by Kate Elliott
Thunder boomed, rattling the timbers and shaking the barred shutters, and hard on top of that came a second crash, resounding through the hall, stilling their chatter. The princess’ courtiers rose and transformed themselves into a new pattern, one made bright and focused by the man who stood at their heart, the man at whom Sapientia stared, her gaze fixed avidly and jealously on his face.
His beautiful face.
As the thunder faded, Liath heard the gentle snap and rustle of the hearth’s fire.
Hugh.
PART TWO
CAPUT
DRACONIS
V
THE HAND OF
THE LADY
1
WIND scours his skin but he minds it not. Mere cold, mere sting of blown snow, cannot drive him from the stem of the ship. He sails on the wings of the storm, driving down on the northcountry to tear out the throats of those warleaders who have refused to bare their throats to his father, Bloodheart. This was the duty given him.
His nestbrothers laughed and howled their derision, for they see this as his punishment. Did he not prove himself weak when he got captured by the Soft Ones? Does he not further display his weakness because he wears the circle at his chest, the circle that is the mark of the God of the Soft Ones?
He knows that Bloodheart meant the duty as punishment. Sent back to the northcountry, land of OldMother and the WiseMothers, he will not gain booty and glory by raiding all winter into the lands that lie near the city the Soft Ones call Gent but which Bloodheart has renamed Hundse, “to treat like a dog.”
But his nestbrothers cannot think more than two steps before their eyes. They do not understand, and he does not tell them, that he wears the circle not because he believes in the God of the Soft Ones but rather as a mark of his link to Alain Henrisson, the human who freed him. They do not understand that their brother, who returns in disgrace to the northcountry, will be the one who holds his claws to the throats of the rebellious warleaders.
Someday, somehow, Bloodheart will die. It is the way of males to die. It is the way of the OldMother to stiffen and grow old and climb at last to the fjall of the WiseMothers. There, with her mothers and grandmothers and greatgrandmothers unto uncounted generations, she will dream of the past and of the future and of the stars that lie like thoughts strewn across the fjall of the heavens far above, too steep a climb for mortal legs.
And when Bloodheart dies, who will the warleaders of the northcountry remember? The ones who raid and burn in the southlands, far away from the homelands? Or the one who drove into their halls and plundered their gold and stole and slaughtered their slaves? The one before whom they bared their throats?
The mewling and sobbing of a slave disturbs him. The dogs are restless, but he no longer lets them feed on obedient slaves. This lesson he learned from Alain: Impulse must not govern action. The other RockChildren, rowing, glance his way with their bitter eyes; they want to challenge him but dare not. They did not fight their way to a man’s form out of the nestlings sired by Bloodheart. They come from other nests, other valleys, other dams. They serve Bloodheart and his litters. They do not contest him.
But they still watch. He dares show no sign of weakness in front of them, or else they will not fight for him when it comes time to bring the rebellious warleaders to heel, the independent ones who raid as all the RockChildren did before Bloodheart’s hegemony: as they wish, with no coordination, with no greater vision leading them. They are no better than dogs! How they matured into men puzzles him sometimes, but he does not worry himself about it. That is a question only OldMother and the WiseMothers can answer.
He steps down from the stem and makes his way across the rocking ship. The beat and rise and fall of the waves is like a second breath to him; he does not falter although the swells are steep here where the seas sing with the joy of coming storm.
He stops at the stern where the slaves huddle. Miserable creatures. One—bearded as all the older males are—stares defiantly at him for a moment; then, remembering, the male drops his gaze swiftly and hunches his shoulders, waiting for the death blow. Another would kill the male simply for that glance. But he knows better.
Nurture the strong ones. In time they can become useful tools.
He leans down and presses the tip of a claw gently but firmly into the edge of one soft eye of the defiant male, as if to say. “I have noticed you.”
Then he shoves aside the others to find the one who moans and mewls and groans. This one has the stink of blood and feces about her. She is a female of middle years, haggard of face, thin, her skirts stained with blood and diarrhea, the sign of an illness he has learned to recognize. Every Soft One he has ever seen excrete such a foul combination of blood and pus and stink dies after a day or three of agonizing pain. Some of his nestbrothers in Gent would wager over how many days one stricken by the disease could live. But he has also noticed that this disease can pass itself on to others if not eradicated quickly. What good does it do the miserable creature to lie there in pain and her own fetid mess?
He does not, of course, want to stain his claws with her tainted fluids. He fetches a spear, its iron point honed into a fine instrument of death. He places the tip of the spear against the female’s breast. She whimpers and sobs, still clutching her belly, and the others draw away, but no one tries to stop him. They fear him. Surely they know she is doomed. Not even the prayers they mouth to their god can save her.
This is the other lesson he learned from Alain: to be merciful. With a single thrust, he pierces her chest.
* * *
Alain started up, gasping, hands clutched to his chest. The pain that stabbed into him faded as Rage and Sorrow stirred, woke, and licked his hands until he calmed. The dream had been so real. But all the dreams of Fifth Son seemed this real. Somehow the blood they had exchanged so many months ago linked them now irrevocably. He saw with Fifth Son’s eyes and knew his thoughts. He lived, in those sleeping hours, in Fifth Son’s metal-hard skin.
Shuddering, he let the two black hounds nuzzle him until the wave of revulsion passed. The revulsion brought in its wake shame. What right had he to judge another creature, even an Eika?
A flame lit suddenly, seen through the gauzy veil that separated his side of the tent from his father’s.
My father.
The veil was pushed aside. Count Lavastine looked in, candle and holder gripped in one hand and the other still caught in the thin fabric of tent wall.
“Alain? I heard you cry out.”
Alain swung his legs off the cot and looked up at his father. If he stood, he would top Lavastine by half a head; at this vulnerable time of night, with the count dressed in shirt and linen drawers, he remained seated. Lavastine let the fabric wall fall behind him and crossed to Alain.
“Are you well?” He placed the back of his hand against the boy’s cheek. It was not precisely a tender gesture— Lavastine did not have tender impulses—but the simple display of concern moved Alain deeply.
“I am well. I had a bad dream.”
Terror padded in from the other room and nipped at Rage. Lavastine cuffed them gently, almost absently, and they both settled down comfortably together, a quivering mass of black hounds.
“You are concerned about the battle.”
Ai, Lady, the dream had been so vivid that Alain had forgotten about the work they meant to do at dawn.
“No,” he said truthfully. “I am troubled by dreams of the Eika prince.”
Lavastine began to pace. Terror yawned, stretched, made as if to rise and pad after his master, and then bared teeth, nipped sleepily at Rage again, and settled back to sleep. “Do not fear my anger, Alain. You were honest with me, and I have forgiven you for freeing the savage. Is it the Eika you fear? Perhaps you’re afraid the prince you let go will be among them and you don’t know if you can kill him, if it comes to that?”
“He isn’t among them. He’s sailing north. He was sent back to his own country by his father to bring to heel all t
he warleaders who haven’t yet accepted Bloodheart as chief over all the Eika. King, I suppose we might say.”
As soon as he spoke, Alain realized how strange this statement must sound. Lavastine turned and, in the warm light of the candle, he gave that grimace which was his smile, not an expression of warmth, precisely, nor yet of amusement. “Son.” Always, these past months, he savored the word, son. “If it is true you have dreams that are also true visions, I wish you never to speak of them to anyone but me. Never to a deacon or any person in the church.”
“Why not?”
“They might claim you have been touched by God and try to take you away from me. I will not let you go, not as long as I am alive.”
Alain shivered. “Don’t say that,” he whispered. “Don’t speak of death.”
Lavastine reached, hesitated, then touched the boy on his dark head, laying his hand there almost tenderly, certainly possessively. “I will not let go of you, ever, Alain,” he repeated. With a shake of his head as a dog shakes off water, he pulled away and crossed to the other side of the tent, hooking the fabric wall up over a post. “I smell morning,” he said. “Come, son. It is time to arm for battle.”
The hounds roused and with their waking roused the servants, who hurried to bring lit lanterns and clothing. They dressed the count and his heir in padded jackets to cushion their bodies from the weight of their armor. Alain had spent the summer training in armor, becoming accustomed to its weight and feel along his body: heavy mail hauberk, soft leather hood over which a servant slipped and tightened a mail coif and, on top of that, a conical helmet trimmed with bronze. Another servant bound his calves with leather strips wound from ankle to knee. This was far better armor than anything he could have hoped to wear as a man-at-arms.
He did not think about battle—if it came to that—as the servant hung belt and short sword at his hips. Outside, he took a spear from the rack set up beside the tent. The long haft of oak was strengthened by a twining ribbon of blue leather that wound from butt to lugs, the “wings” projecting out on either side just below the blade. Grooms brought their horses. Without too much trepidation, Alain swung up on his. He was a natural rider—Lavastine had stated more than once, in his emphatic way, that this was clearly a sign of Alain’s noble blood. He might well have been born to the saddle, but he had truly only learned to ride after that day in the month of Sormas when Lavastine had acknowledged him as son and heir. He was untried and inexperienced, especially when it came time to ride into a skirmish where he might see actual fighting. But a count’s son did not walk into battle. So he would ride.
Lavastine mounted his fine gray gelding, Graymane, and nodded at Alain as if to say: “Are you ready?”
Alain nodded in turn. He would not disappoint his father.
Wasn’t riding to war what he had dreamed of all his life? His foster father, Henri the merchant, and his Aunt Bel had pledged him to the church, to live out his life as a monk at the Dragon’s Tail Monastery. But the Lady of Battles had appeared that stormy spring day when Eika had burned the monastery and slaughtered all the monks. She had given him a rose that never wilted and could never be crushed, a rose he kept wrapped in a little cloth bag and wore on a leather thong around his neck. She had taken a pledge from him. “Serve me.” He had sworn to serve her in order to save Osna village from the Eika attack but also because what she promised him was his heart’s desire. For that, knowing that the man who raised him had promised him in good faith to the church, he still felt guilty.
Birds chirped, and the gray light that heralds dawn rose around them, etching the skeletal lines of trees against the seamless expanse of sky. Above the trees stars shone. Trained by a navigator, Alain could not help but note stars and constellations and wonder at their omens. The wandering stars moved on the backdrop of the sphere of the fixed stars, the highest of the seven spheres beyond which lay the Chamber of Light. Their threads wove power that guided Fate and could be wielded by hands trained in that craft. Or so it was claimed, though such teaching was condemned by the church.
The pale rose beacon of Aturna, the Magus, shone near the zenith in the constellation known as The Sisters, and Mok, planet of wisdom and bounty, made her stately way through The Lion. Beyond Aturna to the west, the jewel of seven stars clustered closely together and known as “the Crown” glittered so brightly he thought he could see the mysterious seventh sister among her six bolder siblings. Bow and Arrow, the arrow tipped with the bright blue brilliance of the star Seirios, pointed toward the Hunter with his belt of gems and his left shoulder tipped with red— the star called Vulneris. But as Alain stared, recalling the knowledge taught him by his foster father, the stars faded with dawn. Soon the light of the rising sun would obliterate this sight, as Lavastine meant to obliterate the Eika camp.
Lavastine lifted a hand for silence. His men-at-arms quieted to gather around him. These were the cavalry, some twenty experienced men, the best of his fighters. The infantry was already in place. The scouts, by now, would be creeping down to the shoreline to do their duty.
Lavastine left nothing to chance, not when he could help it.
They started out slowly, each armed servant holding on to a horse’s bridle and leading them across the rough ground. It grew lighter as they crossed down through forest, picked their way across a blackened field that had once been ripe oats, and came out on a sandy hill that overlooked sea and shore. There, on a rocky rise just above a river’s mouth, Eika had built a winter camp.
The sea shone and glimmered in the east where the first line of light touched it, spreading over the waves. From the beach down by the river, as if it were an echo of the sun’s light, fire sprang up among the ships
“Forward,” said Lavastine calmly. He was always calm.
Alain was sweating with excitement. Someday, perhaps, the bards would sing of this battle. He followed his father down, the other mounted soldiers ranged around them, protecting them. No nobleman sent his soldiers into battle alone; that would be dishonorable as well as disloyal. So must his son—his bastard son, only recently proclaimed as his legitimate heir—be seen capable of riding to war and fighting in battle.
Lavastine glanced, just once, toward Alain, as if to say: “Don’t fail me.”
An alarm shrieked—the howling of dogs and the blast of a horn—from the Eika camp. Like hornets, Eika rushed from their shelters and out of their palisade to save their ships.
Archers hidden in the brush on the steep slopes of the ridge lit arrows from coals concealed in hollow tubes they had carried with them and began to shoot into the enclosure. The infantrymen, who had waded out along the shore, closed in on the surprised Eika from the river’s mouth. And from behind, the claw that closed the pincer’s mouth, rode Lavastine with his cavalry.
It took every ounce of skill Alain had to keep his horse running with the rest, to keep his balance, to simply stay with them and keep hold of his spear—not be jounced off or have his attention wrenched away by a hundred distractions. The cloth shelters in the enclosure burned with a spitting, furious flame. The ships did not burn as brightly, but shapes swarmed over them, dousing the flames and howling their rage while the lightly armed scouts scuttled away to safety.
Then the cavalry hit the first rank of the Eika, those who had seen them coming and turned to fight. Alain rode right over one. He did not even tuck and thrust with his spear, did not even parry, just rode, hoping the horse knew what it was doing. He did not. He was dimly aware that beside him Lavastine thrust and stuck with his spear, striking home into an Eika chest, tugged, then gave up the spear and rode on. Soldiers pounded after them, leaving behind a mass of trampled Eika. Beyond, a larger clot of Eika struggled with the infantry. On foot the Eika had the advantage over the smaller, weaker men. With axes hacking and shields used like weapons, striking and punching, Eika clawed and fought their way through the foot soldiers. But even in the fury of battle some turned, alerted by the cries of their brothers and the pounding of hooves.
/> He was upon them. Skin of copper, of bronze, of gold or silver or iron, they resembled creatures poured out of metal into a human mold, and yet they were not human at all. One cut at him, its teeth gleaming sharply white, its hair the dead color of bleached bone. He parried with his spear, felt the ax blade cut and hang up in the leatherbound haft. He tugged, suddenly frantic, and the Eika dropped its shield and drew its knife. Horrified, Alain released his hold on the spear and, as the creature staggered back with its lips frozen in a ghastly grimace, he jerked his sword from its sheath, lifted it high—
—and in that moment, with the Eika off-balance before him, with the skirmish swirling forward as other horsemen pressed Eika back and Lavastine shouted to urge them on, in that instant before his father looked around, before his father would see him frozen, a coward, he knew he could not do it.
He could not kill.
The Eika cast away ax and spear and leaped forward with its knife, a wicked obsidian blade. Alain tried to lift his short sword to parry, but he was paralyzed with that revelation.
He could not kill.
He was not worthy. He would never be a soldier. He had failed his father.
He was going to die.
The sun flashed fire in his eyes, blinding him. Or was it death that he did not yet feel, a knife buried in his eye or throat, that blinded him? He dropped his reins and instinctively held up a hand to shield his eyes from the sun. A shadow swooped down over him. An iron-gray broadsword cut down across his sight. The Eika fell, cut down in midleap, and collapsed to the earth.
