Horse rode across a green field, mane flying, hooves unfettered; upon his back, no man, but rather sword and shield. Beneath his feet, the crescent hill of Southern blade, and above him, rising over the crest of distant hill, the sun with eight rays.
Marakas bowed at once; Ser Janos was a breath behind, but his knee touched ground and his head fell as if the weight of the evening’s work could finally be laid to rest.
The Toran did not bow in kind; they offered the obeisance armed men could who did not wish to forsake their chosen duty.
But they offered no insult as the banner flapped in a passing breeze; they held their ground as the foremost rider dismounted, aided by a man who wore the robes of the Radann.
Ser Mareo kai di’Lamberto adjusted the fall of his sheathed sword and executed a brief, but perfect, bow. “Well met,” he said quietly, as the heir to the Clemente Torrean raised his head to meet the eyes of the man to whom they all owed their allegiance.
“Tyr’agnate,” Ser Janos replied, in carefully modulated tones. He did not rise until the Lambertan Tyr strode into the courtyard, beneath the watching eyes of the archers of Clemente.
Tyran joined their lord; they numbered four. The smaller number of chosen men was a gesture of faith, a gesture of trust in a liege.
But the gaze of the Tyran lingered upon the walls above, and their expressions were cool.
“You are prepared for war,” the Tyr’agnate said quietly.
“As you see,” Ser Janos replied, showing the first sign of hesitation, as if only now remembering his Tyr’s great disdain for all things Northern.
“And that war?”
“It is not with you,” the younger man replied, discomfort choosing the words. Ser Alessandro would not have been so easily moved to nervousness. “Clemente honors its oath and its pledge.”
“And Mancorvo,” the Tyr’agnate replied, from a distance that the scant yards could not quite encompass, “will do no less.”
There fell an awkward silence, and such silence, alleviated often by the presence of women, might have been left to linger.
But Marakas par el’Sol chose that moment to break it. He rose from his bow, revealing the smooth skin of his face, his head, the lack of Radann robes and the adornment of the office he held.
But he raised sword, and as he did, the man who had aided the Tyr’agnate now lifted head.
“Jevri,” Marakas said softly.
“Radann par el’Sol,” the servitor replied, tendering a bow of genuine respect.
Marakas knew, then, who wielded Balagar. Wondered that he had not known sooner.
“We have met the Servants of the Lord of Night,” Marakas told the Tyr’agnate, “And we have triumphed, but at some cost. It was against further attacks of this nature that the walls were manned.”
“Further attacks?”
“The Tor’agar is not resident within the city of Sarel.”
Mareo kai di’Lamberto nodded.
“He took the better part of his forces, and traveled North toward the village of Damar.”
“And there?”
“The Tor’agnate, Ser Amando kai di’Manelo, requested the presence of the Tor’agar; he had issues that he wished resolved through negotiation.”
“The nature of the negotiation?”
Marakas’ eyes went to the road beyond the Tyr’s back; the words were rendered meaningless by the glance. “Within the Clemente domis, two Marente envoys were housed.”
“Would I be in error if I assumed that they are no longer present to be called upon?”
“No, Tyr’agar.”
“Good. But Ser Alessandro has not returned.”
“No. The better part of the Manelan forces gathered within the West of Damar, and the Tor’agar believed that some unknown number of Marente soldiery also camped within easy reach of the village.”
“Then perhaps we will join him there.” He asked no permission; none was needed. “Do you fear another attack, par el’Sol?”
Marakas considered the question carefully, and then he shook his head.
“Then if you will join us, join us; we travel in haste.”
Verragar was keening as it trembled in his hand.
Avandar had constructed a wall of sorts. Before he began, he caught Jewel by the arms and lifted her almost gently, placing her upon the back of the Winter King. She held her hands in her lap; the stag’s horns were stained by something she had seen at a remove: demon blood. It looked black, in the moonlight; she did not want it on her hands.
If you give the Warlord leave, the Winter King said quietly, he will stand against your enemies. Lord Celleriant expended much in his battle to contain the water, and the Northern bard is human.
She shook her head.
I almost lost him, she said softly. And I don’t have the strength to call him back again. Not tonight.
Maybe, she thought, not ever.
To her surprise, she felt the stag’s approbation. Together, they watched in silence as Avandar worked, lifting dirt and the stones that lay beneath it as if it were whole cloth. He placed these in the streets between the buildings of Damar; drew them from the sloping bank of the now quiet river, and stretched them wide along what was only barely road.
Dust billowed out in clouds; the riverbank was parched as baked clay.
“It will not hold them long,” he told her quietly, raising a brow. Asking the question the stag had asked, but without the attendant words.
Her tired smile was all her answer. I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to lose you again.
You may die, here, he replied, his hands momentarily still. And, ATerafin, the chance that I lose you is greater.
What you do when I die is up to you. Everything changed.
“But not before?”
She shook her head. “Not for me. We’ll find another way.”
The last half of her words were lost to a shout of dismay; the Clemente archers discovered—as did the men who now fell to knees, hands upon the exposed length of slender shafts, that the General di’Marente had learned from the armies of the North as well.
The first volley was deadly; the second far less so. The wind caught arrows in flight, changing their trajectory; it could not send reply in like fashion, but it spared the Clemente cerdan who fought across the bridge. Kallandras of Senniel, bandaged now, had lifted arms as if in greeting. His smile was slender, deadly.
She didn’t care; she wanted to watch it forever.
It was so much better than everything else that demanded her attention.
Jewel had never seen carnage like this. The bodies upon the bridge had made stone slick with blood, and where there was no room to fight, men—on either side—slid and fell, to be speared or cut down as they struggled for footing. Bodies were thrown into the Adane, and some struggled a moment with the water and the weight of armor before at last sinking beneath its moving surface.
Avandar, can you bring the bridge down?
He was silent a moment. Yes, he said at last, but it would not be wise.
Why?
If there is no bridge, the forces of our enemy will not be split; they will withdraw, and join the moving force.
But then we can retreat.
Yes, he said quietly.
She didn’t like the tone of the yes. But?
It was a . . . gift . . . from the older magics, he said at last.
From the elemental—but—
Eyes that were not quite brown met hers. A gift, he said again, quietly. And such gifts, once bestowed, are best appreciated. What you ask can be done, but not without cost. If the water is the most difficult of elements to contain, it is not the most difficult to command.
Jewel, the Winter King moved restively, look at the bridge. And look at the walls.
She did. And she knew he was right. The bridge was whole, a single piece of work. But it was not rough, not elemental; it was crafted, its stone lattice, the exposed sides of its rounded curve worked, as if with chisel an
d time, into a thing of beauty.
And the wall? Dirt, rock, something thrown up, like tarpaulin, against sandstorm or the careless fall of water. Not, she realized, a gifting—simply a faster, more efficient form of digging and building.
Very few of the Arianni, and very few of the Kialli were so adept at making requests of the wilder forces.
But he’s human, she said, defiant. Stupid.
He will never be without power, the Winter King continued. But the depth of his power, the height, must be denied if you wish to keep him.
She was silent for a moment, and then she said, quietly, You were human once.
Yes. And perhaps that is why, little Jewel, I take some interest in the fate of Viandaran. Although he was never ruled, never owned, he has been trapped for far longer than I.
The walls were not of a single piece of stone; the dirt, pulled up, was mired in roots and branches, stronger for it, but less malleable.
Jewel watched Avandar’s work in silence, and when it was finished, she exhaled heavily, as if she could claim some part of the exhaustion of his labor. He did not return to her side; instead, he waited while Clemente cerdan came to stand behind the walls. They had no windows, and were offered no easy view of the roads they had now sealed, and the buildings upon the Eastern bank—those that remained standing—were not as fine, or, more significant, as tall as those upon the West. But the roofs were tall enough, and firm enough, to support the weight of men, and men were lifted by foot to shoulder, and from there to building’s flat, to watch. They disappeared from view as they gained the height.
Jewel understood why; the arrows that the wind did not dislodge flew above them.
Words traveled from height to ground; words were carried from building to Tor’agar. He listened, grim, and offered words of his own in response; like arrows, they were often taken by the breeze; they did not reach Jewel’s ears.
Her hand played with the haft of dagger hilt as she watched; she did not draw her weapon. All of her skill with a blade—and it was meager—was not meant for fights of this nature; gone were the narrow alleys of the twenty-fifth holding, the walls of buildings looming to either side. The shadows in Damar were broken by moon and light, and the silent memory of the alley, by the hoarse shouts and cries of men.
And the screams.
Not all of the dying screamed. Some had no throat for it, and the gurgle of their final words were lost with their lives. Nor did all of the living choose to cloak their combat in sound.
Kallandras of Senniel College was utterly, profoundly silent. Celleriant of the Green Deepings was silent as well, although his blade drew the eye, time and again, as it rose and fell.
He did not stand upon the bridge, but instead, upon the rail, and several times in the fight, he was forced to leap up, and into the Adane to avoid the play of spears, the swing of crescent blade. He seemed heavier, to her, than he had been—as if some essential joy was absent from the battle.
But joyless or no, he fought, and Kallandras shadowed his movements, touching water as well, but failing to sink beneath the rush of its current. The wounds he had taken at the hands of the kin were joined by others; he retreated and returned, as if such actions were part of a graceful dance.
Two such men as these could hold the bridge, she thought, for a long time.
But they wouldn’t. She knew it, and spun, knees digging into the haunches of the Winter King.
Fire limned the edge of the Southernmost wall; dirt and stone flew up, as if they were, by fire, made liquid for a moment.
The cerdan retreated, but Avandar Gallais stood in the rain of earth, his hands spread wide, orange light seeping from his fingertips.
Kallandras leaped clear of the bridge; the soles of his boots skimmed the surface of a water now deprived of voice, of anger. He called for the wind and it took him above the din of battle, above the flat roofs of Southern dwellings; above the archers whose bows must be spent—they were silent.
He could see the Marente forces; they had gathered behind three sections of the wall that Avandar had pulled from the flattened mud and stonework of Damar’s streets. They were led by men on horseback, but they hung back; they waited upon the work of Widan, of magecraft, the Sword’s Edge.
He could hear the words they spoke—when they spoke at all; they hoarded night words and night thoughts beneath the grim press of lips. Lady’s time.
Turn back, he told them, using the fine edge of his power. Turn back or the Lord will devour you; there will not be enough left of you for the winds to claim.
The words came from no discernible direction, or from all; the three mounted men froze a moment, gathering the reins of their horses in mailed fists.
He sent his words out again, choosing as targets the Widan who worked against the walls.
Two froze a moment, but the third—ah, the third—looked up. An umbrella of flame lit the sky, the point of its center the spot where Kallandras had chosen to hover. He dropped, folding his shoulders, his neck, curling his head into the shield of bent arms. The air caught him before he struck ground, and a trail of fire clung, like burrs, to the longest strands of his hair.
Lord Celleriant, he said, shifting weapon’s weight, I have found the last of the Kialli.
Ser Alessandro kai di’Clemente counted the fall of his men. Spoke their names, one after the other, as if naming were a thing of legend, and had power. It was the Lady’s time, and if there was a time for such a power, it was now: he surrendered to her the things that he valued: his men. His horse. His sword.
He sat astride a horse not his own, and honored his rider in so doing, although the rider had not lived to see or acknowledge the honor; he lay beneath the moving water.
A calm was upon the Tor’agar; a calm made of names, of inevitability. A spray of pebbles, dusted with dry earth, clattered against the shoulders of turned armor. The Marente forces still had their Widan, but although Clemente forces had never dallied long with the Sword of Knowledge, they were not helpless.
Not yet, and not while they stood.
He spoke another name, the fingers around the hilt of his sword growing numb with the ferocity of what seemed idle grip. Soon, he thought, he would join them. But not soon enough; there was no room upon the bridge, no worthy death there. Still, death, he thought, would come, did come.
He heard the shortened cry of the only woman upon the field, and he did not even turn to acknowledge what it presaged; he knew. One wall, one at least, had fallen.
And a miracle, he thought, raising sword to the light of the falling moon, the grace of the Lady’s brightest face, that it had not fallen sooner; that it had, in fact, stood at all.
He lifted his horn in his left hand, brought it full to lips; tasted cold silver, as if it were the very Lady’s kiss. He called his men to him, those who remained, and they came, injured or whole, the clank of metal against metal, the labor of breath, the only honor offered him.
More than enough.
He spun horse around on short rein; saw that one wall had, indeed, been breached. But the breach was narrow, and in the gap stood the two Northern men, both fair of face, both dancers whose weapons seemed to add to their grace, their deadly steps. He could not recall the exact moment they had deserted the bridge.
He sounded horn again and urged his horse forward.
Horn answered him. A single long note.
And following it, others, lesser, shorter, but distinct: a song, a war song unlike the clamor of drums.
His gaze grazed moon, his horn fell slowly from his lips; just as slowly did his men look up to see his face, to see that the horn was now, once again, in his lap.
Reymos hesitated for a moment, but only a moment; he raised horn now, and in reply the Clemente call sounded across the rise and fall of the gathered huts and dwellings. Alessandro was surprised that Ser Reymos had breath left with which to make the urgent call of horn so loud.
The Clemente cerdan turned to him, turned away, listening for the play of
distant horn, the sound of distant hooves.
As if, Alessandro thought, they did not walk in a dream of the Lady. As if they were upon a clear field, upon the open plains in the heart of Mancorvo. As if the notes they had heard had been, could be, real.
But when they sounded a second time, he, too, turned, reins in hand, sword in hand, horn once again idle at his belt. Not for the Tors or the Tyrs the song of that call; no man of worth sounded his own praise.
From the North, where no wall had been erected, the first of the horsemen appeared, their gait slowed by the fall of buildings and the bodies that adorned the slender road. And the foremost of the men carried, with pride, a banner that even in moonlight no clansman could fail to recognize.
He bowed his head.
The Tyr’agnate, Mareo kai di’Lamberto, had come.
Steel is a miracle.
Fire is a miracle.
Horses are a miracle.
Cloth, the weave of something grown from plant or worm; gold, from stream or Northern mine; silver, border of chained links that stop wind from furling the banners away from mortal sight.
The sunlight seen through moon is a miracle. Blood, when it flows, and when it stills; breath, when drawn, and when it ceases to be drawn.
Miracles. Offerings.
Who can say that in the Dominion there are no prayers, and no answers, that power alone decides who is fit and who will fail?
Men. And men say much.
Even in silence, wielding blade, they speak.
The walls fell in concert as the forces of the Tyr’agnate streamed past the wounded and the dying. Silence—if silence could be the thundering of hooves, the sound of drawn blades—reigned, and ruled; no words were spoken, no threats exchanged. Threats were idle pleasantries in the South, and the time for pleasantry—if it existed at all—had vanished.
They brought the sun with them. One man wore it openly; orange flame fanned the sheen of golden surcoat above his breastplate, and his sword spoke the language of Day.
Honor bound, he was called, this lord of Lamberto. Honor bound, and as one bound, lessened by stricture, weakened by it.
The Riven Shield: The Sun Sword #5 Page 73
