Stillbright

by Daniel M Ford

  “Tell me, Braech. Lead me, Sea Dragon.”

  Evolyn stared hard at the old and tarnished image of her God, hoping to hear some whisper, some echo.

  Nothing came.

  Evolyn stood up, smoothed out her robes, and made a decision. She had brought Landen and the swords-at-hire to the fight. She had aided the rescue of the Baron. But parts of Londray were in flames and fighting continued in the streets.

  She would not go to battle in Thornhurst. Not like this, not hiding behind other powers. If Braech was not to lead, then Braech would not go.

  “Surely the sorcerers will destroy them,” she murmured. “They will not need me to help them, nor will I risk the lives of Braechsworn guardsmen or warriors. Braech will be represented, but the Sea Dragon leads, or the Sea Dragon does not fight.”

  * * *

  As the last of fall’s two months gave way to winter’s early frosts, Allystaire sat in a tent grown increasingly uncomfortable. With braziers of glowing embers pulled close to the table he used as a desk, he staved off sleep with an old habit. One by one, he listed the forces, the assets, at his command, examining them for weakness, considering strength.

  “The Ravens,” he murmured in a barely audible voice. “Solid. They can hold a wall, or go over it in the dark. Yet I cannot ask of them what I might of men who serve the Mother, and not my sister’s links.”

  He paused, spreading his hand out on the table. “Renard, his militia. Decent enough bowmen. Not real soldiers. They cannot be left alone in the heat of it. Keegan and his wildmen.”

  He sighed, lifted his hand and cradled his forehead. “Then me, Idgen Marte, Torvul.” He paused, and then added, “Gideon.”

  He stared into the glowing coals in one of the braziers, and said aloud, having thought the words several times already, “It will not be enough.”

  The walls are nearly up, and gates. All the folk here will know what it means if they are taken.

  The walls will not stand any engines, he thought. Not likely Delondeur would bring one, if it is him I have to worry about. And bandits will not have them.

  If sorcerers come, he began to think, but he cut the thought off with a clenched fist rapped lightly against the table. “Let them come. Gideon and I will find a way.”

  If Delondeur brings a hundred men? Two hundred? A thousand?

  “A hundred I can keep at bay. Even two or three, mayhap. He could not muster a thousand men as winter comes on. Not unless most were untrained rabble rousted off the streets of Londray.”

  Even so, whatever men Delondeur could bring were sure to have among them well-trained, well-equipped veterans. And when it comes to veterans, there are the Ravens, me, Idgen Marte, Renard, and Torvul. He paused. Keegan, I suppose.

  “That is if it is Delondeur who comes,” Allystaire spat. “What of Fortune? What of Braech? The sorcerers?”

  He lowered his head to his hand again, then stood. He felt the cold more than he once did. His knees protested, as did his back and his aching shoulder. He felt every one of his collection of scars and hurts.

  Without knowing exactly why, or even considering the impulse, Allystaire placed one hand against the edge of his table and knelt, wincing as first one knee, and then the other, touched the ground. Rugs and mats had been laid down where there was space, but even so, the cold leeched through the ground and into him.

  And then bowing his head, the paladin reached out to his Goddess.

  Mother. He stopped, cleared his throat, and started again, murmuring the words aloud. “Goddess, I have tried to do your will, use your Gifts as I thought you would wish. And my best judgments, and my plans have come to this, to sitting and waiting. I have made your people a target. I know nothing of what our enemies plan. The walls I have built, the stores and the trenches and the cunning plans, may all come to nothing.”

  As he spoke the words aloud, admitting to his worst fears, Allystaire began to feel the same kind of cold, gnawing despair he’d felt in the sorcerer ‘s trap on the road. “And this is a trap of my own making. Goddess, if you would but give me a sign, some indication of whether I have done well, or done ill…”

  He waited, shutting his eyes, trying to turn inward, trying to stretch his hearing for some note of Her song.

  He waited. For how long, he didn’t know. Then, with a sigh, Allystaire levered himself back to his feet and wandered over to the other table his tent held, pulling back the cloth that covered his armor.

  In the breastplate, he could see his reflection as well as in any mirror he’d ever owned. His oft-broken nose bent to the left side of his heavy, square face, more deeply lined than the last time he saw it. More flecks of grey in his hair and in the two-day’s worth of beard upon his face. Much more, he silently admitted. Besides age and the odd new crease, there was nothing changed in it; it had been the face of Lord Allystaire Coldbourne, Castellan of Wind’s Jaw Keep, Oyrwyn war-leader for the better part of a score of years. Now it was the face of whom?

  “Allystaire, the Arm of the Mother,” he murmured.

  It was the same face, of the same man.

  “So what would Lord Coldbourne do in this moment? With no army to speak of and unknown enemies with unknown plans on his position? Develop some freezing knowledge of my freezing enemies,” Allystaire answered himself forcefully, thumping a knuckle down on the breastplate. He turned his eye towards the tent flap and the dark and cold of the night beyond, considered a moment, then grabbed a fur-lined mantle from the top of the small chest that held his clothing and strode into the night.

  * * *

  “You,” Torvul said groggily, “had better have a good reason for wakin’ an old dwarf in the middle of the stone-crushed night.”

  “I do,” Allystaire said. He knelt on the floor of the inn, pushing an iron into the coals of the hearth and stirring them up, then laying on a fresh log from the nearby pile. He straightened up, and surveyed the weary faces at the table he’d dragged near the fire: Idgen Marte, Renard, Torvul, Gideon, and Ivar. Only the last of them didn’t appear surprised. “What,” Allystaire began, “have we been doing wrong?”

  “Layin’ up like a rat in a hole,” Ivar said fiercely.

  “Precisely. We surrendered the initiative to our enemies. Whoever they are.”

  “Allystaire, the Archioness herself told you they’d be coming back with a Declaration of Anathemata.” Idgen Marte’s voice was weary.

  “Aye, but who is enforcing it? More Temple rabble? Will Delondeur come? Does Lionel Delondeur even live? Or did his natural son execute him? We do not know any of this.”

  “To tell the truth,” Torvul said, “I’ve been waiting for some peddlers, minstrels, other folk who carry news t’come by. They haven’t.”

  Idgen Marte sat up straighter, her eyes sharpening as she woke up completely. “The minstrels are the first to know to avoid a place. Word travels faster than you’d credit.”

  “Thornhurst is unlikely to have been on most of their routes,” Gideon, quietly confident, said. “Birchvale and Ashmill Bridge are larger towns with more links to earn, but close enough that folk from here could travel there.”

  “For the better singers and players, aye,” Idgen Marte allowed. “But for those still makin’ a name or those can’t handle the competition? Thornhurst’d be ripe.”

  “There’d be little traffic here, but some, surely,” Torvul said. “And there’s none. Pilgrims and folk moving here aplenty, but not anyone looking to make some weight. And they’d see it on the road, the patterns, the movement. If I were still out there, be Cold-damned sure I found my way here with the kinds of things farmer folk are usually wantin’.”

  “They know someone will target us. We know someone will target us. We have to do something to find out who.” Allystaire’s eyes flicked from Gideon to Torvul. “Have you two any thoughts on that score?”

  Torvul pulled at hi
s beer and sat back, rubbing his stubbly chin. “Might be we could do something.”

  Gideon looked as though he wanted to speak, but closed his mouth and merely nodded.

  Allystaire frowned. Ask him later. Privately. “Good. And Idgen Marte?”

  “I suppose I could roust Keegan and his lads and we could start scouting parties. Depends how far you want us to range how much good it’ll do.”

  “Use your judgment,” Allystaire replied. “Hardly your first time heading scouts.” He looked to Ivar and Renard and said, “As for us—we need to redouble our efforts at getting the men ready. Any man who has taken up arms, that is all he does. Less what need drives to feed his family, from now till the longest night.”

  “What ‘appens then?” Ivar leaned back in her chair, grimacing.

  “I know only that the Goddess told me to be ready for it. And ready does not mean lying like a rat in a hole. Now all of you, back to your beds. I want to hear plans after breakfast tomorrow.”

  They stood to leave, but Allystaire waved Ivar aside. When the others cleared the door, he said to the woman, “Captain—if you already knew what I was doing wrong, what stopped you from speaking up? You know I have never been one to grow angry at anyone for speaking the truth.”

  Ivar sniffed, fixing Allystaire with an indifferent stare. “Not sure what ‘tis ya do anymore, m’lord,” she replied. “Lord Coldbourne I knew ne’er woulda let murderers go w’out stretched necks.”

  Allystaire frowned, hardening. “I was prepared to do that if it proved necessary.”

  “It oughta been necessary when m’man turned up dead,” Ivar retorted hotly.

  “There is more at stake than a warband, Ivar.” Allystaire tried not to shout, and only barely succeeded. “More at stake than an army. I serve a different power now, one that seeks more out of this world than merely perpetuating itself.”

  “Tha’s a lot o’words don’t say anythin’ ‘bout lettin’ a brother o’battle go unavenged, and no matter how ya pretty it up, that’s what ya did.”

  “Vengeance and justice are not always the same.”

  “It ain’t justice I’m freezin’ after.” Ivar was just short of shouting through her gap-toothed mouth, the words whistling over bare gums and around what brown and cracked teeth remained. “Ne’er was. A warband don’t work if it ain’t everythin’ for yer brother. Was a time you knew that. Now I hear a lot o’mercy and Goddess and love and other horse-shit I can’t see, spend, taste, drink, lay, or fight beside. Tha’s why I didn’t speak. S’why I don’t speak now ‘less you ask. Now I’m seekin’ my bed and I’ll be up when ya need me and we’ll serve our accord. The Iron Ravens have ne’r broken one. Don’t be shocked when it’s up and we vote t’leave. All I can say.” With that, the leather-clad woman turned and left without a backwards look.

  “Is she going to be trouble?”

  Allystaire should perhaps have been startled by Idgen Marte’s voice so close behind him, but part of him wasn’t. He realized, unconsciously, he’d known she was there. “No. They will do their duty, meet the terms of their accord with my sister, even if that means dying to the last.”

  “Think it’ll come to that?”

  “I do not mean it to.”

  “This isn’t their fight.”

  Allystaire laughed. “No fight is a warband’s fight. And every fight is. You know that as well as I do.”

  “Have you spoken to them of coming to the Mother? Have you even tried?”

  “If warbands have a faith, it is in themselves. If they must have a god, they will take Fortune, perhaps Braech. You said as much yourself, once.”

  “Seems a long time ago.” She paused, and then stepped out of the shadows to face him. “Listen, Keegan and his lot can scour the woods and the hills. I’m better off if I set out myself up to Ashmill Bridge. Speak to the singers and the traders and the wanderers. I’ll learn about what’s going on in the barony. We shouldn’t have been this cut off—there’ll be news out there if we turn our ears to hear it. I’m leaving at first light.” Her voice was quiet, but firm, and her tone brooked no argument. “I’ll be back in a week. You know there’ll be nothing in that town can touch me. Aye?”

  Allystaire nodded mutely and Idgen Marte walked hurriedly off. Feels good to be doing, instead of waiting. He followed her footsteps outside and found Gideon just outside the door in the weak grey light of pre-dawn.

  The boy didn’t meet his gaze. “When…during my strike against the Sea Dragon’s priests who held the rain away…when I left this form?”

  “I was there watching, Gideon, but you never spoke to me about what you did. Only that it worked.”

  “Well, when I left the form of my body—not left it, but changed it, I became a dragon of wind and air.” He frowned. “That is not quite right. I became my thought. Became my imagination and my will, and what I did could best be described as having been done by a dragon made of wind and air.” The boy suddenly lifted his head and stared at Allystaire. “Do you understand?”

  “No. Yet go on, and see if I learn something by the end.”

  “It was wildly freeing. And I can do it again. In a short time I can scout the entire valley of the Ash for you.”

  Allystaire felt the possibilities opening before him, and his mind briefly reeled. To know exactly where an enemy is, and how many of him there are, at any given moment. He stemmed the tide of thought before it swept him along, cleared his throat, and said, “Gideon, if you can do as you say, it would be of immense value to us.”

  The boy nodded. “I know. It is just…I fear it, Allystaire. I fear that I will not want to come back to this flesh,” he said, poking his thin chest with a finger turned inward, almost disdainfully. “Since then I have felt so confined, so slow and small.”

  Allystaire felt his heart sink even as his stomach rose up to meet it. “Truly?”

  “I have lived a life of the mind—what could be more tempting than to live entirely as will?”

  “What do you need to make you able to, ah, come back, as you put it, to your flesh?”

  “I simply have to be able to master myself.”

  Allystaire shuffled next to the boy and put an arm around his thin shoulders. “Gideon—in my days as a war-leader, I would have given anything to have access to the ability you have just described. And had I found a man who could do it—I would have given him no choice. Whatever leverage I could apply to him, I would have. I will give you no orders. I will say only this.” He paused for a quick breath. “Doing this could save lives. Could save the Mother’s folk, Her Temple, everything we are trying to build. If sacrifices are to be made, it must be by those of us She has called.” That’s a Cold-damned hard thing to lay on a boy of twelve, Allystaire thought, recriminating himself.

  “And as for mastering yourself—that is the hard bit. It always is. A man must look straight at the end he seeks, the same way he looks straight at anything. How he gets there, what he is capable of, what he is willing to do, all depend on that first act.”

  “Looking straight at it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I will think on it. And I will have an answer by noontime. Fair?”

  Allystaire nodded and stood, patting the boy on the shoulder. “Whatever you decide, Gideon.”

  As the boy walked off into the cold, Allystaire thought on the Goddess’s words to him at the vigil, and silently prayed. Goddess, Mother, Lady, please do not let him be a false dawn. Then he remembered precisely what she had said, and amended the words of his prayer with downcast eyes.

  Mother, I beg you. Do not let me fail him.

  Chapter 30

  The Minstrel and the Shadow

  “Cold, but it’s good to be among people again,” Idgen Marte murmured, as she mingled with the flow of traffic on Ashmill Bridge’s main thoroughfare. The Bridge from which the town took its name arched high in the dist
ance, and the now derelict mill next to it.

  She felt a twinge of guilt even as the words left her lips. The folk in Thornhurst were people, after all. Good to be back in a city then, she amended.

  A thought flashed when she thought of the small town before her as a city. A vision of tall gleaming towers and paved boulevards wide enough for carriages to ride three abreast.

  “A town, at any rate,” she muttered, banishing thoughts of cities and concentrating on the dull buildings around her, most of them made of clay brick that seemed the color of rust. Like most barony towns it seemed to have no plan; streets started and stopped and bisected each other in mystifying ways, and if it were true to form, she’d bet the locals guarded knowledge of navigating them like sages on mountaintops in some stories she knew.

  But any town with more than a few buildings jammed together and more than a couple of hundred souls seemed to speak to her, draw her in. Always had. So she simply drifted along with the crowd, another sword-at-hire at odds and ends since the end of campaigning season.

  She kept one eye out for signs that tended to bunches of grapes, barrels, horns, foaming mugs, or beehives, with the occasional fanciful animal.

  It was one of the latter that caught her eye: a green and gold dragon coiled protectively around a barrel, more skillfully painted than most she’d seen in this part of the world. The building was a bit larger, too, with stables behind, a noisy but not raucous crowd within, and a warm, inviting light filling the windows.

  She pulled up short just outside the door as the first notes of music trickled into her ears. She knew instantly the melody, knew it was being played on a ten-course lute with a higher chanterelle than any barony-born minstrel played. No quill; the player was plucking the strings bare-fingered, and he knew his business well.