Dreamspinner Press Year Five Greatest Hits

by Tinnean

  Daemon was not sure if he and Iures measured time in the same way, for after several hours of moving only inches, he saw that they were getting no closer to the plaza. Amelina was still absorbed with the sights, smells, and sounds of Tristan. Never had she seen so many men, women, and children.

  “Shall we leap off this wagon and down into the mob?” Penn suggested, rising suddenly. “I grow restless and tired.”

  “You need to stay here,” Daemon told the brash man. “You must attend Amelina.”

  Penn rolled his eyes. “The Terhazien soldiers ride now in front of us, on the sides, and behind. She is well-guarded, my dear Daemon, and I will wither from boredom if I remain here another moment.”

  “Stay,” Daemon ordered gently.

  “I won’t.” Penn smiled, stretching languidly. “I am in need of diversion. Amelina, will you accompany me?”

  She was dying to see Tristan, walk the streets, move with the crowd, but she feared her father more than she desired adventure. “I cannot, for I wish to live to see another rise.”

  “I will return before you have traveled far,” Penn teased her, motioning for Daemon to follow him.

  “No,” Daemon told him, sitting up, reaching for the other man. “You don’t know your way, Penn.”

  He shrugged and moments later jumped from the wagon. Amelina lost sight of him almost immediately and lay down beside Daemon.

  “I so missed you,” she said softly, smiling at him. “And would love to see—”

  “Soon,” he soothed her.

  She took a trembling breath. “Daemon, where you come from, is there a castle such as this?”

  “There is,” he told her. “But it looks not as this does.”

  “What is the difference?”

  “We build for beauty; you build for strength. There has never been such a fortification in Narsyk.”

  “Why is that?”

  “There are so very many castles in Narsyk, as court is held not in only one place but in several.”

  “So the archlord there—”

  “The Ko-Tai,” Daemon corrected her gently. “In Narsyk there is an emperor, and he is called Ko-Tai.”

  “Oh,” she replied cheerfully, happy to be learning about Daemon’s home. “Then the Ko-Tai travels from one place to the next so he can see everyone.”

  “Aye,” Daemon said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. “It is the emperor’s greatest wish to see all whom he rules and protects. All his advisors have their own court, where the emperor may dwell as he sees fit.”

  “How wonderful,” she sighed. “I doubt our archlord sees half of the citizens of our country, and I understand that Narsyk is over three or four times the size of Rieyn.”

  Daemon didn’t answer, just looked out at the crowd.

  “Do you not miss your home, Daemon?”

  “Very much,” he said wistfully. “So very much.”

  They fell silent then as Amelina stared up at the flags strung on ropes between the hotels and at the clouds above them.

  When Gareth found his sister and Daemon, they were both fast asleep, Amelina curled into a tight ball and Daemon on his stomach, head cradled in his arms. He stood over the two of them for long moments. He had brought them something to eat and sat down beside Daemon. Without thinking, he reached out and pushed the cowl back from Daemon’s face.

  Lifting up, more asleep than awake, Daemon moved into Gareth’s lap, head on his thigh.

  “Gareth?” Amelina yawned, waking up slowly, groggy from sleeping in the sun.

  “Aye,” he grumbled, putting the roasted pork skewers and fruit in front of her. “I brought food and water for you and Daemon.”

  “How thoughtful of you,” she said honestly, her voice still hoarse with sleep. The smile she lavished on her brother was loving. “How much further to the castle?”

  “Mycah says it is more than a league away.”

  “Oh,” she gasped.

  Gareth’s eyes flicked to her face, and only then did he see where she was looking. “Amelina, I—”

  “On my life, Gareth, he’s beautiful,” she said, reaching out to touch the russet curls that framed Daemon’s face and touched his shoulders. She drank in the sight of the long lashes, curling mouth, and thick brows. His features were delicate but masculine at the same time, and his mouth… his mouth was spellbinding. “I have never seen a more—”

  “Aye,” Gareth told her, lifting her hand away, running his fingers through the curls. “He is all you say.”

  “Gareth, what—”

  The hard bump startled both Amelina and Gareth and woke Daemon up with a start.

  “By the gods!” Daemon complained loudly, sitting up and turning around to face the others.

  Gareth chuckled, covering his face so no one else could see now that Daemon was sitting up. “Remind me never to wake you. You’re as growly as an old dog.”

  Daemon smiled beneath his layers and leaned forward into Gareth’s chest.

  “Forgive me for not returning last set,” Gareth said, slipping his hand inside the cowl and around the back of Daemon’s neck. “Mycah had much to impart.”

  Daemon sighed, enjoying Gareth’s touch.

  “I liked finding you asleep in my bed, Daemon Shar. ’Tis where you belong.”

  Sliding open the door to his tiny bed chamber before dawn, Gareth had found the younger man curled up on his pallet with his face buried in his pillow. Gareth had felt his heart swell in his chest just looking at Daemon. He was content.

  “Daemon.”

  He turned to look at Amelina.

  “You look good sitting there with my brother and—”

  “I brought you some food,” Gareth interrupted her, smiling at his sister. “Is Penn in the wagon sleeping?”

  Her brows furrowed. “No, Gareth, he left.”

  “Left?” he asked her. “Left for where? When?”

  “To walk at his leisure.”

  “No,” Gareth snapped at her. “He cannot. Penn is a steward and cannot enter the castle unless he travels with his house.”

  “I had no… Gareth, I didn’t know, and—”

  “I will find him,” Daemon promised, getting up and walking the length of the wagon roof and leaping up onto a thick branch of a low-hanging tree.

  “No, Daemon,” Gareth called, standing and nearly pitching forward. Daemon made the walk look so easy, but now, as they were bouncing over cobblestones, the movement was harder than it looked. “Let me find him.”

  “You cannot,” Daemon informed him, taking a running jump and leaping from the tree to an empty balcony on the fourth floor of an inn. “You must travel at the head of the procession with Ehron and the rest of your family.”

  “Daemon,” Gareth called out to him. “I would have you ride at my—”

  “You will be only a short way further when I rejoin you,” Daemon promised, waving to Gareth before disappearing off the balcony and into the darkness of a room.

  “Gareth!”

  He turned and saw Ehron moving up beside the wagon. “Where has Daemon gone?”

  “To fetch Penn,” Gareth groaned, “for he has become lost. By the gods, can the man not rest?” he muttered, turning away from the others.

  It took longer than Gareth suspected to close in on the castle, and as the late afternoon shadows drifted around them and a cooling breeze soothed the weary travelers, there was still no sight of Daemon or Penn. Gareth was not only worried that they would not be given entrance to the castle but was also concerned for their safety in the teeming mob of people.

  As the procession left the great plaza, they began to move at a quicker pace, since those travelers other than nobility were siphoned off onto the ever-splitting side streets. As they finally approached the great ramp of Castle Addah at nightfall, the nobility entered with their retinue of troops and servants.

  Starting up the ramp that led to the drawbridge of Castle Addah itself, Gareth took a deep breath. The castle glowed with light from hun
dreds of windows and from torches along the battlements. The stone rise leveled off and became flat at the top where it met the drawbridge leading into the castle. Gareth could smell the water of the moat, but he could not see it in the darkness. He could see the outer wall of Castle Addah, though, and gasped at the sheer size of it.

  Everything about the castle seemed designed for grandeur as well as protection. The thickness of the walls, the amount of men standing guard, the construction of the gatehouses themselves, all of it built to intimidate. The fortification was like nothing the baron’s son had ever seen.

  “Castle Wharton in Crosas,” Mycah began, turning Gareth’s attention to him, “was built in much the same style as this, though there were three walls of fortification instead of two.”

  “How did you ever break her defenses?”

  “We destroyed it from the outside in,” he squinted at Gareth. “Have you never heard the details of our final victory?”

  “No I have not, but would enjoy hearing you recount such.”

  Mycah nodded because he could hear the sincerity in Gareth’s tone. “You know when we first went to Crosas, all of us had thought that victory would be swift. We were in grave error.”

  “Indeed,” Ehron echoed the man’s sentiment and shared a knowing look with Mycah.

  Ehron remembered the confidence with which he had led his men only to find it crushed when the Army of Rieyn found Crosas a country covered with snow, ice, jagged peaks, and hard, frozen ground. To those not skilled in the ways of enduring eternal winter, the endless days of howling squall proved debilitating and fatal. Blizzards, sleet, hail, frost and icy rain filled both days and nights. Each day was dark, cold, wet, and freezing from dawn to dusk with the sky a constant gray in every direction and the land forever a desolate, blinding white. The only perceptible change in this formidable weather occurred when snow turned to frigid rain and covered the land in slick, hard ice. For the southern soldiers of Rieyn, and especially for the First Legion fighting in the mountains under Ehron Terhazien, the climate and terrain were as hard to fight as the Crosan army. Some of Ehron’s men went mad while Ehron himself nearly succumbed to the utter hopelessness of his task until he had met Daemon. The man had both boosted his spirits and shown him how to revere even so hostile a land.

  “Speak,” Ehron urged Mycah.

  “It was Ram who began the victory,” Mycah said softly. “The Fourth Legion had slowly pushed the Crosan army down out of the mountains of Esher to the interior of the country: first to the fields of Arca, then on to Castle Tilone and finally to Castle Wharton itself, the stronghold of the resistance in the city of Theane. Ram was to hold the opposing army there using his legion as bait, until the rest of the Rieynan forces joined them. He allowed the Fourth Legion to become completely encircled without chance of escape as he waited for reinforcements. As he heard the rejoicing of Olerius’ men, I am certain, though he will never admit to such, that he was terrified that he had miscalculated the arrival of the other legions. As he looked across the frozen tundra and saw a wave of Crosan reinforcements approaching from the east, I am certain that he prayed to the gods for deliverance.”

  “Deliverance?” Ehron asked with an arched eyebrow.

  Mycah smiled evilly, “Am I not to be considered deliverance?”

  Ehron rolled his eyes. “Speak on, my brother craves this tale.”

  “His triari answered his prayers when he reported that the reason the Crosan troops were making such haste toward Castle Wharton was the arrival of my legion, the second.”

  Gareth had actually heard that part: that Mycah, leading the second legion, who had been fighting first on the plains of Reve and then in Teh, had finally broken through the line of defense there and was bringing the Second Legion east. Mycah had joined forces with Hektar Prahna, who had brought the Fifth Legion north, overland and together they were driving the Crosans back into the interior toward Ram. Akasus Jaan, in command of the Third, arrived at Wharton a month later, having come from the northern tip of Crosas, across the country following Ram. All five legions had attacked from opposite directions to ensure success. Nictorus, in command of his own forces, the standing army at Appogia, did not join the others at Wharton but stayed instead at Baelocke holding at Castle Creolan Frae, to the West of Wharton, to guard against possible attack from Caruvia, the supporter of Crosas and their neighbor across the Frozen Sea. If Caruvia saw fit to send reinforcements of men and weapons to their embattled ally, the warlord would be there to guard the flank of the other two legions. No one in Rieyn had even known of Caruvia before the war but after ten years of supplies coming by ship then carried through underground tunnels to their enemy, they came to know the caretakers of the Crosan army. It was understood that a marriage allied the two countries but nothing else was known.

  Finally, the Crosan army found themselves surrounded in their fortress by five Rieynan legions. The Warlord of Rieyn felt assured of a quick, decisive victory. It was maddening when Castle Wharton held against all siege for another two years.

  It was not until Mycah Ilen moved the Second Legion to the coastal town of Lorn and was finally successful in destroying the supply lines coming from Caruvia that the castle finally fell. Mycah seized all underground tunnels and arrested and executed all the men moving provisions through them. Even without hope of aid, the soldiers at Wharton would have fought on had Sagaso Fjohr not been successful in bribing a small band of Crosan dissidents into poisoning the castle’s main well. Without water, there could be no more war. The Crosan army surrendered and the war of ten seasons was over. The Crosan flag was set on fire at the highest turret of Castle Wharton and the drawbridge was slowly lowered.

  “I remember the day the war was over,” Mycah said, his voice strained suddenly. “It was a blessed one until we entered the castle.”

  Ehron nodded in agreement. He too had thought he would be celebrating long into the night, but the reveling was left to the men because after the siege of Castle Wharton, the army that they found inside the fortress of iron and stone was not made of the hard men that had held off the forces of Rieyn for ten years. The men they found were ready to be conquered and grateful that they would be fed and clothed. Even those who were still too proud to admit defeat refused to fight on. Too weary, starving, and cold, they fell on their swords in the hundreds. Ram had gone to speak with one of Strad Olerius’ regents the night before the man committed ritual suicide. He found that he knew relatively little about his adversary as the man spoke to him of Strad Olerius. A cruel and sadistic ruler, the king of Crosas had used everyone to further his own ambitions. The regent told Ram that he was ready to die, feeling that it was just punishment for following a monster that led them into a war because of his pride.

  “War is a horror,” Mycah told Gareth. “Believe no other truth.”

  Gareth leaned back in the saddle and prayed quickly that his country would never see another. He never wanted the beautiful castle they now entered to fall.

  As they rode beneath the second gatehouse and out into the inner bailey, they were greeted by a wave of cheering, the passage opening to reveal a vast lantern-lit courtyard. The grounds were covered in flower petals that had rained from above, thrown by citizens of Rieyn that lined the battlements.

  As Gareth looked up, he saw in front of him, on a raised dais, the archlord of Rieyn, Cerus Tapal. Seated behind him were his wife, the lady Faroyan Tapal, his consort, Phylsytah Kos, and his son out of his consort, Alcoban. His daughter had yet to join her parents as she was riding with Odessa further behind. Standing beside Cerus Tapal were Nictorus Troen, the Warlord of Rieyn, and his son Ram, as well as Janah Ilen, Mycah’s father, the overlord.

  On the ground beneath the dais, standing on the red carpet, were the barons and their families, the maxims and their families, and the regents from the southern provinces, from Scerce and Man Ruan, who had come to pay their respects. They had arrived days earlier from their long journey. There were hundreds of servants, row afte
r row, all on hands and knees, exhibiting the proper respect for the great powers of Rieyn.

  Being at the very front of the grand procession, Mycah stopped before the dais. All those behind him were forced to fan out to the right and left along the sides of the inner ward. Gareth joined his family as Mycah dismounted.

  The prefect was about to step forward when he remembered Ujhar. If anyone walked past the warhorse on their way to the dais, they would be bitten, kicked, or worse. His mount was already restless and tired; the only thing that had kept him in check all day was Mycah holding him firm. Leaving him to stand alone was madness. He would lash out savagely at the next human or animal that neared him. As Mycah turned, though, he saw that Ehron’s consul was suddenly there, stepping as though out of the night, waiting to take the reins.

  For whatever reason, and Mycah knew not what, his great beast of a warhorse adored the consul. Whenever the two legions were together, only Daemon could enter the enclosure where Ujhar was and brush him or ride him bareback. Mycah would watch his murderous horse follow Daemon like a dog and wonder why. In that moment though, the how did not matter, only the fact that Daemon was there did. No one else could have allowed Mycah to walk to the archlord, and he knew it.

  “You have my thanks, Daemon Shar.”

  Daemon dipped his head slightly to the prefect and took the reins that were passed him without a word. Mycah immediately strode toward the dais, toward the archlord, and when he passed his father, he saw the look of absolute glowing pride on the face of Janah Ilen.

  Mycah took the stairs quickly and dropped to one knee in front of the leader of Rieyn.

  “May the gods praise you, Mycah Ilen,” Cerus boomed out, “for all the great and glorious services you have bestowed upon us.”

  “It was my duty, my lord,” he said quietly, still not raising his head.

  “Your duty was bravely borne, and we are honored that you have come to grace us with your presence.”

  When Mycah stood, nothing could be heard above the roar of the crowd. The cheering grew louder as he turned and waved to everyone. In that moment, Cerus looked at the man who would be overlord and smiled. It was done, for Ram had been mobbed in the street when he came through as well. It had taken a command from him, from the archlord, to quiet the din at the approach of this procession. The country loved Ram, and the country loved Mycah. The seats of power would move from fathers to sons seamlessly.