Sons of the Falcon (The Falcons Saga) (49 page)

Thorn
grabbed her hand, closed his eyes, and breathed. A sizzling white glow
enveloped the staff’s head. He stomped a foot. Carah’s legs grew weak as he
snatched energy from her veins. A wave surged out from the epicenter of his
foot and raced through the breach in the wall. Surging up the street, it
rumpled cobbles, ripped walls off houses, tossed carts on the curbs, and
finally struck the outer wall like the Goddess’s own hammer. Twenty-foot-thick layers
of rubble-packed stone cracked, but held. Thorn sent a second wave, a third, and
finally the wall gave way. Open moor lay beyond.

Kelyn
had gone back to fighting in the meantime. Drys slashed madly on his left and
Lord Rhogan of Mithlan on his right. At the Fieran end of the dais, Lady Drona,
her nephew, and a handful of White Mantles stood against a dozen soldiers.
Someone had given King Arryk a sword. He jabbed high through the fence of his
protectors and put the blade through a man’s eye.

Thorn
shoved Carah through the breach and called to his brother, but Kelyn shouted
back, “I can’t leave them, damn it.”

Sweating
and gray-faced from his efforts, Thorn leveled the staff at the man opposing
his brother. A searing blast sent the Falcon hurtling. “Get your daughter out
of here!”

Sense
broke through the red haze glazing Da’s eyes.

“Head
east,” Thorn said. “East, do you hear?”

“Yes.”
Da’s hands were sticky with blood, but Carah didn’t mind as he hoisted her over
the pile of rubble. They raced along the warped street, between crumbling walls
and collapsing roofs. Uncle Thorn’s wave must have overturned lamps inside the
houses, for fire blazed in the thatching, curled through windows. The citizens
of Bramoran stumbled about the ruins, bleeding, confused, sobbing. Kelyn crashed
through a knot of them, and Carah leapt over the crushed body they gathered to
inspect.

Behind
them, thunder roared. She longed to glance back, see if Uncle Thorn and Rhian
followed, but on the battlements of the inner curtain, gruff voices shouted, “Crossbows!
… anyone in the street!”

Ahead
on the outer curtain, startled sentries rushed to the sight of the explosion. Carah’s
breath throbbed, ragged and hot in her throat. The hole in the wall was so
close now. The sentries saw them coming and pointed. Was that a crossbow in a
man’s hand? The battlements were too high for her to be sure.

A
man in the livery of the city watch held up a hand and called, “Stop where you
are!” In his other hand he carried a bared short sword. Kelyn barreled into him
before he thought to raise the blade in his defense. A stroke from Da’s sword
opened the watchman’s chest. Carah never had to break her stride. The sentries
ahead shouted at the sight of the dead man falling. Quarrels whistled past.
Carah shrieked, threw a hand over her head, as if that were an adequate shield,
and fell into the shadow of the broken wall. All the debris here had been thrown
down a thirty-foot drop into the moat. Before she could work up the courage to
jump, Kelyn grabbed her shoulders and tossed her through the breach. Flailing,
she sucked down a gulp of air. The moat rose fast, and the icy water was as
startling as a slap. She surfaced, spitting reeking water from her lips, and
stroked like mad. She was a poor swimmer, but terror sped her along and soon
her hands were clawing up the muddy bank.

A
man screamed in pain. Heavy splashes shook the waters. More people were bailing
from Bramoran, like rats from a burning ship, but who? She had no chance to
look back. A quarrel thunked into the soft earth beside her, and Da hauled her
to her feet. “Weave!” he shouted as they ran. Ahead, a stand of andyr trees
filled a hollow in the hills. Every couple of steps Carah feinted left or
right, left and left again, then to the right. She couldn’t feel her legs
anymore, wasn’t sure how they kept running; her lips tingled, and black spots
danced before her eyes.
If you faint you’re dead
, she warned herself.

The
trees swept close to embrace her. Leaves slapped at her cheeks, and she used
the trunk of an andyr to break her headlong flight. She sagged against it,
unable to catch her breath. Pain pricked her thigh. Surely they were out of
range of the crossbows here.

Da
spun her around, clenched her arms. “Are you hurt?”

She
shook her head, fast tiny jerks, then reached for the needle of pain in her
leg. A crossbow’s quarrel had punctured her silver robe and hung there limply.
The steel point brushed against her skin, scratching it, but drew no blood. Too
close. She laughed and sobbed at the same time.

Her
da held her tightly, then set her aside and hurried to the edge of the wood.
“Look there!” He swept an arm high. “Rorin! Here!” Lord Westport puffed and
stumbled, found the source of the voice and ran on. He had lost his frivolous
hat.

“They
killed my boy,” he panted, falling into Kelyn. “They killed my Barrin.” He sank
to the ground and threw up in the weeds.

More
ran along behind him, a slow trickle. “Rhogan! Drys!” Kelyn beckoned. Two women
ran with them. One was Lord Mithlan’s black-haired granddaughter. Rhogan
half-carried her, half-shoved her toward the trees. Blood flowed down her face.
The other? Yes, it was Maeret. Carah never thought she’d be happy to see her.
Her sodden skirts were no impediment and she soon outpaced Lord Zeldanor and
the others.

“What
the fuck is happening?” Drys bellowed, drawing up under the branches. Unmentionable
filth was plastered in his yellow hair. “Why are we fighting our own?” He
balled his fists. “I’ll rip Valryk’s head from his shoulders, I swear to the
Mother!”

Rhogan
sat his granddaughter down in the clearing, saw to the gash in her scalp. Aisley
nodded heavily, bloodlessly, then fell back in the leaves in a dead faint.

“My
father’s in the moat,” Maeret cried, pointing and tugging Kelyn’s sleeve.
“Please, we have to pull him out. He’ll drown!”

 Kelyn
stopped her from running back, hauled her into the trees. “Davhin is lost. I
saw him hit with a quarrel.”

Was
it he who had screamed? Carah watched the breach in the wall, the shivering
waters of the moat. More than one body floated face-down. Others lay strewn on
the bank. A man with a quarrel in his leg tried to rise, but a second sprouted
from his back and he laid still.

The
clash of steel rang through the breach. Someone was still trying to fight their
way free. “C’mon,” Da breathed, like a prayer. “Jump, damn it.”

Several
men in white showed enough sense to do just that. They leapt from the hole as
one unit and climbed onto the bank again, spreading their great mantles to
conceal three dark-clad people between them, one of whom leaned on another.
Lord Ulmarr sprinted ahead, shouting obscenities between gasps.

One
of the White Mantles took a quarrel in the back, collapsed in a heap. Another of
his brothers stopped to help him, but a quarrel found him, too. In their midst,
King Arryk turned and shouted. The Mantles hauled him bodily out of range, while
he reached back for the fallen guards. The guard who had stopped to aid his
brother rose and tore the quarrel from his thigh and followed, but too slowly.
The alarm had sounded, and soldiers flocked to the battlements. Quarrels rained
down. He lagged farther and farther behind. Carah thought he even looked
hesitant to catch up, feared he might turn and make himself the target.

“To
hell with it,” Da growled, and before Carah could stop him he burst from cover.
As he ran past King Arryk, he urged the Mantles on toward the trees, then
wrapped an arm around the lagging guard and helped him run free of the quarrels.
Only then did Arryk come quietly, leaning again on his companion.

Lady
Athmar glared like a rabid she-wolf as she entered the shadows under the branches.
Carah backed away. So did Rorin and Maeret.
Formidable wall
, Uncle
Allaran had called her. Carah saw why. Hostility pulsed from her like blood
from a heart. She seemed to have lost her weapon, and for that Carah was
grateful, else the slaughter might have continued under the trees. “Daxon, you
hit?” she demanded.

“No,”
her nephew barked. Doubled over and gasping for air, he discovered he bled from
a gash across his chest. “Wait, yes! Abyss rot them.”

King
Arryk clutched his side and drooped against Lady Athmar, but the weight of a
full-grown man taxed her very little.

Drys
ran to help Kelyn, but the wounded Mantle shook them off and limped the rest of
the way by himself. The wings on his helm boasted more elaborate scrollwork
than the others. “Sire?” He tossed aside the quarrel he’d torn from his leg and
hurried to help Drona lower Arryk down against the bole of a tree. Dark blood seeped
through the king’s fingers. How pale he was. The lieutenant knelt beside him,
inspected the wound, cursed.

Carah
started toward them, a hand outstretched, remembering her mother’s bleeding
finger, but the trammel of horse hooves stopped her. Twenty soldiers led by one
of the Falcon Guard galloped around the curve of the castle wall. The White
Mantles dived over Arryk; the rest scrambled for cover. Rhogan scooped up his
granddaughter and hid behind a sapling. Carah ducked under a shrub with Maeret.
Da stooped for the sword he had dropped in the leaves and poised it over his
head. But Carah feared that even Kelyn Swiftblade could not outfight twenty
armed men. Oh, where was Uncle Thorn? The soldiers rode toward the breach in
the wall, walked their horses slowly among the dead and dying, then wheeled for
the trees.

“Goddess
curse them!” Drys hurried to Kelyn’s side, his fists raised.

Maeret
raised a fallen branch to defend herself with.

The
soldiers reined in outside the trees, bent low to peer under the branches, but
did not attack. “Little birds must-a kept-a flying,” said the Falcon in a
strange sing-song accent. “They will-a come out the other-a side. There’s a village.
Go!” He gave the shadows one last long look, then put spurs to flanks and tore
off after his men.

Drys
lowered his fists, Da his sword. “What the—?”

Carah
blinked and with Veil Sight saw bright tracers of fairy light, white and
yellow, spinning about the wood. “It’s Saffron and Zephyr! Fairy wards. No one
can see us.”

Da
sagged, braced his hands on his knees.

If
the fairies were here, Carah worried in silence, who was protecting Uncle Thorn
and Rhian?

“Are
you mad, girl?” Drona asked, advancing. Her oaken face was splashed with blood,
none of it hers.

“Mad?”
The last thing Carah wanted was to be thought a madwoman like Ruthan of
Tírandon. “I’m avedra!”

Drona
hissed and backed away. “Of course you are.” She turned her glare on Kelyn.
“Like your accursed brother. That was him in there, I suppose, covering our
rear.”

“Was
he all right?” Carah demanded. “And the other avedra with him?”

“There
are too many of you around here for my liking. Get away from us.” She returned
to her people, and it was strange how quickly the shadows under the trees were
divided into two camps, the Fierans under one tree, the Aralorris and Leanians
under another.

King
Arryk raised a blood-caked hand and beckoned. “Lord Ilswythe.”

Kelyn
crossed the shadows into enemy territory and knelt on one knee at Arryk’s side.
That bloody hand gestured toward the wounded Mantle. “You risked your life to
save my brother and my friend. This is Lieutenant Rance, of Éndaran. I’m
indebted to you.” His voice barely rose above a whisper, as if he hadn’t the
strength for more. “My guards spend their lives protecting a king, but you
would have died to protect a guard.”

“I
could see he meant something to you. And too many good men died today.”

A
corner of Arryk’s mouth quirked up in a grin, but he hadn’t the strength for
that either. “Maybe the things I read about you aren’t true after all.”

“They’re
true,” Drona declared, “every word, sire! This man murdered my brother and
razed your lands. When we’re back in Fiera we’ll raise our armies and avenge
this evil.”

Arryk
looked up at her, startled. A sorrow as illimitable as the heavens and as broad
as the moors filled the tiny space of his eyes. He managed a shallow shake of
his head, then his eyes glazed over. His body slid slowly down the tree trunk,
leaving a smudge of blood on the bark.

“No!”
Carah’s outburst drowned out the gasps and cries of horror. She shoved her
father aside and fell to her knees beside the White Falcon.
Too late, too
late
, she thought, hands going to each side of his bloodless face.
Why
did I wait?

“Don’t
touch him, wench!” Lady Athmar lunged, but Kelyn intercepted her arm.

“Hands
off, Drona. Hurt her and I won’t think twice about shoving you outside the
wards.”

Carah
didn’t hear the rest of their argument, though part of her knew it was heated,
nearly violent. Arryk’s chest was so still beneath her fingers, his skin
growing cool and gray and putty-like.
Too late.
Veil Sight revealed only
a shadow where light had burned. No, there it was. The thinnest of strands
rising up from his body and through the trees. It gleamed like sunlight on a
single thread of a spider’s web, but was it enough?
Sire? Arryk, don’t leave
us.