The Tale of the Five Omnibus

by Diane Duane

  Kerim bowed. “What’s our strength in the Fire today?” Eftgan said.

  “Three hundred forty-nine,” said Kerim, “about half mounted. Of those, a hundred and ninety are independent—the rest are working in circles of varying size.”

  “Very well,” the Queen said. “Tell your people that, if Herewiss asks them for any kind of assistance whatsoever, they are to drop whatever they’re doing and give it to him instantly. Whatever he’s engaged in at that moment may win us the battle. Or it may not: but that’s not to be their evaluation to make. His authority is to be considered as equal to yours in this regard.”

  Freelorn kept his face quite still while watching Kerim’s reaction. She bowed, but to the Queen, not Herewiss; and the expression she wore was less than happy. Then she took herself away.

  Eftgan sighed, and glanced over at Herewiss after a moment. “I suppose that was unavoidable,” she said. “Where will you be riding?”

  “I was going to ask you where you wanted me.”

  “Wherever you think you need to be, is my first answer. But somewhere near the leading group’s right flank, otherwise.” She picked up her cup again and took one last deep drink. “I’ll be with the left: Erain is minding the center group, and the banner. The Brightwood levies are over on the right. Lorn—?”

  “Unwise to keep the two principals too close together,” he said. “I’ll go with Erain.”

  “So will I, then,” Segnbora said. She was leaning on the Lion banner, where it was struck into the ground not too far from Eftgan’s.

  “Well enough,” Eftgan said. “I intend to keep the rest of our forces rather strung out behind the first curve of assault, at least until I see more of how the battle begins to shape itself. We shouldn’t meet the Arlenes before Ostelien hill, no matter how hard they march: their main force is still too near Elsbede.” She wiped her hands with a napkin and loosened Fórlennh in its sheath, and looked around at them. “To work then, all,” she said, “and may She go with us.”

  ***

  The sun was begining to show peach-colored through the mist as Freelorn watched Herewiss ride off toward the northward-flung wing of Eftgan’s troops, who were now breaking bivouac. All around them tents were being struck, carts packed with untidy bundles; here and there horses were being saddled—this part of the army was a mixed group, armored mounted and unmounted men and women, and some unarmored or light-armored foot

  They had kept the goodbye brief, according to custom between them. Just as well, Lorn thought to himself, watching Sunspark ambling away, and the Flame winding about Khávrinen’s hilt where it jutted up behind Herewiss’s shoulder. It was not his usual, leisurely flow of Fire, but a tense, quick wrapping and curling, hectically bright even in this morning sunlight.

  He’s terrified, Freelorn thought. And I’m just numb. I could hardly feel anything when I let him go. But that was probably just as well, too. Would I really want him to feel how scared I am? What if we never—what if I—

  He cut the thought off: it was a waste of his time, and anyway, the whole business was with the Goddess now: they would at least meet on the Shore, if nowhere else. He glanced over at Segnbora, who was muttering to herself as she rigged a brace and cup, hung from her saddle, for the pole of the Lion standard to go into. Steelsheen, whom the Queen had had brought with her from Darthen, was standing quietly chewing her bit and looking vacant. Segnbora, though, looked rather drawn.

  “No sleep last night?”

  “Uhh?” She glanced up at him, then back to her work. “I slept well enough.”

  “No word from Hasai, then.”

  She sighed and leaned against Steelsheen. “No. And there’s been no sound from the mdeihei, either. Not absence: but complete silence. I did something when I cut my shadow off… but I don’t know what. He’s gone. I did that. I just hope he can come back…. ”

  Someone was making her way toward them, leading a couple of horses. Lorn looked at her half-heartedly. Eftgan had told him in passing that she would find him a horse this morning, but what was the point, it wasn’t his horse, and anyway —

  Lorn’s jaw dropped. Next to the bigger of the two horses, a big Steldene cob, a few steps behind the tall blond girl in Darthene livery who was leading him, Blackmane came strolling along on the long rein. The blond girl looked Lorn up and down as she approached with an expression of calm assessment that said plainly, This is what we’re fighting for? I’m not impressed.

  “This your horse?” she said.

  “Yes, thank you, where did you get him!” Freelorn said, rather more hurriedly than he had intended to, taking the reins.

  The young woman nodded over her shoulder. “Fellow on a big blood roan back there,” she said, “asked me to see that you got him.”

  “Apparently no one’s bothering to try to prevent gating out of Prydon this morning,” Segnbora said, swinging up onto Steelsheen.

  “Apparently…. ” Lorn looked up to find the blond girl’s very brown eyes waiting to catch his. “If you’re going back that way,” he said, “please thank the fellow for me.”

  “A command, sire?” the girl said, and mounted up on her own horse, her gaze dwelling on him insolently, but not without some friendliness.

  “Hardly,” Freelorn said.

  She raised her eyebrows. “You’re not forward,” she said, “I’ll give you that. You’d damned best be worth it all, though—that’s all I can say. I left off putting in winter wheat because of you. Goddess knows what the Dark I’ll be grinding meal from, this time next year.”

  Freelorn mounted and looked over at her. “Come see me in the spring,” he said, “if there’s a problem.”

  She laughed at him, a cheerful sound of complete scorn: sketched a small salute, wheeled her own horse about, clucking to him, and was gone at a hand-gallop, her helm banging at the saddlebow.

  Freelorn patted Blackie, and watched Segnbora trying to get the standard properly settled. “There,” she said finally, “it’ll have to do. Come on, Lorn, they’re moving out.”

  The horsemen were foregathering on and around the Road, where it ran between the two small heights on which this force had bivouacked. There were perhaps seven hundred of them in this group, lancers and the sword-armed, with another seven hundred foot in support, in varying armor; some of these would go in at a run, holding the stirrups of the cavalry. Others would march behind, armed with pikes to break an enemy’s charge, and bows and twirl-spears and swords for closer work. Further back, east down the Road, Lorn could see another group coming, almost all pikes, perhaps fifteen hundred of them: the upraised tips, both metal and plain sharpened wood, shone like gold where the early sun caught them. Lorn put aside with difficulty the thought that they would be darker soon.

  He touched Blackmane with his heels, slipped past Segnbora and out into the open on the Road, and started ambling down it. Behind him had been a vast rustling, clopping, buzzing noise of men and horses all milling about on the Road’s black pavement: now it became a huge dark repetetive sound, like hail on slates but deeper—thousands of hooves, starting to follow him slowly west. He rode along, oblivious for a while to everything but that sound, and the closer ones—the creak of leather, the twittering of larks high up, the chattering of swallows that swooped under the horses’ very noses and inches above his head, hawking after the bugs that the hooves of the horses were stirring up on the Road and on either side of it.

  “Sir,” said a voice by him, “the Queen says next time you should wait for the signal.”

  Freelorn glanced over to his right and saw a young Rodmistress riding a dun gelding—a plump young woman with hair that color halfway between blond and brown, braided back tight. She had a leather corselet that was a bit too large for her, and a leather helmet stitched with metal plaques. “You’re my liason, I take it,” he said.

  She nodded. “Blanis,” she said.

  “Well, Blanis, you tell the Queen that next time, she should get someone to me in time for me to know there
was a signal.” He smiled slightly as she blushed. “Does she want me to stop?”

  “No,” Blanis said, “just keep going. She’ll tell you what she intends as soon as she knows.”

  Freelorn laughed. “Fine. I take it you’re keyed to my upper thought, at least, so that if I see something or think something she needs to hear but I can’t say, she’ll hear it anyway.”

  Blanis nodded.

  “Not much of a job for you, my dear,” Freelorn said. “Tends to leave you open to attack, from one direction or another.”

  At the look in her eyes, he immediately wished he hadn’t reminded her. “Someone has to do these things,” she said, “and others may be busy.” She shot a look back at Segnbora.

  “You do your job,” Lorn said, “and I’ll watch your back—after all, you’re watching mine. Now then—” and he lifted a finger, for she was starting to protest. Blanis subsided. “Good,” Freelorn said. “Darthene Bay coast, is it? Over by Sionan, probably. That north-country delivery, all drawl and seawater—”

  “Who are you accusing of drawling,” Blanis said, suddenly indignant. “Listen to you, everything comes out as one word, no spaces between them—”

  They rode.

  ***

  They rode past Amnyssa, and the Old Dikes, and Oravieh, and the Grange at Aranashown. In the old days, it would have been a pleasant morning’s ride for a prince on holiday, after a night spent over the border in Darthen. He and Herewiss had done the ride a number of times, in happier days. But the view of that countryside was much different now than the last time they had come home to Prydon through harvest weather. The scattered farmsteads were there, but their beasts were gone: no cattle or sheep in the pastures, no smoke rising from the chimneys. There were no people at all. The only smoke that rose came from westward, and it was white, unlike hearthsmoke: burning thatch, or standing hay on fire. It was an hour before noon.

  “The scouts have seen the back of the force holding down the Arlene van,” Blanis said. “The Arlenes are trying to break through, but it won’t help them—our people are right across the road from the western slope of Elsbede to the rise on the right side of Laeran’s Ridings, where the woodland comes down.”

  The relish in Blanis’s voice was surprising. “You’re enjoying this,” he said.

  “No I am not,” she said, though cheerfully. “The Queen is, though.”

  “I’m delighted for her. What does she want us to do when we come up with the back of the holding force?”

  “Their center will fall away toward us. We go straight through. Our left and right coming up behind will replace theirs: they’ll duck around behind. Then we push.”

  “How hard?”

  Blanis looked at first vague, then wry. “Until we get to Prydon, the Queen says.”

  Freelorn snorted. “That’s six miles’ worth of push. Supposing we do it—”

  “There they are,” Segnbora said from behind. She drew Skádhwë.The road had just topped a rise. Down on the far side of it, between two other rises, was a great dark muddle of people and horses, half-obscured by wisps of mist that still lay about, stretching right across the low ground between the rises and a short way up each slope. The sun caught on the occasional uplifted pike or sword, golden: here and there Fire lanced out, curling and whiplike, or straight like a spear. No banner showed.

  Freelorn reached down, unhooked his helmet and put it on, then looked over his shoulder. He couldn’t see the Eagle banner anywhere. Guess I’ve been given the honor of getting all this started, he thought, and tugged Hergótha out of its sheath. He reined Blackmane in, looped the reins around the pommel so that he could work two-handed, and glanced behind him at Segnbora. She nodded.

  “Right,” Freelorn said, his heart hammering. His hands were all a-tremble. He stood up in the stirrups, looked over his shoulder at the great crowd of people and horses behind him, lifted Hergótha so that the sun glanced off its blade for them all to see, and shouted, “The Lioooooooooon!”

  His voice cracked in the middle of it. He thumped back down into the saddle, and kicked Blackie, probably harder than necessary. The horse sprang forward as the cry “The Liooooooooon!” went up from behind him, and all his hair stood on end at the sound of it—at the excitement and anger in the voices of those who raised the shout. How long since that battlecry had been heard in these fields? Six hundred years, perhaps, when the Reavers struck north as far as Darthis, and the Arlenes came to the Darthenes’ aid— But Lorn found it difficult to care about history, just now: found it difficult to do anything but try to keep his seat as Blackie swung from canter into gallop.

  The thunder of hooves caught up with him, sharp from where horses were running on the Road, deeper from those who had spilled over both sides of the Road, as the fore of the Darthene cavalry caught up with him and surged past. Freelorn glanced over to left and right and could catch no sight of the Eagle banner: though Segnbora galloped past him on his right, her silvering hair flying, Skádhwë aflame and the Fire streaming from it, eye-hurtingly bright even in the sun. Ahead of them the milling mass of fighting people was pulling aside to left and right as Blanis had said. Ahead of him, now, the Lion banner streamed out, cracking in the wind, the sun flaming on the rubies of the Lion’s eyes. Hey now, wait for me—! Lorn thought, and galloped after it. A hundred yards, now: fifty: they passed the rear of the forward Darthene force—

  — crash! and they were in among the Arlenes: a confusion of screaming horses, pikes jostling every which way, arrows whining through the air, some purposefully, some loosed high and wild: the glitter of lances, swords hissing in the air, metal clashing on metal, Fire lashing out here and there. This was the point at which things always had stopped making sense to Freelorn in previous battles, and they did so now as well. Blackmane, having been in this situation before, had slowed down somewhat when he saw the confusion starting in front of him, wisely having no intention to run headlong into anyone’s pike or spearhead. But at the same time the Arlene force had long since lost any formation they might have had earlier in the day, and the pikes, rather than presenting a unified wall to the charge, were now scattered all over. A smart horse could avoid them while still obeying his rider’s knee-commands, and Blackmane was smart.

  This was just as well, since Freelorn was busy. All the advice he had ever heard about watching people’s eyes during a fight turned out to be useless, as always, because he hardly ever saw any eyes. Helmets, yes, and the nasals of them, and riders’ legs, and arms and spears and swords and maces, those he saw, and struck at.

  For that first while, before he got tired, Lorn fought in a kind of bizarre resignation, certain that he would be killed shortly. Then, when the tiredness started to set in, and the heat and the thirst, the fear came awake, and other worries than for his own skin. Where was Herewiss? The press around him had drawn away, and he could see that several hundred of the Darthene knights were fighting hard some two hundred yards down the road from him. He looked back the way he had come, and saw, several hundred yards back, the Eagle banner and a great crowd of Darthenes around it, making their way toward him: while past them, up against the southern slope of Elsbede, a great flame of Fire went up. I had to wonder, he thought. Terror rose up in him as he saw the dark mass of men plunging down that steep hillside toward Herewiss: but at that moment the shouts off to his left grew fierce, another group of Arlenes plowing into the Darthenes. That was where his business was, and he went to it, where the Lion banner swayed and pushed westward down the Road.

  More time passed quickly in the confusion of fighting. One of the Darthenes accidentally backhanded him with a mace. He hurriedly kneed Blackie aside, swept down with Hergótha to break the pike of a big Arlene who was trying to spear him, and caught her hard in the chest on the backstroke. She fell. Freelorn panted, desperately thirsty, and looked around to see who was going to come at him next.

  A riderless horse did, bolting past: but no one else. Freelorn watched the horse go by, then spun Blacki
e right around, practically on his haunches. No one was around him but Darthenes now, all heading westward down the Road at a good rate. His banner was well in the fore, and so was the Eagle banner—Goddess knew how it had gone by him unnoticed, but then the Goddess Herself could probably have walked by, in the past while, and he would have missed Her completely.

  “Probably,” Blanis said from off to one side, where she was sitting on her gelding, and breathing hard. “You’re not too good at keeping up with the rest, are you? Always either too far in front, or too far behind. I had to come back for you.”

  “You’re pert, young madam,” he said. “When I’m King, I shall decree your spanking.”

  She snickered at him. “Too big a job for you, eh?”

  Freelorn swiped at her with Hergótha, being careful to miss. The sword had a tendency not to. He glanced up, and was shocked to see the sun standing nearly an hour past its nooning. “Where now?” he said.

  “Straight on, as I told you. It’s going pretty well.”

  “Oh? What was all that Fire I saw back there?”

  Blanis grinned, an astonishingly feral look. “The Queen’s hunch paying off. The Arlenes had a few hundred horsemen hidden up on the north side of Elsbede, and several other companies over on the south side of Kelasta, that came down the hill after we passed and tried to split the main march of the army off from ours. Those Arlenes would have come up behind us and cut off our retreat, and the Arlene force waiting behind the one our group hit would have come in in front of you—” She shrugged.

  “But they didn’t.”

  Blanis shook her head. “The ones who came down Kelasta got mired in the brook that runs by the bottom. They exposed a flank, and our horse broke them in the water-meadows. As for the others, Elsbede hill isn’t quite the shape it used to be. There’s a great big crevasse halfway down it, and about two and a half hundred Arlene horse in the crevasse.” Her smile got even more feral. “I think I would like to meet your friend.” “You’ll get your chance,” Freelorn said. “Meanwhile there’s that new unfought Arlene group—”