The Swords of Night and Day (31 page)

Hurling aside their bows, the Legend riders drew their sabers and heeled their mounts forward. In close-order battle the long lances were of little use, and the enemy let them fall, drawing their own swords. But the impetus of their charge was lost, and they were now facing grim and deadly opponents, who slashed and cut their way through the enemy center. Alahir was relieved to find that his mount—afraid of shadows and swirling cloaks—showed no fear in the battle. He followed his every physical command.

Alahir saw the enemy officer, on a pure white stallion, and heeled his horse toward him. A lancer tried to block his path. Alahir ducked under his slashing blade. The lancer was wearing a heavy breastplate and mail, but his arms were unprotected. Alahir’s saber flashed out, hacking into the man’s forearm and snapping the bone. The lancer’s sword fell from his hand, and Alahir swept past him. The officer beyond, still holding to his lance, made a feeble stab at the warrior closing on him. Alahir struck the lance with his saber, diverting it, then, as their horses crashed together, hammered his saber against the man’s bronze helm. The officer swayed in the saddle. Alahir struck him twice more; the second time the saber cut through the man’s ear and down through his neck. He pitched from the saddle. His white horse galloped away. Even in the chaos of a battle Alahir found himself wishing he had time to catch it. It was a Ventrian purebred and deserved better than the wretch who rode him.

Pushing thoughts of horses from his mind, Alahir swung to find a fresh opponent—but the remaining lancers were fleeing in panic. The younger and less battle hardened of his men began to give chase. Alahir bellowed an order, and they drew rein.

Alahir gazed around the corpse-littered battlefield. Around seventy lancers lay dead or wounded. Alahir scanned the area, seeking out fallen Legend riders. He saw eight bodies, lying unmoving, and nine more men, unhorsed and carrying heavy wounds. Gilden rode alongside. The sergeant had a deep cut on his cheek, almost exactly between the white scars. Blood was flowing freely from it and running over his mail shirt.

“What orders?” he asked.

“Deal with our wounded first, then find two prisoners who will survive a trip back to camp. Then we’ll push on.” He pointed up the mountain slopes. “There’s a fine view of the south up there, and we’ll see how many troops they are funneling through the passes.”

Leaning to his left, Gilden spat blood from his mouth. “Luckily they weren’t great fighters.”

“They were good enough,” said Alahir, grimly. “They just weren’t Drenai.”

Gilden smiled, which opened the wide cut on his cheek. He swore.

“Get someone to stitch that,” said Alahir.

“What do you want to do about the prisoners we don’t need?”

“Let them go—without their mounts.”

“Agrias won’t like that.”

“Do I look as though I care?”

“No.”

In the distance Alahir saw a huge flock of birds suddenly take to the sky, and his mount reared. A deep groan came from the earth. Alahir’s horse bolted. Several other riders were unhorsed. Alahir kept a firm grip on the reins and let the panicked beast have his head for a while, then he gently steered him to the left, seeking to head him back to his troops. Ahead of him a cloud of dust swirled up from the earth, followed instantly by a tremendous thunderclap. The horse, totally panicked now, galloped on. Alahir saw a jagged black line appear on the flatland some fifty yards ahead, as if a giant, invisible sword was scoring the earth. Then the ground suddenly split and a chasm began to open.

Alahir’s first instinct was to kick his feet from the stirrups and roll clear of the horse. However, the memory of Egar’s paralyzing fall still haunted him, his friend lying on the damp earth, unable to move his limbs. If Alahir were to die, it would not be because he fell from the saddle. The horse thundered on. The dust was billowing now, and Alahir had no way to tell how wide the chasm had become.

As the galloping horse closed on the yawning gap, Alahir let out a Drenai battle cry. The terrified horse leapt. For a frozen moment Alahir believed they would not survive. It was as if he and his mount were hanging in the air over a colossal drop. Time stood still. Then the horse’s front hooves struck solid ground. He landed awkwardly, and stumbled. Alahir was half thrown from the saddle, but hauled himself back. The horse came to a stop and stood trembling. Alahir patted his sleek neck, then stared back at the chasm. It was closing behind him. Clouds of dust swirled up once more. In the distance he saw huge trees tumble to the mountainside. Touching heels to the still-trembling horse, he rode back to where his men were clustered together. Most of them had dismounted and were holding the reins of their frightened mounts.

His young aide, Bagalan, looking shocked and pale, called out to him. “What is happening?”

“Earthquake,” replied Alahir. “Speak calmly. The horses are frightened enough.” He was surprised to hear that his voice showed no sign of the fear pumping through his body. His legs felt weak, and he decided not to dismount for a while, but sat, staring up at the ruined woods above. Some of the wounded enemy lancers were also standing, alongside their conquerors, all thoughts of war vanished.

For a short while there was silence among the gathered men. As the dust began to settle Alahir rode to where Gilden was sitting on the ground, having the wound to his face stitched by another rider. “Forget prisoners,” said Alahir. “Get them to dig a grave for our dead, then let them all go.”

Gilden raised a hand in acknowledgment.

Turning his horse, he rode back to Bagalan. The youngster was still pale, and there was a bloody cut on his forearm. Alahir dismounted. From his saddlebag he drew out a leather pouch. Flipping it open, he took out a curved needle. “Sit down,” he said. “I’ll stitch that wound.”

The lad sank to the ground. Bagalan looked up at him. “Why did you leap that chasm?” he asked. Alahir threaded the needle and took hold of his aide’s arm. At first the question seemed odd; then he realized how it must have looked. He had turned the horse and headed directly at the great split in the earth. Looking up, he saw other men staring at him. He chuckled and shook his head.

“Because it was there, boy,” he said, inserting the needle into the torn flesh, and drawing the thread through. Once back in camp, with a few flasks of wine being shared, he would tell them the truth.

Or maybe not, he decided.

A
lahir supervised the burial of the eight dead Legend warriors. First they removed the armor. The Drenai were a poor people now, and the cunningly crafted chain mail was too expensive to bury. The head mail coifs and shoulder protectors alone contained hundreds of hand-fashioned rings, involving months of work. The knee-length hauberks, the ring-mail gorgets, the chain leg mail, the helms, swords, and bows would cost more than the average Drenai land worker would earn in several years. Armor was therefore passed from father to son.

Stripped of weapons, each man had copper coins placed over his eyes, held in place by a black strip of silk. Then they were wrapped in their red cloaks and laid carefuly in the mass grave dug out by the enemy lancers. The grave was marked so that the bodies could be recovered later and taken away for a more suitable funeral, where songs would be sung, and their deeds spoken of.

All the dead were well known to Alahir. He had grown up with two of them. And another had been one of his history teachers. This last, a stern man named Graygin, had been nearing sixty, and had tried to hide the fact that the rheumatic had begun to eat away at the joints of his arms. Alahir had known of the condition.
I should have sent him home,
he thought.

“The fields are green, the sky blue, where these men ride,” he said, as the warriors gathered around the grave. “They will be welcomed in the Fabled Hall, for they were men, and the sons of men. We will all see them again. Keep them in your minds and your hearts.” He sighed. “When this patrol is over we will gather them up and speak the stories of their lives.” Pulling his mail shirt hood into place, he donned his plumed helm. “Now it is time to ride,” he told them.

Throughout the afternoon they rode a twisting trail, higher and higher into the mountains. Alahir had sent scouts ahead, and they reported no sign of enemy activity. On one section they found the bodies of three lancers, crushed by falling rocks. Trees were down, cutting off the trail in places, and the riders had to dismount and haul them aside or make difficult detours over rock-strewn slopes.

Gilden, his face stitched and bloody, angled his mount alongside Alahir as they topped a steep slope. “Land’s pretty twisted now. Can’t tell where we are,” he said.

“We’ll see better when we crest that rise,” replied Alahir, pointing southwest. A strong breeze was blowing. It was chill with snow from the upper peaks. Alahir shivered.

Turn to the east,
said a voice in his mind.

Alahir tensed in the saddle. Gilden spotted the movement. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. The horse spooked.” Alahir felt anger swell in his heart. He had thought he had silenced the voices years ago, when he had refused to answer them. They had brought him nothing but humiliation and mocking laughter. As a child he would answer them out loud, and other children would stare at him, at first confused, but then would come the jeers.

“Alahir’s talking to ghosts again!”

Stupid Alahir. Alahir the Loon. “The poor boy is unhinged,” he heard an old woman tell his mother. So he had stopped speaking to them, and stopped listening to them. Gradually they died away. In truth he had never really expected them to stay away for good. His grandfather had gone mad, people said. He had dressed in rags, covered his face in mud, and moved about on all fours wailing like a hound. His great-grandfather, on his mother’s side, had also been insane. Gandias had walled up his wife and two of his sons, and had taken to murdering travelers on the high road above Siccus. It was even said he drank their blood. His trial had produced shocking evidence of his debauchery. When he had been taken to the scaffold Gandias had shrieked and begged, insisting that the voices had told him to do these dreadful things, and that he was not to blame.

So when Alahir started hearing voices, his mother was terrified. One night Alahir had crept downstairs and listened to a conversation between mother and father. “Madness runs in families,” he heard her say. “What if he is another Gandias?”

“He’s just a boy with an overactive imagination,” his father told her. “He will grow out of it.”

Alahir never forgot that conversation. It was why he had never married. If he was to go mad like Gandias, he would do so as a single man. No wife of his would be walled up to die in a dark, airless room.

As the years passed he had grown a little more confident about the voices. Never convinced he was free, but allowing his hopes to grow.

Now they were back.

Turn east, Alahir. There is something you must see.

“You need to step down from the saddle, man,” said Gilden. “Your face is whiter than snow.” Gilden reached out to take his arm.

“I’m fine!” snapped Alahir, snatching his arm out of reach. The movement was so sudden that Alahir’s skittish horse reared and sprang to the left, moving out onto a steep scree slope. Immediately he began to slide. Alahir fought to keep the animal’s head up as he scrambled for footing. There were few riders better than the Drenai captain, but even he almost lost control. Finally firmer ground appeared under the horse’s hooves, and he scrambled safely to a rock shelf some two hundred feet below the other riders. Alahir looked up at the worried faces above him and waved to show he was all right. Then he rode on, seeking a path back to the high trail.

Irritation flared as he was forced to continue along a rock trail running east, away from his men.

Ahead of him was a sheer wall of rock that had been split open by the earthquake. Several tons of earth had been displaced, and a score of trees leveled. As he rode by he glanced at the desolation. His eye was caught by an odd sight. Just beyond the huge mound of fallen earth he saw a wide lintel stone above a half-buried doorway. It made no sense. Who would build a doorway into a mountain?

Alahir knew he should get back to his men. The enemy lancers may have regrouped or been reinforced. And yet . . . The doorway beckoned to him. How long must it have been hidden here, to have been covered so completely?

Dismounting, he trailed the reins of his mount and climbed over the earth mound. On closer inspection the lintel stone was beautifully carved, and an inscription had been engraved upon it. It was full of earth, and Alahir scraped some of it away with his dagger. He soon realized it was in a language unknown to him. Considering the history of the land, he decided the inscription must have been Sathuli. Possibly a tomb of some kind. His interest waned.

Then the voice came again.

Go inside, Alahir.

“Leave me alone, damn you!”

If you wish it I will never speak again. But go inside. The hope of the Drenai lies within.

No other inducement would have caused him to lever himself into the dark of the tomb, but his heart and mind had been filled with worry for his people for too long now. With a sigh he removed his crested helm, laid it on the earth, then climbed inside. Beyond the entrance was a tunnel going off into the dark. Alahir moved along it. Some fifty paces ahead he saw a shaft of light shining down through a crack in the ceiling. Alahir made his way toward it.

The shaft was illuminating a great block of what at first seemed to be ice, shimmering and glistening. Squinting against the glare, Alahir approached the block. It was too perfectly shaped to be ice. More like a gigantic cube of glass. Then he saw what it contained and his breath caught in his throat.

On a wooden stand within the block was a suit of armor, beautifully crafted in bronze. It had overlapping scales of plate, and the breastplate was emblazoned with a golden eagle, wings spread, flaring up and over the chest. There were scaled gauntlets, and a winged helm crested with an eagle’s head. Beneath the breastplate was a bronze ring-mail shirt and leggings with hinged kneecaps. Then there was the sword, the hilt double-handed, the guard a pair of flaring wings, the blade gold. It shone in the shaft of light as if it were crafted from fire.