Daughter of Lir (69 page)

“You’ll leave?” Emry asked with a touch of incredulity.
“You’ll go back to the steppe?”

Dias snorted—not quite laughter, but close enough. “I’ll
give you Lir,” he said, “as I would have given it to her. The rest is mine.”

“No bargain,” Emry said. “You have safe-conduct back to your
army. After that, it’s war.”

“Enough,” Rhian said. She stood between them, glaring from
one to the other. “I am the Mother’s daughter of Lir. This once, and only once,
I claim the authority of that office. The temple is yours, king of chariots. Do
with it as you will. Lir is yours, my brother. Be wise in disposing of it.”

“And the rest?” They spoke together, Dias and Emry, startling
one another.

“That you will settle between you,” she said, “by single
combat if you must. But settle it before the sun sets—and after you have
stopped the army.”

Emry looked at Dias, and found him looking back. His brows
rose. Dias’ mouth quirked. “Single combat,” Dias said. “Winner take all. Are
you man enough for that, king of Lir?”

“Are you, king of chariots?”

They clasped hands, a brief struggle, quickly over: Dias
leaped; Emry pulled him into the chariot. People were grinning or scowling. It
did not matter. They had a battle to stop, and a battle of their own to fight.

o0o

The fighting in the city was fierce. But the sight of two
kings in a chariot stopped all but the most determined and left them staring.

The great gate was shut. Mabon, limping but alive, stood
guard above it. His warriors with sword and spear beat off the warrior women
from the city. His archers stood along the wall, bows strung, arrows nocked.

“Open the gate!” Emry bellowed as he drove the chariot
toward it. “Mabon! Open the gate!”

Mabon, bless his wise heart, did not waste time in gawping.
He sent a man to do as Emry bade. “The Goddess’ blessing on you!” Emry called
to them both.

The chariot thundered through the gate and out onto the
plain. The massed power of Dias’ people descended upon him, horsemen and
chariots. The sound was indescribable. The earth shook with it. It was
terrible, glorious.

Emry laughed as a man may when he looks death in the face.
Kings he and Dias might be, but they could not stop this. Nothing could do that
but the walls themselves; when they had done it, they would tumble down.

A horn rang. Emry’s hands clenched on the reins. The horses
jibbed, half-rearing.

Mabon had lied. Or someone had. The chariots of Lir were
coming, nigh tenscore of them. A prince of the city led them, his brother
Davin. They were a brave sight with their fine trappings and their armor of
leather and bronze. They fell on the flank of the horde with such force that it
buckled, horses and chariots reeling back, careening into one another.

A cry of pure joy went up from the mass of the People.
Battle—glory and splendor. And chariots to fight against. No enemy had ever had
them, and here were nigh as many as they themselves had in this place. A
grander game had never been, nor a better fight.

Emry forgot who was in the chariot with him, forgot
everything but the battle in front of him. The horses barely needed his urging.
They flew into a gallop.

Davin’s charioteers had driven deep into the army of the
People. Too deep. The enemy closed behind them. Emry roared at them, bellowing
like a bull: “Back!
Back
!” But they
did not hear, or did not choose to hear.

Chariots thrust together lost their advantage. That lesson
Emry had learned over and over in battle with the People. They needed an open
plain, and a long span to run in, and room to wheel and turn. The People had
kept the bulk of their chariots free, but Davin’s people were trapped, locked
together, wheels tangled, teams clambering over one another, doing worse damage
to their allies than their enemies.

Emry struck like a dart at the front of the horde. Riders
and chariots, startled, seeing their king, gave way.

Davin was surrounded by men on horseback, blocked to the
sides and rear by his own chariots, fighting for his life. Emry flung the reins
at Dias and vaulted into his brother’s chariot, and loosed a shrilling,
ululating cry.

It surged outward in a wave, stilling the battle. “Dias!” he
cried. “Lord of chariots! I propose a match. On the open field—a hundred of
yours, a hundred of mine, and all power to the victor.”

Dias grinned, wide and white. “Ah! I do like that. It’s
better, much, than hammering at each other until one of us is tired.”

“Yes: now we do it a hundredfold.”

Dias saluted him, laughing, and called off his men, choosing
out his hundred.

While he did that, Emry considered the force that had
appeared all unlooked for. There were a hundred chariots and teams intact,
easily, and charioteers for them, and warriors to fight. Most of the
charioteers were women, lighter and quicker of hand and eye if not as strong as
the men. That would disconcert the enemy, which was well.

The two forces drew up facing one another on the open field
below the wall. The horde had drawn back to give them room. The wall was thick
with people: wide eyes, startled faces staring down.

Emry raked his glance down the line of his people. Some he
recognized. Most he did not. Of his brothers, only Davin was there—and that was
a relief.

“Remember,” he said. “Give yourselves room to maneuver.
Don’t be trapped again. And aim for the charioteers.”

They all knew him, knew what he was. None moved to gainsay
him. To Davin he said, “You drive the chariot. I’ll fight. Drive straight and
choose targets carefully. Let me deal with them when we come to them.”

Davin nodded shortly. He was not happy, but he would be
obedient.

Emry, in the center of his line, faced Dias in the center of
his. Their eyes met. They loved one another as brothers, as heart’s friends.
That they were kings at war mattered very little in that moment; though in the
next, it was everything.

o0o

There was nothing in the world like the charge of
chariots. The long line gathering, poising, surging forward. The rumble of
wheels. The snorting of horses. The sheer inexorable force of them.

The two lines met with a ringing crash. Swords, spears,
warclubs, axes, met, collided, swept past one another.

Davin checked his team of blacks, rocked them back on their
haunches, turned them in a tight arc, almost spinning on a single wheel. Then
they were at the charge again, closer together now, wielding weight as well as
speed against the enemy’s line.

Wheels ground together and locked. Stallions screamed. Men
shouted and howled and sang.

Emry was singing. It was wonderful to let the song pour out
of him, to feel the wind on his face and the sun on his helmet, and know the
bruising shock of his sword meeting sword in the line of battle.

It was not Dias whom he fought. The king of chariots was
farther down the line, locked in combat with a warrior whom Emry did not know.

It was life for life, blood for blood, and no quarter given.
Davin was good with the horses, always had been. He kept them alive, moving,
and the traces uncut.

Others were not so fortunate. It was the difficulty that all
his people had: to kill with the true joy of killing, and not to flinch or pull
back just short of the stroke.

Emry had been a tribesman long enough to become a slayer of
men. He did not do it gladly, but he did it.

The line of his people had grown terribly thin. Empty
chariots ran around the field, tangling with one another, throwing knots of
fighters into confusion. Emry rallied those that were left, formed them into a
charge, and flung them against the broader, deeper line of the enemy.

He would do it, and do it again, until there was only
himself left, and however many of the tribe were still alive. Dias, he hoped.
Dias his warbrother, his friend, his implacable enemy.

o0o

At last they came face to face. Dias had lost his helmet;
his temple was cut, and had bled appallingly as head wounds did.

He grinned through the blood. Emry grinned back. They knew
one another’s strengths and weaknesses, all the ways in which they preferred to
fight, from many a battle against each other and against the enemies of the
People.

There was a lovely inevitability in it. Emry was taller,
stronger, but Dias was lighter and quicker and had grown up from childhood
fighting in chariots. His team was better trained, his charioteer more skilled.
It would have to be quick.

He pressed hard, hammering at Dias’ blade, driving him back
and down. The chariots veered around one another, swinging wide, crashing
together with a splintering of wood and a grinding of wheels. The horses
strained to pull them apart again.

Dias came up from the floor of the chariot, whirling his
sword about his head. Emry caught it in mid-whirl, bracing against the shock of
the two blades’ meeting. It rocked him on his heels. The chariots lurched,
wheels screeching as they tore free. He staggered.

He saw the blow coming. He scrambled to beat it aside, but
his counterstroke flew wide. He went down in a whirl of darkness and stars.

They brought Emry in on a litter of spears. He was alive.
So were a handful of those who had fought with him, led behind him in bonds,
captives but proud of it. The dead stayed on the field, would be buried there
in honor.

Aera had not meant to trouble herself with him. He had left
her; he had become the enemy. Now he was conquered, as they all were, sooner or
later.

But as night came down on a city that had fallen in large
part to the People, Aera found herself standing over the bed in which Emry was
lying.

He had always come back from battle covered in wounds that
he had not even noticed until it was time to stitch and tend them. She counted
them as she had so often before.

They had had to clip his beard to stitch the worst of them:
the long deep slash that ran from brow to chin. The stitching was tidy. It
would scar, she thought, but not so badly as to ruin his beauty.

He opened his eyes. They were dark and soft with sleep. He
smiled, seeing her, and drew a small sigh, as if he had been wandering far and
had come home.

Enemy
, she
thought.
Conquered king.
He had let
her believe her son was dead.

Her son of his begetting was living, and would come here
when the country was settled. Her elder son slept in a room near this one,
broken but mending, and alive in spite of himself.

Dias had said nothing of what he meant to do with Emry, had
simply brought him back and sent for healers and ordered them to tend him. Then
Dias went back to the battle. He had won Emry’s part of Lir, to be sure, but
there were still the priestesses; they were intractable.

Emry reached for her hand and pressed it to his unwounded
cheek and slid into sleep again. Had he even remembered where he was, or what
had brought him there?

She had intended to slip free and escape. Instead she lay
beside him, her body against his warm familiar body. She buried her face in his
hair and wept a little. He never stirred.

o0o

She woke when Dias came back. He regarded her with an arch
of the brow that said a great deal without uttering a word. She met it with a
flat cold stare.

“Give him to me,” she said. His brow arched even further.
“He’s yours now. Let me have him.”

“For what? So that you can make a cup of his skull?”

“Wasn’t that what you were going to do with him?”

“No,” Dias said. “I was going to keep him alive.”

“As your dog?”

“Why not? He was that before. He’s a better charioteer than
most men of the People.”

“He was a slave then. He’s a king now. He might prefer to be
dead.”

“I can give him the choice,” said Dias. “Will you?”

“Of course not.”

“You can have him,” Dias said. “But you can’t kill him until
I’m done with him.”

She assented to that.

Dias hung on his heel, but she had said all she intended to
say. After a while he obliged her by leaving.

Aera stayed where she was. She felt rather than heard the
change in Emry’s breathing. He was awake, aware. He said, “I lost the fight.”

“And the city,” she said, “and everything else you fought
for.”

“Did I?”

It was hard to stay angry, with him lying so close. “It’s
not defeat to you, is it?” she said. “As long as the city stands, whoever rules
it, you don’t truly care.”

“I do care,” he said. “I’d rather Dias than Etena. I’d
rather myself most of all, of course, or better yet my father, but that was not
the Goddess’ will.”

She would never understand him. But neither, it seemed,
could she live without him. She had tried, and found nothing there but
emptiness.

“You belong to me now,” she said. “The king has said it.”

“I’ve always belonged to you,” he said.

“And I belong to the mare,” said Aera. “Your sister claimed
me, so that I could ride with the men.”

“So I belong to the mare,” he said. His grin was crooked,
misshapen with stitches, but it was as wicked as ever. “And you said I lost
everything. It seems I gained a great deal in return.”

“No man of the People would say such a thing.”

“But,” he said, “I’m not a man of the People. I’m the mare’s
servant. As are you.”

“Maybe we shall all be, in the end,” she said. An unwilling
smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “By the gods and your Goddess, I
missed you.”

“And I you,” he said softly.

He closed his arms about her, stroking her back in the way
that she loved best, so that she arched and purred. He winced with all his
aches and twinges, but she knew how to soothe those.

She was hungry for him—starving. And he, it seemed, for her.
They made their own feast there, a feast of victory after all, and in its way a
promise. That whatever became of the rest of the world, they would not be
parted again.