The Spirit Stone

by Katharine Kerr

  Over the screams and shouting, Prince Dar’s silver horn sang out. The black dragon swung off and flew up high to let the Westfolk loose flight after flight of arrows. The unhorsed cavalrymen were trying to shelter under their small shields and at the same time get themselves into some kind of order among the infantry. Once again Dar signalled. Yelling warcries, the Deverry and Westfolk swordsmen trotted up the rise and charged into the disorganized mob that had once been an army. With shrieks like demons from hell the dwarven axemen burst out of the forest and fell upon the enemy from their flank.

  Caught between two attacks, the spearmen lost the discipline that their lives depended upon. They’d been trained to hold ranks to defend against an equally well-drilled enemy. Now from one side they faced men with long axes that could sweep up from below and cut through their greaves. From the other side, swordsmen, both human and elven, charged in with their own shields held ready to turn aside—or to trap—their spears. The entire contingent of spearmen broke ranks, a fatal mistake.

  Some swung round to face the dwarves, only to be engaged from the side by swordsmen. Others tried to make a stand against the Deverry charge only to have their legs slashed out from under them by the dwarves. Another silver horn—Gwivyr and his squad slammed into the battle. All around the edge the Westfolk archers prowled, loosing shaft after shaft whenever they had a clear target.

  At first Gerran found himself shut out from the real fighting. With the archers he prowled like winter wolves around a stone-walled sheep fold, desperate to get in, unable to find a breach. At last an unhorsed cavalryman came running his way, his shield gone, his cap-like helmet and breastplate intact, both of them heavy leather studded with bronze. Gerran stepped into his path, feinted, then dodged to one side.

  His enemy’s clumsy swing showed Gerran that he’d learned to use his falcata on horseback, not on the ground, but he still stood a good head taller. Gerran dodged to the enemy’s left; the Horsekin turned and swung again, his blade parallel to the ground. The weighted tip of the falcata pulled him a little farther than he should have gone. Gerran flung up his shield to catch the blow and sliced in from behind to hit him hard just beside the breast plate. His sword cut into the leather below. The leather split. So did the flesh under it, and blood ran.

  With a yelp the Horsekin spun back towards Gerran and swung his falcata up from below. On its trailing edge the falcata was as dull as a club, but if it had hit its mark, Gerran would have fallen with a crushed jaw. He sprang back barely in time. Bleeding, out of balance, the Horsekin stumbled, flailing his arms like a dancer. His head for a brief moment bobbed to the level of Gerran’s chest. Gerran swung up from below and slashed him across his eyes. With a scream the Horsekin fell to his knees and grabbed at his face with both hands.

  Gerran stabbed him in the throat, then jumped back, on guard, searching for enemies, but by then Horsekin horns were screeching commands that could only mean one thing: retreat. Unhorsed cavalrymen were already running for the lives, easy victims for Westfolk arrows. The spearmen threw their shields and ran with them, heading downriver.

  Half of the elven archers pulled back to turn and run for the horses the Deverry army had left behind them. Others held their ground and sent flights of arrows racing after the retreat. Men screamed and fell. Some rolled wounded into the river and drowned. Others bled to death where they lay. The Deverry men and the Mountain Folk followed, killing the wounded enemies as they passed, facing off with the few men who turned to make a stand with their backs set against one another—two or three spears against a mob of swords and axes.

  When Gwivyr’s mounted squad galloped forward to harry the retreating men, the remaining Westfolk pulled back. Gerran heard Calonderiel yelling orders in both Elvish and Deverrian. ‘Leave the bastards to the others! The horses are coming!’ Prince Voran appeared on horseback, screaming more orders as he rode among his men and the Mountain Folk.

  ‘Pull back, pull back! To me! To me!’

  The unmounted swordsmen slowed, stopped, began milling around the prince. Gwivyr and his men turned their horses and swung back to join them. Among the fleeing cavalrymen, one suddenly spun around and flung a long dagger like a javelin. It struck Gwivyr full in the back so hard that he dropped his sword and slumped forward. Although the horse reared, the tieryn managed to cling to its neck, but two spearmen sprang forward. As the horse came down, a Gel da’ Thae stabbed his spear with desperate force into Gwivyr’s back. With screams of rage the tieryn’s warband surrounded the attackers like hounds around a fox. Gerran could assume they’d cut them to pieces, just like the fox as well. Two men rode up to their lord’s horse, grabbed the reins and led him onward. Just as they passed Gerran by the spear worked its way loose with a gush of blood and fell, bouncing over the horse’s rump to the ground.

  ‘Get him back to the chirurgeons!’ Voran yelled.

  Gerran glanced upriver and saw the horses coming—each mounted archer guided his horse with his knees while he led two riderless mounts. Another danger point: if the Horsekin rallied and charged back while the Deverry men were trying to mount up, they could reverse the tide of the battle. The Mountain Folk rushed forward to provide a barrier against a counter-charge, but none ever came.

  Gerran grabbed the reins of the first horse he could reach and swung himself into the saddle. He could see Tieryn Cadryc nearby, safely mounted and swinging a bloody sword as he yelled orders. Prince Voran did the same, and the freshly horsed Deverry men formed a living wall around their position.

  ‘The dragons are harrying them!’ Newly mounted, Calonderiel rode back and forth, yelling the news at the top of his lungs. ‘Hold and stand!’

  Gerran rose in his stirrups and looked downriver. He could see a distant cloud of dust and above it two flying specks that repeatedly swooped down and rose again. In but a few moments the specks became too small to see. When Voran blew his silver horn, Gerran sat back down and turned towards the prince.

  ‘Back to camp!’ the prince yelled. ‘We need to collect our wounded from the field.’

  Their losses turned out to be light, not that the news surprised Gerran. Fresh orders spread through the camp, to get ready to move out south, where they’d fortify a new camp. Although a good many men grumbled at the thought of digging more ditches, Gerran understood the prince’s reasons and told them to every grumbler he overheard.

  ‘We’re a cursed long way from home, lads,’ he said. ‘We’ve got nowhere to retreat to if we lose our baggage train.’

  Like dweomer the grumbling stopped.

  It was near sunset before the army had dug itself into its new position some six miles closer to Zakh Gral. Although they found a good stretch of flat ground and some grazing for the horses, by that point the river bed had deepened into a gorge which hemmed them in on the east side. To the west, however, the scrubby forest had disappeared, replaced by a welter of recently cut stumps and debris—lopped branches, piles of leaves, the scrap wood trimmed away from felled logs, sheets of bark, dead brown ferns and shrubs, all left to lie in a carpet of decay.

  ‘They had to clear-cut a lot of timber to build Zakh Gral’s wooden walls,’ Salamander remarked. ‘At least the Horsekin can’t hide in the forest.’

  ‘True spoken,’ Gerran said, ‘but their infantry can mount a flank attack from all this open ground. We’ve got nowhere to go on the other side but down to the water.’

  Salamander grunted in disappointment.

  ‘We’re not going to have a pleasant little ride to Zakh Gral,’ Gerran went on. ‘Keep those Westfolk eyes of yours open every step of the way.’

  That night, the dragons promised to lair somewhere close by. With so many dead horses left behind by the fleeing cavalry, they had no need to go hunting for food. Just as well, Gerran thought. The first battle had gone too easily, as far as he was concerned, which left him suspecting that the Horsekin had some sort of plan or sneak attack in mind. Something nagged at him, some sort of present danger that so far at least, ev
eryone had overlooked.

  Apparently Prince Voran agreed with him, because he set a ring of sentries around the camp, made up of pairs of swordsmen, one Deverry, one Westfolk. As he usually did, Gerran volunteered for the worst watch in the middle of the night. Much to his surprise, Calonderiel appeared to stand it with him.

  ‘I didn’t think a banadar would have to stand a watch,’ Gerran said.

  ‘He doesn’t,’ Calonderiel said. ‘Neither does a noble lord, but here we are.’

  That night the moon shone nearly full, but in the gauzy light Gerran could see only a short way beyond their position. Calonderiel, of course, suffered no such limits. With his drawn sword he pointed towards the south.

  ‘According to Lady Grallezar,’ Cal said, ‘a couple of miles along we’ll meet a road that runs west to Braemel. If any reinforcements are on the way, that’s where they’ll arrive.’

  ‘If we’re between them and the fortress,’ Gerran said, ‘we’ll be pinned.’

  ‘Exactly. The dragons will be flying sweeps to the west, and I thank the Star Goddesses for that, too. But we’ll need some sort of a plan if they do see another army coming.’

  ‘Just so.’ Gerran turned to the west and took a good look at the broken field of stumps and litter. In the dim light he had trouble distinguishing one lump from another. If I had a torch, he thought, I—. ‘Oh horseshit!’ he snarled. ‘So that’s what’s been bothering me.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Tinder and firewood, banadar. There’s a nearly a mile of tinder and firewood right next to our camp. What if the Horsekin drop a torch or two into it?’

  Calonderiel let fly with a string of Elvish oaths, then pulled his silver horn from his belt. ‘A good point,’ he said mildly, then raised the horn and blew the three harsh notes of the alarum, over and over until the camp woke, shouting.

  Cursing and muttering, men rolled out of their blankets, pulled on boots, grabbed weapons, and came running. Each time a couple of men arrived, Calonderiel expanded the ring of sentries. Westfolk he sent ahead, swords or longbows at the ready, while the Deverry men stumbled along behind. Warleader Brel collected his axemen and headed downriver, fanning out as they did so into the wooden rubble. Since his vision was so limited, Gerran stuck close to Calonderiel as he trotted back and forth along the crescent-shaped line. At last the sentries reached the edge of the dead wood and took up posts that looked into green, damp forest.

  Gerran and Calonderiel had just returned to the road after walking the newly placed sentry ring when, ahead to the south, shouting broke out, the deep voices of the Mountain Folk and a sudden scream that might have come from a human or Horsekin throat. Calonderiel began yelling in Elvish, a cry that brought archers and swordsmen both racing to him. They all took off running down the Rhwmani road so fast that Gerran was hard-pressed to keep up. He was gasping for breath by the time they reached the Mountain Folk.

  In the moonlight Gerran could see a shallow river or large stream flowing from the west, parallel to another Rhwmani road leading west towards the mountains—towards Braemel, he assumed. The water crossed their path and plunged down over the canyon’s edge to join the Galan Targ below. The road itself made a sharp turn upstream, away from the cliff edge, to cross a wooden bridge, swarming at the moment with Mountain Folk. With a couple of barked orders Calonderiel sent archers to join them. Two Mountain Folk appeared out of the mob in the road and hurried over to the banadar. It wasn’t until they came close that Gerran recognized Brel Avro.

  ‘Good thinking, banadar,’ the warleader said in Deverrian. ‘We caught some of the Horsekin trying to fire that bridge. The sparks would have spread north quick enough.’

  ‘Thank Gerran here.’ Calonderiel jerked his thumb in Gerran’s direction. ‘He’s the one who realized we were sleeping next to enough wood to roast the lot of us.’

  ‘Good lad!’ Brel said to Gerran. ‘I’ll see that the princes know your name.’

  ‘No need for that,’ Gerran said. ‘I would have roasted along with everyone else.’

  ‘True spoken. I’ll tell them anyway.’ Brel turned his attention back to Calonderiel. ‘But we’ve run into a difficulty. Do you think this rubbish heap runs all the way down to the fortress?’

  ‘Most likely and beyond as well,’ Calonderiel said. ‘They must have wasted a lot of wood building the thing. Why?’

  ‘You’ll see when it’s time.’ Brel started to walk away, then looked back over one shoulder. ‘I need to talk things over with our envoy.’

  From the west came the drumbeat of dragon wings, flying fast towards them. Gerran glanced up to see the silver wyrm circling far overhead, the size of a white bird in the moonlight. Rori dropped down closer, roared out a few Elvish words, then headed south.

  ‘He’s going to scout the fortress,’ Calonderiel said. ‘Just to make sure they don’t have any other clever ruses on hand.’

  Since returning to sleep was impossible, the army moved its camp downriver to the Braemel road. Just as the sun was rising, they dug into a new position to the north of the bridge, where they could guard it and the Braemel road without being pinned between it and the fortress, should fresh Gel da’ Thae men-at-arms come marching down that good Rhwmani road. Rori returned soon after, and the commanders gathered around the dragon to wrangle out plans.

  Gerran walked through the camp until he found Salamander, who was helping Dallandra with the Westfolk wounded. As she went from man to man, Salamander followed along behind, carrying a basket of clean bandages.

  ‘Here, gerthddyn,’ Gerran said to him, ‘why didn’t you tell us about that bridge and the road?’

  ‘They weren’t there before,’ Salamander said. ‘The priestess and I splashed across that little river upstream. It’s so shallow it’s easy to ford, though a bridge is doubtless easier for troops to cross. They must have brought in more men and slaves. I was here some months ago, you know.’

  ‘But you haven’t seen it since then? By dweomer, I mean.’

  ‘You don’t understand about scrying, Gerro. Running water makes it nearly impossible. I can explain—’

  ‘Oh, don’t bother,’ Gerran said hastily. ‘Quite all right.’ He turned Dallandra’s way. ‘Wise One, do you know how Tieryn Gwivyr fares?’

  ‘He’s still alive,’ Dallandra said. ‘Which amazes me.’

  ‘I see. Well, then, I’ll hope for the best.’

  By then the weary army wanted nothing more than sleep, but everyone knew that the Horsekin would rather attack a sleeping army than a ready one. Men kept their armour on, and with weapons close at hand they sat on the ground, dozing until the horns cried out for battle. Close to noon Arzosah came winging back to camp with the news that Horsekin infantry—and only infantry—were heading north along the cliff road.

  ‘They’ve learned somewhat, lad,’ Tieryn Cadryc told Gerran. ‘The dragons won’t be a cursed lot of help this time around.’

  ‘Good,’ Gerran said. ‘We can fight mounted.’

  ‘True spoken, and the princes have come up with a cursed clever idea.’ Cadryc’s mood brightened. ‘We’re going to cross the bridge and wait for them on the far side. This time, we’re chasing them back to Zakh Gral.’

  ‘What about the camp, your grace?’

  ‘We’ll be leaving a good many men behind to guard it. The dragon’s certain we outnumber the army coming to meet us.’

  After Cadryc relayed the commanders’ orders, Gerran rounded up the Red Wolf warband and repeated them in as much detail as he could supply. In the midst of a swirling confusion of men and horses, Clae led over Gerran’s battle-trained chestnut gelding, saddled and ready. Gerran mounted, reaching down to take the falcon shield from his page.

  ‘My lord?’ Clae said. ‘When do you think I’ll be ready to ride to battle?’

  ‘Not for some years yet, lad,’ Gerran said, smiling. ‘And be glad of it. You stay back at the camp. Mount up and be ready to retreat if things go against us on the field. That’
s an order, by the by.’

  ‘Well and good then, my lord.’ Clae pulled a long face. ‘I’ll do what you say, of course.’

  ‘Good.’

  Gerran settled the shield on his left arm, then drew his sword to lead the Red Wolf warband out with a flourish. They clattered across the bridge, where Tieryn Cadryc waited on horseback in a little cluster of his noble-born vassals and allies.

  ‘Well and good then, lads!’ Cadryc called out. ‘Remember your orders! Fight hard for Deverry and the high king!’

  The warband cheered him.

  Once the rest of the army had assembled, it set out down the cliff-top road. The terrain here stretched reasonably level from the cliff edge to their left all the way through the husks and bones of a slain forest to their right—stretching close to a mile in all, Gerran estimated, back to a rise of hills. He no longer worried about fire. If the Horsekin set the rubble alight this close to Zakh Gral, they would pay more heavily than their enemies. The debris did provide another obstacle; poor footing at the best and downright dangerous traps for a horse’s hooves at worst should the battle spread into it. The archers, however, found it a blessing.

  When the army reached a slight rise in the road, the commanders called a halt. The archers, unmounted, spread out into the debris fields. The Red Wolf and its allies took their position near them on the right flank. Gerran had noticed that each archer carried a small hatchet at his belt. He’d assumed that it was a weapon, a last defence in case of a defeat, but in fact, the archers used the blades to shape stakes from dead branches. They then flipped the hatchet over and pounded each stake into the ground in front of them. Behind this waist-high palisade, they arranged themselves three men deep in a curving formation like an arm reaching towards the enemy.

  At the centre of the Deverry line a silver horn sounded. Gerran rose in his stirrups and looked south along the road. A column of dust rose in the air and moved steadily forward. He sat back down in the saddle, then drew one of his three javelins from the sheath under his right leg. He heard the rattle of metal as the rest of the warband followed his lead. The dust cloud came closer and resolved itself into a column of spearmen, marching in tight formation some ten men abreast. Gerran could just make out the sound of brass horns, squalling orders. They’ve spotted us, he thought.