Gideon dove back into his own form, found Mol kneeling at his side, and his heart hammering against his chest. He looked into the girl’s face, saw the fear written in her eyes.
“Gideon,” she said quietly. “I think Torvul has gone to his doom. This is not a challenge for the Wit.”
The boy shook his head as he stood up and adjusted his robe with one hand. “Do not underestimate him, Mol. Or me.”
He turned and started for the door. Mol stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Gideon, please,” she murmured. “Don’t.”
Slowly, Gideon shook his head. “I do not plan to kill them unless they force me to it,” he said quietly. “I do not wish to. Though,” he said, a little sadly, “when I am done with them, they may seek their deaths voluntarily.”
* * *
Waiting, Allystaire found, was much easier when he did not have a clear idea of what awaited him. Or rather, when the Mother’s Gift of Strength did not soar within his limbs, crying out to be released in defense of the innocents tied up along the riverbank. He found that if he closed his eyes and concentrated he could picture them. Not in detail, exactly, but in the moonlight he felt he could see the huddled forms, shivering in the cool spring night but trying to will themselves into stillness and silence. Hands and feet expertly bound with slim cordage, with rocks lashed to their already hobbled ankles. Hoping that the captors would not notice them, when the time came.
When Allystaire thought of the shivering forms, of the amount of rope, the expertise in the knots, he found the anger that began cold in his stomach fanning hot and bright into his arms, and the song rising louder in his mind.
That much rope, that well-tied, spoke of a plan. Of men who came here meaning to do this in order to lure him out.
Beneath him, Ardent, sensing his restlessness, pawed one hoof at the ground. He and the other horsemen were spread out, not in sight of each other, each taking shelter behind buildings as close to the clearing that led to the bridge as they could find. He gave Ardent a gentle squeeze with his knees to calm him; the destrier whickered softly and bent his neck, the long muscles flexing.
He wanted to run, to get on with it, as much as Allystaire did. How does he know? Does he simply read my mood? And it comes to it, how does he handle my seat with the Goddess’s power upon me?
Allystaire had no time to ponder the question, for then Idgen Marte’s voice came to him. We are in place. There are better than a dozen of them. Maybe a score. They are wearing long cloaks and rags to cover it, but near as I can tell, every one of them is wearing mail, carrying axes and swords. Speaking Island Tongue and drinking. I see no bows.
What of Mattar and Gaston?
They’re here, but you’ll need to distract the Islandmen.
Before Idgen Marte could complete the thought, Allystaire nudged his heels into Ardent’s flanks, and the huge grey came around the shuttered two-story building he was hidden behind and broke into a trot. Before long, the bridge swam into focus ahead of him, and the figures patrolling the square in front of it in long cloaks came into view. Allystaire nudged the destrier again, and Ardent picked up a bit more speed. Once they were at the edge of the clearing, with the nearest captor perhaps a dozen paces away, Allystaire drew the horse to a halt and swung his lance free from its boot. The square was perhaps a bit wider than the green back in Thornhurst at its narrowest point, which was where the buildings edging it left off. It widened as it approached the bridge, enough for carriages or troops of horsemen to cross. The Ash was fairly thin here, but not fordable in any case, for the banks sloped steeply downward and the river was deep along most of its length. Delondeur watchtowers—unmanned, for this region of the Barony had been left on its own for too long now—rose just within sight beyond the bridge itself, guarding the approach from Oyrwyn to the north.
Allystaire made it nearly a score of men wandering more or less aimlessly around the square, which was hard-packed dirt with grass at its edges, hard by long buildings that he imagined were warehouses or stables. The seeming emptiness of the town was astonishing; they’d seen but few faces at windows when riding in, hadn’t been challenged on the street by greenhat or Braechsworn. Nor had they been welcomed.
But, Allystaire had reasoned, common folk always knew when hiding served them best.
“BRAECHSWORN COWARDS,” the paladin suddenly bellowed, his voice echoing over the quiet of the night, waking a few slumbering waterfowl and sending them squawking into the night. “YOU SENT A MESSAGE ASKING IF I HAD THE COURAGE TO FACE YOU. NOW ASK YOURSELVES IF YOU HAVE THE COURAGE TO FACE ME.”
At once, the score or so of men shed long cloaks and came up with weapons: longswords and axes, held confidently in gauntleted hands. Allystaire found one part of himself searching quickly for any bare-chested men, wearing clawed gauntlets. When he saw none, he couldn’t decide if he was relieved or disappointed.
“Paladin!” An island-accented voice, flat and harsh, called out and a man taller than most of the others shuffled a few paces forward. He was blond, had a sword in his hand, moonlight reflecting off of the naked blade and the mail hauberk belted at his waist, its edges flowing to the middle of his thighs. “Off the horse. Or town folk go to the water.” His words were halting, but his intent clear.
Allystaire believed he could read a smile on the blond-bearded face as the man said, “Plop. To the bottom.”
He badly wanted to turn the lance in his hand and throw it through the figure as he advanced, to pin him to the packed dirt of the square.
Time! Idgen Marte’s voice sounded in his head again. Play for it! Try to draw them to you.
“And what becomes of the horse, then? Will you try to ride it?” Allystaire knew the words sounded ridiculous as he said them, but with the Mother’s Song becoming a throb of anger, they were all that came to him.
“Eat it,” the blond man said, and the smile on his face was clear. “You are soft here, ride beasts better roasted.”
Despite the stakes of it all, Allystaire laughed, and casually, he slid his lance back into place and lifted one foot clear of a stirrup as if he were going to slide out of the saddle. “You are welcome to try,” he called out, “but I think my horse is more likely to eat you. Tell me your name so that I can tell folk the name of the idiot my horse ate.”
“Arvid,” the man called out, thumping a fist against his chest.
“Arvid,” Allystaire repeated, testing the name. More men closed in, most staying a few paces away. Casually, he dropped his hand to his hammer and turned to eye one man, braver than the rest apparently, sidling up to the horse. Ardent turned to watch him; the Islandman took a half-step back, then another forward.
“Well, Arvid,” the paladin said as he watched a shadowy figure appear behind one of the Islandmen guarding a knot of captives along the riverbank and casually drive a curved blade through his chest, then disappear just as fast, “I think we have wasted enough time.”
Even as the words left his lips, the Islandman edging close to Ardent made a lunge for the horse’s bridle. Allystaire did nothing but let the destrier defend himself.
Ardent’s neck darted to the side, and there was a sickening crunch. The Islandman screamed, drawing back a hand that was now short the better part of three fingers. Allystaire kicked the destrier into motion, and slid his foot back into the stirrup. The force of the stallion exploding into a run knocked the men gathering around him clear.
He spared another glance for the riverbank, and saw two more figures emerge from it and immediately make for the captives, lifting axes to hack at the ropes that kept the stones fast.
As he wheeled the mount around and pulled his lance free, he saw Tibult and Armel come riding into the square, lances leveled. Each of them had a target squared up as if it were a day in the practice yard, sinking lance-points through chainmail, flesh, and bone as easy as pushing the point of a knife through cheese. The cries of dying B
raechsworn were loud in the night.
He swung his own lance out and leveled it with no more effort than it would’ve taken to lift a stray hair from the sleeve of a coat. He looked for Arvid but couldn’t find the lanky blond figure in the chaos that erupted now that Harrys had exploded into the square on horseback, reins clutched in his teeth, bent low over the neck of his courser, falchion and broadaxe held out at neck height for a man on foot.
He settled on a target anyway, a man holding a longaxe with naked incompetence, as if he were about to chop wood with it.
A part of Allystaire’s mind noted the man’s hesitation, his uncertainty about the weapon, but it wasn’t enough to stay the paladin’s hand, not when weighed against the folk tied up along the riverbank, ready to be casually and brutally murdered.
The lancepoint took the man’s throat, and with the force of the Arm of the Mother behind it, ripped the Islandman’s head raggedly free and sent it tumbling into the night. The body tumbled bonelessly to the ground, blood gurgling from the gaping neck.
He tossed his lance aside and turned Ardent again, getting a good survey of the battlefield, such as it was.
It was more of an organized slaughter than it was a battle. The Islandmen had been armed and armored, yes, but it became clearer and clearer they hadn’t any sense of how to fight together, how to engage the men on horseback, or even the basics of how to guard themselves with a sword. They had courage, yes, and they ran forward bravely and gamely, swinging their weapons with abandon and strength and chanted prayers to Braech.
And the Order of the Arm, against nearly twenty, were dispatching them almost casually.
Johonn and Miklas were providing a screen with long-axe and spear, respectively, for Norbert and Teague to loose arrows into the charging Braechsworn, but none even reached their line of two. If they weren’t speared by a lance or run down by the fleet-riding Harrys, the whistling counter-pointed song of long-and-shortbow cut them down till only a bare handful remained.
“Drop your weapons,” Allystaire called out. He spared a glance over his shoulder. Idgen Marte, Mattar, and Gaston had done their work well and quickly, freeing the captives and herding them away from the sight of a couple of bodies cooling in front of them.
He slid from Ardent’s saddle and stalked towards them. Three of them, including Arvid, given his height and the color of his hair in the moonlight, had gathered back to back, swords held out in front of them.
“We can cut you down like dogs,” Allystaire said, as he approached, hand falling to the head of his hammer, “or you can put up your swords and speak with us like men.”
When he spoke, one of them, not the tall, blond spokesman but a short, stouter man with a rough, thick-browed face raised his sword in both hands and charged forward towards Allystaire, screaming.
Allystaire sprinted forward to meet him. Before the Islandman could even bring his sword down, the paladin had moved within the arc of his too-long swing. He wanted, badly, to simply drive his fist through the man’s face, or even through his chest.
Instead, he threw his hands up and caught the man’s descending arms, squeezed till he heard the bones snap, and shoved the screaming man to the ground. He bent, picked up the sword the attacked had dropped, hilt in his left hand, blade in his right.
He walked slowly up to the two remaining men and began to exert pressure on the weapon, bending the steel, twisting it in his hand, until finally he had rolled the last foot of the blade up into a coiled ball. He tossed the ruined blade at their feet.
“You can drop your weapons,” he said coldly, “or I can crush your hands till you can no longer hold them. Choose.”
They tossed the weapons down and raised their hands. Johonn and Miklas handed off their weapons to the archers behind them and rushed forward to secure the captives, putting rough hands on the back of their necks and kicking their legs out from under them, so that both Islandmen fell roughly to their knees.
Allystaire felt the strength leaving his limbs, a familiar ache start to seep in. He strode forward to Arvid, seizing his thin face with his left hand. “You will find that you cannot lie to me, so it would be best if you do not try. Tell me what happened here. All of it.”
Arvid tried to wrench his head away from Allystaire’s hand, but with Johonn leaning on his shoulders and the paladin’s own grip, even without the Mother’s Gift, he couldn’t. The Islandman clenched his teeth and Allystaire sighed, pressing his senses, his will, against the other man’s determination.
“Honored Choiron Symod,” Arvid grated out from between still-clenched teeth. “Ordered us to come south, set a trap. Threaten heretics, make one drink the sea-water he gave us, send him to you.”
“Symod.” Allystaire practically spat the name. Idgen Marte strolled up behind the two men; he could sense her as much as see her. “What sense is there in this trap? You were as much danger to us as a cloud of flies. Surely you can see that.”
The Islandman began to laugh, a harsh and ugly sound. “Trap not for paladin. For town, boy, to the south. Dragon Scales left us soon after we took this town.”
Allystaire felt a sudden surge of anger, an impulse to snap Arvid’s neck. Instead, he squatted to bring his eyes level with the other man’s. “What do you mean, trap for a boy to the south?”
Arvid continued laughing, pausing only to launch a gob of spit onto Allystaire’s cheek. “Don’t know. Honored Choiron’s instructions. Boy has to die, so Dragon Scales go to kill him.”
Allystaire thrust the man away and straightened his back. He didn’t wipe the spittle from his cheek; he barely felt it. His whole body was cold with dread, as he was already measuring the distance back to Thornhurst.
Allystaire, Idgen Marte’s voice, in his head. Torvul is there too. And Mol. And Gideon is the strongest of all of us. Now is not the time to panic.
“Harrys,” Allystaire said. “See the captives back to their homes and let the town know they are free, find out what other damage was done before we came. Truss this one up and bring him back to Thornhurst with you,” Allystaire said, pointing at Arvid. He pointed to the other one who’d surrendered. “You. You go north and find your Honored Choiron and tell him that any harm done here, I will revisit upon him tenfold. Remind him that when I turned his god down, I warned him what it meant to make me his enemy. Take that one with you,” he said, pointing to the man whose arms he’d broken.
“How d’ya know he’ll go, rather than make mischief in the country?” That was Harrys, who’d dismounted, and handled his axe as if he was thinking on its suitability for the headsman’s block.
“The Shadow will see to it,” Allystaire said, lifting his eyes to find Idgen Marte. She nodded, and though he could not see her face, he thought he sensed worry from her.
“What o’the bodies?” That was Tibult, still in his saddle—the man made any excuse to stay on horseback he could find, now that he could ride again—looming over Allystaire’s right shoulder.
“Toss them into the river. Let them find their way back to their god. Let them warn Him that I am coming,” Allystaire said as he turned, seeking Ardent, the destrier waiting patiently a few paces away.
As he walked towards the horse, he heard Idgen Marte’s thoughts once more. Allystaire, don’t. He’s like no horse I’ve ever seen, but he’s still just a horse. Ride him hard all the way back to Thornhurst and you’ll kill him.
The paladin wouldn’t have sworn to it, but he thought that perhaps, just perhaps, his mount heard the Shadow’s words, for the huge grey destrier reared up, hooves pawing at the air in front of him for a moment, a deep whinny rolling from his barrel chest. The moonlight turned the grey of Ardent’s coat, for a moment, into a silver to match the paladin’s armor, and Allystaire smiled.
No, he thought. He is not. Then he pulled himself up into the saddle, let the destrier have his head, and they rumbled south, man and horse of one mind,
one purpose, one Calling.
* * *
Torvul was halfway to his wagon when he heard the howl.
It was an ear-splitting sound, rending the night. It was a sound without humanity in it, and yet it wasn’t the call of any beast he knew. To his ears, it was the sound of a too-large hammer shattering the delicate instrument it was meant to shape. It tore at his ears and set his hands shaking. He looked at them, holding out the long fingers, the stained and scarred palms, and watched hands that had never once betrayed him trembling in the moonlight.
“I am the Wit of the Mother,” he rumbled aloud. “I am the last student of Ochsringuthringolprine, who was himself the last Stonesinger. I will not fear some rotten, stinking god of fish and salt. What is the sea when measured against stone?”
The litany should have calmed him. The very act of speaking should have slowed the hammering of his heart and stilled his traitorous hands, and yet a small voice rose up and said, What is the stone when measured against the relentless pounding of the waves?
Torvul shut his eyes and willed himself to continue walking onward towards his wagon, when he heard another voice, and this one was not small, nor did it come from within.
Be calm, Son of the Earth. Remember who you are and what has been granted you. Fear may cause your flesh to tremble, but does fear move stone? Does fear contend with rock?
Torvul dropped his hands to his sides, set his shoulders, and walked on. One of his trembling hands he curled into a fist, while the other he shoved in a pouch on his belt, pulling free a small bottle. He thumbed it open and quickly splashed some against his eyes, hummed a low note deep in his throat. The world around him blazed into brightness as if it were the sun overheard and not half of a moon, and shapes in the darkness resolved themselves into houses, trees, rocks—and people.
Villagers who lived inside the walls were coming out of their homes, eyes wide with fear. A few, remembering their months of militia training, were carrying weapons—spears and bows, mostly. Torvul smiled ruefully. Renard, he thought, from the grave you continue to serve your home well. Too well, he thought, as he realized the danger.
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