Haven: A Trial of Blood and Steel Book Four

by Shepherd, Joel

  “Go that way, you big fool,” she said, trying to turn his head toward the valley. The horse just lay, too distressed to move. The others rode past, and Sasha remounted to follow, wiping her eyes. Bergen, mounted on the captured Kazeri horse, offered her his flask. He was a big man, with battle scars on his arms.

  “That's my seventh,” he said. “I remember all their names. My son is named after my favourite.”

  Sasha recalled her Peg, now safe somewhere in a Pazira stable in Torovan. Thank the spirits he couldn't fit on the boat to Tracato.

  The top of the ridge presented them with a view of the Kazeri following them. They were much closer now. Another valley bottom and another drink and brief wash provided more relief, but climbing out of that valley, Sasha's horse slipped and fell nose-first into the trail with a thud.

  Sasha leaped off and examined the animal, but could barely find a pulse. Cursing, she pulled a few useful possessions from her saddlebags, while Bergen did the duties with his sword. Another time, Sasha might have protested that she was not so weak she couldn't do it herself. Now, she had only gratitude.

  She joined Aisha, the lightest rider, and her horse perhaps the largest and fittest, but the mare did not welcome the extra weight. “They're riding our horses into the ground,” Sasha muttered.

  By midday, huge thunderclouds were gathering above the mountains, thunder grumbling and echoing through the steep valleys. In no time at all, the rain was on them, turning the rocky trails treacherous with wet rocks and loose mud.

  Rhillian was not pleased by the change. “The Kazeri will go faster now. We'll not keel over so fast in the rain, and the Ipshaal is nearly before us.”

  It was indeed. At the top of the next ridge, through a mist of rain, the party looked down upon a huge canyon. Spanning it was the widest bridge Sasha had ever seen. It was little more than a road of planks, suspended from huge ropes that soared across the span, affixed to four giant stone pillars.

  To the side of the bridge, and at both ends, was a small guard post with a tower and crenellations for archers. “Don't the Steel border guards have to keep to their side of the river only?” Sasha asked Aisha as they descended toward the bridge.

  “Enora does not bother to defend this border,” Aisha replied. “Only the Ilduuri remain suspicious enough to guard borders with their so-called friends. They can build forts on either side, no one cares.”

  Aisha had barely looked at the bridge or the canyon, her eyes only on Daish. “Nearly there,” she told him. “Just down the hill, then you can rest.”

  Approaching the bridge, Sasha saw that a stone wall stretched from the guard post at the canyon's edge to the natural cliff face of the opposing slope. In the wall was a tall gate. Thus the guard post controlled all entry to the bridge, and into Ilduur.

  “Hello!” Rhillian called up at the small tower, walking her horse out before the others. “I am Rhillian. Four of this party are serrin, talmaad of Saalshen. The others are friends of ours. In the name of two centuries of friendship between Saalshen and Ilduur, I ask passage.”

  There came no reply, nor hint of movement. Rain washed down the dark stone walls. Sasha had climbed rocks before, but never a wall this smooth, and certainly not wet.

  “Enemies from Kazerak pursue us!” Rhillian tried again. “If we are not admitted immediately, we shall be trapped out here!”

  There was no reply but the hissing rain, and the roll and boom of nearby thunder. Rhillian turned her horse and came back.

  “Deserted?” Sasha asked.

  “No, I saw movement through a window.” Rhillian looked grim. “It seems the Steel are under instruction not to admit the likes of us.”

  And there was no way around, and no retracing their steps. No one needed to say it. This was the only bridge for several days’ ride.

  “Well,” said Rhillian, with a hard exhale, “there's little choice. At least here there is room for a fight.”

  Sasha was exasperated. If they'd known it would be a fight, they'd have held a high pass and forced the Kazeri to come at them single file up a hill. But now they were trapped against a wall at the base of a slope, with the Kazeri coming down on top of them.

  The party positioned themselves. Daish dismounted and slumped in the gateway with his sword, while Sasha took his horse and readied her shield. The four serrin took the flanks: Arendelle and Aisha to the left by the canyon edge, Rhillian and Kiel on the right against the cliff wall. Bergen held the centre, a Steel cavalryman with shield, sword and armour all suited to the task, but now on a smaller, unfamiliar horse. On his right was Sasha, on his left, Yasmyn. Their horses were all exhausted. It seemed ridiculous.

  “Seven against a hundred,” Sasha announced. “This has the makings of a fireside tale.”

  “Don't you mean a song?” Rhillian wondered.

  “Lenays don't sing much.”

  “We Enorans like to sing,” said Bergen. “Don't we, Aisha?”

  “I'd love to write a song,” said Aisha, testing the pull of her bow, and how much her wet fingers slipped against the string. “But I'll get Sasha to write the words. Lenays do that sort of thing better than anyone.”

  “Hush, you lot,” said Rhillian. She glanced at Sasha. They smiled. There was no need to say more.

  They waited. Thunder crackled and boomed. The rain grew heavier. Sasha heard hooves further up the trail. On the flanks, the serrin pulled their bowstrings. The hooves stopped. Then turned back. A scout, hidden amongst the trees. Sasha wondered how much he'd seen.

  The attack, when it came, was sudden. Kazeri horsemen plunged off the trail fifty paces short of the trail mouth, precariously above the canyon. Others rushed down the trail, and at points in between.

  The serrin drew and fired. Yelling Kazeri fell from their horses at the trail mouth, and others behind reined up in fear as the first four, then six, died quickly. Then the riders coming off the trail edge rushed in, and only Aisha and Arendelle had a good angle on those. Aisha missed once, but Arendelle never did, drawing fast and felling one rider after another.

  Now the blockage on the trail was clearing, and more Kazeri charged from the trees. But their path was obstructed by the confused, riderless horses of the first wave. Rhillian and Kiel's combined fire shot more tumbling from their saddles, as those behind desperately sought a way through, evading and colliding with their fellows. Kiel had more success.

  Then the Kazeri bearing down on Arendelle and Aisha came too close, Arendelle killing one last rider before both serrin were forced to drop bows and draw swords. The volume of arrow fire halved, and the Kazeri came on faster.

  Bergen charged. Sasha followed on his right, and saw him crash a Kazeri straight from the saddle with a massive blow. With perfect balance, he swung his unfamiliar horse into a side step that brought him exactly into line with a second, whose sword arm was severed whilst trying to defend.

  Then Sasha had a rider in her way. She ducked onto his weak side with a kick of heels, shield high to deflect his overhead whilst timing her own swing a little later, catching him on the pass. Then there were riderless horses running into hers, blocking her from the next Kazeri, one of whom took an arrow through the side as Kiel and Rhillian continued to fire.

  Sasha saw Bergen locked in battle with two more, neither of whom were facing her, and steered her horse for a fast lunge through traffic to put her sword through one's back. Bergen killed the other, then drove a third from his saddle with a lunge of his shield.

  The battleground was becoming crowded with horses, many riderless, all rearing, dodging, and scampering in the confusion of falling rain and flying arrows. But Sasha caught a glimpse up the trail, and saw it filled with incoming Kazeri. The numbers were overwhelming.

  Suddenly the air was thick with arrows, as though the rain itself had turned deadly. Incoming Kazeri fell five and six at a time, then more as the arrows repeated. Cries of battle turned to cries of fear as those remaining turned and fled up the mountain trail. The arrows were coming f
rom the guard post, Sasha realised, and the wall itself.

  Finally the yelling stopped. Sasha made a fast check of her companions. Aisha had fallen when her horse had slipped, and suffered bruises and cuts. Arendelle had a cut on his upper arm, bleeding thickly but easily treated. Those two had been most fortunate, having been in the face of that off-trail charge. The rest of them were unscathed…even Yasmyn, who was exultant.

  Fully thirty-five Kazeri lay dead or dying, half of those in that final volley of arrows from the walls. Sasha could not fault their enthusiasm, but felt less charitable of their tactics. It was almost as though they'd never seen archery before.

  Kiel dismounted to retrieve arrows they could ill afford to waste. At one body, he signalled to Rhillian. “See? What futility is this ‘mercy’ you practise, with people such as these?”

  Rhillian and Sasha rode to see. The body was that of a boy, no more than fourteen. His eyes were unblinking as the rain fell into his face, his forehead scarred from the recent blow of the hilt of Sasha's sword.

  “We killed him fair,” Rhillian said coolly.

  “And to what greater moral purpose is mercy,” Kiel asked in bemusement, “if its most immediate function is merely to help you sleep better at night?”

  “I like my sleep,” said Rhillian, moving her horse away.

  Sasha looked down at the young, lifeless face, and thought that her sleep had not been helped at all.

  The gates shuddered and creaked, opening slowly on massive hinges. A man in armour walked out, wearing a red surcoat and crested helm. He had the build of a warrior.

  Rhillian dismounted for politeness, and shook the man's extended hand.

  “Apologies for being late,” said the man in Saalsi. Sasha was only a little surprised—the Ilduuri were as familiar with serrin as Enorans or Rhodaanis. “We had a small disagreement behind our wall.”

  “Indeed,” said Rhillian, with a Saalsi word that was both statement and question.

  The Steel officer looked embarrassed and unhappy. “Best you don't ask too loudly,” he said. “Please, my apologies to you and your friends, we'll try to get you across the bridge with no more problems.”

  Sasha dismounted to Rhillian's side, and they exchanged a glance. No more problems? “Who exactly controls this guard post anyhow?” Sasha murmured in Lenay.

  “Be polite,” Rhillian replied in the same, “but stay wary.”

  Aisha joined the Steel soldiers helping Daish to his feet, as the others walked their horses through the gates. Sasha looked back up at the wall parapet from this side and saw twelve men there, all with serrin-type longbows. The other men there made for perhaps twenty-five border guards. The tower did not look large enough to accommodate them all, and there was only stabling for ten horses at most. Probably the others came from the building across the bridge.

  Before the tower walls, a furious argument was in progress. A man in a green cloak was shouting at a soldier whose helm crest suggested to Sasha he might be an officer. The soldier stood sullenly in the rain, and cast the odd glance at the new arrivals as his more elegantly attired superior ranted in Ilduuri. Sasha and her companions exchanged glances, as Aisha escorted Daish to the cover of a stable berth.

  “Nasi-Keth,” said the man who had let them in, with distaste. Sasha blinked at him. The green-cloaked man did not look Nasi-Keth. Was there a sword on his back beneath that cloak?

  “They're different here,” Rhillian explained for Sasha's benefit. “They belong to the Remischtuul.” The Ilduuri ruling Council, that was, as nearly as anyone had explained it to Sasha's understanding. “They take their initial teachings from Saalshen, as do all Nasi-Keth, but their loyalty is to Ilduur. We try to be nice to them, but they don't truly care what serrin think.”

  Sasha had heard that there was no Mahl'rhen in Ilduur, no house of the serrin, to represent the interests of Saalshen, and promote amity between serrin and human. Two centuries before, Saalshen had abolished feudalism here as in Enora and Rhodaan, and Ilduur had flourished as greatly as had its Saalshen Bacosh neighbours. So successful had Ilduur been, and so peaceable toward its new serrin administrators, that Saalshen's attention moved to the more pressing problems of religion, education, and crop yields in bigger, more populous Enora and Rhodaan. Failure there would have brought real problems for Saalshen, as only the Ipshaal separated humans there from serrin to the east. Ilduur, safe within its mountain walls, had withdrawn to manage its own affairs, and say pleasant things to visiting emissaries, and make pledges of treaty and mutual support—anything to keep the foreigners happy, and out of Ilduuri affairs.

  But one would be foolish to actually trust that the Ilduuri cared enough for their foreign allies to send help in the event of actual need. Some had been foolish, and now learned the price.

  Aisha left Daish in the hands of Ilduuri guards, and came over. “He's berating the captain for helping us,” Aisha translated for them. “He ordered the captain not to help us. The captain obeyed until the Kazeri attacked, then disobeyed. The captain is now to be…castaanti.” She frowned. “I've not heard that word.” Then her eyes widened. “Oh, like castaantala, as in tribunal. He'll be hauled before a hearing of superiors. I imagine that's serious?”

  She looked askance at the soldier nearby. He nodded grimly. “Very serious. Likely they'll hang him.”

  “For helping us?” Rhillian asked in disbelief.

  “For endangering Ilduur by involving her unnecessarily in foreign affairs and disturbances.” There was flat irony to the soldier's voice. “Gone crazy, all of them. Crazy with fear, fucking cowards.” He spat. “The Ilduuri Steel would have marched, my friends. Most of us. But the Remischtuul says no, and the Steel follow orders. We let you down. Ilduur has shamed herself, and our leaders do not care.”

  Rhillian's emerald stare was intense. She put a hand on the man's shoulder. “Do all the Steel feel as you do?”

  “Not all, but most. We want to fight this Regent. No good comes from letting Rhodaan and Enora fall, let alone Saalshen—we all know that's his true and final goal. But the people who join the Steel are not those who join the Remischtuul. You'll see, when you get to Andal.”

  Rhillian nodded. “Then we have not wasted our journey to come here after all.”

  The Ilduuri Nasi-Keth finally had enough of berating the captain and stalked over. He glared at the new arrivals.

  “So,” he said, also in Saalsi. “Now that you're here, I shall have to interrogate you. We cannot allow just anyone to enter Ilduur.”

  “I am talmaad of Saalshen,” said Rhillian, “as are three others of our party. The others are Enoran, Rhodaani, and their allies. We are friends of Ilduur.”

  “Friends,” the Nasi-Keth snorted. “You bring war to our gates. Ilduur needs no friends like you.”

  “If one feels that a friend is to be chosen merely at one's convenience,” Rhillian said coldly, “then one has no friends.”

  The Nasi-Keth gave a look of contempt and walked for his horse. The Ilduuri captain did too. Some of his men exchanged quiet words with their captain, patting his shoulder, offering support. Some glared fury at their superior in the green cloak.

  When all of the party were mounted, including Daish, the Nasi-Keth led them across the bridge. The rain grew heavier still. Thunder grumbled, and blue light flashed huge, mist-shrouded mountains into startling relief. The suspended bridge swayed beneath them, but seemed little strained at holding so many horses at once. Hooves clattered on wooden planks, and from far below came the rushing of the river. It was the first time Sasha had seen the Ipshaal; the greatest river in Rhodia descended from the mountains of Raani before it cut north, to divide Enora and Rhodaan from Saalshen. A barrier between lands and peoples that had shaped the destinies of all.

  Halfway across, the soldier who had escorted them in rode up to the Nasi-Keth man's side, knife in hand, and calmly cut his stirrup. The Nasi-Keth stared at him, and asked an alarmed question in Ilduuri.

  Cutting finished, the gua
rdsman sat upright, sheathed his knife, and gave the other man an almighty shove. He went sideways, his cut stirrup offering no salvation, and fell screaming off the side. If there was a splash below, the roar of churning water smothered it from hearing.

  The soldier turned to the party behind, all stopped, frozen in shock. “Gets awful slippery this bridge, in the rain,” he told them. “Best watch where your horse puts its hooves.”

  In the hills beyond Tracato, the Elissian pursuit finally caught them. Riding in mid-column, Sofy heard the yells and massed hooves as they crested the ridge and came tearing across the fields. Jaryd was on them immediately, leading the countercharge. Tracatan men followed him, ex-Rhodaani Steel cavalry, some Nasi-Keth with cavalry skills, a few with the serrin art of horseback archery. Two were Larosan knights, the survivors of Sofy's personal guard, armour gleaming in the sun as their huge horses strained up the slight incline.

  Wagons and horses in the column about her began to run, frightened families whipping their horse teams up to speed. Sofy went with them, as much to avoid being run over as anything, throwing frightened glances over her shoulder as she went.

  She saw Jaryd hit the first Elissians so hard a horse crashed and tumbled. Behind him went Asym, the Isfayen carving men from their saddles like a cook cleaving meat from the bone. Then she was jostled by a man with children sharing his saddle, desperately fighting for space on the road. Sofy clung to her reins, seeing chaos and tangles up ahead. She was too good a rider to be stuck in this mess, she thought, and steered herself off the road, between runners on foot, and along the side of a vineyard. Then she stopped to gain a better look at the fight.

  Elissians were flowing past Jaryd's defenders, who now milled higher up the slope, fighting crazily against some, but unable to contain the rest, now racing between trees downslope of the road, and others galloping along the road itself. Terror gripped Sofy to see the advance, nothing between them and the fleeing column.