Sacrifice (Book 4) (8 page)

“What failure, Chalaine?” Ethris censured. “You have nothing to be ashamed of. You did everything that was required of you and more. What happened at Echo Hold was none of your doing. Your mother told you this. If Gen had the chance, I’m sure that he would have said the same thing. You are not cursed!”

“I failed to love my husband! I failed to protect the babe! My baby!” she cried at the memory of his perfect form and the short time she had to embrace and suckle him.

“No one loved your husband, and Chertanne and Athan failed to protect the baby,” Ethris reasoned forcefully, trying to break through her guilt. “You were not supposed to have the magic to fight Mikkik; Chertanne was. Mikkik tricked everyone, and that is not your doing.”

“But if I hadn’t loved another man, maybe I would have tried harder with Chertanne,” she said, noticing Dason look away as if embarrassed. In horror, she realized he thought that
he
was the other man.

“Chalaine,” Ethris said, taking both of her hands. “Give it time. You will see that none of what has happened can be laid to your charge. You are as guiltless as Maewen or me or your mother. Now hush, child. Let me see if something can be done for your condition.”

Ethris began chanting and the Chalaine closed her eyes. For a brief moment, she felt relief from the dry, raspy itch of her skin, but once Ethris’s chanting stopped, it returned. She remembered Gen’s sickness in Elde Luri Mora that would only abate when she touched him. He had been Mikkik’s creature that couldn’t abide the holy city.
Perhaps I am so unworthy that I am unfit for even a place as this,
she thought, misery compounding.

Ethris shook his head and stood. “It is beyond my knowledge,” he lamented. “I am sorry, Chalaine. Maewen, when the fighting starts, I would like you to stay with her. If it looks as if the battle is turning against us, take her into the woods and try to get her to Mikmir and the protections of the castle. If I can follow, I will.”

They left, Dason remaining nearby. “I am sure it will fade soon,” he consoled. “You have always been a creature of such beauty that it will return to you naturally, I am sure of it. Your radiance will shine again, and everything will be as it was at first.”

The Chalaine declined to answer, and Kimdan arrived a short while later to let Dason rest. Kimdan made himself useful by constructing a crude shelter for her to afford her some privacy and some protection from any inclement weather. The day had come as hot and bright as the one before it.

“The Uyumaak will wait to come until it cools and begins to darken,” Kimdan said. “If you can rest, you should. We may need to flee in the night.”

She nodded and leaned her head against the tree. She didn’t want to flee. She just wanted to lay down, and if she never rose again, then all the better.

“Hunters!”

The urgent scream brought the Chalaine out of a dead sleep, and she dashed her head against the side of Kimdan’s lean-to, shaking the entire structure. In the weak light of dusk, she could almost imagine that the form standing in the black uniform of a Dark Guard was Gen. But it was Kimdan, youthful bravado tempered by training and now war. He squinted toward the edge of the forest and out into the plain, eyes searching for the camouflaged beasts gathered in the tall grass. The Uyumaak thumping echoed among the tree trunks, filling her with dread and chasing the grogginess from her mind.

The Chalaine, whose crude accommodations faced backward into the woods, craned around to get a better look, her tight, dry skin cracking and peeling with the effort. From her position behind the front line, the trunks obscured nearly everything save the barest of slits of light that provided narrow windows to the battlefield beyond. Her veil and the constricted view prevented her from seeing anything save the fleeing passage of men darting to their positions. Crunching footsteps nearby brought her heart to her throat, but it was only Dason arriving from wherever he had taken his rest.

“We’ve come to it now,” Dason said gravely to Kimdan. “At least they let us rest. How do you fare, your Highness?”

Awful. Horrible.
“Fine.”

“I see Kimdan made you a little castle! I had thought to do the same myself. We should fortify it if we get the chance.”

“Get down!” came another yell from the front, and the woods exploded with the whistling of dark arrows ripping through the trees to hammer hard into the trunks or skitter into the underbrush. Kimdan pushed her farther behind the tree as he and Dason crouched.

“It is a typical tactic,” Kimdan explained. “They rain down arrows to keep our archers from doing any damage while they send in the Bashers to knock down our fortifications. It should let up in a minute.”

The Chalaine huddled on the ground, covering her ears to mute the awful racket punctuated by the painful wails of those felled by the mighty bows of the Uyumaak Archers. Few arrows fell as far back in the woods as she was, but the loud pop of a sleek dark arrow nearby snapped her eyes open, the polished shaft quivering in the trunk of a tree.

As Kimdan predicted, the hail of arrows stopped, providing for a brief respite until the relative silence ended with the horrifying crash of the Bashers smashing into their hastily constructed fortifications. Orders and shouts and screams mixed with the sharp sound of branches being snapped and split and chopped. Kimdan and Dason waited, swords at the ready, itching to help those who fought in the dwindling light before them. The voices of General Harband and Lord Kildan rang out clearly above the din, first calling for reinforcements toward the middle, and then frantically warning everyone to watch the flank.

“If they spread us out, we’re done for,” Kimdan said soberly.

A soldier sprinting back toward their position startled them. “They’re breaking through!” he yelled, eyes filled with terror as he bolted toward the interior of the forest. Kimdan tripped him, sending the panicked Rhugothian soldier and his weapon flying. Angrily, Kimdan hauled him up by his breastplate and slammed him into a tree.

“Get back to the line, you. . .”

Two Bashers charged into camp from their left flank, both carrying massive war hammers and wearing thick hide armor and metal helmets. Kimdan released the soldier, who continued his flight into the twilight of the branches beyond. Wordlessly the Bashers struck, and while their short stature brought them only chest-high with their human enemies, their thick limbs struck with fierce power. The first drove its hammer in a side stroke toward Dason’s hip. Dason jumped backward and away, the strike breaking a thin tree trunk to his right in two. Dason returned with a downward strike to its helmet, the impact hard, but the blade did little damage as it skipped off the metal.

Kimdan took a risk as the other charged him and he leapt at it before it could throw its arm over to strike. The sword’s arcing trajectory aimed for a small space between the helmet and shoulder and missed, impacting with the dense armor of the shoulder and doing nothing. Desperately Kimdan tried to pull back, but the Basher wound up its unfinished hammer stroke and brought it down on Kimdan’s extended leg, cracking it with a sound so awful that the Chalaine shrieked. Dason could do nothing to help his comrade as the other Basher pushed him backward. Dason tried quick stabs, seeking to insert his blade in some gap that would damage the creature.

Kimdan, eyes pained, tried to roll out of the way of another strike, but the Basher pounded him again, shattering his sword arm. The plight of Regent Ogbith’s son finally penetrated the Chalaine’s fear and self-pity, giving her the mettle she needed to act. She spied the sword discarded by the fleeing soldier and dove for it, Samian’s hours of nightly instruction making the hilt and the blade familiar to her hand though she had never wielded a sword in the waking world.

The Basher hammered down on Kimdan again, crushing the left side of his chest, ribs snapping. The Chalaine stood, and with a skill not quite her own, aimed a sword stroke at the same spot Kimdan had tried for before. Unaware of her, the Basher made no move as the sword edge drove into its neck, blood spurting onto her dress as she retreated a step in preparation for its retaliation.

It reeled and turned, horrible line of gray eyes fixing on her from the depths of its helmet. The Chalaine brought her sword up instinctively. Dason still hadn’t finished his opponent, and three more Bashers that had broken through the front line now marched toward their position. The wounded Basher charged unsteadily, its hammer swinging wide. The Chalaine struck quickly, chopping into the neck from the opposite side and severing the head. The Basher fell hard at her feet. At that moment, an arrow took Dason’s opponent down, and with a yell Gerand, Volney, Maewen, and two Tolnorian soldiers broke into the fray and dispatched the remaining Bashers quickly. Blood covered everyone.

“Volney and I will stay with the Chalaine, now,” Gerand said, eyes hard. “You four return to patrolling the flank.”

“I’ll stay, too,” Maewen said. “We may need to flee into the wood if the tide doesn’t turn soon.”

The Chalaine ran to Kimdan. Gerand, noticing his sword mate, joined her. Kimdan barely breathed, eyes vacant and blood running from his mouth and nose. With every ounce of will and desire she had, she tried to heal him, but as with Volney, nothing would come. Her gift had truly gone. In despair she watched as Kimdan exhaled for the last time, face slackening. Shaking, she stood and went into the lean-to he had built for her. The sudden energy that had come upon her was gone, and she curled up on the ground and wept for the blood spilled for one as useless as she.

The sun dropped fully as her Protectors formed a solid perimeter around her, the darkness becoming ever more impenetrable. A change in the thumping brought them all on alert, but gradually the sounds of fighting ceased, replaced with the moans and cries of the injured and dying.

“I’m going to scout to make sure they haven’t secreted any force inside the wood that could come upon us,” Maewen said.

“How can you see anything?” Dason asked.

“Eleven eyes aren’t defeated by the dark, and the Uyumaak aren’t as blind as you are, either. Stay close to the Chalaine. And start no fire! If I cannot return, find Falael and do as he says.”

“We need to bury Kimdan,” Volney said sadly. “He deserves a better resting place than this cursed wood.”

“We need sharp swords and eyes right now,” Gerand returned. “Let’s pull him back a space and arrange his body with what dignity we can. Dason, stay with the Chalaine.”

“As you wish,
little
brother,” Dason said with a firm tone of dominance. Once Gerand had left, he turned to the Chalaine. “I think someone is getting a little carried away with showing off for my father. I think he’s always resented that I am the elder son. Curse this miserable darkness. At least the Uyumaak can have cook fires.”

The Chalaine, tears falling silently now, said nothing. The movement around the forest was slow. Men flung curses into the night at scrapes and trips that could hardly be avoided. But stumbling about was better than light that would provide targets for the Uyumaak Archers. The moons again shone brightly on the plain, though stray clouds would drift overhead and shroud patches of the ocean of grass. The Chalaine drifted in and out of consciousness, for how long, she didn’t know, but when she woke, everything was unnaturally still.

“What is it?” she asked weakly.

“The drums have stopped, Milady,” Gerand said. “The Uyumaak have gone completely silent. I can’t imagine what this portends. Be at the ready. We may have to move.”

“Fall back! Run!” came the cry from the front line. As dissolute as she was, fear struck her heart as she realized that Ethris had raised the call. The Chalaine bolted upright as a curtain of fire rose on the plain, the light sending shadows wavering through the forest. At first she thought the flames some trickery of the Uyumaak or their Chukkas, but Maewen arrived seconds later to correct her assumption.

“Ethris buys us time,” she said, frantically. “Keep the sun to your left in the morning!” she yelled to everyone. “We meet at the ridge.”

They pushed southward toward the unknown chambers of the forest, Dason gripping her arm painfully as he vainly tried to guide her around obstacles he himself couldn’t see well enough to avoid. Once the boles had swallowed the light of Ethris’s fire, going forward became a matter of blind feeling about in the darkness. All around, the voices and footfalls of panicked men created the strange sensation of everyone being together in a dark room where the only comfort was knowing someone else shared the same affliction of blindness. Branches and undergrowth continually clawed at their feet and clothing like restless corpses trying to pull them down into an inky grave.