Stronghold Page 23

Hollis surveyed the beaches, her voice as calm as ever. “We’ll wait for full sunrise. The clouds should blow away soon on this wind.”

  Pol watched his father and uncle, who stood side by side, together as they had always been. Grief had not left their faces, but Pol was startled to see something fierce and feral in their eyes. Old they might be, but beneath the serenity of age were two young men who had bathed their hands in enemy blood. This was what won wars, this elemental anger. Pol did not know whether to feel ashamed or relieved that he could find none of it within himself. He knew only sadness and pain, and a terrible weariness.

  • • •

  Far from Radzyn, on a lonely stretch of Ossetian road between the Pyrme and Radar rivers, Andry and his escort of Medr’im were awake and in the saddle at dawn. It was cold, gray, the kind of morning Sunrunners hated, for it rendered their skills useless. Which was undoubtedly why the enemy had chosen autumn as their season for invasion, Andry told himself. Still, with rain there could be no battles or advances through downpour and mud. Which was undoubtedly why the strike up from the coast had been so sudden and so deadly. And why they sought to take the Faolain River to cut off help to the Desert—where it rained perhaps once in a hundred years. Autumn and winter could be brutally cold on the Long Sand, but ground could be covered and castles taken. If Radzyn fell, and Faolain Lowland with it, a token force could be left in the south to hold it secure and the bulk of the army could be moved to the Desert before the heaviest rains.

  Andry had glimpsed Lowland before moonset the night before. The enemy had spent a day making sure Riverport was utterly destroyed, every home and shop and warehouse and inn up in smoke. And where is Brenlis, in all this horror? he asked himself again, shaking inside. Hidden away somewhere, little love? Find me, and soon, for I cannot find you—

  Soon the enemy would be at Lowland. It was already shut up tight, fields blackened by Sunrunner’s Fire. The drawbridge was up, the moat overflowing. That puzzled Andry until he saw that the sluice gates to the river had been demolished to let the water rise. All well and good—but if the enemy could not get in, neither could the defenders get out to harass troops Andry knew must soon invade the Desert. A small force left behind could ensure Lowland’s isolation while the main army marched past. Even so, at least Lowland would be denied them as a staging area.

  Though they rode west, Andry’s thoughts continually turned eastward to Radzyn. He would not be able to see things for himself until the sun finally made its appearance. If he was lucky and the Goddess was good to him today, the clouds might blow off in a strengthening wind by midmorning.

  I should be there. I should be at my father’s castle, giving the only help I can offer. Sioned had worked at a colossal distance to shield Rohan during his battle with Roelstra—almost the same number of measures as to Radzyn from here—but she had had help. She had seized the strength of every Sunrunner she could find, from Tobin at her side at Skybowl to Andrade and Urival and even Pandsala at the combat scene. Andry had no one but himself. It galled him to admit it, but there was nothing he could do—not at this distance, not alone.

  So he rode west while his heart and mind yearned east, and cursed the clouds that kept him helpless.

  • • •

  Alleyn stroked Meath’s thick hair and tried to screen the hot sun from his face. Her grandmother had told her to try and get the faradhi to drink a little, but it was a losing battle against water-sickness. Alleyn didn’t see why the element that had felled him should revive him, in any case. There wasn’t any logic to it.

  Audran came with a dipper filled from the fresh water barrels. “Is he any better?”

  “No, and not likely to be until he’s on land again.” Angling Meath’s heavy head, she helped her brother pour water down his throat. He moaned and coughed, but kept it down.

  “Why didn’t you let me tell him?” Audran whispered.

  “He’s got more to worry about than us,” Alleyn snapped. She settled Meath in her lap again and glared at Audran. “Besides, maybe we just imagined it. We’re not Sunrunners. Nobody in our family is a Sunrunner.”

  “I didn’t imagine anything!” he retorted. “I felt it and so did you!”

  “Hush up!” she hissed. “Who cares, anyway? If we can’t make it to Tiglath, it’s not going to matter if we’re Sunrunners or sorcerers or both—or neither! And anyway, I don’t see you getting sick.”

  “Not everybody does. Maybe we’re special.” Audran scowled and looked as if he’d pursue the subject, but his sister’s fierce blue eyes stopped him. He gulped, lowered his gaze and mumbled, “I wonder where Papa and Mama are.”

  “I don’t know,” Alleyn said, her voice quivering a little. “But whatever you do, don’t say anything to Grandsir. Or about what happened with us, either.”

  “He’d only worry,” Audran sighed. But he squinted up at the sun with a speculative expression on his face anyway.

  • • •

  Pol forced himself to relax, allowing his mother to guide his strength into the weaving of the ros’salath. As he submitted, all information from his outer senses faded away. He knew there were shouts and battle cries, wind whipping his face and hair, salt spray stinging his nose, enemy troops wading ashore from the small boats, the lingering taste of blood in his mouth where he’d bitten his lip at his mother’s first commanding touch. But all he really knew was the feel of her colors, strong and sharp. And for the second time in his life he recognized the difference between the faradhi gift and that of the diarmadh’im. That it indeed was the second time confused him.

  Sioned had told him once that it was like pressing one’s hand to its exact match on the other side of a thin mesh screen: alike yet never touching. He hadn’t felt that when fighting Ruval nine years ago, but now he knew what she meant. As she drew what she needed from him, he imagined one of the hands turning to clasp hers, while Hollis held onto Sioned’s other hand with both of her own. But try as he might, Pol could not make the image of that second, different hand reach and grip and give of that other strength.

  Slop that. You’re distracting me.

  He let the mental picture dissolve and concentrated on the colors whirling around him, in him. Sioned, Hollis, himself—a whole bright rainbow of jewel tints that threaded around and through each other to form a complex pattern. Usually Sunrunners likened their colors to a stained glass window, unique to each person. It was the easiest way to explain the inexplicable to a non-faradhi mind. But it wasn’t that simple (he could hear his father’s dry voice telling him that nothing was ever that simple). Patterns in colored glass, woven tapestry threads, sun and shadow on water—shifting subtly throughout life, changing with mood or stress, but always the same.

  Pol gave himself over to Sioned’s skill, curious at his lack of amazement. He was sure he had never felt anything like this before—as if he no longer had a body, as if everything he was had concentrated in the strange and beautiful thing she had made of herself and him and Hollis.

  But to some deeper part of him, it was oddly familiar. And that other hand, the one that belonged to the sorcerer, turned its palm to show him a single gold coin. On it was his grandfather’s profile: High Prince Roelstra. There was no similarity between them, no cant or contour that linked him to his blood-mother’s sire. But all at once the face of gold turned, took on the colors and shadows of living flesh—and the leaf-green eyes laughed at him, eyes the color of his own in certain lights, or when he wore certain clothes.

  He felt no fear of this man. But it was an eerily familiar face that grinned at him now, a face from his own memories. And that was impossible.

  The hand closed over the gold coin with its living face, clenched into a fist raised as if to strike him for rejecting the vision. He couldn’t help it—he claimed his other hand, the faradhi part of him, and tried to break through the finely woven screen, smash that fist into oblivion.

  Or lace his fingers with it, and become whole.

  The idea flashed and was g
one so fast that he barely knew it had formed. In his shock he felt sick, rent in pieces, as if the very thought of wholeness shattered him. The colors surrounding him fragmented, paled to shards of acid rime, needles of white slicing into his brain. The blankness of his physical being was now an agony of sensation having nothing to do with the logic of reality. He could hear whiteness, smell cold, taste lightning.

  “Pol!”

  Opening his eyes, he winced at shreds of sunlight. Hollis knelt beside him.

  “Talk to me,” she ordered.

  He coughed, sat up, and wondered when he had fallen to the stones. “Everything still works—I think.” He reclaimed one hand and rubbed his forehead. “Goddess in glory—my head’s about to split open.” Then he looked around. “Mother!” She lay senseless nearby, pale and spent.

  Hollis soothed him with a touch and a tired smile. “She’ll be all right—I have her word on it. She told me so after she finished stitching us both back together.” She flung her thick, tawny-gold braid back over one shoulder. “I’ll take care of her. Your father wants you downstairs. Hurry.”

  “But what happened?”

  “I think we lost you, or most of you, and then I had the impression of . . . of swords.” She paused to compose herself. “I’ve felt it before—only that time, it was a knife. I think they used iron against the ros’salath, Pol. Cut into it with swords.” She attempted to help him up; they ended by helping each other, neither steady enough to stand alone just yet. “When you can, go to your father and Chay. Don’t worry about Sioned. I’ll make sure she’s safe.”

  “Iron—” He swallowed hard. “You felt this before? When?”

  “When Pandsala died.”

  He remembered the agony of it, and his mother’s frantic work patterning the colors of a score of stricken faradh’im. But he also remembered that while iron was fatal poison to Sunrunners, it had a lesser effect on sorcerers. Like him. Diarmadh’im could work around it—painfully, but they could function. He had not. He had simply fallen apart. “I failed again, then,” he said bitterly.

  “You couldn’t know. None of us knew. It’s not in the Star Scroll.”

  He’d forgotten Hollis was there—Hollis, who knew nothing about the true source of his power. “Damn Lady Merisel to all Hells! She must have known—yet she wrote nothing!”

  “As with other things, perhaps she thought it too dangerous.”

  “She was fond of making other people’s decisions for them.” He tried out his legs, found them reasonably useful, and glanced over the walls. It seemed he’d be feeding his sword fresh blood today after all. With a last worried look at his mother, he ran headlong for the stairs, and forgot to wonder why submission to her weaving felt so familiar.

  • • •

  “Listen to them,” Chay muttered. “Listen to their battle cry. Andry was right—Goddess help us, he was right.”

  The shout went up again from the enemy ranks: “Diarmadh’im!” It echoed off the eight towers of Radzyn Keep, all the way up to where Chay and Rohan stood watching the battle. Rohan wanted to put his hands over his ears to shut it out. They bellowed as if they had but one voice—and the discipline this implied was confirmed by the efficiency of the assault.

  “As if it was the name of their lord, or their keep,” Chay went on. “The way our people are shouting ‘Radzyn’ and ‘Azhrei’ and our names.”

  “Maarken’s breaking through,” Rohan said, pointing to the wedge of mounted warriors slamming into enemy foot soldiers.

  “That horse’s ass—if he’s not careful, they’ll circle around and—” Chay ground his teeth, then beckoned to Daniv. “Run down and have my horse saddled, quick! And get me thirty riders—”

  “Don’t bother,” Rohan interrupted. “Maarken’s following the plan, Chay. Reinforcements are right behind. He won’t be cut off.”

  Chay squinted and gave a snort of laughter. “In other words, he doesn’t need the old man galloping up to his rescue! I don’t know whether to be proud or disappointed.”

  Rohan divided his attention between glancing over his shoulder at the stairwell door and peering anxiously down at the fray. With the collapse of the ros’salath, he had been expecting Pol to show up in one place or the other—and went a little weak-kneed when the young man finally arrived at his side.

  “I’m sorry, Father—we failed,” he panted. “They used iron—slashed right through it. It’s a wonder we aren’t all dead.”

  “It’s no wonder magic is forbidden to Sunrunners in combat,” Chay said. “Damn—there’s that word again. Magic. I’m beginning to sound like my son.”

  Rohan suddenly remembered what Chay had said earlier. “What did you mean, ‘Andry was right’?”

  “He knew,” Chay muttered, looking anywhere but at Rohan and Pol. “Saw this in some sort of vision. You know how I feel about faradhi seeings—”

  “He knew. And said nothing, except to you.” Pol’s voice was lethally quiet.

  “I should have believed him. It was my fault you weren’t told. Don’t blame him, Pol.” Chay glanced at him then, with an expression as close to pleading as would ever appear on his face.

  Pol was silent. Rohan pulled in a deep breath and, against all his protective instincts, said, “Arm yourself, Pol. Maarken needs you.”

  “I might as well go someplace I can do some good—or harm, as the case may be!” The deadly glitter in his eyes found an object that was not Andry, which had been Rohan’s purpose. “I’ll order Dannar up here—keep him with you. He’s too young for this.”

  “And we are too old,” Chay murmured when Pol had left them. “But if they can’t push these bastards back onto the beach soon, our swords may drink today after all, Rohan.”

  • • •

  Maarken had taken no wounds of any note—a slice here, a shallow puncture there—and he was only a little tired. But he knew the battle would have to be won soon. His right wrist, crushed in combat eighteen years ago, throbbed with pain. He had exercised it assiduously, making sure it was as strong as it ever would be again, but despite skilled physicians the broken bones had never mended properly. He could move his wrist certain ways but not others—and swordplay demanded supple joints, especially in the wrist. He had accounted for more than his share of enemy dead, but muscles and tendons shrieked at the ill-usage. He could feel the wrist swelling inside his gauntlet. He figured he was good for a little while yet, but not much longer.

  So it was all very simple. He had to win in order to get the wrist iced before it was damaged beyond help and crippled him forever. He could not swing his sword two-handed when on horseback, so he jumped off and, with a battle roar of “Radzynnn!”, led his troops forward.

  Within moments his leather battle-harness was slick with blood. A dark-eyed warrior with a score of gold beads threaded through his beard managed to cut into Maarken’s forearm, and the damaged wrist soon went numb. He still had the strength of his upper arm and shoulder. So he wrapped his left hand around his right to keep it steady, and hacked his way through five more bearded soldiers.

  Screams, battle cries, calls for help, and the almighty crash of steel on steel deafened Maarken now that he was down here in the thick of things, rather than above it on his horse. He fought better on foot; proficient as a mounted knight, his real talent was face-to-face combat with a sword.

  But this couldn’t go on much longer. The first attack had come at dawn. It was now noon. The battle had gone pretty much as Chay had expected, the sheer numbers of the enemy more or less matched by the Radzyn defenders’ knowledge of the terrain—and the fact that it was their land they were fighting for. But casualties were mounting on both sides. Maarken groaned when he saw the corpse of the young woman who had taught his children how to ride. There were others he recognized—too many. This couldn’t go on much longer.

  “Maarken!”

  He took care of his current opponent and swung around at the sound of Pol’s voice. His cousin was on horseback, cutting a swath throu
gh the enemy line to Maarken’s left—doing a damned good job of it, too. He reined his big golden stallion around toward Maarken.

  “Get up here behind me—we can get clear and call Fire!”

  “No!” A hiss over his shoulder warned him just in time; he whirled, gutted the swordsman, and shouted to Pol, “I kill with my sword, not with my rings!”

  “You idiot!”

  And nearby three enemy soldiers became living torches.

  “Stop it, now!” Maarken bellowed. “You’ll get yourself killed!”

  Suddenly the bearded warriors gave another roar of “Diarmadh’im!” Maarken had no time to think. He fought for his life as wave after wave swept down on him inexorably as a storm-tide.

  He collided with a horse and someone grabbed his arm to steady him. He looked up into Pol’s face, half-hidden by his helm.

  “You don’t have a choice this time—climb on!”

  His cousin’s strong arm hauled him up. It wasn’t until he was perched behind the saddle, his legs at an awkward angle, that he realized his thigh hurt like all Hells. Pol pivoted the stallion and rode for the rear of their lines. Maarken hacked at a few enemy heads along the way with his left hand—and pushed his numb right fist into the bleeding wound just above his knee.

  Some of the enemy had advanced nearly to Radzyn’s walls, a knot of them assaulting the main gate, repulsed by arrows and kettles of boiling water from above. Pol galloped for a postern gate. It opened, Pol reined in, and Maarken slipped from the horse into his father’s arms.

  “Pol! Come back here!” Chay yelled.

  But Pol was gone in a thunder of hooves back to the battle.

  “Where are you hurt? Maarken, talk to me!”

  With Chay’s help, he limped inside the gate, heard it slam shut behind them and the iron bolts slide home. The passage through the thick walls was black as pitch; Maarken conjured a finger-flame to light their way.

  “A couple of scratches, and this damned gouge in my leg. Nothing serious. Father—just enough to take me out for a while,” he added angrily.