by Ellyn, Court
The sergeant had been right. As high as the chandler’s rooftop was, the next building offered a higher one still. Thorn eyed the gap between the shop and the town hall and swore. “I’m going to crisp your hide, Kelyn.”
An arrow sang past his ear. The Fierans in the towers had spotted him.
“Saffron?”
“I’m with you,” she whispered, a shimmer near his ear.
Thorn grit his teeth, ran down the pitch of the roof and threw himself across the alleyway. His momentum carried him halfway up the next. In truth, he was afraid to stop running till he reached the ridgepole. Goddess, the slate was slick under foot. One misstep and he’d end up as food for rats in the alley. Fine position, however. Directly across the highway, the gatehouse towers swarmed with Brengarra’s garrison. Below, Lord Jaeron’s cavalry prepared to meet the Aralorri charge.
No time to waste, Thorn had to put a little fear in the hearts of the men on the walls. Straddling the roof like a horse’s back, he nocked an arrow and took careful aim. The wind was with him; the arrow sailed between the crenels, planting in a Fieran’s throat. Their vengeance was swift. Arrows blurred past Thorn. With Saffron’s fay shield in place, he watched one bounce off his thigh, another off his chest. “Damn it, I can’t get used to the sight of that.”
Saffron’s laughter seemed to brighten the westering sunlight.
On the roof of the chandler’s shop, sword blades jabbed through slate tiles, shattering them, and Evaronnans eased out of the holes. Their line of bows took aim and Brengarra’s cavalry felt the sting. Knights raised shields, but warhorses reared and toppled. Only so many of Davhin’s men fit on the chandler’s roof; for every ten arrows they loosed, an Evaronnan fell with a green-fletched arrow lodged in his flesh and a new man squirmed through the holes to replace him.
Faster, Thorn had to loose faster. As he had during the tournament, he had four and five arrows in the air at once, ranging them across both gatehouse towers. His quiver was stuffed with only forty arrows, however, whereas the garrison ought to be able to keep loosing them for hours.
A horn bellowed. Leshan and his rough riders galloped toward the ford with Ilswythe’s knights following close. The Fierans in the towers shifted their aim toward the charge. Many a man left himself exposed between the crenels. Thorn’s arrows flew true.
A billowing white cloak and a golden head fell into his sights. The White Falcon played it safe, however. Instead of joining his people atop the gatehouse, he occupied the roof of the keep. From there he could see the highway, village, and ford from over the walls. Thorn loosed. The arrow fell short, lost to the the castle courtyard. He had only a handful left. Too few to help Leshan, who galloped headlong into the wall of Brengarra’s cavalry.
In the Wood, Thorn had witnessed small bands of Elarion battling smaller bands of ogres, and at Ulmarr he had watched from a distance as his people held their ground, but he’d never seen a clash of arms like the one raging below him now. Blue surcoats and gray swirled like a roaring river. Horses screamed and danced and kicked while swords arced and shields pummeled. In horror, he watched Leshan toss off his helmet and send his shield flying over the heads of his foes. With bloodied hands he drew Contention and hewed the head of Jaeron’s banner-bearer. Nearer and nearer to the ford he pressed, slashing left and right through the surge of Haezeldale’s infantry.
Across the river, the warlord’s red horse had gone into a frenzy, tossing his head and prancing angrily beneath his rider. Goryth himself watched nothing but the approach of his greatsword and the son of his enemy who carried it.
Sickened to the depths of his soul, Thorn turned away his eyes.
~~~~
74
Nearly two hundred squires let loose in town was enough for Laral to doubt he would ever make an effective leader of men. Rocks sailed through windows. Piles of furniture doused with lamp oil burned on the street corners. Chickens scattered from coops with squires cursing and chasing after them. A Fieran woman chased half a dozen youngsters from her kitchen door only to turn and find two older squires securing her house while another tossed bags of flour and potatoes through the window. She flew at them, screeching, hands curled into claws. One of the squires drove his knuckles into her chin. The other laughed. Dazed, the woman lay in the middle of the street while the squires ran off with the contents of her larder.
As Laral passed, riding high on his racer, the woman climbed to her knees and spat bloodily at him.
“I don’t like this business at all,” he muttered.
Drys of Zeldanor, a squire of Lord Gyfan, rode beside him. “Stop them then.”
“How?” Laral snapped. “They’re following orders and doing what they have to do.”
“I guess. Too bad the Fierans don’t see it that way.” Drys was almost too short in the legs and arms to ride a decent-sized horse. His stirrups had to be brought in tight and his reins let out long. His chest and shoulders, however, were twice as broad as Laral’s and, at sixteen, he was already strong as an ox. The other squires ridiculed him for being kin to dwarves, a taunt they never made more than once, because Drys’s fist, they said, didn’t taste too good.
Peering down streets that curled toward the river, they spied barricades built hastily from tables, armoires, overturned wagons, and hay bales. Men in green or gray ducked behind them. Some time ago, Lord Wyramor had ridden around the outskirts with his cavalry in Leanian blue and orange. The clash and screams of battle came from the south end of town now, as well as the north. How to keep this many excited youngsters from venturing too close to the bloodshed?
Squires of Lady Genna trundled past, one grunting behind a wheelbarrow full of squealing piglets, the other cursing the chickens flapping wildly in her arms.
“It’s their fault anyway,” Laral said, trying hard to justify the theft. “Their soldiers stopped our supply line, and now they’re guarding the granaries. They leave us no choice but to break into their houses.”
“Aye,” Drys said, yellow eyebrows twisting sarcastically, “but I wish some of these idiots had the tact to pretend they weren’t enjoying it.”
A squire in the livery of the Falcon Guard hallooed like a manic shaver as he tossed the shattered remnants of a finely carved chair onto the bonfire.
Laral wheeled his racer into the crowd of arsonists. They scattered just like the chickens. “Allym!” he shouted at the most enthusiastic. “There’s a bakery across the street. Do something useful. If you can’t handle that, go back to the collection point and guard the goods we’ve gathered.” In hopes of avoiding the hostilities, the squires had chosen a barn on the eastern edge of town to stow their plunder.
“They’re our enemies, Laral!” shouted Allym.
“Yes, but your orders are to gather supplies for your allies. Move!”
For a moment, Laral thought the squire would brush off his attempt to order him around and go back to his burning, but at last he snorted and said, “Yes, O mighty one. Being the War Commander’s squire don’t make you the Commander. Wait till this is over. You won’t get to tell me what to do.”
Drys stood in the stirrups, preparing to dismount and enforce his friend’s order. Allym suddenly decided his threat was empty. He started for the bakery; several of his cohorts went with him, resentful. Drys settled himself again. “Maybe you should’ve sent him to drag the goats instead. Attitude like his, he might start a stampede, and wouldn’t that be terrible. A few hoof marks on his face might improve it some.”
How did Kelyn do it? All those men, tired of fighting, tired of watching their friends die, missing their families, yet he won them. Over and over again, he won them. Maybe that was the key. Keep winning them. Keep smiling, keep encouraging, keep charming, and more importantly, keep leading by example. Sit in the rain when his men had to. Eat cold oats when his men had to. Did he ever get tired of it?
“Hey, Laral?” A squire backed out of a soot-blackened smithy lugging a barrel of horseshoes. “We gonna need these?”
/> How the hell should he know? “Why not? Put ‘em with the rest. And, er, grab all the flat irons you can find, put them in the medical stack. We’ll need those for sure.”
“Laral!” The shriek echoed up the next street. Kalla raced around the smithy, legs pumping, red hair flying. “Come quick! I can’t stop them.”
At the end of a narrow lane, a pair of squires had trapped a girl. One held her wrists and tried to drag her into the nearest cottage, but his companion had too little patience to care where he took her. He pinned her to the ground and was trying to get a hand up her skirt. She screamed and kicked and twisted until surely her skinny arms were ready to tear loose. A waif of a thing, she stood no chance against these squires, so eager to prove themselves men. On each side of the lane, boarded-up windows looked like eyes clamped shut.
Vaulting from the saddle, all Laral could think about was his mother. No one had dared tell him how she died, but he wasn’t stupid. Rumors abounded, but at their core, they all told the same story.
“Look what we caught! A wildcat, hoo!” cried the squire holding the girl’s arms. He stopped laughing when Drys’s fist pelted him in the face.
Laral grabbed the other by the collar and the belt and flung him into the gutter. The front of his pants was wet. He hadn’t enough self-control to wait till he unlaced them. Perhaps thinking the enemy attacked him, he bolted to his feet with dagger in hand.
“Don’t,” Laral warned, reaching for his diamond-studded prize.
The squire recognized a friend and put away his dagger. “Aw, Laral, c’mon. We weren’t hurting her. Besides she’s just a peasant. Nobody’ll care.”
The girl scrambled out from under Laral’s shadow and pressed herself against a cracking plaster wall. Her hands frantically pressed her skirts down around her ankles. Long brown hair, torn loose from a braid, was tangled about a delicate face.
Laral’s hand remained on the haft of his dagger. “I killed a Zhiani trying to do that to the queen. I’d kill a hundred Zhianese for doing that to my mother. The hell I’ll let you do it to this girl! You have your orders. Get going or you’ll be bleeding all over the place.”
Puffed up like dogs whose meal has been stolen, the two squires backed away, then turned and ran down the lane.
Kalla dropped down beside the girl. “Did they hurt you?”
“No,” she gasped, though her wrists were chaffed red and purple. She shook so hard that Laral imagined he could hear her bones rattling. Small as she was, on a second look, she didn’t seem to be as young as he’d first thought.
“You shouldn’t be in the streets,” Laral scolded. “Don’t you know there’s a battle on?”
Large brown eyes darted fearfully between him and Kalla and Drys. Even though they had saved her, they were still her enemies. “I was … trying to get home. Have you taken the castle yet?”
“The castle?” Laral asked. “Maybe. I doubt it. Can you walk? How far is your house? We’ll take you.”
The girl didn’t move, just clutched her collar to her throat and stared at them. Despite the crumbling facades of the houses around them, her dress was fine wool the color of moss in the shade. Ivory lace fluttered at her wrists.
Drys nudged him. “C’mon, Tírandon, we got work to do. She’ll make her own way home.”
“Tírandon?” the girl whimpered. The word seemed to make her more frightened still. Looking at Kalla, she asked, “You’re from Tírandon?”
“Only Laral.”
“What about it?” he asked. She reminded him of something. What was it? Delicate bones, small hands, quick eyes.
“Wh-what do you mean to do with me?”
“Do with you?” asked Drys, coarse as ever. “We already said we’d take you home. But you just sit there on your duff and we have things need doing. Maybe she’s simple.”
“I’m not!” the girl declared, pushing herself to her feet as lithely as if she had wings. And that was it. She reminded Laral of a bird, a finch, a wren. She tried to edge around the three Aralorris, likely seeking enough space to take flight. “You killed the princess’s lord-husband and destroyed Ulmarr. You killed my brother at Ulmarr.”
“Hey, we don’t have to take that!” Drys exclaimed. “Some thanks.”
“Oh, Drys, stuff your foot in it,” Kalla retorted. “Can’t you see she’s scared?”
“Me, too!” Drys bellowed. “I want to get our supplies back to the barn before some Fieran thinks he’s brave and runs me through with a pitchfork. Let’s move, Laral.” He started for his horse.
“We’re not leaving her,” Laral said. “Somebody else might come along and do something worse.”
“We have our orders, Commander, or did you forget? Kalla, hop on, you can ride with me.”
Kalla’s lip curled. “I’ll walk, thanks.” The two of them headed back along the lane.
Laral reached for the reins, reluctant. Maybe it was the nightmares he had of his mother hanging from chains in the dark, all alone, maybe it wasn’t, but he couldn’t bear the idea of leaving this helpless wisp of a girl standing alone in the street. Regardless, he found himself following his friends and emerging from the shadows that darkened the narrow lane. Along the main thoroughfare, squires tramped in and out of shops and houses. Glass shattered and someone screamed. Drys met him outside the smithy, a box of arrowheads under one arm and a sword’s blade in the other. “Not much good without the haft, but I’ll keep it for my knighting. What d’you think? Man, you look like somebody spit on your fire.”
Kalla shoved Drys from the doorway and trudged from the smithy with a bag of sand over her shoulder. They would need it later to clean chain-mail. She stopped cold and with her chin pointed back the way they’d come.
The girl in the green wool dress had followed them. She stood at the end of the lane with a hand over her mouth as she surveyed the bonfire and broken glass and refuse littering the cobbles.
“Ah, hell,” Drys groused. “She’s gonna get it again. She’s simple, I tell you.”
Simple or not, she made Laral’s heart ache. He handed off the reins of his racer and approached her. “Look, if you won’t go indoors, you should stick with us. We won’t let anyone hurt you.”
She seemed not to hear him. Tears spilled from those large soft eyes. Her lower lip swelled, bruised by the force of an ungentle kiss. Or maybe the squires had struck her. Laral swallowed a bitter dose of rage at the thought.
“My people,” she said, chin unsteady. “Please, have you seen my father?”
Befuddled, Laral asked, “How would I know?”
“Lord Brengarra, have you seen him? He was at the Crossroads.”
Laral glanced back up the street at his friends, but they hadn’t heard. A handful of younger squires, with rabbits strung on a rope between them, jumped when Drys bellowed at them, “Stop petting those carcasses and get ‘em to the barn.”
Turning back to the girl, Laral stammered, “You … you’re … oh. I saw him this morning. At Little Bridge. From a long way away though. He looked well.”
That seemed to ease her. She nodded and straightened her shoulders. “I’m Lady Bethyn. This is my town. See that my people are not harmed.”
Her grace stupefied him. He nodded mutely, face burning with shame.
Over his shoulder, Drys shouted, “Hey, Tírandon! You giving command to me or what? Stop chatting with the peasants and do your job.”
“Watch your mouth,” Laral retorted, rounding on his friend. “She’s no peasant.” Of Bethyn he asked, “Why are you not safe inside the castle?”
“My nurse and household fled before the fighting started. They tried to take me with them, but I didn’t like abandoning the place while our garrison stayed to defend it. It was like admitting we’d lose. I hopped out of the wagon and ran back. The town was overrun before I made it back to the … well, faster than I expected.”
Laral caught her slip-up. “I know Brengarra must have tunnels. Most castles do. Tírandon doesn’t, though. Land’s too
flat and wet. My mother had nowhere else to go. You were right to run away.”
“It’s true then. What happened at Tírandon?”
Laral took a long measure of her face. “You don’t really want to know.”
“Hey, Laral,” called Drys. “Look! What in the Abyss is that?” With the point of his incomplete sword, he pointed back toward the castle. Over the gray towers, black clouds like eddies of smoke gathered thick and menacing.
“It’s coming from the tor,” Kalla said.
Though the wind blew from the south, the clouds swept down from the northwest, long reaching fingers that swirled and collected into storm billows directly above the castle.
Laral cast a questioning glance at Bethyn, wondering if some magic in the strange mountain had caused the phenomenon before, but she seemed as confused and terrified as the rest. Squires in the street dropped their bags, bundles, and barrows to stare up at the crackling black clouds. A finger of lightning speared one of the towers. The report shook the air and scared Laral half out of his skin. Squires screamed, ducked into doorways and under eaves. Bethyn threw her hands over her ears. A second bolt struck the battlements. Throwing an arm around the girl’s shoulders, Laral shoved her up against the smithy wall and hunched over her, shielding her from what? A loud noise? Embarrassed, he backed away.
Bethyn lowered her hands, staring up at him as if he were as wondrous a creature as might fall from the moons. He saw the third bolt of lightning reflected in her eyes.
“The barn,” he muttered, though the thunder drowned out the words. Grabbing Bethyn’s hand, he bellowed across the street. “Everybody back to the barn! Run!”
Boldness sapped by the unnatural storm, the army of squires fled through the streets like panicked sheep when the wolves nip at their heels. Drys dropped his box of arrowheads and Kalla her burden of sand, but Laral’s hands were full. Bethyn ran with him, as light and fleet as a swift on the wing.
~~~~
