Darkover: First Contact (46 page)

And after a few seconds, the Voice added, now in his own voice, “And this is all of the message which the lord Geremy Hastur has sent to you at this time; except that he asks that you come as quickly as you can.”

Dom Rafael sat scowling at the floor. It was Bard who asked, “How many of the invaders have crossed the borders of Asturias?”

“Sir, they are an army.”

Dom Rafael said, “It seems we have no choice; otherwise these Serrais will fall upon us one by one, and pick us off at leisure. Say to my kinsman that I will join him, with all the able-bodied men I can raise, and as many
leroni
as I can bring, as soon as I have made certain of the defense of my own house and of my lady and my grandson; and you may tell him that I have said this under truthspell.”

The Voice bowed and there were a few more formal speeches. Then the Voice withdrew, and Dom Rafael turned to Bard.

“Well, my son? I have heard of your renown in war, and look, here is one waiting for you as soon as you come home to Asturias!”

“I would rather fight against Geremy himself,” Bard said, “but the throne of Asturias must be made secure before anyone can sit upon it! If Geremy thinks that our help will strengthen his claim to the throne, it will be for us to show him he is deluded when that time comes. When do we ride forth?”

 

All that day the beacon fires burned, summoning all men who owed service to Asturias, which meant every able-bodied man who could ride against invasion. As they rode out, more and more men joined them, noblemen in armor of metal-reinforced leather, bearing sword and shield and ahorse; bowmen afoot with arrows and fire arrows and long pikes, farmers and peasants riding donkeys and horned pack beasts, carrying ancient spears, maces studded with deadly spikes, even cudgels and pitchforks.

Bard rode with his father’s paxmen, and near them rode a small group of men and women, unarmed, wearing long gray cloaks and hoods which hid their faces; the
leroni
who would fight alongside the warriors. Bard realized that all during his absence his father must have been recruiting and training these men, and suddenly he shivered a little. How long had his father been hatching this rebellion, like some monstrous egg sheltered in his mind? Had he wanted the crown for Alaric, so long ago?

Well, he, Bard, was better suited for war than governing; he would rather be the king’s man than the king, and if the king was one day to be his well-loved brother, there was a good life before him. He began to whistle, and rode on, cheerful.

But an hour or so later he had a shock, for among the
leroni
he had recognized, even under the hood, the form and face of Melisendra.

“Father,” he demanded, “why does the mother of my son ride with the armies? She is no camp follower!”

“No, she is the most skilled
leronis
in our service.”

“Somehow, from what you said, I thought Lady Jerana blamed me for spoiling her for that service—”

“Oh, she is useless for the Sight,” Dom Rafael said. “We have a maiden youth for that, not twelve years old. But for all else, Melisendra is highly skilled. I had thought of taking her for my own
barragana
, at one time, because Jerana is fond of her, and as you will know when you are wedded, it is useless to take a concubine who is detestable to your lawful wife. But—” he shrugged, “Jerana wished to keep her virgin for the Sight, and so I let her be; and you know what happened. I would rather have a grandson anyway. And since Melisendra has proved herself fertile to you, perhaps you should take her to wife.”

Bard frowned with revulsion. He said, “I remind you, sir, that I have already a wife; I shall take no other woman while Carlina lives.”

“You may certainly take Carlina for wife if you can find her,” Dom Rafael said, “but she has not been at court since her father’s death. She fled the court even before Queen Ariel took Valentine to her kinsfolk at Valeron.”

Bard wondered if she had left court to avoid marriage to Geremy. He would certainly have seen this marriage as the best road to claim Ardrin’s throne. Was she waiting for him, somewhere, to come and claim her?

“Where is Carlina, then?”

“I know no more than you, my son. For all I know, she is within a Tower somewhere, learning the ways of a
leronis,
or even—” Dom Rafael raised his eyes to the newest group of fighters who had joined their army on the road, “she may have cropped her hair and taken the vows of the Sisterhood of the Sword.”

“Never!” said Bard, with a shudder of dismay, looking at the women in their scarlet cloaks. Women with their hair cropped shorter than a monk’s, women without grace or beauty, women who wore the Renunciate’s dagger, not in their boots as men did, but strapped across their breasts, in token that a man who laid a hand upon them would die, and that the woman herself would die before surrendering herself as a prize of war. Under their cloaks they wore the odd garb of their sworn sisterhood, breeches and long laced jerkins to their knees, low boots tied around their ankles; their ears were pierced like those of bandits, long hoops dangling from the left earlobe.

“I wonder, my Father, that you will have these—these bitches with us.”

“But,” said Dom Rafael, “they are fighters of great skill, pledged to die rather than fall to an enemy; not one has ever been taken prisoner, or betrayed her oath of service.”

“And you mean to tell me that they live without men? I do not believe it,” Bard jeered. “And what do the men think, riding with women who are not camp followers?”

“They treat them with the same respect as the
leroni,
” said Dom Rafael.

“Respect? For women in breeches, with their ears holed? I would treat them as all such women deserve who give up the decencies of their sex!”

“I would not advise it,” Dom Rafael said, “for I have heard that if one of them is raped, and does not kill herself or her ravisher, her sisters hunt her down and kill them both. As far as any man can say, they are as chaste as the priestesses of Avarra; but no one knows for certain what goes on among them. It may simply be that they are very adept at the art of secret whoring. And they are, as I say, skilled fighters.”

Bard could not imagine Carlina among them. He rode on, silent and moody, until they called him, in midafternoon, to examine the weapons of a band of young farmers who had joined them. One bore an heirloom sword, but the others had axes, pikes which looked as if they had been handed down for generations, pitchforks and cudgels.

“Can you ride?” he asked the man with the sword. “If so you may join my horsemen.”

The young peasant shook his head. “Nay,
vai dom,
not even a plowing beast,” he confessed in his rude dialect. “The sword belonged to my great-grandsire, who bore it a hundred years gone at Firetop. I can fight wi’ it, a wee bit, but e’en so, I better stay wi’ my brethren.”

Bard nodded in agreement. Weapons did not make a soldier.

“As you wish, man, and good fortune to you. You and your brothers may join those men there. They speak your tongue.”

“Aye, they my neighbors,
vai dom,
” he said, then asked shyly, “Are ye no’ the high lord’s son, the one they call the Wolf,
dom?
”

Bard said, “I have been called so.”

“What be ye doin’ here,
dom?
I heard ye were outlawed, in foreign parts—”

Bard chuckled. “He who made me outlaw has gone to explain it in hell. Are you going to try to kill me for the head-prize, man?”

“Nay, no such thing,” said the young peasant, his eyes round in dismay. “Not to the high lord’s son. Only, with you to lead us, we canna’ do other than win,
dom
Wolf.”

Bard said, “May all the Serrais foxes and wild men think so, man,” and watched as the peasants joined their own group. His eyes were thoughtful as he rode forward to join his father. Here and there he heard a snatch of conversation:
the Wolf, the Kilghard Wolf has come to lead us.
Well, perhaps it would serve them well.

When he joined his father, Dom Rafael gestured at the youngest of the
leroni,
a fresh-faced freckled boy, his hair blazing under the gray hood; he was only twelve or so. “Rory has seen something, Bard. Tell my son what you have seen, lad.”

“Beyond the wood, Dom Wolf—Dom Bard,” he amended quickly, “a party of men coming to ambush us.”

Bard’s eyes narrowed. “You saw this. With the Sight?”

The
laranzu
said, “I could not see so well, riding, as in the crystal, or in a pool of clear water. But they are there.”

“How many? Where? How are they drawn up?” He fired questions at the boy. Rory got down from his pony, and taking up a twig, began to draw a pattern in the dust.

“Four, maybe five dozen men. About ten mounted, like this—” He sketched a line at an angle to the rest. “Some of the rest have bows. . . .”

Melisendra bent over the boy and said, “Are there
leroni
with them?”

“I think not,
domna
. It is hard to see. . . .”

Bard looked quickly around at the great body of men straggling along behind them. Damn! He had not thought it necessary, yet, to form them up; but if they were taken on the flank this way, even a few men could do dreadful damage! Even before he thought seriously about the ambush, he snapped, “Rory, see this! Are there men following us?”

The boy squinted his eyes and said, “No Dom Wolf, the road is clear behind us all the way to Dom Rafael’s stronghold and as far as the borders of Marenji.”

That meant that the invading army from Serrais was somewhere between them and Castle Asturias. Would they have to fight their way through it, and find the castle under siege? Perhaps the invaders could wear out Geremy Hastur before they ever got there. No, that was no way to talk about an ally under truce. And meanwhile there was an ambush waiting for his army. A laughably small one, intended—he was sure—only to delay them awhile, so they would halt to tend their wounded, not arrive at the castle till after nightfall, or perhaps the next day. Which would mean an attack was planned for that night. An army of this size could not escape observation; if they had sentry birds or
leroni
with the Sight, the army of Serrais must surely know that they were on the way, and have some special interest in keeping them away for another day.

He said something of this to his father, and Dom Rafael nodded in agreement. “But what shall we do?”

“A pity we cannot get around them somewhere,” Bard said, “and leave the men of this ambush to watch here like a cat at an empty mousehole. But we cannot take an army this size past this wood unseen. Rory says there is no
leronis
with them, but that does not mean there is no
leronis
in rapport with one of their leaders, seeing through his eyes. So we cannot attack them without also alerting the main army of Serrais.” He considered for a time. “And if we do so, even though we annihilate them quickly—four dozen men cannot stand against all our army—it would give time for
leronis
or sentry bird to spy out our numbers and how we are positioned and weaponed. But what a
leronis
does not witness she cannot report. I think the main army must go past the wood where the ambushers will not see them. Father, give some man your cloak and let him ride your horse, and send him with me, with your banner, while you take the main army around the wood. Meanwhile, give me—” he paused to consider, “ten or twelve picked horsemen, and a dozen swordsmen with tall shields; and a couple of dozen bowmen. We will go the main path; and if we are fortunate, the watchers in rapport with the ambush will think that is all we have to lift the siege of Castle Asturias. Take all the
leroni
with you, and when you are past this wood, sit down with them and their sentry birds, and let them tell us what manner of army Serrais has sent against us this time.”

This was quickly agreed to.

“Take the bowmen of the Guild,” he was told, “and Lord Lanzell’s horsemen—there are fifteen of them and they work well together and follow one man. Pick your foot soldiers yourself.”

“Father, I do not know the men well enough, now, to find picked men so quickly.”

“Jerrall does,” Dom Rafael said, gesturing to his banner bearer. “He has been with me twenty years. Jerrall, go with my son and obey him as you would myself!”

Drawing up his picked men, watching the main army form up tightly to go the other way, Bard felt a queer tightening in his throat. He had been fighting since he was thirteen years old, but this was the first time he had fought under his father’s banner; and the first time since he had been sent into outlawry that he fought for a land about whose welfare he cared a
sekal
.

They swept down on the ambush from behind, taking the mounted men unawares and killing half their horses before the foot soldiers could rally to them. Bard’s men formed a shield wall and shot blazing arrows toward them. The battle lasted less than half an hour, after which Bard’s men had the Serrais banner and the wounded remnant fled in all directions. Bard had lost two or three men, but they had captured or killed all of the enemy’s horses. He gave orders to cut the throats of the most gravely wounded—they would not survive being moved, in any case, and this was more merciful than leaving them for
kyorebni
and wolves—to take up the gear and armor.

Rejoining the main army, they had their prisoners interrogated by a
laranzu
who could mind-probe. From this they learned that they would, indeed, have to fight their way through the whole Serrais army before they came to Castle Asturias. The army, outside the walls of the castle, was preparing to attack, but was ready to hold it under siege if they could not capture it by surprise attack.

Bard nodded, grim-faced. “We must press on through the night. We cannot bring up all the supply wagons so quickly, but our best men must arrive in time to spoil the surprise those men of Serrais are planning!”