Days of Air and Darkness

by Katharine Kerr

  “They look worried,” Yraen remarked.

  “They should be,” Rhodry said. “It’s not such an easy thing, relieving a siege this size. We can’t just ride in and push them off in a single day.”

  “Well, true. It’s going to be a nasty little scrap.”

  “By now I’m sure they know we’re coming.”

  “We kept a good watch out for scouts.”

  “Can you swing a sword and knock a raven from the sky?” Rhodry was grinning. “She’s the only scout who matters.”

  Involuntarily, Yraen glanced up. Nothing moved against the blue, but for all he knew, the raven had flown over and left them long before.

  Rather than risk a fight with tired horses, the lords decided to camp where they stood that afternoon. They did send out patrols to stand a roving guard against a possible attack, while Rhodry and the dragon circled above, watching for the raven shape-changer. Yraen, along with Renydd and five other men from Lord Erddyr’s warband, rode one of the first patrols. They walked their horses north for about a mile, then cut to the west across pastureland, not that there was so much as a goat left in it.

  “What the farmers didn’t take to the dun,” Yraen said, “the Horsekin have eaten by now.”

  “I’d wager it,” Renydd said. “Huh—look over there. A cowherd’s hut, I’d guess, and still standing.”

  More to give themselves a goal than for any real reason, they rode over to the circular hut, made of secondhand planks and dirty thatch. As they came close, they could smell the rot of a corpse. The horses tossed their heads and danced.

  “I suppose we should go see how long ago he was killed,” Renydd remarked. “It’d give us some idea of the kind of patrols they ride, maybe.”

  “Might just be a cow,” Yraen said.

  “Huh! No such luck, I’ll wager. The rest of you stay mounted and on guard. Yraen and I will dismount and have a look.”

  Sure enough, it was a man they found in the hut, stripped naked and staked to the dirt floor, hand and foot, with iron spikes. Rot had swelled him, insects covered him, but still they could see how he’d been opened up and his organs cut out to be placed to either side. Retching and gagging, Yraen and Renydd fled back to the patrol. If he’d eaten more recently, Yraen decided, he would have heaved, but as it was, he managed to control himself.

  “Ye gods,” Renydd whispered. “Who would do that to some—some peasant, by the gods! He meant naught to them.”

  “True spoken. Well, we’d better get on with our patrol, if this is the kind of men we’re facing.”

  Toward evening, Yraen found himself summoned to the council, which had gathered round a rough map of the city someone had drawn in a patch of dirt. As best he could remember, Yraen drew in the positions of the Horsekin’s earthworks.

  “They seem to have protected their eastern camp the most,” Drwmyc remarked.

  “They have, Your Grace. Jill thinks that their leaders are camped up on that east ridge. There’s a lot of tents and banners there, anyway.”

  “If things go badly,” Erddyr put in, “they could retreat straight into the hills.”

  “True spoken, my lord,” Yraen said. “But these men don’t look like they retreat much.”

  Drwmyc grunted once under his breath and went back to studying the map while the other lords crowded round. Since no one remembered to dismiss him, Yraen heard the rest of the council. The plan was simple: they would let the slower-moving carts, extra horses, and servants follow after the army, which would march straight for Cengarn. If they were met on the road, or if they lost badly in front of the town, they could fall back to a safer position with their supply train intact. If they could win and hold a position on the plain to the south and west of Cengarn, the supply train would catch up with them soon enough.

  When the council broke up, Yraen walked through the camp and finally found Rhodry off at the edge of things. He was sitting at a small fire while the dragon slept nearby, though she opened one eye when Yraen approached. He sat down next to Rhodry and told him what he’d overheard.

  “Sounds like a good plan to me,” Rhodry said. “I wish I was riding with the army, though, instead of up in the sky.”

  “You would. Think we can win?”

  Rhodry merely shrugged. There was, Yraen supposed, nothing more to be said than that.

  On the morrow morning, riding armed and ready for war, the army reached the siege. Rhodry and the dragon left first, flying so high that they seemed only a bird’s size in the sky. The horsemen jogged up the south road, traveling through burnt-out farms and past the occasional ruined village, until they crested a low rise and saw below them the broad plain leading up to the city. Yraen was expecting that the gwerbret would hold the army back behind this ridge to hide its size from the enemy, but Drwmyc waved them on. As they poured over the ridge and down, Yraen saw why—the Horsekin were armed and mounted and waiting in a rough semicircle round the southern flank of their camp. Rhodry had been right about the raven, and there was nothing left to hide.

  Some hundred yards in front of the Horsekin line, a lone rider sat on his horse and held up a staff, wound with ribands. A herald. Drwmyc sent a herald of his own out to meet him, but he kept his men moving. They swept downhill and poured out onto the plain to the south and west, forming up in a rough semicircle of their own, elven archers at the left, the northwest point, dwarven axmen at the southeast, the right. Both sides had laid claim to a position now. When the battle came, and Yraen had no doubt that parley would fail, each side would try to force the other back, either into their camp or into a full rout.

  In the midst of the two lines, the heralds met. In the bright and gusty noon, they parleyed for a long time, far longer than heralds usually did, or so it seemed. The Deverry army at last got a clear sight of what they were facing—massive men, heavily armored with solid breastplates worked into their chain mail; massive horses, caparisoned in studded leather. Long arms, long slashing sabers—they’d have the reach, all right, when the fighting started.

  Yraen soothed his nervous horse and looked up at the town. From his position, near the middle of the crescent but well back, he could see the dun crowning the cliff, and a tiny pennant, defiant in the wind. The entire town would know their relief had arrived by now. Carra would be at a window up in the broch, he supposed, praying for her alien husband’s safety. He looked up and down the line, found Prince Daralanteriel, riding with the gwerbret. The archers, then, would have Calonderiel in command while the prince, like the gwerbret, kept himself safe for as long as possible. Yraen only wished he could hate Dar; he tried, but the hatred was a thing of words only, running in his mind: Carra’s husband.

  At last, the two heralds bowed to each other and turned their horses, kicking them to a fast trot as they rode back to their respective commanders. All up and down the allies’ line, men gathered themselves, loosening swords, pulling javelins, waiting for the signal to charge. The Horsekin drew their sabers with a flash of silver light, but they, too, waited, watching for the heralds in case they should ride out again. The silence lay as deep as water over the plain. Yraen could guess that the Horsekin had delivered the same demand as before: turn over Princess Carra’s dead body. His guess was confirmed by a sudden howl of rage that came from someone near the gwerbret. Yraen turned to look and saw Prince Daralanteriel swinging his horse toward the enemy as if he would charge them alone. A lord grabbed his highness’s reins just in time and hauled him back.

  The moment hung a moment more, the silence, the waiting in the hot bright sun. Drwmyc raised his hand and signaled; his captain raised a horn and blew. With a howl, the Deverry line sprang forward. Javelins flew and winked in an arching shower of death as the Horsekin line charged to meet them, a slower charge of burdened horses, kicked to a fast trot. Caught toward the rear on high ground, Yraen had a chance to see the battle develop.

  Off to the left, the Westfolk loosed a level flight of hunting arrows. Pierced through their caparisons, the first ra
nk of horses reared and screamed, stumbling and falling. The second rank of the Horsekin charge tried to pull up and failed. More horses went down, kicking and rolling upon their riders as the arrows hissed forward again. The Horsekin cavalry was forced to pull to the southeast and tighten their line, allowing the Deverry men to surround what became a sloppy wedge. Yet as he jogged his horse downhill, searching for a way into the actual fighting, Yraen could see men falling as the heavy cavalry slammed into the Deverry line. Longer reach, longer weapons, heavy horses, armored themselves—they told badly when the charges became, as they always did, a thing of single combats, wheeling and dancing for position on the field.

  The weight of their horses’ slow charge pulled a couple of the Horsekin riders straight through the Deverry line. Riding hard, Yraen galloped for a man on a black coming straight for him. As Yraen wheeled his horse, he got a glimpse of blue and purple tattoos on the chin and jaw below an iron helmet with a long nasal bar. They swung, parried, trading blow for blow while he swore and yelled and Yraen stayed silent, flicking away the enemy’s saber with his heavier broadsword until, in frustration, the man tried a hard side slash that left his right unguarded. Yraen caught the strike on his shield and slashed in to catch him solidly on the right arm. Blood welled through his mail as the bone snapped. Grunting in pain, he dropped the saber and tried to turn his horse. Yraen hesitated for the briefest of moments—normally he would have slashed at the mount, but the caparison baffled him. Instead, he risked a reach and a stab, caught the Horsekin warrior on the back, but his blade slid off heavy mail, turned so easily that he went sick with dread. He pulled back and let the man go, not out of fear for his own life, but for the battle, for the war.

  Yraen glanced round and tried for an overview of the Deverry line. They were being pushed back. He knew it more by instinct than by sight as he paused his blowing horse. He rose in the stirrups and looked round, but in the dust and chaos he could get no clear view of the battle. All he could tell was that the center of the line had fallen back and now made a desperate sort of stand close to the rise of hill behind them.

  “Ah, shit!”

  Yraen sat back, kicked his horse to a lope, and headed for the fighting. Again, instinct more than sight made him glance up at the sky. Like a winged stone, the dragon was dropping down. He felt rather than heard himself laugh and let his horse first slow to a walk, then amble to a stop, while he watched the dragon dive with her wings swept back straight for the thick of the Horsekin line. Yraen could imagine her roaring, but he heard nothing over the battle noise and the sudden whinnies of terrified horses. She leveled off, skimming over the cavalry with huge beats of her wings, while below her the enemy horses went mad.

  Kicking, neighing, bucking, rearing, shrieking with that ghastly sound a horse only makes in agony—the Horsekin line broke, turned into a whirlpool of yelling riders and frenzied horses. Yraen had no time to wonder why his horse—why all the Deverry horses—treated the dragon with complete indifference. Screaming war cries, the Deverry line reformed and charged, slamming into the flank of chaos, as Arzosah flew upward, swung round in a turn, and dived again. As Yraen trotted forward, looking for a gap through which he could reach the front line, he could see Horsekin riders thrown, Horsekin lying trampled or desperately trying to get to their feet and run while Deverry men cut them down with the slash of a sword. Alien horns called out, sounding a retreat. The Horsekin who could control their horses turned and fled, charging for the gaps in their earthworks, where foot soldiers waited with spears to cover their retreat.

  Deverry riders followed, slashing, harrying, killing where they could. Yraen rode down one unmounted cavalryman and killed him with a blow across the back of the neck before the Horsekin could turn and fight. He charged past the corpse, realized he’d gone too far, and pulled his horse’s head round fast, peeling off to the east as the earthwork rose in front of him. He got a quick impression of a fringe of long spears as he swung past, then circled back to the safety of his own line.

  The west and south of the field was theirs. On silver horns, the captains were sounding the signal to hold and stand as the Horsekin fled behind their circling earthworks to the north and east. Since Yraen could see the gwerbret’s banner planted over it, he could guess that Drwmyc’s warband had captured the half-finished ditch and mound to the southwest, lying some distance from the base of the steep cliffs that rose up to the dun. Yraen let his horse pick its way across the battleground, littered with the dead and wounded, and stared up at the sky. At last, he saw the dragon, flying fast and straight toward her own lines from the north. She circled round Cengarn once, then flew on to land behind the Deverry army. As she settled to the ground, a roar of cheers greeted her, and in answer, she rose for a brief moment to her hind feet, as if in a bow.

  Since both Jill and Dallandra could scry out Yraen, the two dweomermasters had been keeping track of the relieving army’s progress and knew, therefore, approximately when it would arrive at the siege. Before the battle started, they went up to the roof of the main broch and watched, waiting to transform into bird form if they needed to. Neither the raven nor Alshandra appeared.

  “Odd,” Dallandra said. “You’d think Alshandra would be here to inspire her men if naught else.”

  “True spoken. Perhaps the raven went to fetch her.”

  Below them, men crowded the walls of both town and dun to watch the battle. Until the dragon’s swoop brought the relieving army the victory, Jill watched with a growing sense of dread. She knew enough about war craft to realize that without the dragon’s aid, the relievers would have lost, and badly. As the Horsekin line broke, and their mounts began bolting and panicking, the men on the walls cheered and screeched in victory. Jill found herself shaking her head over and over in a long no.

  “Oh, ye gods,” Jill said. “We’ll drive them off this time, if we’re lucky, but the next?”

  “What do you mean? The next?”

  “The Horsekin know where Deverry is now, and they think a goddess has promised the country to them. They may well lose this siege, but what about when they come back? This war will look like a little skirmish. If Drwmyc and his men crush this lot, they might not return for years, but return they will.”

  For a moment, she was afraid that Dallandra would faint, she turned so pale and weak. Jill caught her arm in a strong grip.

  “I’ll be all right,” Dallandra whispered. “It’s just that here I was thinking we were saved, and there’s not but worse trouble ahead.”

  “Well, it may not be for years and years. For all I know, neither of us will live to see it.”

  “Especially if they can’t break this siege.”

  And, Jill supposed, it might well be that the relieving army would yet fail. Even though the Horsekin had ceded the western half of Cengarn’s valley, their position to the east was still strong, especially if Alshandra arrived to help them defend it. She glanced up and saw the dragon circling the dun. On her back rode a man, a tiny figure at this distance, but she could guess it was Rhodry. When she flung up her arm in a wave, she could just make out him waving back. She laughed and waved again as the pair flew off.

  “Well,” Jill said to Dallandra, “that’s why Evandar had the omen of the dragon.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I just had the strangest feeling round my heart, watching them. For Rhodry’s sake, I mean, not ours. The beast will bring Cengarn naught but good.”

  “But Rhodry harm?”

  Dallandra tried to speak, her lips half-parted as she shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “The omens aren’t clear enough to speak. Harm and yet not harm. I just don’t know.”

  They left the roof and hurried down to the great hall, where everyone was talking and shaking their heads over the wondrous creature they’d just seen.

  Evandar in hawk form flew over the Lands, past the forest and the beacon tree, over the silver river, above the semblances
of cities and the long green meadows. As he flew he called out, a harsh cry from the hawk’s mouth, yet it was still her name. She would have to come to her name as long as she was in his dominion or in the lands that had once been Shaetano’s, and when she did not come, he could assume that she’d taken herself away from them. He flew on farther, faster, heading for the misty horizon that he’d seen from the hill. Never did it come closer, not that horizons do come closer in our world, but in Evandar’s lands there had been a time, when he was first creating them, that the horizon had marked an end that could be reached.

  Below him, the mist lay with an edge like silver ferns, covering what had once been the horizon of the Lands. Through it he could see nothing. With a tuck of wings he dove, swooping through the mist, leveling just under its covering in a gray light hanging over a gray country, where huge boulders pushed up through thin soil, and dust blew in little scurries to match the mist. Yet here and there, he saw patches of green, lichen on a rock here, thin grass there. Little eyes gleamed in cracks and crannies; he heard little snarls and scrabblings. On and on it stretched, the gray and the broken rock. He began to circle back, knowing that Alshandra would never endure such a place.

  His circling brought him to a dead tree, the black and stripped remains of a pine or some such straight-growing sort. Sitting with his back propped against it was an old man, dressed in shabby brown clothes; his skin, or his image of it, at least, was brown as well. He was paring an apple with a bent old knife; every now and then he would cut off a slice and eat it, but it seemed that he would never come to the end of the fruit, because the slice and the peel would grow back as soon as he’d done with them. Evandar’s curiosity won a brief battle. He circled again and landed on a boulder nearby. The old man considered him for a moment with merry black eyes, then offered him a slice of apple. Evandar shivered his feathers and changed into elven form, then took the fruit. Never had he tasted a thing so sweet or so fresh.