The Forge in the Forest (52 page)

The tide of blackness arose again, and overwhelmed him. Chill and nausea crept upon him; he shivered ceaselessly till he could almost imagine his marsh fever was returning. Lack of food and sleep made all worse; a harrowing night was wearing toward its end. Ils or Roc might have cheered him, but they were already away, leading small bands of such experienced soldiers as could be found into the nearby streets, to give warning of any sudden assault by the Ekwesh. But it was typical of Kermorvan that he, the center of so much activity and excitement, should have found time to consider what ailed his friend. When the hard hand was clapped upon his shoulder Elof looked up with dull eyes, and met a look that blazed. "Take courage!" hissed Kermorvan. "Only take courage! Men have dared ere now to love the Powers, and great good has come of it. Did you not know? It is said my own line, the royal line of Kerys itself, sprang from such a union in the lost deeps of time, and so that great nation was born! And she, she also loves! Think only what she did for you, when bonds we cannot imagine were tearing her heart and spirit! For that alone you must fight on!"

Among the ashes choking body and mind Elof felt a trace of returning warmth; he nodded, jerkily. He could still fight. If he could do nothing else for her, there was always that. And against those who had so misused her he had a long score to settle. "Good!" said Kermorvan, sharply. "An ill thing when a cool heart like mine must rekindle the fire of a smith! Come, there is a morsel or two of food; eat while you can, for there are stirrings in the upper streets! I wonder they have not already attacked."

"Could it be Kara?" breathed Elof.

"The girl! Of course! She has put the fear of Hella into them, appearing thus. And well she might! They fear to venture far beyond their stronghold. Time it is that we gave them cause!" He turned away, shouting orders, and Elof saw the crowded square begin to stir like a great whirlpool. The smell of cooking meat drew him, but he had barely time to gulp down some of the savory scraps toasted over a hastily built bonfire before Kermorvan reappeared, and with him Erouel. "Into your hands, old man, I commit crown and scepter. If I return not to claim them of you, do as you will with them; they will no longer mean anything. But better the sea should have them, to my mind, than the Ekwesh. Now, Elof, are you ready? Your place is beside me, if you will, for it is our column must strike the hardest."

"I am ready," said Elof, and he plucked a brand from the fire. To Erovel's horror he drew his mailed hand down it, and at once it sank to charred blackness; even the smoke rolled leadenly groundward. But between Elof's clenched fingers a gleam awoke. "We may need light; would we had a dragon to give it! But this will serve."

Fanfare and drumbeat there was none as they filed out of the square, not even a warcry or a lighted torch; Kermorvan had ordered silence, and it suited the mood of his followers. Their first wrath had cooled, and they knew there was no going back. Many no doubt thought themselves as good as dead already, but fell rather than fearful it made them. Some still wore only the nightrobes they had rushed out in, but to Elof they seemed not comical but eerie, an army of shrouded forms gliding over the dark cobbles, Kermorvan and the dark-cloaked goblins at their head.

They were well into the city, climbing the broad street that rose in stepped terraces toward the palace, when the night ahead roared into sudden life, to shouting and the clink and hammer of weapons, the hum and spit of bows, the rattle of running feet upon the cobbles. Against a burning building up the hill silhouettes appeared in furious combat, and the column made as if to surge forward. Furiously Kermorvan ordered them back. "A feint!" he hissed. "That is their advance guard meeting ours. If only… aye, here come the first of them!"

Sure enough, Ils and her party came flying down through the back streets, with Roc's not far behind. "As you ordered!" she gasped, when she had regained her breath. "We broke and ran in disorder, as they thought it. Will it tempt out their main force?"

"It has!" panted Roc, arriving with his force. "Soon us they saw us scatter and thought they'd only mobs to deal with, out they swarmed like bees from a byke! They're less scared than you thought!"

"Or harder driven!" said Kermorvan, and raised his voice. "Now, as we ordered! Into the side streets with you, and remember—await the word!"

The great column split and swiftly melted aside. Kermorvan lingered to urge the last of them into cover, and barely had time to draw Elof aside before the vanguard of the enemy burst over the edge of the terrace above and poured down the slope. In a taut spearhead they ran, light-armed runners with spears and small targes, their hard faces set in fierce grinning masks; a few mounted men cantered at their flanks and in files behind them, some with bows as well as lances. Then behind them the main ranks came down in wave after wave like flood over waterfall, spearhaft and swordhilt rasping a sinister song against the painted shields held as a wall before them. So swiftly ran the vanguard that they were already past the first side streets before they noticed the throng in the shadows. Before they could halt, Kermorvan barked a single order. A gust of arrows wafted up and rattled down among the vanguard, and scarce slower surged out the people of Morvannec. Up against the disordered vanguard they thundered, and past it, leaving it to those who were coming up from below. Up the street they charged, Kermorvan at their head, and as flood meets flood in boiling turmoil, they came up against the main force of the Ekwesh.

To Elof it was a time of thunder and madness, as if he had been caught between his own hammer and anvil, and bitterly he hated it. He fought often at need, but never before had he been caught up in the whirling fury of a battle, where survival lay in hewing men before him as brush in a forest, stumbling over limbs that still twitched, slipping in blood still flowing or fresh-spilled entrails. He saw men and women hurled down at his side, yet he himself was untouched by the weapons that raked at him, always that shade too slow. Gorthawer met them in the red-tinged night, and they bowed before the blade and the strength of his arm, and fell away broken upon the bodies of their wielders. He swiftly lost sight of his friends; Ils reappeared briefly, toppling a tall warrior by main force and sinking her broad axe into his breastbone, and now and again he caught brief glimpses of Kermorvan, always ahead of him, his warcry on his lips and his gray-gold blade sweeping in intricate patterns among the hedge of spears and shields. At length Elof dared to hope the intensity of the fighting might be slackening, only to find it redouble suddenly as a new wave of foes swept forward over the corpses of the first. And with it, in armor as bright as Kermorvan's was black and marked with the emblem of the broken chain, the tall shape of Bryhon Bry-heren came plunging through the fray. The sword he swung was long and heavy, a huge two-handed thing with a scalloped edge to the upper blade, but he wielded it with the same liquid grace as Kermorvan his, and cut a deep swathe of bloody panic among the city folk. Then into his path Kermorvan sprang, and in a ringing flurry of blows they met, flowing around each other with the deadly grace of a dance. Never before had Elof seen a warrior to match Kermorvan, but for the first time he realized that Bryhon's confidence was no mere bluster, that he was indeed of the same order and schooling. And he was fresh, and bore a visored helm where Kermorvan was bareheaded. If Bryhon's gangling frame moved with less fluid ease, there was a vicious power in the sweeping strokes he favored, which could suddenly switch direction without slackening. Such a stroke, aimed at Kermorvan's body, leaped aside in the very instant he parried it and slashed down upon his unprotected head. But Kermorvan sprang aside and ducked in the same swift movement, the point grazed his face, glanced off his shoulderplate and struck the cobbles. With a suddenness that startled even Elof, Kermorvan's steelshod boot crashed down on the blade and tore the hilt from Bryhon's grasp. Bryhon sprang back, tugging something from his shoulder, a broad-bladed battleaxe half his own height. But the fighting swirled into the gap, and Elof, battering frantically at a new shieldwall, saw the adversaries borne apart on its tides.

Then, as suddenly as it had come, the shieldwall fell back, fragmented, melted away before his eyes, and he found himself striking giddily at empty air. He lowered his sword and strained for breath, deafened by the roaring in his ears. His head ached terribly, though he could find no wound; the blood spattered on his mailed arm was not his own. He looked around, and was startled. Though he had not been conscious of moving, the battle had borne him ever higher up the hill, till now he stood in the square below the palace whence so recently they had fled. He looked back, and winced; the street behind was a very carpet of bodies, some moving feebly, some still. It was hardly possible to tell which were Ekwesh, which not, for the same wash of blood boltered them all as they lay. Steam and stench tainted the night air.

"So!" said Kermorvan's voice beside him. "We are not yet parted, then, we four!" He stood there, calm as ever despite his tangled hair and the broad slash that skipped from forehead to cheek. Roc was with him, and Ils not far off, helping to tend a woman who lay wounded and shrieking. Indeed, the air was filled with groans and cries, and the sound of them raised the hair at Elof s neck.

"Have we won?" he asked, and cursed the stupidity of the words. But it seemed that Kermorvan understood.

"Not yet!" he croaked. "We beat them back to the palace, but at terrible cost. Then out sallied a rearguard under that creature Bryhon, and covered their retreat within. Some five or seven hundred we slew out of their two thousand-odd, but the rearguard was easily that large, and more would remain. I guess they still dispose of well-nigh two and a half thousand men, fighting men at that. And our losses…" He closed his eyes a moment, then gestured at the ragged force he had led, standing shocked and bewildered among the carnage or searching desperately among the maimed and dead. "Arm yourselves from the Ekwesh!" he shouted. "Spear and shield and armor, if you can! And form up then, for soon we attack again!" He ground his teeth, and added, almost under his breath, "We must. We have no choice. So many Ekwesh crowded into the palace, they will know they cannot withstand a siege. Any moment now they will sally out—and what then? Will the people endure another such slaughter?"

Other columns that had seen little fighting were swaggering into the square, only to halt in horror at the butchery. "Look near ready to drift away now, some of 'em," muttered Roc, "whatever the cost."

Kermorvan frowned. "This is hard for tried soldiers to endure, let alone peaceful citizens. I had hoped their anger would give them an edge in strength, but there is something else, some inner will that spurs on the Ekwesh no whit less hard, nearly to madness…" The same idea came at once to all three.

"If she could raise the city so swiftly—"

"She could be turned against us—"

"But where is she? She could be deep within the palace…"

"No," muttered Elof. "She would need to see…" Between finger and thumb of his gauntlet a thin white flame arose, and its light danced along the darkened windows of the palace. A murmur of wonder arose from the folk behind, and they pressed closer to see, only to fall back as Ekwesh archers tried for the mark. But Elof ignored the arrows skipping around him; he could see none but Ekwesh at the windows. He swept the light swiftly along the galleried roof.

"There!" cried Ils.

"There's nothing but statues…"

"See there! In the middle! There's one too many…"

When Elof looked again he saw it. Impassive, unmoving behind helm and shield, she might indeed have been a statue like the rest, save that one corner of her long cloak fluttered in the restless breeze. Elof looked around desperately. "I must get to the roof! Those windows there, do they not light a stair? It must begin somewhere near the main doors. If I could only get through the lowest window…"

Kermorvan raised his eyebrows. "Then we could turn our assault on the main doors. But be swift, if you would save lives! And weigh them well against… other claims."

Elof nodded, for words he could not find, and Kermor-

van turned to bark out orders. A great beam was lifted from one of the ruined houses and borne forward, still smoldering, in the arms of the strongest, Roc and Ils and Elof among them; along it and over them were raised Ekwesh shields to guard against arrows. Kermorvan cast an eye over his motley force, gave a curt nod of encouragement and waved them forward with his sword. Over the cobbles trotted the bearers of the beam, gathering speed, and up the worn steps without a single slip. As they reached the top, arrows rattled and thudded into the shields, and the bearers began to run, gathering speed. One man fell, the others skipped over him and hurtled on toward the high bronzed doors, the tarnished figures on them shining strangely in the faint starlight. Then they were under the galleries, and in the last moment ere they struck Elof hurled himself aside. From behind him he heard a mighty creak and clangor of bronze, and another as the rebounding ram was swung back and dashed against the doors once more, and a loud wolfish cheer. Then with a rumbling crash the doors swung apart, tore free of their hinges and toppled; the rammers sprang aside, but Elof, turning to the window, was caught. One buckled bronze mass loomed over him and crashed down. It was instinct that raised his gauntlet to it; it stopped short in a rush of escaping flame, poised on his palm, all the force of that heavy fall drawn into his gauntlet and captured. It was still dead weight, but without the impetus he could thrust it aside, and dodge. It crashed down among the rising roar of battle renewed. He dared not look back; he swung himself up to the carven sill and punched his mailed fist through the tiny lenticular leads. The high window creaked open; he flung himself through the gap, and down into the hallway beyond.