Adrienne Martine-Barnes - [Sword 02]

by The Crystal Sword (v0. 9) (epub)

  Dylan reminded himself that she was competent with her weapon and that he could not protect her from everything. “I shall be pleased when I can get you a helm and some mail and a shield.”

  “And more pleased if I would sit quietly over a ’broidery frame while you ride off to slay dragons.”

  Dylan laughed. “True, but I know that is not possible.” “I was always dreadful at needlework.”

  “That I believe. Now, let us ride as swiftly as possible, and hope we do not meet any more Darklings.”

  “Ride where?” she asked practically.

  “North, for now.”

  They rode away from the river a little way, then struck northward, encountering small bands of Shadowlings who scattered before them without much trouble. The air was so choked with ash that they could barely breathe, and the horses snorted and wheezed, so they could not travel as fast as they would have liked. The sun had climbed to midday before they encountered the first evidence of Louis’ presence, a dead man-at-arms in a blood-smeared blue tabard with the fleur-de-lys upon it. His chest was spiked on a spear, and his young face seemed surprised under the helm. Beyond him lay another even younger and just as dead, his slender neck almost hacked through by some axe or sword.

  Dylan, hardened as he was after Paris, still experienced a tremor of disgust, a sense of sickness and futility, of waste. Aenor sat her horse like a statue, showing no expression whatever except a slight narrowing of her eyes that might bode ill for someone. He would have preferred a few womanly tears or at least some quivering lips, the way Rowena, his sister, did when she did not quite cry. This stony female saddened him, but he said nothing. He urged his horse forward, and she followed.

  After a few minutes they could hear the roar of a battle. It was like some odd brazen beast howling in the distance at first, until it became the distinct sounds of men screaming and shouting, of weapons clashing, of horses mad with fear. The air was so thick with ash it might as well have been night, and they blundered forward towards the sounds, their horses picking their way over the fallen corpses of friend and foe alike. They were upon the battlefield before they were fully aware of it, when a group of squatty fellows with looted short-swords swarmed towards them from the shadows.

  Dylan wheeled his horse around as he unsheathed his sword and felt the beast under him respond as if it had not already had a day’s hard travel. Its elegant hooves lashed out behind and caught one attacker in the chest while Dylan slashed another from the shoulder to belly. Aenor charged into the fray swinging the odd-shaped sword across the up-lifted arm of a Shadowling. The green gem in the hilt glinted evilly against the ashy darkness, then raised a shaft of clear but verdant light. The ashes swirled away as if repelled by the light itself, and she cut down another man. Dylan dispatched three more, and the spare horses accounted for a couple before the rest of the troop retreated into the murk.

  Aenor seemed enveloped by the green light of her beryl and it cast strange shadows under her eyes and below her chin. Unsmiling, dry-eyed, and grim, she appeared to him the embodiment of some fearsome goddess of death. He could not believe this was the same woman who had clutched him between lubricious loins and howled with pleasure beneath him only hours before. That seemed a sweet dream, and he had woken into nightmare.

  “Do you know any songs for clearing the air?” he asked as if nothing had changed.

  She gave him a look as if he was a stranger, then sighed and smiled a bit, banishing the crone into nothingness. “I think I can do something about it.”

  Aenor held the sword by its short quillons, so a crosslike shadow fell upon her breast. The beryl reflected onto her wide brow and she sang a long, deep note that seemed to rattle his bones. It went on until it was almost painful, the area where they sat on their horses almost pulsing with a green light that became yellower and yellower, until is was a miniature sun. A wind screamed at them from their backs, a howling, rainless storm that tore the song from her lips as it ripped the ashy overcast to tatters, revealing the hard-pressed forces of the King and the startled faces of masses of Shadowlings.

  Franconian banners bowed in the howling gale and their poles snapped and broke, the cloth billowing away like strange birds. Lines of men-at-arms wavered and shielded themselves from stinging swirls of dust for perhaps three breaths and then returned to the grim task of slaughter, the ragged but numerous Shadowlings pressed forward like a silent tide.

  The sudden illumination seemed to hearten the Franconian forces and they regrouped and began to strike at their foes. It was like holding back the sea, because the Shadowlings did not care if they died. Dylan took this in and urged his steed forward. A bolt of lightning almost blinded him for several seconds, and then he was surrounded by the mindless faces of the Shadow Folk. He cut them down.

  Aenor’s horse reared and lashed out at a pair of men. She grasped the sword by its hilt and slashed at another foe as she clung to her reins. Another crack of lightning rent the gloom, and Dylan realized it was no sudden storm, but some great magic conjured by King Louis. Then he was too busy staying alive to think of anything. He could see Aenor whirling on horseback, hacking down Shadowlings like sheaves of grain, and once she paused for a second and shouted a strange word, but for the most part he barely knew what he did, except to kill the twisted faces that swirled around him. Once he nearly ran down a little bunch of Franconian men-at-arms before he distinguished friend from foe.

  Aenor kept abreast of him, shining like a beacon, the blade of her sword red with blood and her smut-smeared face spattered with it. Her blue eyes were enormous and somehow deadly, and he glimpsed again the fearful crone. Dylan heard a sound like distant thunder behind him and turned to look. The ground shook and a herd of licomes raced into the fray, stabbing with their horns and slashing with their bright hooves.

  His horse stumbled and a quarterstaff rammed him in the chest at the same instant, and Dylan flew out of his saddle as his sword arced away. He rolled to his feet and ducked as a stave whistled past his head. He lunged under the stick and caught the Shadowling in the chest, wrested the weapon away, and laid about him. He tried to reclaim his horse, but the press of Shadowlings was too great.

  Aenor wheeled her horse around and urged it towards him. The air was again thick with smoke, the acrid stench of lightning and blood, and flying debris. Time seemed to pause for a moment as a fist-sized rock sailed through the murk and struck her wide brow. She looked surprised for

  an instant, then sagged across her horse’s neck and slid off* onto the ground.

  Time paused. She could not be dead. The gods could not be so cruel. He would destroy the world if she was gone.

  Dylan leapt across the space between them, smashing aside a Shadowling or two, and snatched the Crystal Sword from her limp hand as he straddled her fallen body. A jolt nearly numbed his arm as his hand closed around the hilt. He bellowed in rage and pain and felt the surge of change race across his muscles. The beast roared, and he was both man and animal. He barely noticed a soft nose butting him in the back as Aenor’s horse pushed him aside and stood over her still form.

  The sword was alive in his hand as he sprang forward to meet a fresh wave of Shadow Folk. The licomes thundered towards him, and he saw the unnamed beast which had carried him so many leagues across the land, trumpeting his challenge. Dylan leapt up onto the bony back and grasped the rough mane, snarling from slavering chops. His hands were still human enough to grasp the sword, but they were darkly furred and silver clawed.

  Dylan swept down upon the hordes of mindless Shadow-lings, the licomes behind him and beside him, belling their challenge and striking out with hooves and homs. Across the field the Franconians took new heart under the bolt-rocked sky and surged forward, catching the Shadow Folk between the two forces.

  It was a screaming nightmare of blood and slaughter, and Dylan thought of nothing but hacking away at anything that stood in his path. His arm ached but the sword pulsed with killing. The great beast beneath him lunge
d and feinted as if trained to the task as they struggled through the howling horde.

  A clear note rang across the clamor and Dylan dimly wondered if Gabriel the archangel had chosen this moment to blow the last trump. Then a dozen mounted knights

  charged towards him, their faces hidden under their helms. But the blazing aura of the King was unmistakable, the nearly blinding light of a godful man who handled his sword with more vigor than skill. The two groups met, joined, melted, and turned as one to ride down the remainder of the Shadow Folk.

  It was over with a sort of shudder, a stumbling halt as the Franconians found there was no one left to kill but a few stragglers. Bodies lay in heaps across the field, and there was a kind of stillness broken only by the groans of the wounded and the soft moan of the dying wind. The knights paused as if bewildered, sheathed their swords, and drooped their shoulders in exhaustion.

  King Louis raised his helm and looked at Dylan, shadow-rimmed eyes bright with weariness and relief. Still more beast than man, Dylan could only growl a greeting before he turned the licome aside and went in search of Aenor.

  The horses marked where she lay, the three mares and the stallion standing in a square around her, the corpses of broken-headed Shadowlings a mute testimony to their part in the battle. Dylan slid off the licome, patted its flank with a silver claw-hand and bent over Aenor. She seemed so still, her golden hair unplaited into a froth around her head. There was a gash on her forehead and it bled sluggishly.

  Dylan scooped her up, his claws tearing her garments a little, and howled. The sound rolled across the field and he saw that Louis had followed him. The slender king dismounted and reached out a hand to Aenor’s long throat. His body’s light coruscated like a rainbow, and the air smelled sweet—the clean, green smell of springtide.

  Aenor lay so still in his arms, as if she slept, and Dylan felt his heart clench. He hugged her awkwardly against his chest, and stared with beast eyes at the baleful green beryl in the leaf-shaped sword he had dropped beside him. He remembered the power of it, the mindless killing, and he wished it had never been made. He heard the groans of the dying and smelled the blood and bowels of the fallen, and wondered how any man could take pleasure in it. He gave a bellow of anguish and rage, a dumb animal voice of his hatred and senseless death, and drew Aenor closer against him.

  Morel’s big black stallion nickered, pawed the ground, and blew warmly against the nape of Dylan’s neck while the licornes stood in ranks around them, encircling the three of them. Aenor stirred and moaned faintly.

  “She lives,” Louis said, his voice ragged from smoke and shouting. The King glanced uncomfortably from Dylan to the woman and back again, and he looked very sad. “It might have been kinder if she had not,” he added softly.

  The woman’s eyes fluttered as she lifted a hand to her brow. She opened her eyes and for a moment Dylan glimpsed again the fierce, unforgiving face of the hag. Then she smiled a little and stroked his ugly snout. Dylan felt the beast retreat at her touch, and his features re-formed.

  “Did we win?” she asked simply.

  XXI

  King Louis, Dylan decided later, was a good man, but he did not have a great heart and he did not understand how to deal with the Plantagenet personality. His first mistake was to ignore Aenor’s insistence that she would have no other man but Dylan, and his second was to exclude her from the council where a decision about her would be made. Dylan was allowed in as the only available Albionese, so that King Arthur’s interests might be at least nominally upheld.

  They were in a council chamber in the fortress at Paris a week after the Battle of Angers: the eight nobles Louis considered sufficiently loyal and trustworthy to listen to, the Bishop of Paris, Dylan, and a sweaty cleric to record the events. The room had been scrubbed and new tapestries hung upon the walls, fresh reeds scattered on the floor, but it still had an unused, musty feeling. Dylan tried not to squirm in his high-backed uncomfortable chair, and he tried not to smile at the singular lack of enthusiasm expressed by the assembled noblemen at the idea of welcoming the daughter of Geoffrey Plantagenet into their families. Two had begged off—quite legitimately—on the grounds of consanguinity, being sons or grandsons of her mother’s siblings. The real issue was the taint of bewitchment, but no one, not even the Bishop, spoke of that. Dylan would have found the situation highly amusing if

  the circumstances had been otherwise. As it was, he had to curb the urge to turn into a bear and rend the lot of them to pieces.

  There was a startled shout outside the closed doors, then a sweet, flutelike tone Dylan would have known anywhere, and the doors splintered into a million pieces. Aenor stepped across the rubble without lifting her skirts, dragging debris and two frantic guards who were loathe to lay hands on her in her wake. She wore a plain white gown of fine Flemish linen, embroidered round the throat and sleeves in bold blue, her hair unbraided in a golden waterfall; and the gaudy scabbard of the Crystal Sword made a barbaric splash of color against her garb. A blueish bruise on her temple was all that remained to remind him of Angers. The sight of it still gave him chills. She might have died, despite the plans and plots of Sal and Beth, and he could not bear the thought.

  Aenor marched up to the long table and glared at everyone. “Which one of you has had the audacity to agree to marry me against my will?”

  His Grace, the Duke of Burgundy, rose to his feet and smiled. “None, my lady.”

  “And you, you little pipsqueak, did you really believe you could dispose of me like some extra cows?” Aenor addressed the King, blue eyes blazing and with no respect whatever for the dignity of his office. It brought a fine rosy flush to her cheeks and made her even more beautiful. Most of those present had not seen her before, and Dylan could tell they were trying to weigh her appearance against their knowledge that she was in her mid sixties as the world counted years.

  Louis shrugged. “We do not marry to please ourselves.” Aenor pushed her hair off her shoulders in an impatient gesture that lifted her breasts against the fabric of her gown provocatively. Then she put both hands on the end of the table and looked directly at the King. “Just because

  yours is dreadful is no reason to try to disrupt my life. I pity your wife and her joyless beddings—done from duty and not affection.”

  “Silence!” snapped the Bishop. “This council is no affair of yours. Return to your quarters at once.”

  “Go suck an egg,” she replied. “Or an orange. It might sweeten your disposition. I shall wed none but Dylan d’Avebury—and I would get about it, if I were you, since I have no desire to produce a bastard.”

  Dylan was stunned. It was possible, of course, and women somehow knew these things, mysterious creatures that they were. He found himself blushing under the curious glances of several eyes, as if he had done something shameful. At the same time he knew Aenor was perfectly capable of pretending a pregnancy which did not yet exist, since the loss of her maidenhood might make her a less desirable marriage prize.

  Louis looked hurt and disappointed. “I thought better of you, Dylan. Still, it is no impediment.”

  Dylan trembled with rage, the beast-wolf within him baying silently for release. He swallowed the bitter bile that rose in his throat and took a deep breath. “What do you see when you look at her, mon roi? Do you see a woman of flesh and blood who has suffered an imprisonment of mind and body such as would have broken the spirit of any man amongst us? No, you see nothing but an heiress, a pawn to be played in the game of power and dominion. Do you consult with her noble brother, the King of Albion? No, you labor in haste to bind her estates to the Crown. I came to Franconia to find Aenor, and if my task were naught but rescue, I would not presume to my claim. But she is the song of my heart, and while I may be unfit to kiss the hem of her gown, at least she is more to me than land and power. If anyone is unworthy in this, it is you, my lord.”

  “So you care nothing for great estates, but you did not hesitate to ravish the poor girl at the first oppor
tunity. Of course she fancies herself in love with you, her savior and rescuer. Women lack the wit to—”

  “Enough, you whey-faced excuse for a King!” Aenor shouted, cutting Louis off. “The land must weep to bear your tread. It is your wits which are addled. I will sing the roof down on your fat head!”

  “What does she mean?” asked the Count of Poitou anxiously.

  “She has a lovely voice,” Dylan said more calmly than he felt, “but I have seen her bring down a cave with it.” “She will not do any of that,” Louis said, and lifted his hands to perform some magical gesture. Then he screamed and pressed his fingers to his brow where once a silvery birch leaf had rested for a moment.

  The air shimmered and a smell like spring invaded the stuffy chamber. Beth, the Lady of the Birches, hovered about the shining surface of the table as the nobles gaped and the Bishop and the young priest crossed themselves and muttered Latin phrases. Louis looked ill, as if the vision of the goddess ate at his vitals.

  “Mortals waste such time in bickering,” she told Dylan, “I wonder they have any left for living.” Then she looked at him. “You still have not learned to ask for aid, dear one, and I grew tired of waiting.” She turned her lambent gaze on the King.

  Louis bowed his head, looking older than his years, and rested his hands on the table. His lips moved silently in some prayer. Beth smiled benignly, her exquisite beauty well revealed by the scantiness of her leafy gown. “Begone, foul creature,” he said aloud.

  The goddess laughed. It was a sound like all the freshets of springtide gushing past the last ice of winter, like the murmur of wind in young green leaves. “Alas, poor Louis, I am not so easily banished. Your young God has no power over me—poor crippled thing that you have made him.” She turned and twirled, sending her draperies out in a leafy flutter. “No god has dominion over me, for I am life itself. / am the rebirth and the resurrection, and when you perish, you will come to me, to lie in my dark bosom, until you are called to rise again.”