Exile's Children (80 page)

“You look weary.” Lhyn's fingers were deft as they tied off her husband's braids. “Shall you rest now?”

“I am weary.” Racharran flexed his shoulders, sighing. “I am weary to my soul. But no, not rest—there's no time. Do the Breakers move by night …”

“The guards are set, no?” Lhyn fastened silver brooches in his hair, pinning the warrior's braids. “Men watch, and the Stone Shapers are in place. What more can you do?”

“Be there; wait,” he answered. “Pray.”

“Wait here,” she said. “Pray here. With me.”

He smiled a slow, sad smile and took her in his arms, wondering all the while if it was for the last time. “I cannot,” he said against her cheek.

“Better the People see me; see all their akamans. We must go strutting about and pretend that all's well. Besides, I'd be there on the cliff if they come.”

“Yes, I know.” She kissed him. “I am selfish—I'd have you to myself this night.”

He met her kiss and held her close a moment, then loosed his hold. “Have you any regrets?”

She smiled and stroked his cheek and shook her head. “None.”

“Good; nor I.” He reached for his weapons. “The Maker be with us all.”

“He is.” She rose with him, going to the lodgeflap. “Perhaps Morrhyn shall wake soon.”

Racharran nodded and tried to smile. “Perhaps.”

Cloud scarred the moon's face and curtained the stars. A wind gusted chill along the clifftop, whispering mournfully. A dog barked, was answered, and then fell silent. The night was filled with a palpable tension, as if the darkness possessed its own weight and pressed down upon the watchers.

Out on the flat beyond the hills, fires burned, myriad points of light that stretched out and back in a great mass that moved inexorably forward, toward the Meeting Ground. It was as if, Racharran thought, some vast funereal procession came to the People. He looked to the right and left, checking the warriors and the Grannach he knew were in place. It was hard to wait: the People fought on horseback, swift; not like this, nor by night. He spat, and glanced westward, to where the Maker's Mountain stood. The peak was cloud-shrouded, only a dim bulk against the sky.

Morrhyn, wake!

He turned his face back to the plain. The lights were closer, massing until they seemed a solid line of fire, like a river of flame that ran in flood toward the pass. He checked his arrows, knowing they were sound: needing something to do. He glanced at his son. Rannach sat stroking a stone along the edges of his hatchet, his eyes fixed firm on the blade. To his other side, Colun squatted with Baran and three of the Grannach Stone Shapers. All carried battle-axes and wide knives; Colun was humming tunelessly. Spread out along the cliff's rim were some two hundred
Commacht, Perico with his Aparhaso warriors, and Kanseah with his Naiche. Across the width of the gap, invisible in the cloudy night, Yazte and his Lakanti waited with Chakthi and his Tachyn, four Stone Shapers with them. More men waited behind: reinforcements. Kahteney and Hadduth were amongst the lodges; and Morrhyn.

The fires came on: so fast. By the midpoint of the night they must surely reach the pass. Racharran felt a terrible certainty the Breakers would attack, not waiting for dawn but commencing their onslaught immediately, like the dark, shadow creatures they were. He murmured a prayer: that Morrhyn wake, and then that the People defeat these monstrous invaders. He asked the Maker's forgiveness of his doubt, and prayed Lhyn die easily, and he with honor.

It was hard now to believe that any could survive.

He saw Rannach looking at him and smiled, wondering if the expression was truly as sour as it felt.

Rannach said, “Father, I'm sorry.”

Racharran nodded, his smile warmed by that, and clasped his son's shoulder. “And I. But that's in the past now, eh?”

Rannach ducked his head and touched his father's hand. Then his face grew fierce and he indicated the waiting men, the cliff's scarp. “We shall not die alone. They'll not easily take the Meeting Ground.”

“No, not easily.”

“Arrhyna believes Morrhyn will wake.” Rannach's smile was both tender and sad.

“Perhaps.” Racharran shrugged. It was momentarily harder to hope.

The lights drew closer, bobbing and dancing through the expectant night as if all the fireflies in the world had gathered, or a wall of scourging flame rushed at the People. Soon it was possible to see that each was a torch held aloft by an individual rider. There were so many, Racharran thought, so very many, and all with the single, awful purpose. His mouth felt dry and he spat again; and wondered if he was afraid, or only sad that soon the People should be slaughtered, and Ket-Ta-Witko lost to them.

The wind got up and blew the cloud away to the east. The Moon of the Turning Year emerged huge and bright, a single night from its full girth. It lit the Maker's Mountain with a silver radiance, the pinnacle blazing eerily above the lesser peaks. Stars pricked the sky; fewer, it seemed, than the approaching torches.

Colun said, “Good. We can see them clearer now.”

The great burning column slowed, bunching so that it became a
single, vast mass. And still it moved forward, but now a group of riders came charging on ahead, almost to the ingress of the pass.

Men nocked arrows, and Racharran called softly, “Hold! Not yet! Wait on my word,” hoping that Yazte and Chakthi gave the same command.

The Breakers halted and he saw two dismount. Their torches burned atop long poles that they drove into the ground, one to either side of the pass like guiding beacons. Faces hid by garish helms stared at the opening, at the heights above, and then the Breakers swung back astride their weirdling mounts and with the others raced back to the main horde.

Now that the cloud was gone and the night was grown silvery, the watchers on the cliffs could see that each pole bore a crossbar, from which things were hung, swaying slowly, turning: heads.

From one pole, Juh and Hazhe gazed blindly toward the Meeting Ground; from the other, Tahdase and Isten fixed blank eyes on the pass.

Racharran heard Perico cry out softly, and when he looked in that direction, he saw Kanseah shape a sign of warding.

Then a single horn sounded and all the torches were doused.

By the moon's light the Breakers' bright armor glittered and shone ethereal, as if phantom rainbows spilled across the plain.

The horn sounded again and they charged.

Racharran heard Baran chuckle, and saw the Stone Shaper begin to move his hands, chanting lowly.

The foremost Breakers entered the pass. Their beasts growled and snarled now, the sound like the rumble of falling stone or the grumbling of floodwater filling up the passage. Twenty abreast they came, racing their mounts onward, urging them to the slaughter, more than Racharran could count.

They filled the pass and he turned his head to where the Grannach's new-formed wall blocked the egress. He saw the vanguard haul their animals to a stop, the lion-beasts rearing, pawing the air, roaring their frustration. The riders struggled to turn them back, shouting to those who followed. But the beasts' howling dinned too loud and the press came on too eager, driving the forerunners up against the wall. The strangeling animals fought one another as they were forced together, rearing up to claw and bite their fellows, even the riders.

Then Baran's chanting, and that of his companion Stone Shapers, grew louder, rising to a guttural crescendo. And ceased.

It seemed then that the earth itself moved. Racharran felt himself lifted up and dropped as the pass caved in. The sound of it deafened him—not even the running buffalo herds made such a thunder. He saw
the rimrock shudder and bulge, then fragment and topple down. Vast blocks of stone rained onto the Breakers, crushing riders and their mounts like bugs under the terrible fury of the Stone Shapers' magic. It was a brief vision, fragmented as the rock that rained down to fill the pass along all its length. And the sound lasted far longer, as if the stone bones of Ket-Ta-Witko roared in triumph. That seemed to echo off the sky itself, so that men covered their ears and flattened on the ground, awed by this demonstration of Grannach power. A cloud rose, hiding the stars and the moon, and small shards of rock exploded upward, as if the broken walls ground ever deeper onto their prey, expelling the lesser pieces.

Beyond the entrance to the pass, the horde halted as boulders tumbled outward, bouncing and rolling across the grass to claim more victims.

The poles that dangled the severed heads of Juh and Hazhe, Tahdase and Isten, were broken and buried, and where the pass had stood, there now existed only a barrier of stone. It blocked the ingress and its face was unsound, all filled with treacherously loose rock and spills of shale. Before it, spread in a wide fan, the ground was littered with boulders.

The dust cloud fell back and the thunder ground to a reluctant halt. Then the night filled with a new sound as the Breakers raised their heads and howled their anger. Their beasts roared as the advancing army pushed those closest to the wall against the tumbled rocks, and for a while confusion reigned.

Then the lone horn sounded and slowly order was imposed on the milling throng. The snarling, fighting creatures were forced to snapping obedience as the riders drew them back, regrouping. Once more they clustered in a solid mass and, by the light of the burgeoning moon, the watchers on the rimrock saw armored figures dismount, stripping their beasts of harness as others, carrying poles that ended in long spikes with recurved hooks, came forward. These wore night-black armor painted with sigils on chest and back that glowed the dull crimson of old, dried blood.

“We've fought these,” Colun said. “They're beastmasters of some kind.”

There was no need of further explanation: the jet-armored figures drove the beasts forward through the toppled boulders, goading the creatures to the wall, to the foot of the cliffs.

Like enormous cats, they began to scramble upward.

“Our work, this.” Baran rose and shouted across the length of the new-formed wall. “Do you call your men back from the rim.”

The Stone Shapers began their chanting again. Racharran watched the Breakers' beasts climb. Fifty of them, he guessed; less as some lost footing on the unsure rock and fell, yowling furiously, to the ground. Those limped and licked at hurts, and snarled irritably as the beastmasters drove them back to their task.

Fresh stone came loose from the wall and the cliffs' edges, and it seemed the rock shifted under the weight of the clambering creatures, no longer packed solid but become suddenly impermanent. The beasts screamed and fell, and from above them boulders tumbled, flinging them away or crushing them until none remained on the slopes.

Twice more the dark-armored beastmasters forced the surviving animals to attempt the climb; and twice more Baran and his fellows sent stone against them, thwarting the attempts.

The horn belled and the beastmasters fell back, bringing the animals with them. Only nine lived still, and they limped, favoring wounds.

“A lesson taught them, eh?” Colun's voice was triumphant. “I doubt they'll try that again.”

“Likely not.” Racharran smiled wearily. “But what shall come next?”

He realized the sky grew light. The moon was gone away to the west, and along the eastern horizon a band of brightness presaged the sun's rising. The disc came up red-golden as fire and sent long lances of brilliance across the plain. It shone bright on the Breakers' rainbow-hued armor and on the furred and scaled hides of their mounts. It seemed to Racharran they covered all the grass, and he knew they were not defeated; would not give up. He knew they must, sooner or later, overcome by sheer weight of numbers.

And tonight the Moon of the Turning Year would reach its full.

Morrhyn, wake!

For want of occupation, Lhyn spilled leaves into a pot and set the tea to brewing. Through the hides of the lodge she could hear the sounds of battle, distant but yet horribly clear. She wondered if Racharran lived—and Rannach—and prayed they did and were not wounded. She prayed that Morrhyn wake, and fought to still the doubting voice that whispered he would not, or if he did, it should be too late.

She looked at the sleeping man, his snowy hair spread loose on the furs, and saw him shift, turning this way and that, the lids of his closed eyes moving twitching.

Kahteney said softly, “He dreams. Surely, he dreams.”

Lhyn turned to the Lakanti wakanisha, but said nothing. There
seemed nothing to say that had not already been spoken. Kahteney smiled wanly and shrugged.

Hadduth only sat, his lean-planed face unmoving as his dark eyes, which neither blinked nor shifted from Morrhyn's face.

Lhyn wished he were not there. No matter Chakthi's vow, no matter the Tachyn fought with the rest, she could not feel comfortable with Hadduth. There was something indefinable about the man, something secretive and hidden. She thought his eyes were bland and unyielding as a snake's.

Maker, she prayed, let him wake in time.

And stirred the tea and waited.

“We can do no more.” Baran gestured angrily at the jagged rimrock. “Do we bring down more, there'll be no cliff left—only a slope they can climb.”

Racharran nodded, accepting. The cliff's edge was no longer a regular line but all indented and broken where the Stone Shapers had sent it down onto the Breakers. The ground below was spread with rocks and shattered bodies, those of armored attackers and beasts alike. He nocked a shaft. Colun and his Grannach, warriors and Stone Shapers alike, drew heavy axes.

“We bowmen will look to shoot them as they climb.” Racharran addressed the Grannach creddan. “Do you take those who reach the rim.”

Colun smiled and Racharran called out the order to the Matawaye.

The sun stood high now, the sky all blue and cloudless, marked with the wheeling shapes of the crows and ravens that gathered in anticipation of carrion feast. At least, Racharran thought, we've the advantage of height. The Breakers' arrows fell short of the rimrock, and the breaking of the cliff edge crenellated the stone so that the warriors enjoyed some small measure of cover from which to fire their shafts.