Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  He couldn’t breathe. His throat was agony, his chest fek as if it were going to burst, his blood pounded in his ears. He writhed and twisted, clawed for the man with his free hand, kicked and thrashed, while the man held him down and throttled him.

  Dalian’s mouth opened, but nothing eame out; his eyes felt as if they were going to pop out of his head, his ears and face burned, and he couldn’t hear anything but a roaring. His vision went red, then began to tunnel, until all he could see was the man’s impassive, bearded face, and that was starting to black out.

  Then, with no warning, the man let him go and flung himself backward.

  Darian rolled out of the way, coughing and gasping, and looked up to see Huur attached to the man’s scalp, flapping her wings furiously and digging bloody furrows along his forehead with her talons.

  She must have come in the hayloft door - she saved me!

  The man was screaming at the top of his lungs and flailing at the bird with his fists; she in her turn battered him with powerful strokes of her wings, disorienting him. Belatedly, Darian realized he had to get out of there. She hadn’t managed a killing hold, she couldn’t hang onto him forever, and once she let go, he was free to go after Darian again. Darian scrambled for the ladder and slid down it, with his feet braced on the outside of the uprights and his hands slowing him. He had lost his knife somewhere - he didn’t know where, but right now all he wanted was to get away.

  But the door was closed, and the bar was down across it. The mage-light dropped down into the stable, and the man stopped screaming; Huur must have let him go.

  Please, please, don’t let her be hurt!

  The horses were all frantically stomping and neighing, upset by the commotion and wanting to take their agitation out on something or someone. The mage would be down there any moment -

  Where can I hide that he can’t find me?

  There wasn’t much room in the tiny stable - and with the horses ready to kick anything that stood in their path -

  The horses! Yes!

  He darted along the center aisle, throwing open the doors to the stalls as he went. The horses hadn’t been tied, and once they felt space behind them, they kicked and backed out into the aisle, then proceeded to fight with each other, milling and squealing, and providing a barrier of large and angry bodies between Darian and the ladder. Just as he opened the last stall, he spotted the mage’s feet on the ladder, and he saw a pitchfork leaning against the back wall. He seized it, and darted into the last stall, dangerously close to the horse that was vacating it. Fortunately, the horse was more interested in getting a piece of one of his rivals than in stomping Darian into the straw.

  This stall had no half-door at the back, and neither did the one opposite it. There would be no escape that way.

  As he cowered in the back of the stall, pitchfork clutched in his trembling hands, he heard the mage’s voice roaring over the squealing and bugling of the fighting horses, and the thud of hooves on wood. He heard the louder sound of the stable doors slamming open, and then the noise of a riding whip on flesh and the thunder of hooves receding. The mage had opened the stable doors and was driving out the horses. Soon he would come looking for Darian.

  I’ll only get one chance at this - Darian broke out into a cold sweat, shaking all over, but his mind seemed strangely sharp and clear, and as he watched the lighted space of the open stall door, he saw the last of the bulky shadows vanish, leaving only the long shadow of a man.

  The mage-light’s behind him.

  He watched the shadow, and listened to the footsteps, waiting for the moment when the mage would be’just around the corner of his stall.

  The man was thorough; he checked every stall, while Darian’s heart pounded and his gut churned. He’s looking at the opposite ones first. When he first gets up here, I’ll have just that long while he checks the other one -

  He saw the shadow’s legs, the body silhouetted on the wall; he braced himself, and with the next step, the mage himself appeared framed in the stall door.

  Darian charged, screaming.

  This time he caught the mage entirely by surprise, driving him into the wall and pinning him there. He looked terrible, with great gouges bleeding down into his face and his robe wet with his own blood - but he was obviously far from finished. One tine of the pitchfork held an arm pinned between it and the next tine, one pierced the man’s clothing at his side, although Darian couldn’t tell if it had caught flesh, and one was buried in the wood of the back of the stall.

  But the mage wasn’t dead - and he wasn’t done with Darian yet.

  There was an insane rage in the man’s eyes; he foamed at the mouth, and he clawed at Darian with his free hand. Failing to reach Darian, he grappled with the shaft of the pitchfork, and tried to wrench it away, while at the same time, he pushed away from the wall. There was blood seeping into the mage’s clothing, but this was obviously not a fatal wound.

  If he could get off the wall, he could free himself.

  Darian panted, bracing his feet in the dirt of the stall floor, and hung on with the strength of desperation. Why wouldn’t this man die?

  Bit by bit, the mage pushed Darian back, struggling in eerie silence. Bit by bit, Darian’s feet slipped, and he scrambled to reestablish his hold.

  If the mage got loose, he’d kill Darian - then he’d kill Snowfire and all the others. Then he’d go after Nightwind and Starfall and Kelvren. And all because Darian had failed.

  “No!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “Not - this - time! “

  With a last burst of energy, he drove the mage back, and felt a surge of elation.

  But the madness left the man’s eyes for a moment, and the mage screamed something guttural. The handle of the pitchfork burst into flame, splintered, then crumbled away, leaving Darian standing with a handful of kindling and ash. The mage plucked the metal tine out, and cast it to the ground contemptuously.

  Darian stared, frozen.

  The mage laughed, and reached out, his fingers curling into a claw.

  Darian ducked and rolled to the side. He came up running, or trying to, heading for the open stable door.

  Behind him, the mage screamed something else, and the door slammed shut in his face; he hit it, unable to stop in time, and dropped to the floor.

  The mage laughed again, and Darian rolled over, his back to the door, and his hand fell on the bar that had held it shut. He didn’t even think; he just grabbed it, and came up swinging.

  He caught the mage on the side of the head, once again catching him by surprise. The man reeled back, and Darian swung again.

  This time the mage caught the wooden bar and wrenched it out of Darian’s hands, throwing it aside.

  Darian dove underneath the man’s grasping hands, gambling that the wound in his side was too painful for him to move easily. He somersaulted and came up on his feet on the other side; the mage was between him and the door again. He looked frantically about for a weapon, any weapon.

  His eye fell on the forged tines of the pitchfork as the mage turned.

  This time he didn’t dare fail. It didn’t matter if he died; he couldn’t fail the others.

  He snatched up the tines, braced the rounded end against his chest, and charged again, but this time with every last bit of strength, and every bit of his weight, holding back nothing.

  He drove the larger man back against the closed door; felt the tines hit flesh that yielded, resisted, then gave with a wet pop. The man screamed horribly; he flailed at Darian and a terrible blow to the side of his head knocked him away, stunning him; he fell to the ground as everything went dark.

  He couldn’t move, couldn’t see anything.

  Am I blind? With a convulsive shudder, he managed to move, to get to his knees, but he still couldn’t see anything. Everything was dark.

  Then, with a creak, one of the stable doors swung open, and vague and flickering red light outside proved that he wasn‘t blind after all. It was the mage-light that was go
ne.

  But the mage was still moving. In a moment, he might get up again. He was hurt, but by no means dead yet.

  Darian’s right hand was wet, as was his sleeve, and as he moved it, his fingers touched his abandoned bucket. He grabbed it and lurched to his feet, staggering over to the mage who stared up at him in the changing light, spittle at the corner of his mouth.

  He gave the man no chance to act; he brought the bucket down on his head as hard as he could. If the man wouldn’t die, at least he wasn’t going to stay awake for long!

  He hit the mage a couple more times for good measure, then left the bucket upturned over his face and staggered, exhausted, out into the open. He didn’t care who or what saw him at this point. He stood in the middle of the dirt path, swaying on his feet, wondering where he should go next. The shouting had decreased; who was winning?

  Then he sensed something gathering at his back; something oddly familiar. Magic - but - where and when had he sensed something like this before?

  Magic - like - For some reason the sensation called up a memory of Justyn, but Justyn had never had enough magic for him to sense like this -

  Except the day he destroyed the bridge!

  Fear gave him energy he thought he didn’t have; he sprinted for shelter, any shelter, heading for the nearest building as fast as his feet would carry him. He reached it just as the stable behind him exploded into flame, the shock of the blast knocking him into the side of the cottage. He saw fireworks behind his eyes for a moment, and had all the wind knocked out of him. He struggled to breathe, lying on his side, trying to make his lungs work again.

  He didn’t stay that way for long; when his eyes cleared and he got a few good breaths, he picked himself gingerly out of the remains of a flower garden. He looked around, and things were pretty much the same as they had been. With a single exception, that is. What was left of the stable blazed fiercely, as if it had been soaked in oil.

  Darian went looking for Snowfire and the others, but didn’t have to go far to find them. No sooner did he round the corner of the house than he saw the entire cavalcade approaching - the Hawkbrothers, battered and injured, but all still alive, followed by the villagers.

  The villagers of Errold’s Grove were a far different group of people than they had been a half moon ago. They had clearly been kept on short rations by their captors, and just as clearly had been worked to exhaustion. They were filthy, unkempt - precisely the kind of folk that they themselves would have turned away from the village as vagabonds. Clothing, dirty, torn and tattered in the course of hard labor, had not been changed, cleaned or mended in all the time they’d been captives. Some of the men showed signs of beatings; all looked as wary and spooked as the horses running freely among the houses.

  But Darian had no eyes for them; with a joyful shout, he ran to Snowfire and the others, who answered his shout and surrounded him, babbling questions, while the villagers stared at him with wide eyes. The villagers recognized him, yes, but this was not the same Darian that they had scorned and disregarded before.

  “One at a time!” Snowfire ordered, and some of the babble subsided. “Dar’ian, we were surprised by a group coming to claim some of your people. We were attacked. We took shelter in the barn, and were promptly put under siege. What saved us was that the elite fighters that were left here had been drinking, and simply didn’t fight together at all well. We were holding our own, until we were attacked by a - a bear-creature. It must have been summoned and controlled by their mage. It broke through our defenses and killed three of your people and injured several of us. We are sorry - there was just nothing we could have done to save them, though we tried. Then, the creature suddenly went berserk, as if it was no longer under control, and turned on the barbarians! They had to fight us and it at the same time; they killed it, but seemed to lose heart and retreated - then there was a tremendous roar and flames shot into the sky, and their retreat turned into a rout! What happened here?”

  “It was the mage,” Darian said, too tired to feel even a flicker of pride in his deed. “I saw him making magic and I knew I had to do something. I think he’s dead; I think he did what Justyn did at the bridge.”

  He told the tale as quickly as he could, in as few words as possible. He was a little afraid that Snowfire and the rest might not believe him. After all, who was he to claim to have destroyed a powerful mage? - but they accepted his tale at face value. And the results were there for all to see, so perhaps it was not as difficult to believe as he had feared.

  “You were one thing he would not have been concerned about,” Snowfire said thoughtfully. “He would never have believed that a single young boy could be a threat to him, not even when he had the evidence of that threat slashed into his own body. He should have known better. We all know that the smallest creature can become dangerous when driven to desperation.”

  “I couldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been for Huur,” Darian said hastily. “She is all right, isn’t she?”

  “One broken feather, and a ruffled temper, which she has flown off to cool,” Snowfire assured him, and looked around at the wide-eyed group of villagers surrounding them. He switched to stilted Valdemaran.

  “I believe we hold Errold’s Grove, and need not fear the return of the barbarians tonight,” he said, raising his voice. “I believe it is safe enough to stay and sleep, and in the morning, begin to rebuild. If you will go to your houses, we allies of Valdemar will secure the place against intruders.”

  Still shocked and bewildered, ready to listen to anyone who offered a voice of authority, they trailed back to their houses by twos and threes. Snowfire divided the Hawkbrothers into three groups of five, leaving out the two worst wounded, to take night-watches. “Is there anyplace you can go to rest?” he asked Darian, with a hand resting lightly on his shoulder. “Would anyone give you bed space? You have done more than enough for one night!”

  Darian felt each and every separate bruise aching, thought longingly of Justyn’s little cottage, once despised, and nodded.

  “Go then,” Snowfire said, giving him a gentle shove. “I will see that you are awakened in the morning.”

  Already those not on the first watch were putting out the fire in the blazing stable; soon concealing darkness hid the signs of battle, leaving only the acrid scent of smoke in the air. Darian trudged toward Justyn’s cottage, wondering what he would find there.

  What he found in the light of a single lantern was signs of recent occupation; the furniture was gone, probably broken up for firewood. The contents of the shelves lay piled in a corner, discarded as worthless, including all the bad paintings of famous mages, and there were bedrolls spread across every available bit of floor. He wrinkled his nose at the smell of sweat, burned food, and unwashed bedding; he took the time to throw all the bedrolls out the door and open the windows. The fireplace hadn’t been swept in ages, and it seemed that when the barbarians finished eating, they tended to pitch what was left into the fire, for it was littered with bones and burned crusts - hence the odor of burned food. Darian climbed the ladder to his loft bed, and discovered it was the one corner of the house that hadn’t been touched, probably because his little bed was too short for any of the barbarians.

  With a weary sigh, he tumbled into bed, leaving the lantern to burn itself out.

  It was the sound of horses and men’s voices that woke him in the gray light of dawn, and before he was even properly awake, he tumbled down out of the loft and emerged from the cottage with a poker in one hand, ready to do battle all over again.

  But it wasn’t the barbarians who had returned; the noise was the arrival of a rescue expedition. Men on horses milled around the square, all of them wearing Lord Breon’s colors and badge; more men afoot were rounding up loose livestock and confining it in hastily-built corrals. Darian put down his poker and scratched his head, watching all the activity with a sense of bleary bemusement.

  After another moment, he quietly got himself a bucket of water and used it
to clean himself up, wincing as he scrubbed a body that was black and blue from neck to knee. Once clean and marginally presentable, he went back out and joined the milling people, picking up what had happened this morning by listening to fragments of conversation.

  Lord Breon had gotten Starfall’s message and had gathered his men to respond to it - but on the way, he had encountered the thoroughly demoralized barbarian foot soldiers, and had fought an unequal battle with them. Then, having defeated the barbarians, he had been stopped by the rockfall, and had been forced to find a place to ford the river to get to the road on the other side. By this time, of course, they were certain that they would find Errold’s Grove occupied by a hostile force, and had only hoped to catch the remaining barbarians by surprise. Ready for battle, they had clattered over the bridge a little before dawn only to encounter the sentries; after learning that the town was in friendly hands, they had made enough noise to wake up most of those who were sleeping.

  When Darian wandered in, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand, Lord Breon himself was in earnest consultation with Snowfire, with townsfolk standing awkwardly about, still looking dazed and bewildered, though most of them had cleaned themselves up and found more presentable clothing. They formed a sad contrast with their once-respectable selves, however, and looked rather as if they had grabbed whatever would fit with little regard for the sex or size their garments were originally intended for.

  Snowfire spotted him and hailed him with relief. “Here! Little brother! Your command of the tongue is better than mine, come and help me with this!”