The Dark Glory War (42 page)

She also fired the outer city. With my own eyes I saw vylaens use magick to ignite the blazes. Despite what has been rumored, Cavarre did not start the fire, nor did any of our forces. He had, of course, long since figured out how to deal with such an eventuality, and before the smoke could settle over everything in a choking fog, trumpets blew retreats, pulling us back to the inner city. Chytrine also pulled her troops back, including the southern force, which had come to a stalemate with Augustus’ force.

The fire provided Chytrine’s forces with a respite, and we likewise won one, though resting up and trying to breathe in the smoky inner fortress was very difficult. The food all tasted burned and keeping bits of ash off it was impossible. Many veterans just smiled and said it would put hair on our chests or give us good singing voices, but I failed to see how either thing would be relevant in our current situation.

I searched for a long time to find Leigh, mistakenly having assumed he would be at the aid station set up for Oriosan troops. Most of our men had faired pretty well, with the majority of the wounds being like mine: minor cuts. A few had been lung-struck with arrows or swords, and more had deep gashes from the temeryx attack, but all seemed in good spirits and busied themselves sewing up wounds, creating poultices at healers’ instructions or just calming hurt friends who had to wait for elven magickers to appear.

I found Leigh in a small blockhouse near the inner fortress gate. I’d been directed to it because it was the aid station that had been set up for nobles. Few enough of them had been hurt that, had I been of a cynical mindset, I would have assumed that instead of being lucky, most of the nobles had never put themselves in jeopardy. Being young as I was, and with the examples of Prince Kirill and Lord Norrington fresh in my mind, I assumed good training and intelligence had preserved most of the nobles from injury.

I found Leigh on a cot in the corner of a room with Prince Scrainwood perched at the foot of his bed. The Prince scowled at me instantly, but Leigh gave me a smile. He levered himself higher in the bed using Temmer. He’d been stripped to the waist and had a bandage wrapped around his ribs. I could see the dark angry purple of a bruise all over his right flank, and despite his brave smile, I knew he was in a lot of pain.

“Metholanthcould ease that, you know.”

Leigh waved away the suggestion. “Others have more need.”

Scrainwood, who had been holding a poultice against a nasty bruise on his forehead, glared at me. “This place is for nobles. You’ll have to get your leg looked after elsewhere.”

I looked at him and poured as much contempt as I could into my stare, then shook my head and nodded at Leigh. “How bad is it?”

“Ribs broke, definitely. I’ve not coughed up blood.” He winced, his breath coming short and hard. “An elf’s on the way. Once the Prince is taken care of …”

“I see.” I again regarded Scrainwood. “What happened to you?”

“I was unhorsed and hit my head.”

I did my best to hide my surprise since I knew he’d been with Augustus and I didn’t see Scrainwood tucking himself into combat. Regardless, warriors generally mentionwhat orwho hit them, which suggested to me it hadn’t been an enemy warrior. As I had the story afterward—not from the Prince, of course—Scrainwood managed to lead a small knot of men into the wrong place at the wrong time. A roving gibberer squad attacked them, his horse went down and he hit his head on a watering trough. His men managed to get him clear, but at the cost of two lives.

Leigh coughed weakly, then hissed with pain. “The Prince tells me thesullanciri leading the southern army was a hoargoun. He says it has a most hideous power. Fear spreads from it in this miasma. Worse, it cannot be killed.”

Scrainwood nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, it is already dead, so it cannot die again. Our arrows had no effect. The narrow streets restricted the swing of its club, otherwise it would have smashed us.”

“How fared Augustus?”

“Well.”

“Prince Scrainwood told me that Augustus managed to have a catapult hit thesullanciri withnapthalm and set it afire. That drove it back but didn’t consume it.”

I nodded, then pointed at Temmer. “Magick weapons seem to be all that works against them. You best be up and about when he comes again.”

“That is my plan.” He smiled and looked past me toward the door. “And here is the first step in that plan.”

I turned as a rustling of skirts came to me, and immediately felt out of place. The elf entering the room wore a brown gown that, while not festive, seemed far removed from combat. Here I stood reeking of smoke, with soot and blood staining me and my clothes, and she clean and fresh, with bright eyes and a beautiful smile. She seemed the utter opposite of what we all represented.

She came immediately to Leigh, but he shook his head. “You should see to Prince Scrainwood.”

She smiled indulgently. “You will forgive me, but I choose who I heal and of what. My strength is limited, and I wish to put it to its best use.”

“But my head, it hurts.” Scrainwood pulled away the compress to show her the bump.

“And I see one possible cause.” She reached out and brushed the middle finger of her left hand on Scrainwood’s bump. I saw a flash of blue, akin to a woolspark. Scrainwood yelped and jumped back, banging his head on the wall.

The Prince snarled at her. “What did you do?”

“Magicks require an expenditure of energy to fuel them. I can draw on my own reserves or, in the case where someone is receptive, I can use their body’s own strength to help. In your case, I reduced the swelling and repaired the damage, but it had a cost. In that one instant you felt all the pain the wound would have caused you if it had healed naturally.”

Scrainwood frowned and slumped against the wall, rubbing the back of his head.

The elf smiled at Leigh. “I am Jilandessa. With you I need to determine what is wrong before I can weave a spell to heal you.”

Leigh smiled. “I am at your disposal.”

Jilandessa brushed her raven hair back past her shoulders, then spread her long-fingered hands out and held them over his ribcage. A soft red glow began to spread out from them, but failed to touch Leigh’s flesh. She pulled back, narrowing her steel-blue eyes. “There is interference. I cannot work spells on you.”

Leigh frowned, then glanced at the sheathed sword he clutched in his right hand. “Could this be the cause?”

The elf nodded. “Very possible. You and it have a bond. As long as you are touching it, I cannot heal you. No simple magicks can work on you.”

Leigh smiled and glanced at me. “See, Hawkins, you needn’t have gotten yourself roasted at the bridge.”

“Nice to know now.”

Leigh looked again at the sword. “Well, if I must give you up …”

Scrainwood got up on his knees at Leigh’s right, his hands poised to grab the sword. “I will hold it for you.”

“You are very kind, Prince Scrainwood, but …” Leigh shook his head, “I would not make a servant of you.” He shifted the blade to his left hand, then held it out to me. “Hawkins, would you hold this for me?”

I almost protested the implication that I was his servant, but I knew he didn’t mean that. I accepted the sword from his hand, keeping my grip firm on the scabbard and refraining from touching any part of Temmer itself. The blade did feel light—far lighter than it should have—and well balanced. In and of itself, even without the magick, it was a formidable weapon.

The second it left Leigh’s grasp, his expression slackened and his eyes lost focus. Pain tightened his eyes and he sagged. He tried to smile, but his teeth were gritted. “I’m ready.”

Jilandessa bent to her task quickly and this time the red magick did penetrate his flesh. I saw a silver line glowing on his right flank, glowing right up through the bandage, and it seemed as if that might be outlining the broken ribs. It looked a bit like lightning and probably hurt as much.

The red changed to green, which dulled the silver lightning, then subsumed it. The bruises on Leigh’s chest faded, pulling back like an army in retreat. Leigh’s breathing eased and his jaw unclenched. He remained slumped in the bed, but that seemed more because of fatigue than an inability to move.

He nodded sleepily at her. “I feel much better. Thank you.”

Jilandessa smiled. “You’ll need to sleep now, for a while, but you will be recovered when you waken.”

Leigh smiled, then held his left hand out toward me. “Temmer, please.”

He struck me very much as a child asking for a favored toy at bedtime. I hesitated, not because I coveted the blade for myself, but because I wished him the peace he’d known earlier without it. Something inside of me said that such peace would never be his again, so I gave him back Temmer and tried to smile as he clutched the blade to his breast, much in the same way he had described it lying in the sepulchre where he found it.

The elf turned to me. “Shall I deal with your leg?”

I looked up at her, surprised. “No, my lady, I am not a noble.”

“Spells do not discriminate.” She shrugged slightly. “And you bear a silverwood bow. Your actions have proved you worthy of my ministrations.”

“But I would not have you tire yourself on my account. It’s a flesh wound—one suited to needle and thread, not magick.”

Jilandessa smiled carefully. “Then I will use your own strength, as I did with Prince Scrainwood.”

Well, there was an opportunity I could not pass up. I nodded to her and steeled myself for the pain. I had always thought I had a high threshold of pain—things did not seem to hurt me as much as they had others, and I’d played that to my advantage, cultivating a reputation for being quite stoic. I set my face and stared past her at Scrainwood.

Jilandessa flicked a finger over the gash on my thigh. It felt to me as if she had jammed a glass auger into the wound and kept turning and turning it, driving the pain deeper and deeper. It built for one heartbeat, then two, and I expected it to subside then, but it kept going. I wanted to curse the pain, I wanted to blaspheme Fesyin’s name, but I held it in. I forced myself to remain expressionless and to continue breathing as the pain spiked high, then did not let my relief show as it began to drain away.

“There, gone.” The elf smiled at me, then drew back a step and curtsied to the Prince and Leigh. “Good day, fine men.”

I nodded to her. “Thank you very much for your help.”

She swept from the room. I watched her go, then turned back to look at Leigh, who was sleeping. I caught Scrainwood staring angrily at me. His face looked as if the pain I had endured were a bitter draught he’d been forced to drink down.

I ignored him, bent and kissed Leigh on the forehead. “Sleep well, Leigh. Tomorrow your actions will decide the fate of Fortress Draconis.”

Somehow, in the chaos that was the inner fortress, I found Seethe and we retreated to the Crown Tower. We sought sanctuary in her room. Though both of us were grimy and hungry and exhausted, we stripped off our clothes and fell into her bed together. We went at each other with a fierce passion and intensity that matched the ferocity of combat and I knew greater pleasures than I had known before.

I’ve heard men speculate about why people are so eager to couple in such circumstances. Some say battle, with all its horror and blood and death, reminds us of our own mortality. Procreation, or at least the act of it, is the only answer to staring your own death in the face. Others contend that the joy of surviving is so great that words and thoughts and songs alone cannot express it. It requires the whole of a person to sing it, body and soul. And yet others suggest it is a way to anchor yourself in normalcy after having ventured into the twisted and mind-breaking crucible of warfare.

To me, it seems, it was all of those things and more. Though young and absolutely entranced with all that Seethe was, the clarity of mind Kedyn granted me left me no doubt about the ultimate fate of our relationship. Even if we did both survive this war, I would age and she would not. Eventually she would tire of me or, if I was fortunate, she would clutch my hand while I lay on my deathbed. I think I wanted to share passion with her at that time, in that place, under those circumstances, so she would have something to remember. I did not want her to be able to forget me because I knew I would never forget her.

Her motivation I can only guess at. When she did notice, during a pause in our frenzy, that my thigh had been sealed with magick, she playfully accused me of seeing another elf. “Have we spoiled you now, Hawkins, that no woman will satisfy you?”

We laughed over that and plunged back into our lovemaking, but I’d noted a hint of sadness in her as she chided me. Being a Vorquelf meant she always felt she was an outsider, so the idea that another elf, one bound to a homeland, would somehow be more attractive to me than she was an idea that easily took root in her heart. I did all I could, in word and deed, to eradicate it—and in the end, I think it had withered and died. Still, because of it, I think she clung to me so she could belong with someone, to be more than an outsider.

While we were together the world did continue on around us and even affected us. As dusk fell—prematurely because of the smoke blotting out the sun—a loud blast ripped through the outer city and shook the tower sufficiently to bounce me out of bed. My ears rang, both with the sound of the explosion and Seethe’s laughter. I spared a mock-angry glance at her, then stripped off a blanket and wrapped myself in it. I heard people scurrying about in the hallway and I inquired of them what had happened.

No one knew then, but the way Dothan Cavarre reconstructed events provided a plausible explanation for what had happened. It appeared that in the haste to bring the dragonel into the city to blast the inner fortress gate down, a vylaen in charge of the powder wagon had raced it into the burning city. He made a wrong turn, found himself in a cul-de-sac of burning buildings and one collapsed on his wagon. It ignited the powder, resulting in an explosion that leveled six blocks of the city.

Some good came out of that explosion, for it snuffed some of the fires—most of which were burning out anyway. As the sun sank and the moon rose, the smoke began to clear and blow back over Chytrine’s camp. Thatdid make it difficult to assess how much we had weakened her forces, but the bodies scattered through the streets and the reports by various commanders suggested she had lost at least half her force.