PROLOGUE (83 page)

They howled and the slow roll of the drums quickened. The Eika gave up their looting, the dogs were kicked and slapped into obedience, and they formed up again.

With a howl, they attacked. A huge Eika princeling j hefted his obsidian-edged club and sprang forward at their head. Lavastine's captain bolted forward to brace the line for the impact, but it was no use. The line of men split asunder as two shieldmen were bowled over by the massive Eika. The captain thrust with the banner pole and stuck the Eika princeling in the brow, the point lodging in the scaly forehead. The creature flailed and smashed its club into the banner pole, breaking it, then grasped the splintered end, tugged, and heaved the captain bodily forward and struck him to the ground. With the point of the pole still thrust out from its forehead and the Lavas banner drapped over its shoulders like a cloak, the Eika plunged on, roaring.

Men screamed and retreated and the line dissolved into chaos. But Alain stepped up to meet him with a blow swung with all of his strength. The Eika caught it with his bare hand, the sword's point splitting the skin but doing no more damage than that, and then wrenched Alain forward, and down, and lifted his club for the death blow.

Alain tried to shift his shield, but it was too late. It was too little. More Eika swarmed past toward the crumbling troops. The hounds had vanished into the maelstrom.

I am with you Alain. You have kept your promise to me.

The club arced down, but he was a shadow and she the life that lived within the light. She was there, a thing of effortless and terrible beauty as she wielded the sword that is both war and death.

She rolled and the princeling's killing blow struck earth, spitting clods into the air, into Alain's teeth. She cut to the back of the Eika's leg, hamstringing it, and the Eika fell. It seemed no more than a dance as she rolled up to her feet, and with a second blow, as fast as the lightning strikes to herald the coming of thunder, she beheaded the savage.

With her, Alain retreated, but only to form up the line around him
—around
her.
Where the shields parted, where the line buckled or men's spirits wavered, he had only to go, the shadow to her light, and she would go there as well. In her wake men's spirits lifted, and they fought with renewed ferocity, shouting his name: "Lord Alain! Lord Alain!"

For where she stood, where Alain was, no charge could succeed. But even the Lady of Battles could not succeed against the thousands, the endless onslaught of savage Eika and their ravening dogs.

The Eika surged forward. Drums pounded until he could hear nothing above them, not even the clash of shield and sword, not even the screams of the wounded or the howling of dogs. He could not be everywhere at once, and where he was not, the line gave way.

The Eika came on and on up the hill from all sides, and soon all sides were hard-pressed. The drums boomed. With a sudden shift of rhythm, the force of their reverberation deafened him, and the very hill beneath trembled as the shield wall failed in a dozen places and the battle no longer had order.

It became a melee as men clumped together fighting desperately just to stay alive. Eika flowed in from all sides. Fear clutched at Alain's throat as he realized how few were still afoot
—and those who fell had no chance against the dogs.

Even the Lady stilled, staring. The hounds boiled up to him then, yipping. Sorrow took his tattered tabard in his teeth and dragged him westward and in this way, with the Lady at the point and Alain right behind her, they drove westward step by agonizing step down the hill toward the distant shelter of the western forest. Men fell in beside him and behind him, seeking shelter, seeking safety in what numbers they had left to them, a wedge of men thrusting through the Eika onslaught. With each step they struggled as Eika raged forward. They had no choice but to escape to the woods, for their hill and their camp
—and the day-was lost.

All was lost.

He could no longer see the plain, only the horde of Eika surrounding them.

At the point of their wedge, the Lady cut a path west
‍
ward until they were at the west "gate," its wagons smashed and dead bodies littering the gap. The drumbeat increased, and with each beat the determination of the Eika to stop them from retreat grew. There, at the ruined gate, their wedge ground to a halt. The sun beat down with the hammer blow of heat.

With a great breath, like a beast so immense that its voice was that of a thousand and more mouths, the Eika shifted, steadied, and howled until the roar of it drove men to their knees under the merciless bright eye of the sun.

Only the Lady blazed bright in answer. And only Alain could see her as, behind her, he lifted his sword in desperation.

"Hold fast!" he cried. "God is with us!"

But no one could hear him.

SHE did not count the stairs, only cursed each clank and rustle and whisper from the men behind her. But no Eika waited for them where the stone steps curved upward and opened into the crypt. She stumbled on a gravestone and fell to one knee as the rest came up behind her, emerging one by one into black silence.

Erkanwulf helped her up.

Each least movement or murmured comment fell heavily, weighted by the dampening earth and magnified by the stillness of the waiting dead.

"Hush," said Lavastine. "Listen."

They listened but heard nothing but their own breathing.

"Now." He did not need to speak loudly. In the dim light afforded by torches, ears became keen of hearing. "We must open the gates of Gent. And we must kill Bloodheart, if we are able. My experience of the Eika tells me that they follow a war chief and will fight like dogs among themselves if that leader is dead."

The tombs lay in dense silence around them. Torchlight made a haze of the air. In the curve of shadow beyond the smoky glow Liath saw a glint of white, recognizable but indistinct.

"Captain Ulric, you will take fifteen men. I will take fifteen men. We must take separate routes for the western gates of Gent. Eagle." She nodded. "These seven men I leave under your command. As the old stories say: Send a mage to kill a mage."

"My lord count
—!" she protested.

He lifted a hand to silence her. "It is your job to hunt down and kill Bloodheart."

"Yes, my lord count," she said obediently. At that instant a torchbearer turned and the glow of the torch spread wings and illuminated the far doorway of this vaulted corner.

Bones.
Not safely interred in the sanctity of a tomb but scattered like leaves on the forest floor, the bones littered the far vaults of the crypt, all tumbled together. As she moved cautiously into the next chamber, she knew they were the bones of Dragons. The smell of lime stung her nostrils. The Eika knew to cast lime over the remains. Little putrefaction remained because of clay soil and moisture...and because it had been over a year since the fall of Gent. Skulls grinned at her; open eyes bled pools of blackness. Ribs showed white under tattered tabards and padded gam-besons chewed to pieces by rats. Skeleton fingers clutched at her boots and a thighbone rolled under her so she slipped and almost fell.

"Lord have mercy!" breathed Erkanwulf beside her, "Look! The badge of the King's Dragons!"

Reason enough to kill Bloodheart.

They picked their way through the terrible remains of the king's elite cavalry. At least the Eika, for unfathomable reasons of their own, had dragged them down to decay among the holy dead.

She dared not look too closely for fear she would see the dragon helmet that marked the remains of Sanglant. Her memory of him was so clean, so strong, of his living face watching her in the silence of the crypt, his chin as smooth as a woman's under her fingers; of him standing proud and confident in the midst of the crowd that had threatened to mob the palace; of his last dash into the fight, when all had seemed lost. She could not bear to see his beauty reduced to dust. So she stopped looking at the remains around her except to place her feet with care so that she did not step on too many of them, poor dead souls.

With each step, purpose weighed more heavily on her: She could become the instrument of vengeance for what had been done to him and to his Dragons. It gave her heart as she neared the steps that led up to the cathedral.

When her boots nudged the bottom stair and she peered upward where spiderwebs wreathed the canted wall and glittered like a silvery net of moonlight above her torch, she turned back. "Let me scout ahead," she whispered.

"Your group will file up behind you," said Lavastine. "We dare not be caught here."

"Let me just scout first alone," she said. "Should I be caught, and if they guess where I have come from, then you are on an equal footing. Eika see in the dark no better
than a human man
—"
Although not as well as she did, but
she could not say so out loud. "—and you will have a better chance of fending them off...and of escape back through the tunnel."

"What of the dogs?" whispered Erkanwulf. "What if they smell us?"

"Then again you are safer to remain here, where the smell of lime and damp will somewhat cover your trail."

"And if they don't know of the tunnel," said Lavastine quietly, "then they would have no reason to look down here. If they discover you, they'd be as likely to look elsewhere and thus give us time to get out and move for the gates." He nodded curtly. "Go on."

Go on.
So coolly he considered her death and resolved that it might benefit him.

But Liath only smiled grimly, gave her torch to Erkanwulf, and set off up the stairs.

The curve soon took her out of sight of the soldiers waiting below, but even the memory of torchlight was enough to light her way. She heard the delicate tread of men coming up after her. Soon a thin line of light limned the door that led out onto the nave, but she passed it by and crept on up a narrower set of stone steps that led to the choir.

Here, in a cramped landing, she set her hand on a thick door ring and rested her ear against the rough planks. What she heard from beyond was faint, a teasing melody as light as air. Dust coated the iron ring, slick under her fingers. She gave a nudge with her shoulder. The door cracked open. Daylight blinded her and she had to stand for the count of twenty until her eyes adjusted even to the thin line of light that now edged the stone column around which the stairwell wound. From the nave she heard the sound of flutes.

She tucked her sword against her and eased open the door. The choir walk ran empty, a balcony no wider than an arm outstretched, all the way to the opposite end of the nave. A layer of dust blanketed the floor. Tapestries whose brightly woven stories were muted by dust hung on the walls beneath the huge second tier of windows through which the sun shone, motes of dust everywhere streaming and dancing in the light. Where a few of the tapestries brushed the floor, sagging or half fallen, their bases had been nibbled into ragged ends by rats or mice.

She set a foot forward and eased herself into the quiet walk. A dart of movement startled her, and she froze. But it was only a mouse, bold enough enough to prowl the choir in broad daylight. The sight of it gave her courage. If mice skittered about so freely, then it was not likely anyone lurked up here.

She stepped farther out, hugging the wall, and eased the door closed until it stood with only a crack. Each step left a distinct print behind as she crept forward.

She crouched and made her way along the solid railing. Above, the ceiling vaulted high to span the nave. Flute music echoed below and beside and beyond her. She dared not look at the windows for fear one glimpse of sunlight would ruin her eyes when she needed to look below. Her quiver brushed the rail, and she rose slightly to peer over.

And there, in a shaft of sunlight streaming in through the western windows, sat Bloodheart on his throne.

He played music on flutes crafted of bone, and she shuddered to hear him as the music wafted into the air and twined and curled around as if it were a living thing. And she knew, then: He wove with his flute, wove the very illusions that protected him.

Next to him, almost in his shadow, crouched the skinny Eika priest she remembered. Naked except for a loincloth, he rocked back and forth on his heels in time to the melody. A wooden chest sat tucked against his feet, and one of his clawed hands rested protectively on its painted lid.

And there were dogs, packs of dogs all here and there, panting, lying in heaps, tongues lolling and saliva dripping onto the flagstone floor. Beside the holy altar Bloodheart had let a midden grow, a low mound of garbage, rags and trash and bones and old rusting chains piled up against the most sanctified place in the cathedral. She winced to see the holy Hearth defiled in such a fashion, but no doubt Bloodheart pleased himself by desecrating the blessed Hearth of the Lady.