Adrienne Martine-Barnes - [Sword 01]

by The Fire Sword (v0. 9) (epub)

  She pried her eyes open, still full of the warmth of the dream, and took a deep, shuddering breath. Knuckling her eyes, she sat up. "Talk about wish fulfillment,” she muttered. "I even knew her name—Rowena.”

  The night was full of sound, the stamping of horses and the movement of men, along with a few dogs. The wind sighed, as if it had tired itself out in the past few weeks. Eleanor listened, then got up. Something was wrong. She pulled her cloak around her and crept to the front of the wagon, hoping not to disturb her faithful servant.

  Yorick’s lean shadow crossed the opening of the wagon. "What?”

  "Don’t you ever sleep? I don’t know. Something’s amiss. I had a dream and—”

  "Laughed,” he replied.

  "Yes, I did, didn’t I?” So powerful had the dream been, she still carried the sense of well-being it had given her. Eleanor could not decide if she thought it kind or cruel, to have visions of what could never be.

  He extended a long hand to help her onto the wagon seat, then sat beside her in companionable silence. Eleanor enjoyed that, and the good man smells that enveloped him, work sweat and damp leather and cloth. His body light was clear, a diamond light around a jewel of a man.

  She looked across the river toward the walls of London. They had camped at one end of the stone bridge, the span that would give rise many centuries in the future to a children’s rhyme. Now it was brand, spanking new—barely passed its fifteenth year, the Marshall had informed her. Already there were wooden houses on each side of the wide roadway, though she had only caught a glimpse of them in the gray daylight. She checked her "mirror” above the camp, surprised at its existence and at her own capacity to weave such a thing. You still do not know your own strength, daughter.

  Eleanor smiled at this whisper, feeling that special acerbic affection she associated with the Mistress of Willows. A good thing, too. I wouldn’t want to get stuck-up.

  Goose! Arrogance is not your vice, but humility.

  Eleanor felt she had just been slapped a stinging blow on the face. Humility a vice? She frowned over it, until she remembered a certain Dr. Hoffman in the history department at her father’s university, an absolutely brilliant scholar who deferred to everyone, even the school janitor, in a perfectly maddening way. She would let her colleagues attach themselves to her work like leeches in exchange for a footnote, until she became a kind of departmental workhorse, always publishing but never alone. I don’t do that. But she knew how eager she had been to hand Arthur over to William and stop with the job half-done. Her pregnancy was just an excuse to get out of the responsibility of finishing the task.

  Sighing, she thought, Why can’t things be all clear and neat?

  They never are, even for the gods, child.

  A faint thud caught her attention, and she looked up toward it from the meditation on her wind-chapped hands. A tiny movement in the darkness of the city. Eleanor stood up awkwardly and tried to penetrate the gloom. Something darker than night seemed to creep along the base of the wall, a black serpent coiling around the city with sinuous stealth. She studied it, feeling her energy stopped as if by a barrier at the edges of this darkness.

  For perhaps half an hour she stood and sensed the thing, until her spirit felt bruised from hammering at the darkness. Yorick’s gnarled hand held her elbow, and she could feel his warmth and loyalty upholding her. For a moment, she wondered why he had attached himself to her. As if this distraction released her mind, she suddenly found an answer to the question of what was going on.

  "Nevsky!”

  "Milady?”

  "John’s going to send his men across the river in the cover of darkness. Or that is his plan. We have a small surprise for him. Go wake Arthur, and tell him... to bring his pipes.” A slight smile touched her face.

  Yorick returned with the young king still rubbing sleep from his eyes, a cloth-wrapped bundle pressed against his chest. William lumbered out of the shadows, alert and sharp-eyed.

  "Milady, this is the first good night’s sleep I have enjoyed in a week,” Arthur complained. The camp was astir now, though mutedly.

  "Yes, my lord. Look to the river. What do you see?” "Nothing. No, moving darkness. What is it?”

  "Your cousin sends his troops, I believe.”

  "But what of their light? Does he command Shadow men now?”

  Eleanor sat down with a thump. It suddenly came to her that these approaching troops were not lightless zombies but living men, ordinary men who followed John out of fealty or love or greed. "His magic cloaks their lights, I think.”

  William snorted, cleared his throat, and spat into the snow. "Yes, milady. He can make himself almost invisible, though I think it costs him dearly.”

  Eleanor nodded, for she had not solved that problem herself and knew it to be a difficult one. She realized that while John was a very bad man, he was also the only person alive who probably knew more of the uses of magic than she did now. In some other circumstance, she would have sat and learned from him. Now she would send several hundred or thousand men to a chilly death.

  It was hard, the choice to use her power, Arthur’s power, for there seemed no way to do so without killing. Those men creeping out onto the frozen river probably had wives and children, mothers and fathers who would mourn their passing.

  Arthur shifted his hand, and an eerie moan slipped from under the cloth. He clapped a hand around it, and the sound died. "I do not like this accursed thing, milady.”

  "No. But with every harmony, there is an equal disharmony. There is God, and there is the Devil. There is the Harp, for healing, and the pipes, for illness. Such things keep the cosmos in balance.”

  William guffawed. "I did not know you were a philosopher.”

  "Me? No, I’m just a simple wench who—”

  His laughter broke over her words. "I am repaid for my attempt to gammon you. Simple wench, indeed.” Arthur ignored this byplay, still turning the matter of harmony over in his mind. "If I play these in the camp, there will be madness.”

  "True, my lord, and I had not thought of that.” She had but felt a need to protect his pride. "Let me think. We will go beyond the perimeter to use them. That should suffice.” But she did not stir, aware of some detail overlooked. Then she moved back into the darkness of the wagon and drew the silky blue cloak of Bridget over her, took her staff, and dismounted.

  They were two dozen as they stepped outside the confines of the camp. The air seemed heavier, as if charged with lightning, but it was not unbearable, just a bit stifling. The lingering smell of roses vanished, and there were the odors of cold, nervous men, the clean bite of snow, and a slight, burning, woody scent from the city.

  The blackness spread out in a thick line across the river. It wound under the arches of the bridge like a swiri of velvet on the slightly shining ice. Several knights ranged themselves on either side of Arthur, and Eleanor stood behind him. "I would suggest you gentlemen stop up your ears.”

  Then they waited silently for a few minutes, the men stamping uneasily in the snow, watching the dark line move forward until it was in the middle of the frozen river. Eleanor used the time to wrestle with her conscience, trying to see if she had overlooked some less violent solution to the threat. But she knew that John could sit in London while they froze, harassing them and wearing them down, unless they forced him to do otherwise. She speculated why he had not chosen to do just that and decided that it was her own presence that unbalanced his calculations. He must have been startled, at the very least, by the sudden appearance of the mirror. Or perhaps he felt his power waning and moved to stop the process.

  Guide me to do right, Lady. It was a heartfelt prayer offered to Bridget and Sal and the Virgin Mary and all the faces of woman. The answer was an uplift of pure joy, so her aura fountained up, casting shadows on the snow. She raised her hands together. "I think we need a little light on the subject,” she said, and cast a fireball into the air above the river. It burst like an Independence Day display, and the fig
ures of the men on the river were cast in gold for a second. They turned their eyes toward the sudden brightness, then away, dazzled.

  "Now, Arthur!” She gasped the words, for she felt her heart struggle suddenly, as if squeezed by a dark hand. She snatched the blue cloak across her chest, and the pain passed as Arthur dropped the cloth and lifted the pipes to his mouth. At the first tone, half the knights clapped their hands to their heads and howled, and several others fell down senseless.

  Eleanor set her feet apart, at shoulder width, drew a deep breath, and spread her arms, holding the cloak out around her like a field of stars, her aura flaming like a beacon. The strength of earth flowed into her feet, up her legs, and into her body as Arthur played six notes, over and over. She could see his shoulders tremble. William stood rocklike beside him, one hand over an ear, the other on the young king’s shoulder.

  There was a cracking sound, and the bridge trembled. Then the ice began to craze like a shattered mirror. Screaming panic hit the ranks of men on the ice, though whether it was from the pipes or the sudden unsteadiness qf footing one could not tell. Eleanor felt the panic, too, but detachedly, as if it were someone else who was screaming from a raw throat.

  The river under the ice churned, first sluggishly, then with greater turbulence, smashing blocks of ice and bodies of men into the arches of the bridge. It swallowed struggling, armored men, the black waters closing over their heads as they fled back toward the far bank. Others ran toward Arthur’s camp, and a few made it, crawling out onto the icy shore, howling.

  Eleanor’s arms ached, and her hand around her staff was stiff. She felt a sudden warmth upon her back, and two bony hands raised her elbows. Yorick’s familiar presence steadied and refreshed her, though her heart was heavy.

  The pipes made a particularly shrill cry, and the city wall seemed to tremble. Then great blocks of stone leapt into the air and fell back to earth with loud thuds, which echoed even above the confusion on the river. A gap in the wall widened.

  "Arthur! Stop! You’ll bring down the whole city!” He stood limply with his back to her, the syrinx hanging from his black left hand. It fell into the snow with a few faint squeaks. Water crested up from under the undamaged ice upriver, pushing the debris of dead men and floes down to the cracked arches of the stone bridge and beyond. Pale dawn grayed the east as they came back to the silent present.

  The Marshall cracked his jaw, as if his ears needed popping, then bent down and wound the damp cloth around the pan pipe. "I never knew it ’twas of any use to be tone-deaf,” he said, holding the bundle distastefully. "Give me a grand headache though. A fair sickening way to fight.”

  Eleanor was too tired to argue the niceties of sword-fighting over drowning. All she said was, "God willing, we will never have to use that thing again.” Then she turned and let Yorick help her back to the wagon.

  XXXIV

  It was a bitter-flavored victory, and Eleanor found herself once again the object of curious and suspicious glances that slid away anxiously when she met them. A number of surreptitious signs of the cross touched brows and shoulders as she moved about the camp with dour Yorick constantly beside her. She could hardly blame them, but that did not lessen the pain it caused. She wanted to say, "I did what I had to,” but the refuge of expediency was unpalatable. The men around her would have felt no sense of shame to have gone out on the ice and hacked their way through King John’s men, but fireballs and pan pipes and cracking ice were somehow dishonorable.

  She saw, too, that she could very rapidly become more a liability to Arthur than an asset, if his followers thought him too subject to her influence. A baron who almost sweated avarice approached her with oily enthusiasm, hinting that she was in danger and that he would give his offices to protect her for a consideration.

  Eleanor, tired beyond endurance, short on sleep and chilled, just leaned into his ear. "Would you like to be minus your left testicle or your right?” He scurried away, and she found the ever-present Yorick grinning.

  "That will learn him to suck up to his betters,” he said slowly.

  "My dear friend, you are a snob.” His blank expression told her he did not know what she meant. "Never mind.” She cast a glance at the ruined wall of the city. "I would give a lot to sleep in a real bed tonight. I wonder what John will do now?”

  "Parley.”

  "You are probably right. I don’t think he expected to be stalemated this way. Oh, by the way, the... music didn’t seem to affect you. Why? Are you tone-deaf like the Marshall?”

  "Naw. No sound behin’ thee. All caught on thy star cloak.”

  "Really. How interesting. Thank you for holding me up. I was ready to drop. I still am, except that at any moment, something is going to happen.”

  Yorick nodded. He held a hand up. "Storm.” A snowflake clung to his knuckle.

  Eleanor looked toward the west, where storms came onto Albion from the Atlantic, then north. The sky was its usual leaden gray, the pale winter sun hardly even a blur overhead, but there was no massing of clouds to signal any disturbance. The wolf winter, indeed, seemed to have exhausted itself for the moment, which she was grateful for.

  As she had several times before, she wondered what had prompted this silent man to attach himself to her. Eleanor knew only that he was widowed by the Shadow and that his two sons were grown, that he could turn his hand to any task from driving a team to mending a broken wheel, and that his loyalty was as steadfast as anyone could wish for. She almost asked him, but a "halloo!” broke the relative quiet of the camp.

  There was movement on the stone bridge, and a single file of riders picked their way across. The pipes had spli}; the stone span along its center from shore to shore, so it was passable if one took care. A red banner with two crouched lions fluttered in the slight breeze. The horses reached the end of the bridge, and she could see perhaps a dozen riders in the slight drift of wet snowflakes cascading down.

  They drew up before the guards at the perimeter, and one leaned forward and spoke. Their cloaks were blue, a wonderful splash of color against the dismal gray of the day, and the metal of their chain mail gleamed. Eleanor thought they looked like an illumination, and she realized that this was the first time she had actually seen anyone who resembled her mental impression of the Middle Ages. She glanced around at the muted browns and soft greens of her companion’s clothing, the iron mail showing rust where it had been inadequately greased, at boots rimed with mud and old,

  dried blood, and knew that her picture book idea was a thing of cities and peace. The real Middle Ages was muted in its colors and violent in its life.

  A man-at-arms loped across the camp, sending up spurts of mushy snow, hurrying to Arthur’s wagon. The Marshall met him, and she watched their heads come together, conferring. Arthur, a little white-faced and fey from his piping, leaned out. He climbed out, twitching his drab cloak around him, saw her watching him, and gestured at her. He looked wan, and she understood that she was not the only one who found the experience changing them. He could destroy a city full of people by putting a pipe to his lips, and if she had not spoken, he might have. It was almost too much power to entrust to one headstrong young man, and she was sure he knew it.

  They arrived at the point where the messengers waited on the horses, Arthur with his bodyguard and William, Eleanor, and Yorick. A number of the knights and barons in Arthur’s train assembled behind them. For a long moment, there was no sound but horse snorts, hoof falls, the rattling cough of someone with a cold or incipient pneumonia, and the metallic chink of arms.

  Then a man swung off his horse, swept back one side of his cloak, and revealed an embroidered tabard with two gold lions crouching on a red field. He wore a small knife in his belt but no sword and no mail, and he swept a casual glance across Arthur, the Marshall, and Eleanor. His eyes seemed to linger on her a moment, but she could not be sure. He must, by his lack of weapons, be a herald.

  "Greetings, William of Striguil.”

  "Well, if it isn
’t Henry de Camber. When did you put on the pursuivant’s tabard?” The Marshall ignored the absence of any title and returned the mild insult.

  A quick movement, a hand reaching for a hilt that was not there, displayed Henry as a hasty man unused to his current office. The mounted men behind him shifted uneasily in their saddles, though their faces were hidden under their helms. One horse shook its head suddenly and blew its full lips, and Eleanor could hear sniggers in the barons behind her.

  Henry flushed an ugly red. "I come with a message from King John.”

  "Then speak it. We are all ears and cold feet.” William spoke lightly. Eleanor glanced over her shoulder and saw a number of wide grins.

  "The King, in his mercy, forgives your treachery, William, knowing you were ensorceled by this pretender. Therefore, he bids you kill the woman. Burn her. As for the man who calls himself Arthur, you will surrender him to King John forthwith.”

  Arthur started laughing. It was a rude, raucous, unexpected sound. "That’s my cousin John, commanding the moon and expecting it to shine on him. I think I remember you, Camber. About twenty years ago, you were a page who was forever breaking crockery. My cousin must be in dire need to use such a clumsy tool. Still got that big birthmark on the back of your neck? It used to fascinate me when you served at table. Took away my appetite, really.”

  Henry de Camber turned an unpleasing red, and Eleanor could tell by the shaking of their shoulders that a number of his escort thought this was a good joke. Knightly guffaws churned the air behind her.

  "Where is the real herald, Geoffrey of Brideswell?” William asked.

  Henry mastered his rage and gave a shrug. "In the Tovyer for his treachery. As you will be soon.”

  "And you were the only one willing to do the King’s dirty work? Arthur is right. He must be in trouble.” "Will you accept the terms?”

  "No.” Arthur was serious again. "We will meet John here at midday. Tell him.”