Lady Warhawk (19 page)

The shield she had thrown over the campsite kept the rain off, but wind still gusted
underneath, battling the three campfires the boys rebuilt. By the time Meghianna had Tyrin
divested of his torn, burned, bloody clothes, his wounds washed and bandaged, the boys had
dragged the dead bodies into two groups and gathered up the weapons. She called for clean
clothes for Tyrin. Mikyl brought her the saddlebag with the man's sigil on it.

Her nephew was spattered with mud and smeared with blood where he had touched his
face during the grim task. Dark smears under his eyes testified to his weariness. None of his
usual mischief and curiosity glimmered in his eyes as he quietly watched and helped her get
Tyrin dressed warmly.

"Useless as a girl's rag doll," the warrior grumbled. He leaned on the boy and managed
to stay upright. "My thanks, Lady."

"No, you have my thanks. You defended us."

"But the magic--"

"If you had not been here, our enemies would have walked quietly down the ravine,
tripping no alarms, invisible to many spells. By the time the protective spells stopped them, they
would have been much closer to the Stronghold and my boys, giving us that much less time to
react and defend ourselves." She wiped her hands clean on the messy cloth that used to be her
cloak. "I am sorry about your men. We should have asked for a larger escort, perhaps. Or
perhaps it was foolish of us to come here at all."

"No, Aunt Meggi!" Mikyl looked aghast at her. "We needed to learn everything you've
been teaching us. And maybe..." He gave Tyrin a guilty glance.

"I know what you're thinking, lad." The warrior wobbled a little, but he raised a hand
and patted the boy's shoulder. "Better that we're warned of the enemy's actions with a small,
bloody feint, than to be surprised with a big, deadly battle."

"Soldiers." Meghianna fought an urge to spit out the bad taste that suddenly filled her
mouth. "I will never understand how any of you think, if I live to be a thousand years old."

Tyrin laughed, the sound ragged in his chest. Mikyl grinned, the expression grim and far
too old in his dirty, weary-pale face. The two shared a companionable glance.

"Very well," she said with a sigh. "The boys have been cleaning up, securing the area.
They are your command, not mine."

Meghianna appropriated a clean, discarded cloak and sat near the fire, listening as the
boys reported to Tyrin. Everyone was dead, except for the two captured warriors. Without the
enhancement of magic, the storm soon faded away. Lok used his
imbrose
to find the
scattered horses, and they gathered up the dead members of the escort to take them to the village.
Tyrin was suitably impressed with the proposal Garyn made, to bury the men within the tombs
that had served the Stronghold's men for centuries.

"They'd be honored, Lady," the man said, when Meghianna agreed with the
proposal.

"They served the Stronghold and the Warhawk valiantly. We are honored to have them
rest with men of valor."

They gathered the enemy dead in a pile with all the detritus of the short battle--after
removing any identifying jewelry or emblems, and anything that tingled of magic in any form.
Meghianna set the pile on fire.

She refused to take the two unconscious enemies any closer to the Stronghold. For
safekeeping, she melted the rock around them into a bubble, enclosing them in rock twined with
Threads, where time stood still. She would not be able to keep the magic solid for long, only a
few days, but it would be long enough.

Mrillis responded to her call through the Threads as she finished the magic. He had felt
the disturbance on the other side of the continent, and was already prepared to ride out to join
her, only waiting for her to contact him. He promised he would be there in two days to take
control of the prisoners. He was a little more than a day's ride from the end of the tunnel that led
to the Stronghold. With a team of Valors and enchanters who had all been born in the
Stronghold, he would come through the tunnel, emerge in the Stronghold, and come out in half a
day of travel, to take possession of the prisoners.

We are in a state of alert here, my dear,
he said, when Meghianna expressed
her misgivings over having taken the boys across the continent to the Stronghold.
We have
been getting reports of a surge of Encindi and rebel Rey'kil activity all over Lygroes, and along
the shores of Moerta.

Why? For what reason? It's autumn--what madness makes our enemies strike out
when they should be digging in for the winter, as they have always done?

The Warhawk's heir has returned in triumph to stand with his father, and
Braenlicach burned and sang in recognition of him. Our enemies are in terror, frustrated that
they were unable to find him when he was young and untrained.

We had hoped to avoid one war by bringing Athrar out of hiding, and we have
triggered another.
She choked on something that she couldn't identify, but might have been
fury and bitter laughter and tears, all mixed.

We are merely tools of prophecy. We are charged with doing what is right, doing
our best, defending the weak and innocent and fighting evil. After that, the play of history, the
current of time and events, are out of our control.

That is no comfort, old meddler.
Still, Meghianna smiled when Mrillis' weary,
wry laughter drifted to her through the Threads.

The Encindi ventured from their dens and mountain fortresses long before the first
snowmelt of spring. Since they had kept up their depredations far longer into the fall than usual,
Efrin suspected they would rouse sooner in the spring. He sent Valors leading troops of soldiers
to keep watch against such tactics. Meghianna listened to the reports of the raids on farms and
villages and failed sieges of fortresses and estates, and she shuddered. It had been much easier
imagining her father riding into battle when she was a little girl, because she had such a dim
concept of what the centuries-old war with the Encindi entailed. Now, with her son and brother
in training as Valors, she shared the same sick dread and pride and frustration that women had
felt since the first ragged defenders stood at the gates of the first fortress and defied their
enemies.

She spent her time traveling across Lygroes, visiting the schools and healing halls her
ladies had established, testing children with trinkets of star-metal to search for
imbrose
in the next generation. She knew better than to stay at the fortress and hover in the background
while Lycen and Athrar grew into men. As Glyssani admitted with a teary smile, there was a
time for a mother to let go and let her son become a man, and it was far easier on them both if
she wasn't watching.

Lycen and Athrar and Megassa's sons became a unit unto themselves, standing against
the sons of nobles who tried to split them for political gain, testing anyone who approached
Athrar in friendship--and, to Meghianna and Megassa's relief, making it hard for girls to
insinuate themselves into their company.

The years slid by. The Encindi threat tapered away, when three fierce winters in a row
reduced their numbers through starvation, sickness and freezing even faster than battle wounds.
Efrin sent out teams of Valors to find and capture Rey'kil rebels who used their magic to drive
Noveni from Lygroes. Mrillis and Meghianna took turns riding with them, helping to track and
bind their
imbrose
. Then those rebels were taken to Wynystrys, where the scholars
bound their
imbrose
permanently, much as had been done to Megassa as a child.

Athrar grew up, a source of pride to his parents, a source of frustration to the nobles who
wanted to establish dominance over the Warhawk's heir or drive a wedge between him and his
brother and nephews, or capture his heart through the wiles of their daughters.

Athrar turned nineteen. He had proven himself so well in patrolling the Wayhauk
Mountains that Efrin decided to send him with a troop of valors to tour Moerta.

"The inner continent is relatively at peace," Efrin explained, when the family had
gathered for a private meal the evening after his announcement in the Warhawk's Council.
"There's no better opportunity for you to get to know the landscape than now."

"All of us?" Athrar asked, looking up and down both sides of the long table. His
nephews and brother met his gaze and mirrored his grin of anticipation.

Family meals had changed greatly, Meghianna reflected, remembering the days when it
had been just Mrillis and her father and herself. Lorkin had been called to the Warhawk's
Council three years ago, and he and Megassa now lived in the fortress most of the year.
Meghianna was pleased that the years had mellowed her sister's husband, taking away much of
his stiffness, the intensity of his manner. His sons revered him, and that was the testimony to his
character that mattered to Meghianna. Family meals were a noisy affair nowadays, with twelve
of them around the table. She liked the noise, the exuberance of the boys turning into young men,
proven by minor battles and wounds and loyalty.

"All of us," Athrar repeated. "We need to know Moerta to defend her."

"It's more important to get to know the people," Lycen offered.

"Very true," Efrin said, nodding. "Well, lads, are you up for an adventure?" He looked
from one to another of Megassa's sons. He chuckled when all four responded affirmatively. "I
know you'll make me and your parents proud. You always do. But take some time to have some
fun amid all your duty, hear me?"

"Oh, I'm sure my boys know how to have their fun," Megassa drawled, as her sons
responded with laughter and grins. "I wish you hadn't given them license for fun, Papa. It will
just encourage them."

"No, they're good lads. They're a credit to both of you." He raised his cup of wine,
encompassing Lorkin and Megassa in the gesture. "You are a precious part of this family, and we
could not do without you." He rested his other hand on Glyssani's, lying on the table between
them. "I know you will stand with your brother and with Glyssani when I am gone."

"You are going nowhere, Papa." Meghianna wagged her finger at him, teasing to muffle
a flare of panic. "I promised you when I was just a little girl, I would never let you go away, and
you will be Warhawk forever."

"Good," Athrar said, and raised his cup. "It's much more fun being the heir. Let's stay
this way forever."

The other boys raised their cups, seconding his playful vow. Efrin laughed with
everyone else, but he shook his head, meeting Meghianna's gaze, and she could almost hear his
thoughts. She remembered clearly the day she had promised Efrin she would find magic to keep
him young and keep him the Warhawk forever. He had told her that the young could never know
how cruel a thought that was.

Efrin was an old man, with constant pain haunting him now, thanks to years of battle.
He wanted to rest. He was tired of carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders and tired of
planning how to defend thousands of people who hated him because he wore the crown, because
he wasn't true Noveni, because he wasn't Rey'kil, because Braenlicach burned anyone who tried
to take the blade from him.

Meghianna wondered now, with an odd sense of revelation, if the weight of all those
decades of hatred and rebellion drained her father of his strength, and not his wounds.

The evening passed pleasantly in planning the boys' adventure. When Mrillis agreed to
accompany the six princes, Meghianna decided she would not volunteer. She would make one
final tour of Lygroes and then retire to the Stronghold to enjoy the quiet that moons of effort and
vigilance had earned them. If her brother and son had earned a holiday, then so had she.

It didn't occur to Meghianna until after the ship had sailed, that the boys would go to
Welcairn when they reached Moerta. And Indreseen lived in Welcairn Castle.

To her relief, Mrillis didn't laugh at her when she contacted him with her concerns. He
listened and said he would keep an eye on Athrar and make sure he stayed out of trouble.

Has it occurred to you, my dear, that Indreseen might have suitors, even a
sweetheart, now? She hasn't been to the fortress for nearly two years. Plenty of time for her to
forget Athrar. And there's a very good chance he has forgotten her, too.

One can only hope. Maybe if he draws a blank when they meet again, that will
insult her and she'll go away.

Now Mrillis laughed.
I may be old, but I haven't forgotten how easy it is to bruise a
girl's feelings and get her angry for practically no reason at all. Stop worrying, child.

That's easy for you to say. You'll be there, able to do something.

Perhaps there will be no need to do anything, he returned. Athrar has grown up.
Perhaps Indreseen has grown up, as well. She could be a good match for him. You might be
surprised.

That is what I'm afraid of--a nasty surprise.
Fury washed over her when Mrillis
laughed again. Then something broke apart inside her, and she realized just how ridiculous and
meddlesome she sounded.

What's wrong?
Mrillis asked, when the silence grew long between them.

I'm just tired. Good night, old meddler. Try not to fall overboard, will
you?

Good night, my dear.
Mrillis laughed, and then his presence faded from the
Threads.

* * * *

"Lord Mrillis?" Athrar's voice coming out of the darkness surprised the enchanter.

"Shouldn't you be in bed, lad?" Mrillis turned back from his survey of the inner
courtyard of Welcairn Castle. The welcoming feast King Markas had thrown for them had lasted
long into the night. Mrillis could still hear the sounds of servants cleaning up in the great hall. He
wished he was in bed, but a sense of something being out of place kept him walking the top of
the curtain wall.