But instead of breaking their opponent’s will, the success of the second attack seemed to revive them as the more compact mass of warriors began to push back at the line of Thalgor’s men that moved implacably through their camp.
Erwyn watched with mounting dread as the enemy took the offensive and slowly drove the attackers out of the camp and down the valley. Thalgor’s men fought valiantly, but the numbers were against them, even with the loss of the quarter of the enemy Sett’s men had scattered. Their opponents fought like men possessed, driven on by a leader they feared more than the enemy, more than death itself.
The battle had moved so far down the valley that Erwyn, the other healers, and the two young men left to guard them, were forced to leave their hiding place and move cautiously along the ridge, careful to stay as much as they could in the thickest part of the woods.
The guards led them past the fighting, so they could take shelter again well behind Thalgor’s men, where the valley narrowed before it opened out onto the plain where Thalgor’s walled camp stood, Gurdek’s men its only protection.
There in the narrow pass Thalgor would have to make his final stand. Erwyn saw the three scouts he sent back to the camp to tell Gurdek the battle went badly, so he could move the women and children into safety in the forest. She sent Felyn and Tya strength with her thoughts, but knew the others would care for them until she returned. If she returned.
That she truly might die only now came to her. To die in battle with Thalgor, at his side in mind if not in body. A well of love and pride filled her at the thought. She hoped it would give her the strength she would need not only to die, but perhaps worse, to live on without him.
As the valley narrowed, numbers counted less. It mattered less if five ranks of the enemy faced only three of Thalgor’s men if Thalgor’s fought better, were braver, and had more at stake, so they struck down their opponents more freely than they fell.
Erwyn didn’t know if her witch’s sight or the excitement of the guards told her, but she saw the tide of the battle turn.
Now only three ranks of enemy forces faced Thalgor’s still almost three. Now two. Outnumbered, the enemy fought more viciously, but Thalgor’s line stood firm.
The lowering sun glinted off those swords not completely bathed in blood and off the metal of shields raised in defense, then lowered in attack.
The enemy leader put on a helmet for the first time. Covered entirely in gold, it hid his raven hair but not his size or the way he used his sword on his own men, if they got in his way, as viciously as on the enemy.
The golden helmet would make it easy for Thalgor to find the enemy leader in the roiling humanity of a last-stage battle. She watched with ice-filled veins as the man she loved made his way unerringly to his target. He brushed aside the last line of men around their leader as if they were so many flies on a warm-time afternoon.
Finally the two leaders faced each other. The fighting continued around them, but it seemed to still, as if everyone kept half an eye on the battle that mattered most.
Leader to leader, to decide victory or defeat. A fight to the death.
*
Thalgor was tired. The battle lust had ebbed and flowed through him so many times in the day that even his heart felt weary as it beat in his chest.
The enemy, who had prodded more than fought himself, held his head high despite the great weight of that golden helmet, his body straight, his sword at the ready.
This was not a normal man. Thalgor sensed the witch blood in him, felt him try to probe his mind, to weaken him with visions of what would become of his people if he lost.
More than the witch blood, though, he sensed the man’s evil. An evil he had seen the likes of only once, but then he had lived with it every day for more years than he wished to remember. Most evil was stupid and so easily defeated. But not this.
If he had never faced the likes of this intelligence before, Thalgor would have feared much more than he did. He knew this evil. He knew its power was its greatest weakness.
The brute he’d slain before did not think a boy could make a killing blow. This monster would make a similar mistake. Thalgor only had to fight and survive long enough to give him the chance to make it.
He dropped his shoulders to feign greater weariness than he felt.
An arrow whizzed past his left shoulder. A row of enemy archers stood with arrows pointed directly at him.
Bitter rage coursed through him. A tradition since before time said leaders fought each other one on one. Another arrow flew by and he felt his opponent’s smile broaden.
The third arrow brought a death-cry from the men who still fought behind Thalgor. Was it Sett’s voice? Rygar’s?
Thalgor pushed the thought away. His enemy sent it. He sent one in return– the golden helmet on his own head. A loss he knew the enemy feared as Thalgor did the loss of friend or brother.
A volley of arrows from his own ranks answered the opponents’ and most of the archers across from him fell.
As the two leaders circled, each looking for a weakness in the other, Thalgor saw that his opponent expected their ranks to collapse and Thalgor’s men to flee if he was killed, so the enemy could capture his camp and destroy his people without opposition.
But that would never happen, at least not at once. If he fell, Sett and Rygar would hold the line fast and, if all here died, Gurdek still had a full third of their men with him to defend a camp that by now should be empty of all but warriors.
Was this man so bent on revenge he would follow the remnants into the forest? Even if he did, he would never catch them all. Some of Thalgor’s people would survive, and with them the legend of a walled camp, the dream of a time without war or wandering. That knowledge made him smile in his turn.
The enemy tilted his head at the smile and the afternoon sun glinted off the gold of his helmet.
Suddenly Thalgor saw that the helmet offered so much protection his opponent held his shield lower than usual to better protect his chest and belly. And when he moved just so, a line of flesh was exposed between helmet and shield. The vulnerable flesh of a human throat.
Thalgor’s smile widened.
Certain of what he must do, he lunged toward his opponent’s sword hand. But his blade met only a stout shield as his own felt an answering attack. The duel was on.
The two of them circled and traded stroke for stroke, but none hit home.
Silence seemed to fall around them. Even the air felt still, but Thalgor knew–lunge, parry, strike again–that the battle raged on all sides, if less fiercely, that their swords clanged, that they both breathed hard with the work of it. Such duels always quieted the battle. The narrowness of his focus always drew an invisible circle around him and his enemy.
But this was different. This was more.
Perhaps it was the witch blood that flowed so strong in both of them, perhaps something else, but their duel had an air of eternity about it. Not just death and victory hung in the balance, but the future of the land. Peace or terror.
They moved in the slow dance for as long as he ever remembered it lasting. The short dark-time day would soon fade.
Suddenly the other man made a quick downward stab at Thalgor’s leg and caught him just above the knee. It was not a serious wound, but the blood flowed freely and wet the ground between them.
His enemy paused for a moment and lifted his head to breathe the smell of blood as a man might the scent of a woman as they mated. He made a thrust at Thalgor’s heart, but only sliced a hole in his breastplate.
They began to circle again. Thalgor favored his wounded leg more than was necessary to draw his opponent’s strikes in that direction and pull him slightly off-balance.
Thalgor feinted to the right and brought his sword down sharply, striking his opponent on the wrist of his sword hand.
The enemy looked up at him in obvious surprise, then called something to his men Thalgor could not hear. The movement exposed a ribbon of flesh between helme
t and shield.
Now.
Thalgor’s sword cut through that flesh. His senses were so alert he felt the hesitation before the skin gave way, heard the crunch as the sword cut through the bony voice box, heard the sound of the man’s dying gasp.
The spurt of blood almost blinded him as the enemy fell dead with one last cry of rage.
Thalgor was again the boy who had killed his first man with a similar blow. Killed and freed those he loved from a horrible evil. Man and boy, it was a good day’s work.
A cry went up around him. As much from the enemy warriors as from his own men.
He dropped his bloody sword and shield, and pulled the golden helmet from the dead man’s head.
He held the helmet high in the sinking sunlight for all to see with a victory cry of his own.
A whirr, a thud.
Everything went black.
*
Erwyn could not make herself watch the duel between Thalgor and the enemy leader. Instead, she convinced the guards to lead the healers down the steep hillside at the narrowest part of the valley so that, if Thalgor was victorious, they could immediately set to their work. And if he was not, they could return to the walled camp to await their fate with Gurdek’s men.
She was battered and scratched from clambering down rocky slag and through heavy underbrush before they reached the more level soil of the pass.
The guards found them a hiding place behind Thalgor’s men where they could hear the clamor of battle but see nothing of how it went, or how Thalgor fared in his duel with the enemy leader.
Then the sounds changed. The last rank of men began to talk excitedly among themselves. The guards crept forward to hear what they said. Erwyn followed while the surgeon, the herbalist, and the bone-setter stayed safe in their hiding place.
One of the guards heard her behind them, but rather than send her back, he only whispered, “Thalgor has wounded his opponent’s sword hand.”
She was past them before they could stop her. When she reached the battlefield, she heard the cry that went up when Thalgor struck at the enemy’s throat. Spurred by a power she did not understand, she struggled through the next rank of warriors, all of them oblivious to her presence in their intense focus on the duel.
Thalgor’s victory cry pushed her through the front ranks and into the midst of the now-frozen battle.
She caught sight of Thalgor just as he fell.
With a scream of pure terror, she rushed forward and reached him while the arrow lodged deep between his ribs still quivered where his breastplate had been cut open.
On his right side. She struggled to calm the edge of hysteria in her mind. Not in his heart.
He lived. But something was still very wrong.
Rygar and Sett were arguing over the body of an enemy archer, Sett’s sword plunged deep into his belly.
“You did not need to kill him,” Rygar said.
“A better death than he deserved for such treachery,” Sett replied as he pulled his sword free.
“He only obeyed the orders of his leader.”
“After the leader was dead.”
“Rygar,” Erwyn called, as much to stop their arguing as because she needed him. “Rygar, come here.”
He came at once, while Sett began to create order on a battlefield where the captive enemy still slightly out-numbered Thalgor’s victorious warriors.
“Thalgor is wounded,” she said in a reproachful tone.
“It is not his heart. He will live,” Rygar replied.
Thalgor groaned and fine pink bubbles formed on his lips.
Everything inside Erwyn froze.
Rygar blinked twice and reached down to touch the foam. He smelled it to learn what Erwyn already knew. It was blood.
Time stopped as they looked at each other, brother and woman, and absorbed the awful truth.
A moment passed. Perhaps an hour. Perhaps a lifetime. Erwyn could not have said.
Someone, maybe the surgeon, called for torches in the fading light of day. Still she and Rygar stared at each other.
Thalgor groaned again. Again the bloody foam.
“Can you heal him?” Rygar finally breathed.
“I don’t know.”
But she did know. Knew her powers were not enough to slow Thalgor’s breathing at the same time she healed and mended all the layers of wounded flesh in his lung. With two witches, it might be done. With only one there was no hope.
Still, she reached into her bag and pulled out cobwebs. Perhaps the wound was not so bad as she thought.
“Take out the arrow,” she told Rygar.
He grimaced, then pulled the arrow free.
With the arrow came not a spurt of blood but, more sinister, a hollow sound from Thalgor’s chest. And more bloody foam.
Erwyn clasped the cobwebs over the hole, but felt the suction threaten to pull them inside Thalgor’s body when he struggled for another breath.
“No,” she cried aloud as the fear swallowed her.
Those nearby fell silent. Torches gleamed in the twilight.
Rygar cursed and threw the arrow toward the dead man who shot it. He sighed and touched her head as she knelt at his feet, holding the cobwebs against the hole in Thalgor’s chest.
“No,” she wailed again. “He cannot die.”
Rygar lowered himself down beside her and put his good arm around her shoulders.
“No,” came on a sob this time. “We have a life to live together yet. I want his child.”
“Can you save him?”
“Not alone.” Panic took over her thoughts. “But if his mother had witch blood, you do. I can show you how to still his breathing…” She spoke quickly, as if that would make it true.
“Only he inherited what witch blood our mother had. You should know that. You do know that. Think, Erwyn. If you cannot save him alone, you must ease his death.”
“How can you say that? You are the one he loves most. I must try to save him. Don’t you see that?”
Thalgor groaned and struggled again to breathe.
“How long?” Rygar asked gently.
“He is strong, but…” The hollow ring of her own voice shocked her, as if her body knew what her heart could not accept.
“Will it be an easy death?”
She looked up at him, at that face so like Thalgor’s. “You need not play the fool with me, Rygar. I am not so far gone with grief as that. At least not yet.”
“Then ease his death, sister. As you would for anyone.”
Pain wracked her body. Even as she knew the truth of his words, knew her magic demanded it, she whispered, “I cannot.”
Before Rygar could respond, Thalgor’s eyes flickered open.
“Erwyn.” His voice, robbed of air, could barely be heard.
“Do not talk,” she told him automatically.
Thalgor smiled thinly. “Erwyn,” he said again.
Resigned, she replied, “I am here.”
He reached his right hand up to cover hers where they held the cobwebs to his wound.
“Erwyn, I love you.” He coughed up a mass of pink foam and closed his eyes again.
“Now can you ease his death?” Rygar asked, with more wisdom than she would have expected.
She shook her head. Tears flowed down her face and damped the hand that was still clasped with Thalgor’s.
Let him die easily, she silently begged.
Night fell. The surgeon tended Rygar’s wounded arm. Someone brought food they ignored. Sett came to speak in hushed tones with Rygar, who still knelt beside her, but she could not care what they said.
She lived only for each quavering breath Thalgor drew, lived only on the wish that each would be his last.
He loved her.
The words freed her. Her heart soared above the clouds of the dark-time twilight into the clear purple sky beyond them.
The words bound her, to this one moment in time, to this endless, hopeless vigil.
Most of all, the words deafened
her, drowned out the cries of all the other wounded and dying men around her who needed her healing. Drowned out the call of her magic. Drowned out her duty to give Thalgor the easy death he deserved. She heard only those word –and his every strangled breath.
She was as incapable of easing the death of the man she loved as she was of saving him.
It was full dark when a stir among the warriors around them roused her from her stupor. A man stepped into the circle of light cast by a fire someone had built without her noticing.
She would have taken him for Rygar, if Thalgor’s brother did not still kneel beside her, as numb with grief as she.
The man cast back his hood.
The Witch King!
She started to cry out to him, to beg for his help, but he gestured for her to remain silent and pulled back his cloak.
From out of the dark folds stepped Felyn.
Before Erwyn got over her shock, the Witch King was gone and the child stood alone before her, cursed eyes wide with fear.
“Why are you here?” Rygar asked her gently.
“The Witch King brought me.”
“But why?”
“So I can help Erwyn save Thalgor.”
Erwyn lifted her eyes to Felyn’s and for the first time saw her sister.
Her mother had told the truth. The warmth of that knowledge, after all this time, eased the icy chill of this new loss.
More, when she looked at Felyn she saw a second witch.
Thalgor groaned and shifted beneath her touch. There was still time!
“Kneel with his head in your lap,” she told Felyn with sudden calm. “Put your hands by his eyes and find his mind with yours. It will be deeply asleep. Tell me when you have it.”
“Can I help?” Rygar asked.
“Not here,” she told him. “Go to Sett and help him organize the march back to the camp. Was Gurdek told of the victory?”
Rygar pulled himself to his feet and smiled down at her.
“Welcome back, witch. I won’t go far, in case you need me.”
She nodded and carefully lifted her hand to free it from Thalgor’s grasp without letting the cobwebs move.
“Erwyn,” Felyn whispered.
“Do you have his mind?”
“Yes.” The child gave a small sob. “I’m afraid.”
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