“Not quite the same, my lady,” he returned. “Now we are one.” He touched the rim of the star-shield and it rang gently.
Tembujin, at Dana’s elbow, muttered an oath. She looked around. Miklos stood there, offering Tembujin the reins of a horse. The odlok set aside his bow and took the reins, cautiously, as if fearing they were poisoned. Miklos turned on his heel and strode away. Andrion frowned slightly at the stiffness of Miklos’s departing back.
Tembujin stared in pleased surprise. Then, realizing how much his expression revealed, he assumed an air of indifference. He offered his hand to the horse. It snuffled curiously and snorted, accepting him. Tembujin proceeded to inspect the horse’s legs and flanks, skilled fingers testing each muscle and tendon. The beast was a tall gelding, silver-white in the misty light; Tembujin noted the animal’s lack of virility and turned, one eyebrow arched high, to Andrion.
Andrion bent in a stiff, formal bow. “A token of my friendship, Prince Tembujin.”
“And a warning to respect those women you protect, Prince Andrion?”
Andrion grinned.
“My thanks,” growled Tembujin, not without humor. He scratched the horse’s neck. It rubbed its muzzle against his tunic; if it had been a cat, it would have purred. Tembujin smiled.
Andrion rocked back on his heels, pleased with himself.
“I need no man’s protection,” Dana said, nettled, to no one in particular. She loosed another arrow, which narrowly missed Bonifacio as he strolled through the range, surrounded by servants and acolytes like sweeping robes. He started, glared at her. She smiled blandly back.
Nikander murmured an order, and immediately the legionaries gathered in orderly rows. Miklos brought the remaining bronze falcon from the pavilion and grounded its pole beside Andrion. Bonifacio lifted Bellasteros’s helmet from a box. A brief ray of sun sliced the clouds, laying a golden aureole about it. The crimson plume rippled in the wind as if it were a living creature, a hatchling, trying its wings.
No. there was the hatchling, Dana mused. Andrion’s eyes absorbed the glimmer of light on the helmet and on the falcon, a mingled flame of pleasure and horror filling their depths. His own black plume fluttered, and his black cloak billowed about his slender body. A body taut with a complex beauty . . .
Bonifacio began the prayer, “To victory, and the embrace of Harus.” To Ashtar, Dana thought, and she abandoned her musings.
Day passed almost imperceptibly into night. Andrion tried to sleep. The darkness around him bristled with black-barbed arrows; through them came Tembujin, his face stretched tight to the bone, riding a pale horse.
Andrion woke. The world was consumed in the crimson folds of Bellasteros’s cloak, red flames leaping from the neat rows of tents, from the pavilion; greedy flames hissing upward to stain the moon with blood.
He was still dreaming. He struggled again to wakefulness. The moon was a silver blaze overhead, and the Companions of Sabazel danced naked in its light, their supple limbs spangled with the star-sheen of the shield.
Still he dreamed. He moaned, tossing on his narrow camp bed. He saw through the opening of the tent the rising sun, a thin crescent of gold like the blade of Solifrax. The moon contracted, became a many pointed star at the tip of the sun, and the horizon was a gold chain binding them together. The horizon clotted, and tendrils of smoke coiled upward to become a thick-cabled spider’s web encompassing sun, moon, star, and bringing them down into the mud outside the inn in Bellastria.
Andrion awoke and sat trembling among tumbled blankets, waiting to see what new manifestation would greet him. The darkness outside was thinning to a gray shot with rain. The chill ate to his bones; he could hardly sense his own body, as if it were not really his but a corpse’s.
The tent flap moved. Andrion tensed; Miklos looked in. “Ah, my lord, you are awake; the legions are forming, my lord.”
So he really was awake this time. He wondered if he perhaps preferred one of his nightmares to this chill reality. He wondered if his title in Miklos’s voice became a sneer.
The young soldier blew flame into the smoldering coals in a nearby brazier. In the sudden scarlet light his face was clear and steady. No, he did not sneer. Is loyalty the greater, Andrion asked himself, when it is so hard to bear? Groaning, he rose to his feet and reached for food, clothing, weapons.
Ventalidar’s coat steamed. Gratefully. Andrion mounted his broad, warm back and turned his head toward the gathered officers. Behind them the legionaries were wraiths in the hazy dawn light, illusions of men, not flesh and blood. Ilanit’s shield was a dull brass disk. The bronze falcon drooped upon its perch.
Tembujin was, indeed, a vision of death. His damp black hair matted his forehead and temples, and his cheekbones were sharp below brittle eyes. “You wish no armor?” Andrion asked him.
“Perhaps I was meant to die at the hands of my own people,” Tembujin returned, lips stiff. “Perhaps you only delayed the inevitable.”
Andrion could not reply. We are all fey, he thought; death no longer frightens us. But we must prevail.
He drew Solifrax and flourished it with an arm so tense it shivered. The sword was a quick stroke of lightning, flaring and then gone. Trumpets brayed, flat under the lowering sky, and with a mutter of resignation the imperial army moved. There should be more than this, Andrion thought; I have anticipated this day for three months and more. Banners should be flying, the troops should sing raucous war hymns, a falcon should screech overhead. But even Ventalidar plodded like a plow horse through the mud. His blood was torpid in his veins.
He laid Solifrax along his thigh, where it hummed faintly beneath the weeping of the rain. Perhaps it, too, steamed. He would let himself believe so.
* * * * *
The great khan seemed shrunken, his face darkened by decay; his high plucked forehead was as furrowed as if some nightmare fouled even his waking hours. His massive shoulders slumped and his huge hands trembled. He surveyed the damp, chill dawn absently, not quite catching its significance.
“You have drunk too much kviss these last months,” Raksula hissed. She was dressed in the tunic, breeches, and long dagger of a warrior.
Baakhun turned ponderously. He did not recognize her. With a grunt he turned back to the people arrayed before him. He tried to straighten his back and failed.
The sun was a bloody stain on the horizon. To one side huddled the burdened camels, the herds of sheep, the families of the Khazyari. To the other waited the ranks of warriors beneath their standards. The only breeze stirring was their muttered thirst for battle. Odo stood before them, a scarlet dagger in each hand, grinning over the mutilated bodies of two imperial scouts. “To a successful conclusion to our hunt!” the shaman squealed. “To victory, death, and the embrace of Khalingu!”
Raksula’s face, ferret-thin, ferret-sharp, was engraved with a scowl. The scouts had said remarkably little before they died, considering the persuasions she had used, but they had been unable to conceal the presence in the imperial army of the black prince and his sword of power. Raksula flexed and loosed her hand as if it still stung from the burning amulet. Her mouth tightened to a pitiless slit.
Vlad stood beside Baakhun, slack-lipped, watching the army like toys gathered for his amusement. The carved plaque of the odlok hung lopsided on his tunic. With a muttered imprecation, Raksula straightened it. He cleared his throat and spat onto her boots. She tweaked his small, scrubby tail of hair, and he scuttled like a spider onto his pony.
Slaves hitched ponies to the cart carrying Khalingu’s image. Odo clambered up and seized the reins. He began a tuneless chant, eerie rising and falling phrases that rose and then fell back, at one with the chill and damp of the dawn. The cart lumbered over the bodies of the scouts.
Voices took up Odo’s chant, wailing of the blood and death that would warm such an unpromising day. The song swelled. The plain shuddered.
With a screech of ecstasy a young woman threw herself beneath the cart. It bumped over her body, l
eaving the muddy grass mottled with scarlet. A warrior leaped, and then a woman threw her child into its gruesome path. Odo’s voice wound upward again, shrill enough to pierce the cloud, and the shrieks of the Khazyari followed it, consuming, compelling. Baakhun watched stolidly; Raksula licked her lips in anticipation. “Bring me the necklace,” she murmured. “The necklace, and then the sword and the Empire. Qem has betrayed you, but I shall not. I am your most loyal servant.”
The hangings around the god were as dense and gray as the sky. From within came a brief scrabbling, as of claws unsheathed and then drawn back again, and the smack-click of yawning lips and teeth. The rain fell in gauzy veils, shrouding the bodies of the sacrifices. The chant wavered across the plain and the cart rolled on.
* * * * *
The day swirled, steadied, swirled again. Time ended. To Andrion the world was the cold north wind that cut through cloak and armor and flesh. It was the hard rock against his shoulder and the tantalizing scent of damp earth in his throat. His hand was clenched so tightly on the hilt of Solifrax that it had long since ceased to feel it. Ventalidar huddled aggrievedly behind him, Patros knelt beside him; the Sabazians crouched in a knot across a narrow gully, Dana’s slender form beside Kerith’s, Lyris leaning over a rock with spear poised, watchful as a hunting wolf. Tembujin stood beside his horse, slapping the reins across his leg, features revealing nothing.
The valley of the Galel lay before them, serrated stone stretching past a watercourse to a murky horizon that could as well have been the far rim of the world as the far rim of the valley. Soggy tamarisk clung like moss to the tumbled rocks; a discordant wind moaned around stone spires like the ruins of an ancient city. Runnels of water splashed gently at the edge of perception. A snake poured down a nearby crevice and disappeared into the underworld.
Andrion realized then that not only was he hearing wind and water; distant shouts echoed through the tiered rocks. Nikander’s force had engaged the enemy and drawn them hither; the armies, lumbering behemoths, jockeyed for position. He released Solifrax, flexed his hand until the blood flowed again, drew the blade from the sheath. It rang faintly and thrilled to his touch.
The sides of the valley seemed to ripple as the waiting soldiers stirred into alertness and the wind clattered with metal striking metal. Ilanit lifted her shield and the star pulsed in slow rivulets of quicksilver.
A fine chill mist sifted over the valley, obscuring the far rim. Then dim shapes materialized in the hazy distance. Andrion squinted and saw his own soldiers moving slowly, deliberately, through the rocks. That horseman was Nikander, no doubt; the old turtle orchestrated his “retreat,” moving just fast enough to entice but not lose his pursuers.
Patros whispered hoarsely, a handsbreadth from Andrion’s ear, “Nikander rides into the thick of battle as if riding to an inspection, and emerges not only unscathed but victorious.”
Victorious, Andrion repeated silently.
Nikander’s legionaries melted away. Khazyari warriors and ponies, tenuous beetle shapes, spilled with unearthly shouts down the watercourse and overran a few laggard imperial soldiers. Nikander appeared beside Andrion, who started, his teeth snapping, his sword jerking. Diplomatically, Nikander did not notice. The keening of the Khazyari resonated in the stones, in the air, in Andrion’s blood. The mist was a chill mantle deadening the world, but he was not cold.
Tembujin leaped onto his horse and leaned over to Dana, saying something; she grasped her bow, steadied her quiver, pulled herself up behind him. The white horse faded into the underbrush.
Where were they going? Andrion ran his tongue over dry lips. It was too late now to doubt Tembujin’s loyalty. The Khazyari were here, beginning to hesitate, to become suspicious. From Toth’s vivid descriptions, Andrion recognized the bulk of Baakhun in the vanguard; that weasel-faced woman beside him, coiffed with a multitude of tiny plaits, must be Raksula. And beside her was the bloated form of Vlad, Tembujin’s half-brother. The Horde was not crimson but black, a flood filling the valley, their ponies picking a path among the water-smoothed rocks of the stream.
Andrion glanced at Patros, at Nikander, at Ilanit. They awaited his signal. A flame kindled in his belly, a hot and consuming hatred. He rose, raising Solifrax, stretching toward the sky. Now! “In the name of the god!” he shouted through clenched teeth, calling no god by name. He leaped onto a boulder. The crystalline blade of the sword gathered the light of the shrouded sun and blazed, ringing him with a nimbus of fire. With echoing shouts imperial soldiers erupted from every shadow.
Arrows hissed like angry wasps past his ears. Yes, he thought dispassionately, I make an excellent target. One of those bows could shoot a shaft right through my carapace. He seized the hilt of Solifrax with both hands and jumped into the surging throng of soldiers; they buoyed him up, carrying him toward the Khazyari.
The barbarians were fast, Harus, yes; they turned with gleeful shouts and swarmed toward their attackers. One warrior was pulled from his horse and cut to pieces. And another; Solifrax shrieked and the dark face was colored suddenly red. The sword seemed to move of itself, striking as fast as a venomous snake. Andrion grasped one thought plummeting through seething senses: vengeance at last.
The Khazyari boiled around him. The legionaries disappeared and he stood beside Ilanit, sword and shield pealing in fierce melody, icy wind pealing above them and sweeping the air free of rain. His body stretched and coiled, burning in an ecstasy of power. He was Solifrax, he was death; the glow of the sword and the wings of his cloak encompassed the world. “For Bellasteros!” he shouted, and Lyris on his other side screamed, “For Sabazel!”
The Khazyari slipped in the mud, fell over rocks, became waving equine and human limbs tangled in one bloody mass. But they kept coming, bronzed faces, black eyes in narrow slits . . . Andrion’s mind howled. He knew nothing else.
* * * * *
Dana and Tembujin stood on a ledge that wound along the rocky side of the valley. The sound of the battle, the shouts of men and the screams of horses, eddied upward and burst about them. There was Andrion, black cloak flying, sword darting like a tongue of flame. There was the star-shield of Sabazel shining like the face of the moon beside him. Their weapons were so bright they cast shadows, drawing the Khazyari like moths to the flame.
The Horde swarmed over the valley. Dana set arrow to bow, searched for a target in the indistinct mass below, fired. The arrow blossomed suddenly from the chest of a warrior and he fell into the melee. An odd feeling, Dana thought, to kill a man; I do not really like it. Tembujin stood somberly beside her, offering no comfort.
For every Khazyari horse that slipped and fell in the mud, so did an imperial soldier. Dana could not see that either side was the more powerful. She fired again and again into the confusion, until her arm ached and sweat began to trickle down her face. Ashtar! Andrion, Ilanit, Kerith, Patros . . . Silently Tembujin handed her most of his arrows. He leaped onto his horse and guided it along the ledge.
Imperial troopers blocked the ravines leading from the valley, forcing the Khazyari back upon themselves. Miklos propped the falcon standard beside Ventalidar and plunged into the fray, shouting frenzied curses. From the depth of the Khazyari, Raksula saw the shining crescent of Solifrax and the shining disk of the star-shield. She, too, turned toward them, mouth open, eyes gleaming. Vlad clung desperately to his horse. A thin string of spittle hung from the corner of his mouth.
Baakhun’s slightly vague eyes snapped into focus. Through the mist and rocks lining the valley gleamed a white horse, carrying a black-haired man with the bearing of an odlok. “Tembujin!” cried Baakhun. “He haunts me; I betrayed him and he haunts me!”
For a moment it seemed as if the entire struggling mass halted, frozen. Tembujin and his horse winked in and out, a taunting phantom above the battle. Tears streamed down Baakhun’s sagging cheeks and he forced his way through his guard, seeing nothing but the shape of his dishonored son. “Tembujin!” The wind took the name and repeated it, over a
nd over down the rocky galleries.
The Khazyari quailed. Andrion glanced at Tembujin’s ghostly shape and laughed with a feral joy, urging his own soldiers forward. Ilanit began the Sabazian paean and he repeated it, their clear voices penetrating the battle and becoming one with the song of the wind. Solifrax blazed. Raksula spun in a circle, torn between sword and stunned Baakhun, cursing imperial soldiers and Khazyari warriors alike. The dagger she held leaped out, again and again, splattering her hand with blood.
Tembujin slipped from his horse and knelt beside Dana. “There,” he said, his voice oddly strangled, “the lion standard of the khan. See, Baakhun, who was my father.” Dana glanced at him, wondering if she should be frightened of his mood, his face and eyes radiant with hatred. But it was an intoxicating mood, and her head spun dizzily with it.
She nocked an arrow, as did he. Simultaneously they aimed. Baakhun’s upturned face did not falter. But Tembujin’s hand did. For just a moment his cheeks paled and his lips parted, uncertain. Raksula grabbed Baakhun’s bridle and began to lead him back into the midst of his guard.
“He will escape!” cried Dana, hardly recognizing that urgent voice as her own. The wind pummeled her; her heart leaped. Her thumb snapped. Tembujin’s bowstring shrieked. Two arrows arced through the air and one of them struck deep into Baakhun’s chest.
With mild surprise the khan noted the arrow. He smiled, and died. Raksula screeched in rage. With hysterical strength she dragged Baakhun’s inert body from his horse to hers. Vlad turned to see his father’s face staring vacantly at him, blasted clean of regret and sorrow. Vlad wailed in dismay and jerked his pony around, overrunning his own warriors in his haste to be away from the battle. Raksula followed him with the body of the khan, screaming in an apoplectic frenzy. “They think we shall meekly retreat, but we shall strike and strike again! They cannot beguile us with evil sorcery, parading an image of the dead before us!” The Khazyari fell back.
Winter King Page 25
