Blood of the Falcon, Volume 2 (The Falcons Saga)

by Ellyn, Court

  Rhorek cast the soldier a doleful half-smile. “That is my desire also. I miss my wife and my son.”

  The Fieran looked at the floor, and Rhorek took a slow turn up and down the aisles, listening to one story after another, reminding tired soldiers to be brave a little longer. The Aralorris seemed amazed that the king himself had come to devote his time to them; the Fierans, that he regarded them at all. Still, some spat as he passed also. He ignored it with vast aplomb. Returning at last to his War Commander, he said, “As much as I would like to go home, I doubt that is in your plans.”

  Laral poured some of the weak wine into a wooden cup for him. One of the Falcons intercepted it, tasted it, then passed it into the king’s hand.

  “This is not the place to discuss those plans, sire,” Kelyn said.

  The orderly snipped his thread free from still another stitch and said, “I’m almost finished here. Then the War Commander must rest.” Squinting at Kelyn’s squires, he added, “Don’t let him carry for himself or pull himself into the saddle.”

  Eliad replied with a skeptical “Hnh!”

  Laral chuckled. “Oh, yes, we get to tell His Lordship what to do all the time. He listens very well.”

  Rhorek echoed his laughter. “He will follow these orders, won’t he?”

  Kelyn rolled his eyes, but before he could argue, a cry rose from the Fieran side of the room. A soldier in Haezeldale green with a bandage around his head, scrambled up from his bedroll. His comrade took him by the shoulders and spoke softly to him. Blood stained his hands. He must’ve come from the town hall to deliver news of the worst kind. The wounded soldier shoved away his comrade’s hands with an angry roar. A pair of orderlies approached him, bidding him to remain calm. Unfair request, really, Laral thought.

  The Fieran jabbed a finger at Rhorek. “There he is! He’s just a man. We can take him. Then no more of our brothers have to die.”

  Lissah edged closer to the king. “We better get you out of here, sire.”

  To Kelyn, Rhorek said, “We’ll talk in the morning, if you can climb out of your bedroll.” Two Falcons preceded him out the door, the others brought up the rear. The sound of the scuffle stopped them on the threshold.

  The Haezeldale soldier ran up the aisle. Orderlies chased him. Leshan rolled off his cot and threw out a foot, flinging the Fieran to the tiles. The four Falcons whisked Rhorek from the guildhall. Scrambling up again, the Fieran freed the dagger from his boot harness and dived upon his attacker. He and Leshan disappeared for only a moment between the cots, and by then Laral was running down the aisle.

  Orderlies in green aprons and blue wrestled the Fieran, finally pulled him away. The dagger clutched in his fist gleamed dark red.

  Laral dropped down beside his brother and smashed his palm over the spurting wound in his chest. He heard someone crying out, “No, no, no!” and soon recognized his own voice. Leshan lay twitching and gasping under his hands. An orderly tossed aside the cots and knelt beside them, pushed Laral’s fingers away to examine the wound. Sitting back again, he shook his head.

  For an hour, Laral had dared to hope that Ruthan was mistaken, that he and his brother would ride home together. A strong hand squeezed him about the nape, and Kelyn lowered himself to his knees at Laral’s side, laid a hand to his foster-brother’s bruised brow. Leshan was pale as marble already.

  Every voice in the guildhall had gone silent. Even the Haezeldale soldier who had done the deed sat on the floor among a dozen orderlies with a crazed look of horror on his face.

  Finding Kelyn looming over him, Leshan gasped, “What’s it like?”

  Pressing a smile onto his face, Kelyn said, “Beautiful. She’s waiting there. She goes on forever.”

  “Then what … have I been afraid of?”

  “No need.”

  “Where’s Laral?”

  Laral leaned closer, cursed the tears that hung heavy in his eyes and kept him from seeing Leshan clearly.

  “Ruthan. Take care of Ruthan.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Watch the gates. She saw …” A welling of blood in his throat drowned out the rest. He choked and convulsed, fighting for one more breath, but he never won it, and all the faces that had haunted him, the faces of his slain, died with him.

  ~~~~

  76

  The next day belonged to the dead. By dawn, pyres and mass graves burned on both banks of the Thunderwater, Fierans to the west, Aralorris in the fields beyond town to the east, and the river flowed between them. Black flags of smoke wafted north, then spread out flat like heavy mist in the valleys between the Mounds. Thunder grumbled about the summit of Tor Roth, though not too insistently so early in the morning. Laral walked beside the cart. Kelyn told him he had no need for his help today, though Laral didn’t believe him. There was much to be done.

  A handful of Leshan’s rough riders had survived the battle and trudged alongside Laral, battered and dispirited. As they passed the castle, a postern door opened in the ivy-shrouded gate, and Bethyn emerged. She looked more like a bird than ever in her drab gray state gown. A sheer gray veil covered her hair and lifted like smoke on the morning breeze. Her household followed her. They must have returned in the night. Long of face, snuffling into kerchiefs, they surrounded the bier that carried Lord Jaeron aloft.

  Bethyn caught sight of Laral and paused, staring at him from across the highway. With a word she stopped the procession and started toward him. A squat, fat woman in a wimple called after her, but Bethyn turned, held up a hand bidding her be silent, and the woman obeyed.

  Laral weaved through carts and orderlies bearing Aralorri dead up the hill, and meeting Bethyn in the roadside grass, he held out Jaeron’s ash pouch.

  “Oh, yes, thank you,” Bethyn said, taking it. Her eyelids were swollen, but at present her composure was admirable. “That’s what I came to say. I didn’t thank you yesterday for everything you did, and … I didn’t mean what I said. Blaming you for … my father … well, you’re no more to blame than I am.”

  He bowed his head and attempted a smile but failed.

  Bethyn noted the dark stains smearing his blue tabard. “You’ve been helping with the dead?”

  He’d only bothered washing his hands and face, though in the bright light of the morning he found blood around his fingernails. “My brother,” he said, gesturing toward the cart that had drawn to a halt. The oxen didn’t seem to care that they hauled bodies behind them and munched contentedly in the ditch. “He was going to make it. But he was killed last night protecting the king.”

  Bethyn’s fingers rose to cover her mouth. Tears spilled from those large brown eyes, and she glanced back at her household and her father’s bier. “Would you consent to something, Laral? Do you think your brother would have consented … to being burned alongside my father? I don’t want any of this to be wasted. A thousand years of the same thing. The same blood, the same tears, the same fires burning. Will it never stop? People have to see!”

  Near their feet, blood stained the ground dark purple and matted the grass. Had it belonged to a Fieran? An Aralorri? An Evaronnan? Perhaps a Zhiani who’d been wounded at Little Bridge and finally collapsed here? Who could say? It was just blood. A man’s blood. A father, a son, a brother.

  Laral gave the nod.

  People didn’t know what to make of it. Bethyn’s household looked uncomfortable, watching the pyres burn so close to one another. One pile of kindling, one growing blaze. Woolen blankets covered the bodies as the flames fed on the perfumed oils and ate through the kindling; if Laral hadn’t seen which bier Leshan had been placed on, he couldn’t have told the difference. In the end, all men were ash and wind. Where had he read that statement? Perhaps he’d never read it at all, but that didn’t make it less true, he supposed.

  He stood apart from Bethyn’s people, guarded by the remnant of his brother’s rough riders. Once word spread of the unconventional burning, Kelyn rode down the hill to stand with him. Eliad helped him down from the saddle
. Kalla and Drys ran after them and stood, hands on their knees, panting and gawking. A short while later, King Rhorek arrived, surrounded by all fifty of the Falcon Guard.

  The short, fat woman clinging to Bethyn’s side wrung her hands, pacing. “Your father wouldn’t stand for this.” Her voice was no more delicate than the rest of her; her objection traveled far, though she’d meant to be discreet.

  Bethyn looked straight ahead at the rising smoke. “That no longer matters, Lady Brighthill.”

  “Since when do you call me that?”

  “Since I became Lady Brengarra.”

  The nurse pressed her kerchief to her mouth, brokenhearted, and said nothing else. How strong and sure Bethyn looked, chin raised, eyes dry. Perhaps it was for the benefit of her people that she remained composed. Laral tried to emulate it, then gave up. He was drowning inside, sinking into some black bottomless pool and, Goddess, he was cold. Even the morning sun across his shoulders and the heat from the pyre failed to warm his bones.

  How was he to tell Father? And Ruthan? No, Ruthan already knew and had said her farewells.

  Warm fingers encircled his hand. Bethyn peered up at him, worried, as if she had sensed his thoughts, his growing despair. She didn’t seem to care that anyone might see that she offered her hand, and suddenly Laral didn’t either. There was only Bethyn, wren-like little Bethyn, who seemed to have made it her mission to bring worlds together. Laral found himself grinning at her boldness, her wonderful madness. In spite of everyone who might see, his fingers twined through hers, and she laid her head on his shoulder to watch the ashes rise.

  ~~~~

  Rhorek was not eager to break camp, and after supper he let Kelyn know it. “Hardly one of us has had any rest! How effective would we be if we met resistance at Haezeldale?” In the darkening confines of his pavilion, he mixed a silverthorn solution for himself; even those who had not taken part in the fighting were saddle-sore, grouchy, and exhausted from yesterday’s uncertainty and today’s sorrow.

  Beyond the flaps, funeral pyres and mass graves still burned. Smoldering embers and smoldering bones lit the dusk and cast long, wavering shadows inside the pavilion. The lingering stink of the smoke pervaded clothes, hair, tent silk. It was in the water and the food and the words in Kelyn’s mouth. “Sire, the dwarves are counting on us. We must move.”

  “You can’t even move both arms!” Rhorek tossed back the bitter solution and grimaced.

  Kelyn twitched his arm in the snug sling to prove him wrong. His chest and shoulder throbbed, but Rhorek didn’t offer him any of the silverthorn. Perhaps he wanted Kelyn to feel the pain, so he would agree to stay put a few days longer. More than anything, Kelyn longed to curl up under a pile of blankets, sleep for days, and mourn the loss of his foster-brother, but these were luxuries Aralorr couldn’t afford. “We’ll be just as wounded and tired tomorrow, and I promised Brugge we’d join him as soon as possible—”

  “Aye, as possible—”

  “Which means four days from now. Not five, not six. The Warlord is dead, yes, but, sire, if we wait, we give the Fierans time to amass a strong defense at Haezeldale, and the delay may cost us Brynduvh and the White Falcon.”

  “Can’t we wait and see if Shadryk sends an offer of surrender?”

  “We can’t afford to hope for that, not at this point.”

  Rhorek slumped in a camp chair and sulked in silence.

  “You want this war over, sire? Then by the Goddess, let me finish it!”

  Aralorr’s host broke camp at dawn. While squires brought down tents and saddled horses in the chill morning air, Kelyn called to Eliad. The boy approached with a handful of tent stakes. “Have you seen my brother?”

  “Yes, sir, yesterday morning.”

  “Yesterday? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I figured if Thorn wants to be found, he’d let you know.”

  Kelyn scrubbed a hand over his face, swallowing an ugly curse, and searched the crowds of soldiers, knights, and squires for a blue velvet robe, a blood-stained linen shirt, a long tail of gold-striped hair. Nothing. He could be anywhere, invisible even and mere feet away, laughing at his blind twin. Or he could be lying dead on the roadside. Who could say what terrible effects fighting a shadow might have?

  “Where did you see him?”

  Eliad pointed at the demon-withered trees. “Before we rode down to Leshan’s pyre, he appeared out of nowhere, right there. He picked up his staff and started for the horses. When we got back to camp, Sarvana was gone.”

  Where the hell had he gone this time? At least he was strong enough to ride. But where did he need to be that was more important than at Kelyn’s side?

  “Sorry, m’ lord,” Eliad said, starting back for the deflated pavilion, “but you’re wasting your time worrying about him. Better get on with business.”

  Cheeky kid. But he was right, Kelyn knew, even if he didn’t like it. Barking orders, he summoned his commanders.

  ~~~~

  Laral wasn’t much help. He had to roll up the pavilion three times before it would fit inside its canvas storage bag. Eliad’s arms weren’t strong enough yet to manage the task, but the younger squire might have done a better job, regardless. Over and over again, Laral found himself staring at Brengarra’s towers, the task at hand forgotten. When it came time to saddle Kelyn’s warhorse, Laral turned the animal north so that his back was to the castle. Didn’t matter. All he could think about were Bethyn’s soft hands, the weight of her head on his shoulder, the way she had looked at him last night after the pyre had burned out: returning to the castle with her household in tow, she glanced back at him three times. Gone forever, he kept thinking, a sickly sinking in his belly.

  “You gonna leave it like that?” Eliad asked, pointing at the cinch dangling under the warhorse’s chest. “Kelyn will be riding upside down if you do.”

  Seeing what he’d done, Laral almost blamed the stallion for puffing out his chest in rebellion against another day of long, dusty walking, but it wasn’t the horse’s fault; he shut his mouth and tightened the cinch.

  “I saw, you know,” Eliad whispered. “You holding that Fieran girl’s hand.”

  “Mind your own business, scut!”

  Eliad wagged a finger. “You mind your business.”

  Laral swung a foot, and Eliad fled toward the lines of tethered racers. Disentangling his and Laral’s mounts from the rest, he saddled them both in a flurry, as if to show Laral how it ought to be done. What did a ten-year-old know about matters of the heart? For that matter, what did Laral know? He was utterly disgusted with himself.

  Drys and Kalla rode by, following their foster-lords. His friends waved, and Kalla even affected a smile, but Laral thought their faces a trifle stiff. They had barely spoken to him since the evening the battle ended. Kalla had cried as Leshan’s ashes rose, and Drys had offered brief, stone-faced condolences, but nothing more. Were they avoiding him because of Leshan’s death, or because they disapproved of Bethyn? Maybe they considered him a traitor for feeling this way. Was he? He’d never felt more confused or miserable. As if losing Leshan wasn’t enough.

  The sun was no more than two fist-widths above the horizon when Kelyn dismissed his commanders and motioned for his horse. Laral helped him into the saddle. “We’re moving fast, boys,” he told his squires. “Mount up.”

  Laral’s feet felt like lead, but somehow he managed to pull himself into the saddle. At Kelyn’s order, the clanking iron snake wound down the hill toward the ford, banners high on the wind. Riding past the castle, Laral hoped he might catch a glimpse of Bethyn atop the walls, but he saw only sentries. Panic twisted his belly into knots. His racer’s hooves splashed in the waters of Thunderwater Ford. He couldn’t do it. He had to see her first.

  “Kelyn!” he said. “I’ll catch up with you.”

  “Catch up? Where are you going? Don’t leave the line.”

  “I’ll catch up.” He wheeled his racer and cantered uphill to the gate. A double portcullis and a
door of heavy oak beams barred him out. He had to wait half an hour, until the Aralorri host had rumbled past, before the sentries could hear his request. And then they laughed.

  “Her Ladyship? See you?” one called down from the battlements. “Get on with you, Aralorri scum, or we’ll put an arrow in you.”

  “It was my brother she asked to be burned with her father. Please, announce me. If she says no, I’ll leave.” If Bethyn said no and turned him away, he preferred they put an arrow in him.

  Silence from the walls. The waiting drew out like a lifetime, though Laral decided fifteen minutes had passed, at most. He was about to give up and ride away when the portcullises rattled, rising, and the oaken door swung open. Peering through the tunnel beneath the gatehouse, he hesitated. The gate might shut behind him and refuse to open again, not for him, not ever. Afraid he was making the greatest mistake of his life, he charged through the gate. Laundry maids at the well fled with baskets of laundry as if he were a marauding army all by himself. The castellan met him below the keep, a hand squeezing the pommel at his hip. Seven more men of the garrison stood with him. Though they were too old to take up arms and march with their countrymen, Laral would bet his last copper that they knew how to use those pikes they carried. A cross-looking fellow with a bushy white beard, the castellan sported a bloody bandage around his throat. The wound caused his voice to sound like bones rattling together. “She wants to see you, but the rest of us don’t. Make it short, Aralorri. One wrong move and you’ll feed the crows at the end of a rope. Well?”

  Laral leapt from the saddle and followed the castellan up steps worn smooth and uneven by centuries of passing feet. Green lichen mottled the dark stone of the keep. Some of the windows didn’t appear to have glass. An old, old fortress was Brengarra, solid and enduring. Inside, generations of lords and ladies had tried to soften the ancient stone with luxury, but beneath the tapestries, rugs and plush, polished furnishings, the place remained stark and austere. A fire crackled in the great hall, and a decrepit wolfhound raised his head from his paws as Laral passed. The lord’s chair nearby had been covered in a ghostly gray sheet of mourning. A broad stair led to a newer wing. Paler stone, bigger windows, and bright draperies shimmered with morning sunlight. Soft notes of music drifted along the corridor, accompanied by a voice, sweet and achingly pure.