Love And War (39 page)

For the lances were the great mystery as we waited, what Breca might have called the wild
card in the deck, the painted shard of lead that served as the spot on the die. But not at
all like a die so loaded, the lances seemed larger and heavier than they were, lying in the courtyard of the fortress - larger and heavier
because of the legends around them. For you remember the SONG OF HUMA, that HE TOOK UP THE
DRAGONLANCE, HE TOOK UP THE STORY, and the story, whatever it was, lay somewhere upon each
of the weapons, so at times you might imagine that they gleamed with some light beyond
polishing, beyond tricks of reflected sun or moonlight.

But I had grown up among legends, and though I had to admire the workmanship of the
lances, had handled several of them in the long days of waiting, like the most Measured of
our knights I believed this light, this mystery, was the play of wishes and dreams over an
exquisite but finally quite ordinary weapon. And believing this I refused the instructions
of elf and female in the use of the lances.

Instead of instructions, I listened to the laughter of gamblers and the songs, songs
which, if not invented in secret by Breca, were invented in secret by one much like him:

OH WHERE THE NORTH WALL IS CRUMBLING, LET US PUT MORTAR AND BRICK, LET US STACK LIMESTONE
ON LIMESTONE LAID DOWN WITH A PROMISE AND LICK AND WHEREVER LIMESTONE WILL FAIL US AND MORTAR AND BRICK GIVE WAY, LET US STACK FOOTMAN ON
FOOTMAN LAID DOWN WITH THE PROMISE OF PAY.

And listened to the politics from on high, to the speculations of Heros and the grumbling
of the foot soldiers. For something was clearly afoot, and Heros described it as a bitter
dance of moons, Derek's on the wane and Sturm's waxing, power flowing like light away from
one man into another.

Heros championed neither of the factions: both were, as he would say, TOO VARIABLE. There
was Sturm on the rise, once dishonored, once the companion of dwarves and kender and elves
and the vagabond mage with the hourglass eyes whom nobody had trusted or quite mistrusted,
and could the road back to honor lie in the company of such a patchwork crew? Heros did
not have the answer, and without certain answers it was his nature to disapprove.

Derek, on the other hand, had ceased to be an option, his armor too bright from polishing
too much and too long his eyes too bright from something far more unsettling than wine or the fever of
approaching battle. He had taken to winding a horn in imitation of Huma, and at all hours
of the night the footmen were called on alert, equipped and assembled to find only that
the alarm had been raised by Lord Derek himself, alarmed by what he considered the
unnatural closeness - or sometimes distance - of the red moon and the silver. And the men
did not complain loudly, nor comment too loudly when Lord Derek wore the horns of a stag
on his helmet, as if in recalling the old divine contest between the hero and the quarry,
he had chosen to play both the hunter and the hunted.

It was one night, not long before his riding forth, pursuing a disaster of which you have
no doubt heard, that I was awakened once again by the sound of the horn winding. I armed
myself, thinking continually, PERHAPS THIS TIME, PERHAPS HE WILL NOT CRY WOLF FOREVER, and
moved through a courtyard as silent as if nothing had happened, the footmen crouched
around the fires sleeping or drinking or dicing, or drinking and dicing themselves to
sleep, all as if the night were soundless and as safe as any other. And of all these, only
Breca watched the battlements where, outlined in red and silver, a glittering figure all
metal and antler sounded a lonely horn.

I stood beside Breca, who never took his eyes from the solitary figure as he leaned on the
pommel of his two- handed sword, chuckling a dry laugh as desolate as the winter outside
the fortress and, glancing sideways at me, murmuring, THAT ONE HAS A THOUSAND DEATHS ON
HIM. HE HAS BEEN DISMOUNTED BY THE WINTER AND THE ICE AND THE WAITING AND THERE IS NOT A
THING IN THE MEASURE TO COVER THIS, SO THEY WILL DO NOTHING.

And when I ventured that perhaps Lord Derek had lost some faculties, but that the most
brilliant of generals often seemed at sea in the times of peace and waiting, Breca asked
me where I had read such things, FOR YOU MUST HAVE READ THEM.

THIS ONE IS NOT ONLY AT SEA BUT CAPSIZED, he said. FOR THEY ALL ARE AT SEA, CROWN, SWORD,
OR ROSE, AND THIS ONE AT HIS BEST HAD NOT ENOUGH SENSE TO POUR PISS FROM A BOOT IF THE
DIRECTIONS WAS ON THE HEEL. AND THIS, he said, pausing to light his pipe, the sword still
upright beneath his elbow, point to the ground, THIS IS THE ONE THEY WILL SURELY PICK TO
LEAD US.

And so in the early days of the siege, before Lord Derek unraveled completely and rode off
into death and the horrible oblivion of legends, we spent our time watching the
battlements and the dwindling food, looking for smoke on the horizon and listening to the
sound of the horn by night and the rumor by day that somewhere, forgotten within the
bowels of the fortress, lay something the kender had stumbled upon in his curious
wanderings, something that could - if time and place and desperation were to meet - alter
the course of the siege.

It is tiring to remember this all, Bayard, for already I grow unaccustomed to the old
habit of seeing, and though it would seem that the memory of vision would be that much
more strongly burned into the thoughts of the newly blind, when you lose the habits of
seeing you often lose the memories of sight, for the motions of the eyes and the mind grow
rusty and with them the thoughts established before through those motions.

And what is more, the light must be fading, night must be approaching, for the warmth that
settles upon the sill of my window is fading now and I smell smoke and burning tallow as I
face into the room. Some things there are for which the night should have no ear, and
among those are the ride of Lord Derek and the disasters that followed. So again in the
morning, if my nurse will only remain patient - patient and undeniably kind - I shall
recount the darkest leg of the journey.

It was rumor that passed among us once more, rumor again of movement and of battle, but
this time there seemed more substance to it, for on the battlements and in the chambers
the knights were silent, the only storm arising from a conference room high in the tower,
where Alfred and Derek and Sturm waged a war of words and of rising voices, an occasional
shout or a fragment of speech caught when the wind died and the sound descended to the
courtyards and the barracks of the fortress.

We could make nothing of this debate above us, these loud quarrels like the distant cries
of predatory birds, but it was different from the nights of the winding horn, the sudden
preparations for the false alarms, for now we did nothing but wait - no preparations, no
rumors of what was taking place beyond SOMETHING IS TAKING PLACE - and the fortress
incredibly silent, as though the horses were lost in thought and the vermin had quit the rafters and the middens by instinct, going
Huma knows where into the winter darkness.

I awoke on the second night to the jostling of Heros. He was fully armed, having dressed
himself while I slept, as though there was no time to waken a squire (or as I came to see
later, as though somehow in arming himself he took part in a strange penance, having last
performed the task on the night of vigil before his knighthood ceremonies).

DEREK IS RIDING OUT, he said flatly, averting his eyes as my thoughts rose out of sleep,
constructing once again from the bare walls and the damp cold of the chamber just where it
was I had awakened, at first thinking that Heros was announcing retreat, surrender,
abandonment, then realizing it was none of these and all of these at the same time - that
an attack too monstrous to be ill-advised and too foolish to be heroic was set to begin,
and that in the courtyards of the fortress the footmen were marshalling.

There was nothing to be said, nothing to be asked except, AND YOU?

His eyes still avoided me. STURM FEELS THAT THE DEFENSE OF THE FORTRESS REMAINS THE
DEFENSE OF PALANTHAS. I AGREE WITH STURM.

BUT NOT AGREEMENT, I thought. NOTHING MORE THAN SHEER AND DELIBERATE SURVIVAL, IF NOT A
LASTING SURVIVAL THEN THE WEEKS, THE DAYS, OR EVEN THE HOURS THAT STAYING BEHIND WILL GIVE
US. THAT IS WHY YOU HAVE ARMED YOURSELF WITHOUT RECOURSE TO SQUIRE AND TO CEREMONY. THAT
IS WHY YOU ARE GLAD THAT THE ROOM IS DARK, SIR HEROS, SOLAMNIC KNIGHT OF THE SWORD. But
there was no blame in this, Bayard, no blame except for the old and honored folly that
would make a man ashamed to breathe when his companions breathed no longer, and with that
blame what the blame could not banish - a pride in Sir Heros that he could feel the shame,
that such folly was both old and honored.

From the window of the corridor they looked diminished, frail in their armor and swords
and pikes as they assembled, stamped the cold from their feet, and fell into line behind
the mounted knights. I could single out Breca in the foremost column, standing a head
taller than those around him, and once I believe he glanced up at the window to where I
was standing, the flatness of his eyes apparent even from a distance, even through the
shadows of the wall and the dark air of the morning. And perhaps because of that darkness there was no expression I could see on his face, but there is an
expression I remember, may have imagined in this permanent and greater darkness from which
I speak to you.

For if an expression could be featureless, void of fear and of dread and finally of hope,
containing if anything only a sort of resignation and resolve, that was Breca's expression
and those of his companions, saying (if such a blankness, a nothing can say anything),
THIS IS NOT AS BAD AS I IMAGINED BUT WORSE THAN I EXPECTED, and nothing more than that
when the doomed gates opened - the very gates he had called indefensible a short week
before he marched out onto the plains and into the lifting darkness.

And then again it was the waiting, the waiting no chronicler records in accounts of this
or of any battle. You have heard, certainly, how the news of Derek's defeat was brought to
us, of the bodies draped over the red-eyed horses and of the soft threats of the Dragon
Highlord. Of knights so ruled by the Measure that they let the enemy speak, let him taunt,
until one among us (the elfmaiden it was), not ruled by an old and wasted chivalry but by
something more profound and ancient - an instinct for survival underlined by anger -
wounded him with a well-placed green arrow. Of listening to the birds who remained by
night as they sang their songs of bereavement, their songs perhaps of Heros and of Sturm.

Again it was the waiting, until they attacked and breached the walls.

And how can I explain to you, Bayard, what it was like when the waiting ended, how the
draconians charged from a place beyond vision, growing in size and in number as they
covered the miles from their camp unto the foot of the walls, sidling like crabs from the
path of our arrows, rushing through the rain of oil and pitch we set down before them,
clutching the walls with a fierce suction of the hands and climbing like chameleons, like
salamanders (for some of them were pitch-covered, burning as they climbed) up to the crest
of the battlements, where the sound of metal on metal, of metal on flesh, rose up around
me and banished thought.

And you do not stop to reflect on the drawing of blood in anger. All the preparation in
swordsmanship, in tactical combat and even in the vows of bravery and steadfastness adds
up to nothing like the Measure tells you, none of these fanciful promises to live your
life so that the death of your enemy is made worthy by your living, for who knew how long the living would last after
your enemy - or even the last of the enemies - had fallen. But the preparing led only to
the surprisingly heavy lunge of the sword and the small resistance of armor and skin and
gristle and finally bone against it, when the training tells you, I SUPPOSE THIS ONE IS
DEAD AND WHERE IS THE NEXT ONE NEAREST, and as though in a corridor of dreams the voice of
the dwarf beside you echoing, DRAW FORTH YOUR SWORD, SON, BEFORE HE HARDENS INTO STONE,
and another before you all green scales and arms, who is falling then over the parapet,
head and metallic jaw collapsed beneath the swift rising hammer of the dwarf, and the thought clears for a moment again to
discover three more of them crouched in a file on the battlements, small red eyes
flickering behind the bristle of curved weapons like some horrible boars in a thicket you
are supposed to remember but cannot, so you let the thought alone and try the sword again,
one of them falling and two of them trampled in a flood of knights which in turn is
bearing you like baggage or a fallen comrade down the steps from the battlements so
quickly that for a moment you feel you are falling, assuring yourself that this cannot be,
for a fall would take place much more slowly, but then in the final fall who was to say
how time would collapse or how the mind would suspend the fragment of years, trying to
remember everything, but then, on your feet and buoyed by your own heavy running, you see
the doors of the tower and within them the elf maiden shining, and you think, So THIS IS
DEATH WHICH IS MORE THAN I EXPECTED BUT EVERYTHING I IMAGINED, but then you are inside the
tower with the last of them, the heavy doors closing behind you and the sound of bolt upon
bolt upon bolt staying them fast.

No, it is not pretty to write, and be sure it is not pretty to tell. But there is more,
and soon I will speak from recollection of sound and rumor only. Soon the story continues
without eyes, and the ugliness passes. Bear with me, my dear, my nurturing one, the last
hour of the telling.

The magic of the tower was sealed for the last time, and there for the first time I knew
what it was that the kender had discovered in a deep chamber. No larger than a dove, than
the heart of a child, the orb was glowing with a light and whiteness surpassing the
downpour of sun on the snow we had ridden through days on end, we had watched from the
walls in our waiting. And it seemed fitting that before the darkness all things should resolve once more into white, as the elf maiden Laurana
began to instruct us, quietly and urgently, in the final dance we were too stubborn, to
noble to learn when the dance would avail us. The lances, surprisingly light, we placed at
arrest, in the noble absurd salute to the thing we knew was coming because we heard from
beyond the walls the stuttering thunder of heavy wings, the breathing, and though we could
not guess through which wall, which aperture it would drive its ancient and sinuous head,
it was coming, we knew.

And the mortar and stones of the northern wall shook and flaked, and Laurana seized the
orb (though never again would I see her as I turned northwards, lifting the flange of the
lance to my shoulder, its butt secure beneath my arm that was stronger now, having
something to do at last after all the cold and the waiting and the loss of Breca and of
Heros, it seemed, who was not among us and somehow forgiven by his absence and the meaning
of his absence) and a great sweetness fell upon me, whether from the orb itself, as the
legends say, or from that moment of repose in the mind when, pushed past all endurance,
you can say AT LEAST THERE IS NO MORE OF THIS, NOTHING LEFT BUT A BRIEF PAIN AND THEN
PEACE SURPASSING. We proffered the lances: the Solamnic salute, the prayer that our lives
henceforth be worthy of the taking of lives, and again I offered the prayer with the
others, thinking of Heros, of Breca, that through all the silliness of the prayer their
wounds somehow were made cleaner.

And there was confusion, a shrapnel of walls, for a moment those dull reptilian eyes
glowing a red that was lifeless in its ancient light, and I thought of Breca's eyes and
what the poet says of foxfire, and there was heat unsurpassed like the Cataclysm had come
again, then complete and abiding dark.

And from there, dear Bayard, and dear woman whose patience has been long, has been
stalwart, it came to me as it came to you, by report and by rumor. How as we brought the
lances to arrest, Sturm was upon the battlements, trading his death for our time in an
impossible stand, how the lance of the Dragon Highlord rode through him cleanly and
finally, how the sun burst. How Laurana spoke to the Dragon Highlord Kitiara over his
remains, with the fortress, the countryside, with all of Krynn watching or listening as
the future turned on her heart's sounding. All of this having everything and nothing to do
with all of us.

And I heard, as they drew me to the window, through the bandages and the pain and the
fading smell of my flesh and the flesh of others, Sturm's funeral begin in what must have
been sunlight, and of the many words spoken over the body only these last in recollection,
vivid and fathomless as the coded song of the birds I am hearing once more through the
windows of the hospital, saying:

FREE FROM THE SMOTHERING CLOUDS OF WAR As he once rose in infancy, The long world possible
and bright before him, LORD HUMA, DELIVER HIM.

UPON THE TORCHES OF THE STARS Was mapped the immaculate glory of childhood; From that
wronged and nestling country, LORD HUMA DELIVER HIM.

Lord Huma, deliver us all. And deliver especially you, my brother, for last night my nurse
and I spoke briefly, spoke quietly of the world remaining after Sturm, after Breca, after
Heros, after the passage of my eyes. And with the gift of the sighted for prophecy, she
ran down the lists of light, describing the world made possible at the cost of despair, at
the cost of the smell of the corpse fires lingering under the herbs and the metal and the
fragrance of flowers and clean bedding, at the cost of the sun diminished to warmth only.

And within those lists lie the armies of the Dragon Highlord driven away, as Mother says,
ONCE AGAIN FROM OUR LAND AND FROM THOSE THINGS WE ARE HONOR BOUND TO DEFEND BY THE MEASURE
AND THE CODE, of Takhisis back into the void and somewhere unraveling in a dark I can only
dream through my darkness, in a story that remains unimaginable because I cannot see its
ending. Of the freedom to do what we want, of the wronged and nestling country made right
as we raise our children in prosperity and peace, as we commit the young men not to the
study of swords but to a study of lore and of history, a study finally of themselves.

She finds comfort in this. She writes the final page in this comfort. But I shall tell
you, Bayard, no doubt frustrated by your brother and by history as you dance with the
sword in our home. I shall tell you that when these studies commence, when once again
young men begin to study themselves, that your training, your ardor, will not go without
issue.

For when the time comes, we shall take up arms again.