The Spirit Stone (56 page)

Ranadario grabbed the remains of the limb and tossed it onto the heap of other dead flesh on the wagon bed, whilst Dalla held a thick linen pad to the wound with her left hand and pressed hard. With the right she grabbed a waterskin of herbal brew, then removed the pad and washed the joint and the flap of skin. A small hand gave her a fresh needle, threaded with a single linen strand. The sister seemed as composed as if she’d been a chirurgeon. She was in shock, more likely, but Dalla had no time to worry about her at the moment.

‘Please don’t die,’ the lass whispered to her brother. ‘Please, Tarro, don’t die.’

‘He won’t,’ Dallandra said. ‘The bleeding’s nowhere near as bad as I feared it would be.’
Probably,
she thought,
because he’s already bled half to death.

But only half—once she’d stitched the wound, puckering the skin around his new stump like the end of a sausage, Dalla laid her hand on his face, cold and pale, but not deathly cold and bloodless, though his eyelids did have a bluish tint. If nothing more happened to the wound, if it stayed free of infection, he probably would live. She washed it all down again, then bound it with clean linen.

The menservants trotted forward. Dallandra turned to the lass. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Penna, my lady. My thanks for helping him.’ She ran off, following her brother as the servants carried him away.

Ranadario grabbed a waiting bucket of water and sluiced down the blood-soaked tailgate. Dallandra moved away from the gore flecked run-off and looked around. Head down, Salamander was striding along the lines of wounded men. She could guess whom he was searching for.

‘Ebañy!’ Dallandra called out. ‘Rocca’s not been brought in.’

‘You’re sure?’ He raised his head to look her way. ‘Of course you are. I’ll go look in the fortress.’

‘Not now, you howling dolt! It’s too dangerous.’

Salamander ran off, heading for the battlefield.

‘Shall I go after him?’ Ranadario said.

‘No.’ Dallandra shrugged. ‘He won’t listen, and the wounded need you more.’

Salamander had been trying to scry for Rocca, only to have the smoke and the vast etheric disturbance of the battle defeat him. The etheric doubles of the men who had just died drifted helplessly across the field. Their spilled blood gave off life-stuff in waves of mist. The burning, too, filled the air around it with swirling vortices of astral energy. Finally Salamander gave it up. He could stand waiting no longer and went physically to the battlefield, where he crept around the battle’s edge from the north.

Around him the fighting flared sporadically, just as a fire appears dead only to burst into flame when a servant stirs the ashes. Here and there Horsekin warriors made a stand, only to be cut down by Deverry men in twos and threes. An arrow whistled close by him—far too close, and Salamander began yelling out Prince Dar’s name in Elvish to make sure the archers realized he was no enemy. Once he stumbled over a dying man and apologized without thinking before he hurried on again.

The wooden walls of Zakh Gral still blazed when Salamander reached them. The heat drove him back, a searing second wall, far more impassable than mere wood and stone. A memory from his brief time there surfaced. He ran down to the cliff edge on the north side of the fortress and found what he was remembering, a breach in a stretch of half-finished stone wall, probably left for a postern gate. The stone blocks now lay cracked and steaming, but he could pick his way through. The heat still clawed at him. He gasped for breath and pushed himself onward.

Once he got inside, he stopped running and considered his position while he panted for breath. Where would Rocca have gone? Eventually, she would try to flee, but he knew that she’d never leave without making sure the sacred relics were safe. He ran towards the little stone shrine, or rather, what was now the ruins of the shrine. The dwarven fire had burnt out the roof beams, and the roof itself had collapsed. Flames had cracked and blackened the fine stonework.

All around it lay dead and dying Gel da’ Thae. They had tried to save their goddess’s shrine and failed as Westfolk arrows rained down, killing the lucky ones outright. The others—the bitumen mixture had stuck like fangs to their flesh wherever it had struck them. Tiny flames still danced on blackened faces and arms turned to cinders. One man raised his charred head and called out to Salamander, ‘Kill me, kill me! For
her
sake!’ Salamander broke into a run and hurried past. Here and there an overturned bucket lay in a pool of water, but the black fire floated, still burning, in the puddles.

In the smoke and the dust, in the midst of shrieks of terror and cries of pain that hung as thick as the smoke and dust, Salamander finally found Rocca. Muffled in a shabby cloak she had wedged herself in to a corner of stone ruins, and she sat so still that he thought her dead, but when he knelt down in front of her, the cloak trembled as she moved an arm. In her lap lay a cloth sack, crammed full.

‘It’s Evan,’ he said in Deverrian. ‘Are you hurt?’

Slowly she raised her head and even more slowly lifted a hand to shove back the cloak’s hood. Soot and grime caked her face, except where tears had embroidered a patten on each cheek. Blood crusted the hand that lingered beside her face.

‘You
are
hurt. Tell me where!’

She looked up and smiled at him, a radiant burst of joy.

‘Evan!’ she whispered. ‘You’ve come back. It be that you’ll be bringing me to our goddess, isn’t it?’

‘Tell me where you’re hurt.’ He saw, then, the blood seeping through her cloak, a spread of crimson all down her side. When he folded the cloak back, he could see her blood-stained dress, half-torn away to reveal worse-torn flesh beneath. As far as he could tell, some heavy but sharp thing had fallen upon her, to do its worst damage when she struggled to get free. As carefully as he could, he picked her up. She cried out in pain, but he settled her against his chest. Staggering under her weight, he headed for the breach in the stone wall.

The smoke hung so thick that at first he feared he’d gone in the wrong direction. He could barely breathe, and her added weight made him gasp as he staggered onward in the parching hot air. One foot after the other—his world shrank to that, one foot after the other, until at last he saw ahead of them the opening in the stone wall. He was coughing and spitting, but he carried her through at last. He managed to get a few yards beyond the dying fortress before he could go no further.

When he laid her down she whimpered. He knelt down beside her and realized that he’d come too late. Blood soaked her dress and his shirt where she’d lain against him. Her face had turned a ghastly white.

‘Will I see
her
soon?’ She whispered the words.

‘You will, truly.’
Even if I end up mad again,
he thought,
you will have that.

Salamander summoned every bit of dweomer he had and thought of Alshandra, built up an image of her, vast, towering over them, but smiling, holding out her hands as if to greet her priestess. With a wrench of will he sent the image out from his mind. He could see it as if it hovered in the air over them. At first he feared he’d misjudged Rocca’s latent dweomer talents, but all at once she smiled in her brilliant way and lifted one hand towards the image.

‘Beloved,’ she whispered. ‘My life and hope.’

Salamander summoned his body of light, a silvery flame-shaped glow. He transferred over fast, too fast, but her etheric body had already separated from the flesh, and he had no time to spend on caution. Together he and Rocca floated in the blue light, high above the swirling storm over the battlefield. Before them the image of Alshandra towered, huge but smiling, and stretched out her hands to her worshipper.

‘Go with her.’ Salamander sent his thoughts to Rocca. ‘Let us go with her to the river of life.’

With no dweomer training Rocca lacked the skill to send him coherent thought messages, but he could feel her joy, a pure thing like morning sunlight, as they rose together through the whirling indigo vortex that led inward to the astral. Ahead of them stretched the meadow of white flowers, pale under violet light, nodding in some intangible breeze. On the other side of the stretch of flowers Salamander could just make out the white river whose water has never flowed on land or into sea. He gave Alshandra’s image a mental push that sent it floating towards the boundary of life and death. Smiling still, Rocca followed without his urging.

Pain struck Salamander like a razor cut. A tug on the silver cord wrenched him away from her. With a sound like the roar of a waterfall he plunged back into his body with a yelp of sheer agony as his etheric double slammed into bone and blood, muscle and skin. In his arms Rocca still breathed, but faintly, and for only a few heartbeats more. Her head flopped back, and her lungs emptied in a last rattling sob. He grabbed her shoulders and lifted her half off the ground.

‘Rocca!’ He howled out her name. ‘Rocca!’

She had gone beyond answering him in any world. Gently he laid her down, then closed her unseeing eyes. When he looked up, the air seemed strangely thick and shimmering. Not madness, he realized, but tears. He bent his head and wept so hard that he was barely aware of the man running towards him, sword raised.

‘Salamander!’ Gerran shouted. ‘Gerthddyn! You fool! Get out of here! The whole cursed field’s on fire.’

Salamander grabbed the sack of relics, tried to stand, and nearly fell. Gerran seized him by one arm and hauled him to his feet. All around them fire crackled in the grass as it leapt from broken beams and walls. Greasy black smoke rose high in the sky.
At least she’ll have a pyre,
Salamander thought.
There’s naught else I can do for her.

‘Come on, move!’ Gerran was yelling. ‘Do you have horseshit where your brains ought to be? Run!’

With Gerran hauling him along, Salamander managed to do just that. Together they stumbled through the spreading fire to the safety of the Red Wolf warband, waiting with horses on the edge of the battlefield.

‘It’s over,’ Calonderiel said. ‘Prince Voran and his men are chasing down the hairy bastards that managed to escape. The rest of our men are keeping the fire back from the camp.’

‘Good,’ Dallandra said.

‘Is that all you can say?’

‘Cal, I just finished taking an archer’s leg off at the knee. He still might die anyway. I’m in no mood to sing your praises or whatever it is you want.’

Dallandra was sitting on the ground between two tents, taking a desperately needed rest. Calonderiel hunkered down in front of her. He reeked of sweat and smoke, and a mixture of the two smeared his face and neck. All down his right arm blood oozed through his mail.

‘You’re wounded,’ Dallandra said.

‘Not truly,’ he said. ‘I can still use the arm, so it can’t be that bad. You look exhausted.’

‘I am.’ She watched as two Deverry men, supporting a wounded third between them, staggered past. ‘That one’s not that badly off. The chirurgeons can tend him.’

‘Good.’ Calonderiel pulled off his pot helm and pushed his sweat-soaked hair back from his face with both hands, leaving a smear of blood across his forehead. ‘Why don’t you go back to our tent and hide from all this? By now you’ve either treated the worst wounded, or they’re dead.’

Dallandra allowed him to help her up. Although she was tempted to lean on him, she shook herself free of his offered embrace. ‘I’m not that tired,’ she said. ‘I need to go back and see—Wait! There’s Ebañy heading our way.’

Salamander trotted up, carrying a blood-stained sack. Blood crusted on his sleeves and soaked the front of his shirt.

‘Your friend?’ Dalla said in Elvish.

‘Is dead.’ Salamander tossed his head, then spasmed with a racking cough that ended when he spat up black rheum. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘Here are the so-called holy relics.’

Salamander shoved the sack into her arms, then trotted off, dodging among the other men.
He truly loved her, didn’t he?
She watched him till she could see him no longer.

‘Dalla!’ Calonderiel grabbed her arm. ‘You should go back to our tent.’

‘I’ll go back if you go.’

‘You know I can’t do that.’ His mouth went slack, and he looked away. ‘Too many of our men are dead. I’ve at least got to go speak to the wounded.’

‘And I’ve got to do what I can for them. Let’s go tend them together.’

Calonderiel had told her the truth about his wound. When she finally got a chance to examine his arm, she saw that a blow from the trailing edge of a falcata had landed with enough force to split the skin through his padding and mail, but the cuts were shallow and easily stitched. His mood, however, would take far more time to heal. He glowered and swore revenge for every dead man, for every wound any of his men had taken until he became a walking pillar of rage and little more.

With Calonderiel to worry over and so many wounded men to attend, Dalla had no chance to open the sack of relics that day or night. By then, with the fires beaten out, the army had chased down and slaughtered every Horsekin and human straggler from the fortress that they could find. In the morning, the various lords sent a pack of messengers off on their way back to Deverry with the news. Dallandra had already used dweomer to send messages from Prince Daralanteriel to Valandario and through her, to Princess Carra and the others at Mandra.

While Dallandra and the chirurgeons did their best to save the wounded, and the warbands buried the men they failed to save, the princes, the gwerbret, and all their lords held a long council of war. Calonderiel told her of their decisions that evening. They were eating a scrappy dinner of stale flatbread and mouldy cheese, augmented by a couple of chunks of stewed horsemeat, in their tent.

‘The Roundears are probably still arguing,’ Cal said. ‘Prince Voran’s come up with a splendid idea, but Ridvar doesn’t like it. It’ll cost him taxes.’

‘Let me guess,’ Dallandra said. ‘The prince thinks Honelg’s old dun is indefensible.’

‘Right you are, my clever darling! He wants the Mountain Folk to take it over.’