by Fire
Lynan felt almost too tense to think, and he wondered if this was how his father had felt before a battle. Perhaps, he thought, but Elynd Chisal never had to worry about the consequences of attacking his own people.
He heard riders approach, and looked up to see Kumul, Ager, and Jenrosa.
“You wanted to see us, lad?” Kumul asked.
Lynan was not sure how to say what he had to say to them. They knew—they must have known—what would happen once they crossed into the east, but how ready were they for the reality?
“We have made contact with Areava’s army,” he said at last. “They are only three or four hours’ march to the east of our position. Korigan is preparing our forces to attack.”
He let the words sink in. Ager and Jenrosa seemed frightened, and Kumul’s face had paled almost to the color of his own skin.
“Well, we knew it would come,” Kumul said huskily.
“It has to, my friend,” Lynan said, wishing he had words that could make it easier for all of them. “I know no other way to end this, not now.”
Kumul nodded stiffly, then said, “My lancers are ready. They’ll be no match for the knights of the Twenty Houses, but against any other regiment they’ll do fine.”
“Jenrosa?”
Jenrosa breathed deeply. “As Kumul says, it had to come.”
“And your magic? What does it say to you?”
Jenrosa had told no one except Kumul about her dream of Silona, not even Lasthear. “Sorrow, and ...” She closed her mouth. She could not tell Lynan what she had seen. The dream might have meant nothing.
“And?” Lynan urged.
“If my magic is true, you will soon have the Key of the Sword around your neck.”
Lynan’s eyes widened in surprise. “You saw this?”
“I think so. I think this is what my vision showed me.”
“And not the Key of the Scepter?” Ager said.
Jenrosa shook her head. “I did not see that.”
“What can it mean?” Ager asked.
“I do not know.”
“It is enough,” Lynan said. “To win the Key of the Sword, we must win the battle.”
“I cannot say,” Jenrosa said, answering Lynan’s unspoken question.
“Ager, do you ride with your clan?” Lynan asked.
“Of course.”
“Then stay with me in the center with Gudon and the Red Hands. Kumul, I want your lancers in reserve. The enemy will be expecting horse archers, though not in the number we have. The lancers will be an extra shock to them, perhaps the deciding one. The gods go with us.”
They silently regarded each other, each of them thinking something more should be said, but none knowing what it was. Kumul was the first to move, wheeling his horse around and galloping back to his lancers. Jenrosa followed him.
Ager gently tapped his horse’s flanks, then suddenly reined in. “Lynan, are you prepared for what comes after the battle? Because I’m not.”
Lynan did not know and wanted to answer truthfully, but said instead: “Yes.”
“Good,” Ager said, and then was gone as well.
Lynan felt nauseous and tired, and that somehow he was not only betraying the land of his birth but his friends as well.
“What’s that?” Edaytor asked, pointing back the way he and Olio had just come.
At first Olio did not see anything out of the ordinary. The dawn sky was a pale, washed-out blue, and in the distance he could see tiny pennants fluttering from the masts of ships in the harbor. Then he noticed a ruddiness in the skyline above the old quarter. “I don’t know.”
For a moment they stood there watching, and then at the same time they saw the lick of yellow flame leap from one roof.
“Oh, no,” Olio murmured.
Edaytor gripped his arm. “Go back to the palace and sound the alarm, your Highness. I will go with all speed to the Theurgias of Fire and Water. They can help.” Edaytor ran off with all the speed his large body would allow him.
Olio started running toward the palace when he heard the alarm. One of the guards must already have seen the flames.
He stopped. There was nothing more he could do there. He was needed in the old quarter. He turned around and ran back the other way.
The spasm came so quickly that Areava could not help the groan that escaped from her lips.
“Damn!” she shouted, surprising Doctor Trion and the midwife who hovered nearby.
“Your Majesty, are you all right?”
“Another contraction,” she said breathlessly. And then another wave of pain came. She pressed her lips together, but it was no good. She groaned again.
The midwife waited until the contractions had finished, then explored the queen again. Areava was so exhausted by the effort of controlling herself that she barely felt her.
“Two fingers’ span. Good.”
“What’s best?” Areava asked her.
“A span of around eight fingers. Then your daughter will be ready to come out.”
“Eight fingers! I have to wait for you to be able to shove—”
“Madam, please!” the midwife implored. “I do not shove—”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
One of her maids stood beside her and placed a damp cloth against her brow. It helped.
“Is the pain really so bad?” she asked patronizingly.
“Are you a virgin or something?” Areava said shortly.
The maid blushed.
“God, you are,” Areava breathed, and ridiculously felt like laughing. “And who’s ringing those bloody bells?”
* * *
As soon as Galen received the message from Sendarus, he turned the regiments of knights around and returned to the main portion of the army. They got there just over an hour later, when dew still covered much of the ground. He saw that the army was being deployed, facing west across a wide, mainly flat plain. Archers lined the rise midway across the plain, and the infantry were arrayed into loose columns behind them and were in the process of marching left and right along the line to form the flanks. Some cavalry was already positioned on the far left flank. Galen found Sendarus in deep conversation with Charion, and was pleased to see they were not shouting at each other as they had been for most of the time since leaving Daavis.
“What has happened?” he asked as soon as he reached them.
“A few scouts on our left flank failed to report in,” Sendarus said. “I sent a larger scouting party to find out what was happening.”
“And they haven’t come back either,” Galen guessed.
Sendarus nodded and pointed to the west. Galen could see clouds of birds winging their way. “Whatever’s stirred them up is very large. Salokan?”
Sendarus shrugged. “How could he have made such a wide detour without us detecting him? It must be him, but I don’t understand how he’s done it.”
“It may not be Salokan at all,” Charion said seriously.
“What do you mean?” Galen asked.
“Her Highness thinks it may be a second Haxus force, coming in from the Oceans of Grass.”
“Mercenaries? This Rendle that Areava was so angry about?”
“Possibly.”
“If it is, do you think he has been in touch with Salokan?”
“No way of knowing. If he has, we can probably expect him to be bearing down on us already, but whether to hit us on the flank or to join Rendle before making a combined assault, we don’t know.” Sendarus licked his lips. “There is another possibility.”
“Which is?” Galen asked.
Sendarus and Charion spoke at the same time. “Lynan.”
A whole street seemed to be on fire. Flames belched into the air as houses built from nothing but old wood and thatch ignited. Screaming people were jammed into the street, some of them on fire, some of them bleeding from burns and wounds caused by falling timber. Children slipped and if not caught up right away by their parents were trampled underneath by the panicking mob.
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Olio tried to force his way though the mass to get to the stricken, but could make no headway. He grabbed one man by the arm and showed the Key of Power. “I am Prince Olio!” he shouted. “Help me get these people out of the way!” But the man shook his arm free and fled as fast as his legs could carry him. He tried with another man, and then a woman, but their reaction was the same as the first.
“God’s death!” he shouted. “Will no one help me?”
The mob swept by him, forcing him against a wall. He heard a crack above him and looked up to see a roof smoldering, and then all at once catch fire. Flames seemed to leap over his head to the roof of the house on the opposite side of the street, and it, too, went up in flames. The heat was unbearable. He retreated to the end of the street, ducked in a doorway and waited for the mob to pass him by. When he emerged, he found that a handful of men and women had also stayed their ground, desperate to do something but not knowing what. He went to the nearest, a woman, and showed the emblem of his authority.
“Where is the nearest well?” he asked.
“A block away!” she said. “But we have no buckets to get water!”
“Make sure there is no one left inside these houses,” he shouted, pointing to all those homes that were still free of the fire. “And collect as many buckets and pans as you can—anything that will carry water!”
The woman nodded, passed the word to another, and then another. In a short time there was a gang of about twenty people, all with a container of some kind.
“Form a chain to the well. We need to douse with water all the houses in the next street so the fires doesn’t spread.”
Other people came to see what was happening and, without being asked, joined in, but in a few minutes Olio could see their efforts were wasted. They could not get to the other end of the street where the fire was still spreading, and they could not carry enough water at this end to make any difference. The fire was leapfrogging houses now, sparks blowing from roof to roof, shining in the dark, smoky sky like miniature shooting stars.
“It’s no good!” Olio told them. “Get to the harbor. Carry any who cannot get there themselves!”
At first some people ignored him, desperately trying to save their homes, but eventually the heat from the flames even drove them away.
Olio found an old man with only one leg who was struggling to keep up with the crowd; he was leaning against a corner post, bent over and gagging. Olio hooked an arm around the man’s shoulders and helped him along.
“Thankin‘ ya, sir,” the man said between bouts of coughing. “Thankin’ ya.”
A little way on they came across a small child, crying, standing by herself under the lintel of an open door. Olio shouted to a passing youth to take the man, then went to the child.
“What’s your name?” he asked, picking her up.
“I can’t find my mumma,” she said.
“We’ll find her, darling. What’s your name?”
“Where’s my mumma?”
The contractions were now less than two minutes apart. Areava was covered in a film of sweat. Her nightgown and the sheets on her bed were soaked, and the smell of them made her want to gag.
“A span of five fingers,” the midwife said.
“Find Olio,” she said desperately. “Find my brother. Find Prince Olio.”
“There is nothing he can do for you, my lady,” the midwife said, trying to sound stern.
“He has the Key of the Heart,” she said. “The Healing Key. He can help the baby.”
“Your Majesty—”
“Find him!” Areava screamed, and the midwife scurried off. A second midwife took her place and curtsied.
“I don’t believe this,” Areava moaned, then tensed as the contractions started again.
The first flight of arrows fell short, and even as the second flight was on its way Lynan was suddenly surrounded by twenty of the Red Hands. This time the arrows found targets. One of the Red Hands screamed and fell from her horse. Lynan heard other screams nearby.
“Spread out!” he ordered his bodyguard. They ignored him. “Listen to me, we’re just making a bigger target for them! Now spread out!”
It was not until Gudon repeated the order that they reluctantly moved away from their charge. Another flight of arrows fell among them. Ager galloped over to him. “Where are they shooting from?”
Lynan pointed to a rise about three hundred paces away.
He could clearly see a line of archers dressed in Charion’s colors. “They belong to a Hume regiment,” he said.
Ager squinted through his one good eye. “God, they’re hopeful. They’re shooting at their maximum range. Let them waste their arrows, I say.”
Lynan agreed. Gudon and the Red Hands were spread out in a line to his left, and on his right extended Ager’s warriors. A hundred paces behind him, Kumul had drawn up his lancers into two wedges. Farther on his flanks the rest of the Chett army were still getting into their starting positions for the attack.
Someone on the other side must have realized the archers were wasting their time because the volleys ceased. The ground in between was sparsely coated in arrow shafts sticking out of the ground.
Over the next few minutes riders came to Lynan telling him that their respective banners were ready. Lastly came Korigan. She reined in beside Lynan and Ager.
“Everyone is in position,” she said.
“Give the word, then.”
“Do you want my people to take that ridge first?” Ager asked. “I could clear those archers away in five minutes.”
“We don’t know what’s waiting for you behind the ridge. We go as planned. Flank movements first.”
Korigan nodded and rode off, and for a while the only sound anyone could hear was the beating of her horse’s hooves on the plain. When they stopped, there was a moment of complete silence. There was no wind, and all the birds had long fled.
A cry that sounded like the wailing of an angry grass wolf pierced the air. The cry was taken up by twenty thousand throats, and the ground seemed to rumble like thunder.
“I stopped the archers,” Charion said, embarrassed at her own troops panicking like that.
“How many arrows have they left?”
“Half a dozen each, but I’ve ordered up more.” She pointed to a supply wagon being quickly trundled up the ridge by hand.
“Let’s hope the enemy don’t charge in the center first before they’re restocked,” Galen said dourly.
Charion glared at him, but Sendarus held up a hand to each of them. “No time for this. Has anyone here fought with the Chetts?” Both commanders shook their head. “I don’t suppose anyone here has fought against them?”
“If they had, you don’t really think they’d admit it, do you?” Charion said. “The only people to fight against the Chetts in the last two generations have been slavers, mercenaries, and troops from Haxus.”
“What tactics do the Chetts use?”
“Until now, small-scale tactics,” Charion said. “The Chetts have never fielded an army. The largest clan can put up three or four thousand fighters, given time, but no one has ever seen this many warriors before.”
“And never one under the command of a Rosetheme,” Galen added, the contempt clear in his voice.
“You are sure that pennant represents the Key of Union?”
“What else?”
“But they are all horse archers,” Sendarus said, changing the subject. He did not want to think about being in battle against his own wife’s brother, no matter how much she hated him. “So if we keep our discipline, keep our lines intact, we can wear them down.”
“And when the time is right, charge with our own cavalry,” Galen agreed.
“That’s the hard part,” Charion said. “Knowing when to counterattack. The Chetts are good at fooling their enemies into foolish charges, then isolating and destroying them.”
Suddenly the air was rent with the most terrifying cry they had ever heard.
“At least,” Charion added, repressing a shiver, “that’s how the Chetts behaved before they had an army. Who knows how they fight now?”
It was close to midday, but smoke hung so thickly over the city and its harbor that it could have been midnight. Dark figures moved like ghosts through the gloom, lost and aimless. Olio did his best to help organize refugees into groups that came from the same street or the same block so that families could be reunited, but the sheer number of people fleeing the fire made it impossible.
By now magickers from the all the theurgia were present to help, the most successful being those from the Theurgia of Fire—their most powerful spells were able to impede the progress of the fire by lowering its temperature. Mostly the magickers assisted by adding extra bodies to the long water chains that led from the harbor to the worst affected areas of the old quarter. Priests were everywhere, lending a hand and consoling where they could. Royal Guards arrived to help keep control of the crowds, and to distribute food and wine sent down from the palace’s own stores.
The fire had not spread much farther north than the old quarter, where the buildings were uniformly old and badly maintained. Homes beyond the original city gates were spaced farther apart and there were servants and other workers to help landowners defend their property.
Still, it was a larger disaster than Kendra had experienced for many decades; some were saying the worst since the storms that had devastated the whole city one summer day a generation before the late Queen Usharna was born.
Tired and dirty and ragged as he was, Olio was recognized by some members of the Royal Guard and immediately assigned an escort to take him back to the palace. At first he refused to go, but when a brazen cleric pointed out he was more a distraction than a help, he reluctantly left.
