearsome guard of ivory teeth still lay on her bed in camp, where in her haste she had forgotten it. She hadn’t even missed it until now.

  Fool, she thought. What am I doing here?

  The randon was beside her now, their mounts head to tail. The rathorn sniffed. The mare stood her ground, although her withers darkened with nervous sweat. “Most important, though, there is this.” Spare spoke too softly now for anyone else to hear. “In the next hour, we may all die. Your lord brother survived Urakarn, otherwise no one would have known what happened to him or to the troops under his command. Someone must survive here too, to tell our story. Please, lady.”

  Timmon rose in his stirrups and pointed. “Here they come!”

  Beyond the gap, the valley widened and turned toward the southwest. Black-clad riders appeared around the bend, filling the Betwixt from side to side as their front line swung across it. They seemed to bring the wings of night with them, under whose shadow they rode in a many-legged mass. Likewise, their hoofbeats rolled together into a continuous rumble like distant thunder and dust rose like smoke in their wake. Through rents in the latter, one could see something looming behind them that was neither the Escarpment nor any Apollyne peak. Black it was, high and wide enough to dominate the sky, although its snowbound summit was broken. Columns of steam rose above it from its hidden interior and its flanks were fissured with cracks that glowed red in the dusk of its shadow.

  “‘Black rock on the dry sea’s edge,’” Gorbel growled, quoting an ancient song to the surprise of those close enough to hear. “‘How many your dungeons swallowed. How few came out again.’ D’you mean to tell me that that hulk is…”

  “Urakarn,” breathed Timmon. “Or a counterfeit of it, like a mirage.”

  Snow tumbled down from the heights and a cloud of ash belched up over its ramparts. Jame remembered the boiling lake and the seam of rising fire within the earth. Some moments later, the ground shuddered slightly underfoot, but any sound it might have made was swallowed by the rumble of the oncoming horde.

  Jame watched the gray stallion in the vanguard. It really was Iron-jaw, she decided, who had been her father’s war-horse. She remembered Tori daring her to ride the brute, and that bone-jarring fall, and Tori dragging her back through the fence, out from under those deadly, steel-shod hooves. Iron-jaw had always had an evil temper. Then Ganth had ridden him to death in the Haunted Lands, searching for the Dream-weaver, his lost love. When the stallion had come back as a haunt, the changer Keral had claimed him for his master, Gerridon.

  …we can always feed you to his new war-horse…

  Was that who rode Iron-jaw now?

  The figure on the haunt stallion’s back wore silver-gilt mail and black steel plate of an ornate, antique design that predated the Kencyrath’s experience on Rathillien with the rhi-sar. A horned helm obscured his features. It occurred to Jame that, despite growing up in his house, she had never seen the Master’s face clearly. He had always stood in the shadows, or behind her, or behind something else, such as those red, bridal ribbons. Tori had met him at least twice in his youth with the Southern Host but never face-to-face, if her experience of his dreams was to be believed. Only the Randir Matriarch Rawneth had had that dubious honor in the Moon Garden, but it was the changer Keral with whom she had mated, not Gerridon as she still believed.

  How had she known one face from another?

  How was Jame supposed to now?

  “M’lord Caineron,” said Ran Spare, “take the rocky slope. We can’t afford to be outflanked. “M’lord Ardeth, can you fortify that hill?”

  It required someone who knew him to see the strain in Timmon’s answering smile, but it wasn’t cowardice. He hadn’t yet proved himself to his house. This might be his last chance.

  “With pleasure,” he said, and wheeled his horse back into the crowd, followed by the Ardeth cadets.

  Spare turned back to Jame. “Lady…”

  Death’s-head snorted and pawed the ground. When he tossed his head, he nearly pulled Jame out of the saddle. Spare tried to grab his bridle, but Jame knocked his hand away before the rathorn could take off his arm.

  It comes to this, she thought.

  * * *

  Ever since she had first seen the gray stallion and had guessed who might be riding him, this fight had become personal. The Master had betrayed the entire Kencyrath, but his own house first, including her own hapless father. And she owed him for a miserable childhood which she still only partly remembered.

  Yet doubts arose: what could a single rider do, even on such a mount as Death’s-head? To make a sacrifice was one thing; to make a fool of oneself while doing so was another, and to what end?

  Moreover, despite her suspicions, what could have possessed the Master to risk his person after so long lurking in the shadows—not that he was really in the light now with night roiling over his head, slashed by distant lightning. If he was here, he must think that there was no real risk. He meant to smash through the cadets and seize the camp before the Host could arrive to defend it. Meanwhile, he must believe that
his puppet Prince Ton had overthrown King Krothen to become the Host’s paymaster. To whom did the Host belong then, if not to him?

  Jame didn’t think it would be that simple, but the Master of Knorth was arrogant enough to believe that it was.

  Thus her thoughts and emotions churned, underlaid with an unspoken fear: was she simply afraid?

  The Karnids had seen them. They came on at a gallop that made the earth shake, Iron-jaw thundering before them with sparks under his hooves where steel met rock. Thousands of swords cleared their scabbards and flashed back the dawn light from under the boiling clouds of night.

  In the next hour, we may all die.

  At the very least, she might buy them some time.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Spare. “He was Lord Knorth before he betrayed us all. This is house business.”

  With that, she put her heels to the rathorn’s sides and he bolted forward, almost leaving her in midair.

  They passed through the gap, hearing the cries behind them as the cadets formed ranks. They would hold their position as long as they could, but not follow, nor did Jame expect them to. The rathorn’s hooves devoured the ground. She felt his back arch with each stride while the wind tore at her loosened hair.

  Her shield was slung across her back. She slipped it down onto her left arm, truly feeling its weight for the first time. The rhi-sar lashings might be light, but the ironwood backing was not.

  Iron-jaw lunged toward her. Jame remembered meeting him in the soulscape, how he had nearly run down the foal that had been Death’s-head, how she had grabbed his thick neck, swung up, and plunged her nails into his eye. Sure enough, the right socket was a scarred cavity weeping thick, dark blood. Blind on that side…

  The space between the two equines was closing rapidly. Trinity, were they going to crash head on? The haunt was larger and heavier than the young rathorn, his hooves the size of platters. He loomed over them like a gray cliff.

  At the last moment, Death’s-head swerved to the right. As they hurtled past each other, the rathorn slashed at the haunt and its rider hammered down with a battle axe on Jame’s raised shield.

  Jame thought for a moment that he had broken her arm, but he had only driven the shield back to her shoulder, momentarily numbing it.

  Death’s-head turned faster than the haunt could and surged up on his right side. Jame finally remembered to draw her sword, but how was she supposed to manage it, the shield, and the rathorn all at once?

  Have you ever fought in that armor? Spare had asked. I thought not.

  Ah, well. Death’s-head would do as he wanted. As always, he was her primary weapon.

  She took the reins in her fingertips behind the shield. The haunt’s rider hammered down on it again, chipping its ironwood rim. She could see the glint of his eyes on either side of his nasal guard and hear the hollow boom of laughter within his helm.

  Iron-jaw turned to the left. Death’s-head, following him, almost ran into a wall of rearing, lunging thorns. Jame saw that the black mares surrounded them in a circle, around which the Karnids streamed to throw themselves against the front rank of cadets. To either side, they were dismounting and swarming up the rocky slope to the north and the mountain spur to the south, to be met above by Gorbel’s and Timmon’s forces respectively. She glimpsed the Caineron Lordan in his black armor methodically chopping at cheche-covered heads as they rose to his level. On the other side, the Ardeth fought in a shimmer of gold, backlit by the rising sun.

  Jame reined in Death’s-head who, surprisingly, obeyed. Iron-jaw plunged ahead of them. Coming up on the haunt’s left from behind, Jame saw the gleam of white ribs where the rathorn’s nasal tusk had ripped open his side but not noticeably slowed him. She slashed at his hindquarters. He screamed in pain and rage. Jame shot past, and again pulled hard to the left to avoid the mares. Their wicked black heads snaked out to snap at the rathorn’s barded flanks as he passed.

  Iron-jaw cut to the inside and drew up level where he rammed his shoulder into his lighter opponent, lifting the rathorn off his feet. Jame was thrown up onto Death’s-head’s neck and only kept her seat by clinging to it. The gray haunt rounded on them. His head shot over the rathorn’s as he tried to pin the white equine to his chest, the better to kick him to death with his steel-shod fore hooves. Ropes of slaver swung from his mouth into Jame’s face. His white eye rolled at her. She stabbed at it, and the haunt reared back with a squeal, letting the rathorn drop. No fool although dead, he had already lost half of his sight to her.

  Somehow Jame stayed in the saddle and Death’s-head regained his feet, stumbling but not falling.

  Meanwhile, the haunt nearly toppled over backward into the ring of shrieking mares. His rider was still off balance when he thudded down from his rear. The other’s shield had jerked up. Jame came in to the left and hacked at the exposed wrist. The rider’s gauntlet flew off, taking the shield with it…and his hand too? Where the vambrace ended, there was nothing.

  …a hand, reaching out between red ribbons to claim her, her knife chopping frantically at it…

  I cost him that, Jame thought. It is Gerridon after all.

  The reality of it almost took her breath away. Whatever she had suspected, to find herself actually at sword’s point with the Master of Knorth seemed too fantastic to believe. Scrollsmen would sing about this encounter, however it ended, for he was a creature of legend. But then so was she. Jamethiel Priest’s-bane, daughter of Ganth Gray Lord and the Dream-weaver, sister of Torisen Black Lord, Lordan of Ivory…

  “Ha!” she said, and slashed at him again.

  He turned in his saddle to meet her blade with the edge of his axe. With a flick of his wrist, he disarmed her.

  Jame dropped her shield, kicked free from her stirrups, and threw herself at him. The axe’s return stroke hissed over her head. She felt his strength as she grappled with him, but also his unsettled mass shifting. Then they were both in the air, falling, she on top, his hot breath roaring in her ear. Jame twisted to lead with the spike set on her left shoulder guard. She thought she heard a startled cry just before she crashed down on him. The rhi-sar tooth scraped against the nasal guard, then plunged into the helmet’s eye slit. The next instant her weight slammed into the steel shell, and something snapped.

  The impact took away both Jame’s breath and, for a moment, her wits. She regained the latter to find herself lying on her back, staring up at the ragged sky. What had happened? Where was Gerridon? Silence spread about her, the clash of arms and more distant cries dying away one by one. Was she going deaf? What had broken? Sweet Trinity, not her neck…

  Hooves scraped the ground close by, and she found herself looking up the length of two black, slender, equine legs. The thorn’s head descended. It sniffed at her, stirring the lock of hair that had fallen into her eyes, and bared its fangs behind curling lips. Like Death’s-head, it was a carnivore and had carrion breath. Would the rathorn ivory at her throat protect her? Then it sneezed in her face and stretched its neck to prod something that lay beside her with a nasal tusk. Metal rattled. The thorn snorted and withdrew.

  Cautiously, Jame turned her head. There lay the Master’s horned helmet, scored where the rhi-sar tooth had entered it. Its mangled eye slit seemed to stare back at her, dark and empty.

  She started to rise, and gasped as pain lanced through her left shoulder. Finding that arm limp, she struggled up onto the other elbow. The rest of the black enameled armor sprawled on the ground nearby, also tenantless, held together by various buckles and straps.

  Iron-jaw was gone too. Whether he had vanished like his master or simply walked away, she didn’t know. Death’s-head remained, looking about curiously with head high and ears pricked. The battle had stopped in its tracks. Jame had the impression that the Karnids had all turned to stare at what remained of their fallen prophet, but now their attention was fixed on something to the west. She craned to follow their gaze.

  Urakarn still loomed behind the rags of night, but its fa
ce had changed. A massive column of ash billowed above it, stabbed through by lightning bolts, and fiery chasms had opened down its flanks. As Jame watched, the eastern face of the mountain bulged and slid. Another explosion belched clouds of steam near the summit, and another, and another. Everything was in motion, rising or falling, to a sound like that of distant thunder. The Betwixt appeared to be in the direct path of that vast, roiling collapse. Just when it seemed that a wall of debris would come rolling around the valley’s western curve, the sun lifted over the mountain spur to the east and night rolled back, taking the shades of Urakarn with it.

  The sky growled and the ground briefly trembled. A trickle of smoke rose on the far horizon from a mountain hidden by the curve of the earth.

  The Karnids stirred and muttered. From where Jame lay, she could see mostly shifting black legs, of horses, of men. All seemed to reach the same conclusion at once. With that, they turned and trudged off westward, away from the battlefield, toward the ruins of their home.

  Jame rose slowly, carefully, as if one joint at a time. Her left arm hung dead at her side and her left shoulder slumped forward within her shell of rhi-sar armor. All around her, Karnids were retreating, skirting the circle of combat as if the ground there was tainted. No one so much as looked at her.

  “That’s it?” she asked Death’s-head.

  The rathorn snorted and shook himself.

  When she turned to the east, the sun blinded her. The two ridges and the gap between them appeared to be full of waving figures. Their voices seemed far away and faint, but she thought that they were cheering. Jame waited for them, holding her arm by the elbow close against her side, feeling cold and sick.

  II

  The camp surgeon told her that she had broken her collarbone.

  “It’s nothing serious,” he said cheerfully. “A healer could set it right in a few days, but we don’t have one. Say, two weeks in a sling with plenty of dwar sleep, four or five weeks without it.”

  Then he had given her a sleeping draft, which she had hardly needed. It seemed an age since she had last closed her eyes—twenty days, if one went by the calendar.