Stillbright

by Daniel M Ford

  “None of that changes any of what I said. The Mother is not going to be a part of your revolution.”

  “What about guarding the weak? What about punishing the wicked?”

  “You’ve got it confused with choosin’ among the strong,” Torvul said.

  “My father must be destroyed,” Chaddin said with, Allystaire thought for the first time, real heat creeping into his voice. “Whatever he was, he’s become a beast.”

  “That we agree upon,” Allystaire said. “And we will give you and your men shelter from him. If our purposes work in tandem while you take that shelter and we can join our strength to defeat him, all to the good. But any alliance stops at the wall of Thornhurst.”

  “And those walls will do you no freezing good when my father gets here, unless there’s three thick feet of stone I can’t yet see.”

  “It has never been the walls as much as those who stand behind them,” Allystaire replied, with an assurance he did not feel.

  “There’s more to ‘em than you think or can see, boy,” Torvul interjected.

  Chaddin was silent a moment. “You honestly think you can defeat whatever my father brings? What if there is another sorcerer? Hired Islandmen? What then?”

  “I have killed more hired Islandmen than I can remember,” Allystaire said. “And you will recall what I did to your father’s first sorcerer.”

  “We’ll have what, three score? Against two hundred? Perhaps three? You’re mad. Perhaps if we fled, went into the mountains—he can’t kill what he can’t find,” Chaddin said, speaking in a sudden rush, curling one hand into a fist in front of him. “Staying behind the walls, we’ve given up all mobility, all initiative…”

  “Remember who you are talking to,” Allystaire grumbled. “I was teaching your father what mobility and initiative meant before you were holding a sword.”

  “Enough babble,” Torvul suddenly rumbled, smacking the bottom of his cudgel against the hard ground. “Make a decision. You stay and you’ve got the Arm of the Mother beside you. Sixty against three hundred make long odds, but a damn sight better than twenty against the same.”

  “I am offering you something no other baron will grant you,” Chaddin said, his voice almost pleadingly desperate now. “Independence for your village—no interference from the Temples, legitimacy for your Goddess…”

  “Thornhurst will prosper or fail on its own faith, its own strength, its own people,” Allystaire replied. “And my Goddess, our Goddess, requires no one’s approval for Her legitimacy. I will not make her Church and Her name, small though they may be, a tool in a fight over an inheritance. That is my final word.”

  “You’re a mad man,” Chaddin said, shaking his head slowly. “You’re giving up what you say you want for some notion of purity…”

  He was cut off by the sound of a yell, which sent Torvul and Allystaire scrambling outside.

  In the distance, beyond the southern wall, a column of bright red light plumed into the sky.

  “Torvul…”

  “That’s one o’ my signals. Red means more than a dozen, armed and close.”

  “My armor, now,” Allystaire said. He didn’t run for his tent; he walked with long confident strides.

  “What’s our play,” the dwarf huffed, laboring to keep up.

  “You, me, Idgen Marte, and whomever else is ready.” Even as they walked, Allystaire was assessing the way the response was meant to unfold. Idgen Marte, Renard, Ivar, and Gideon to my tent. Women and children to the Temple. Ravens preparing the mounts.

  He felt a calm and familiar assurance spread through his limbs, felt the rising energy that danger brought, tamped it down, banked it like a fire that needed to last long on too little fuel.

  Then he and Torvul were in his tent and Allystaire was throwing off his tunic and pulling on the gambeson that lay on the table with his armor. The silvered, mirror-bright surface caught his eye for a moment, then Torvul was pulling pieces off the table and arranging straps.

  “Just a warning,” the dwarf said, as Allystaire was pulling the gambeson on. “If you ever call me your squire, I’ll poison you.”

  No sooner was the quilted gambeson on him than Torvul was strapping pieces to his arms. The dwarf’s nimble fingers made quick work of buckles, and soon Allystaire’s arms and hands were plated with vambraces and gauntlets that left only the palm of his left hand bare.

  By the time they were hurriedly fitting greaves over Allystaire’s legs, Idgen Marte was throwing back the flap. Her own dark blue leathers were pulled over a thin coat of tightly ringed mail, and her hair was held back by a wide metal band, with a matching piece about her throat. She had her bow to hand, and two bristling quivers, one on her hip and one on her back.

  “Ivar sent her three best bowman out as skirmishers. Renard is having trouble getting his men to the wall. Gideon has said he’ll go to the Temple. He asked me to say not to worry, that he’ll still be on the field.” She reached out and tapped his cuirass, finger pinging against the golden sun the boy had magically inscribed there. “Didn’t explain.”

  Allystaire choked down a spike of anger. “Orders are meant to be followed, yet they never are. Someone always thinks he knows better.”

  “Renard was trying to make sure none of his militia fell on their own spears or shot each other,” Idgen Marte pointed out.

  Allystaire grunted noncommittally. “Horses?”

  “Saddled, being led here.”

  He nodded, and knelt down as Torvul threw the straps of his sword-harness over his back. Allystaire’s gauntleted fingers fumbled with the strap, but Idgen Marte snatched it as he stood up, and cinched it tight.

  The dwarf picked up his helm off the table, and Allystaire slid it into place without comment. It felt heavy and close, as it always did, with the cheek and nose guards digging into his flesh.

  “Should have a visor,” Torvul grumbled. “Be more proper knightly that way.”

  “Never favored it,” Allystaire said. “Cannot see half of what you are fighting with one.” He picked up his hammer, hefted it for a moment, then slid it home, picked up his shield, and headed out into the night.

  Ivar was waiting, holding the leads of Ardent and Idgen Marte’s courser. The huge grey destrier was pulling at the reins, bursting with energy, muscles bunching, fighting the warband captain every moment. The animal settled, though, as soon as Allystaire emerged.

  Ivar’s head turned, and, slightly shocked, she said, “What the Cold kind of armor is that?”

  “The kind I wear now,” Allystaire said, grabbing the grey’s reins and pulling himself hard into the saddle. He felt his mount gathering itself beneath him, ready to run.

  He knows battle is close, Allystaire thought. He always did. Another Raven came trotting up, held out Allystaire’s lance, and he took it, adjusting his grip so that he held it far up the shaft.

  “String along beside me on the way out,” Allystaire said as he settled in the saddle, pitching his voice to carry as the Ravens gathered around their captain. “But do not obscure my path. If I start Ardent in a charge, he will not stop—do not be in his way. Remember that our own people are out there, the people we are here to defend—be mindful of that as you choose targets in the dark.” He paused, gathered his breath, and said, “Forward.”

  He felt a tiny thrill as he said that, though whether it was the Goddess’s approval or his own, he couldn’t say.

  This, he knew.

  No pitfall negotiations. No preaching. No priestesses with one hand on his trousers and another on a knife. No frozen cabbages or stolen farm implements. His horse, his saddle, his lance and hammer and shield.

  As he rode Ardent through the gate that Renard’s men hastily pulled open, a cheer, ragged but honest, went up behind him, and he smiled coldly against the metal pressing into his cheeks. It was for this that I was made, for this that yo
u Ordained me, Goddess. Let me not fail you, he thought, as he gave his mount its head, and, wearing painfully bright armor that carried light through the darkness like a lamp, went out to meet Her foes.

  They were not cunning, or hadn’t expected much of a response, for there was no proper ambush set. A handful were tossing lit torches at the buildings of a farmstead, while others assembled on the road. A score at least, though it was hard to tell as many of them were moving, shouting, torches in one hand and weapons in the other. There was enough light to see the green of their cloaks and tabards.

  He heard a shriek, a woman’s, pierce the night, rising above the noise around him.

  A squadron was assembling on the road, heavy footmen, with long spiked hammers and bowmen on the flanks. Were they led and organized properly, were they veterans, they’d cut mounted men apart.

  Bowmen first, he thought, directing the words at Idgen Marte. He felt a sort of nod of acceptance, and then she and her mount vanished from view.

  Confusion, shouts of alarm among the men assembling to hold the road.

  Panic as two of the four bowmen suddenly screamed as fletchings sprouted from their chests, driven deep through their boiled leather by the Shadow’s short, powerful horse bow.

  “Get people clear of the fires,” Allystaire shouted, knowing his voice would carry. Even as he did, he felt the strength of the Goddess’s Gift filling his arm, and he lifted up his lance point in the air, then swung it back to couch it against his side.

  It was as light as a reed; it was nothing.

  It was twelve feet of strong ash with a foot of sharp steel on its end, and with a forward thrust of his arm it plunged through the chest of one of the skirmishers who was too slow to figure out what to do with his long pole-hammer.

  The force of the blow ripped the man’s torso in half, sending an arm and shoulder careening into the darkness.

  Allystaire felt the lance shiver and the cracks beginning to run up its length. Dimly, he registered the screams behind him as he tore through their ragged line. It took hard tugging with his knees to wheel Ardent for a second charge at them, and by the time he did they were already scattering. More arrows sailed into them from Idgen Marte’s position in the darkness. They threw down their polearms and fell to their knees, holding out their hands. One had a splash of blood and gore along the side of his face.

  His anger was so great, beating so powerfully at his mind, that he spurred Ardent, intending to ride them down.

  There was a harsh, discordant note within him—the music that filled his limbs gone, for a moment, horribly awry. It was a sound of desolation and pain and darkness, and if he had to hear it again he would surely lose his mind.

  He steered with a sharp knee pressed into the destrier’s side, and Ardent veered away from them, onto the patchy, winter-killed grass.

  The farmhouse was perhaps the smallest building on the plot, with a much larger cow byre, and another shed of a size with the house. Perhaps for that reason, the green-tabarded soldiers who’d moved into the area had gone to the larger buildings first.

  Idiots, Allystaire thought, but even as the thought came to him, he saw a trio, bared blades in hand, kicking down the barred door, heard shouting inside.

  He slid from Ardent’s back, unslung his hammer, and ran across the ground, covering the yards at a speed no man in armor should make.

  * * *

  The first one through the door had gotten a bolt from her father’s crossbow. The crossbow had been given to her father by the dwarf, who’d slipped her a handful of hard candies at the same time and told her not to worry, which meant she did, because when you were a child and told not to worry, you absolutely should.

  Lise had watched her father practice with the crossbow, carefully, shooting at the broad base of a dead tree, every morning, as the dwarf had shown him.

  So Lise worried when her dad had gone outside and flung down the bottle the dwarf had brought, the one of red glass, and gotten out the crossbow and the bolts and thrown the bar over the door. She’d become positively terrified when the banging on the door started, and her father had ordered her down to the tiny cellar he’d dug out beneath the kitchen, but had stopped at its entrance long enough to watch the door splinter and shiver and finally burst open, her father squeeze the handle of the bow, the short bolt flying true into the first man, who dropped with a scream.

  Then she ducked down into the dugout, hearing another scream, which she thought with terror, sounded like her father’s voice. Then quiet, and footsteps inside, with shouts and horses and muffled screams outside.

  Booted feet scurried through the house. Things were tossed and overturned, crockery was shattered, and finally the door of the dug-out cellar hauled open, and a hand reached in, pulling her out by the front of her dress and tossing her raggedly on the floor.

  Lise had been taken by the reavers along with her father, those many months ago, and she had learned well not to scream, not to speak, not to give any satisfaction, so she bit down on her cheeks and was silent.

  There were two men, both wearing long and mud-stained green tabards; she could see that much by the light of the kitchen fire, both with swords, one of which looked dark and wet to her eyes. She tried to stand up, only to have her legs kicked out from under her.

  “Your da shot our chosen man,” one of the men snarled. “Right in the gut. Did for him. Now what do you think is good payback for that? What is due us for our grief?”

  Lise swallowed hard, biting back the tears from the pain and searching for her breath and the words to answer. She heard a new set of footsteps creaking on the floorboards, and lifted her eyes hopefully, thinking that her father had crept upon them with the crossbow loaded again.

  It was not her father, but Lise smiled all the same when she saw the gleam of the armor.

  The men whirled around as the room brightened, but too slowly—the first turned straight into the paladin’s glittering, mailed fist.

  It met the side of the soldier’s cheek and stove in his head with a loud, and, to Lise’s ears, entirely satisfactory crunch. The man dropped to the floor of the kitchen bonelessly, and, she hoped, dead. From the way his head lay flat as the blade of a hoe on one side, she assumed he was.

  The other tried to bring his sword to play, but the room was close and the paladin was already inside his guard. He caught the soldier’s wrist in one hand, there was another crack, and the sword thunked to the ground. Then the same hand went around the man’s throat and lifted him off the ground.

  The soldier’s boots had to be a foot clear of the floorboards, but the silver-armored man didn’t struggle, and there was no hint of strain in his voice.

  “What were you going to do to the girl?” The paladin’s voice was low and calm and yet, even to Lise, some way more frightening than the leering soldier, or the snickering reavers had ever been.

  “Kill her, maybe—”

  “Enough.” He gave the man a slight shake, with a rattle of armor. “Why?”

  “Orders to leave none alive, and her da shot our chosen man—”

  “Who was breaking down a man’s door in order to murder him and his child.” The paladin, still holding the soldier aloft, turned his head to Lise, and said in a softer voice, “Turn your head, Lise. You need not see any more death this night.”

  She turned her head—but not all that far, and peeked back out of the corner of her eye. She was hoping maybe he’d take out his huge sword and cut the man in twain; instead, there was simply a crunch as his hand made a fist around the soldier’s throat.

  Lise did turn away then. She heard two distinct thumps. One with the heaviness of a body slumping to the ground, the other smaller. She tried not to think too hard on why there were two sounds instead of one.

  “Come on, girl.” Then the paladin was at her side, picking her up, and carrying her out of her kitchen, wrapping on
e coldly metal-clad arm around her back. She expected to pass her father’s body, and was keeping her eyes tightly shut.

  Instead she suddenly found herself being shifted to other arms, more familiar arms. She opened her eyes to see her father—pale, ragged, with a wet hole on his shirt that her leg brushed against—shaking with relief as the Arm of the Mother handed his daughter to him.

  “Get to the walls,” the paladin told her father. “Take nothing but your bow and your daughter. The way is clear.”

  Lise’s last thought as she saw the paladin walk away with flames and stars reflecting brilliantly, was to wonder why, despite what she’d seen him do back in the kitchen, there hadn’t been a single spot of blood or dirt on his armor.

  * * *

  Thank you, Mother, was all the prayer Allystaire had time for as he turned away from the girl and her father, and let out a loud call. “To me! The night is not yet ours!”

  Idgen Marte raced up, winking into his vision from the night itself, with Ardent following close upon her courser. Allystaire swung himself into the saddle.

  “There’s maybe two score of heavy foot coming down the road. Take more than a single man’s charge to break them,” she said. “Still a good quarter mile out but making good time. Look like they know their business. And this is just the tip of the spear.”

  Allystaire pulled his lance free from the boot forward of his stirrup, felt keenly the shivered and fractured timber of it as he settled his grip around it. “We shall see.” He tried to focus, tried to think through the searingly cold anger that filled him, past the music that lifted his spirit and pounded his heart into a drumbeat, past the flooding of his limbs with strength. “Ravens,” he cried out, and soon the warband had assembled. They’d made short and bloody work of the amateur skirmishers, and though fires began claiming buildings around them, a stream of folk was headed back to the walls. He spared a look back and saw a group of men moving from the gate to meet them.