The Exiled King

by Sarah Remy

  Jacob, now the size of a small dog, crouched in front of the left-most opening, wings half extended. He clicked his beak impatiently.

  “What’s down there?” Mal asked, sniffing suspiciously at the air beyond. “Smells dank.”

  “Ai, I said, the river tunnel.” She shook her head as she followed Jacob through the opening. “Why are you here? You’re not supposed to be here. I’ve locked you out.”

  “I’m not here,” he said, pacing once more at her side. “You’re dreaming. That was a tidy cheat, turning your wards inside out like that. I had no idea it was possible, and if I had, I certainly wouldn’t have tried it for fear of melting my midbrain in the reversal. All that energy, cracking about near your cerebellum.”

  Avani paused midstride. She shot him a narrow look. “Cerebellum. I don’t know that word. Why would my dream you know a word that I don’t?”

  “We’ve spent a lot of time in each other’s heads,” Mal replied cheerfully. He looked young and carefree in the diffuse tunnel light. His hair was long again, and he smiled easily as he hadn’t since before Roue. He was dressed, not in vocent black, but in a plain linen tunic and trousers. She couldn’t be sure but she thought there was the faintest scruff of black beard on his face. “You know what I know even if you don’t, as do I you.”

  “You’re talking nonsense.”

  “You’re the dreamer,” Mal pointed out, making Avani laugh despite her distrust. Then he gripped her wrist. “Listen. What’s that?”

  “It’s only the river.”

  The path soon turned steep and slick, cutting straight down into the mountain. Avani put her hand on the tunnel wall for balance. Water rained in droplets from overhead, spattering her head and shoulders. It was icy cold. Jacob, being Jacob, managed to stay dream-dry even as he splashed through mud and shallow puddles.

  The tunnel twisted sharply to the right once, and then again, and yet once more. Soon they were walking in tight circles, descending at a precipitous rate. The sound of the river grew loud, like many voices whispering at once, or an angry storm rifling countless leafy tree tops. The tunnel wall trembled beneath her hand. The tunnel floor became a muddy stream, catching at her ankles.

  “I don’t think that’s the river you’re hearing,” said Mal as the ground abruptly evened out, flat and straight, now more tributary than tunnel.

  Avani had been that way once before, and not in a dreaming. She’d explored the tunnel all on her own, out of curiosity, and not because a black-feathered bird insisted on drawing her through vision space. She remembered the twisty decent, the fear when she thought she’d missed the correct turning in her haste, the water rising from ankle to waist. She remembered the second cavern down below the river, flooded but for an island of limestone at the very center.

  The island was there, and the ice-cold flood. But it wasn’t the Mors River rushing above and around that she heard after all: on the island gathered a population of barrowmen, so many they were forced to stand shoulder-to-shoulder or crouch knee to knee. Corpse-white, flat-eyed, too thin, they were naked or dressed in fur or pieces of mismatched fabric. Many held sticks, or bronze knives, or pieces of sharpened bone. Some had covered their heads with tattered scarves or wide-brimmed villein’s caps. One wore a noblewoman’s stained silken gown over stockings made of old lace.

  They were whispering amongst themselves. Their voices, sibilant and strange, shook the walls. When at last they noticed Avani, they fell immediately silent.

  Jacob, circling again overhead, threw a shadow large enough to blacken the island entire. They barrowmen stood unmoving beneath that penumbra, faces upturned and afraid.

  “Cast him out,” ordered Avani’s Goddess through Jacob, as the raven’s shadow spread over water and limestone, blotting diffuse sidhe light to black. Avani, guilty, looked around at Mal where he stood thigh-deep in water, brows lifted in mute confusion, but it was not Mal the Goddess meant.

  “Make a chalice of his head bones,” the barrowmen agreed, voices mingled to one roar. “Bring the torches!” They straightened, gripping knives and bone in long-fingered hands, regaining courage. “He’s coming! Cast him out!” They cavorted in place, a battle dance, and all around them the cavern shook until chunks of rock and mud thundered into the lake from the ceiling above.

  “He’s coming,” warned the Goddess.

  And “Cast him out!” screamed Jacob from his perch on Avani’s chest where she slept atop the cliffs. Bear reared upright, alarmed, growling. Avani sat up, dislodging Jacob, almost breaking her forehead on Liam’s as he bent to shake her.

  “Wake up,” Liam said. “I smell smoke on the wind, and not the good, clean sort. It’s started.”

  Clouds obscured the moon. Wind rattled the baldachin’s roof and chased sparks from torches. Wythe was preparing for battle. Kingsmen strapped on armor with the help of squires. The coursers, too, wore plate over quilted blankets to guard their sides and haunches, and stiff leather masks called shaffrons to guard their faces. The shaffrons were adorned on the cheek pieces with Wythe’s willow-tree device, and made the animals look quite fierce. They stamped their hooves and switched their tails as mail was tucked and tied and belted into place, snorting at the stench of char on the wind.

  Avani made herself useful near the baldachin, steadying Brother Cenwin when he had need of it, keeping busy in between. Groundwork at night was a hazardous thing without nerves running high. Soldiers and servants were stepped upon by excited horses, or sliced on a mail edge, or recovering from too much drink the evening before. Avani handed out ginger to the gut-sick and willow bark for the aching heads. She bandaged sliced flesh and splinted broken bones. She had a stern word with Brother Cenwin when he faltered in the face of Absen’s lack, and another with the desert scout’s ghost when it walked straight through a gelding mid-tackup, making the horse kick and squeal.

  The king’s constable had not yet returned from the western curve of the line. Messages coming fast by wing or by rider from Wilhaiim suggested that attack had come first from that direction. Red and orange flame leapt high into the night sky where last sunset they’d been able to see Whitcomb’s white clapboard. The wind blew a vague, anguished din eastward with the smoke; sometimes Avani knew the screams were human distress, but other times she assured herself it was only the shrieks of coastal gulls disturbed in the night by smoke and fire.

  By tradition Morgan was the last man to sit his horse. Avani held Wilde’s head as the lad reached for his stirrup, making soothing noises though the bay gelding stood quietly. The noises were for Morgan and for Liam. The young earl shivered in his mail and tried twice before he made the saddle from the mounting block. In the light of the torches Liam’s smile, meant to be reassuring, was ghastly under his helm as he handed up Morgan’s lance.

  “I think you’re meant to give a speech, say something bracing,” he counseled. “I’ll be two ticks behind you, my lord.”

  Morgan gathered the reins. Wilde bobbed his head, quiet as a lamb.

  “I know what to do,” he said. “Liam, don’t dawdle. My lady, keep safe.”

  Then he snapped his visor to, wheeled the gelding around, and cantered away to address his waiting men.

  As soon as Morgan was gone, Liam put his hands on his knees and breathed at the ground. Avani, recognizing an onset of panic when she saw one, resisted the urge to pat his shoulders and instead waited quietly. He didn’t faint, but she thought it was a close thing.

  “The infantry’s come up the hill and settled behind our line to wait,” he said thickly after a moment. “That’s a burned city on the wind—you and I both know it. Everyone knows it.” He straightened. He wore a battered cuirass, scrubbed to gleaming, over pieces of leather scavenged from the barracks, and a kettle helm with a leather strap to keep it snug. “It’s happening now.”

  She did touch him then, a light brush of fingers to his set face.

  “Morgan’s not ready,” he said. “I didn’t have time to make him ready. He’s always ha
ted the quintain because he falls off every time and he’ll never say it out loud but I think he’s afraid of blood.”

  “I didn’t have time to make you ready, either, but you’ve done well for yourself,” she said, which made him grimace before he turned toward his own horse, a large gray with kind eyes beneath its shaffron. “I’m proud of you. Goddess protect you this day, Liam.”

  He swung quickly into the saddle to hide threatening tears. In a moment he was gone, trotting down the slope toward the gathering army in search of his lord. Bear, bouncing out of the night, ran after.

  Avani hugged her ribs and listened the wind rattle the baldachin, briefly at a loss as to what to do next. The camp was emptied out, even the servants and tradesmen—those fit enough to hold a weapon—had gone down the hill to join the infantry rallying behind the cavalry. The quartermaster’s tent was left unguarded, the man and his wife and his two grown sons departed to serve the king.

  “Will you be wanting a horse, my lady?” Brother Cenwin asked, coming around the baldachin with a fat coastal pony in tow. He had a pack over his shoulder and a fat spell pouch tied to his belt and his book of healing spells under one arm. She was glad to see he had the sense to cover his tonsured head with a kettle helm, twin to Liam’s. “There’s Absen’s mare or Shin’s old gelding if you prefer.”

  “Nay,” Avani replied. “But thank you. I’ll go on foot.”

  He nodded sagely. “It’s the infantry that takes the brunt of it, or so I’ve read. None of us alive this day have seen war to know for sure, god save us.” He swung into saddle, agile, then tossed her a salute before hurrying on, the pony’s short strides making him bounce.

  And then she was alone, but for the ghost pacing in front of the baldachin and a few scattered chickens startled from sleep and come to peck cautiously around the stone well. She glanced at the sky, trying to gauge the time by the stars, but smoke and clouds obscured the sky.

  She had a helmet of her own, a barbute from Morgan’s war chest, cut with a wide, Y-shaped opening for her eyes and mouth. She’d declined the matching visor, disliking the constriction. When she tugged it on, the helm caught on the felt skull cap she’d pinned over her hair until she wiggled the helmet side to side. The barbute muffled the wind and the disturbing sounds it carried, for which she was grateful. She wore no other armor—metal was heavy and she relied on her wards inside and out.

  She carried her sword, a gift from Mal tempered to her hand when she’d accepted the office of vocent, and a belt knife for cutting bandages. Her own medicinal pouch was not as plump as Cenwin’s, but she wore two full skins of water mixed with strong wine on her belt, which she believed might be far more valuable on the battlefield than the priest’s supply of willow bark for fever or valerian leaf for sleep.

  When she whistled for Jacob, he came, flapping clumsily from the roof of the baldachin. Remembering the raven’s grace in her dreaming she suffered a pang of sympathy. He rebuked her concern with a chop of his beak against the top of her helm before settling in on her shoulder, head tucked low.

  “Ai, then,” she declared, reconciled. “This is not what I imagined for us the day I found a lonely cottage in a quiet village on the most isolated hills in the kingdom. Nor even the day we took rooms in the palace and I put on vocent black.”

  “Tricks,” grumbled Jacob in agreement, pecking at the metal over her right ear. “Cast him out.”

  “I dare say we’re giving it our best shot,” retorted Avani as she began to pick her way down the hill. “Mayhap let the Goddess know that for me, just in case she hasn’t noticed, aye?”

  The Wythe cavalry line curved from the base of the cliff southwest along Wilhaiim’s eastern flank, one hundred and fifteen lancers deep, stirrup pressed against stirrup. North of the first soldier in line, the forest and jagged mountain met where the white cliffs reached toward the foothills of the northern steppes. South of the final Wythe lancer another cavalryman sat his horse as a garrison line began anew. He wore House Grennich’s device on his shield and on his cape. The mounted Kingsmen each had shield and lance in hand. They were meant to function as a living wall, preventing enemy intrusion while at the same time protecting the infantry massed behind. Armed with sword, lance, and short bow, and dressed in mail head to toe, and mounted on coursers trained to kick and bite, the cavalry was Wilhaiim’s pride and joy. Their predecessors had put down the sidhe, and later protected the city from necromancy gone rogue. Any family with a member in the cavalry had pride of place in unspoken flatland hierarchy, whether that family be tenant farmer or of noble blood. So long as each garrison line worked in kind and did not break, Wilhaiim’s cavalry was a powerful force indeed.

  Less so the infantry. Avani, walking amongst the waiting foot soldiers behind the Wythe’s wall of lancers, understood why young Parsnip had hope for a role in the cavalry. The infantry was a ragtag bunch, made up in large part by men and women whose experience on horseback was the family draft horse ridden from farm to market, and who hadn’t the education needed to win an officer’s medal. Some were Kingsmen in truth, trained to the sword in the royal barracks, and kitted out in bits and pieces of armor on the throne’s indulgence. They knew how to use blade and fists and carried the light, round wooden bucklers more suitable to ground war. They wore good leather boots, also at the throne’s indulgence, and simple metal sallets to protect their heads, and their weapons were in good repair. The officers amongst them wore a tunic fashioned in the king’s scarlet over their jerkins.

  The rest of the infantry, and as far as Avani could tell the vast majority, was made up of villeins drafted from Wythe’s fields and surrounding hamlets. They had farmers’ clogs if they had any shoes at all, and held pitchforks, cleavers, boning knives, and small swords for weapons. Some still wore the wide-brimmed straw hats used for working in the fields under a summer sun. Others had donned makeshift armor tacked together out of pieces of leather and fur and even burlap. A few had sacrificed dignity for safety and wore iron cook pots on their head to cover their vulnerable skulls.

  They were a disparate lot but resigned to their fate, standing silently except for the occasional cough or mutter as they waited for battle to come their way. Avani stood with them, between a farmer with a long skinning knife clutched in her hand and a grandfather with a rusted scythe gripped in his, and tried to see anything past the horse and riders ranged ahead. In the dark and the smoke with the helmet to muffle her ears, it seemed the most helpless of choices, watching and waiting for danger that was yet only distant flame and voices carried on the wind. She marveled at the courage of the men and women ranged around her; her heart was in her throat, her sword drawn though she’d meant to use her wards for defense and her hands only for healing.

  Death came from the west with trumpets and drums, the horns sounding from far too near and then one hundred and fifteen soldiers away, at the garrison next door. Wythe heralds blew an answering call, and the Kingsman in front of Avani stood in his stirrups to get a better look, leather creaking. He was a large man made larger by mail and shield.

  “Bloody buggering Skald,” he reported as calmly as if he were sighting a sudden rain cloud on an otherwise sunny day, “bastards shooting fire off their horses. No wonder the countryside went up overnight like Mabon festival come early.” He sat again in his saddle, adjusted his shield and settled his lance across his forearm. “Ready up, lads and lasses, it’s time to prove your mettle. Here they come!”

  Avani thought she could hear Morgan’s shrill voice over the groan and creak of cavalry preparing. Jacob bounced on her shoulder, croaking excitement. The grandfather on her right side kissed the blade of his scythe, tears streaming down his wrinkled cheeks, catching the orange flash of flaming arrows loosed in a volley over their heads. Someone in the crowd screamed. Someone else began to laugh nervously. The woman with the skinning knife howled, “For the king! For Wilhaiim! For Wythe!” and her call was quickly taken up on either side. Another blast of trumpets, a second volley of dea
dly arrows in the night sky, and then the cavalry plunged ahead, a first feint.

  The infantry, more screaming mob than organized contingent, hurtled after, dragging Avani and Jacob along.

  Chapter 20

  “Knotcreek, Selkirk, Black Abbey—their fields and hamlets are burning all about, my lord, they’re pinned between fire and water.”

  Mal, perched on one of the wide steps beneath Renault’s throne, rose to pour wine into one of the silver goblets always at hand. He passed the goblet over.

  “Drink up, Russel,” he ordered. “And sit, before you collapse. The steps are not so comfortable as the throne, but they’ll do for the likes of you and me.”

  Russel cupped the chalice in both hands and gulped wine. She stank of death and smoke. Her leather armor was pocked in places with new burns and her face was reddened as if she’d stood too long outside in a midsummer heat. Splashes of blood were drying on her boots and thighs. She wore a hastily knotted bandage on her sword arm.

  As she drank she stared over the edge of the chalice at the oriel where Renault waited for the sun to rise on his kingdom and better reveal their losses. Brother Tillion knelt near the king, quietly praying. Despite Mal’s misgivings Renault refused to send Tillion away. Oddly, the theist’s presence seemed to comfort Renault.

  Arthur and Parsnip, curled together, slept on the floor near one of the throne room’s gigantic hearthstones. The grate was cold. Renault had ordered the fires put out as the flames on the midnight horizon grew in size and number.

  Runners had stopped coming in from the coast hours earlier, unable to make it past flame or around the constantly moving influx of invaders. Until recently messenger birds had managed to find the castle despite desert arrows but as dawn approached the wind had grown in force until the city shook and sighed and any winged creature would surely need to find shelter out of the storm.