The Lady of Han-Gilen

by Judith Tarr

  Ebros reached the hill’s foot. Bows sang. Arrows arced upward. One fell spent at the Mad One’s feet.

  For a long moment Mirain regarded it. Elian longed to shriek at him, to beat him into motion.

  His sword swept from its scabbard. With a fierce stallion-scream, the Mad One charged.

  Ilhari pounded on his heels. Elian clung to the saddle by blind instinct. All her anger, all her impatience, even the sickness of her fear, lost itself in the thunder of the charge. There remained only startlement, and a growing exhilaration.

  The wind in her face; the splendid sword—when had she drawn it?—in her hand; the surge of seneldi strength beneath her. Behind her, the army; before her, always before her, the scarlet fire of the Sunborn.

  No target practice, this, no game of war on a table. This was battle as the singers sang of it. She laughed and bent over the flying mane.

  With a mighty shock, the armies clashed.

  Alone, Elian might have run wild. But Ilhari would not leave the Mad One.

  That too was madness, of a sort; for there always was the press thickest, the battle hottest. Southern-trained Mirain might be, but he fought as a chieftain of the north, at the forefront of his army, guide and beacon for all the rest.

  He was mad. God-mad; possessed. No arrow touched him. No blade pierced his flashing guard. His eyes shone; his body shone with light that waxed as he advanced. Even when a cloud dimmed the sun, he blazed bright golden.

  Elian, tossing in his wake, carrying his spears and the shield that, like a true madman, he scorned to use, felt the last of her temper drain away. Awe rose in its place.

  She fought it as she fought the enemy who massed about her, fiercely. This was her brother. She had taken her first steps clinging to his hand, shaped her first letters under his teaching, learned first how to wield a sword with his hand over hers on the hilt. He ate and slept like any man, dreamed both well and ill, and woke blear-eyed, tousled and boylike and faintly cross-grained. He laughed at soldiers’ jests, wept unashamedly when his singer lamented the sorrows of old lovers, cast admiring eyes on a good mount or a fine hound or a handsome woman.

  He was human. Living, breathing, warm and solid, human.

  He rode in battle like a god.

  A blade leaped at her. She parried, riposted, as her weapons master had taught her. The keen steel plunged through hardened leather into flesh and grated on bone. With a wrench she freed it.

  She never saw the man fall. Her first man. Ilhari slashed with hooves and teeth at a smaller, broader senel, its rider fantastically armored, whirling a sword about his head.

  Heroics, thought Elian. His bravado left bare the unarmored space between arm and side. Her sword’s point found it, pierced it.

  “’Ware right!”

  She wheeled. Bronze sang past her arm. Another’s blade cut down her attacker; a white grin flashed at her. Vadin in barbaric splendor, his helm crowned with copper and plumed with gold, his gorget of copper set with Ianyn amber. His brother was with him, trying to echo his grin, but regarding Elian with eyes wide, level, and much too dark.

  Why, she thought, nettled, the boy had been terrified for her. Suddenly it all seemed wonderfully ridiculous. She laughed. “My thanks!” she called out to them both.

  Vadin bowed and laughed with her and spun his mare away. Cuthan nudged his tall stallion to her side as if he meant to stay there. He refused to see her glare.

  For a moment the tide of battle had ebbed. The vanguard could rest, catch breath, inspect one another for wounds. Mirain’s standardbearer grounded the staff of the Sun-banner and gentled his restive mount. The king sat still, eyes running over the field.

  It was a good vantage. They had passed the hill’s foot and begun to mount the slope to the town. All over the wide field the battle raged; but the northerners had thrust deep, driving Ebros against the walls.

  The prince’s banner caught the wind before the gate. He kept to the custom of southern generals, ruling from behind, where he could see all that passed and escape danger to himself.

  “It goes well,” said Cuthan. “See, their right has fallen.”

  “Their left holds,” another of the household pointed out, “and they’ve got walls to retreat to. We’re not done yet.”

  “They’re regrouping.” Cuthan leaned forward, intent. The enemy was drawing back, gathering together, mustered by trumpets and by the shouts of captains. Mirain’s forces pursued them hotly; they offered little resistance.

  Mirain loosed an exclamation. His trumpeter glanced at him. His hand swept out in assent.

  His army heard the sudden clear notes. Retreat, they sang. Retreat and re-form. The companies wavered. Retreat! the trumpet cried.

  Slowly, then more swiftly, the army moved to obey. But one large company was not so minded. Deaf or obstinate, it pressed on, harrying its Ebran prey. Its captain rode behind it under the banner of Ashan.

  Ebros massed now before the walls. As the last company fought its way forward, the ranks seethed. Horns rang. Cymbals clashed.

  Mirain’s voice lashed out at his household. “Stay!” But the Mad One was in motion, springing toward the Ashani forces.

  Ilhari followed. Elian urged her on. Mirain’s glance blazed upon them, his will like a physical blow.

  Cuthan’s stallion, close and dogged on their heels, staggered and bucked to a halt, and would not advance for all of Cuthan’s spurring and cursing. Ilhari stumbled, shook her head, lengthened and steadied her stride.

  Glittering, deadly, the scythed chariots rolled forth from the Ebran lines.

  The Mad One stretched from a gallop to his full, winged speed. He closed in upon the Ashani rearguard, veered left.

  Ilhari swayed toward the right. The wind whipped into Elian’s eyes, blinding her; yet she knew where they passed. Round the racing army, footmen, cavalry, chariots. Chariots foremost, the light war-cars of nobles, unscythed, all but unarmored, their strength resting wholly in the arms of the warriors who rode them.

  Ilhari hurled herself across their path. Seneldi veered. Reins and wheels tangled. Men rolled under sharp cloven hooves.

  “Back!” cried Elian, high and piercing. “In Avaryan’s name, back!”

  Sun’s fire blazed, dazzling her. A deep voice echoed her own. The Ashani ground to a halt.

  “Back!” roared Mirain.

  Step by step, then in a rush of hooves and feet and a clashing of bronze, they obeyed him.

  Thunder rumbled behind. Indrion had loosed the scythed chariots.

  Ilhari tensed to bolt. The Mad One spun on his haunches. His nostrils were wide, blood-red, his neck whitened with foam, yet Mirain seemed as calm as ever, Enspelled, perhaps, by the whirling scythes.

  “No,” he said. Softly though he spoke, Elian heard him distinctly. “See. They hinder one another; they fear their own fellows.” He might have been on the training field, instructing her in the arts of war. “Come now. We have our own work yet to do.”

  He did not return directly to his command, but angled right, riding swiftly yet easily. When Elian glanced over her shoulder, the chariots were closer.

  Yet, terrible though they were, still they were but a few. And Mirain’s army was drawn up in a wide crescent. At its center, the charge’s target, massed a phalanx of men on foot, shields linked into a wall. Before them waited mounted archers, and men in light armor on light swift mares, armed with long lances.

  Ashan’s men found their place in the right wing. Some companies might have continued their flight once it was begun, but if the Ashani were fools, they were brave fools. They turned again to fight at need.

  As Mirain crossed the face of his army and circled the phalanx to find his banner, a shout ran with him, deep and jubilant. It had his name in it, and his titles, and—Elian stiffened a little, startled—her own usename. But she had done nothing. It was Ilhari who had refused to leave her sire.

  And Galan who brought half a charging legion to a standstill. Stern though Mirain’s face
was, his mind-voice held more approval than not. He was almost proud of her.

  Almost. There was still the matter of his command and her flagrant disobedience.

  She would pay for it later. But as she returned to the household gathered behind the phalanx as behind a wall, she felt the warmth of their greeting. Even Cuthan met her with a wide white grin. Recklessly she returned it.

  The chariots came on. Behind them advanced the Ebran army. The prince’s banner rode in the center now, edging forward.

  Mirain’s mounted archers sprang into a gallop, fanning across the field. In the spaces between them spurred the lancers. Their spears swung down in a long glittering wave, leveled, and held.

  The air filled with arrows. So slow, they were, rising in lazy arcs but dropping with blurring speed.

  Seneldi screamed. Men howled and fell. The lancers thrust in among the racing beasts, striking at them, veering away from the scythes. Arrows sought targets, men and seneldi both, harnessed beasts and unarmed charioteers.

  A senel misstepped, stumbled, fell into the whirling blades. Its screams shrilled over the din of battle. Elian squeezed her eyes shut.

  The screams faded; hooves crashed on metal. Her eyes flew open. The chariots had collided with the phalanx.

  It held. By Avaryan, it held.

  Buckled. Swayed. Stiffened. Broke.

  Mirain snatched the trumpet from its startled bearer, set it to his lips, blew a clear imperious call. A roar answered it. With a mighty clangor of bronze on bronze, the wings of his army closed on the enemy.

  oOo

  Glory was a fine word in the morning when one was fresh and unscathed and rode at the Sunborn’s back. But glory lost its luster in hour after hour of grueling labor, dust and sweat and screaming muscles, blood and entrails, shrieks of pain, curses and gasps and the ceaseless, numbing, smithy-clamor of battle.

  Elian no longer knew or cared where she went, save only that the Mad One remained in her sight, black demon spattered with bright blood. For a time she thought they might be falling back, driven before the chariots and the fierce defenders of Ebros.

  Then, as a wrestler musters all his strength and surges against his enemy, they thrust forward again. On, on, up the slope of the hill, under the walls.

  No, she thought. No.

  A deadly rain fell upon them: arrows, stones, sand heated in cauldrons and poured down from the walls, seeping beneath armor, searing through flesh into bone.

  Mirain’s voice cut across the shrieks of agony. The infantry, embattled, thrust together. Shields locked again into the moving fortress of the phalanx.

  Relentlessly it advanced. Ebros stood at bay with its back to the walls.

  Heedless of the hail from the battlements, Mirain sent his stallion plunging against the Ebran line. “Indrion!” he cried, his voice rough with long shouting. “Indrion!”

  The Prince of Ebros had long since forsaken either custom or prudence to fight in the first rank of his army. He turned now, hacking his way through Ashani troops, striving to reach Mirain. The young king, battle-wild, strained toward him.

  Even as they came together, a chariot cut between them. A man in Ashani armor struck wildly at his old enemy.

  Mirain’s sword flashed round. The charioteer flailed at reins that held no longer. The flat of the king’s blade caught the team across their rumps, sent them bucking and plunging into the heart of the Ashani forces.

  Freed of the obstacle, they faced one another, king and prince. Indrion was a tall man, northern-tall but not so dark; his eyes beneath the plumed helmet were almost golden, and feral as a cat’s. With a single graceful movement he vaulted from his chariot and bowed in not-quite-mockery.

  Mirain laughed and sprang from the Mad One’s back. They stood a moment, poised, taking one another’s measure. Without a word, they closed in combat.

  Elian’s breath came harsh in her throat. Oh, he was mad, mad, mad. He all but held the victory: his shieldwall battered at the gate; his cavalry drove that of Ebros in rout across the field. Yet he faced this giant, this warrior famous throughout the Hundred Realms, and he laughed, daring death to snatch away his triumph.

  She clapped heels to Ilhari’s sides. The mare set her ears back and braced her feet. Elian tensed to fling herself from the saddle, but iron hands held her fast. She glared into Vadin’s eyes.

  “No,” he said. “This is the king-fight. It’s not for lesser folk to meddle in.”

  Elian cursed him, and her obstinate mare, and her madman of a king. Not one of them would yield.

  All about them the fight had cooled. Enemies stood side by side, blades drawn and dripping, eyes upon their lords. Even the folk on the battlements—women, Elian saw now; boys and old men and a mere handful of warriors—had ceased their barrage.

  Mirain and Indrion fought alone, gold and gold, scarlet against crimson. Mirain was a warrior in ten thousand, but he had fought unstinting from the first; god’s son or no, he was made of flesh, and he was weary. Indrion, newer to the battle, met his skill with skill no less, and with greater strength.

  The king was weakening. His blows were less strong, his parries less firm. The two swords locked, guard to guard; his own trembled visibly.

  A dead silence held the field. In it, his breathing was hoarse, labored.

  With a mighty heave, Indrion flung him back. He stumbled, half fell, recovered without grace. All his guards were down. Even his proud head drooped.

  He was beaten. Beaten and waiting to fall. Indrion laughed, short and sharp, and closed in for the kill.

  Steel whirled in a flashing arc. Up, around, down, full upon the prince’s golden helmet. Indrion reeled, incredulous, and toppled.

  Mirain stood over the prone body. He was breathing hard, but not as hard as he had pretended; his sword was steady in his hand. City and armies waited for the killing stroke.

  He pulled off his helmet and tossed it into the nearest hands—an Ebran’s, a youth in the prince’s livery, his charioteer.

  As the boy gaped, Mirain said, “I claim my prisoner and all that is his. Who challenges me?”

  No one moved.

  Mirain’s sword hissed into its sheath. “So.” His eyes flashed across the field. “I claim my prisoner, and I set him free. You—you—you. A litter for the prince. Who commands now for him?”

  “I command for myself.” Prince Indrion could barely sit up. His face was grey, his eyes glazed, but his voice was clear enough. “I yield, my lord king. On this sole condition: that neither my men nor my town be destroyed.”

  “I had meant it to be so,” Mirain said. His hand clasped the prince’s; his smile illumined the air between them. With his own hands he saw Indrion settled in a litter and borne from the field.

  TEN

  Ebros was conquered. Mirain’s army held the town; Prince Indrion’s camped without, under the walls. In the grey evening, men with torches moved slowly over the battlefield, heaping the dead for burning, bearing the wounded to the healers’ tents on the edge of the Ebran camp. Wherever they passed, the croaking of carrion birds followed them.

  Elian could hear it even in the keep. Having seen to it that Mirain doffed his armor and washed away the stains of battle, she had been banished to her bed.

  She had not struggled overly hard against his will. He had only gone to break bread in hall with the captains of both sides, and she was bone-weary. She had bathed long and rapturously; she had put on a clean shirt, soft over her many bruises and her few, slight wounds; she had lain as Mirain commanded her across the foot of the enormous bed reserved for the lord of the keep. But sleep would not come.

  Her bed was soft, her body no less comfortable than it had been after many a long hunt. She was numb with exhaustion. And she lay open-eyed, hearing the harsh cries of the birds called heirs of battle, children of the goddess, eaters of the slain. Where men fought, they fed. They grew fat on slaughter.

  She lay on her face deep in the featherbed. In the darkness behind her eyes, the battle
unfolded itself, clearer by far in memory than it had been while she fought in it. She saw her bright sword swing up; she saw it fall and grow lurid with blood.

  She was a warrior now. Her blade had been blooded. She had learned to kill.

  None of the songs told of what came after the fierce joy of the charge: the blood on the trampled grain, the scatter of limbs and entrails, the carrion stench. There was no splendor in it. Only a dull ache, a sickness in body and brain.

  They called her valiant, the men of Mirain’s household. After the battle they had given her their accolade, the armor of the Ebran lord whom she had slain, such a trophy as a squire could not claim save by the will of his lord’s whole company. And seldom indeed could he win it in his first battle.

  If they could see her now, they would despise her.

  Or worse, they would know her for a woman. They would mock her, a girlchild who played at manhood, a hoyden princess who feigned the voice and manners of a boy. And there forever would be her fame: in the rude jests of soldiers, where it well deserved to be.

  She rolled onto her side. Her stomach heaved; her body knotted about it. “No,” she said aloud. “No!”

  Abruptly she rose. She pulled on trousers and boots and snatched up the first warm garment that came to hand. Mirain’s cloak; but she made no effort to exchange it for a coat of her own. It was warm; it covered her; it carried a faint, comforting scent of him.

  The town was quiet, startlingly so. Mirain’s army, forbidden either sack or rapine, had also found the stores of strong drink well and firmly guarded. Well fed and sparingly wined, they kept order as in camp, with discipline which many a southern general might have envied. And, Elian thought, remarkably little grumbling.

  The gate-guards knew her; they let her pass unchallenged. She paused beyond them. The sky was dark, starless; a thin cold wind skittered over the field.

  Torches flickered there, moving to and fro like ghost-lights, rising and dipping and sometimes holding still for a long count of breaths. Among them she discerned humped shadows, mounds of the dead. There were three: Ebran, Ashani, Ianyn.