Stillbright

by Daniel M Ford

  When the Ravens, spears in hand, had amassed, he ordered sharply, “Stage on the road, fifty span ahead, loose line—leave room for twice as many men. Hurry!”

  Ivar began translating the orders more colorfully, and Allystaire tuned her out, struggling to think clearly, to think of the land as it lay on a map.

  “The farms are lost,” Allystaire replied, “but we need to blunt their edge. Show them that no foot of this ground is given cheaply. Find a good shadow ten yards beyond the Ravens.”

  Idgen Marte nodded. “Where are you going to get the men to fill out the line?”

  He swallowed hard, and said, “From Gideon.”

  She nodded, turned her horse and ran off. His next thought was to bow his head and send his thoughts outward, back towards the walls, seeking out the Will of the Mother.

  Gideon’s mind was not difficult to touch, and the force with which it met him was daunting.

  Gideon, Allystaire thought. I need you. Can you…

  It felt for a moment as if a massive presence sorted through his thoughts, then Allystaire felt Gideon’s voice calmly saying, I see. And yes, I can. Through the sun.

  You may have noticed that it is dark out, lad.

  The sun on your armor. That is why I put it there. Go.

  Allystaire felt the contact break. He thought he felt the Goddess’s song grow a little dimmer as Gideon drew on his own power. He spurred Ardent and found the road, covered the place where the Ravens were setting up.

  Up the curving west-bound road they could see the mass of men moving in the dark, the torches lighting their way.

  “How exactly are we gonna hold off that many heavy foot with a dozen of us,” Ivar was grumbling, as she shifted her grip on her spear and spat heavily into the dirt.

  “There will be more of you momentarily,” Allystaire answered him as he pulled up behind. He held his lance gingerly, then felt a buzzing enter the music that still filled him. Then a chime and a flash from the Sun on his chest, and suddenly for every living, breathing Iron Raven on the road, there were three more.

  They would not pass a close inspection, or battle. Largely they mirrored the movements of the men they stood beside, wearing the same blackened mail, carrying the same spears and other arms.

  In the dark, at a distance? It should do, Allystaire thought.

  The line of soldiers murmured in shock and surprise, a few jabbing their spears at their insubstantial partners.

  “Calm, and hold,” Allystaire bellowed, a long-accustomed note of command in his voice. The Ravens snapped back to their rank, forty soldiers holding the road with spears bristling outwards.

  The Delondeur foot came on, Allystaire searching their ranks as they closed. There, he thought suddenly, seeing the shape trotting alongside them—a mounted man, a knight or officer, leading them forward. In the darkness he couldn’t make out any standards or badges. Ask Torvul for something for the night vision next time.

  Once he thought them in reasonable shouting range, Allystaire called out, “You come seeking to kill and burn your own people at the behest of a slaver baron! A man so bent on power and plunder that he will tie his own people to the oars and row them to death so long as the ship sails him towards glory. Turn back or die.”

  Take the bait, he thought. Take it.

  The column halted at a muffled shout and the mounted man rode forward. He was an indistinct shape in armor, carrying a lance. A hand reached up to push his visor to the crown of his helm, and he yelled back across the distance. “You have raised arms and hired warbands against the rightful Baron of this land. That you speak treason only confirms your intent.”

  “Might I know who I am addressing? I like to know a man’s name before I kill him for defending his Baron of shit, his Baron of rapine and filth. A man is who he serves, and I will suffer no man like that to live.”

  “Sir Leoben, given command of these Salt Spears,” the man shouted shrilly, and Allystaire’s mind was drawn back to the Dunes and the knight Chaddin had threatened. “And it will be my honor to kill you,” he added. “I have personal dishonor to avenge upon you, Coldbourne!”

  “Come forward and die in the service of your Baron then,” Allystaire felt Ardent tensing beneath him, hoped his lance would hold together. The Ravens stepped to the side in a neat, long-practiced maneuver, clearing space for him to bring the destrier through.

  He spurred Ardent and felt the destrier’s huge muscles bunch and flex beneath him as it leapt to the charge. Leoben’s horse was of a similar size and breed as Ardent, and though moon and starlight, and the distant fires lit the field poorly, man and horse together were too large to miss.

  The lance had the weight of air in his hand, and he aimed it true, striking the center of Leoben’s shield. But the wood couldn’t take another blow and it exploded in his hands, fragments pinging off his armor and scattering into the night, and too little of the force was transferred to do more than rock the knight in his saddle.

  At the same time, he felt Leoben’s lance strike the tip of his shield and slide over it. It took him square in the chest. He felt the sick sensation of air being pushed from his lungs, the sudden deep well of black sleep that rose up and threatened to claim him. He felt himself slumping.

  Stupid, he cursed himself through gritted teeth as his legs lost their grip on the saddle and he fell over sideways, hitting the ground with a clatter of armor. At least his feet pulled clear of the stirrups, and Ardent rode clear. Too freezing full of yourself, he thought groggily as he struggled back to his feet. Did not even look for his lance. Idiot.

  Allystaire swallowed a wave of nausea and pushed himself to his feet. His shield had tumbled from his hand but he still had his hammer. His right hand found it and brought it out, holding it easily, even as he wavered uncertainly in place, searching for Leoben.

  “You are unhorsed and undone,” came the knight’s joyful shout. “Yield yourself as my prisoner, return to the Baron to face justice for your crimes, and perhaps some of the poor folk you’ve led astray can be granted mercy.”

  The only thing worse than an old fool is a young one, Allystaire thought as he whirled to the sound of the words. Leoben sat his horse a dozen yards away, the destrier’s tail flicking angrily.

  “I will not yield,” Allystaire called out, biting off the wooziness that tried to infect the words. “Not to the likes of you. Meet me on foot or on your horse if you must, coward.”

  Leoben merely laughed and waved to his footmen, who, Allystaire suddenly and sickeningly realized, were much closer to them than his own, and every bit of two score men.

  “Take him,” the Delondeur knight yelled, and the infantry broke ranks and charged towards him.

  Now or never, Shadow, Allystaire thought, and before he knew he was doing it, his left arm, shieldless, had reached up to seize his sword and pull it free. Despite its length and weight, with the Goddess’s song still powering his limbs, it was like swinging a dinner knife. He charged towards the oncoming wave of spearmen, hammer and sword swinging, dimly aware that he was yelling as he ran, that all trace of grogginess and nausea had fled, that Idgen Marte had answered him and that a cry had gone up as arrows began to fall among them from behind.

  Allystaire did not dwell upon the odds, only on the mass of men and the continual movement of his weapons. He led with the blade, swinging it in a long arc before him, and followed with the hammer when men drew inside his reach. He felt arms and legs part under the force of his sword. Ribcages and armor, helms and skulls gave way like eggshells to his hammer. He felt the nick and cut of their blades, too. No man came for long into the press and crush of a battle and went away unscathed.

  Part of him noted that men in blackened mail under black leather had rushed beside him, their own broad-bladed spears defter and deadlier than those of the Delondeur foot.

  Soon he found himself face to face with the blu
rred and shadowy outline he knew to be Idgen Marte. Without a word, spoken or otherwise, they turned their backs to one another and faced a ring of spears.

  “Whatever devilry this is, honest Delondeur steel will bring you down,” Leoben gloated from beyond the ring, rising up in his saddle and lifting his sword point to the air. He seemed to gather breath to yell an order, when the fletchings of a crossbow bolt suddenly sprouted from his eye, and he slid bonelessly from his saddle.

  “It’s hardly steel and it sure as Cold ain’t honest,” came a shout from a powerful and resonant voice that brought a smile to Allystaire’s face. “And it’s not got an asshair on my devilry,” Torvul roared, his voice made all the more commanding because he was unseen.

  That was followed by a sudden gout of flame springing up just behind the Ravens, who had backed off the ring that formed around the two Ordained.

  The Delondeur infantry, wide eyed at the display, suddenly broke and ran.

  Allystaire’s very first thought was to whistle sharply, and Ardent came trotting to his side. He slid his hammer into its ring and grabbed the bridle, leaned heavily on the destrier, and shouted, “Gather any that live and such weapons, mounts and gear as we can use, then make for the walls!” He started to sheathe his sword, only to feel a telltale weariness start to seep into his limbs, and he had to steady himself and summon strength to do it.

  The Ravens burst into action. Bodies lay strewn around the road, and Allystaire took solace in the fact that all that he could see wore green tabards.

  Idgen Marte blurred away, and Torvul strolled up, the strange coiled stock of the mchazchen crossbow wound around his right arm, one of its sighting rings locked upward.

  “Figured the longer this went the more likely y’were to need me,” the dwarf groused.

  Allystaire merely shook his head, pulled himself painfully into Ardent’s saddle, a task monumentally more difficult than sheathing his sword had been. For a moment he teetered in the balance, afraid he was about to spill ass over appetite into the road, but, with a last surge, he swung his leg over and down and slumped on the saddle.

  “Have we wounded?” He had meant to bellow the query like an order, but his voice came out in a rasping croak that only Torvul heard.

  “Probably none more than you. Snap out of it and heal yourself before you pass out.”

  “Got to save it for them,” Allystaire said, and twitched his destrier into motion only to have Torvul seize the bridle with one powerful arm.

  “There won’t be any of it for anyone if you don’t attend to yourself first,” Torvul hissed. “Not to mention that the men on the walls and the people inside them need to see you ride back in tall in the saddle and unhurt. Understand?”

  He’s right, Allystaire told himself, and with a weary shake of his head, he raised his left hand, slid it onto the back of his neck where there was space beneath his helmet, and reached for the Goddess’s Gift of healing.

  “Took it worse than you thought, didn’t you?” Torvul said.

  Allystaire could only nod in agreement; one spear had taken him hard in the hip. Others had nicked his thighs and side, points finding gaps in the armor, and one had found his elbow. None of the wounds in themselves were overly dangerous, but all together they might have put him off his feet, in time.

  Her song flowed from his mind to his limbs and the wounds neatly sealed.

  “Wounded to me as soon as we make the walls if they can walk,” he yelled then, his voice regaining most, if not quite all, of its former commanding timbre. “Now if they cannot!”

  None were brought forward, which he regarded as a good sign. All of them bearing prisoners or weapons, and with Idgen Marte having grabbed the reins of Leoben’s destrier, they set off back for the walls of Thornhurst.

  A good bit of the farmland outside was in flames, but they would die or be doused before reaching the walls, he was sure. Most, maybe all of the folk who’d lived on it had fled safely inside. “People matter more than land, more than buildings,” Allystaire muttered as they rode.

  As they neared the walls, Torvul produced his lantern, kindled in it a bright white beam, and centered it tightly on Allystaire.

  The reflection was dazzling, lighting up a circle around him for ten spans or more as he rode in.

  Renard threw the gate wide and a ragged cheer went up, and as Allystaire came closer, hushed words began running through the Thornhurst militia manning the walls in their hodgepodge of blue tunics, with their spears and axes and knives.

  “Spotless,” Allystaire heard one say. “Untouched,” another. “Impossible.”

  But two words circled the crowd more than any other. When Allystaire heard them, he imagined he heard a tiny note of the Mother’s music behind them.

  “Still bright.”

  Chapter 34

  Old Mountain Ice

  Torvul stood outside Allystaire’s tent, puffing thoughtfully at his pipe, beneath the cold canopy of stars.

  The flap swished open, and Allystaire—having traded his armor for the dark blues, riding boots, and fur-lined cloak—sidled up to him.

  “Thank you, Torvul,” he murmured. “I think I might have gotten us killed had it not been for you.”

  “Not the first time, boy,” the dwarf allowed from around the stem of his pipe. “Won’t be the last.”

  “I did not think I would see you use that bow…”

  “Nor did I,” Torvul replied. “We came to an understanding, though, it and me. I needed it. She needed it.”

  Allystaire nodded. “I was foolish and overconfident.”

  “Aye, that you were. Of course, if your lance had held, it may’ve worked anyway.”

  “No wood that I know is going to take two blows like that when the Mother’s Strength is upon me.”

  “If I had but a single stalactite of mchazchen I could make you a lance worthy of the songs the bards’d sing of it. Made to your arm, all smooth polished stone, too much force for any shield to stand.” Torvul sighed, tamping his pipe’s bowl with a thumb. “Like all my people, I’m reduced to the poorer earths, the baser metals and common gems.”

  “Have you any other thoughts?”

  The dwarf shrugged. “The usual. Band it with iron or steel. I could make you one purely of steel, had I enough iron—but then you’d not be able to lift it except when the strength came on you, which has its own problems.”

  “Aye,” Allystaire said. There was a silence. “We won the first day.”

  “We did. But only just. And it’ll get worse before it gets better.”

  “You seem unusually glum, Torvul. Is it simply the coming siege?”

  The dwarf made a noncommittal noise in response, pulled the pipe stem from his mouth, and spat on the grass. “No. It’s what I just said, about poorer earths and my folk. It’s likely enough that I’ll die here in the next few days, but all over these baronies and beyond, my people are dying the same way, by one and two. And even those that aren’t lost or exiled or forsaken are trying to make a home in a wagon. Home means stone and smoke, not wood and sky!” He spat again, and said, “Don’t mind me. I’m old. The melancholia is bound to take hold now n’then.”

  He looked up, turned his pipe down, and knocked out the dottle by tapping it on the sole of an upturned boot. “Go get a turn or two of sleep. We’ll keep the watch, me and Idgen Marte, and have you awake the instant anything shows itself.”

  Allystaire nodded, unable to stifle a yawn, and returned to his tent, disappearing inside the flap.

  A few more minutes passed in silence before Idgen Marte emerged from the darkness behind the dwarf. “Still bright?” Her tone was as sarcastic as usual. “How’d you plant that?”

  “Every good peddler knows how t’throw his voice.”

  “Why?”

  “Rolls trippingly off the tongue, don’t you think?”

 
“Really, why?”

  “People need a symbol, knight of legend, a simple phrase they can shout and follow into battle,” Torvul said. “They don’t quite have that yet. If we survive this, they will.”

  Idgen Marte murmured something to herself, nodding faintly. “It’ll do.”

  “It has to,” Torvul said bleakly.

  “It will,” she affirmed, reaching out to squeeze his shoulder. “And Torvul? If I have t’fight the rest of this siege with just knives, I’m cutting off one of your ears.”

  He harumphed pointedly. “An artist cannot be rushed.”

  She snorted and walked off. “Good thing there’re no artists here, eh?”

  * * *

  Certainly it wasn’t much more than a turn till Idgen Marte was shaking him awake, a lamp throwing light around his tent.

  “They’re circling the walls, staying out of bowshot. Probably time to get you up.”

  Allystaire felt the weariness that followed the Mother’s Gift still clinging to his limbs, but he pushed himself out of bed anyway as Idgen Marte hooked the lamp on the ridge pole. “How many?”

  “Hard to tell without enough light. Gideon told me he could count them, but…”

  Allystaire shook his head. “I do not want him on the walls. Or in the air.”

  “He can really? I mean, I saw him disappear that day.”

  “Aye,” Allystaire replied. “And I do not want him doing it except at need.”

  “Why? It is a tremendous advantage.”

  Allystaire held up fingers as he counted off points. “First, we do not know how much or how long he can do it. Second, we do not know who or what can feel him do it. And third—he told me that each time he takes to the air it becomes harder to bring himself back to earth and take up his body again. Says nothing can match the sense of freedom. And a lot of other nonsense about pure thought and no limitations that I do not understand.”

  “If we’re going to survive this, you’ll have to be willing to let the boy expose himself to danger.”

  “Just help me with the armor,” Allystaire grumbled.