by Tom Deitz
“Trust is necessary among commanders, Majesty. And kinsmen.”
Barrax eyed him narrowly. “This is a fine force you have here. Finer than I had in mind when I asked you to assemble it. Fine accommodations. I was not aware of the wealth of the Army of the North.”
“It fared better than the south during the plague,” Lynnz retorted. “As my reports show.”
“I have no doubt,” Barrax noted dryly. “In the meantime, I have in mind to see if this force and another to which I have access are in fact soldiers as well as poseurs.”
Lynnz leaned forward at once: interest gleaming in his eyes. “What did you have in mind, Majesty?”
“Why, to test Eron’s defenses.”
“Now?”
“You sound surprised.”
Lynnz covered with a sip of wine. “No, Majesty—if you think it wise. But I would remind you that it is winter up there.”
“And I would remind you of two other things. First, they are so used to hiding out in their holds during the cold time they never think someone might dare attack them then. And second, that warmth returns first in the south—and their first and strongest line of defense lies in the south.”
“War-Hold.”
“Exactly. If we were to attack it early—in the middle of the winter, say, when they least expect it—we could take it before word could reach the north. Then, as spring marches north, so do we.”
“A brave plan, Majesty, but … forgive me, foolish. Forgetting the winter, War-Hold has never been taken.”
“Nor has it been assailed in ten generations. And we know that Eron is under strength.”
“So are we.”
“But not so much. And our full army against one hold …”
“One impregnable hold.”
“Not so.”
Lynnz’s eyes narrowed again. “Kraxxi told you … something?”
“He did. Foolish, naive, innocent boy that he is. I may even let him live—long enough to see what he has done.”
“And what has he done?”
“Given me a reason to attack.”
“And this reason is?”
Barrax smiled wickedly. “Well now, that is something you need to ponder for a while. Suffice to say that I learned some very interesting things from my interview with Merryn. A remarkable woman, that.”
“Things that would benefit me to know?”
“Things that would benefit the army I command to know, of which yours is part.” A pause, then: “Oh, stop fretting, Lynnz. I’m not out to kill you or relieve you of your command. I’d never hear the end of it from my sister if I did.”
Lynnz shrugged. “You are my king. I can say nothing else.”
Barrax laughed—loudly and without restraint. “Perhaps not. For now, however, we need to spend some time discussing how far we can move how many men how fast.”
“You’re determined to do this thing?”
“I’m determined to investigate it thoroughly. The rest—I may have to modify the timetable for all sorts of ridiculous reasons, but I will tell you this, Lynnz. I may be a dreamer, but I’m no fool.”
CHAPTER XI:
COLD COMFORT
(NEAR TIR-ERON-DEEP WINTER: DAY XLV-PAST SUNSET)
I’ve forgotten what green looks like,” Eddyn told Rrath, as the stumpy gelding he’d named Stamina labored up yet another snow-drenched hill. They were angling sideways, to keep the wind out of their faces and ease the slope a bit. As if it mattered.
Except that everything one did on the plains mattered, if it preserved one whit more warmth, strength, or determination. There’d been no snow for a day—for a change—and thank The Eight for the tents they’d had of the ghost priests, and for the horses the folk at Grinding-Hold kept. Horse, rather, because one of them was dead and buried in drifting snow, forcing the other unfortunate beast to bear double on those occasions Rrath and Eddyn both tired of walking. They tried to vary that task—taking turns on the horse and leading it when the going was especially rough, though both knew it cost them precious time to labor along in snow up to their waists, when both had skis. They moved slowly, but they moved. Every hand brought them closer to Tir-Eron. And decision.
“Remind me next time we start overland,” Rrath growled, from where he sat behind Eddyn on Stamina’s broad back, “and I’ll be sure to wear a suit of motley, so you won’t get bored.”
Eddyn ignored him, having grown tired of arguing everything either of them did or said. Instead, he pondered the landscape: rolling hills covered with snow, dulled by a thunderous sky. A distant line of forest in gray-brown and midnight-blue, but not the dense foliage of the Wild. A ruined hold they’d decided wasn’t worth investigating. And, for the first time, a gauzy whiteness against those glowering clouds that he prayed was steam rising from Eron Gorge. By straining his vision, he thought he could make out the square finger of Eron Tower: the guard post that marked the western road. They’d come in from the northwest, splitting the distance between the two principal means of ingress into the most habitable—and inhabited—gorge in Eron. Better that way, Rrath said, than to risk being sighted.
Eddyn wasn’t certain he cared anymore. None of this was remotely real, nor had been for a while. It was all noble notions worn down to naught by the need for survival.
Rrath released his hold on Eddyn’s waist and pointed past him, a little to the left. “Is that the tower?”
Eddyn squinted. “Should be.”
“Then we should turn farther south, and wait in the shadow of that hill there until dusk.”
Eddyn shivered. “I suppose you have a reason for depriving us of comfort for two more hands?”
“More than that, probably,” Rrath returned offhandedly. “Distances out here are deceiving, as I’m sure you know, and dusk is when we’re least likely to be noticed. The light’s uncertain then, and two of the moons rise together tonight just past sunset, so there’ll be all kinds of weird shadows out here, which I hope will confuse any sentries who actually happen to be doing their jobs. Too, the bulk of the tower staff will be eating then. And finally … I have to go that way to reach a certain route into Priest-Hold I’d prefer you didn’t know about.”
Eddyn reined Stamina to a halt, then twisted around to the right and caught Rrath in the ribs with his elbow—hard. The Priest “oofed” and did exactly as Eddyn had intended: fell off. He landed full on his back, spread-eagled in the snow, looking startled. Eddyn calmly paced Stamina around so he could stare down at his companion, who was trying to get his breath. “Eddyn!” Rrath gasped, eventually. “There was no need—”
“There’s plenty of need,” Eddyn shot back. “If you think I’m going to accompany you to your clan hold, so that whoever is really in charge there can put me back in thrall, you’re crazy! I’ve had enough of that to last my whole life. I had one goal when I started out on this insane journey, and for a while it was your goal, too, because I had no choice. But I am Clan Argen, and a smith. I have to consider our interests first.”
Rrath glared at him as he tried to rise. Eddyn kicked him down again with a well-placed foot. “Stay there. When I leave, go where you will, but I’m through with you. Maybe you can protect me—or think you can. But I’d rather rely on Argen—and the King.”
Rrath’s glare intensified, though he didn’t try to rise a second time. “They’ll find out, you know, that you’ve destroyed a masterwork. We can protect you from that—”
A snort. “And how do you propose to do that?”
“If they can’t find you, they can’t try you. If they can’t try you, they can’t convict you.”
“I’m hoping that what I have to tell them will overrule that.”
It was Rrath’s turn to snort. “Like you thought Strynn would name you father of her child instead of bringing charges of rape? Like you thought bringing word of the gem to Argen-yr before Argen-a got wind of it would make up for murder along the way, never mind destroying a masterwork?”
“It might, if th
at thing’s as powerful as it seems. It certainly made the ghost priests go solid in a hurry to get hold of it—or the threat it represents,” he added, to see how Rrath would react.
He didn’t. But all Eddyn’s pent-up anger for the last few days suddenly welled up in him. “You’re scared to death, aren’t you? Scared that once I get a finger alone with the King I’ll tell him things that will bring your clan down completely.”
“Or start civil war,” Rrath countered. “Do you want to risk that? This isn’t Argen-a and-yr, Eddyn. These are the two most powerful clans going at each other, and while we’ve a pretty good idea what resources the King commands, he has no idea of ours, nor do you.”
Eddyn paced Stamina a step closer, so that the horse loomed over the Priest. “Somehow I doubt you do, either.”
And with that he jerked back on the reins, even as he set heels smartly in Stamina’s sides. Startled, the gelding vented an irate whinny and rose up on its hind legs. A better-than-average horseman, Eddyn not only retained his seat, but managed to direct where those heavy front hooves landed.
He heard Rrath scream, and the snap of bones, and then a muffled curse. “Stupid horse!” he shouted, from sheer desire to counter his own wickedness.
Whereupon rationality reasserted itself. Whether or not Eddyn liked it, Rrath was human, had been a friend, and didn’t deserve to die like this in the cold.
With that in mind, and hating himself all the while, Eddyn jumped down from Stamina’s saddle and waded to where Rrath lay, unmoving in the snow. His eyes were closed and a nasty gash in his forehead leaked blood, along with a troubling depression in his rib cage. He still breathed, though—barely.
So, what would someone do who’d had this happen by accident? Not move the body, but cover it and get help—in a hurry.
Without further debate, he tugged Rrath’s cloak more closely around him, paying special attention to extremities that might get frostbite if the temperature fell very far. A pause, and he raised the Priest’s mouth-mask, feeling the warmth of breath against his fingers, but hearing, also, a rattle in those ragged exhalations. Finally, he removed his cloak and tucked it around Rrath as snugly as it would go, so that no skin was exposed directly to the air. The cold bit at him without that protective layer, but he could endure at least another hand. A pause to line up landmarks—the tower and a notch in the horizon—and he was in the saddle again. Without looking back, he once more urged Stamina forward.
The Priest could live—or not. But in spite of circumstances, there was no way he could prove the horse’s action had been anything but an accident. In the meantime, Eddyn would do the right thing and have help sent for his companion—from his own clan, if possible. In any event, he was rid of Rrath for a while. And right now, that was all that mattered.
The depth of the snow and a biting head wind slowed Eddyn, so that it took more than a hand to make his way to Eron Tower. But despite the mounting cold, that interval also gave him time to compose what he thought would be an adequate story. The place was close now: looming up out of the twilight; a great central finger with smaller cubes bracing it. The main gatehouse loomed ahead, and he’d had the guidance of the way markers for the last half hand. Yellow light glowed through thick glass in the higher rooms: proof of warmth and comfort he’d all but forgotten.
Closer, and he felt Stamina’s gait shift as its hooves came onto the hidden pavement.
The sun was behind him, and the snow had gone luminous red and dusky purple where light contrasted with shadows. The tower blazed orange-red like an ember. Light flickered off movement on the nearer battlements, sunset finding polished spears and banner poles and helms.
The wind picked up, stealing warmth and breath as one. He urged Stamina to a quicker pace and tried to put an appropriate urgency in his voice when he yelled for help.
No one noticed at first, but soon enough the half-seen figures on the battlement began to move more quickly, and torches appeared from inside to augment those already flickering uncertainly at either corner. People clotted, then dispersed, and he urged Stamina faster yet—though the beast protested, and struggled through the heavy drifts. The gate, which had been closed for the night, was slowly opening, disgorging figures who rushed out to meet him.
“My friend—he’s hurt,” he yelled, as soon as the first green-cloaked guards-man came into range. He gestured frantically back the way he’d come.
Voices clattered back at him, masked to obscurity by the wind.
“He’s hurt; I couldn’t move him!” he shouted again, varying the litany as he’d rehearsed, over and over.
“Who are you?” A voice finally clarified from the howl of a sudden gust. “What’re you—”
“My friend’s hurt,” Eddyn interrupted, gesturing again, even more frantically than before as he reined his mount to a halt. “He’s—”
“What happened?” the first guardsman—a lad no older than himself—demanded.
“We were riding double, and got excited when we saw the tower, and he moved wrong, or something, and the horse reared. I must’ve yanked the reins when I twisted around and … the horse brought its hooves down on him. I—”
“When was this?” a second guard broke in, already scanning the darkening plain.
“A hand ago, maybe. I didn’t dare move him. His ribs—”
“Was he conscious?”
“Not so I could tell. A hoof took him on the forehead. He was bleeding some. I covered him as well as I could and—”
He didn’t finish, because Stamina chose that moment to expire. Eddyn barely had time to leap off his collapsing mount—which forced two new arrivals to dodge out of the way. One moved toward the beast, the others—three now—regarded Eddyn.
Who, now that he was on a level with them, was suddenly aware of his height, and the fact that his mouth-mask had slipped down when he’d landed.
And that he was face-to-face with a lad named Merlicon, against whom he’d more than once played orney. Confusion flickered through the shorter youth’s eyes—probably due to the fact that Eddyn wasn’t where he ought to be and had a fair start on a beard. But the guardsman’s companion was quicker.
“It’s—” that one hissed.
“I know!” Merlicon rasped back, reaching for his sword. Eddyn started to reach for his as well, then realized that would give the lie to his ruse.
“My friend—” he tried again. “Rrath, from Priest-Clan.”
“Eddyn,” the third man said, tonelessly. “Eddyn syn Argen-yr.”
Eddyn neither acknowledged nor denied the salutation, but he backed away a step, as though from reflex, wishing Stamina had proven worthier of its name.
The sword came free. Another joined it.
“Dead,” said the man who’d been tending the horse. “Ridden to death.”
“For a reason,” Eddyn replied desperately. “My companion—”
“We’ll tend to him,” Merlicon, who seemed to be in command, said, glancing over his shoulder. Eddyn followed his gaze and saw five more guards issuing from the tower—which should be half the active complement.
“Where is this man?” someone barked.
Eddyn pointed toward the notch. “Between those hills: the double one and the single.”
The man nodded and trotted back toward the tower—likely in search of aid, medical supplies, and a litter.
Again, Eddyn made to go with him, but suddenly found himself facing three drawn swords with matching grim expressions above them.
“Eddyn syn Argen-yr,” Merlicon repeated. “You’ve changed, but no one your age has your height. Please acknowledge,” he added, with ritual formality. “Eron Tower demands you identify yourself upon approach.”
Eddyn didn’t reply, and tried hard to keep his hands away from his sword. To attack would bring a counter—and his death, which, now he thought of it, might not be an unpleasant option.
“Acknowledge!” the man barked again.
“Why? When you’ve already recognized
me. My friend—”
“We’ll see to your friend,” the horse tender snapped, as two more men arrived, and likewise drew their swords. “Meanwhile, we have orders to arrest you.”
“Me?” Eddyn gasped, taken utterly off guard. “This makes no sense. I’ve just come out of the Wild, with an injured Priest!”
“We know,” Merlicon retorted. “We were also told by the King himself to expect you. That’s as much as you need to know, and as much as we were told, besides. Now, do you fight or come peacefully?”
Eddyn spared one glance over his shoulder to the night darkening across the snow and wondered if perhaps Rrath didn’t have the better situation.
And then, for once, he did the right thing. He dropped his sword and raised his hands before him. “I don’t know what I’ve done,” he began carefully, “but if the King knows, I suppose he’ll inform me in time. Neither of us is above the Law.”
Silence greeted him, and by the time Eddyn had been escorted to the gatehouse, a dozen armed guards accompanied him.
It was warm, he noted gratefully, and there was even a small fire crackling behind a security grate in the cell to which they led him, two levels below the surface of the plain. It was austere but clean, and they let him eat as soon as they’d stripped him, searched him thoroughly, and given him a robe and a pair of thick house-hose.
But no one spoke to him—at all.
Not during the rest of that evening, nor during the night he spent there, nor the next day when, just past the morning meal, they moved him—under guard, in a windowless litter—to another cell. He had no idea where it was save by the impressions he gained in transit: across land, down the Stair, and north at the bottom, then down more stairs. He suspected, however, that he was in the dungeon beneath the Court of Rites—which was to say, beneath the forecourt of the Citadel.
But no one told him, and he’d never been down there to know. They fed him again, and locked the thick wooden door, leaving him in a room two spans to a side, lit only by light brought in by polished steel mirrors he couldn’t reach.
