The commander’s mailed fist sent the Corenwalder slave sprawling to the ground. He snarled, “I’ll say what your orders are, you dog.”
The slave stood to his feet. Aidan noticed with great admiration that he didn’t even rub the cheek the Pyrthen had struck. “The general,” the slave began. “The general’s orders—you were to set me free when I had led you to Sinking Canyons. I have served him these three years.”
The commander laughed a cruel, mocking laugh. “Did you really think the general would set you free? You? A traitor to your own people?”
“My treachery served the general well enough,” said the slave.
The commander shrugged. “That may be. But the general thinks no more highly of you than your people, the ones you betrayed, must think of you. Neither do I, when it comes to it.”
“But the general’s orders …” the slave began, a little more hoarsely.
“The general’s orders were to kill you once we got to Sinking Canyons.” From the pleased look on the commander’s face, it was obvious he was telling the truth. “One never knows when a traitor will turn again.”
Despairing, the Corenwalder fell to his knees as the Pyrthen slid from his horse and unsheathed his sword. “I am betrayed,” he moaned.
The Pyrthen raised his sword and spoke. “It is no treachery to betray a traitor.”
Before the Pyrthen’s sword fell on the slave’s wretched neck, the canyon walls echoed with the voice of Errol, bellowing the name of his long-lost son like a war cry: “Ma-a-ay-n-a-a-a-ard!”
The old man appeared from his hiding place and closed on the Pyrthen with his broadsword raised above his head. He brought his weapon down on the seam of the Pyrthen’s black armor, where the shoulder plate met the breastplate. Ten Pyrthens were off their horses before Errol freed his blade for a second stroke. A quick, vicious thrust from an officer’s sword sent Errol to the ground. Arrows whistling down from the canyon rim felled a dozen horsemen. A second volley of arrows dropped a dozen more Pyrthens before the first wave of Corenwalder swordsmen fell on the enemy, making it impossible for the archers to go on shooting.
The Battle of Sinking Canyons was terrible. The Pyrthens were ruthless and efficient fighters. They hurt and killed their share of Corenwalders. But they were hugely outnumbered by the militiamen who appeared from the canyon’s every crack and crevice, like ants boiling out of the hidden holes of an anthill. Corenwalders circling around from the canyon mouth sealed off the invaders’ only escape route, but still the Pyrthens wouldn’t surrender. Three or four Pyrthens burst through the lines, dodged the archers’ arrows, and galloped to safety. The rest spilled their lifeblood on the sands of Sinking Canyons.
* * *
Soon after the fighting broke out, Maynard dragged his father to the safety of a small cave. For the slave who had led the Pyrthens to Sinking Canyons was, of course, Maynard, the second of Errol’s sons, who had once tried to pass himself off as the Wilderking in the Feechiefen Swamp. As the battle raged outside, Maynard held his dying father in the cool darkness and wept for the years he had wasted, for the sins he had committed against the father who had traded his own life for the life of a son who betrayed him.
While his life was ebbing away, Errol opened his eyes. When he saw his son, a faint smile flickered across his face. “Maynard,” he said. In spite of his weakness, the voice that spoke the name of his son was so strong with love and tenderness it seemed to bear away all the hurt that had passed between the two of them. “Maynard, you were never meant to be a slave.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
An End and a Beginning
The Pyrthens were coming. Surely they would be coming after those few escaped horsemen returned to the main body of the army. The Pyrthens knew where the rebels were, knew how many they were, and knew that they were enemies.
There was no time to bury the dead with the honors the fighting men would have liked to accord to their fallen brothers. They placed the dead in tunnels—the Corenwalders in one chamber, the Pyrthens in another—and sealed them in.
The Errolsons buried their father in his own grave, out of the canyon in the plain above; they felt sure he would prefer to be buried in more solid ground than that of the canyons. Aidan, Percy, Jasper, and Brennus stood around their father’s grave while Aidan offered up a prayer of thanks for their father’s life. Maynard hung back a few steps, wanting to honor his father but not sure how welcome he would be among his brothers.
By the time Aidan had finished his prayer, Maynard was crying violent tears. He squatted on the ground, his bony arms folded around his knees, and rocked back and forth on his heels. His hoarse wailing echoed across the plain and off the canyon walls a hundred strides away.
Brennus opened his eyes and glared at his brother. “A little late for that, isn’t it, Maynard?”
“Brennus …” Aidan began, reproach in his voice.
“Don’t ‘Brennus’ me, Aidan. Does that howling do any honor to Father? It’s no more than the self-pity of a son who broke Father’s heart a thousand times over. A son who brought the enemy to our front porch, who betrayed thirty-six hundred men, the least of whom is more worthy than he. The son who was the direct cause of Father’s death. No, I don’t see how those tears honor Father at all.”
Maynard’s tears of shame and sorrow flowed all the more. His wailing grew louder, shriller.
“Brennus,” said Aidan quietly, “if you wish to honor Father, then love what Father loved.”
Brennus stomped off without another word, waving a hand behind him. Percy and Jasper weren’t so violent as Brennus in their reactions. But they weren’t yet ready to receive Maynard into the bosom of the family either. They, too, wandered off in the direction of the canyons.
Aidan squatted down beside his older brother and put his arm around him until he stopped his wailing. The two of them walked to the rim of the canyon, still not speaking, and sat with their feet dangling from the edge. They watched the daily activities of thirty-five hundred men, below, getting on with their lives. Men were bathing their wounds in the wash pool, starting fires to cook their evening meals, talking in little groups.
To their left, the sun was going down, the brilliant purples and pinks of its dying light magnifying the colors that swirled in the canyon walls.
They sat that way for five minutes or more before Maynard finally spoke. “His love haunted me, you know. All the way across the ocean it haunted me.” He watched a pebble bounce down the side of the cliff.
“False love I could handle. Flattery, using people, even being used—I understood all that. That made sense to me. But unconditional love was the last thing I wanted, from Father or anybody else. Because to receive unconditional love is to know somebody loves you more than you deserve to be loved.
“I don’t mean Father ever meant to make me feel unworthy. I don’t even think he knew he loved me more than I deserved. I just mean a love that intense can’t help but make you see your own selfishness.
“So I spent my life trying to prove I deserved more than I was getting. That’s why I tried to pass myself off as the Wilderking. Who’s more deserving than a king?
“When that didn’t work, I went to Pyrth. I had something they wanted, and I thought they would honor me for it. I could help give them victory over Corenwald, the one kingdom they had never been able to conquer. I could come home a victor, not groveling for Father’s forgiveness but making him grovel for mine.
“But the Pyrthens didn’t love me. They broke me. They made me a slave, not a general. Then, when it was too late, I understood I needed unconditional love more than I needed anything in the world.”
He began to weep again but softly this time, not violently as before. “I was sure I had finally put myself beyond Father’s love. But after all those years, after all that hurt, it finally tracked me down. And it saved me.”
“He never slackened in his love for you,” Aidan said after a long silence. “I can tell you that.” He looked d
own into the canyon, which was now growing dark. “And now he’s gone. I can’t get my mind around it. It’s as if we woke up one morning back home and found that the River Tam was gone. Some things you just figure will always be there.”
He waved his hand out over the canyon. “You know, a village used to stand there.”
Maynard pointed down at the canyon floor. “Down there?” he asked, surprised to hear that anyone would put a village in the bottom of Sinking Canyons.
“No,” said Aidan, pointing again. “Out there. It stood right out there, in a spot that’s now a hundred feet in the air. It was solid ground then, and the villagers built solid little cabins on it. They cooked their suppers, raised their children, visited with their neighbors. On nights like this, they stepped out their doors and watched the sun go down.
“And then the earth opened up and swallowed their little village. Which goes to show, you’d better be careful what you put your faith in. The things of earth look mighty solid, mighty permanent. But then they go away.”
The diggings were just visible in the failing light. “We found part of that village, by the way,” Aidan said, lest Maynard think he was making it up, or maybe speaking figuratively. “Dug it up with shovels. The name of that solid little village was right there on the gate stone: New Vezey.”
Maynard got a strange look on his face. “Did you say New Vezey?”
“That’s right,” said Aidan. “We think it was an old feechie settlement.”
Maynard paused, deep in thought. When he finally spoke, he spoke slowly, carefully. “The Pyrthens have a saying: “Until New Vezey rises, the Empire will stand.”
Aidan looked perplexed at the odd saying.
“It’s like saying the Pyrthen Empire will stand until pigs fly or until the stars fall from the sky,” Maynard explained. “It means the empire will stand forever.”
Aidan shook his head. “I still don’t understand.”
“There’s a legend people tell on the continent about the Vezians, or Vezeyfolk. They were a warrior tribe that lived in a broad river valley they called Vezey Land.”
“Veziland,” Aidan muttered, remembering the inscription on the coin that Arliss found.
“When the Pyrthen empire first rose to power,” Maynard said, “the Vezeyfolk were one of the tribes they conquered. Vezeyfolk were driven out of Vezey Land, and their king, Halverd the Antlered, led them into the country that came to be called Halverdy. Which is where our people came from.”
“The Halverdens started out as Vezeyfolk?” Aidan asked. “I never knew this.” Indeed, even the most learned of Corenwald’s lore masters were a little hazy on the history of the Halverdens before they came to Corenwald.
“All that part is historical fact,” Maynard continued. “But then there’s the legend of New Vezey. According to the legend, King Halverd sent a select group of Vezeyfolk over the ocean to establish a colony called New Vezey, just in case they put them on ships and waved good-bye, and that was the last anybody ever saw of the New Vezians. They were shipwrecked on an island somewhere. Then, according to the legend, the earth just opened up and swallowed them.
“Just fairy-tale talk, of course. Just a legend. That’s why the Pyrthens say their empire will stand until New Vezey rises again, because there never was any New Vezey.”
“But there was,” Aidan said, his voice rising with excitement. “There was a New Vezey, and we found it. Vezeyfolk …” Aidan muttered. “Feechiefolk … Vezey … feechie …” He remembered Bayard’s misquoted rhyme: “‘Fallen are the Vezeyfolk …’” He remembered Bayard’s sudden realization that sent him running for the library.
“The feechiefolk are Vezeyfolk,” Maynard said, the realization slowly dawning on him. “They’re descended from the lost colony.”
“Yes!” said Aidan, nearly shouting. “Descended from the same people we’re descended from. That explains why we found a Vezilander coin in the diggings. Their Harvo Hornhead is our Halverd the Antlered. That explains why they speak our language.”
The realization made him almost giddy. “The feechies are our people, Maynard! We’re one tribe!”
“The empire stands until New Vezey rises again,” Maynard quoted. “So the Pyrthens have better reason to hate us than they know: We are New Vezians, together with the feechiefolk. If only we can rise again.”
Aidan understood a new truth about the Wilderking prophecy: The Wilderking wouldn’t merely unite the feechies and the civilizers into a single kingdom. He would reunite them, two parts of a single tribe that had been separated for three centuries.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Preparations
Days passed, and the expected attack by the Pyrthens didn’t come. News of the invasion soon came, however, and it wasn’t good. Tambluff had fallen. Much of the city had burned, and Tambluff Castle was now inhabited by Pyrthen officers.
Rather than allow the Pyrthens to besiege Tambluff and subject its inhabitants to starvation and disease, the Corenwalder army had given the Pyrthens battle outside the city walls, led by King Darrow and Prince Steren. The Corenwalder army was scattered to the four winds. King Darrow was killed in the battle. It was believed Prince Steren survived—or King Steren now, if indeed he did survive.
“They will surely be coming now,” said Aidan to his brothers. “And they will bring the main body of their force. This is the only army they have left to fight against.”
To Aidan’s surprise, however, the Pyrthen army wasn’t the first army to arrive at Sinking Canyons. Word had gone out among Corenwald’s scattered warriors that resistance to the Pyrthen occupation would center on Sinking Canyons and Aidan Errolson’s army. They streamed in for a day and a half, in groups of ten, fifteen, fifty. Sometimes whole units came. Civilians came, men who had no part in the battle at Tambluff but had heard about Sinking Canyons and wanted to play a role. Some came believing Steren was king. Others came believing Aidan would be king, believing they were among the first recruits of the Wilderking’s army. Indeed, many of these stragglers suspected the Sinking Canyons army would be mostly feechies.
With every new group that came, Aidan studied the faces, hoping Steren was among them. And at last, the fourth morning after the Tambluff battle, Steren rode up at the head of a cavalry unit, a dashing figure on a black horse.
Aidan bowed before his old friend. “King Steren! You are welcome to Sinking Canyons. We are yours to command.”
Steren leaped from his horse and, pulling Aidan to his feet, embraced him as a brother.
“I am sorry to hear about your father,” said Aidan. “We are all sorry.”
“Thank you,” Steren said. “He was beautiful, Aidan. I wish you could have seen him on that last day. He was first in the attack and last in the retreat. He was worthy of Corenwald that day, Aidan, and I shall always remember him that way, astride his black horse, tilting toward the enemy.”
“Then I will remember him that way too,” said Aidan.
“The Pyrthens aren’t far behind me,” said Steren. “They’ll start arriving later today. They may attack as early as tomorrow. I need to review the troops immediately so we can prepare for battle. How many men do we have?”
“Seven or eight thousand foot soldiers,” Aidan answered. “Then there’s your cavalry unit and a second cavalry unit we’ve cobbled together from individual horsemen who have arrived in the last two days and men riding horses captured from the Pyrthens.”
“Seven or eight thousand,” Steren mused. “The enemy is probably twice that at least. Well then, we shall make do with what we have.”
The rest of the day was spent in preparation for the coming battle. Scouts gave the officers a tour of the canyons’ terrain. King Steren organized the new recruits into makeshift units and assigned them to officers. Late in the afternoon, the scouts at the canyon rim reported the arrival of the first Pyrthen units on the north side of the canyon. The Pyrthens kept coming well into the night.
Outside the tunnel complex, the five Errols
ons and Dobro sat in a circle with King Steren. There were no fires on the canyon floor that night. Men circled around fires would have made easy targets for the Pyrthen archers, who were surely in position already at the north rim of the canyon. The Corenwalder scouts on the south rim could see hundreds and hundreds of Pyrthen campfires flickering across the plain on the other side.
Aidan was explaining his plan to the others. “We could hold these canyons forever if we had to,” he said. “Archers can’t really hurt us. Any archer who was in position to shoot down on us from the rim would be very exposed himself. We could pick them off like flies.
“They’d have to come in after us, down to the canyon floor. And they couldn’t roust us out that way even if they had a hundred thousand men. We know every crevice of these canyons and every hideyhole. They’d be fighting an invisible enemy. We could ambush them from a different spot every day.”
“They could starve us out,” Brennus observed.
“We could attack their supply trains, carry off their food,” Aidan said. “We could eat better than they do.”
“Fine,” Steren said. “We can hold the canyons. Then what? The Pyrthens have Corenwald’s army contained in Sinking Canyons. As long as they get to keep the rest of Corenwald, I think they’ll be happy to make that trade.”
“But don’t you see?” Aidan said. “From here we could wreak havoc on the Pyrthens. Their supply train will have to stretch from Middenmarsh all the way to Tambluff. Our raiding parties could hit them anywhere on the Western Road, then beat it back here to the canyons. We can organize resistance in the villages, create a whole country of insurgents. Eventually we could win Corenwald back.”
“Eventually?” Steren said. “Eventually? Aidan, you’re still thinking like an outlaw: Hide out, bide your time, wait for something good to happen. Eventually!” He nearly spat the word. “Meanwhile, our people are living under the oppression of the Pyrthens. That’s no way for my people to live, Aidan. I am king of Corenwald. I won’t lead an insurgency in my own kingdom. We’re not a band of outlaws. We’re an army. We’re the army of Corenwald.”
The Way of the Wilderking Page 15
