Hall of the Mountain King

by Tarr, Judith

  “That must have been a signal. Arrows swarmed over us. No matter where we were or what we did, we were hit. My lord, I swear by Avaryan’s hand, I saw one bend around a rock and bury itself in a man’s eye.”

  “Yes,” Mirain said with flat and calming acceptance. “They all died, I was told. But you live.”

  Surian swallowed hard, trembling with shock and pain and remembered horror. “I . . . I live. I think, sire, I was meant to. No, I know it. I’m meant for a message and a mockery.”

  “She knows us wholly,” Mirain muttered, “and we grope for knowledge of her.”

  Surian stared at him, afraid to understand him. He smiled faintly but truly. “You’ve done well. Rest now. While I live, no darkness shall harm you.”

  oOo

  The sun passed its zenith and began to sink into the spell-wrought shadow. Still the enemy had not moved. Mirain’s army, drawn taut too long, began to slacken.

  “Imagine days of this,” Vadin said.

  “Our enemy is well capable of it.” Mirain had bidden his men be fed again, for diversion as well as for strength, although Vadin had not been able to make him break his own fast. He paced instead, with a bit of fruit forgotten in his hand. “But if we attack, we attack blind. Literally, maybe. I’m not yet as desperate as that.”

  “What do you counsel then?” demanded Prince Mehtar, doffing his helmet and handing it to his squire, and biting into a half-loaf spread thick with softened cheese. “We can sit here until we starve, and then the enemy can roll over us.”

  “With all of us begging to be trampled.” Alidan drained a cup of ale as handily as any man-at-arms. “My lord, we have to do better than that.”

  Mirain glared at the ground where already he had paced out a path in the sparse grass of the hilltop. “Yes, we must. But I dare not give in to my instincts and lead a full charge against the enemy. What they did to a dozen scouts, mountain tribesmen and hunters of Ianon, they can do to three thousand of my warriors.”

  “Die swift or die slow,” Mehtar said, “die we will, if this army is as large as it looks.”

  “Ah, but is it?” Mirain ceased his pacing at the farthest extent of his path, eyes turned westward under his shading hand. “Think now. The Marchers have men in plenty, and my turncoat lords likewise. But not enough to fill yonder hills, or to stretch back as far as these seem to stretch.”

  “Yes,” said Vadin, “and it’s been making me wonder. These are men we know, men like us, some probably forced to fight at their lords’ command, others following Moranden in good faith. If we can hardly endure the shadow at this distance, how can they march under it?”

  “Illusion,” Mirain answered him, “and delusion: the black heart of magic. They see no shadow: they think the sun is free and their minds likewise, even as they think only the thoughts the mages permit them to think. They dream that they have come to rid the throne of an impostor and the kingdom of a threat; commanded to slay and burn, they see in front of them not villages of women and children but camps of my soldiers. And the witch whose spells rule them—the witch laughs. Her laughter shudders in my bones.”

  He spun on his heel. They were all silent. Some of them thought he might be mad. “No,” he said, “only god-ridden. My lords, my ladies, our enemy dares us to fight or fly. I’ve never had much skill in running. Shall we fight?”

  “That will be a swift death,” Mehtar said, approving.

  “Maybe not, my lord. The witch taunts us with her strength. Let us prove to her that strength can matter little. The tactics of the wolf: strike, slash, leap away.”

  Adjan’s eyes narrowed as he calculated. “We can do that. Wear down the enemy’s men, who can’t be so very many more than we are, and keep our own happy. But we can’t stretch out our necks too far, or we’ll lose too many and the other side not enough.”

  “Ten captains,” said Mirain. “Ten men of proven courage with hand- picked troops. Adjan, my lord prince, will you command two of the companies?”

  “Aye,” Mehtar said for both. “Eight more to find, then. Shall I do it, sire?”

  “Seven,” Mirain corrected him. “I shall take a company. You may choose the rest as you will. We ride out within the hour. Choose well and swiftly.”

  Mehtar opened his mouth, shut it again carefully. With equal care he bowed. “As my king commands.”

  oOo

  Each captain of the sortie led twice nine men. Mirain commanded nine men and five of his own guard, and Vadin, and Jeran and Tuan of the race to Umijan; and Alidan. They formed ranks quietly but without undue stealth behind the main line of forces, mounted on seneldi chosen for speed and courage.

  Vadin glanced from side to side. Alidan was close on his right hand, anonymous in armor and helmet, wearing the scarlet cloak of the king’s guard. She looked both capable and deadly, and she sat her fiery stallion better than most men. At his left rode Mirain, aglitter in his golden armor. Beyond them on either side he saw the other companies drawn up, mounted and ready.

  It was like a melee at the Summer Games; and yet how unlike. This was real. Men would die here for the king who sat lightly in his tall saddle, toying with a wayward battle-streamer. By his word they stood; by his word they would fall.

  Vadin’s heart hammered. His nostrils twitched with the faint sharp tang of his own fear. Death he was not afraid of; he had lain in its arms. But he could fear pain, fear overlaid and underlaid and shot through with something light and fierce and salty-sweet. Something like gaiety, something like passion: the inimitable scent and sense of battle. Everything was sharper, clearer, more wonderful and more terrible.

  He laughed, and because people stared, laughed again in pure mirth. In the midst of it his eye caught a flame of gold. Mirain had raised his hand.

  The lines opened, here, there. Rami gathered her haunches beneath her. The companies darted forth, no two at once, no two in the same direction. Mirain’s force thundered straight to the center, over the plain, through the swift tumble of Ilien, up the slight slope beyond. There was no cover there; they were naked to the sky and to the waiting shadow.

  Vadin settled himself more firmly in the saddle. Rami’s gallop was smooth, effortless. The silver mane floated over his hand. One blood-red streamer whipped back to strike his wrist.

  The enemy waited. He could see as one sees at dusk: shapes, eyes, but no features. The eyes wore no more expression than the weapons bent against him.

  He drew his sword. It was light in his hand, although the blade was strangely dark, its polished sheen lost in dimness.

  The company rode together still, close at Mirain’s back. But some did not ride easily; their mounts fretted, veering and shying. One man flogged his senel on with his scabbard, the face within the open helmet like a demon mask, teeth bared, eyes white-rimmed.

  The horror touched Vadin as a wind will, brushing and chilling but going no deeper than the skin. Looking down, he saw with mild surprise that his body was clothed in a faint golden shimmer, a pale echo of the shining splendor that was Mirain.

  Close now. No arrows hummed out of the massed ranks; no spear flew. There was a taste in his mouth as strong as fear.

  Trap. He set his teeth against it. Rami leaped the last yards, braced for battle. Vadin swung up his sword.

  The enemy wavered like a mirage, melted and faded and vanished away. Vadin heard cries of anger or of terror. Seneldi screamed. The arrows began to fall.

  The Mad One trumpeted, a great stallion-blast of rage and challenge. “On!” Mirain cried to him and to all who could hear. “On!”

  Shadows, all shadows. Vadin’s blade clove air again and again. Yet still he struck, still he pressed on. Bolts sang past him; one pierced his flying cloak. He laughed at them.

  With a shock so powerful it nearly flung him to the ground, his sword struck flesh. Blood fountained, red as Rami’s streamers.

  As if a spell had been broken, suddenly he could see. Though dim and shadowed still, an army spread before and about him, drawn up
under banners he knew. They had few cavalry: the Marches were not known for their herds. Most of the seneldi drew chariots.

  Those he could not face, even wild with battle as he was. Mirain had given them a wide berth, striking against knights and infantry; Vadin sent Rami after him. The enemy fought well and fiercely enough, but there was a strangeness in their eyes, as if they did not truly see him.

  They struck only when struck first; they did not attack. All along their lines, knots of combat alternated with unnatural stillness. Even the chariots did not roll forth to hew the attackers into bloody fragments, but stood where they were set, the charioteers’ eyes fixed straight before them.

  In Geitan they had told Vadin that he was rarely blessed, a warrior who could sing as he fought. But that was against men who were free to sing in turn, fight in turn, slay in turn. This was a travesty, a sorcerous horror.

  His lips drew back from his teeth in sudden, deadly rage. “Fight, damn you!” he howled. “Turn on us! Hammer us down!”

  The eyes did not change. His sword turned in his hand; he began to lay about him with the flat of it, stunning but not wounding. He sensed Mirain close by him: a gathering of power, stronger, stronger, until surely he would burst with it.

  Mirain let it go. The light upon him mounted to a blaze. Eyes woke to life, to fear, to battle-madness. With a shrill cry a charioteer lashed his team against the attackers.

  Darkness roared down. Rami wheeled uncommanded, running as she had never run before, flat to the ground, ears pinned to her head.

  She burst from the shadow like a demon out of hell, eyes and nostrils fire-red. The stream flashed silver about her feet.

  Beyond it she slowed, became a seneldi mare again, breathing hard, with foam white on her neck.

  Vadin blinked in the bright sunlight. His fingers were clamped about the hilt of his sword; painfully he loosed them, wiping his blade on his cloak.

  Blood faded into royal scarlet. With a convulsive movement he thrust the sword into its sheath.

  Mirain’s sortie had done what it intended. The enemy was in turmoil, too intent on the spell’s breaking to muster an assault. But the cost had been frighteningly high. Mirain’s men milled here and there on the hither side of the water, with riderless seneldi running among them. They moved with order in their confusion, a swift and steady retreat with an eye constantly on the enemy, and there were far fewer in the retreat than had ridden to the attack.

  Mirain’s own company gathered to him. Vadin counted and groaned aloud. Of eighteen, twelve were gone. The six who remained rode like wounded men, several on wounded beasts.

  Alidan reached king and squire first: Alidan without her helmet, her hair escaped from its braids, her sword hand bloody to the wrist. But there was no wound on her. Mounted as they both were, Mirain pulled her into a tight embrace.

  For each of the others he had the same. They all had the look of men who had passed through one of the thrice nine hells: grey and stunned, staring without comprehension at the plain daylight.

  “We tried to follow you, my lords,” Alidan said for them all. “The shadows turned into men and fought us; we fought back. But you were too fast for us. My lords, you shone like gods. You went deeper and deeper, and at last we could not force our mounts forward. We tried to hold the line behind you. It broke. Our seneldi carried us out. My lord king, any punishment you name—”

  “Punishment?” Mirain laughed painfully. “I did exactly the same as you, and abandoned you to boot. No, my friends. You did what few other mortal men could have done.” His eyes caught Alidan’s; he laughed again with less pain and more mirth. “Mortal men, and one woman.”

  oOo

  They rode back slowly. They were barely half of the way from the stream to the battle-lines—those lines bending outward against all discipline to receive their king—when a horn rang. The Mad One whipped about, Mirain’s sword flashing from its scabbard.

  The enemy’s lines opened. Out of them came a single rider, a man on a smoke-grey senel, all in grey himself with a torque of grey iron about his neck. That and the grey banner without device proclaimed him a herald, sacred before men and gods, owing allegiance to one chosen lord. His eyes rested neutrally on the army, but when they touched Mirain they narrowed and darkened.

  “Men of Ianon,” he said. He had a superb voice, rich and deep, trained to carry without effort over a great distance. “Followers of the usurper, the one who calls himself Mirain, bastard child of a priestess and false claimant of the throne of the mountain kings. I bring you word from your true lord. Lay down your arms, he bids you. Yield up the boy and you shall go free.”

  “Never!” shouted Alidan, fierce and shrill. Deeper voices echoed her.

  The herald waited patiently for silence. When he had it he spoke again. “You are loyal, if not wise. But your rightful king remembers what you choose to forget: that you are his people. He would not willingly send his army against you for a battle that would end only, and inevitably, in your destruction.”

  “What about the villages?” bawled a man with a voice of brass. “What about the children cut down and burned in their houses?”

  The herald continued coolly, undismayed. “The king proposes a different course, one both ancient and honorable. Two men claim a throne which only one may hold. Let them contend for it, body to body and life to life: a single combat, with all spoils to the victor. Thus will none die but one man, and the division of Ianon be healed, and the throne secured. What say you, men of Ianon? Will you accept my lord’s proposal?”

  Mirain rode forward a senel-length. The movement silenced his army. He faced the herald, taking off his helmet and setting it on his pommel. “Will Moranden swear to that? That the victor take all, with no treachery and no further slaughter?”

  The herald’s nostrils flared. “Have I not said so?” Upstart, his eyes said. He was a man who believed in his commander.

  Even from behind, Vadin heard the smile in Mirain’s voice. “Will you condescend to take him my answer?”

  “He gives you until sunset to make your choice.”

  “He is generous.” The Mad One advanced another length. Mirain’s words came bright and strong. “Tell him yes. Yes, I will do it.”

  The herald bowed: barest courtesy, no more. “It is the privilege of the challenger to choose time and place, of the challenged to choose the weapons and the mode of battle, whether single or seconded. My lord bids you to meet him here between the armies, tomorrow, at sunrise.”

  Mirain’s bow was deeper, rebuking bare courtesy with true courtliness. “So shall I do. We shall fight singly, overseen by one judge and one witness of each side. As for weapons . . .” He paused. His army waited, drawn thin with tension. “Tell your commander that I choose no weapons. Bare hands and bare body: the most ancient way of all.” He bowed again. “Tomorrow at sunrise. May the gods favor the truth.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  “Unarmed!”

  Even Adjan had taken up the cry, shocked out of all dignity. Mirain turned a deaf ear to him as to the rest, laboring first among the healers and then, and only then, returning to his tent.

  The protests had followed him; they continued as his squires disarmed him. Blood had soaked even to his undertunic, and dried there; there was a long breathless pause until his pursuers saw that none of it was his own. With sudden fierce revulsion he tore at the garment, stripping it off, flinging it as far from him as he might.

  Which was, by design or chance, into Adjan’s hands. “My lord,” the arms master said with some remnant of his usual control, “single combat is an old and honored way of resolving conflicts. But unarmed combat—no weapon, no armor, no defense at all—”

  Mirain looked at him. Simply looked, as a stranger might, a stranger who was a king. “If it would soothe your outraged modesty, I could wear a loinguard.”

  “The dark,” someone muttered. “He rode into it and fought it. It’s driven him mad.”

  Vadin stared the man down until
he fled. That began an exodus. Vadin remained; and Adjan, and Obri the chronicler who was like a shadow on the wall, and Ymin with Alidan.

  Olvan and Ayan, moving with great care, began to prepare the king’s bath. They filled the broad copper basin; Mirain let them wheedle him into the water, a letting that had no passivity in it. His eyes were still on Adjan. “Well, Captain, would a loinguard content you?”

  “Full armor would be no more than adequate. And sword and spear and shield with it.”

  “And the body of one of your northern giants.” Mirain glanced down at himself. He had grown since he came to Han-Ianon; he would not, after all, be so very small. Middle height in the south, perhaps, but in Ianon, small still; smoothly and compactly made, with the lithe strength of a rider or a swordsman.

  And ensorceled surely, to have bound himself to a contest without weapons against the most formidable fighting man in Ianon.

  “No,” Mirain said with tight-reined impatience. “No. Unbind your brains, my friends, and think. I’m skilled in arms, I know it well enough; with the sword I may even become a master. My charger has no peer in this kingdom. But.” He stepped out of the bath, neither flaunting his body nor belittling it. “Moranden is a man grown, in his full prime, trained from earliest youth in the arts of war. He can wield a larger sword, a longer spear; if he can’t out-ride me, he can hold his own against my Mad One. While I flail uselessly at him, he can smite me at his leisure, like a man beset by a little child.”

  “He can do the same without weapons,” snapped Adjan. “His arms are half again as long as yours; he stands head and shoulders above you. And he’s strong. The Python, his enemies used to call him: he strikes like a snake, fast and deadly, with all the force of his size.”

  “In the west,” said Mirain, “there is a creature. She is small, no larger than my two hands can hold, with a long supple tail, and great soft eyes like a lovely woman’s. She sheathes her claws in velvet. They call her Dancer in the Grasses, and Night Singer, and most often Issan-ulin, Slayer of Serpents. There is no creature swifter or fiercer or more cunning than she. Even the great serpent-lord, the crested king, whose poison is most deadly of all—even he falls prey to this small hunter.”