Days of Air and Darkness

by Katharine Kerr

  “I hope so. Well, there’s Brel, getting ready to give the signal. I’d best go take my place in line.”

  As Garin joined the axmen, he glanced up and saw birds wheeling, black specks against the high sky. He couldn’t help wondering if one of them was the raven sorceress, come to spy.

  South from Lin Serr ran a proper road, made of paving stones set into thin concrete—the dwarven invention that Deverry men called “dweomer stone.” On this surface, the carters and the axmen alike fell into a fast trot that would have winded a human being after a few miles. Fortunately, on this trip, Garin no longer had to worry about Rhodry keeping up with the march. Far overhead, the silver dagger and his mount circled and swooped, flying some miles off to the east, circling back, flying off to the west again, to keep watch for the shape-changer.

  The watch paid off on the morrow morning. After they broke their night’s camp, the contingent had made only a couple of miles when the dragon came flying back. She landed full across the road, forcing a halt. Rhodry slid down and came running to Brel and Garin.

  “Ambuscade!” he called out, and he was grinning like a child. “They’ve drawn up next to that narrow bit of road about ten miles from here, the place with all the trees and underbrush.”

  “OH, have they now?” Brel said. “Well, we’ll just see who surprises whom.”

  “Now wait,” Garin said. “How can mounted men fight in trees? How did they hope to hide their wretched horses, for that matter? What did they—”

  “Here!” Rhodry held up a hand for silence. “Let me finish. They’re not mounted, except for a couple of captains. It’s infantry with long spears, disposed on the flat side of the road. It looks to me like they were hoping to pin you against the cliffs on the other side.”

  “Infantry?” Garin snapped. “How did they get up here so fast, then? Oh. Ye gods. More of that god-cursed dweomer.”

  “I’d wager a fair sum on it.” Rhodry was grinning. “I saw a raven flying some distance off, but it never flew close enough for me to tell whether it was bird or shape-changer.”

  “Huh,” Brel said. “Doesn’t much matter. Pin us against the cliffs, eh? Well, I say we pin them between a pair of jaws.”

  The three of them hunkered down in the road to draw plans in the dirt with a stick. Brel would lead some three hundred axmen straight down the road as if they suspected nothing, while Garin would take the rest of the men to fall upon the waiting ambush from behind.

  “Shouldn’t you lead the rear attack?” Garin said to the warleader. “I’m afraid I’ll botch it. A general I am not.”

  “True.” Brel nodded. “But I don’t want you killed right off, Envoy. It’s going to be dangerous, marching right into the trap. That’s my job.”

  Garin shuddered, cold in the bright sun.

  “Your job,” Brel went on, “is staying alive to handle all the talking and courtesies once we join up with the allies. I don’t like shoveling manure, and I’m no good at it, either. You get our men in position behind the ambuscade, and then you get to the rear. Do you hear me? That’s an order.”

  Garin considered arguing. Brel was glaring at him.

  “Well, I’m not much of an axman, anyway,” Garin said. “Done, then.”

  “Good,” Brel said. “Now, what are we going to do about this blasted sorcerer? I don’t want her giving our game away.” He glanced at Rhodry. “Can you and the wyrm keep her occupied?”

  “We can try.”

  “Now wait,” Garin broke in. “What if she lures you off into some magical country and traps you there?”

  Rhodry started to answer, then merely considered. The dragon swung her head round to join the conversation.

  “She’s terrified of me,” Arzosah said, and rather smugly. “I don’t think she’ll want to get close enough to work dweomer. Besides, if she does, I’ll smell it.”

  “Umph,” Garin muttered. “Well, I don’t know—”

  “Garro,” Rhodry broke in, “there’s no such thing as a war without risk. Doesn’t much matter if it comes from magic or a blade, does it?”

  “It matters to me,” Garin snapped. “I don’t know why, but it does. But I’m not the dragonmaster here, and besides, I honestly don’t know any other way to keep the witch from spying.”

  All morning, the First Regiment, or rather, the five hundred men, human beings all, who were left after the Keepers had imposed the discipline of counting out and the long spear, crouched in their ambuscade. The land sloped up from the road some few feet into heavy underbrush and trees, a perfect position for a trap, or it would have been for men who weren’t so demoralized that they stank of fear. Since the high priestess in her form of the sacred raven would warn them when the enemy was actually approaching, Tren was free to walk among the men and try to do something to lift their spirits. Arms crossed over their chests, the newly appointed Horsekin officers merely watched, glowering.

  The human soldiers spoke a form of Deverrian, oddly archaic, oddly pronounced, a survival among the slave community of the days before the Horsekin had taken their ancestors prisoner, but they could understand Tren, especially since he was talking in platitudes. I have faith in you, men, we’ll redeem your regiment’s honor, we’ll show them how we men can fight—that sort of thing, and some at least responded, smiling a little, risking a few words back to this human lord whom Rakzan Hir-li favored so highly. Most merely stared numbly and answered not at all. Just the day past, they’d been forced to watch friends of a lifetime die slowly, screaming.

  “My lord?” a squad leader said at last. “The raven priestess, she be due back, bain’t?”

  “So she is.” Startled, Tren glanced up slantwise at the sun, which hung directly overhead. “She should have been back before this.”

  Tren turned to consider the Horsekin officers, who had sat down, by then, in the shade of the pines. In the heat, the forest stood quiet, except for the buzz of flies, too quiet. He glanced up again—not a bird in the sky, whether common or magical.

  “Somewhat’s wrong,” Tren said abruptly. “Get the men on guard. All of you—squads on alert!”

  In a clatter of breastplates and shields, the spearmen got to their feet, reaching for weapons. The Horsekin officers yelled taunts Tren’s way, then slowly got up, so slowly that they were the first to die when the dwarves burst out of their cover and charged down the slope. In a silence more grim than any war cries, the axmen at the point swung and chopped them down like trees, legs first, then quick blows to the head. A couple of squads raced past, trying to plant and brace their spears against the swing of axes, against the rush of a downhill charge of dwarven warriors bent on vengeance for slaughtered kin. Useless sword in hand, Tren ran this way and that, trying to get his men arrayed.

  No chance, no chance at all—a spearman’s battle line has to be properly formed, with each man’s shield overlapping the man on his left to make a tight wall; it must be organized and set before it can hold. The men of the First were milling and yelling, stabbing futilely as they tried to form a line, dropping their shields to grab their spears two-handed as the great-axes swung low, slashing men to the ground, shattering the wooden hafts. Tren began yelling for a retreat into the road and flat ground before the battle had barely begun, but suddenly screaming broke out behind him. He swirled round and saw another pack of dwarves racing into the roadway, then turning to charge up the slope.

  Only the forest cover saved any of the men. On the broken ground, among the trees, the dwarven axmen were prevented from forming a tight line in their turn, which would have mowed the mob down like a scythe. As it was, the entire battle broke into a disorganized brawl—and a lethal one—as here and there a few spearmen managed to set their backs together and make a fight of it. More tried to flee, and side by side stabbed and thrust a way clear for themselves through the enemy line. Others ran for the trees and got free before the dwarves could stop them. Tren tried to make a stand, yelling at the top of his lungs, then tried to organize a proper retr
eat, then simply tried to find a horse—but the few they’d brought with them on the dweomer road had all fled or been downed by the relentless slash and swing of the great-axes.

  “My lord, my lord! Run!”

  One of the men he’d befriended was screaming at him over the general melee. Tren had just time to glance round. When he saw that the dwarven pincer movement had closed and bitten off a victory, he ran as shamelessly as any of them, stumbling uphill and toward the south, screaming surrender and hoping against hope that their enemy would understand the word. He dodged among trees, heard the enemy howling and jeering behind him, stumbled over dropped spears and thrown shields, kept running and dodging until he gained, at last, the top of the rise. When he looked back, no one was pursuing; they’d made their point and taken their road back, and that, apparently, was all they wanted.

  Gasping for breath, Tren kept jogging south, yelling at the men he passed, rounding up a few here, a few there, until in a grassy valley, a couple of miles from the broken ambuscade, he managed to pull together about a hundred men of the First. They milled round him, formed up in a ragged square, spears at the ready and outward, when he ordered them. From some distance away, they could hear battle sounds, faint and dying away as they listened.

  “They won’t be following,” Tren called out, “but stay on guard anyway.”

  Because they knew nothing else to do, they obeyed. Still panting for breath, Tren walked round the formation and considered their condition. Half were unarmed, many were wounded, no one had a scrap of food or a blanket with him, but they were alive. Alive and free. Free. For one brief moment, Tren could feel freedom like a taste in his mouth, as sweet as mead and as heady. He could take this troop and march north, leave the Horsekin behind and fortify his brother’s dun—his dun, now—with this new warband, where they’d never dig him out again. He felt himself grinning, then remembered Ddary and his oath-sworn riders. The grin faded of its own will just as the raven called from overhead.

  When the priestess in her sacred raven form swooped down, cawing and circling, the men cheered her. She’d appeared like an omen, just as he thought to break free, and in that precise appearance Tren saw his Wyrd, trapping him. He saw no reason to fight or argue.

  “Well and good, men,” he called out. “The priestess will lead us home again. Follow me.”

  With a wave of his sword, he led them across the valley, where a misty curtain hung over the magical road that would take them back to their masters. As they walked it, Tren was thinking up a good lie to save the men behind him from the fate the Horsekin dealt out to failures. They say that elven blood makes a man eloquent; be that as it may, his talk of powerful dweomer and thousands of warriors materializing from nowhere so moved Hir-li that his men were allowed to live.

  “Well, Envoy, you’re right enough,” Brel said dryly. “You’re no general.”

  “My apologies.” Garin moaned. “I didn’t realize how fast we’d come. I didn’t realize that we were there ahead of you.”

  “You’re cursed lucky we weren’t held up by somewhat. They could have rallied against your force alone. To just charge like that, without finding out if we’d got into the pass yet—”

  “I know, I know. Ah, ye gods! Ah, ye gods!”

  Brel said nothing more, merely frowned into the camp-fire. In the gathering dark, they were sitting at a council fire of sorts, Brel, Garin, and Rhodry, while the dragon lazed nearby. She’d eaten all three of the dead horses and lay as swollen and drowsy as a snake who’s swallowed a field mouse whole.

  “Ah, well,” Rhodry said at last. “It worked out in the event, Garro. They broke, they ran, we won.”

  “True, but—”

  “No buts,” Brel broke in. “In war, never allow yourself to worry about what might have been, good or bad. Our dragonmaster’s right. We won, we only lost a few men, we’ve got prisoners and booty.”

  “My thanks,” Garin said, “for forgiving my stupidity, I mean.”

  “Oh, I haven’t done that. There’s just no time to worry about it now.”

  Garin winced and concentrated on watching the fire.

  “So, Dragonmaster,” Brel went on, “the raven didn’t even give you a fight of it?”

  “She didn’t,” Rhodry said. “I don’t mind admitting that I was afraid of what dweomer she might work, but when she saw us riding for her, she fled. We just chased her round in circles, mostly, until it was too late for her to warn her men.”

  “None of them had much stomach for a fight, did they?” Brel considered for a long moment. “Huh, well, I’m not going to judge the entire army by this one detachment. They might have had their reasons for being so demoralized.”

  “Just so. We can’t count on this happening again. As for the raven, the dragon’s right. She’s terrified of Arzosah.”

  On the morrow, Brel sent the badly wounded men and the roped-together prisoners back to Lin Serr in the care of the lightly wounded, then reorganized his squads and marched on south. Rhodry returned to his scout duty, riding Arzosah high above the line of march. After her feast of dead horse, she was in a splendid mood, swirling and swooping with great flaps of her wings, calling back the occasional jest about what she was going to do with the raven when she found her.

  “Roast her, slice her, eat her all up!” Arzosah chanted. “You build me a fire, Dragonmaster, and well have a fine fowl for the table.”

  “Roast her yourself,” he called back. “Can’t you breathe fire?”

  Arzosah snorted, an explosion of sound.

  “Of course not! What a silly tale that is! Why, if we could breathe fire, we’d burn our mouths. We’d bake our teeth and turn them brittle. Disgusting thought, really!”

  They swooped toward the dwarven army, which was at that point marching through a shallow valley. As Arzosah overshot them and began to circle toward the west, Rhodry happened to glance at the southern end of that valley, where the road climbed to a narrow pass between the flanks of two hills. Across the pass hung a vast shimmering curtain of mist.

  “Stop!” Rhodry shrieked. “Arzosah, turn back, turn back!”

  She obeyed immediately, but turning in midair when you’re flying fast is not such an easy thing to do. As she dipped down, Rhodry was thinking out strategy. Obviously, when the dwarves saw the mist, they’d halt. Should they then all try to march through that veil to face Alshandra? The army carried plenty of cold steel, after all, to work her harm, provided they were armed and ready for the fight. When Arzosah straightened out her flight and headed back toward the army, Rhodry realized that the dwarves weren’t stopping, that they were marching straight on into the pass as if they saw nothing there—realized that they must have seen nothing. This mist hung thin and lavender-pale, not thick and billowing like the others, and it must have been invisible to anyone without elven blood or dweomer sight.

  Yelling and cursing, Rhodry hung perilously far over Arzosah’s neck and screamed at Brel to halt as the dragon glided downward. Too late. The front ranks jogged forward into the mist; moving at their solid dwarven pace, the rest of the squads followed.

  “After them!” Rhodry yelled.

  “Are you daft?”

  “Do what I say! Follow them!”

  With a shriek for the folly of it, Arzosah dived and swooped through the gate of mist into another country. Rhodry found himself flying over a broad brown plain, swirling with dust as the dwarven army below disintegrated into a shouting, spinning confusion. The sky hung low, as copper as the dust, while a great roil of clouds or perhaps smoke masked a bloody sun, huge and hanging low in the west.

  “Horrible!” Arzosah moaned. “Absolutely horrible!”

  “I see Brel over there trying to restore order at the edge. Land near him.”

  Whining and griping, she settled to earth in a spew of copper-colored dust. Rhodry slid down and ran to the warleader, who was alternately bellowing orders and blowing on a silver horn. Garin caught Rhodry’s arm.

  “What in the name o
f every god has happened to us?” the envoy snarled.

  “It’s some trap of Alshandra’s. I couldn’t warn you in time. You didn’t see it? It was a mist, like, but purple, and hanging over the road.”

  “Not a thing. One moment we were hup-hupping up the pass, the next we were marching out here. Wait. For a bit, there, as we were marching, I thought the light was growing dim, somehow, but I thought I was just tired. Oh, ye gods!”

  In a remarkably short time, Brel restored order. The men found their squads, the squads found their companies, the companies drew up in proper order, the carters followed suit. Brel smiled, walking up and down the ranks as he spoke to them in Dwarvish.

  “He’s basically just congratulating them for coming to themselves so quickly,” Garin whispered to Rhodry. “And they deserve the praise, I must say. I—ye gods. Who’s that?”

  “Evandar!” Rhodry snapped. “I might have known.”

  Grinning in utter self-satisfaction, Evandar came strolling up to join them while the dwarven axmen gawked and swore. The Guardian was wearing the most peculiar lot of armor that Rhodry had ever seen. On his head, he had a high silver helm, crested with spikes of the same metal, while the visor, made of gold, sported a dragonish snout. His breastplate, silver again, grew more spikes, but under it he wore naught more than a tunic, judging by his sleeveless arms, guarded only by a pair of black leather vambraces. His legs, too, were bare except for high black boots, also spiked in such a way that it was a wonder he could walk without tripping. He did wear a short affair of silver plate and chains to protect his manhood, though Rhodry doubted if anyone could have sat down in such a thing. He carried a sword, enormously long and curved, with bites taken out of the blade here and there and jewels in the hilt.

  The dwarven army burst out laughing. Rhodry trotted forward and grabbed Evandar’s arm before he could turn them into something foul.

  “May I ask why they greet me so rudely?” Evandar snarled.

  “You look a proper sight, that’s why. Here, you’re not planning on joining the war in that—that—those—things, are you?”