“No. Since we arrived things are changing. Power flows freely into me, but it is harder to…” Power. Power.
Evolyn shivered. She’d never heard that echo of the Eldest’s voice repeat itself.
“Harder to fix these insects in my mind. Harder to tell one from another.” Another. “I need to draw your image of him from your mind.”
“No.” Fear turned to resolve inside Evolyn Lamaliere, as it once had when the paladin loomed over her in her study. “No,” she repeated, drawing strength from the assertion. “I will go and face my enemy alongside Symod and the Braechsworn. It is where I belong. I will not skulk and hide in the sight of those who murdered my own any longer.” She took a deep breath and tensed herself to give a signal.
“Yes. Call forward your berzerkers. I said I could not tell you apart. One gnat, one stinging fly, is much like any other. But not that I could not tell when more than one of you approached me. Call them, so that I may make use of them. They will serve a grand destiny, Evolyn.” Gnats. Destiny, Evolyn.
From the dark recesses of the building beyond the reach of the green aura, two men suddenly rushed forward, throwing axes flying from their hands.
The Eldest did not move, nor even turn aside from his contemplation of the statue. The axes dropped in midair as if hitting an invisible wall.
Then, and only then, did he lift a hand from the folds of his robes. The fingers were skeletal, glowing like a green fungus in a dark cave. He spread them and the two Dragon Scales she’d brought with her were lifted off their feet like ragdolls.
“Do you know why the rulers of this—” The Eldest paused, as if searching for a word. “This place left this statue intact?”
“Some small scrap of dignity or fear that caused them to recoil from their blasphemy,” she said. Though her insides had turned to icy water once more, Evolyn Lamaliere was not going to let her voice quiver, not even if she was now at the turn of her death.
Silently, she began to pray. Father of Waves. Master of Accords. Dragon of the Sea. Into your hands—
“Stop that. It interferes with my work here.” Work. “They left it because no art they possess could destroy it. The Negation might, of course. Or perhaps the Stonesinger, if indeed he has that art to his hand still.” The Negation. The Negation. Negation.
Something in that echoed voice repeating itself gave Evolyn pause this time. Not because it frightened her. She was a careful study of men and their habits. And she knew when she heard fear in a voice.
She was hearing it now, in the way it quivered and then the way, on the last repetition of the word, it babbled.
What can this thing possibly fear? she asked herself, before the Eldest spoke again.
“The idiot boy does not know what he has done. He has handed me the seeds of his own destruction, gathering so much power into this place of crude being. Nevertheless the work here must be done.” He lifted his eyes from the statue and turned, slowly, describing thick green vapor trails in the air as he contemplated the two bare-chested berzerkers that hung helplessly near him.
“You have the honor of a grand destiny.” Destiny. Destiny. He raised his other hand.
The two berzekers began to scream together, an inhuman sound, an animal cry of fear and pain. Evolyn watched in mounting horror as the flesh melted from them. Horribly, she saw the skull of one revealed in the noxious green light, and yet the mouth was open and the sounds of agony still came raggedly from his throat.
She turned, and she ran, resolving to leave that night, with the berzerkers, to put as much distance between the Eldest and herself as she could.
Symod, she thought, as the screams behind her lapsed into a wet burbling, Symod, what have you done?
CHAPTER 48
Any Burden
Allystaire sat his saddle with one hand on Ardent’s neck and the other on a basket of light throwing spears tied to the pommel of his saddle.
A thousand of these things for my lance, he thought, then amended, For a good dozen lances. He pulled one out of the basket, hefted it, felt the light springiness of the two-foot haft, the hollow steel head. Meant to shatter, he thought, as he held it up to his eyes in the faint pre-dawn light, inspecting the mark of some unknown smithy in Barony Damarind.
Around him the Order of the Arm sat their own mounts, many of which nosed for grass in the muddy Varshyne ground. Torvul slumped on his pony, snoring gently. Gideon, surrounded by his guard of wild men who’d once been Chimera, was likewise slumped in his saddle, but for entirely different reasons.
Pinesward Watch wasn’t much more than a shape in the darkness, a jumbled heap to the west. The camp of the Braechsworn was entirely lost in the overhanging shadow of the keep. The chill early morning air was silent, tense, charged with the risk they were taking in coming so close to the enemy.
Then a huge angry cry rent the air, and a flame-wreathed giant suddenly sprang into being between them and the castle. It was man-shaped, and easily twice or three times the size of any Gravekmir.
Even to Allystaire, who knew that the boy sitting near him, his brow hunched in concentration, was projecting that image, felt like its bellow was a challenge to everything around it with ears. Come, it seemed to say wordlessly, test my strength. Test your own.
And then dark shapes, smaller than Gideon’s giant but taller than any mounted man, began, singly and in clumps, to disengage themselves from the larger shadows and run towards it, answering it with their own long rumbling yells.
“I’ll be dipped in shit,” Torvul muttered, having lifted his head when the giant unleashed its cry, “it’s working. Stones Above, I never thought it would.”
“Let us make use of it, then,” Allystaire said. “How long till the sun breaks behind us?”
Torvul sniffed at the air, turned to look to the east. “No more’n a quarter turn,” the dwarf said.
“Then let us not waste the time,” the paladin said, kicking his heels into the sides of Ardent, then laying low over the destrier’s great neck as it shot forward like a bolt loosed from a great engine.
* * *
Symod was shaken into wakefulness. For a moment he thought he was on the deck of a ship that had suddenly pitched on its side, and he scrambled out of his cot. For a terrible moment he flailed in the darkness, finding himself on hands and knees on the cold and muddy ground. Something so loud it had seemed to make the earth shake had awoken him, and he knew it could mean only one thing.
Then he stood, his head brushing the top of his tent, and smiled broadly. He stroked the gold-and-sapphire amulet that lay against his bare chest and closed his eyes in concentration, reaching out to every priest of Braech in the camp.
The paladin shows himself. It is time.
All around the Braechsworn camp, priests suddenly roused themselves, donning robes, hefting maces, hammers, and axes and heading for the center of their camp.
For his part, Symod quickly found his robes and slipped them on. Then he went to a trunk at the foot of his cot and opened it. Inside it sat a large glass bowl and a heavy jug. He lifted the jug out and uncorked it, smiling even wider as the scent of brine filled his senses, expanded into his tent.
“I have you, Allystaire,” he muttered aloud, and strode from his tent into the darkness before dawn, jug of seawater dangling from one hand, bowl tucked beneath his other arm.
* * *
With the sun coming up behind them, the Arm of the Mother, his Order, the Wit, and the Will reined up on a hill that overlooked the Braechsworn camp. Just barely within range of bowshot, he thought, if the archer was good and the bow was powerful.
Pinesward Watch, it was plain to see, would soon fall. From what Allystaire could glimpse, the defenders had abandoned the outer curtain wall and pulled back to the inner keep. He held out one hand and Torvul tossed his leather-wrapped glass tube into it. Allystaire held it to one eye and saw weary d
efenders with spears and crossbows trudging along the inner battlements. The front gate and barbican still held, but were no longer defended. He guessed that a pile of earth and wood and whatever was handy had been heaped up behind the gate to reinforce it even as the men who’d paid to guard it had withdrawn.
He trained the glass over the walls of the keep and found his eye drawn to one particular soldier walking the wall who seemed shorter than the others. Allystaire peered forward intently. If the soldier was indeed shorter it was because, he could see, the soldier was a boy. No older than Gideon, certainly. Perhaps twelve or thirteen summers old, clutching a spear that towered over him, wearing a chain shirt that probably covered his knees and a tabard he could, and did, trip on.
“No one that young needs to be taking up arms outside of a courtyard,” Allystaire growled. “Torvul,” he snapped, unable to keep the anger inside him from bleeding into his voice. “I need the Braechsworn to hear me.”
“Then give me my glass back before you snap the Freezing thing. I haven’t got yet another, and I’ve not the time nor tools to make one or repair this one if you break it as well.” The dwarf snatched the glass away, and not a moment too soon, for Allystaire heard the faint notes of the song begin in his head. Like the ringing of silver trumpets or a harp striking clear notes before the recitation of great deeds in song, the notes tingled not only in his ears but along his body, filling his limbs with warmth.
And with a terrible strength.
He slid from the saddle, surveying the camp beneath him. Only one cluster of tents amidst hundreds of men sleeping haphazardly around cookfires.
Torvul leaned in his saddle, holding out a delicate crystal bottle. He poured a measure of it onto Allystaire’s open mouth.
Then the paladin opened his mouth and yelled, his words carrying across the distance, cutting through the wind, powerful enough to shake the bones of any man who stood in front of him and too near.
“SYYYYMMMMMODDDDDDDDDD.” He waited for the echo to roll over him before he continued. “SYMOD, YOU COWARD. COME AND FACE ME. I AM ALLYSTAIRE STILLBRIGHT, THE ARM OF THE MOTHER, AND I DO NOT FEAR YOU. CAN YOU SAY THE SAME?”
Then the paladin slipped one of the javelins from the basket, bent his arm, took a running start, and threw on his fifth step.
The weapon arced high into the air, glinting in the sun as it reached the height of its arc, then descended deadly and gracefully into the Braechsworn camp.
* * *
Brazcek Varsyhne leapt to his feet when the glass of the window behind him rattled in its casement, and a decanter fell from a nearby table. The Baron had been dozing in a chair, in his armor. He smelled of rust and sweat and fear and when the sound jerked him awake, his first thought was that the Braechsworn had somehow found the timber and the time to make engines, and now meant to pound his walls to dust.
With Herrin close on his heels he ran out onto the battlements, finding himself among men who stared gape-mouthed to at hill that overlooked the camp spread out before them, the camp full of the tormentors that had cut their numbers in half since their last struggle for the walls.
Atop that hill, something gleamed brilliantly in the rising sunlight, shone like a diamond against the brown and green of early spring. Behind the figure, too small for Brazcek to make out in detail, a blue banner unfurled in the breeze, a golden sunburst bold in its center.
Another wave of sound rolled over the men on the walls, emanating from the figure on that distant hillside.
“ARE THERE NONE AMONG YOU, BRAECHSWORN COWARDS, WHO WILL COME AND FACE THE ARM OF THE MOTHER?”
Something arced into the air from that figure on the hillside, and Brazcek Varsyhne wanted, in the sunlight of a spring morning, to fall to his knees and weep. Around him, some of his men did the very thing, while others cheered, and others roared wordlessly, their anger renewed, to the camp of enemies below them.
The paladin had come.
For the first time, Brazcek Varshyne had felt something besides despair, something besides the grim resignation of ending his life in a manner the bards would approve of.
He felt hope. If a paladin had come to them, with an army at his back, then his Barony was not at its end. Then the terrified folk huddling in a mass in the keep under his feet were not at an end.
Brazcek Varshyne felt tears in his eyes that were not, for the first time in days, shed in grief and despair.
The paladin had come.
* * *
The dozen most senior priests, Marynths and Winsars, had only just gathered around Symod’s table, and the glass bowl of seawater, when the words shouted from the hillside rolled over them in shock. Dragon Scales, including their menacing leader Jorn, gathered close behind the Choiron, snarled and howled.
For his part, the Choiron laughed.
If the gathered servants of the Sea Dragon around him noticed that the laughter had an edge of fear beneath it, none of them said as much.
Neither did any join him in mirth.
Symod gestured them back to the bowl, shouting, “To your task, servants of Braech. Fear not. All is proceeding as the Sea Dragon would have it.”
And then something fell from the air, whistling as it came. It struck a priest in the back rank, exploding against the scales of his armor. The priest fell to his knees, screaming, his arm dangling useless and mangled from the shoulder that had been struck. All around him, other priests or Islandman guards suddenly bled from torn cheeks; one placed a hand over an eyesocket that leaked blood and gore.
Even Symod paled at that, but still he called the priests around him. They raised their hands over the bowl and the Choiron leaned low over it, murmuring words no one else could hear. Images began to swim in it.
Then another missile fell from the sky, striking one of the priests who stood near the bowl, taking his raised hand off at the wrist.
A fragment of the javelin scraped across Symod’s cheek, and droplets of blood began to scatter in the bowl.
Symod bellowed and oath and snatched up the bowl, tossing the water out and bending beneath the table for the jug.
“Dragon Scales,” he bellowed as he straightened up, “to me! Jorn! Shield us as we work!”
He set the bowl back down after wiping spots of blood from it with a sleeve, set it on the table, and sloppily poured seawater back into it.
The headman of the berzerkers had called out in Islandman tongue, and more of his bare-chested, scale-gauntleted kin suddenly gathered around. They climbed atop each other’s shoulders, raising a barrier of flesh against the threat of javelins falling from the sky.
One of them who stood on the shoulders of another looked down in disbelief as a javelin sank through his collarbone and settled deep into the meat of his chest. His face frozen beatifically, he fell forward, as another ran to take his place.
“We have the paladin now,” Symod muttered, as he leaned back over the bowl, heedless of the men who fell around him, of the fragments of steel that whizzed in the air.
* * *
Rede paced nervously around the camp he’d been relegated to. Around him, knights in their many colors, red-surcoated Innadan lancers, and newly arrived, scale-clad Harlachan axemen slapped backs and shook hands. Arontis Innadan and Unseldt Harlach embraced one another, each one calling the other “Brother of Battle” and laughing.
He heard none of it.
Images blurred in his mind. Around a huge hill of sand, a mist rose. Not a mist. Steam. The anthill boiled and burned and screamed. A green tide rolled over an icy lake and could only be rolled back by those who sang in fire. Immovable stone took form and flew.
The images were suddenly driven from his mind by a blinding pain, his thin and wasted body wracked with coughing. He pressed a balled fist to his mouth, and looked on in horror as it came away speckled with blood.
* * *
Allystaire quickly
ran short of javelins. Beside him, Teague raised her great bow and arced arrows into the air after each spear Allystaire threw. Norbert paced behind them in frustration, his bow useless at this range.
Torvul sat on his mount, taking sightings with his glass and calling corrections until Allystaire released his last javelin. The song still boiled in his veins, and Allystaire itched to leap into Ardent’s saddle and lift his hammer and charge amongst them.
It would be suicide, he reminded himself, and yet the men behind me would follow. If they had a fragment of my strength… He let the thought die.
“Why do they not come?”
“Some are,” the dwarf called out. “Finally getting up the gumption. Looks like a Freezing lot o’them too, maybe more than we can handle.”
Allystaire peered down into the camp and found that the dwarf spoke true, a group was detaching itself from the main body. Moving aimlessly, without lines or formations, just charging ahead, driven by the shouts and imprecations of a small group of Dragon Scales on their heels.
“A fighting retreat then,” Allystaire said. “We are everything these men are not,” he yelled, as he sprang onto Ardent’s back.
Horses snorted and armor rattled, arms were loosened and readied, leather creaked as his knights shifted in their saddles.
“Norbert, draw them after us,” Allystaire commanded. The lean knight nodded, pulled himself back into his saddle, and fitted an arrow to his bow. Gripping his mount just with his legs, he nudged the horse into a canter forward, drawing back his bowstring and loosing high, speculatively, at the oncoming Islandmen.
“Any burden,” Allystaire shouted.
“Any burden,” they answered back, Norbert too, even as he rode towards the enemy.
Allystaire drew his hammer and let Ardent trot, drawing away from the castle and its besiegers.
Ahead of them, Norbert rode quickly to within bowshot of the outermost rings of men. Expertly drawing his bow and twisting his body, he sent a high arcing shot towards their forces, then another, quickly drawing arrows from thick sheaves of them tied to his saddle.
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