Falburn shook his head. “We’ll need to pace our volleys between theirs... scare ‘em, but waste as few of our arrows as possible.”
Wolt nodded. “We’ll be firing into the sun.”
“Aye,” Falburn agreed. “But with the wind. Mine’re used to the sun... yours’ll have the shade of their helms. And maybe their shine’ll blind the pirates.”
He grinned, and Wolt nodded at the counsel as Chief Mate Josson returned to the forecastle and began to give orders in a slow and staggered shanty.
“We’re turning into them?” Hafgrim said, but only loud enough for those nearest him to hear. “If they turn, fine... but if not, how will we avoid that ram?”
“A gamble?” Adria shrugged. “I’m not sure he has a plan for that yet.”
“He’s hopeful it won’t be needed,” Elias said. “It’s reasonable. If she can’t cripple us, and if she loses enough rowers, she’ll be slow to ram and reluctant to try.”
Wolt turned about to survey his Knights’ readiness, then leaned out over the railing of the main deck. He cleared his throat and spoke aloud, so that all aboard could hear.
“Knights of Heiland,” he began. “Across the water men without faith and without honor seek to do us harm. I don’t need to tell you what is at stake. Every battle we wage, every mission we advance, is of equal weight in the eyes of the One.”
He nodded at a few of their faces, showing some real confidence, warranted or no.
“Today we serve our God, today we serve our Crown, and today we serve the sea. Today The Echo is our Matron, our Sister, and all aboard her are our brothers.”
The shanty had quieted as Josson took notice of the words. Adria smiled a little, and looked about to see that Hafgrim, Elias, and even Falburn were nodding.
Wolt has learned a bit on the voyage, as well… she thought. What to say… what not to say…
The Knight Captain continued, “Remember your training. Remember your oath. Stand fast against the stones and arrows of those who would see us drown. Draw and fire on my command. With our faith true and our arms strong we will not fall.”
Wolt paused, and then saluted. “Victory...”
As one, the Knights saluted, “Victory!”
Josson began the shanty again, and the captain called for adjustments to the sails. Falburn then motioned to Emoni with his free hand. “I won’t order ye to the hold, girl, but if ye’re keen to stay up here, best stand by me.”
Without comment or expression, she did as asked, but the captain’s shield boy had to motion for her to stand nearer.
“For the shield, Lady,” he smiled. “’Less your Sisters have taught ye to catch arrows.”
Emoni reacted neither with appreciation nor offense at the boy’s jest, merely nodding once and moving as indicated.
Were she not who she was, they would have sent her below regardless, Adria thought. What strange power the Sisterhood has, even among those who pay their religion only small respect. Or... is it this girl’s power, alone?
“She’s a strange one,” Elias quietly agreed with her thoughts, having followed Adria’s gaze.
“This journey is certainly an odd place for a Novice,” Adria said, more obliquely than she might have liked.
Elias nodded.
Only then did Adria, with deliberation bordering on ceremony, begin to prepare her bow. Unrolled, the long unstrung black shaft held only a mild curve across its considerable length — as long or longer than those of the other Knights — and both ends were capped with a length of bone, each carved with burnished runes.
Bleached leather covered the grip, coiled with blackened steel wire in twisted pairs. As she had many times before, for a moment she merely stared at it, not quite out of fear or shame this time, but with a mixture of wariness and respect.
Beside her, Elias leaned in and gave a low whistle. “That is an impressive weapon, Highness. I can certainly say I’ve never seen its like.”
“It was a gift from Taber,” Adria explained, distantly. “From a time when I was too young and too eager to use it.”
She lifted the bow in her left palm, without gripping it, as if it were no more than a switch from a sapling. It showed its balance, rolling on its axis in perfect form. She gripped it, then, and she thought of past challenges, of the many weapons she had raised, the lives she had saved and those she had ended.
Red and white beads.
“I remember this,” Hafgrim said beside her. “It was for winning a round in the Squires’ Tournament. Or… was it your birthday?”
“Both, I think. I still don’t fully understand why.” Adria nodded. ”It is a legacy of war. The wood is from a tree which stood in the center of a sacred place of the Aesidhe. It was said to have been struck by lightning, but it never burned. The bone is from a great warrior among their people, a warrior who stood against our father in battle, with neither weapons nor armor, and was slain, nailed to the tree itself.”
Adria was careful with her voice, keeping her tone even. She did not speak the name Fire Heart, or use the word slaughter. She did not raise her voice or show anger. But those around her watched, and they listened. A legacy of war.
“This bow remembers that event, a symbol of both the Aeman and the Aesidhe. It represents a great victory in Father’s war, a turning point in the history of Heiland, and a tragedy in the story of the Aesidhe. It is all that is left of one of the greatest among their fallen.”
Hafgrim and the Knights were quiet and still about her as she strung the shaft. Adria smiled after a moment, and Elias hesitated at her expression. “Why are you smiling?”
“Because of something I was once told, about the bow and its weight.” Adria shrugged and stood with the strung bow and an arrow. “I could not even string the bow when it was given. Three times I tried to put it aside, and three times I was told to keep it until it was time. I was told that it honored me, honored my father, and honored the one my father had slain. That when I had the strength to draw it, I would know.”
Elias nodded. “And you have the strength now?”
“The strength of arm? The strength of will?” Adria’s smile widened as she nocked her arrow. “I hope so. This will be the first time I have tried.”
With a deep breath, and an eye on the enemy galley, though it was still too far away to fire, she drew the bow to half its pull a few times, to ready both her body and the wood, and finally to the full length of her arrow, where she held it.
As she closed her eyes and counted her heartbeat, she knew the number of eyes that watched her. The bow was perfect. Stronger than any before, but it flexed, it held, perfectly to her will.
Mine is a heart of fire, she assured it and herself.
After a count of twenty, she exhaled, and let the arrow slide forward gently along its shaft, then opened her eyes again into the sun, unflinching. She did not have to look about her to know that she had gained some respect, and not merely from Elias.
We’re ready, she nodded silently. Some to lead... some to follow... and some to fall.
She followed the river. As Preinon had foreseen, a fog began to cling to its surface, scattering and swirling here and there like so many ghosts dancing, ghosts waiting to rise over the banks and swell across the land.
Adria did not know what she would find at Palmill, and part of her hoped that it had all been finished, that her decision was for nothing.
I wonder if the Moresidhe are the Tricksters the Aesidhe speak of…
And still, she ran all the more.
I bled for the People once, she told herself. I can bleed for them again. I can leave them. I can save them, if not from the Others, then at least from us.
Her limbs tired and burned, the pain in her head from her time with Tabashi ebbed and then subsided somewhat as she willed herself on.
What are my limits? she wondered. What is the
price we pay to hold back the river?
The memory was already something like a dream, but she felt she remembered what she needed to — the coins, the story of her uncle. Revenge.
He was betrothed, after all... And none have mentioned this? Adria turned the possibilities over. Still, if things went as Tabashi said, no wonder it was kept something of a secret. My father’s guilt... my uncle’s shame and sorrow. They would protect me from my own legacy.
The questions will make you stronger than the answers, Preinon had told her, once, long ago.
Adria still had no idea what she was supposed to do, exactly, but at least her legs knew where she needed to go. The forest soon thinned, and she could see stumps where the axes of Palmill’s foresters had wandered. Finally, the trees peeled away to her right, where fallow fields lay astride the river.
Before her, a long rope bridge, whose middle dipped lazily into the slow but steady current, stretched across the water, its far end posted by the near side of the mill. There were torches among the ramshackle structures, where men prepared themselves for the coming battle.
She traced a line back across the bridge and up the slow rise of the empty fields to the edge of the forest, where even now a line of Aesidhe Hunters broke through the phalanx of oaks and pines, Preinon at the fore, dead center, the first among them to step over the line of ash.
Without having even caught her breath, Adria glanced back to the village, then turned to her right and ascended the slope to Preinon and his Hunters in Rows.
“I held off for awhile, hoping you might return,” he said as she approached, his voice friendly but without mirth. “I am glad I hesitated... I am glad you hesitated.”
“Thank you, Atuteko,” she said, though she wasn’t sure exactly what she thanked him for. The phrase worked a bit differently from Aeman, anyway.
“I have sent a messenger to the village. He has told them that we are not the savages they believe us to be, that we will not slaughter them in their homes. I have invited their men to take up arms and come forth, to face us upon the field of battle with honor. It is a grace they would never show to us. Perhaps it will win us some respect.”
“You have invited them?” Adria asked in Aeman. “Personally... by your name?”
He nodded slowly. “It is time.”
Time for vengeance, she frowned, turning away. Tabashi spoke the truth.
She only nodded, and glanced over the ranks of young Aesidhe warriors — men like Méneshno who lost their tribes and families to the Knights when their camp was attacked, or who were driven from their home in Ebonfold or Sotower or some other Aeman town that had once welcomed them.
They were painted, all of them, in the colors of a great hunt — faces and arms patterned in the white of moon and the red of blood to match their beads. On their breasts many wore vests of wooden slats to take the first blow that found them.
Others were bare, marked with the eagle talon of the Path of Thorns. All wore baldrics and belts with swords and knives and bucklers, and carried spears in the front rows or bows in the rear. They stood ready, neither shifting in their place nor anxious in their looks. They glowed in the moon.
When did this happen? she tried to remember. How are they so prepared?
Preinon reached to his side, and One Who Stands Above handed him a belt with a sheathed sword — Adria’s.
I left it in the camp, she knew. Only hours ago, though so much has happened in so little time... so much distance.
She took the sword as it was offered, and wrapped and buckled the belt around her hips, across the one she already wore for her knife and pouches. As Preinon stepped forward, she turned beside him and surveyed the field from above, though inside she searched again for the perfect words.
The men of Palmill were slowly taking to the field. Some singly, some in pairs or in small groups, they made their way from among their hovels and across the bridge, clinging to the ropes to either side, soaking their boots in the river water at the center. They bravely took to the patch of trampled grass between the water and the fields.
Surely this cannot be all, Adria frowned. Many must hide with their families.
A lone Knight of Darkfire and his squires worked to array the ragtag militia into something resembling order. They could hear his voice from where they stood, but his words were indistinct, and it would hardly matter anyway. The Hunters would not know the words.
“Your days of chess are over,” Preinon said to her in a low voice. “Be it as it may, here before you is the greater game of kings and queens.”
Mostly pawns, Adria thought, but did not speak it aloud. He will not be swayed until this battle is over. This much is certain. I must... look for my chance.
“And what of their wives and daughters, Atuteko?” she asked, fearful but strong of voice.
“We are not savages,” he frowned, as if accused. “They will be well used.”
Hostages... she realized. Armies, fortresses, and prisoners. The exiled Duke of Heiland has returned.
Below, two lines were mostly formed, those with shorter weapons in the fore, those with longer in the rear. Most wielded tools better suited for planting, smithing, or even cooking. They were arrayed too close to the water, and Adria prayed that the Knight at their fore would lead them out, so that they would not be pushed into the river in the initial attack.
The Knight mounted his courser while his squires took to their palfreys or mules. One of them raised the standard, and the violet and black with its silver star unfurled in the torchlight.
They waited only a moment there, for the Knight knew better than to delay and test his men’s morale. He raised his hand and motioned forward, and they advanced slowly, one ragged and sodden foot at a time, perhaps fifty men in all.
Preinon nodded and turned back to his own men, and Adria, suddenly unaware of where she should be, simply turned and watched him as he gave his rallying speech.
He continued nodding for awhile, appraising them, obviously in no hurry.
He can give the Others half the hill if he wants, Adria thought, glancing back over her shoulder. He can give them all of it...
“I am called Preinon Idonea to our enemy,” he began. “But I am called Watelomoksho by the People. Do you know me?”
“We know you, Brother.” They gave the traditional answer.
“I know you, Brothers and Sisters,” he nodded, raising his arms as if to embrace them. “I know your names and I know your tribes. I know those among you who have lost your homes. I know you who have lost your wives and mothers. I know you who have lost your sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and all your ancestors to the Enemy.
“I see on your faces the white of snows that have covered the graves of your People. I see on your limbs the red of the blood that has filled the rivers and flowed along the paths of retreat. And I see in your eyes the fires of a hundred camps that are turned to ash.”
He paused, turning half around to consider the enemy, who had stopped to reorganize their already-ragged line. Their Knight commander cantered before them, trying to bolster them with his own words. But his men did not see him. They looked to their feet, or to the trembling hands of their neighbor, or up the hill to the force gathered above, savages with painted bodies and spears in perfect rows.
Preinon nodded his satisfaction once more as he turned back.
“I see in your eyes the fires of a thousand ceremonials. I see on your breasts the blood on the talons of eagles, where Hunters once danced around a great black tree. And I see in your hearts the beat of a white flame that never dies.”
He invokes Fire Heart... Adria blinked, amazed. He invokes the Sun Dance, the very white bones and black limbs that formed my bow.
She was thankful it was not there, thankful that he had not brought it with her sword.
“They fear us,” Preinon continued, now loud en
ough that the enemy could hear his tone, if not understand his words. “They have feared us in the forests of our home, and so they turn us against one another, and raze the trees with fire, and they will not stop until there are only plains of ash as empty as this field.
“It is true,” some among them said.
“But I say we will stop them here. We will stand between them and the tree line. We will stand toe to toe with them. We will fight them on the empty plains, on grasslands or the open earth or fields of ash and blood.
“It is true,” more agreed, and louder.
“We will make them fear us under the open starry sky as they fear us under the green canopy. Only then will they stop the burning. They will stop the burning when they can no longer reach the tree line — when they fall to our line, to the spear points and the arrow heads of the People.”
“It is true,” they shouted, and Adria had never heard it said with such force. She stood, blinking and mute, in awe of their power and of his power over them.
He has them, Adria stared in disbelief, awe mixed with horror. He has made them into an army despite themselves, despite all of us...
“We have been Hunters, all of us,” Preinon said, a bit softer. “And we have been hunted.”
“It is true,” they returned, with no less strength than before.
He paused, nodding, pacing before the lines with the paint of his face shining in the perfect moonlight.
This is not just a speech, she realized. It is a ceremonial. He would give them this in place of the Sun Dance they lost to my father. Here begins their true Path of Thorns.
“Tonight...” he shouted, and they shouted after.
“Tonight, my Brothers and Sisters...” he shouted, and they shouted all the more.
“Tonight we are Hunters of Men!”
The roar now was deafening, and despite herself Adria felt herself exultant, full of pride and guilt and anger as they all must be. Her arms shook, but without fear.
For the first time, she truly realized the power her uncle had at his command, the power that her father must surely share... that might yet sleep in her own bones. It was one thing to be formidable in combat, to face an enemy in the heat of passion to save herself or to save a child, and another to...
Heir of Scars I: Parts 1-8 Page 57
