Last King of Osten Ard 02 - Empire of Grass

by Tad Williams

  If I can’t light a fire by tomorrow, I think I will go mad.

  * * *

  Porto and an Erkynguard sergeant named Levias were watching over a small troop of Erkynguards as they brought back levies of food from the nearby shire seat at Leaworth to the camp where the soldiers waited for Count Eolair and the prince to return from their mission to the Sithi. The levy had taken longer than expected, because the local baron had protested every requisition, and had even angrily stated that he would inform the High Throne of the outrage being practiced upon him until the Erkynguard quartermaster produced the order signed by Duke Osric and countersigned by the king.

  “If that baron ever has to feed a real army instead of just this little traveling company,” Levias suggested to Porto, “he’ll likely have a fit and fall down dead.” Porto had laughed in agreement.

  Sergeant Levias was a friendly sort, a round-faced, stocky man about a decade past the end of youth. Porto liked the man’s company and was also enjoying the day and the sunshine. After passing nearly a month in the saddle since they’d left the Hayholt, Porto was comfortable riding again, despite the occasional ache in his old bones. He was concerned about Morgan, of course, after the prince and Eolair had been gone so many days in the forest, but that was in God’s hands, not his own. He could only wait with the rest of the Erkynguard and hope for the best.

  As they followed the course of the river on their way back from Leaworth, going slow because the carts were laden with grain and beer and other useful things, they saw the first smoke drifting on the southern horizon, a dark plume above the grassy hillocks that stood between them and the camp. At first Porto thought nothing of it—what was a military camp without fires?—but after a moment Levias saw it too.

  “That’s wrong, that is,” the sergeant said, but he didn’t look very worried. “Too much smoke, too dark. One of the wagons must have caught fire.”

  “God help us,” said one of the foot soldiers from under his milkmaid’s yoke, “let’s hope it’s not the cook wagons. I need my supper. This is hard work.”

  “Do not throw the Lord’s name about,” Levias told him. “Your complaining stomach is nothing to Him.”

  “So the priest told me too, back home.” The guardsman, a young fellow named Ordwine, had proved to be fond of his own voice. “But when I let out a great fart, it seems God changed his mind, because the priest threw me out of His church!”

  Porto laughed in spite of himself, but Levias only gave the young soldier a disgusted look. “You will learn to fear the Lord one day. I only hope that it does not come too late.”

  Instead of continuing what was obviously raillery of long standing with his superior, young Ordwine stared into the distance, his eyes suddenly wide. “Look, now, Sergeant. The smoke is getting thicker.”

  Porto turned even as Levias did. The black cloud was like a thunderhead. The rest of the guardsman had stopped to look, and even the drovers brought their wagons to a halt, faces gone suddenly pale as suet.

  A part of the dark cloud broke loose from its base and came hurrying toward them across the uneven meadow. For a moment Porto was frozen with fear, cast back in an instant to the Norn lands and the terrible magic of the White Foxes that had brought cookfires to life, collapsed great stones, and even moved mountains. But what was speeding toward them was no rogue cloud of smoke, he saw a moment later, but horses—Erkynguard horses running in terror, eyes rolling, hooves flashing in the late afternoon glare, many still wearing their blankets emblazoned with the Twin Dragons of the royal house.

  “By the Aedon, what happens here?” said Levias, forgetting his own rule against using holy names in vain. “Has the whole camp caught fire? Ordwine, you and the rest get after those horses before they escape. See if you can calm them and get them harnessed—once they escape into the grasslands we’ll never catch them.” He turned to Porto. “Keep with me, Sir Porto. Something is amiss!”

  Afterward, Porto could remember little of the scene they saw as they galloped toward the smoke, except that for a brief instant he could have almost believed that the green, peaceful grassland had opened up and vomited forth demons from Hell. The Erkynguard camp was beset by men in armor, perhaps a hundred ragged but well-armed Thrithings-men on swift horses. The Erkynguardsmen were fighting back from behind wagons but they were much outnumbered, and many of the wagons had already been set ablaze by the attackers’ fiery arrows. The fast-moving nomads seemed to range on all sides, so that many soldiers who thought they were hidden from danger by a wagon or tent died with arrows in their backs.

  Levias spurred his horse toward the melée, but to Porto it was already clear that the battle was over. Perhaps half of the guardsmen in the camp were already dead and the rest surrounded, but very few of the attackers had been killed or even wounded.

  He lay his head close against his horse’s neck and spurred after Sergeant Levias. “Turn back!” Porto shouted. “Turn back!”

  “We have to help them!” Levias cried, his words barely audible above the shouts and screams.

  “And who will help the prince?” Porto shouted, reining up. They were still far from the camp. Half the wagons were now blazing high and hot, and several others were beginning to burn. “Who will help the heir to the throne when we are dead?”

  Levias slowed, then a moment later half a dozen of the whooping clansmen saw them and broke off from the main group. Levias pulled back hard on his reins, then turned his horse and sped back toward Porto, the Thrithings-men closing rapidly behind, their braided beards bouncing, their red mouths open in cries of battle-joy.

  It is Hell indeed, Porto thought, turning his horse to flight.

  Arrows were humming past them like hornets, and Porto knew that the Thrithings-horses were all but tireless and would catch them soon. He shouted to Levias to head toward the forest, their only chance for escape, but realized a moment later that they were far downstream from the ford and would have to cross the Ymstrecca in full flow.

  An arrow flew past him close enough to bite at the skin of his neck. They crested a low, grassy hill and as they flew down the slope on the far side, suddenly more riders were on top of them, springing up as if from nowhere. For a moment Porto’s heart skipped and seemed to stop. But before he could even draw his blade, these new riders rushed past with loud cries, heading up the slope toward the trailing Thrithings-men, who had just arrived at the top of the rise, and Porto realized these new riders were the Erkynguards—Ordwine and the others that Levias had sent to catch some of the fleeing horses—and he breathlessly praised God. It was clear from the way they rode that these soldiers were not horsemen—most of them had been farm boys before joining the guard—but he had seldom been so glad to see anyone. Screaming with rage, almost with madness, Ordwine and the rest crashed into the trailing Thrithings-men. Porto could not leave them to fight alone, so he turned his mount in an abrupt, shuddering half-circle, then followed them up, determined to sell his death for a good price.

  Men tumbled through the air as the two troops met and their horses reared or stumbled. Horses fell, crushing men beneath them. Axes and swords rang on shields or clashed blade on blade, or blade on flesh. Men screamed. Blood sprayed. In that little trough between two rolling greens swells an entire battle began and ended before the sun had set. Luckily for Porto, the battle went better for his side than the fight at the camp.

  When it was over, the only survivors were Porto and Levias, both wounded but not too badly, and two of the Erkynguards—young Ordwine and a smaller, beardless soldier named Firman. None of the Thrithings-men who had chased them would see their clans again, but that could scarcely be called a victory.

  When they made their way back toward the camp, the rest of the nomad army was gone and most of the fires had burned out, leaving only a few flames wavering here and there, like drunks staggering home from the tavern. The ground was littered with corpses, but the dead were almost a
ll Erkynguardsmen and Thrithings-men: Porto saw no sign of the trolls among them.

  Nobody spoke but Sergeant Levias, and his only words were a string of sickened, angry curses.

  * * *

  • • •

  When the newcomers first came toward them out of the woods, distance made size confusing: Porto drew the sword he had only just sheathed and called out to Levias and the others to be ready. A moment later he saw that the leader was riding, not a shaggy Thrithings-horse but something smaller and stranger—a white wolf, in fact—and he lowered his blade. He hailed Binabik and his troll family with relief, but the guardsmen with him seemed less joyful. Many of the soldiers had regarded the Qanuc with superstitious fear from the moment the company had left Erchester, and if ever there had been a day of disastrous luck, this had been that day.

  “I did not think to see you alive again,” Porto said as the trolls rode up.

  Binabik swung down from his mount, then looked over the smoking remains of the camp. “We were being in and out of the forest all the day, looking by the chance that Prince and Eolair had been coming out somewhere different.” As he spoke, his wife, daughter, and the large troll named Little Snenneq looked around in grim silence.

  Porto nodded sadly. It had been almost a sennight since the Sithi had taken the prince and Eolair away and the whole camp had been unsettled by the lengthy absence. Only military discipline had kept them relatively calm.

  “It will be just us waiting for them now,” Porto said. “We must pray those grasslanders do not return.”

  “There are Thrithings-men and other grasslanders on the move in great numbers all around,” Binabik told him. “But mostly distant from this place, on the far downs.” He gestured toward the low hills along the southern horizon.

  “Grasslanders are coming this way, you say?” Porto was terrified at the idea of having to fight again. The strength of desperation that had fueled him had ebbed back out of his body, and every weary muscle and every old bone he possessed seemed to be aching.

  “Not this way.” Binabik crouched, running his fingers through the bent grass, eyes narrowed. “All heading toward the west they are, but also away from this spot. The Thrithings people are making a great clan gathering at the end of summer each year. Perhaps this attack was by some clans on their journeying to that gathering. Ah!” Binabik held up what at first looked like nothing so much as a gobbet of mud. He cleaned it with a handful of dewy grass. “Look,” he said. “A tatter of cloak, and it is of fine weave.”

  Porto shook his head. “What good is that to us?”

  “To wear, no goodness at all,” said Binabik with a crooked half-smile. “To see and think about, perhaps it is being more use. Look with closeness.”

  “I can’t see close things so well,” Porto admitted.

  “Then I will be telling you. This is a cloth of very clever stitching and make. No broadweave, as we Qanuc say of the garments we make during the summer, but fine work. I mean no impoliteness when I say these are not the garments of one of your soldiers, let alone the cook or his helpers. This is the cloak of a nobleman. Sisqi! Qina! Help me.”

  Together the three trolls moved slowly outward from the spot where Binabik had found the piece of cloth, staying low to the ground, examining the muddy, torn turf. Porto and the guardsmen looked on in puzzled silence. Little Snenneq, still mounted on his huge, slow-cropping ram, wore an expression like a hungry child forced to sit through a long prayer before eating.

  Sisqi stopped and called to Binabik.

  He leaned close and then nodded. “And see—it was Count Eolair. He was here during the battling or just after. See how the mud has been trampled back over the bloody ground.”

  “But then what of the prince?” asked Porto in sudden fear. “Sweet God and merciful Elysia, was Prince Morgan here too? Oh, God, is he dead?”

  Binabik’s face was somber. “I pray to all my ancestors he is not. But you and your men go to there, Porto.” He pointed to the far end of the muddied battleground, where some of the men had fallen back from the original camp in their futile resistance. “We will do the searching here. Be looking at all the dead. I am praying none are Morgan or Eolair, but we must be knowing with certainty.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Porto stood over the last of the dead Thrithings-men. This one was a thin fellow with long mustaches and the bloodless look of a drowned rodent. His guts were out, and they stank. After staring a moment, Porto turned away to collect himself. The sun had all but vanished in the west. He could see a thin haze of mist rising from the distant meadows.

  “I am bringing perhaps hopeful news!” Binabik called, walking toward him. “But first, what have you found?”

  Porto listed off the number of each side’s fallen. “All the Erkynguard are dead, Levias says, but those who went with us to Leaworth. They also killed the camp servants, mostly young boys.” A wash of pure hatred went through him. He had almost forgotten what it felt like, the helpless, burning heat. “But, praise God, none of the dead are Eolair or Prince Morgan.”

  Binabik let out a deep breath. “I mourn the others, but the absence of the prince and Eolair is making the meaning of my own discovery more certain. Come see.”

  He led Porto and the guardsmen back across the twilight battlefield. They had been among the dead long enough that Porto had begun to feel as though they walked in the afterlife—as though they were the ones who had died, and were waiting for their fellows to rise and join them in eternity.

  Binabik took a brand from the fire Little Snenneq had built and began to walk along the edges of a torn but less brutalized section of meadow on the forest side of the camp. Porto, who was long-legged even beyond most men, towered over the troll and had to take small, almost mincing steps to avoid tripping over him.

  “There, and again there, and again there.” Binabik was now leading him out from the camp toward the ford, gesturing at things Porto could only barely see, even with the torch held close. “Footprints that came from there.” He pointed toward the shadowy tree-wall of Aldheorte across the river. “Prints of two walkers, both in boots well-crafted. But before they reach this camp, there is being confusion—and here.” He pointed again. Porto could at least see that the ground was much disturbed. “One set turns back to the forest. The sky rained the night before last, do you remember? These are prints being made since that night, as with the others around us—or just after yesterday’s battling.”

  Porto tried to consider all these ideas. “After the battle? What does that mean? And what do the two sets of tracks mean?”

  Levias, who had been listening silently, said, “It means one of them turned back to the forest.”

  Binabik nodded. “Good seeing, Sergeant. I too think it so.”

  “It was Prince Morgan who went to the forest,” Snenneq said.

  Binabik again nodded. “That too I am hoping now. If the prince and Eolair were coming from the forest and saw the battle, Eolair I am thinking would have made the prince run to safety, the only safety that was there for his seeking, in the great forest. But the piece of cloak and no blood there, and no body of the count, tells me—what, Snenneq?”

  “That someone took the Count of Eolair prisoner,” Snenneq said immediately.

  “Yes,” Binabik said, nodding. “So we will all pray to our ancestors and gods they are both being still alive—Prince Morgan in the forest, Eolair with his captors.” He stood and put his hands to his mouth, then called, “Vaqana, hinik aia!”

  It seemed no time at all before the wolf appeared, tongue dangling and eyes intent, clearly enjoying the smell of blood and burned flesh more than the humans did. The troll bent and put his mouth near the beast’s ear; it looked to Porto as if they were conversing quietly. The idea, though strange, did not seem impossible—the leader of the trolls had shown several times that the wolf understood him even better than
a horse did its rider.

  Now Binabik climbed onto Vaqana’s back and seized the ruff of fur at its neck, then called something to his wife Sisqi. The wolf leaped off so quickly that grass flew into the air behind him, carrying Binabik back toward the scene of the original attack.

  “Where does he go?” asked Sergeant Levias. “Does he desert us?”

  “The trolls are not that sort,” said Porto.

  “My husband says of something he heard,” Sisqi explained. “He hurries to see, and tells us to follow with carefulness.”

  Levias exchanged a look with the other two Erkynguards, and they stayed close together as they rode eastward along the Ymstrecca’s bank. Bodies lay scattered across the meadow like the tumbled statuary of a lost race. He heard a cry and looked up, squinting in the evening darkness until he could make out the distant conjoined shape of Binabik and his wolf hurrying back toward them.

  “Come to me!” Binabik cried as drew nearer. “With swiftness!”

  As the others approached, he turned the wolf away from the river and led them back across the grass, just beyond the last sad tangle of dead Erkynlandish soldiers. “Here, you see?” he said. “A large force of Thrithings horses were passing here—look, here is a shoe-marking from one.” He pointed at a muddy half-circle. “They lead away west and south, toward the place that is being called Spirit Hills, where the grassland people have their gathering.”

  “I don’t understand,” Porto said.

  “Are you suggesting we should try to attack them, with our paltry numbers?” Levias asked.