Song of Unmaking

by Caitlin Brennan

  Forty-Six

  War was hell. Valeria’s father had often said that, and she had heard stories enough. But the reality—the blood, the crushed and severed limbs and trampled entrails, the screams of the wounded and dying, and over it all the numbing clangor of metal on metal—was worse than anything she had imagined.

  She had no time to be sick. The legions were losing the battle, and the emperor was barely holding on against the tide of Unmaking.

  She was barely holding on herself. If the stallions had not come across the river, she would still be lying with the fallen priests, and her soul would have gone into the dark. The stallions and the Lady were all that stood between Valeria and dissolution.

  It was the Lady who put in her mind the thought of the Dance. The part of Valeria that had been trained as a rider did not want to listen. How could there be a Dance with three instead of four or eight? What hope did they have of succeeding? What if the Unmaking was waiting for exactly that, to break the Dance once more and end what it had begun?

  The Lady’s ears flattened to her skull. She snapped her strong yellow teeth in Valeria’s face. No questions. Stop thinking. Dance!

  Sabata’s back coiled beneath her. He could as easily buck her into the river as accept her guidance.

  The others were waiting. Rodry might not know her wits were wandering, but Kerrec did. He had had his own fit of the I-can’ts—and been bitten for it, too.

  Completely unexpectedly, she laughed. The Unmaking recoiled. Sabata tossed his mane and stamped.

  She sent him forward. He was not the great master that Oda was. She had to guide him. But she knew the patterns. They were as clear as words on a page, written on the earth in front of her.

  The Lady moved ahead of Sabata. Rodry was motionless on her back.

  There was no gate and no hall. No Augurs stood in their gallery to interpret the Dance. The ground they danced on was not perfectly raked and groomed sand but trampled grass, slick with blood.

  Nevertheless this was a true Dance. With the first step that the Lady took, the power woke.

  It drew the Unmaking away from the emperor. Valeria knew she should not do it, but she looked up. A black tumble of cloud hung over the Dance, swirling slowly. Its heart was darkness absolute. At first it was no more than a pinpoint, but as the Lady marked the limits of the Dance, it opened wider.

  A fierce wind began to blow, buffeting Valeria. She dared not stiffen against it—that would unbalance Sabata. He had to be perfectly steady.

  There was a moment when she knew that neither of them could do it. They were both too young. They had the power but not the art. She could not guide him. He could not carry her. They would fail.

  She brought herself up short. The Unmaking was working inside her, sapping her courage, even while it sucked the light and life and soul out of the world. She would be strong enough, Sabata would be steady enough, because they had to be.

  The Lady set the pace. Petra, behind Sabata, anchored them to earth and all its powers. Sabata was the balance between them.

  Valeria had never known a Dance like it. Not only were there only three of them, and not only did they dance directly under the maw of the Unmaking. The Lady’s presence changed everything they did. It went deeper and rose higher.

  The powers that came to this Dance were stronger than Valeria had seen before. Everything that the full quadrille of stallions was to the Dance, the Lady was, alone, in her single self—and more.

  The stallions in the Dance were submissive to the riders’ will. They performed the movements as their riders instructed and raised their powers under the riders’ guidance. They were the living incarnation of their magic, but that magic was an instrument in the riders’ hands.

  The Lady did not submit. She drew on the riders’ power and discipline, but the Dance was hers.

  The whole world was the power and the Dance, but Valeria was aware in her bones that the battle had gone still. Somewhere in the ranks, a drum began to beat.

  She faltered and almost dropped Sabata out of the Dance. But this was not the drum that had beaten for the priests of the One. This one throbbed with magic, but its heart was mortal.

  It fell into the rhythm of a human pulse. The Lady’s satisfaction brushed past Valeria like a breath of wind.

  The Lady was not afraid of the Unmaking. It could Unmake her—of that she was certain. But like all horses, she did not trouble herself with what might be. There was only what was—now and always.

  It was the gift and curse of mortals that for them time was a running stream and not a perpetual present. That was their power, but it was also their greatest failing.

  The Lady needed that failing. She needed even the fear. It shaped a pattern, and that pattern strengthened the bonds of the world against the Unmaking.

  Kerrec gave her his fear, and his hatred, too, and bitter disappointment that he could not commit murder when he most needed to do it. That was a strong pattern, dark and clear. Into it he wove other, brighter strands, too many and swift for Valeria to follow. She was in them, and Briana, and even his father, whom in spite of their long war, he truly loved.

  She spun her own threads into the pattern. As they wove through Kerrec’s, she realized that she could see them with her mortal eyes as well as her magic. They were taking shape in the world, an intricate tracery of light and shadow. It spread across the field of the Dance and rose up over the dancers, raised like a shield between the Dance and the Unmaking.

  The Dance both traced the pattern and created it. This was a Great Dance, but it opened no gates and shaped no future but the one directly before them. The gate that was open, the gate of Unmaking, must be shut. If it was not, there would be no future. The world would be swallowed in nothingness.

  The image in Valeria’s mind was altogether mortal. It was ridiculous, maybe. A man might laugh at it. She saw the many-colored threads and the void beyond, and thought of mending a torn shirt.

  The Dance was the needle. Each movement drew the edges closer together.

  It was an enormous working. Without the Lady she could never have done it.

  When she tried to stop, to let the Lady control the Dance, the Lady would not allow it. This was for her to do. It needed mortal eyes and mortal sense of the world.

  Valeria gave in to it. She drew ruthlessly from the others—shrinking a little from Kerrec until he opened his magic wide and laid it in front of her. It was not perfect, but even roughly mended, it was a potent thing.

  Its greatest strength was not the raw power but the order and discipline he imposed upon it. He was a master of his magic, and he gave it all to her, to use as she would.

  There had never been a greater gift. The Lady and the stallions came together within it, and Rodry with his bright, sunlit, utterly mortal magic. That was the world as it should be—the world they must save.

  Valeria fixed on it. It was beautifully simple, like one of her mother’s herbal teas, or a Word spoken to kindle a fire. That simplicity was the greatest power that mortals knew. It swayed even the gods.

  With the others’ help, Valeria bound the Unmaking. She closed the gate. It strained against her—but she held fast.

  The Dance wove its last figure. The intricate pattern hung in the air. The sky was clear, the cloud of oblivion gone. Slowly the pattern melted and flowed until it was part of all that was.

  The drumbeat stilled. The horses danced to a halt. Sabata’s neck was dark with sweat, and his breathing came hard.

  The battle of magic against Unmaking was ended. But the armies had declared no truce, and neither had surrendered. As if the long pause had been no more than a breather, they clashed with a roar of renewed fury.

  Valeria hissed. Sabata snapped and kicked at air. Neither of them needed to ask what the others would do. With Sabata in the lead, they plunged into the melee, aiming for the emperor’s hill.

  Forty-Seven

  Between the tribesmen’s amulets and the cloud of oblivion hovering over the em
peror, the imperial mages were completely and successfully occupied. It was axework on that field, and the legions were falling like trees.

  Euan Rohe knew exactly when the tide of battle turned. There was a moment when the legions no longer stood fast and no longer tried to advance. They were falling back—step by step.

  It was slow, but there was no doubt of it. The people were advancing and the legions were retreating. Up on his hill, the emperor’s circle of defenders was growing smaller.

  Euan gathered as many of his Calletani as he could find. They stopped for a breather, sipping from waterskins and eating a bite or two if they had rations with them.

  The legions were retreating faster now, trying to draw together around their emperor. Most of the tribesmen harrying them did not seem to notice that they were following rather than herding their prey.

  If the imperials closed up their wall again, the fight would still end in their defeat—but it would drag on much longer than it needed to. Not that Euan minded, but there was a gap and he had just the men to make it wider. There was much more sport in hunting legionaries in ones and twos than in hammering away at their blasted shieldwall.

  He whirled his axe around his head and howled—and his Calletani howled back. So did a straggle of outlanders, clansmen who had lost their chieftains or been cut off from their people. He swept them all together into the gap between legions.

  The flanks of both were auxiliary foot—outlanders in imperial pay. They were notoriously loyal and famously deadly, and they were not about to lie down and accept defeat. They would die first. Euan was happy to oblige them.

  Up to now he had felt like a woodman hewing trees. This was a real fight. Some of the auxiliaries were as tall as he was, and they fought like men—one by one instead of in a box of shields.

  He went axe to axe with a great golden bear of a man. He was faster but the auxiliary was stronger. They traded blow for blow, the auxiliary’s smashing strokes against Euan’s lighter, quicker assault.

  After the first parry that nearly shook his arms from their sockets, Euan ducked and darted rather than take the blows on his axe. He had to hope the other man would run out of strength before Euan ran out of speed—and then hope he had enough strength left to strike the deathblow.

  The auxiliary’s axe whistled past his ear. He slid aside before it hacked through his shoulder. His lips peeled back from his teeth. He whirled, letting the weight of his axe carry him, aiming at the auxiliary’s neck.

  Euan’s axe clove empty air. The auxiliary sprawled on the bloody grass with the Ard Ri’s great sword in his skull.

  The high king grinned at Euan. His face was spattered with blood and brains. Blood ran down his arms. He looked as if he had been bathing in it.

  Euan could have—ah, so easily—let his axe continue its circle and sever the Ard Ri’s head from its neck. Maybe he was a fool for letting the weapon fall and leaning on it, grinning back. They exchanged no words. Side by side, they threw themselves back into the fight.

  They were nearly through the gap and ready to surround the fragments of both legions when the light changed. Euan knew better than to let anything distract him when he was fighting for his life, but this had the too-familiar stink of magic.

  Something new was on the field. It did not feel at all like Gothard. It felt like—

  He nearly lost his head to a legionary’s sword. He cut the man down, barely even aware of what he did. For the moment at least, everyone else was absorbed in killing one another. He turned and looked out across the field.

  The battle had long since left the ford, leaving only flotsam behind. There were three horses in the middle of it—two greys and a bay. They looked common enough, and their riders looked like imperial couriers, or maybe scouts. None seemed to be armed.

  They must have come with dispatches from the empire and found themselves on the edge of a battle. Except that they seemed to have come across the river rather than up it. And the way they were standing there, drawing all the light to them—that was not so common.

  Then they moved and the world went still, and he knew.

  Had Gothard known about this? If he had, would he have bothered to tell anyone? There were riders on the battlefield, materialized from who knew where, and they were pacing through the movements of a Dance. Euan could almost see their pattern distilling out of air, a twining, circular shape like one of the intricate brooches of his people.

  For a dizzying moment he wondered if they were more of Gothard’s allies. But that dream did not last long.

  Whatever they were doing, there was nothing Euan could do about it. He could have sworn on his father’s barrow that one of those riders was a woman—and that woman was Valeria. If Valeria was here, the One alone knew what would happen.

  Maybe not the One, Euan thought as he looked up. He had been perilously slow to realize what was different. The sun was shining through a tumble of clouds—just as before. But the cloud over the emperor, the cloud of Unmaking, was gone.

  So was the stink of magic. There was none left on this field—anywhere. Gothard’s sorceries had failed.

  Euan breathed deep of the wonderful, living, mortal stench of a battlefield. The emperor was still alive, but the tribes were taking his hill. His legions were all but fallen. What could his gods do now, if they had not done it already?

  An auxiliary’s axe nearly cut Euan in half while he stood grinning at the empty sky. He blocked it at the last instant and turned it on the man who had struck it. The white gods and their oddest servant sank far down in his awareness. It was kill or be killed here. The end was close enough to taste.

  Forty-Eight

  The only weapon among the three riders was Rodry’s long knife. He was clinging too tightly to the Lady’s mane to draw it. Valeria had too little magic left to raise wards, and Kerrec was barely hanging on. Speed was their only defense.

  Men were fighting in cohorts and clans, the strict order of imperial battle broken down before the barbarian hordes. The emperor was free of the magical attack, but he was still the enemy’s dearest target. The tribes were doing their best to take him.

  The press of men and weapons was tighter, the nearer they came to Artorius. The fighting was fiercer. Imperials and barbarians fought sword to sword, body to body, driving against each other with brute strength.

  Most of the archers on both sides had long since given up shooting and resorted to coarser weapons, but a few were still sending flights of arrows into their enemies’ ranks. As they started up the hill toward the emperor, one such deadly rain fell on the riders.

  Valeria crouched low on Sabata’s neck. Petra shouldered to the lead. The Lady pressed on at Valeria’s knee.

  The armies were parting more slowly for them than before. As arrows fell all around them, men dropped, wounded or dead. One bolt slit the leather of Valeria’s breeches as if it had been gauze. She ducked another before it pierced her throat.

  She turned to Rodry, meaning to warn him—as if he could not see for himself. He was crouched as she was, making himself as small as possible. She started to breathe a sigh of relief.

  An arrow sprouted between Rodry’s shoulder blades. It was a black arrow fletched with glossy black feathers—raven, she thought. The tribes loved the beasts of battle, the wolf and the raven and the kite that fed on carrion.

  Maybe it was not sunk as deep in him as it seemed to be. Maybe it had only pierced the skin. He was still clinging to the Lady’s back. He was alive and riding.

  His fingers loosened. His body began to slide. Valeria lunged toward him, wheeling Sabata about and then sidewise.

  She was too late. Rodry tumbled to the bloody ground, eyes wide, staring blankly at the sky.

  There was a small space around him, a zone of quiet. The fight was thick all around it. Most of the fighters were barbarians. The emperor’s troops were fighting desperately, but they were outnumbered.

  Valeria had a great deal of difficulty understanding what that meant. She sho
uld move. She should fight—somehow. But there was Rodry, white and still. How could he be so still?

  A warrior burst out of the melee and stopped short almost on top of him. It was a barbarian, a big man with an axe nearly as tall as he was. Her numbed mind took in a blur of gold and plaid and coppery red.

  He had not killed Rodry, but he was an enemy. He would do. She drew up magic from depths of rage that she had not known she had. It gathered in her hand, a bolt of bloodred light.

  She looked into the enemy’s face. His eyes were golden amber like a wolf’s. He was a little taller and a good deal wider that she remembered—a man now rather than a rangy boy.

  Euan Rohe stared at her as if she had risen from the dead. He was not only alive, he was clearly prosperous—his torque was gold, as were his brooches and rings and armlets. A mob of men fought behind him, hacking off heads and spilling the entrails of the emperor’s soldiers.

  Maybe she knew some of them, too. She did not look to see. His face transfixed her.

  It was her fault he was here. She had helped him to escape from the ruins of the Great Dance and his grand conspiracy. If she had not done that, he would be safely dead or locked in one of the emperor’s prisons.

  He could have raised his axe and killed her and Sabata together. She should have loosed the mage-bolt that was still in her hand, straining against the bonds of her will.

  Deliberately he lowered his eyes and turned away. Equally deliberately, she flung the mage-bolt at random, far away from Euan Rohe and his warband.

  There would be a price to pay for that. Twice now she had had him in her power and let him go. But he was part of her—her first lover and once, in spite of the worlds between them, her friend. She could not bring herself to kill him.

  She wrenched her mind back to the battle. Rodry was still dead. Nothing in the world could change that.

  The Lady whirled suddenly into motion. She mowed a swath all around his body, felling tribesmen in bloody ruin. Then she darted through the mass of warring mortals.