The Free Kingdoms (Book 2) (27 page)

A horn sounded over the battle, long and deep.
The Harvester.
For a moment, the combatants stopped and listened, fear on every face. And then the fighting returned with increased ferocity.

A melee in the bailey swept Darik into its path. Eriscobans surrounded a giant, wounded and separated from his fellows. Roaring in rage and pain, the giant swung its battle axe, delivering a blow that obliterated one man’s shield and drove him to his knees. Darik rushed in next to the others, blades chopping at the giant’s legs and abdomen. The giant finished the man with a second blow before turning to swing at Darik. But by now the giant bled from several wounds, and Darik danced out of range, while two other men chopped at its calves. The giant bellowed again and dropped. Eriscobans rushed in and finished it. Darik and the Eriscobans turned back to the battle, fighting as a single knot of men, cutting down all enemies.

The battle turned ugly elsewhere in the bailey and on the walls. More Veyrians slipped inside every moment. Atop the walls, Hoffan and his men lost the left gate tower, and found themselves overwhelmed in the right tower.

Hundreds of Eriscoban reinforcements stood atop the walls to the north, but they couldn’t get past the breach in the Golden Tower to reach Hoffan’s men. Inside the gates, one barbican opened, and then a second and a third. At last, the final defenses, the gates themselves, stood wide open. Kratian camel riders poured into the bailey, followed by cavalry, footmen, and mammoths. Darik braced himself for a final stand.

But the enemy turned before they could overrun the bailey. Fighting raged at the gates and Darik saw blue turbaned men of Balsalom and white flags emblazoned with the golden dragon of the house of Saffa. Relief flooded through his exhaustion.

From Darik’s back, more shouts. He turned and looked up the Tothian Way as it divided the Citadel and entered the heart of the city; a second force rode to meet Balsalom’s army. Hundreds of horsemen galloped through the city, toward the Citadel.

No!
Darik thought, thinking the enemy had broken down one of the other gates while the Eriscobans concentrated their defense at Eastgate. The army riding down on them was strong enough to sweep through Kallia’s army and retake the road.

A man rode at the head of the horses, straight-edged sword drawn overhead, eyes blazing with battle fury.
Whelan.
The Knights Temperate had arrived.

And then they swept into the bailey, where they met the enemy. Whelan’s horse fell, but he jumped from his saddle, sword moving in a blur and slaughtering any who stood in his way. Men and giant alike fled from his onslaught. Darik hurried to his side. Whelan gave him a nod of recognition, then turned to the grim business at hand.

Sofiana jumped from her horse and crouched at the base of the Golden Tower, crossbow in hand, and calmly shot a Kratian riding toward them. Other archers gathered at her side, pounding at the enemy who still held the walls. Hoffan’s men regrouped and retook the nearest gate tower, then pressed toward the second.

Other Knights Temperate joined Whelan and Darik. Together they fought their way through the gates and onto the road outside, where they met the main force of Balsalom, still surrounded by three score thousand Veyrians, who pressed the road from either side. Kallia and her pasha stood to the east, surrounded by a small group of men.

Whelan found a riderless horse and dismounted an enemy to collect a second horse, this one for Darik. Together, they joined the Brotherhood, who finished its business in the city and rode to join Balsalom. They fought as a single force and swept the enemy from the road. They pushed to the right, while Balsalom pushed to the left, and the Eriscobans from the city poured up the middle of the road.

And just like that, the rout began.

Whelan had become something other than human. One Veyrian lifted his sword to block Whelan’s blow, but Soultrup already stroked back from the other direction, as if the massive sword weighed nothing more than a rapier. Darik and a pair of Knights Temperate followed in Whelan’s wake, fed a steady diet of wounded.

At one point Darik looked over his shoulder and saw that they were surrounded on all sides by enemy soldiers, friendly forces some eighty feet behind them. But the enemy was in full retreat and had no more thought than to flee.

They pushed the Veyrians past Sleptstock by nightfall, killing thousands. The Thorft River ran red with blood and filled with bodies. Only darkness stopped their push, and when morning came, they continued the slaughter. By now, the Veyrians, without Toth’s leadership, left only clumps of leaderless men to the swords of Balsalom and the Free Kingdoms. A few thousand Veyrians made a stand in Estmor, but Hoffan and Whelan punished this resistance, killing hundreds and capturing most of the remaining army when its pasha fell.

Whelan and Hoffan only called off the attack at the mountains, preferring to let the enemy flee east rather than risk ambush from well-defended castles. They turned to the Free Kingdoms and finished any Veyrians who remained behind. They found Cragyn’s Hammer outside the Citadel where it had fallen, and carried it to the city to learn its secrets. And then they turned to rebuild and mourn the dead.

The Harvester feasted as he hadn’t feasted for four hundred years.

Chapter Fourteen

Darik met Daria in the close outside the library two days later as the griffin riders prepared to return to their mountain aeries. She’d wrapped her father’s body in a blanket of woven feathers, together with Brasson and Averial, planning to bury them together next to the aerie.

Sixty-one riders survived the battle, together with sixty-eight griffins, barely more than half the number who’d come to Sleptstock. Of these, a third of the griffins were too weak to fly and would have to heal their wounds in the Citadel.

Darik turned to Daria as she climbed onto Joffa’s back, her father’s body tied down behind her. Two other griffins, including the one she’d ridden after Averial fell, held Brasson’s body between them on a sling. Darik cleared his throat, not knowing what to say. She looked older. An awkward distance had fallen between them since the end of the battle, a mingling of Daria’s newfound confidence and the death of her father and her griffin. Whatever she’d felt for him was long gone, he feared.

He squinted to see her face against the sun that rose above the city walls. It was cold this morning with a hint of frost on the ground, but the sky was clear and began to warm. The cloud castles had dissipated.

One thing confused him. “Why does everyone call you Flockheart? Is that your last name?”

Daria shook her head. “Flockheart is a title. Now that my father is dead, I’m the leader of the flock.” She sighed, as if the title weighed heavily on her shoulders. “It’s my duty to raise an army so we’ll be more ready next time.”

With their numbers decimated, Darik wondered how the griffins would be anything more than a minor nuisance next time Toth attacked with his three surviving dragons. He expressed this concern to Daria.

She explained. “The only truly wild griffins live far to the north. Wild griffins that live in the Dragon’s Spine are fledglings released for lack of riders. In another year, I’d planned to do the same with my own two fledglings. To tame a griffin born in the wild, you must capture it in the first month of life, but the other griffins can be captured and tamed with patience and tenderness. They will remember the riders. As for more riders, we will open ourselves to the hill country and enlist those who are willing.”

Darik remembered the power of a griffin, the first-time thrill of flying. “You won’t have a hard time finding volunteers.”

Some of Daria’s earlier shyness crept over her face. “I hoped you would come as one of those volunteers. You already know how to ride, and the griffins trust you.”

Darik’s heart pounded. “Yes, I would like that very much,” he said softly. “But first I must return to Balsalom and find my sister.”

She handed him a griffin feather. “From Brasson. It’s a tradition to keep a feather from your mount when it dies. You rode him well at Balsalom, and since Father died—” Her voice trailed off.

“Thank you.”

Daria smiled sadly, then lifted Joffa’s tether. “I will see you soon.” She watched a griffin lift from the close and soar over the wall toward the mountains.

Joffa keened softly. Darik stroked its neck, sorry to see the beast go, but more sorry to see the griffin’s mistress leave. Impulsively, he leaned forward and kissed Daria on each cheek. She let go of the tether and pulled his mouth to hers, kissing him deeply, a moment that ended too soon.

“You promise you’ll come?”

He smiled. “Wild griffins couldn’t keep me away.”

“Perhaps you had better wait until you meet my mother,” she said with a slight smile. “I can’t decide if she would feed you to the fledglings or insist that you marry me.”

“I’m not sure which of those options scares me more.”

Daria laughed and picked up the reins. “Ska!”

In a moment, they disappeared from view. Darik turned back to the Citadel to find Markal, Whelan, and Sofiana, who prepared horses for the ride. He couldn’t stop thinking about Daria.

#

The four companions rode east under the protection of Kallia’s army. Toth’s mountain strongholds sat quietly brooding as they passed, neither side risking attack. Leaving the castles would, however, make the Tothian Way impassable to merchants from Balsalom or Eriscoba; Hoffan remained at the Citadel to put together plans to starve out the castles over the winter. Once Kallia’s army passed, the poorly maintained Old Road, some fifty miles north, beyond the Desolation, was the only link between the two lands. It was a tedious, dangerous route, thick with brigands.

Markal was wounded from his battle with the dark wizard, and dispirited, too. He wandered ahead of the group, appearing only at meals, and speaking little of what had happened in Sleptstock.

Even on the road, Darik slept better than he had in weeks. The four companions ate well, too, feasting on grouse and hare caught by Scree, together with the generous provisions sent by King Daniel. But Darik grew restless, longing for dry, spiced air, for wine, fruits, and breads, instead of the ale, goat cheese, and mutton that they ate in the west. After meals, Whelan and Darik practiced with the swords, while Markal wandered away again. Sofiana watched the swordplay with an amused look on her face, occasionally offering Darik unwanted advice.

The four companions left the army when they stopped for the night east of the Desolation. They met Ethan at his tavern. Whelan and his brother spoke quietly in the back room while the others ate in the kitchens. When the two brothers emerged, it was with arms about each other, laughing over a joke. Sofiana beamed to see them so friendly. She was happier than Darik could remember.

Markal and Sofiana rejoined the army, the girl taking Whelan’s falcon with her. While the army marched triumphantly through the Great Gates, and past the Slaves Quarter up the hill to the palace, Whelan and Darik stopped outside the Gates of the Dead to look upon Saldibar’s tower of silence. Birds had picked the body clean, leaving only bones and a few tattered shreds of white linen. Darik stood silently; Whelan had shared the story of how the two men met on the Old Road so many years ago.

They entered the city through the Gates of the Dead. It had taken them a full ten days to reach the city. Instead of going to the palace to meet the others, they turned toward the Grand Bazaar instead.

The place was alive!

Hundreds of people crowded the souks, all about the business of buying and selling. A thousand spices filled the hot air. A man fed figs to a monkey that sat on his shoulder, while another man sat on a blanket, charming a cobra by weaving his body back and forth and playing a wooden flute. A man with a blue turban leaned in anticipation as they walked toward his pile of rugs.

“Good masters,” the man shouted at them. “The finest rugs in Balsalom.” He grabbed Darik’s arm insistently and pointed with his other hand to a purple rug woven with flying horses. The subject struck a little close to home. The man said, “Twenty dinarii.” The man shook his head vigorously. “No, for you eighteen dinarii, six crana. Such a bargain you will not find in all the weavers guild.”

Darik pulled away and turned to Whelan as they pushed through the market. “Eighteen and six? Fa! That’s no bargain.”

Whelan gave him a sideways glance. “He thinks you a rich young lordling from the west, the way you carry yourself.” He grinned. “No slave would have that kind of money to waste on a rug.”

Darik looked at himself, covered with the dust of the road, his barbarian clothing worn, his boots thin-heeled. But he had a fine sword at his side and new muscles in his arms and legs. Perhaps Whelan was right.

“But now that we discuss it,” Whelan said. “Neither of us look the part we must play today. Let’s find a tailor.”

“You’ve got money?”

Whelan gave him a sly smile and pulled a purse from his belt. “More than I know what to do with. King Daniel thought I might need money. I hope we don’t attract thieves.”

Darik eyed the tall man with his deadly-looking sword and thought it unlikely.

Whelan spent far too much money in the shade of a tailor’s tent. The tailor, his apprentice, and three slaves bustled about them, fussing over every measurement. At last, an hour later and eighty dinarii poorer, they left to eat, filling themselves on wine and spiced ganori smeared onto garlic flatbread. They went to the baths to be washed and perfumed. When the towers chimed midday, they returned to the tailor to find their clothing waiting.

Darik wore a white robe with a blue turban on his head with copper bracelets and soft-soled shoes. Whelan preferred a flowing shirt and loose pants, but also wore a turban, this one white, onto which he placed a blue sapphire given him by the khalifa after the battle of the Citadel. Properly dressed except for the barbarian swords strapped to Darik’s waist and over Whelan’s shoulder, they made their way to the Bakers Corner.