by Tom Deitz
Vorinn started to reply that by staying where he was, Riff was all but assuring himself of a role in running a kingdom, however small. Back in Eron he could, in theory, return to being either a woodsmith or a soldier. Instead, he raised another objection. “You both have consorts.”
Myx shrugged. “They’ll come. This is exactly the sort of thing they’d relish. It only remains to get word to them, and arrange … transportation.”
Vorinn rolled his eyes. “Krynneth?”
Krynneth looked startled, as he often did these days, as if the question had dragged him back from some other place—or, perhaps, time.
“I’ll stay here, if no one objects,” he said slowly, pronouncing each word with deliberate care. “I think I’ll fight again someday—but not today. Today, I fear I would do more harm than good.”
“And I,” Kylin broke in before Vorinn could address him, “I’ve done what I can—for now. Any good I happen to accomplish henceforth will be done here, and I’m not sure how much that will be. As for the rest … I’m blind, and no one here is a fool.”
“I didn’t expect you to go,” Vorinn told him frankly. “But it is your right. Even now I won’t try to stop you.”
“You won’t have to,” Kylin assured him. “There are as many songs here as there, so here is where I’ll stay.” He punctuated his remark with a shimmer of notes on his harp.
“Lykkon?”
Lykkon took a deep breath. “I’m in a quandary,” he began slowly. “I’m not needed here as much as some of us are, and I’m not overly fond of living in the Wild. On the other hand, there’s a lot to be learned here, so whatever else I do today, I certainly plan to return here eventually. That said, I’m also the Royal Chronicler, and seem to have become Avall’s closest friend after Rann, Merry, and Strynn, and he’ll need me in that capacity, if nothing else. Which I guess means that if I’m going to finish the Chronicle properly, I need to see as much as I can firsthand; therefore, if possible, I’d like to go with you. I don’t think I’m duplicitous enough that my deep brain would contradict me. As for Bingg—”
“Bingg’s his own man, here,” Vorinn cautioned.
“Bingg goes where Lykkon goes—for now,” Bingg laughed. “I’m like him in that I like to know things, but the things I most want to learn are in Eron, not here. I’m at the beginning of something Lyk’s at the end of, and I’d like to see it through—assuming there’s a Kingdom left for me to do that in. But if there is, I want to be there, and if our efforts somehow fail, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering whether my presence could have made a crucial difference.”
“In other words,” Strynn summarized, “you don’t want to spend your life decrying the lack of something you didn’t help to save.”
Bingg regarded her shyly. “Thank you. Eloquence is one of those things I need to study.”
“Which means you’re going?” Vorinn concluded.
“Which means I intend to make the attempt,” Bingg corrected. “There’s also the fact that I’m the smallest person here, and Lykkon’s no bigger than Myx, so if size is a factor in returning, that should play in our favor.”
“Spoken like my brother,” Lykkon grinned, sparing him a rough hug.
Vorinn looked at the river. “Do we need …?”
Lykkon shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. That’s what Avall did, and I’d trust him.”
“Well, then,” Vorinn sighed, “you lads armor up, assemble what gear you have, and let’s get moving. There could still be fighting at the hold.”
“As you will, Lord Regent,” Lykkon agreed—and trotted off to begin sorting through their packs. Vorinn watched absently as he began redonning his own clothing. It was still damp, naturally, but would be wet again so soon that it scarcely mattered.
Fortunately, he had arrived in full war gear, excepting his shield and helmet, and equally fortunate, Lykkon’s armor had come with him during their jump. Bingg had no armor on this side of the Spine, but Myx—who tended to remain in his guard persona when the group was traveling—was shrugging out of his mail, with able assistance from Bingg. “It’s the smallest we have to hand,” Strynn offered from beside him. “Myx won’t need it as much as Bingg will. He’s practical that way.”
“I hope Bingg won’t need it either. I hadn’t intended for him to fight.”
“No, but that won’t stop someone else claiming him as a target. He’s smart enough otherwise to keep himself safe. And if there really is a battle, he should find a sword soon enough. As for a helm—look: he’s trying on Myx’s, but it doesn’t fit, which means Riff’s won’t.”
Vorinn watched the nascent warriors for a moment longer, then shrugged, shook his limbs to loosen them, and smiled down at Strynn. “I’ll have that sword now, if you don’t mind. And whatever happens, though it’s been my honor to serve my Kingdom and my King, it has been a far greater honor to serve my sister.”
“And I to be served by you.”
With that, she offered him the sword again, and this time he took it—then shifted his gaze to the ground, blushing furiously, suddenly afraid to meet his sister’s eyes. “Strynn,” he stammered, “I … have no wife—nor even a year-bond, now; nor a bond-brother. But I …” He paused again, as words deserted him. “I would have a kiss from you, for luck.”
“And I will be glad to give it,” Strynn replied formally, raising her hand for Vorinn to assist her up. The kiss—on either cheek, then the lips—was as chaste as it ought to be between siblings, but somehow it touched something new in his heart. And maybe, for the first time in his life, Vorinn truly felt that he was loved.
He started to speak, but Bingg and Lykkon came jostling up just then, eager-faced, and, now that they were once again clad more or less the same, looking more than ever like brothers. Lykkon had retrieved his personal sword, and Bingg—who, again, had none on this side of the mountains—sported Riff’s second-best hunting knife.
“I’ll have one of those kisses, too,” Lykkon smirked, looking at Strynn with a twinkle in his eyes. “If you’ve got any to spare, I mean. And one for my brother, please.”
Strynn tapped her lips experimentally, then smirked in turn. “Yes, indeed, there do seem to be a few left. So I suppose—” She didn’t finish, simply leaned forward and planted her lips firmly against Lykkon’s cheeks and mouth, then did the same for a blushing Bingg.
Vorinn was staring at the river, obviously agitated. “I think I see why Avall left so precipitously,” he muttered. “It spares all this.”
“It spares a lot,” Strynn agreed, “but I’m sick of Avall always leaving. Or me leaving,” she appended pointedly.
None of which prevented the rest of their group coming forward for hugs, wishes of luck, and victory kisses of their own.
Myx shook Bingg roughly by the shoulders, like a brother. “You know why I’m lending you that mail, don’t you? It’s so that you’ll either have to bring it back or be in my debt forever.”
“I’ll remember,” Bingg affirmed. “And I promise that as soon as I can, I’ll make you a new set.”
Riff raised a brow and elbowed Myx in the ribs. “He’s Argen-a, brother, the best smiths in the world; you’d better be sure he makes good.”
“Never fear,” Myx and Bingg chorused together.
“Let’s go!” Vorinn shouted. And all at once the lot of them were trooping into the river. Strynn and Kylin halted when the water got calf deep, but Myx, Riff, Div—and Krynneth—pressed onward until it lapped against their thighs. Vorinn tried not to look back, but could not resist doing so once, and saw them all standing there, waiting. He wondered whether they were watching the end of something or the beginning of something better.
And then he turned, braced himself, and continued on. “What do we do now, Lyk?” he murmured, when the water reached his ribs.
Lykkon gnawed his lip, then nodded decisively. “We should try to duplicate exactly what you did to come here as much as possible. Bingg and I will grab the blade—jus
t enough to blood ourselves—you should then do that as well—and then we’ll grab your hand, dive under … and wish.”
“Under?”
“Most of this is wishing,” Lykkon reminded him. “If you’re underwater, you generally wind up wishing more fervently—not to drown, if nothing else. More to the point, your body’s wishing along with your brain. That should help considerably.”
“I guess I’ll just have to trust you,” Vorinn grumbled, and extended the blade. Lykkon slid his palm down the metal with easy confidence, revealing red at once. Bingg had to try twice, but likewise managed to ensanguine two fingers. Vorinn hesitated for a pair of breaths, then shifted the hilt to his other hand and ran his right palm down the blade, wondering why the previous wound there seemed almost to have healed already. Another shift put the sword back in his dominant fist.
As soon as those two other reddening hands joined his on the hilt, he triggered the barb that waited there, and, the instant the power answered, sank down where he was in the middle of an unknown river in an unknown land and wished to be back in another place entirely: a place that was no less beautiful or bloody, but rather more familiar.
Somehow, impossibly, he heard two other minds wishing that as well. And then water closed over his head, and he felt himself torn asunder.
He tried not to think about it this time—as he had had no time to think about it earlier, intent, as he had been, on survival. But this … It was odd, it was strange, it was distinctly unpleasant, and he wanted it over.
For a moment he simply wasn’t. And then, for a much longer interval, he felt himself stretched impossibly thin, as though his whole body were become a wire thousands of shots long.
And then that wire was coiling again, and he was—
—Somewhere else.
He knew that instantly: by the cloudy blood in the water around him, by the feel of smooth stone beneath his feet as it forced him toward the surface, by the muffled sounds of shouts and running feet seemingly everywhere …
And then, like a spring rewinding, he compacted back to himself, which, along with his will and what felt like a thrust from some place deeper than the pavement, propelled his body upward.
The first thing he saw was Avall.
CHAPTER XXX:
REUNION
(WESTERN ERON: MEGON VALE–NEAR-AUTUMN: DAY II–MIDAFTERNOON)
It took Avall a moment to acknowledge what he was seeing—and even so, reflex made him flinch backward in alarm—which brought him hard into Tryffon and Merryn, who, like himself had just stepped back onto the pontoon bridge outside what was still the hold’s only accessible door. Metal clanged. Mail rustled. Armor creaked and snapped.
Tryffon “oofed” and growled an irritable, “What is it, boy?”
Avall ignored him entirely. He had no choice, really.
Perhaps one day he would get used to things like this: seeing the water to the right of the dueling platform appear to thicken—if that was the right word—then start to foam, then surge upward abruptly, only to collapse upon itself, revealing—
—Vorinn—with, beside him, their hands still sliding away from his sword to grasp blades of their own, Lykkon and—he blinked—Could that grim-faced, cold-eyed warrior really be young Bingg?
All three went instantly on guard for all they stood in water to their crotches. But then Vorinn’s eyes went wide, and what had begun as a snarl segued into a gape, then widened into a grin.
“Please tell me you’ve left me someone to kill, cousin,” Vorinn blurted, his practiced warrior’s gaze still darting about in quest of prospective foes.
“Actually,” Avall replied from pure, numb-brained reflex—“we’re effectively through with all that.” Then, as realization truly dawned and joy replaced fatigue: “Vorinn! You’re back! And Lyk and Bingg! You’re back—and you’re safe and—you’re too late, and I’m sorry, but it didn’t take long once it happened. And—oh Eight, all of you, just come here!”
Bingg was already out of the water by the time Vorinn had sheathed his sword and begun to clamber out in earnest. Lykkon was on the platform almost as quickly. Together, they hoisted Eron’s war commander out of what was now a rapidly draining pool.
Avall had reached the sodden party by then. He and Vorinn had differed on many issues in the past, but those differences were forgotten as he snared his brother-in-law in a hearty hug which only ended when Tryffon claimed his turn—which gave Avall time to greet his two young kinsmen properly. It had barely been three hands since they had seen each other—if even that—yet to Avall it seemed like forever, as he felt an overwhelming mixture of joy and relief flood through him.
He was wet from the shoulders down where Vorinn had embraced him—and didn’t care. All that mattered was that the problem that had plagued him for so long that he barely remembered when it had not been a factor in his life was well on its way to resolution.
With that in mind, he crowded close to his friends again. Close enough to hear Merryn lean to Vorinn’s ear, and whisper, “Strynn?”
Avall felt a jolt at the mention of that name. He should have noticed that, damn it: how only three of all that number he had abandoned in such haste had returned. Not that Strynn was truly a warrior—but that was in nowise to say she couldn’t fight. And then he remembered: She was pregnant, which was cause enough to remain behind. And, he suspected, in light of assorted campfire conversations during the last eight days, there might be other reasons.
“She had to stay,” Vorinn replied loudly, for Avall’s benefit as well as Merryn’s. “Things are as well as they can be there, but that dish makes a better meal than a snack. For now”—he made room for himself among the increasing numbers jostling about—“what’s happened here?”
Avall likewise glanced around—and was immediately taken aback by the number of people scurrying hither and yon. He only hoped they were allies; all he needed was for the Ninth Face to produce some terrible new strategy now, when victory seemed at last within his grasp. As for Ahfinn—Where was the man, anyway? Oh, yes, there he was, securely in custody of Lady Veen, who had bestowed Zeff’s head on someone else while she bound Ahfinn’s hands before him.
But Avall’s folk seemed to be everywhere, most especially on the gallery closest above and behind him, and still crowding through the cleft in the hills that led to the hold’s southern approach. And since this was still the only real portal in and out—until the water lowered another span, at any rate—this platform and the narrow walk that served it were becoming impossibly crowded.
“Let’s go back to my tent,” Avall suggested, avoiding Vorinn’s query. “Anything that needs our attention can be pursued as well there as here.”
With that, he flung one arm around Vorinn and the other around Rann—both of whom had been, at various times, his Regents—and nodded for his ever-attentive escort of Night Guard to open a path for him away from the hold.
Yet he paused again where the causeway met the outer wall and the route started down the narrow outside stair. It was a good place to see from, and a good place to be seen—and, since a good third of his army was crowding in below, it was also as good a place as any from which to give worth its due.
Taking a speaking horn from a herald who had attached herself to their party, he leapt into the embrasure between two merlons and, oblivious to the dizzy drop below, raised the horn and shouted to the suddenly attentive throng crowding into Megon Vale.
“People of Eron,” he began. “Knights of Eron and people of Eron and everyone who has, even once, borne the most excellent rank of soldier!”
And with that, as though they thought with one brain, everyone in the entire vale and the hold behind him fell silent.
“Hear me, all you good folk,” Avall continued. “Today we have the victory—in proof of which we have the head of he who gave us so much grief. And without its head, the body will soon wither and decay. So shall it be here.
“But that is not why I address you,” he went on. “I stan
d here not for my own sake and my own glory, small though that glory may be, but to present to you another: the man who endured longest and risked most to bring us to our present happy pass. All good people of Eron—I present to you the man who truly is your savior: the Lord High Commander of all the Royal Armies: Vorinn syn Ferr-een!”
Perhaps Avall had heard a louder cheer when Vorinn joined him on the ramparts, but he doubted it. It began as applause and shouts of acclamation from those close-packed ranks below: those best stationed to hear his words. But from there it quickly spread up the hollow and into the gap, even as more applause erupted from behind: applause that was soon joined by hoots and cheers and bellows. And then someone began beating a shield, and someone else a drum, and a third someone a helmet; and a flute was found, then a trumpet, then two more, and to Avall’s utter amazement, the whole world dissolved into joyous noise.
Even the earth seemed to be celebrating, for it was shaking, too. It took Avall a moment to realize what that portended. “Wonderful as all this is,” he whispered in Vorinn’s ear, “we probably aren’t as safe here as we could be.”
Without further debate, Avall and his companions—and Vorinn after a final pause to wave at the ecstatic crowd, which prompted another swell in volume—started down the stair.
They walked back to the camp because it was a fine day; and though they were all tired to the bone, it was a fatigue that was not worsened by action. Not when a cheering mob flanked their every step and followed them all the way. Many of that number were Gem-Holders, Avall noted, wondering how they had managed to get outside so fast.
It was just as well they were here instead of there, he supposed, if what he feared about the hold’s stability was true. Still, he banished that and other dark thoughts from his mind as he led what had been most of his Council and a good part of his court back to the Royal Pavilion.
