by Ellyn, Court
~~~~
Alyster knew he was nearing the battlefield when he saw the ravens wheeling. A tattered black cloud of birds churned over the hills. There were hundreds, thousands. What magnitude of slaughter had drawn so many?
“Not good,” said the Elari jogging at Alyster’s side.
Again, the War Commander had paired him with one of Falconeye’s dranithion. When Laniel departed with Kingshield he had taken most of his troop with him, leaving only his second-in-command and three others to keep an eye on the plain surrounding Tírandon. Nyria was more solemn, more focused, more disciplined than Azhien. Though she didn’t look it, with her sleek pearlescent skin and hair the color of midnight, Alyster guessed she was some centuries older than his friend. Her amethyst eyes harbored a maturity, a knowledge far deeper than her apparent years accounted for.
Last night, when the War Commander sent them ahead of the column, Nyria had outrun him. The moons had lit their path, Forath overhead and Thyrra languidly setting. The flat grasslands of the plain had risen throughout the night, turned rocky, uneven, the kind of terrain Alyster was familiar with. Still, the Elari had to pause to let him catch up.
“I thought highlanders could run,” she’d said. Though the levelness in her voice matched the seriousness of her face, Alyster had detected a taunt rather than a rebuke.
He’d grinned, caught his breath, then matched her step for step.
Dawn found them entering the Barren Heights. The hills were as gray and bleak as bones. Who could live here, scratching out a livelihood among these boulders, this thin, dour soil? Farms had been plentiful on the plain, pastures that in better times likely teemed with sheep or kine. But not here. Wherever Alyster looked, he saw not one hand-built structure, not one hedgerow or orchard. The Heights were an unfriendly place, ill-omened.
His skin tingled—with more than sweat, he realized. Hair tried to stand on end. His breath came easier; muscles weary with running ached a fraction less. Old power resided here, in the soil or the rocks or the air he didn’t know, didn’t want to know. “D’you feel it?”
“Feel what?” Nyria asked, eyes raised toward the ravens.
“What does Carah call it? Avë.”
The Elari looked round at him. “No, I don’t, avedra.”
Ah. Unnerving to hear the word applied so casually to himself. To share something with legendary men like Thorn Kingshield and Lord Daryon. What could he do with the energy coiling around him, through him, if he could curl a hand around it like a cudgel? Maybe Carah was right. Maybe he ought to seek training. Later. When his mind could turn from thoughts of vengeance, back to the simplicity of herding his goats.
The ravens drew the scouts. They were close enough now to hear the excited croaking. A circling maelstrom of cawing and cackling, of wind ruffling through wings.
Dread unfurled in Alyster’s chest. Would he be the one to bring news to the War Commander that they had arrived too late? That Kethlyn was dead and all his men with him? To be the bearer of such tidings, to see the horror overcome the War Commander’s face, to feel pity for the man…
“There.” Nyria pointed off to their left. The slopes of two hills formed a broad V. Flat ground stretched out beyond.
Squinting, Alyster made out the gray lines of tents. A red banner flapping forlornly on a lopsided pole, like a bloodied hand beckoning for help. No people. No horses.
The scouts scrambled up the next hill. Nyria lowered herself into a crouch as they neared the summit.
Stones bit into the heels of Alyster’s hands as he slunk down onto his belly. Ravens dipped, inspecting the scouts, veered away again complaining. Under the grating voices of the gluttonous birds, Alyster heard the distant clash of voices, of steel. Someone still lived. Still managed to defy the scavengers.
Alyster raised his head by slow degrees and at last peered over the lip of the hill. His breath caught, then came in short urgent pants.
Nyria hissed through her teeth, swore softly.
The slopes of the hills, the troughs of the valleys, were red. Red uniforms, red banners, red flesh, red soil, red stones. Bodies mangled and twisted. Armor crushed, pike shafts snapped, swords bent, shields splintered. Arrow, arrows, arrows strewn under the bodies like frayed threads of a carpet unwinding. Hair or clothing rippled in the wind, giving the impression that some still struggled to crawl free of the butchery, but the longer Alyster stared, the more he realized that spotting survivors was only a trick, a hope of his eyes.
Ravens hopped from limb to limb. Red beaks worried at open flesh. Clusters of them squabbled over scraps when there was more than enough to go around.
A fair number of larger corpses lay among the humans, but it was no mystery who had paid the dearer price.
The wind tasted of copper, so thick that Alyster rubbed his nose to make sure it wasn’t his own blood he swallowed.
From the pouch on his belt he fished out the War Commander’s spyglass, clicked it open, and aimed it across the stained slopes to the hills beyond. The humans, those few who were left, had banded together atop a ridgeline. Arrows took flight, arched both east and west and descended out of sight. The glint of steel under the brightening sun. The press of bodies. Shouts, but no discernable words. Horns, but from which side?
“Ai, Mother’s tits and teeth….” Alyster laid his forehead on his wrist and passed the spyglass to Nyria. “You recognize Lothiar among all that?”
The Elari’s breath came shallow, tense for a few moments, then she said, “I see an Elari, but I don’t think it’s him. I don’t see the Sheannach’s son either.”
Alyster raised his eyes. Dawnlight fell orange upon a strange landform. Beyond the struggling humans and the flight of arrows rose a naked hilltop with a jagged summit. Standing stones, Alyster realized, surely twice as tall as a man, maybe more, and each stone blazed like a cinder in the waxing sunlight. The mighty hill seemed to frown at the carnage bleeding out at its feet. Sight of it caused the hairs on Alyster’s nape to ripple again. Aye, avë, ancient and sleeping. It whispered…
Nyria shook his shoulder. “Did you hear me?”
He realized he’d nearly stopped breathing. How long had he been staring at the stones, captivated? The orange light on their carven sides had dulled to white as the sun cleared the heavy air on the horizon.
“We should move closer,” Nyria repeated, “see the kinds of odds we’re facing.”
Alyster gathered his feet under him. They circled the battlefield together, heads low.
The standing stones watched. Beckoned.
By midnight, the scouts had found their way back to the column. The long current of men and beasts and wagons had collected on the western edge of the plain, a dark lake of vague shapes and specks of light. Amid the humble canvas tents, Kelyn’s blue silk pavilion shimmered under the moonslight. A single lamp lit it from within. On the pole outside, the black banner and red falcon drank the light like shadow.
Nearby, a second pavilion glowed as brightly, this one green silk topped with slender white pennants. When the White Falcon’s Mantles had sped from Brynduvh in search of their king, they had come prepared for operations on the field, likely expecting to battle Aralorris to win him back. Good thing too, Alyster huffed as he passed the Mantles ringing the pavilion, cloaks as pale as ghosts. A king mustn’t be expected to sleep under ordinary canvas, oh no—or, Goddess forbid, a shaggy cow hide.
Just before the War Commander’s host had marched from Tírandon, Alyster had overheard an argument. “Mother willing, we won’t be gone long,” Kelyn had said, a note of pleading raising the timbre of his voice.
“Mother willing,” the White Falcon retorted, “Uncle Johf will be joining us. Drona too. When they do, I will be there for my people.”
“She’s my daughter. His Majesty need not concern himself.”
Narrowed eyes, raised chin. “We will concern ourself with whom we please. And we will not be commanded to cower.” There was something brutally cold in the way one man referr
ed to himself as many, and in that instant Alyster had wished he were anywhere but overhearing the verbal blows of that battle.
Kelyn had deferred at last, bowing his head and wearing a peculiar little grin. The White Falcon had strode off calling for his shiny new armor.
The column had made more miles than Alyster expected; the return run was blessedly shorter. Kelyn must’ve pushed the regiments until after dark. The silence among the tents was strained, forced. Few soldiers slept yet. Music thrummed softly from one tent or another; the light of campfires was hedged by high mounds of earth.
Miraji hemmed the camp, stalking slow, ready to shroud every tent inside the veil at the first sight of an ogre.
Inside the blue pavilion, Kelyn conversed lowly with Laral and Eliad. Their taut whispers broke off as the scouts ducked through the flaps.
“Worse than I imagined,” Alyster said without preamble.
Kelyn’s face went blank as stone.
“We estimate about a thousand duínovë left,” Nyria added. “They’re holding out on a hilltop. Cut off from their camp and supplies. No respite. That was at dawn.”
Kelyn listened with growing alarm and bellowed at last, “Goddess! Fuck and be damned!”
Alyster had never heard him swear so elaborately, hadn’t believed the man capable.
The War Commander sank into a folding camp chair, trembling hands lacing before his face. He was barely holding it together.
Eliad paced, chafing against the leash that bound him to camp.
Evenly, Laral asked, “The ogres?”
Nyria hesitated, glanced between the Sheannach and his advisors. “Some ten thousand.”
Miles ago, back in Tírandon, Lord Daryon had called it true, that yellow-eyed madman peering through the memories of a falcon. No one had wanted to believed him, but today Alyster had seen the numbers with his own eyes.
“Poor bastards,” Eliad muttered, glance darting over Kelyn, then down at the ground.
“Most of the ogres were hanging back, fresh as daisies,” Alyster said. “We need to tire them a bit.”
Silence. Every eye on the War Commander.
Laral’s voice nudged softly. “Sir?”
Kelyn pushed himself from the chair. “Two hours rest, then we’re off.” His orders were gruff with penned panic. “We’ll arrive by first light. Get out.”
First light fell warm and ruddy on Alyster’s face. The day would be a hot one, no mistake. Hot sky, hot stones, rotting flesh. The reek wafting over the hills turned many a stomach, blanched many a face. Upon approaching the carnage, Alyster had watched as one cavalry sergeant pulled his horse aside, stepped out of the saddle, and retched. Others covered their noses with sleeves, but there was no escaping it.
Now that the column had arrived, overtaking the Evaronnans’ abandoned camp, the sweet sickly odor was thick enough to swim in.
Alyster had led the War Commander to the hill where he and Nyria had first gazed upon the massacre. The bodies strewn under the sun for so many days were bloating. The ravens feasted, growing fat, faces slick with wet, feathers clumped with drying gore.
Kelyn said nothing as he gazed, only tallied his losses with a gray face.
“Goddess’ bosom,” Eliad blurted. “Are any left?”
Commander Sha’hadýn muttered softly in her own tongue, and Foreman Dagni was unable to clamp her jaw shut.
Beside them, Laral groaned, hand to mouth, and descended to one knee as if his bones had suddenly turned soft. The moonstone gargoyle leered at his shoulder as if pleased with the bloodshed. “When we fought in these hills before … was it like this?”
“No,” Kelyn said.
What had it been like, Alyster wondered, but decided he had no right to ask.
Kelyn raised his spyglass. “That hill, you said?”
Alyster followed the direction of the spyglass. “Aye, sir.”
The hill where he had seen the arrows rising and steel glinting the morning before had disappeared inside roiling heatwaves. Too early in the day for such a glimmer. The Miraji hid whoever remained, providing a chance to rest, to regroup, to tend wounds. The ogres were wary of approaching that quivering dome but pressed around the foot of the hill, a dark unsettled sea.
“We’ll skirt these hills,” Kelyn said, lowering the spyglass. “Come at the ogres from the east. Try to push them west and free that hilltop. Sha’hadýn? You’ll lead the charge. On foot or ahorse, your choice.”
Nyria waited on hand to translate.
The Miraji commander nodded, spoke.
The dranithi said, “This terrain on foot, she says. Quieter that way. More surprise. We will be the sandstorm rising under a clear sky.”
The War Commander nodded. “Dagni, your dwarves will follow the Miraji. One company to the south, the other sweeping in from the north. Militias of Blue Mountain and Zeldanor will be on your tail. Laral, report to the White Falcon. Make sure he doesn’t do anything gallant. Eliad, you and your highlanders will hold the camp. And send Daryon to me.”
Eliad saluted and descended the hill, aiming for the knot of gray-clad Drakhan elves. The other commanders followed, leaving Alyster alone with the War Commander.
Reluctant, certain he was being relegated to camp with the rest of the highlanders, Alyster turned and started off. His nape tingled; he felt Kelyn’s urge to speak like a slap to the back of the head. He paused.
“I’ve no right to ask you, but do me a favor and I will be in your debt.” Kelyn broke off staring at the hill of standing stones and the lesser hill below it, the hill wreathed with shimmering air. He pinned Alyster with eyes that screamed a plea. “Find him. Find him for me.”
~~~~
31
Rhoslyn watched the cyclone of wheeling ravens. They meant only one thing. Too late, reinforcements had come too late. Certainty was an iron weight plummeting through her.
The rumpled fabric of hills separated her from sight of the scavengers’ feasting ground. Every maternal instinct compelled her to leap from the wagon and run up those slopes and look for her son. Wisdom (or was it cowardice?) bid her stay put.
The bruises earned from three days of jolting in the wagon and sleeping on the ground suddenly meant less than nothing. The wondering and worrying were almost over. Or were they? Had the Goddess decided? Was her son alive or dead? How long until Rhoslyn knew that judgment had finally been passed?
Behind the bench seat, whispered prayers sibilated from the shaddra’s lips. It had been Etivva’s council that decided Rhoslyn’s course, and Etivva who had invoked the Mother-Father to act. For what did she pray now? Rhoslyn clamped her mouth shut against the question.
The surgeon’s wagons lurched to a halt beside the headwaters of the Blythewater. Northward, the camp bloomed into existence. The soldiers there would act as a buffer between the healers and the battlefield. Birch trees clustered along the riverbanks. Cattails swayed. Beneath the hungry, discordant cry of the ravens, there was the soft sound of water trickling over stones, of wind sighing through leaves. The scent of green and mud laced with the odor of rotting flesh.
On the bench beside Rhoslyn, Queen Briéllyn whispered, “I met Rhorek here. Among those trees. I think of it every time I pass on my way to Rhyverdane.” Her eyes were flat with memory. For an instant joy threatened to rise, exert itself as a smile. She tamped it down and climbed from the wagon.
“Get the pavilions raised quickly!” she shouted as teams of orderlies disembarked from the other wagons. “Those ravens mean casualties. They’ll be here soon. Move, people!”
Etivva’s bald head emerged from the stifling shade under the canvas. Sweat trickled down her scalp. Stiff legs hefted her slowly onto the bench seat. Wrinkled linen robes tangled about her wooden foot, inciting a soft curse from the shaddra’s holy mouth.
“Allow me, Holy One,” said Aisley, raising her hand. How nimbly the girl had hopped down the wheel of an adjacent wagon.
Rhoslyn curled a lip in envy. She considered asking the girl to hel
p her down as well, but pride won out. She wasn’t that old yet.
A duchess wasn’t much of a hand in raising pavilions, but she could see to her own horse. She untethered the gray from the back of the wagon and led him to the riverside. The urge to ride to the lip of the hill was like a rope tied around her chest. Again she denied it, laid her forehead to the horse’s sweaty shoulder as he lowered his muzzle and drank his fill.
The pavilions mushroomed, open-sided gray canvas stretching under the flat, faded sky. Orderlies stacked crates, erected trestle tables, set out implements and bottles and pyramids of bandages. Blankets and cots soon lined the ground. The drivers backed the mules until the beds of three of the wagons eased under the shade. The surgeons lowered the tailgates and began scrubbing the dust and animal hair from the planks. Tin tubs were placed at the surgeons’ feet, receptacles for bloodied clothing and amputations.
Sick before the procedures even began, Rhoslyn turned away. “What can I do?” she asked Briéllyn.
“You can stitch, can’t you?”
Poorly.
The queen directed her to a row of stations inside the second pavilion. A bucket, a sponge, bottles of ointment, a needle, a bobbin of thread, a pair of scissors, and rolls of bandages occupied each table. “Not all wounds will be life-threatening, of course. Breaks, bruises, gashes. You can see to those. You’ll have to draw your own water. Keep it as clean as possible between patients. Aisley will be at this station. She can help you.”
Rhoslyn extended a nod of thanks toward the raven-haired girl, but she wasn’t paying attention. She stood in the sunshine, just beyond the eave of the pavilion, eyes raised northward. She was watching the storm of scavenger birds, hands clasped before her bosom, lips moving as if with prayer.
So young. Yet young no longer. Was she strong enough to bear the frenzied horror the following hours would bring? Had it been wise of Briéllyn to tote her along?
