Godbond (25 page)

Pajlat led the enemy charge, the hooves of the fanged horses thundering, their chests roaring, loud as the black storm that still coiled overhead. At the horses' heels swarmed Otter clansfolk on the foot, and the Cragsmen lumbered along with them. As for me, I loosed my bolt along with the other Red Hart archers, and most of us felled our targets, for we of the hunting tribe seldom waste an arrow. And half a twelve of feathered shafts thudded into the thick bisonhide shield Pajlat held tight to his chest. I tried the mercy shot to his neck, though not with any thought of mercy—I badly wanted to kill him. But my bolt missed, parting his hair rather than lodging in his throat.

“Ill luck!” shouted Karu from her curly-haired mount by my side. There was no time for a second shot. My Red Hart comrades were changing their bows for spears and knives, and I found Alar in my hand, and with a shout we kicked our ponies forward to meet the charge.

Host met host with a shock like that of sea turned against itself, like clashing breakers, sending spray of blood into the air.

It was a long, bloody day with no rest.

Alar wanted to kill the Cragsmen. It was well thought of, for there were few among Kor's followers who were fit to face those great hulks with their vicious blackthorn clubs, but I would not heed Alar. I felt I must stay by Kor. He was not yet well in strength, his face was pale, his eyes narrowed in pain. And everything seemed hard that day, as if ill luck squatted in the air, as Karu had said—she had her mount killed under her, though the thick, curly fur was often proof against fangs and knives, and she buried her stone blade to the hilt, then, in a Cragsman's leg before he howled and struck her senseless. I saw my former lover, Winewa, bring down another in the same way, and a small mob of Seal hacked the lout dead. I saw other Seal, with that inborn liquid grace of theirs, slipping into gaps in the enemy lines as lithely as seawater, spearing horsemen from the side, sending Otter scuttling back. But there seemed always to be more horsemen, more Otter, and I could not reach Pajlat to slay him, and Kor's breath came in tight, rasping gasps—I could hear him next to me.

Another wound?

Cuts, nothing worse. Yet I seem—so weak
—

Bleeding? Have you torn yourself open?

Curse it to Mahela, yes
.

Overhead, a chilling laugh, sounding even through the clamor of battle, and out of the bruise-black cloud swooped a devourer with a rider on its back. Mahela, in her human form, with her retinue of fell servants swirling around her. Thunder cracked and rain poured down, so dense that the world turned black and green, as if we were under the sea. We battled on, our feet and our horses slipping on wet moss and wet rock and mud. And my people of the Red Hart were afraid, I could see it in their cringing shoulders. Despite themselves, they flinched every time a devourer swirled overhead, flying low.

Mahela looked on, amused, diverted, delighted, dressed as if for a festival—her shimmering green gown floated and eddied about her as she flew on her demon steed, the skirt of it flowing down over her feet. And oddly, she looked beautiful, eerily beautiful, with the waves and torrents of her black hair and her fair white face, comely and daunting, nearly like that of—no, I had to be mad, thinking it. Battle bends the mind.

Kor
—

His sword, Zaneb, fended off his enemies, but he was gazing up at Mahela with a peculiar look, at once intent and aloof. And mindspeaking him, I felt for a moment the surge of his feelings, and they were—as white and black as Mahela, and far more mad than my thoughts. Blood-hot. Moon-mad.

I wrenched myself away. No time, I told myself, there were enemies to tend to. Enemies pressing hard.

“Kor! 'Ware the foes that tread on earth!”

He lowered his glance to me. “Mahela has meddled, somehow,” he said. “I feel it in her. We amuse her.”

“I know it,” I said sourly. I knew Mahela of old, and I did not trust her smile. I knew she would strike in her own sweet poisoned time.

Chapter Eighteen

Only because darkness fell early under cloud and rain, forcing the attackers back to their camp, did we outlast the battle. And when Kor got down from Sora, with my help, he looked as pale as the wounded who were being taken, senseless, into Seal Hold—or the dead, who were being sent away, with blessing and apology, into the sea.

Kor! Are you bleeding still?

Does it matter?

Hush
. I helped him to his bed—he could walk, though barely—and looked at the wound, and saw thankfully that it no longer bled. He had worn much swaddling, and it had stanched the flow. I saw to fresh bandaging, and he let me, tamely.

When I had finished he said to me aloud but privately, for my ear only, “Dan, we cannot hold them off for another day.”

“I know,” I told him. Kor was not one to cry despair. He spoke but what was true. We would not last.

Yet we had to. Unless we held them off until Tassida came.… The others Pajlat and his minions might enslave, but Kor and I would be killed, surely and none too gently. And then there would be no hope for anyone, no hope for the dying world, for he and I and Tassida never would be three.…

Should she come to us. I knew what the meddling was that made Mahela smile. I knew her dark hand lay heavy on Tass.

My brother
, Kor thought to me. He also knew, he also remembered the larger battle, and all that he could not say in any other way was in those silent words.

“We must attack,” I said.

We worked out the plan over food. Our aim had to be to take Pajlat by surprise, perhaps sleeping, and kill him—it went against our natures to think like brigands, but the thing had to be done. The Fanged Horse raiders would fight on after their king was killed, they would as soon fight as breathe, but their Otter allies might lose heart.

“And if there is one person whom I do not mind killing by stealth, it is Pajlat,” I said. “Unless it might be Mahela.”

Kor looked at me, and said nothing, for he was spent. He ate little, and afterward lapsed at once into a sleep that was more like a stupor. It fell to me to choose our warriors and speak to them. I took a turn at guard, then went and lay by Kor's side, wakeful, but glad that he slept.

Wanhope that I was, by the time I arose, in the dense darkness before dawn, I was telling myself that we would be able to hold our own at least one more day. But Kor was right. We did not.

The dawn attack let us manage it, bloodily, until three-quarterday, but otherwise did us little good. The enemy had seemed almost to be expecting us, as if some ill-wishing bird had told them we were coming. By the time the sun passed its height, we had been forced back up the cliffs we had braved in the dark, and Pajlat, curse him, still rampaged, nearly untouched. But I had wrenched away his long reach, his bisonhide whip, so that he fought on only with knife and maul. Kor had killed a Cragsman, dodging under the cudgel and driving for the throat, taking a glancing blow on his ribs and back as he did so, but no worse harm. I felt senselessly hopeful, so much so that when I saw the rider I felt at first an unreasoning leap of heart, as if I had seen Sakeema—

Bursting like a dayspring from between the mountainside trees, leaping his horse into the battle, as I had done two days before, and the horse was a fanged mare, I knew the one, the sand-colored fanged mare Kor and I had chosen for our messenger to Tass. The rider, a tall and comely yellow-braided youth, but not the one we had sent for Tass—and my thoughts of god, king, savior, fell to ashes.

It was Ytan.

What curse rode on my back, that when I looked for Sakeema, I had to find Ytan? Sheer evil luck, worst of ill luck, the same perverse luck that kept my blade away from Pajlat's throat? Or was it Mahela's hand, heavy on me?

With that mad-dog, death's-head grin of his, and with thick bandaging still wrapped around the wounds Talu had given him, Ytan joined the nearest Cragsman and began with glee to fight. And though he would fight a Fanged Horse warrior if one were foolish enough to attack him, for the most part he turned his knife on his own tribe-fellows. He, Ytan, the one enemy I could not bring myself to kill. And the other Red Harts were as badly shaken as I was to see him raising weapon against them. Perhaps worse, for they had not encountered him since he had left the tribe. They faltered in their line of battle, and the Otter River people cheered, and Pajlat's horsemen roared like their fanged mares and pressed forward.

By nightfall, our enemies owned a foothold on the headland. On the day to follow, almost certainly, they would take the Hold. For Kor, an unpleasant death would follow. For the others, slavery at the best. Torture or death, perhaps. For women, the shameful torture called rape.

And soon after, world's end.

That night Kor and I walked out into the darkness, not willing to waste in sleep what might be our last hours together, even though Kor could not walk far. We spoke to those who stood guard on the portion of the headland that was left to us, and then we walked to the point and sat on the chill rocks, looking out over the greenly shimmering midnight sea far below.

It seemed to me that there was nothing of hope or solace to say, so I did not speak. But Kor said to me, “I feel so much regret in you, Dan, and I cannot understand why.”

I sputtered as if ocean had slapped me and given me a faceful of seawater. I had left him and gone off on a fool's quest—“I left you just when you needed me most,” I complained, “and to no purpose, and you cannot understand why I regret it?”

He smiled slightly at my tone—though I could not see him in the night and the murk of Mahela's making, I felt the smile in his mind. “Indeed I do not,” he said. “Nor can I comprehend why you bewail the quest. It has gained us both much.”

I snorted in disbelief. “I know how little it has gained me,” I retorted, “and how can it have gained you anything?”

“But it did. More than you know.”

This was a new tale to me. I hearkened, and when he spoke on his voice was very gentle, almost tender.

“It was not as bad for me as you believe, Dan, after you left. Small wonder that you think so, for you remember those times just before you went away, and they were the worst of my life. I was sunk in a pit of my own making. But when I saw you truly had to leave me, I made up my mind to be strong.” He spoke but merest truth, as always. His words were clean of any plea for pity or praise. “I had to be strong. And I managed it better day by day.”

“I am glad of it,” I told him. “But I deem the pit was of Mahela's making.”

“Scarcely, Dan. She did not make me pity myself, nor can any adversary, no matter how strong. It was of my own doing.”

His honesty silenced me. He went on, he told me more.

His days had been spent in preparation for the war and siege that he knew must come. Even though he drove himself every day, working his people hard and himself even harder, so that he should have been lost in exhaustion by sundown, he often found that he could not sleep. And even though no vigil was any longer required of him, he often walked the headland during the night.

Kor said, “There was no time by day to think of anything but food and the fighting to come and the squabbling within the tribe. But at night there was a plenitude of time to think, and room. At first the thoughts were dark. And when my mind turned to you, none too kind.” I felt rather than saw his smile, his quiet amusement. “But in the course of many such nighttimes, hard work by day and wandering by night, something began to happen. There is a—a wisdom in the night.

“It came to me as if out of the dark spaces between the stars. I felt very small beneath that vast sky, and it was a comfort in a way, that I felt myself not at the center of things. But sometimes I felt myself—I can scarcely describe it. I became part of the night, I was as vast as sky, as immense as sea, I was at one with the washings of the sea, and I was—yet myself. And in a dim way I began to understand what I am, both things at once. Small, yet vast. Fragile, yet—deathless. Dan, can you at all understand? Saying it, I feel mad.”

I told him, “You're no more a madman than I am.”

“That's dubious comfort, Dan!” Teasing, he moved to strike me lightly with his fist, then caught his breath and cursed. “Bloody hell! But I am stiff.” At my side I heard his stirrings as he lifted himself and changed position to ease the ache of his wound.

“I will go back,” I offered, “and get a cloak, a pelt, something for you to sit on.”

“No. I am all right. It is a great thing, Dan, not to need too much softness any longer.”

A quirk in his voice like the quirk of his wry half smile.

“Dan, you are so good to me—if you had stayed by me, you would have let me weep on your shoulder forever. Truly, you did me a favor by going away for a while and making me be strong. And an even greater one by coming back to me again.”

He meant it. My heart ached so that I could not speak. After a moment he went on.

“I was not without companionship in the nights. Vallart came to me sometimes, out of the shadow-stars in the tidal pools.”

“Alone,” I murmured, remembering how I had seen Chal alone at Sableenaleb.

“Yes, alone. It felt nearly—he must have been very much like you, Dan. It felt as if you were here with me, in a way, all the time.”

I said huskily, “I am grateful to him.”

A long silence. I sensed Kor had more to say, and waited for it, and in time it came.

“One moonlit night I walked far down the beaches toward the greenstones and found a queer sort of living creature lying in the sand. It was a white-breasted cormorant—I saw it first by the flash of those white feathers, and then saw the glossy black of the rest of it glimmering in the moonlight. But it was far larger than any cormorant should be, nearly as large and heavy as a man, with a mighty beak the size of my sword. And though it darted its weapon of a beak at me and hissed at me to warn me away, it had no strength to move from where it lay. In the moonlight I could see the dark blot of the wound on its white breast.”