The Gathering Storm (25 page)

He waited on the stem of his ship as the sun rose, still obscured by a mist steaming off the waters. The chain of the western gate growled, and a second portal opened into the city. Torches sparked into life along the walls of the citadel as the Alban soldiers and their queen came awake to danger. A shrill horn, a clanging bell, and a piercing scream sounded from inside, but it was too late. Smoke twisted from buildings close by the outer wall, melding with mist. Fire rose from the houses within, lifting on those flames the cries, curses, and anguished wails of the beleaguered inhabitants, a terrible, beautiful clamor. The sun cleared the low-lying bank of river fog and poured its light across the mighty walls of Hefenfelthe, proof against weapons but not against treachery.

Those who resisted were killed; for the rest, chance ruled. Some were spared because they remained hidden, others because they fled. As many died begging for mercy as fell fighting. Hefenfelthe had shut its gates against the RockChildren and would therefore serve as an example to all the Alban towns, villages, and farms that it was better to surrender to Stronghand’s authority than to struggle against it.

By the second night of the battle, the narrow streets of Hefenfelthe were deserted and the fires quenched, since he did not want to burn the whole city. With his troops ranged around the citadel walls, Stronghand watched as the Alban queen appeared high above, on her tower. Torches and lamps hung around her made her gleam. She wore bright armor; a wolf’s helm masked her features. A golden banner marked with the image of a white stag streamed beside her in the wind called up by her sorcerers. She raised a horn to her lips. As the
note sang in the air, flights of burning arrows streaked out from the citadel battlements to strike the roofs of buildings far out in every direction.

She intended to burn down the city around them, but she would not succeed.

“Let the men hew down buildings on all sides of the fire in a ring around the citadel,” he said to Tenth Son, who stood sooty and bloodstained beside him. “That way the fire can only burn back in toward their refuge.”

He led the assault on the fire with his own ax, and in the end they cut a wide trail in a ring around the city and wet down the roofs on the far side of that gap. By dawn the towering wall of the citadel caught fire along its eastern front, and smoke choked its defenders, blown back against them by the very wind the tree sorcerers had called up to harry the fire against their foes. He cried out the order for the final assault himself, although he let others lead the charge, the young ones, the foolish, those who sought to prove their worth, attract his notice, or gain a larger share of treasure.

Battering rams were carried forward. Their thick wooden heads, carved to resemble the horned sheep who lived in the mountains, clove in the citadel gates. As his warriors pressed forward, the smoke gave them an unassailable advantage. The Alban soldiers drowned in it, but fire and smoke were no particular threat to RockChildren born in the long ago times when the blood of dragons had fused human flesh to wakening stone.

He followed the vanguard in through the broken gate and marched with his picked guard, his litter brothers, and the warriors of Rikin Fjord along the trail left by the assault. Bodies lay everywhere, but the dense smoke choked the smell of blood. Battle raged around the entrance to the long hall as the RockChildren tried to force an entry. Arrows drove into shields in a furious hail. Spear points thanked against wood. Shutters cracked and stove in under a press of ax blows, but in each newly shattered opening spears bristled as Alban soldiers placed their bodies in the gap, shouting for reinforcements, crying out curses. Arrow shot and hot oil poured down the sides of the tower. The blank sides of that huge stone edifice —the largest he had ever seen—offered no purchase. The first
course of stone, rising four times his height, had no windows at all, and in the three higher levels the windows were only slits. The only way into the tower was through the hall.

“Throw in torches,” he said to Tenth Son. “Burn them out.”

Yet although the citadel walls burned as soon as fire touched them, the heavy-beamed hall had a roof of slate. Fire guttered out on these shingles. A few thrown torches slipped in through broken shutters but were quickly stamped out by the defenders. Already, dark clouds gathered, called by the tree sorcerers to put out the fires. Lightning ripped through the sky, and thunder boomed. The first patter of rain washed over his upturned face.

Warriors threw up a line of shields to protect the men with the ram from arrow shot. He took a turn himself. The pounding of the ram against reinforced doors shuddered down his arms. The noise of its impact crashed above the clash of arms. Rain came down in sheets over them, turning to sleet and then to a battering hail. But what might have confounded a human foe did nothing to his kind. His standard protected them against magic, and their tough hides protected them against almost everything else. Iron might cut them. A hot enough fire would kill them, in the end, and they could drown. But the RockChildren were not weak like humankind. The strength of stone was part of their flesh, and their greatest weakness had always been their tendency to rely on strength alone instead of on the intelligence and cunning that were their inheritance from that part of themselves that derived from their human ancestors.

The door into the great hall buckled and groaned and on the next strike shattered, planks splintering as they gave way. With a shout, warriors leaped into the gap. Many fell back, wounded or dead, but more pressed onward, and the weight of numbers and the haze of smoke everywhere gave them the advantage. Once the fight swelled forward to fill the smoky great hall, it was only a matter of time.

He pushed through with his guard around him. The hall had been built to abut the tower, one end built right up against the lower course of the western face. Stairs led up to a loft, a broad balcony where Alban soldiers now made their stand,
holding the single door that led into the queen’s tower. The fight was long and bloody, but once his troops controlled the stairs they could hang back and, with their shields to protect them, pick off the defenders one by one.

He could be patient. He had time.

Night came, and the struggle went on with torches ablaze to light their way. Smoke wound in hazy streamers along the beams, curling like aery snakes, half formed and lazy. Sometimes all he heard was the breathing of the soldiers as they rested, waiting for a shield to drop, waiting for an opening when one man leaned too far away from another. Now and again came a whispered comment from among the Albans, a shift in their ranks as a fresh man squeezed forward to take his place from one who was injured or flagging. He admired their loyalty, their prowess, and their toughness, these ones who stayed to the bitter end. It was, in truth, a shame that such fighters would all have to die.

Midway through the night, Tenth Son reported that the rest of the citadel had fallen and the fires had been quenched. Except for the tower, the RockChildren ruled Hefenfelthe now. Once they captured and killed the queen and her tree sorcerers, the rest of Alba would capitulate.

Foolish to believe it would be so easy.

Just before dawn, thunder rumbled so low and heavy that it shuddered through his feet. As the sound faded, he sensed a strange weakening in the Alban soldiers, shields drooping, a spate of unseen movement within the tower. Pressing the advantage, his troops stormed the door and overwhelmed the score of men who had held that gap all night. Stronghand followed the vanguard as they mounted the ladder steps. The tower had fully four stories, each one a broad chamber fitted with the rich furniture and tapestries proper to a royal house. No one remained to resist them, and the rooms were empty, abandoned—until they came to the battlements, the high tower height where he had watched his enemy launch her final, desperate attack.

There the Alban queen waited for them. He had not expected her to be so young, pale-haired, with the blue eyes common to humans bred in northern climates. Her skin was creamy smooth, untouched by sun, and her expression proud
and fixed. She wore robes woven of a shimmering silver cloth, chased with gold thread, and a seven-tined circlet of silver at her brow. An old man bearing a staff of living wood crowned with seven sapling-green branches knelt beside her. With his head bowed, he appeared ready for death. Could it be possible she had only one sorcerer to aid her? Or was she herself a sorcerer? Five children huddled against her skirts, silent except for the youngest, who struggled not to sob and so made a gulping sound instead, erratic and irritating.

Beyond the battlements, the city of Hefenfelthe lay in uncanny silence as the sun cleared the river mist and day came. Crows circled above the buildings and smoking ruins.

Seeing him, the queen picked up the smallest child and stood waiting, eager, face flushed and eyes bright. At that moment, he realized she had no magic to protect herself. Even the old man, tree sorcerer though he clearly was, was too weak to protect her.

She expected her enemies to kill her and her companions.

He had been tricked.

He of all people, having witnessed the victory, and loss, at Gent, should have remembered human cunning.

“Where are they?” he demanded, but she did not know the Wendish tongue. Shouts rose to him from below as Tenth Son appeared on the ladder stairs.

“There’s a tunnel out of the lowest level.”

“The queen and her sorcerers escaped.” Fury clawed him. They had outwitted him! How had he not seen this coming?

“They collapsed the tunnel behind them. I have slaves digging it out. I’ve ordered patrols out beyond the walls.”

But it was already too late. He knew it, as did Tenth Son. As did the girl and her aged companion and the five little ones, left behind to face his wrath.

Sacrifices.

The Alban queens ruled in the old way, offering blood to their gods in exchange for power. The circle god of Alain’s people did not reign unchallenged here. Even the gods warred among humankind, seeking preeminence.

Let it be done, then. If these seven had been left behind, then they could not even be worth enough to his enemies to
hold for ransom or as a bargaining chip. Lifting his sword, he stepped forward

his feet hit the ground so hard that all breath is sucked from his lungs. He staggers, gasping for air so that he can call out to her, but Adica is lost to him, torn away into the whirlwind. He grabs for her, but his hands close on dirt. Grass tickles his face. He smells rain and hears a muted roar, like that of a lion, but it is only the wind caught in trees or perhaps the rush of unseen wings, fading.

Gone.

The hounds lick his face, whining and whimpering, nosing at him, trying to get him to stand. He lifts his head.

Huge shapes surround him. He has fallen into the center of a pristine circle of raised stones. Beyond the circle, four mounds mark the perimeter, grown high with grass and a scattering of flowers. His heart quickens with hope.

But this is not the place he knew and came to love. An encircling forest cuts off any view he might have of lands beyond the clearing. The tumulus, the graves of the queens, the winding river, and the village are all gone. What peace he found will be denied him. Adica’s love, given to him freely, has been ripped away.

She is dead.

He knew it from the first when he was dragged unknowing into her country, but maybe he never believed. Maybe he thought he really had died. After all, he ought to have died. He had been so close to death after the battle with the Lions on that ancient tumulus that a part of him had chosen to believe he wasn’t living anymore but rather had passed over to the other side, the field of paradise that borders the Chamber of Light, where his soul could rest at last in peace.

Ai, God. Peace mocks him, for what he has seen and experienced this night is surely more horrible than the worst of his fears.

How could the Hallowed Ones have done it? Did they know what they wrought? Was it worth such destruction to spare a few?

The hound Sorrow shoves his head under Alain’s stomach and pushes. Rage tugs at his hand. Struggling, he gets to his
feet, but he no longer knows where he is or what lies in store for him. The hounds herd him toward the forest’s edge where a track snakes away into the trees. Face whipped by branches, he presses along the trail. Eventually, it broadens into a path padded by a carpet of pine needles. He just walks. He must not think. He must not remember. If he only walks, then maybe he can forget that he is still alive.

But maybe it is never possible just to walk, just to exist. Fate acts, and the heart and mind respond. The path breaks out of the forest onto a ridgeline. A log lies along the ground like a bench, and he pauses here to catch his breath. The hounds lick his hands as he stares at the vista opening before him.

A river valley spreads out below, a handful of villages strung along its length like clusters of grapes. Closer lie the plaster-and-timber buildings of a monastery and its estate. The bleat of a horn carries to him on the stiff wind that blows into his face, making tears start up from his eyes. An entourage emerges from woodland, following the ribbon of a road. He counts about a dozen people: four mounted and six walking alongside two wagons pulled by oxen. Bright pennants flutter in the breeze.

He has to speak, he has to warn them.

Running, he pounds down the path. He has to stop and rest at intervals, but grief and panic drive him on. Always he gets up again, heart still racing, breath labored, and hurries down the path until it levels off and emerges out of forest onto a trim estate, fields laid down in rows, orchard plots marked off by pruned hedges, the buildings sitting back behind a row of cypress. Bees buzz around his head and one lights on his ear, as if tasting for nectar. Geese honk overhead, flying south.

A trio of men in the robes of lay brothers work one of the fields, preparing the ground for winter wheat. One leads an ox while another steadies the plow, but it is the third who sees Alain stumbling out of the woodland. He runs forward with hoe in hand, held there as if he has forgotten it or, perhaps, as if he may use it as a weapon.