The Tale of the Five Omnibus

by Diane Duane

  The owls weren’t getting much business, though. It was a quieter camp than most Segnbora remembered. Evidently the Darthenes, too, realized that there were forces about that it would be better not to disturb.

  The group passed the outer sentries and shortly thereafter were met by a dark-haired rider on a Steldene dun gelding, bearing a torch, the light of which danced off the bright chain of a major.

  “Torve!” Freelorn said, pleasantly surprised. “Well met. You seem to have made better time than we did from Barachael.”

  “Barachael’s secure,” Torve said with his usual calm cheer. “The Queen’s grace wanted me here, so here I am. She asked me to bring you in.”

  “She felt us coming?” Herewiss said, sounding somewhat relieved.

  “You were close,” Tone said, his normally unassailable calm sounding just a touch strained. “There have been problems with scrying of late.”

  “We noticed.”

  The Queen’s tent was little different from those that the rest of the army used—slightly larger, perhaps, but of the same patched canvas. All that identified it as hers was the Eagle banner on its pole outside the door. On the other side of the doorway, however, the diamond-studded haft of Sarsweng was thrust into the ground up to its hook, and its diamonds glittered restlessly in the torchlight. Eftgan was sitting in shirt and britches on a low folding chair, surrounded by a scatter of maps and parchments and papers. She was tapping one map idly with her Rod while talking to a man who squatted beside her chair.

  She rose to greet Herewiss and Freelorn and the others, tossing her Rod aside. “I’m glad to see you,” she said, sounding as if she meant it. “Come in and be comfortable. Everybody, this is my husband Wyn—”

  The group murmured greetings. Segnbora caught Wyn’s eye and traded smiles with him. It had been ten years since she had last seen him, and (as she had suspected) the years had left no sign of their passing. Short and compact, Wyn s’Heleth was in his early fifties and looked perhaps thirty: a man with a face like a handsome hawk’s, and eyes so merrily threatening it was sometimes a strain to meet them.

  Segnbora had herself introduced Wyn to Eftgan back in Darthis, when the old King had been looking for a wine merchant who wouldn’t charge him exorbitant prices. Not too long thereafter the Darthene Court had found itself supplied with not only good wine at reasonable prices, but a future Prince Consort. Connoisseurs were still talking about the rare vintages that had been uncorked for Eftgan’s wedding.

  “There’s stew in the pot and dishes beside it,” the Queen said, sitting down. “Wine and water in the jugs. Sit, friends. We have trouble.” She dug about in the welter of maps and pulled out a large one of the whole Bluepeak area.

  Trouble’s a gentle word for it, Segnbora thought as Eftgan talked and pointed. The Reavers had a considerable start on the Darthenes, and there had been nothing the Queen could do about it. Worldgating would have been impossible, when so many people were involved. Eftgan had therefore been forced to march westward from Orsvier slowly enough to allow for musters and pick-up levies along the way. The Reavers seemed to have handled all such matters a long time before, on the other side of the mountains—for here they were, four thousand strong, arrayed in siege around Bluepeak town and holding the mouth of the valley from Nómion’s flank to Britfell’s outer curve. Lionheugh, as Freelorn had feared, was well inside their lines.

  “They have three thousand foot and a thousand horse,” Eftgan said, “and the fact that they got here first gives them the advantage of the ground, too. They’ve taken stand on both sides of the Arlid, and to dislodge them we’re going to have to attack uphill. I don’t like that…”

  “How do you stand?” Herewiss said.

  “Fifteen hundred horse and four thousand foot,” Wyn said in his sharp tenor voice. “Eighty sorcerers, fourteen Rodmistresses—”

  “Fifteen,” Eftgan said. “You always forget to count me. However, sorcery hasn’t worked since yesterday—or, when it does work, you don’t want to be anywhere near the consequences. As ranking Mistress here, I’ve advised my sisters to keep their Fire to themselves unless I—or you, Herewiss—order otherwise. By the by, have you heard anything from the Precincts?”

  ‘‘No—”

  “Neither have I. It’s disturbing. I asked them for advice on this matter two weeks ago, while it was still possible to bespeak as far as the Brightwood. I suppose the Wardresses started debating the subject and are taking too long about it, as usual.” She sighed. “It’s too late now; we’ll have to make do with our own advice. Meanwhile,” she said to Freelorn, “there’s the business of the Royal Bindings to consider. I brought the Regalia.”

  Freelorn nodded. “I know the ritual. But the Arlene Regalia is in Prydon… all of it but Hergótha, anyway.” He looked annoyed as he said it. Hergótha the Great, Héalhra’s ancient sword, had been missing since Freelorn’s father died. If there was anything Lorn wanted back as much as the Arlene kingship, it was that sword. “And I remind you, I’m not an Initiate. My father never took me on the Nightwalk into Lionhall.”

  Eftgan nodded. “We’ll take our chances, Lorn. You’re the Lion’s Child, and Héalhra’s blood is what’s required here. The problem is,” and she pushed at the map of Bluepeak with one booted toe, “I’m reluctant to do even so minor a Gating as would put us down on the Heugh—that was the spot you were thinking of, wasn’t it? The Shadow’s influence is building by the minute. Any use of Power from now on could be terribly warped.” She frowned. “Did I tell you that the valley is crawling with Fyrd? A new kind. Or rather, an old one—”

  “Thinkers?” Dritt guessed.

  The Queen looked at him glumly. “Yes.”

  Freelorn reached for the map and pulled it closer to where he sat cross-legged on the floor. He studied it for a few breaths, then indicated the mouth of the valley. “The Reavers are drawn up here, under several of Cillmod’s mercenary-captains.”

  “A little more north,” Wyn said. “About a quarter-mile north of the Heugh, stretching right across to the Spine.”

  “Uh-huh. They’re on the other side of the Spine too?”

  “It seems a safe assumption, though we haven’t confirmed it. They’ve got a small force at the Spine’s northern end; we’ve left it alone.”

  Freelorn nodded, leaning over the map. “I doubt they’re paying much attention to their rear, then, since the besieging force is holding it secure, and the Fyrd are back there too. I suspect no one will notice if we go in the pantry door instead of the great-hall entrance.” He pointed at Britfell, indicating a spot near where the fell joined the northern massif of Kemana. “Here.”

  Now it was Wyn’s turn to look shocked. “You’re crazy! There’s no going up Britfell, it’s too sheer! Maybe a climber could do it in a day or so, if there was time…”

  Herewiss was looking at Freelorn with an expression compounded of worry and dawning hope. For once, Segnbora thought, anticipation rising in her, maybe one of Freelorn’s crazy strategies is going to pay off—

  “I’ve done it on horseback,” Freelorn said. “With my father. There’s a path. We went up the north side and down the south in about six hours, coming out on the far side of the curve about a half mile north of the Heugh. And if two people did it, so can ten.” He glanced around at his own group. “Or a hundred,” he said to the Queen. “Or five hundred.”

  “That path must not be very visible from either side,” Eftgan said, sounding uncertain, “which suggests it will be rough to ride.”

  “It could hardly be worse if the Shadow Itself had built it. But it’s a way to get over. And everybody, even the Reavers, knows there’s no way over the fell: that’s what brought our ancestors to grief.” Freelorn tapped the map again. “So. We take a few hundred of your horse—or why be stingy? Make it five hundred—and go over.” He scrunched up his forehead in thought. “Allow sixteen hours for the whole passage. You order your main force to draw up north of the valley’s mouth. The Reavers won’t move;
they’re not such idiots as to attack downhill and give up the advantage of the ground. If they draw back and try to tempt your forces to come after them, fine. Meanwhile, you and I and five hundred horse are here”—he tapped the inside of Britfell’s curve—”where we can’t possibly be. We come down around the Heugh and do our binding there, while the cavalry takes the Reavers in their unsuspecting flank and rear, attacking downhill and driving them against your main force to the south. Hammer and anvil.” He grinned.

  Wyn was beginning to look interested despite his doubts. “That still leaves the cavalry with an unfought force at its back: the besieging force. If they leave the city and come down on you—”

  “How many are holding the siege?”

  “About a thousand foot.”

  Freelorn shrugged. “If they send enough people to make a difference, won’t the garrison inside try a sally?”

  “So they’ve said,” Eftgan said. “That’ll make no difference to the cavalry, though.”

  “So.” Freelorn tapped the Spine. “Once your main force engages the Reaver force, you send a good-sized party to secure the ground between the Spine and Nómion and clear the Reavers off that side of the river. There’s our bolt-hole. We ford the river and go up behind the Spine, then rejoin the main force.”

  Eftgan sat silent for a little while, studying the map. “We’re fifty-five hundred to their four thousand,” she said at last. “I don’t have the leisure for strategic victories. I need conclusive ones. This at least gives us a chance to do what we have to without using Power and risking a disaster. The surprise of taking them from the rear would be tremendous. It should disorganize them wonderfully. And, since organization was never their strong point anyway…”

  Eftgan glanced over at Wyn for his opinion. He nodded at her. She paused to give the map one more long look.

  “The last scrying I managed,” she said, “gave a hint of something that might be coming from the northwest, from upper Arlen. Help or hindrance, I couldn’t tell. And I don’t dare delay to find out. The Bindings must be reinforced as soon as we can. Any delay could turn loose forces I don’t care to contemplate, or leave Cillmod opportunity to try to destroy the weakened Bindings completely.”

  Standing, she bent to pick up her Rod from among the papers on the floor. “No matter. We’ll work with what information we have. Freelorn, I’ll ride with you regardless of the uncertainty. Wyn will handle the main force in my absence. Meanwhile—”

  The tent flap was thrust aside. In peered a tall, rawboned woman in the Darthene royal blue, with somewhat disordered dark hair and a captain’s chain around her neck. “Ma’am,” she said, breathless, “the Reavers are attacking the north side of the camp again. Maybe a hundred or so.”

  “Oh, damn,” the Queen said. She tossed her Rod away and reached to the side of the tent, where Fórlennh BrokenBlade lay sheathed. “They love trying to draw us out,” she said, buckling on the scabbard. “Any trouble handling it, Kesri?”

  “Not really.”

  “Good. Of your courtesy, go call the other captains and the captains-major. I have something to tell them.” The captain vanished and the tentflap fell.

  Eftgan turned to Freelorn and Herewiss. “Midnight’s coming on. We’ll start an hour after midnight, and give the Reavers a surprise tomorrow afternoon.”

  Lorn and his people began heading out of the tent to see to the horses and to their own bedrolls. Eftgan flicked a wry glance at Segnbora, an outward indication of mixed concern and anticipation. “Just like old times, ‘Berend.”

  Segnbora thought of Etachnë and other such fields that lay behind the two of them, victories and defeats equally frightful. “Not just like, I hope.”

  “No,” Eftgan said, looking thoughtfully at Skádhwë in its scabbard, and at Segnbora’s odd shadow on the floor. “I suppose it won’t be.”

  FIFTEEN

  Mn’An’dzat kchren’rae ëhwiss thaa’seth:

  The Five Truths, terrible and joyous:

  Stihë hë-stihé.

  What is, is.

  Stihú hë-stihé.

  What was, is.

  Whrn’thae najh’stihëh.

  Matter is an illusion.

  Ousskh’thae najh’stihëh.

  Meaning is an illusion.

  Mda’t’dae bvh-sda’t’dae mnek-é.

  The Door opens both ways.

  Rui’i’rae-sta haa’ae!

  Believe none of these!

  Ehh’ne lhhw’i’ae (What Dragons Say), vii,14

  Full night, when it came, was starless. A heavy overcast hung like a roof just above the highest peaks, Nómion and Kerana. In that stifling silent darkness, a long column of riders picked its way to the foot of Britfell’s northern slope and came to a halt.

  The prospect was daunting. Sheer walls of cracked cliff-face rose up uninvitingly. Around them were strewn rubble and boulders brought down by the annual flux of heat and cold. Eftgan, on her tall bay gelding Scoundrel, shook her head as she looked upward.

  “Lorn, if the road isn’t still there—”

  “Then we’re no worse off than you were before,” Lorn said. Ahead of Segnbora and the others, he, Herewiss, and the Queen were shadows among shadows. Everyone in that riding had made sure there was nothing bright about their gear; faces and hands and buckles and swordhilts were smeared with a mixture of grease and soot. Even so, Segnbora’s Dragon-sharpened vision saw movements and expressions clearly enough.

  Freelorn pulled up Blackmane’s head and headed him off to the left. “Let’s take the adventure the Goddess sends us,” he said, “and go as far as we can.”

  He urged his dun straight at the cliffside. Blackmane snorted mild protest but went where his rider directed him, climbing a slope of talus and scree and not stopping until they reached a narrow ledge fifty feet or so above the cliff’s foot. “This way,” Lorn called softly to the riders waiting below, and put his heels to Blackmane again. The horse took him leftward past a rounded outcropping of stone, and out of sight.

  “This is crazy,” Lang said, beside Segnbora.

  “Maiden’s madness, I hope,” Eftgan said, and shook Scoundrel’s reins. He stalled, snorting, until Eftgan laid her crop gently below his left ear and touched him with heels again. Up Scoundrel went in a nervous rush, scattering pebbles and small stones. One by one the others followed him, reining their horses in to keep them stepping lightly and minimize the damage done to the path.

  The ride was like something out of an old tale or a bad dream, full of long terrifying pauses during which Freelorn lost the way and found it again, dismounted to heave fallen boulders off the narrow track or to lead Blackmane where he thought it too dangerous to burden a horse with a rider’s weight. The path, if it could be dignified with such a name, wound back and forth along the face of the cliff, switching back at wildly irregular intervals, the switches often barely enough for one horse to negotiate. Always there were heartstopping drops below.

  Segnbora kept her elbows in as she rode, once again very glad of Steelsheen’s breed—Steldenes, bred in mountainous country, were frequently accused of being part goat. The mare picked her way delicately along ledges of rotten, sliding stone with only an occasional snort of protest at the poor quality of the trail. Other horses behind, flatland breeds, weren’t doing as well. The sound of whispered swearing came drifting up from riders down below.

  As they climbed, the night got blacker, if that was possible. A feeling began to grow among the riders that Something with no good intent was watching the silent climb. Tense minutes stretched into an hour, then two and three. Segnbora began to feel as if she had been climbing up this miserable wall forever, as if her whole life had been spent fighting with eggshell-fragile stone, squinting at it, terrified of every step.

  At the same time, she had to admit that this feat would be sung of for years, if any of them finished the climb and survived the battle that waited just the other side of Britfell. She maneuvered Steelsheen cautiously around another treach
erous switchback, not looking down.

  Inside her, in their own darkness that now seemed bright by comparison, Hasai and the mdeihei hissed laughter at her fear of heights, and then began singing (in sixteen-part harmony of the kind Dragons used when feeling playful) their memory of the ballad which the bards would later write for Freelorn: When Fyrd came over the Darthene border / and Reavers moved at the Shadow’s order… Segnbora almost felt like smiling, until she remembered that just because her mdeihei had a memory of the ballad, that was still no guarantee that any of them were going to survive.

  As she was thinking that, one of Sheen’s hooves slipped, and Segnbora’s heart seized as she leaned with the mare so she could regain her balance. For an instant they came close to a perilous drop, but Steelsheen recovered and went on, sweating and trembling, but knowing what her mistress wanted. Unconcerned, the mdeihei were singing in unison now, a calm chorus. They climbed the Fell and they crossed the water, the Lion’s Son and the Eagle’s Daughter—

  The riders pressed on. Several hours before dawn it began to snow, the wind rising to a howling blast. Snow that grew blizzard-fine drove stinging into faces, numbing hands on the reins. The horses whickered in complaint and tried to walk with eyes averted toward the cliff, which only caused them to miss their footing more often. Their riders, who had more or less expected the change of weather, broke out extra clothing and muffled themselves up as best they could. The sky got infinitesimally lighter as day broke above the storm, though not enough to lighten anyone’s spirits.

  There’s will behind this weather, Herewiss had said. That will could be felt watching them more strongly every minute. The head of the column was fairly close to the top of the fell now, but that was no comfort: the thought of having to take a similar path downhill, on an icy trail, was on everyone’s mind. The storm was blowing from the south, and had been abated somewhat by striking the fell and having to pour over it. Matters would be much worse on the other side.