The Dark Ferryman (50 page)

And then the waiting began.

The drums stopped. Bistel lifted his head and faced into the slight wind that hung over the river plains as if scenting it like a hound. He lifted a hand.

“Tressandre, Alton!”

They swung about, faces alert.

“The wind has shifted. The fog is lifting unless we expend a great deal of energy to hold it, but we won’t. Diort knows that as well. He’ll be attacking. I want three of your best archers, with ild Fallyn Talent, up on that ridge to knock down whatever scouts he will send high. I don’t want anyone overlooking the battlefield but us. Understand? As for your other fighters on the ground, tell them to hit and hit hard but not to expend themselves or their ammunition. He’s testing us. We’ll show him we’re tough but just not how tough. Not yet. Don’t give way, but hold your own. Understood?”

“Why not just take them out today? Why wait?” Alton’s stormy green eyes fixed on Bistel’s face.

“Because we’re not strong enough. Not yet. We’re strong enough to meet him and bow his back, but not to plow him under. We need the Warrior Queen and her contingent to do that . . . and perhaps even then it is not wise to grind him into the dust. I don’t want him taken out, do the two of you understand? Even if you can. I won’t make a martyr and rallying flag out of him for generations of nomadic blood feuds.”

Tressandre’s lip curled. “If we grind them into dust, no one will remember him.”

“Someone always remembers. Always. Are my orders understood?” Bistel stared Alton in the face until the young man had to look away, ducking his chin. “As ordered, Warlord Vantane.”

Tressandre said nothing but turned about with a toss of her head. She looked back over her shoulder. “What if Diort himself goes up to scout?”

“He won’t. He doesn’t know, yet, that his life is not forfeit. But if he perceives it and goes up on the ridge, then he’ll know that we’ve dammed the Revela and certain of our plans will have to be changed.”

“He is still to be held inviolate.”

“He is untouchable.”

She licked her lips. “Would Osten Drebukar have planned it so?”

“That we cannot know. I will tell you this, Tressandre. If I have to spend as much time fighting the Stronghold ild Fallyn as I do the enemy, I’ll relieve you of your command and turn your fighters over to someone else. Is that clear?”

“As you command. One only wonders, Warlord.” She nodded to Alton and strode off with him to set up their archers as directed.

Bistel sat down on a dew-covered hillock. Below the slight rise, he could see the blankets of fighters forming into a front. They would clash inevitably. He didn’t know what Osten Drebukar would have done, although he had a good guess, having sat at the table and done a good deal of planning with him and Lariel. But in moments like this, strategy had to be flexible and responsive. He could not know who would hold and who would break until it happened. Osten might well have gone into this attempting to shatter the Galdarkans from the very first skirmish. He might have been that aggressive, knowing that Lara’s intention was to put down Diort and any thought he might have of progressing his actions into the west. Of making sure that Diort would have to bow to her and whatever alliance she proposed.

But then Osten might not have. He certainly hadn’t pursued Quendius with any vigor over the years although there was at least one time or two when that weaponsmith could have been squashed like an ugly bug. Perhaps he had never felt that Quendius needed to be dealt with. Or, perhaps, like many of the older ones, he had muttered to himself, “Sooty skin, the color of kings.” Quendius had come out of nowhere, like all of them, but his roots might have run deep in the old homeland. They were Suldarran, lost, so who could know except the old superstitions, the old muttered tales less than half remembered? As for that, who could know now what stayed Osten’s hand? Bistel only knew what he would do against Diort and as he had tried, more than once, to do against Quendius.

Bistel spat to one side as if clearing his mouth of a bad taste. He stood, and motioned to a young Vaelinar waiting quietly at his right hand, a Vaelinar who did not hold the surname of Vantane but who certainly echoed Bistel’s and Bistane’s features. “Get my horse. Pass the word down. When the drums start again, they will strike, and strike hard.”

He had scarcely mounted when the rhythmic beating began again. He stood in his saddle. “Signal Jeredon to bring his men up and attack the right flank.” Another lad took to his heels as though scalded. Bistel watched him run to the flagmen and the signal went up. He stayed standing a moment longer, to assess the sea of moving men and women downwind and slightly below him. For a moment he thought of a field of wheat, still green and growing, shifting and swaying in a slight wind as every shoot searched for the sun. Fleetingly he saw himself as a harvester of men, saddened that he would be cutting them down before their prime, their ripeness. He too, might well be cut down, by the battle plans of an uncertain Warrior Queen, although he could scarcely say that he was not ripe for it. His shock of white hair would give that the lie. He took up the helm hanging off his saddle by its strap, shook it out, and put it on. The moment passed as he knew it had to.

As he rode down to his company, he saw the sky fill with arrows and could hear the dull thunder of Diort’s shield men putting up their wall. Arrowheads hit covers with a rattling like hail and before quiet could fall and the shield men could see around their protection, Bistel brought his cavalrymen in to flank them, and the fighting started in earnest.

Horses cried shrilly and war dogs barked and snarled and howled, all dimmed and barely heard over the clash of sword, shield, pike, and mace. He fought with sword, and a dagger in his off-hand, forgoing a shield on his arm, using only the plated protection on his leg armor, with chain-link beneath, lined with raw spidersilk under that which even arrowheads could not penetrate well. Two Galdarkans toppled from the stony ridge where ild Fallyn pushed arrows found them. No one else dared to make the climb, and so Diort fought a little more blind than he would have liked. The response of his companies showed caution.

Bistel spearheaded his own offenses. He swung till both forearms and shoulders ached and blood smeared his mail from head to toe and his horse wore a coat of lather and blood spray, though none of it his. He cut his way steadily through the Galdarkan line, sectioning off a portion of it, footmen abandoned by their brethren. On any other day, he would have signaled that putting down their arms sufficed but on this day, he did not. There would be no winners on this day, but he wished to leave an impression in Diort’s mind. This was not an exercise. If he entered into war against the Vaelinars, he would pay, and pay dearly.

Bistel would leave no illusions behind him.

Across the dry ground now muddying with spilled blood and sweat, he looked up with a swing as a cavalryman and his mount fell away from him, and saw Diort only a charge away. Their eyes met. The ground between them lay bare, though littered with wood splinters and broken bodies and fallen banners.

Bistel lifted his reins and shifted to touch his boots to his horse’s flank.

The ild Fallyn could not have Diort. But he himself was another matter. Taking the Galdarkan alive might solve much.

In one smooth move, as Bistel’s horse dug in his hooves and lunged forward, Abayan Diort dropped his sword and drew the great war hammer at his back. He threw himself off his horse and swung it at the ground, slamming it upon the rapidly disappearing distance between them.

A thunderclap sounded, and
rakka
murmured low in its wake, as the earth split and the ground shivered. Stone shattered. Dust and gravel flew as an abyss opened. Bistel’s horse came to a sliding stop on his hindquarters. They halted at the edge of the crevice. He could have forced the horse into a jump as his mount regained its balance, but he decided against it. They faced each other again, he and Diort, over the yawning gap. Bistel put a finger to the brow of his helm and saluted, before spinning his mount around and spurring him back the way he had come, out of archer range and regrouping the attack on the rear flank.

Message sent, and delivered, on both sides. No quarter would be asked or given.

TRANTA WOKE AT MORNING’S THIN, REEDY LIGHT. The ghostly cast of winter through the windows of the sickroom added to his pallor. But wake he did, and his stirring woke Lara sitting at his side. He blinked as if he could not quite focus. She laid the back of her hand on his forehead. He reached up and held it there briefly.

“You’re back.”

“I felt called.” He turned his head slightly and winced as he did so.

“We need you. Can you tell me what happened?”

“The world shattered. Now you tell me.” He licked cracked lips and his voice sounded thin, no stronger than fog along the sea.

She didn’t want to tell him. She fussed with her dress, which had wrinkled during the night’s vigil, before turning even as she turned her eyes away. “Sevryn . . .” Her words failed her.

Tranta raised himself on his elbow. He flinched and cradled his head as if it had been cracked. “Not Sevryn. I saw him when I fell.”

Lara cleared her throat. “He received a message after you were struck unconscious. Tranta. The Jewel of Tomarq is no more.”

He grabbed her shoulder with a hand that bit into her flesh but she made no sound. “My brother?”

“Died defending it. But we . . . we have no body. We can’t be certain.”

His fingers gripped her harder. “No.” He let go of her suddenly as he fell back onto the bed cushions. “I couldn’t have felt it.”

She looked upon him. “We both know better. You felt something, and the force of it nearly killed you.”

He put both of his hands to his head as if he could hold himself together. “Falling,” he whispered hoarsely. “I’m falling!”

She put her hands over his. “Listen to me. You are here. You’re more than the Jewel and separate from your brother. Hold on to me, and don’t let go.”

“I am tied to the Jewel. My brother . . .”

“I know. I know. But you’re also tied to me. I’m your Warrior Queen, Tranta, and I am,” she gripped him harder, “I’m ordering you to obey and stay with me. The Jewel is only the eye of the Way your blood built there. It’s blinded now, but it is not destroyed. Can’t you feel it?”

“What I feel is,” and she could feel him cold and shaking under her touch, “I feel myself falling again. Climbing the air uselessly. Hanging over the ocean forever, knowing that when I hit, I can’t live through it again. Not a second time.”

“You won’t hit. And you’re not falling. Hold onto me!”

“I failed in my trust.” Tranta looked at her, his eyes the color now of a sea pounded by winter storm, dark blue and cold blue-gray, hopeless, under assault. “I saw the flaw. I never thought it would shatter.”

“You’ve failed nothing, nor has Kever. Do you understand me? The Jewel was attacked. You’ve failed only if you give up.”

He shuddered. He slid his hands out from under hers, slowly, and then grasped each in his own, and hung on for dear life. She could feel his existence fraying, threads breaking, as if he were the Way itself, the Shield of Tomarq, shredding to nothing but wisps of bright element to be lost forever. But she also found that the Way sensed her, sensed them both as if it were a living being, and it sought for wholeness through them. It would plunder them both if she let it, as a drowning man might drown his rescuer in panic, and she retreated from it carefully, leaving it only a bit of her energy upon which to cling. He felt it, too. Sweat dappled his face.

“It can be repaired,” she told him. “It waits for you. Do you feel it?”

“I . . . can’t.”

“Not today. But time doesn’t exist for it. And I promise you, we will find the means to weave it whole again. Just stay with me, stay with us, the Vaelinar, and you’ll be whole again.”

He took a deep breath. Then he kissed each of her hands. “I’ll do whatever you ask of me.”

“Then I ask you to rest a bit, and come help deliver judgment at a trial.” Her smile went bittersweet. “I’ll tell you more after you rest.”

He closed his eyes and she didn’t leave until his grasp of her went slack. Then she slipped away to become the queen she had to be for the task ahead.

“I think it’s morning,” Rivergrace said quietly.

By the sound of it, Nutmeg rolled to a sitting position. “How can you tell? Can you see anything? Hear anything?”

“Nothing but the growling of your stomach. Not that mine is any quieter. ” They had, indeed, been forgotten at dinnertime. Rivergrace tucked her riding skirt closer about her.

“If that thing skitters by me one more time,” Nutmeg muttered darkly, “I’m eating it!”

“But you don’t know what it is.”

“I don’t care. Serves it right.”

Rivergrace reached out and touched her sister’s sleeve, then found her hand and squeezed it tightly before letting go. Her sister felt warm to her own ice-cold hand. She opened her eyes to find herself still enveloped in the suffocating darkness, and she swallowed a bitter taste at the back of her mouth, trying to calm the near panicked thumping of her heart. She hated closed-in places where she could not see, the nearly forgotten memories of her childhood wrapping tight around her as if choking the air as well as the light away from her. No sound of dank and dripping water surrounded her, or endless trails of grit and stone and gravel, or the farther away rush of an underground river. It often stank with sludge from the mining operations and the forge, but it also ran clearly now and again and those were the times when her mother would take her to its banks to get drinking water and to bathe. The river could be seen, its waters eerily phosphorescent green on top of a deep, nearly black blueness as it ribboned away into rock-sharp canyons, cut under the mountain by hundreds of years of wear. The river was the only place in all the mines, caverns, and tunnels where she had not felt as if the mountain could crush her at any minute.