by Hilari Bell
Commander Sower, who preferred to rely on the reports of his scouts, had agreed to Jeriah’s suggestion with the deadly politeness he’d been using since the Hierarch’s orders had arrived. At least the rooftop allowed him to escape the hostile atmosphere of the command post in the house below. Jeriah had been there all night, visible to anyone who cared to look, so when the trapdoor behind him creaked open, he wasn’t surprised to see Makenna’s short, ruffled hair. No one else was speaking to him.
She let the door bang back into place and joined him at the railing. “It’s all set. The last runes have been drawn, and the priests who are to cast the arc in the air have practiced the spell so many times, they could do it in their sleep. We’re ready.”
It had disturbed her to rely on the priests to cast a large portion of the gate. Almost as much as Jeriah had been disturbed by Sower’s refusal to let him go out with the scouts, and she concealed it better than he did. But at least she was doing something! In fact, as the person who’d cast more gate spells than anyone else in the Realm, she’d been chosen to order and anchor the whole complex spell. She hadn’t been shoved aside.
“You can’t blame Commander Sower for being miffed at you,” she pointed out, in a reasonable tone Jeriah instantly detested. “You went over his head and behind his back to set this up. You’re lucky he allowed you to stay at all.”
“He can’t order me to go.” Jeriah didn’t sound reasonable, and he didn’t care. “I’m not under his command, any more than he’s under mine.”
At least Koryn had sympathized with his frustration.
“And yet,” Makenna pointed out, “Sower’s doing exactly what you want. He made the order not to attack the barbarian servants, those camps they left behind, downright ironclad. He’s got his decoy troop out there, and the real troops tucked in yon ditch, out of sight. They won’t interfere with us unless our plan fails completely. And then we’d be glad of them.”
“So if he doesn’t want me with him, I should be posted there!” Jeriah snapped. “Or out with the scouts, or running messages, or doing something somewhere! I could—”
“If you were down in that ditch,” said Makenna tartly, “you’d be doing no more than you’re doing here, and with a lot worse view. Which would probably make you even more twitchy!”
“At least I might be useful if anything goes wrong,” Jeriah said. “Instead of sitting and watching while the greatest battle in the Realm’s history gets resolved without me.”
The instant he said it, shame set in. Getting rid of the barbarians was what mattered, not whether Jeriah had a hand in it. He expected Makenna to tell him so, but she only leaned on the railing, looking over the fields to the south.
“The waiting’s always hard. Some say it’s the hardest part. For me, the aftermath, seeing to the dead and wounded, is worse. You always wonder whether, if you’d been a little smarter, planned a little better, you could have prevented it.”
Jeriah was reminded, once more, that this was Cogswhallop’s general.
“If this goes according to plan,” he said, “there won’t be any wounded, or any dead. I know that’s better than heroics.”
The early-morning sun lit her skeptical glance.
“Really,” said Jeriah. “I do know it.”
“That’s as well,” she said. “Because you’ll never be a hero. No more will I.”
Jeriah stared. “I think we’ve both done pretty well so far!”
Even Koryn had conceded that he’d done a good job.
She’d ridden out with the landholder’s family. Jeriah could see how much she wanted to stay, to witness her enemies’ defeat. But there was nothing more she could do, and she was sensible enough to accept it.
“Not bad, Rovan.” Koryn’s gaze was fixed on some soldiers who were concealing themselves in the ditch. “Not bad at all. You might actually bring this off.”
Even that faint praise had lifted Jeriah’s heart. “If I do, will you forgive me? For Master Lazur? For . . . everything?”
The huge eyes turned to him. “Even if you don’t bring it off, I have to give you credit for an all-out try.”
Koryn had ridden away then, leaving him uncertain if he’d finally been forgiven or not. But if she thought he’d done well . . .
“We’re doing a magnificent job,” Jeriah told Makenna firmly.
“We’ve done well enough,” she admitted. “But we’re not heroes. You and I, we’re too . . . too practical. Too aware of how things really work, of what’s impossible, to ever come up with a crazy idea like this.”
Jeriah frowned. “Tobin and Senna are the practical people in my family. I’m supposed to be the crazy one.”
“Exactly.”
“You’re not making sense.”
For once, Makenna’s smile held nothing but friendship. “You’re supposed to be the crazy one? The idealist, who doesn’t let anything stop him from doing what’s right?”
Heat rose in Jeriah’s face. “Things stop me all the time. And what’s right . . . that’s gotten a bit muddled lately.”
“But you didn’t come up with this plan,” Makenna said. “Neither did I, great general that I’m supposed to be. Tobin created it. Tobin, who’d be the first to call it madness.”
“Yes, but Tobin only came up with this because he couldn’t stand to leave . . .”
Suddenly Jeriah saw it, all together. The thing that made his brother a hero. That kept him or Makenna—or Master Lazur—from ever becoming one.
“He couldn’t stand to leave anyone behind to be killed,” Makenna finished for him. “His heart’s too soft to sacrifice anyone, so he made up the craziest plan ever heard of, and he pushed till it might even come off. So he’s the hero. You and I, we’re the ones who follow behind the heroes and try to make their crazy plans work.”
“Then you’d best start working on this one,” said a gruff, familiar voice. “It’s about to fall to bits on us.”
Jeriah jumped. Cogswhallop was perched on a chimney behind them, but he’d given up complaining about the goblins sneaking up on him.
“What’s wrong?” Makenna sounded calmer than Jeriah felt. “Where are the barbarians?”
“They’re gathering on the other side of that hill.” Cogswhallop pointed to a low rise to the southwest. “There’s a gully that let ’em reach it without the human scouts seeing, but we spotted ’em some time ago. I’d guess they’re waiting for the gate to go up, though as much as we can tell from a distance, they look pretty twitchy. If you wait too long, it might occur to them to ride in here, capture the priests, and force them to open up the gate when and where the barbarians choose. You wouldn’t be refusing them. Not for long.”
The goblin’s face was grim. Jeriah decided he didn’t want to know the details.
“So what’s wrong?” he demanded. “They’re doing exactly what Tobin said they would.”
“Aye,” the goblin drawled. “But they’re taking Tobin along with ’em.”
“With them? What do you mean?”
“He’s tied hand and foot to a horse’s saddle, with four hard lads guarding him,” Cogswhallop replied. “So it doesn’t look like they plan on leaving him behind. And if they get him into the Otherworld—”
“Right,” said Makenna. “Cogswhallop, gather up all our lads who can fight. We’ll—”
“You can’t,” Jeriah told her. His heart pounded with fear for Tobin, excitement at finally being free to do something. Utter dread, for if he failed, it would no longer matter if Koryn forgave him—he would never forgive himself.
“You’ve got to cast the gate,” he went on. “There’s no one else who can control the spell. I’ll put together a troop. Humans, because if the barbarians can sense the goblins’ presence, it’ll give us away before we can get close.”
The goblins were also too small to wage a physical fight against barbarian warriors, but Jeriah wasn’t going to insult them by saying so.
“You need to stall about casting the gate till we�
��re ready,” he went on. “We’ll wait till the barbarians are coming, charge out, and get Tobin away from them.”
Makenna frowned, slender fingers tapping the rail. Was she going to throw a girlish fit, demand to come with him? Or—
“Put your troop in that orchard,” she said crisply, pointing. “You’ll be able to watch the barbarians’ approach long enough to locate Tobin, then ride out while they’re distracted by Sower’s decoys. Take Daroo with you. He can carry a message to me when you’re in position. They’ll be coming in fast, so don’t get fancy—ride in, get him, get out. I wish . . .”
She shrugged. Commanders didn’t get wishes, and she knew it better than Jeriah did, but he still felt for her. He had no time to feel.
“Where’s Dar—”
Something tugged on his britches. Jeriah reached down and swung Daroo onto his shoulder, feeling the small hands dig into his tunic. Nice, to be able to carry his friends around in the open.
He was already hurrying to the trapdoor, but he turned back as he lifted it and met Makenna’s somber eyes. “I’ll get him.” He’d put too much effort into rescuing Tobin to lose him now. “I promise.”
It was Cogswhallop who replied. “You do that, lad. But don’t expect much help from him—he’s in bad shape.”
Jeriah wanted to ask why, but it would take time to assemble his troop, and once the human scouts located their enemy, Makenna wouldn’t be able to stall for long. No matter what shape Tobin was in, Jeriah wanted him back!
He took the stairs down from the roof two at a time, with Daroo clutching his shoulder. Jeriah thought he heard a whispered “Yahoo!” but the goblin’s voice was too soft for him to be sure.
The clerks and support staff stared as Jeriah ran past with a goblin perched on his shoulder. One of the commanders put out a hand to catch him. “Rovan, are they com—”
“Not yet!”
Jeriah dodged the hand and ran on. They would send someone up to the roof, who would find Makenna there, but nothing to alarm them. Unless the barbarians took Cogswhallop’s advice and charged . . . No, he had to stick with the plan. Makenna would give him time. Unless the human scouts spotted the gathering horde—then Jeriah’s time would be up!
He dodged through the farmyard, then sprinted down the path behind the house. A horse might have covered this ground faster, but Jeriah couldn’t take it into the ditch. He was panting when he reached it, sweating in the cool morning air. He took a bit of care scrambling down the side of the shallow ravine. A sprained ankle was the last thing he needed.
Half a dozen hands reached out to steady him as he tumbled the last few feet.
“Rovan! Are they here? We haven’t heard anything!”
“They’re not here.” Jeriah tried to catch his breath and look less panicked. “But I need some men for a . . .”
His gaze fell on a young subcommander, a friend of Tobin’s from the years his brother had served in this army.
“. . . a special escort,” he finished. “You, Trevenscourt, meet me in the stable, mounted and ready to ride. There will be others coming to join you.”
He hurried on before the troop’s commanding officer could ask more questions—though he might not have had any. Squires of Jeriah’s age and rank were often sent to gather men for an escort or run other errands for the assembled commanders. No one even argued as he hurried down the ditch, keeping an eye out for Tobin’s friends and drafting several more before he finally reached Commander Malveese’s unit.
He could have picked out the men he wanted by their expressions alone—men who’d do anything to get one last chance at their enemy. Waiting in the ditch while the barbarians escaped was harder on these men than waiting on the roof had been for Jeriah. In short, they were the worst of the hotheads. Jeriah had no fear that they’d balk at an unauthorized mission—he only hoped they’d remember that their job was to free a prisoner, instead of simply killing every barbarian they could get their hands on.
He picked out over a dozen, more than half of Malveese’s unit, and met the commander’s suspicious gaze steadily.
“A special escort,” Jeriah said. “I was told to gather all the men I needed.”
The fact that the general who’d given those orders commanded the goblins’ army, not the Realm’s, was a mere detail.
Commander Malveese hesitated a moment, then shrugged.
“Take all the men you like. They’re not doing much here.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Jeriah sincerely. “For everything.”
“Just bring it off.” The commander’s lips twitched. “Whatever it is.”
Jeriah was still smiling as he led his troops out of the ditch.
Jogging back to the stables kept them too breathless for questions. When they entered the big building, Jeriah found that the men he’d sent on earlier had saddled not only their own mounts, but horses for most of the others. It took just a moment to get a bridle and saddle on Glory, who pranced uneasily as she sensed his tension.
“I have to tell you all,” said Jeriah, “this isn’t an escort, and it hasn’t been authorized by any commander. But the barbarians have Tobin.”
He kept his explanation short and succinct. They all knew it was Tobin who’d conceived this odd ambush in the first place, so the story didn’t take long.
“This is against orders,” Jeriah finished crisply. “In fact, coming with me might get you kicked out of the army when this is over.”
“When this is over, there isn’t going to be an army,” one of the Southlanders said. “We might as well go out fighting, instead of hiding in a ditch!”
The rumble of approval was almost a cheer, but some of Tobin’s friends looked troubled. A few of them, younger sons, had probably planned for a career in the sunsguard. But none of them said anything and Jeriah blessed them from the bottom of his heart. He needed them.
“Most of you don’t know what my brother looks like—and I should tell the rest that he’s been ill.”
Jeriah organized them into small units, three or four Southlanders paired with each man who knew Tobin well enough to identify the man they were supposed to rescue. When he was done, almost twenty men led their horses out of the stable and across the yard. At this point, Jeriah was more concerned about being seen by one of his own officers than the barbarians. But the orchard lay just beyond the manor’s gate, and the bright spring leaves soon hid them.
In a few more minutes they were staring through a screen of branches at the backs of Commander Sower’s troops. Those men were supposed to look like a loose perimeter guard, assigned to protect the gate from barbarian scouting parties without getting so close as to alarm the spirits.
Jeriah had agreed that the barbarians would be suspicious if the gate was completely unguarded. He’d also agreed that it should be possible for these men to allow themselves to be swept aside when the barbarian army charged, without too many dying in the process. He still thought the men who’d volunteered for that unit were the bravest he’d ever met.
He also understood why Commander Sower had turned away so many of the Southland volunteers. The men around him looked far too eager.
Jeriah turned to Daroo, who had moved from his perch on Jeriah’s shoulder to the back of Glory’s saddle.
“We’re set. Go tell Makenna she can start the spell.”
He could feel Daroo’s reluctance. The young goblin wanted to stay. He wanted to do more than carry messages. But Daroo, for all his youth, had been a soldier too.
“Aye.” He slid down the stirrup before Jeriah could give him a hand and headed toward the manor.
“Daroo?” Jeriah said impulsively. The boy turned. “Tell Makenna . . . tell her I can think of worse things to do with my life than helping heroes win.”
The way Daroo’s face brightened was reward enough, but as Jeriah settled back in the saddle, he realized that it was true. Without people like him, people who could deal with the consequences when the plan fell apart, the heroes could end up dead. Th
at wasn’t going to happen here. Not if Jeriah could prevent it.
“Remember, we’re only here to grab Tobin and get out.” He kept his voice low, but all of Tobin’s friends, and even some of the Southlanders, nodded.
Jeriah looked at the men who hadn’t and was about to repeat himself when the light shifting through the leaves took on a silver cast. He turned toward the manor and gasped.
They’d been talking for weeks about how big this gate would be, but he hadn’t expected . . . It arced from one side of the field to the other like a rainbow, but its silver-blue light was a solid, swirling curtain that descended to the earth and blotted out the sky. Then it swirled itself clear to reveal another sky, half full of drifting clouds, while the sky over the Southlands behind it still showed clear.
The sight of those clouds brought home the reality of that alien world as nothing else had, and the back of Jeriah’s neck prickled at its strangeness. But he had no time for awe; a shout went up from Sower’s men as the barbarian army poured over the long, low rise that had concealed them.
They’d painted themselves for battle, clay-white skin, with spikes of stiffened hair framing screaming faces. They surged across the fields like the froth of a great wave, and the thunder of thousands of pounding hooves rolled over Jeriah. He was astonished when Sower’s men rushed out and formed a line in front of that charge instead of running away—he wouldn’t have blamed them!
But admiration and his own terror both took second place to frantically scanning that oncoming mob for his brother. Jeriah hadn’t imagined there’d be so many of them, and picking out an individual face in that jostling tide seemed impossible.
They completely filled the long fields as they approached Sower’s line, and more barbarians were riding from behind the hill when the battle began.
Jeriah, still trying to pick Tobin out of the mass, tried to ignore the clang of metal on metal, the shouts of anger and pain. Some of the Southlanders shifted restlessly.
