The Crown of Dalemark (41 page)

Even so, they all ducked and flinched as the horsemen swept up to them. Horses were all round them, all over them. One rider actually hurtled over their heads, leaping the five of them and the waystone, too. The ground shook in earnest.

“O great One!” Kialan groaned, with his head up to follow that particular rider. “That was my father. Now we're in the soup whatever happens!”

The noise of fighting suddenly doubled. They could almost feel the riders from Hannart crash into the battle. Beyond the edge of the waystone Maewen saw a horse rear, screaming and gushing blood. Something else tumbled into view, with a clothy
thwump
, and she saw it was the rider, thrown down like a broken doll in a strange position. He was not moving, but his horse went on screaming, and so did others she could not see. She nearly screamed herself. She wanted to be sick. Her eyes felt twisted and hot. Mitt had been right to say she did not like war. It was horrible. And the worst of it was that she had helped cause it by riding the King's Road instead of Noreth. The only reason she did not scream and kick and beat the grass with her fists was that it would be letting Mitt down. She crouched, swallowing.

A bullet went
whang
on the edge of the waystone. That nearly hit me! she thought. Beside her Kialan yelled out an extremely filthy word. Maewen jumped round to find him clutching his arm. There was a slice of granite standing out from his sleeve and blood was trying to flood out around the slice. His sleeve was soaked red already. Kialan repeated the filthy word and took hold of the piece of granite to pull it out.

“Don't do that!” Mitt shouted at him. “Stop the bleeding first!”

“But it hurts,” Kialan said. There were gray-green smudges of shock under his eyes.

Maewen could see how much it hurt. And Kialan had had his arms spread out to keep them from being trampled. He didn't deserve this. She wanted to do something to help. She bobbed up. The fighting was a frantic seething out beyond the green road. The space in between was full of loose horses and quiet, doll-like dead people. One of the horses wandering there was her own—or Noreth's, except that poor Noreth would never have any need of it now. Here was something she could do.

“I've got a roll of bandage in my saddlebag,” she said, and jumped up to get it.

Mitt and Moril both screamed at her to come back, but there were scarcely any bullets now. The fighting had rolled back again and was now around that line of black wagons. Maewen covered the space to her horse in perfect safety and told herself she was being brave at last. The horse stood docilely. She heaved and fumbled at the straps on her baggage roll. Quick, quick, before Kialan bleeds to death! It seemed to take a hundred years just to undo two buckles.

Then the voice spoke to her. “There is a loaded pistol someone has dropped on the ground at your feet,” it said. “Take it and—”

“Oh shut up!” Maewen told it. “Kialan's hurt.”

“Moril!” said Mitt.

“I know. I heard him.” Moril bent hurriedly over his cwidder, trying to make the power gather. Mitt could feel it was slow and difficult to gather again so soon, and the screams and roaring of the battle did not help.

“I made sure the Adon was injured,” the voice told Maewen smugly. “These are my instructions. Shoot the Southerner with the crown first, and then—”

“I said
shut up
!” Maewen screamed. The buckles were undone. The bandage was—where?
Where?
Oh, here it was. She took the roll and backed away. Pistol? Oh yes. There, almost under the horse's feet.

The voice rose to a blare.
“Pick it up, you stupid girl. Shoot them all and take the crown!”

“Quickly!” said Mitt.

“No,” said Maewen. She aimed her boot at the pistol and deliberately kicked it as far away as she could.

Mitt groaned. Moril put all his fingers under the lowest string and plucked, desperately. The cwidder responded with a deep brassy
twang
, as if Moril had struck a gong instead.

The horse in front of Maewen drifted away sideways. Although it seemed like a solid horse, it behaved just like smoke and shredded into the air, in brown wisps. In its place was the ghost of a man, twelve feet high or more, bell-shaped and robed, bent over to glare at Maewen with human eyes under fat eyelids. He was hollow. She could see the empty space in the middle of him, and somehow this was the most horrifying thing about him. I was riding
that
! she thought.

It did not seem to bother Kankredin that Maewen could see him. He blared, “I am the One! You must do as I command!”

Mitt made a movement to stand up. The ghostly fat-lidded eyes caught the movement. The vague hand in the hollow sleeve made a small gesture, as Maewen said, “No, you are
not
the One. And you never fooled me for a moment.” She was shaking, but she was glad to find she could be brave in this way at least.

The towering shape bent toward her. The sheets of wriggly hair on both sides of its face fell forward, and the huge, vague hands reached. Mitt found he could not move his legs. Beside him Moril's hands seemed to be stuck to the cwidder, in crooked shapes. But Mitt did not need to walk. He drew breath and shouted.

“
YNYNEN
!”

Then he moved, in spite of not being able to, and took off like a sprinter. Somehow he covered the distance between himself and Maewen, just in time to knock her over and fall on top of her before Ammet answered his call.

There was a howling wind, full of chaff. They were peppered with stinging grains of wheat, first from one side and then from everywhere. It made them both cringe. But in spite of that, in spite of grain coming at them like hailstones, and flying straw and blinding chaff dust, Maewen and Mitt both craned round to see the ghost of Kankredin spinning in a spinning trumpet shape of wheat-filled wind.

It was over almost as they looked. The ghost drew tatters of itself together and dissolved away backward. The trumpet shape unraveled and streamed away across the green land, carrying chaff and grain far and wide.

“Did you get him?” Maewen asked.

“Not sure.” Mitt dragged himself to his knees. There was no sign of Kankredin. The gong note Moril had evoked from the cwidder was still in the air, sounding on and on. If Kankredin was near, he would be visible. “Had a feeling Ammet only got part of him,” Mitt said regretfully, “but I think he's gone.”

Maewen scrambled up with the bandage. The crown had fallen beside her. She picked it up, thick and orange and heavy, and it left a bare oval shape in the grain that covered the grass. “I
knew
there was something strange about that horse,” she said as they went back to the waystone among drifting chaff and pattering grain.

Moril looked up as they came. Mitt nodded. Moril put one hand on the throbbing string to stop the sound, and then flexed both hands as if Kankredin had cramped them. Behind Moril, Kialan had Ynen's belt buckled round his arm to stop the bleeding. He was holding it tight for Ynen while Ynen tore pieces off both their shirts to bandage the place where the slice of stone had been.

“Rather a waste of two good shirts,” Kialan said. His face was a better color. He looked up at Mitt. “What happened to the crown?”

Maewen realized that she was holding it. “Bend your head down,” she said to Mitt.

None of them noticed that the noise of fighting had all but stopped. As Mitt bent his head and Maewen fitted the crown carefully over his hair, Earl Keril came crunching toward them over the scattered grain. He was a little disheveled, but he barely looked as if he had been in a battle. He hooked his thumbs in his sword belt and watched Mitt and Maewen. “Well, now,” he said pleasantly. “I had five possible outcomes in mind when I sent you to Adenmouth, but this was one that I confess never occurred to me.”

Mitt straightened up. He was slightly taller than Earl Keril. “Get me hanged and make sure there's no uprising,” he said. “Right?”

“Hanging you may yet be the solution,” Earl Keril said in the same pleasant way. “Let me put to you my point of view. The North had been agog for some years with stories that Noreth Onesdaughter”—he bowed pleasantly to Maewen—“would take the royal road the year she was eighteen. Then, all of a sudden,
you
arrive in Aberath in a manner which fulfills every prophecy ever made, and all the common people are hailing you as the new King come at last—”

“I never knew that,” Mitt said. “I had no idea. If you'd let me alone, I wouldn't be here now. But you set me on to murder Noreth.”

“Naturally I hoped that the two claimants would cancel one another out,” Keril agreed. He looked at Maewen again. “Rather than the one crown the other. But we were prepared for other outcomes, too. To that end the Countess took you in and educated you, and I took steps to make sure you would remain under the sponsorship of Hannart and Aberath—”

“Sponsorship is one word for it,” Mitt said. “Nice try.”

“I asked you to see my point of view!” Keril snapped. “When I was young and ignorant, I took part in an uprising. I know better now. I would go to greater lengths than this to stop another. People die in uprisings, by thousands, most horribly.”

“When
I
was young and ignorant,” said Mitt, “I lived in Holand. People died there all the time, only slowly. And the rest were too scared to help. There needs to be an uprising. One that works this time.”

The two of them stared at one another unlovingly. “If this is your attitude,” Keril said, “I shall see you hanged at Harvest. There are plentiful grounds.”

Moril, Kialan, and Ynen surged to their feet, Kialan saying, “Listen, Father—” and Ynen protesting, “Don't undo the belt yet!”

“Be quiet!” said Keril. “I'll deal with you two later. What I want to know—”

Hasty feet crunched over the grain, and Alk and Navis arrived, one on either side of Keril. Alk's leathers were torn all over, showing battered links of mail underneath, and he had a streak of blood on his chin. One side of Navis's face was black with powder. He looked tired to death, but he spoke to Keril with the utmost courtesy. “My lord, we have to thank you for your timely intervention.”

Alk grinned. “We were goners without you, Keril.”

Keril turned his unloving look on them. Navis said, “Is there some trouble, my lord? May we assist?”

“Yes,” Keril said grimly. “I want to know how this Mitt of yours contrived to have a Southern war band to meet him.”

“I did no such thing!” said Mitt.

“Those are Henda's men, my lord,” Navis said. “As you surely know, Henda can be trusted to respond to anything that might be a threat to his earldom entirely on his own.”

“But how did he know?” Keril said. “Did you tell him, Navis Haddsson?”

“Oh come now, Keril,” said Alk. “You saved Navis's life yourself. You heard the Southerners calling him traitor.”

Keril hitched his shoulders irritably. Navis bowed to him. “As to how Henda knew, my lord, since I had heard of Noreth Onesdaughter at least two years ago, I can only suppose Henda's spies told him at the same time.” Mitt stared. This was news to him. “One of those secrets,” Navis said to him, “that my brother took good care not to have known on the waterfront in Holand.”

“So I am to understand,” Keril said to Navis, “that Navis Haddsson commandeered the hearthmen of Dropwater and Aberath to fight Henda, knowing that Henda would oppose Navis Haddsson's candidate for the crown.”

Navis's eyes went to the golden band round Mitt's forehead. He smiled slightly. “My lord, I did not expect Henda. I expected you. But you are right to believe that I hoped Mitt would be King.”

“Why?” Keril asked icily.

Navis shrugged. “Aside from obvious personal wishes, my lord, one of the pictures in my rooms in Holand was a portrait of the Adon. My impression is that you, too, my lord, were struck by Mitt's resemblance to the Adon. I thought about it much of the time we sailed North. But I would have waited a few years to do anything about it. You forced our hands.”

“I'm glad I did,” said Keril. “Your candidate is not of age and has no right to that thing on his head.”

Alk had been exchanging looks with Moril. Now he said, “Right, Keril. Why don't we ask?” And he nodded at Moril.

Moril stood forward. “The One called us to witness just now,” he said, loudly and formally, “that we have a new King. The One gave Mitt the crown and his own name of Amil.”

“I hereby witness this as lawful,” Alk said. “Come on, Keril. Accept it.”

Keril still seemed entirely unwilling. Moril, carefully and meaningly, arranged his fingers on the cwidder. “I could summon the One,” he said.

Keril looked uneasily at the cwidder. “You always were a bit of a mystic, Moril,” he said. “But this is a reasonable age—”

He was interrupted by howls and yells and catcalls in the distance behind him. “Traitor!” they heard. “Traitor! There's the traitor!” The shouting was coming from hearthmen in all three liveries. It seemed to have something to do with the row of supply wagons beyond the road. Navis set off that way at a run. Alk and Keril followed. Mitt pointed a thumb at Keril's back. “Never rely on things being reasonable,” he said.