The RuneLords (55 page)

As he rode up, Inette looked up at him, a smile on her ruined face. The smile quickly faded. "You all right?"

"No," Borenson said. "Where's Myrrima?"

"A messenger came through town," Inette said. "Troops are gathering. Lord Orden is at Longmont. She--Myrrima left last night. Many of the boys from town have gone to fight."

All the ease of heart he'd felt for the past hour now drained from him. "To Longmont!" Borenson shouted. "Why?"

"She wants to be with you!" Inette answered.

"This--this won't be a picnic or a day at the fair!" Borenson shouted.

"She knows," Inette whispered. "But--you're betrothed. If you live through it, she wants to live with you. And if you don't..."

Borenson hung his head, thinking furiously. Sixty miles. Nearly sixty miles to Longmont. She could not have walked there in a night, even in a pair of nights.

"Did she travel afoot?"

Inette shook her head numbly. "Some boys from town went. In a wagon..."

Too late. Too late. Borenson spun his horse, raced to catch her.

Gaborn heard Iome cry out as he rode toward Longmont. Her cry was so startling that at first he feared that she'd been shot with an arrow. For hours now they had been traveling, stopping every few minutes to switch horses, and Iome had not made a single complaint. He slowed and turned in his saddle to look back.

He saw at first that King Sylvarresta sat in his saddle, head nodding. The King clutched the pom of his saddle with both hands. He wept softly, breathing in gasps. Tears streamed from his eyes.

Iome, too was hunched. "Gaborn, stop. We've got to stop!" she cried, taking the reins of her father's horse.

"What's wrong?" Gaborn asked.

"Gaagh," King Sylvarresta said.

"Our Dedicates are dying," Iome said. "He...I don't know if my father has the strength to go on."

Gaborn felt an overwhelming sadness envelop him. "Borenson. I should have guessed." He felt dazed. "I am so sorry, Iome."

He rode up next to the King, took the King's jaw in his hand. "Can you ride? Can you stay on the horse? You have to ride! Hold on!"

Gaborn pushed the King's hands firmly to the pommel of the saddle. "Hold! Like this!"

King Sylvarresta looked into Gaborn's face, clutched the pommel.

"Do you have strength to ride?" Gaborn asked Iome.

She nodded grimly in the dark.

Gaborn let the horses canter lightly, kept a close watch on his charges.

King Sylvarresta was gazing up at the stars as they rode, or watching the lights of a town as they passed.

Five miles later, they rounded a corner, and King Sylvarresta went flying off his horse. He landed on his hip, slid in the mud and grass at the side of the road. Then just lay, sobbing.

Gaborn went and whispered soft words to him, helped King Sylvarresta back on his horse; then Gaborn rode behind, cradling King Sylvarresta between strong arms.

Through the long night, King Orden waited impatiently for sign of his son. It was hard, this waiting, the hardest thing he'd ever done.

Orden's men carried all two hundred thousand arrows from the armory to their perches along the castle's battlements. On the wall-walk beneath the west tower, they set a great bonfire, a message of distress, in an effort to call aid from any who might see its light or smoke. Near that fire, his men set great cauldrons of oil to boil, so that the putrid scent of them filled the castle.

Orden commanded five men to go north three miles, to set a similar fire on the peak of Tor Loman, so everyone within twenty leagues might see it. Duke Groverman had not heeded Orden's petitions. Perhaps sight of the battle pyres would shame him into it.

Just before dawn, two thousand knights arrived from Groverman, explaining their delay. Groverman had heard of the fall of Longmont, and thought to retake it, but had sent word to Sylvarresta. Apparently his messengers never made it to the King alive. After a day of waiting, he'd sent a hundred scouts on force horses to Sylvarresta and learned that the castle had fallen.

Orden wondered which road the scouts had taken, thought it odd that his men hadn't spotted them. Which meant that the knights had taken trails through the forest.

Then the scouts had returned with the ill news of Sylvarresta's defeat, and Groverman waited still for reinforcements from distant castles.

The knights Groverman sent were good men, solid warriors. But despite his best efforts, Orden did not feel prepared. He suspected this battle would bring trials he couldn't prepare for.

The Earl of Dreis gave King Orden no comfort. The man was incompetent. He had been in the castle for less than an hour before he tried to assume command. One of his first tasks had been to order the artillerymen to push the catapults back into the shelter of the towers, foiling all the work the artillerymen had done setting the ranges.

Orden found the Earl lounging in the Duke's old quarters, letting a body servant massage his feet while he sipped warm tea.

"Why have you ordered the artillery stored?" Orden asked.

The Duke seemed to struggle to decide whether to affect an imperious tone or become defensive. "A stratagem, my dear fellow, a stratagem. You see, I realized that if we keep them hidden until the heat of battle, we can whisk them out suddenly, and the sight of them will dismay Raj Ahten's forces!"

King Orden did not know whether to laugh or weep at such stupidity. "Raj Ahten has seen many catapults," he said simply. "He has taken a hundred castles by force. His men will not be dismayed at the sight of these."

"Yes, but--"

"Indeed, Raj Ahten has seen these catapults, for he came here not a fortnight ago. He knows they are here."

"Ah, of course! Point well taken!" the Earl said, shoving his masseuse away as he struggled from his chair.

"We need to put the catapults back, then let our men test the settings once again, and their ranges."

"Well...all right," the Earl grumbled, as if considering some other plan.

"Also," King Orden said, "you've ordered your men to defend the castle gates, and my men to man the walls. Is there some reason for this?"

"Ah, of course!" Dreis said. "You must realize that my men are fighting for home and country. It is a matter of honor for them to defend the gates."

"Your Lordship," Orden tried to explain patiently, "you must understand that in the thick of this battle, all our men will be fighting for their lives. My men fight for their homes and their countries, as well as yours do. And I've brought my best force warriors, men with ten and twenty endowments each. They will fight better than commoners."

Dreis rebutted, "Ah, your men may fight with swords and hammers, but our men will fight with heart, and with a will!"

"Your Lordship--"

Dreis raised a hand to stop him. "You forget your place, Orden," he said fiercely. "This is Heredon, not Mystarria. I command this castle, until some greater lord takes my place."

"Assuredly," Orden said with a slight bow, though a bending of his back had never come harder. "I did not mean to seem presumptuous. I merely hoped that some of my better guards might fight beside yours. It would show Raj Ahten...our unity."

"Ah, unity!" Dreis said, taking the bait. "A noble concept. A fine ideal. Yes, yes, I'll order it immediately."

"Thank you, Your Lordship," King Orden said with another bow, then turned to leave. He felt he had just got a handle on how Dreis' counselors must have had to work him.

"Ah," Dreis said, "do not leave. If I might ask: I understand you are recruiting men for a serpent ring?"

"Yes, Your Lordship," Orden answered, dreading the next question.

"I will be in it, of course. I should be the head."

"And expose yourself to such risk?" Orden asked. " 'Tis a brave and noble sentiment, but surely we will need you to direct the battle." He could not help but put a little whine in his tone, as Dreis' counselors must have done.

"Ah, well, I believe in teaching men correct principles, then letting them direct themselves," Dreis countered. "I will not need to direct the battle."

"Then, please, milord, at least consider the safety of your lands after the battle. Heredon has suffered losses enough. Should you get killed, it would be a terrible burden. Let us not have you serve as the serpent's head, but only somewhere near the head, in a place of honor."

"Oh, no, I insist--"

"Have you ever killed a man, milord?" Orden asked.

"Why, yes, yes I have. I hanged a robber not three years back."

Of course the Earl had not hanged the man, Orden knew. He'd have let the captain of his guard perform the feat.

"Then you know how difficult it is," Orden said, "to sleep at nights afterward. You know how it is to look another man in the eye as you seize his very existence. Guilt. Guilt is the price we pay for leading our people.

"I killed my first man when I was twelve," Orden added. "Some mad farmer who tried to cudgel me. I've killed some twenty men in battle since.

"My wife...grew distant over the affair, cold and unresponsive. You would think they'd love you better for it, but the women imagine that a little blood on your hands makes you grow more callous and cruel. It stains the soul, so. Of course, I am no Raj Ahten...Who knows how many men he has personally killed. Two thousand, ten?"

"Yes, the guilt..." the Earl mused. "Nasty business, that."

Orden could see the slow wheels of the Earl's mind begin to creep, as he wakened the man's fears. Orden was not at all concerned with guilt. He needed only to remind this fool how many men had died at Raj Ahten's hands. "It does stain a man's soul." Now the Earl had a way out of battle. He could flee it in the name of righteousness, rather than fear.

"Very well, they are your forcibles," the Earl said. "Perhaps you should be the serpent's head."

"Thank you, milord," King Orden said. "I will try to serve with honor."

"But I will be next in line."

"Actually," King Orden said, "I hoped to reserve that spot for another, the captain of my guard. A very formidable fighter."

"Ah, aha!" Dreis said. Now that he was considering it, he did not seem at all certain he wanted to fight this battle. "Well, perhaps that would be best."

"But we can reserve the spot after him for you, milord," Orden said. He knew that he did not have to reserve a place of honor for this nincompoop. Once Dreis gave his endowment to the captain, Orden would be free to put the Duke anywhere in the serpent. Someplace close to the middle would be nice.

"Very well, then," Dreis said in a tone of dismissal. Then he made it clear to his servants that he was not to be disturbed before dawn, for he would need his sleep.

So King Orden went back to the battlements and fretted and watched for signs of aid, signs of trouble. He put his far-seers, men with many endowments of sight, on the highest pinnacle of the graak's aerie, then sent scouts out to keep watch on the hills and roads both east and west for sign of Raj Ahten's occupying army.

But they caught no wind of it.

Instead, hour by hour, all through the night, men came riding in to give aid--three hundred more farmers from the area around Castle Dreis, all with longbows; they had no armor, but wore woolen vests that might keep out a poorly sent shaft. Borenson's regiment came racing in near dawn--eighty warriors who bore many wounds from yesterday's battle.

They told how Raj Ahten's troops never showed for the ambush at Boar's Ford. Said they'd heard no word of Gaborn.

From the west came a regiment of two hundred lancers on force horses from out of Castle Jonnick, men who'd ridden when they heard Castle Sylvarresta had fallen, then had neared it only to hear that a battle would be fought at Longmont.

From the east, Knights Equitable trickled in from freeholds, a dozen here, fifty there. Mostly they were older men who had nothing to lose, or young men still naive enough to believe that war is glorious. All of these added to the fifteen hundred knights and archers that the Earl of Dreis had brought in, and the two thousand from Groverman.

Then there were the farmers' sons and the merchants out of towns that bordered the woods. Boys with grim faces, some armed with nothing but an axe or a scythe. Young men from the cities who were dressed in finery, who bore light swords that had too much gold in the baskets of their ornate hilts.

Orden did not relish the arrival of such commoners, hardly counted them as defenders. Yet he dared not deny them the right to fight. This was their land to protect, not his.

As each little troop rode between the twin fires burning along the road before the castle gates, men on the walls would shout in triumph and blow their horns, calling "Hail Sir Freeman!" or "Hail Brave Barrows!"

Orden knew men's devices, could name most knights by glancing at their shields. But one rider who came in near dawn both mystified and excited him.

Almost last to ride in that night was a huge fellow, big as a bear, riding a black, swaybacked donkey as fast as it would trot. He bore no coat of arms, only a round shield with a huge spike in it, and he wore a squat helm from which a single cow's horn curled. He had no mail but a thick coat of pig's hide, and his only weapon, beside the dagger on his belt, was a huge axe with an iron handle some six feet long, which rested across the pommel of his saddle. With him rode fifty men as grungy as himself--men with longbows and axes. Outlaws.

The knights on Longmot's walls hesitated to name this warrior and his band, though they could not help but recognize him. Shostag the Axeman. For twenty years, Shostag and his outlaws had been a scourge to every Runelord along the Solace Mountains.

It was said that he was a Wolf Lord of the old school, that he'd taken many endowments from dogs. As Shostag neared the castle gates, King Orden watched the downs behind him, saw the fleeting gray shadows of wolves race nervously through the starlight along the hedgerows, leaping stone fences.

Shostag stopped a hundred yards from the gates with his henchmen, among the last ruins of the burned city. Even in the near-total darkness, the firelight showed his face to be dirty and unshaven, his every manner vile. He spat in the ashes, looked up to the battlements, stared Orden in the eye.