The Sea of Time (47 page)

Jame realized that he had never been exposed to the Eye. Really, Kencyr didn’t know Kothifir as well as they should, given how long they had been here.

“They’re coming,” she said again. “My word of honor on it. Don’t you believe me?”

“I have to, don’t I? Either that or declare our lordan mad. How many?”

“More than I could count. Ten thousand? About ten miles out.”

“We could match that, if we were all here,” said Ran Spare, thinking out loud. “As it is, there are fewer than two thousand cadets in camp. I’ll sound the alarm.”

He left at a run, and Jame pounded up the stairs to her apartment, where Rue met her at the door, almost limp with relief.

“Ten! Brier Iron-thorn said that you’d come back! What’s going on?”

Jame told her.

“Truly?” Her eyes widened.

Then she started as the great horn outside Harn’s apartment blared out over the drowsy camp. One by one, the waking compounds added their alerts, the Knorth’s immediately above Jame’s quarters, on the roof. Below, feet hit the floor and cadets scrambled into their clothes. Damson appeared at the door, barefoot with her shirt unlaced. Quill and Niall were behind her.

“What?” she asked, then registered Jame’s presence. “I should have known.”

“Just answer it,” said Jame. “I’ll catch up as soon as I can.”

They turned and ran.

Now, where was . . . oh, there. Gaudaric had delivered the rhi-sar armor as he had promised, in bundles piled at the foot of her bed. Jame tore off the wrappings and arranged the pieces on her blanket over the mound formed by Jorin, who had crawled under the cover and was resolutely ignoring her.

“They’re forming in the inner ward,” Rue reported from the northern balcony, hanging over it to look down. “Here come the other randon in camp. Ran Spare is talking to them. Some are arguing with him—no wonder when, from what you say, we’re outnumbered five to one. But as a Knorth he’s senior to the others.”

The horns stopped, little Coman piping to the very end and finishing with a discordant, excited bleat.

Rue turned back to the room. “What’s that?”

Jame unwrapped a large, round parcel. It was, as she had suspected from its shape, a shield, made of braided rhi-sar leather laced back and forth over fire-hardened ironwood. Another package yielded up barding in the form of a quilted crupper to cover a horse’s flanks. She hadn’t forgotten Death’s-head’s last, unfortunate encounter with the fangs of the black Karnid mares. That left one bundle. Now, what was this?

“Oh,” said Jame, and held up the rathorn ivory vest, which she had last seen on display in Gaudaric’s showroom. Morning light glimmered off its intricate, overlapping plates, each barely two fingers wide, drilled at the top and laced to a sturdy, padded jacket. Its collar was high, its skirt long enough to cover the upper thighs and divided for riding. It shifted in her hands, its scales softly clinking. A note tumbled from its folds.

“I could see that the gorget fretted you,”
Gaudaric had written.
“Please accept this as a gift from my family and a grateful city.”

“It’s beautiful,” breathed Rue, touching it with a fingertip.

“Yes. It is. And now it has to be useful as well.”

Jame regarded the armor laid out on her bed, trying to remember the arming sequence. One started at the feet.

Ran Spare’s voice echoed below, distorted by stone walls. He was telling the cadets what they faced.

Jame fumbled with the hooks that secured the back- and frontplates of the greaves, then remembered that she hadn’t buckled the heel plates onto the articulated boots. Quick, quick . . .

Next the belt, to which the thigh guards were attached.

“Now what?” Rue indicated the padded gambeson and the equally padded ivory vest.

Should she have put on the former first? Too late now.

“The vest.”

Rue helped her on with it and laced it up the back. Then she dropped the breast- and backplates of the cuirass over Jame’s head. Below, Spare was ordering the cadets to the armory, then to the stables.

. . . arm harnesses, spiked shoulder guards, gauntlets . . .

Jame started to pick up the helmet, then remembered that she needed a weapon. Gaudaric hadn’t sent her a sword because he knew that she already had one. It hung from a hook in its leather sheath in the corner, a nicely balanced, sharp-edged piece of steel with the wavy patterns down its blade of many foldings. Her lack of skill with it was legendary. As the doggerel verse went:

Swords are flying, better duck.
Lady Jameth’s run amuck.

She had never yet managed to hang on to a sword throughout an entire engagement.

Beside it were her scythe-arms, those elegant double-pointed blades that functioned as extensions of her claws. Of the two weapons, Jame much preferred the latter, but they weren’t intended for mounted combat. Reluctantly, she took down the sword and strapped its belt around her waist.

“Here.” She gave Rue the shield and barding to carry, herself taking Death’s-head’s high, heavy saddle and bitless bridle from their racks. “We need to get out the South Gate before the cadets catch up with us.”

Horses neighed in excitement behind them in the ward as they hurried down the deserted street.

Creak, creak, creak
went Jame’s leather armor. It might not be as heavy as steel plate, but it certainly was noisy. And stiff.
I’m a dragon, not a tortoise,
she told herself, beginning to sweat and pant as the saddle’s weight dragged her down and its dangling stirrups tripped her up.

Meanwhile, she called silently to the rathorn, but received only sullen silence in reply. She had visited Death’s-head as often as she could over the past year, but had had little to ask of him even though she sensed that he was growing bored and resentful. Now he was sulking.

Bel-tairi met them beyond the gate, over the bridge. Jame slung the saddle onto the Whinno-hir’s back and tightened the girth as far as it would go but, designed for a much larger barrel, it hung loose. Rue grabbed the right stirrup as Jame swung herself up, then handed her the shield, bridle, and folded crupper while she balanced precariously.

“I don’t think she can carry me too,” the cadet said, stepping back. “You go on.”

Jame looked down at her, remembering how Rue had longed to prove herself to the rest of the Knorth barracks. “You’re sure?”

“Yes. Go.”

She rode across the training field, into the dips and hollows carved by the Amar’s overflow. From ahead of her came the sound of swift water, and of something noisily churning in it. Splashing around a curve, Bel knee-deep in the early spring runoff, she saw the rathorn in the shallows, vigorously rolling in the mud. He regained his feet with a snort and shook himself. His white coat was streaked with muck, his mane and tail tangled. Jame regarded him in dismay.

“Oh, no. Not now.”

She shifted to dismount, and felt the saddle slide sideways under her. There was barely time to kick free her feet before she hit the water. Trinity, but it was cold, even so far from the mountains that had given it birth. She surfaced sputtering to find both rathorn and Whinno-hir watching her. Death’s-head snorted again, as if in scornful laughter. Jame pushed dripping black hair out of her eyes and scowled at him.

“Come here, you.”

At first she thought he was going to sidle away from her, but she must have put more command into her voice than she had thought. He stood, blowing with impatience, as she sluiced water over his shoulders and raked her claws through his unkempt hair. Beyond the ravine, out of sight, horses thundered past, the cadets riding to war. Quick, quick . . .

Death’s-head accepted the saddle, bridle, and crupper with an ill grace, but his ears had twitched at the sound of hooves. Something was afoot, something interesting.

Jame swung up into the high saddle, feeling water drain down inside her armor and run out of the gap at her heels. She had barely gathered the reins when the rathorn was in motion. He trotted up the creek bed with his horn-crowned head held high and his nostrils flaring red, then clambered up its steep bank to the valley floor. The other riders were a cloud of dust to the west. Death’s-head started after them at a canter that quickly grew into a gallop. Jame resisted the urge to clutch his mane, instead tightening her legs around his barrel. At the touch of her heels, he went even faster.

Some two miles from the camp, a mountain spur cut into the valley from the south while a recent massive landslide from the Rim pinched it to the north, leaving only a hundred feet clear between them. The cadets were racing for this bottleneck, the only place along the Betwixt where their inferior number might hold off the far larger Karnid horde.

But for how long?
Jame wondered.

By now, hopefully, Brier had alerted Harn Grip-hard. The bulk of the Southern Host would come as soon as it could, but it would take time for a significant number to descend the Escarpment, and then how many horses had the cadets left them to reach this new battlefield?

Two miles for the cadets to cover, eight for the Karnids, but the former had spent a good half hour getting ready. Who would reach the gap first?

The mountain spur loomed ahead, its steep sides bristling with stunted trees and shrubs. Opposite it was a slope of rocky debris, reaching from the valley floor halfway up to a giant bite taken out of the Escarpment’s rim. Sunlight climbed both. Beyond, westward, the sky was still dark enough to show scattered stars, although building clouds soon obscured them.

Ah. The cadets were pulling up just short of the gap, with no Karnid yet in sight. They had won their race, for whatever good that might do them.

Jame hauled back on the reins, but the rathorn only tossed his head in irritation, almost unseating her, and plunged into the Kencyrs’ back ranks. Horses squealed, fighting to escape his rank scent. Some threw their riders and bolted back toward Kothifir. Others collided with their mates and fell in tangles of thrashing limbs.

“Sorry,” said Jame to startled faces as she bucketed past. “Sorry, sorry, sorry . . .”

She emerged through the broken front line to face a crescent of nine senior randon who had turned to observe her precipitous arrival.

“I don’t believe it,” said the Caineron, scowling. “Where did she spring from?”

None of them looked pleased to see her, Ran Spare least of all.

“You should turn back, Lordan,” he said. “This is no exercise.”

There was a jostling among the riders. Timmon emerged on her left riding a palomino, Gorbel to her right on a sturdy dark bay. The Ardeth wore hardened leather with rhi-sar inserts over gilded chain mail; the Caineron, a full suit of unornamented black rhi-sar. Most of the other cadets had donned less, down to mere padded jackets, depending on the wealth of their respective houses. Jame began to feel overdressed. She also felt rising anger.

“Why the Caineron and Ardeth Lordan, but not the Knorth?”

Death’s-head fidgeted under her. He wanted to get past these blockheads and at the enemy, whoever that might be. The officers’ horses stirred uneasily.

“For one thing,” said Ran Spare, “you see what effect that monster of yours has on our mounts. Are we to sacrifice the entire cavalry for one rider?”

He rode toward her as he spoke, calming his nervous mare with the touch of his hand. Death’s-head’s nostrils flared with interest. Pray Ancestors that she wasn’t in season.

“For another, have you ever fought in that armor? I thought not. For some reason, you’re also dripping wet. Worse, where is your helmet?”

Jame touched her bare face, shocked by memory. The helm with its fearsome guard of ivory teeth still lay on her bed in camp, where in her haste she had forgotten it. She hadn’t even missed it until now.

Fool,
she thought.
What
am
I doing here?

The randon was beside her now, their mounts head to tail. The rathorn sniffed. The mare stood her ground, although her withers darkened with nervous sweat. “Most important, though, there is this.” Spare spoke too softly now for anyone else to hear. “In the next hour, we may all die. Your lord brother survived Urakarn, otherwise no one would have known what happened to him or to the troops under his command. Someone must survive here too, to tell our story. Please, lady.”

Timmon rose in his stirrups and pointed. “Here they come!”

Beyond the gap, the valley widened and turned toward the southwest. Black-clad riders appeared around the bend, filling the Betwixt from side to side as their front line swung across it. They seemed to bring the wings of night with them, under whose shadow they rode in a many-legged mass. Likewise, their hoofbeats rolled together into a continuous rumble like distant thunder and dust rose like smoke in their wake. Through rents in the latter, one could see something looming behind them that was neither the Escarpment nor any Apollyne peak. Black it was, high and wide enough to dominate the sky, although its snowbound summit was broken. Columns of steam rose above it from its hidden interior and its flanks were fissured with cracks that glowed red in the dusk of its shadow.

“‘Black rock on the dry sea’s edge,’” Gorbel growled, quoting one of Ashe’s songs to the surprise of those close enough to hear. “‘How many your dungeons swallowed. How few came out again.’ D’you mean to tell me that that hulk is . . .”

“Urakarn,” breathed Timmon. “Or a counterfeit of it, like a mirage.”

Snow tumbled down from the heights and a cloud of ash belched up over its ramparts. Jame remembered the boiling lake and the seam of rising fire within the earth. Some moments later, the ground shuddered slightly underfoot, but any sound it might have made was swallowed by the rumble of the oncoming horde.

Jame watched the gray stallion in the vanguard. It really was Iron-jaw, she decided, who had been her father’s war-horse. She remembered Tori daring her to ride the brute, and that bone-jarring fall, and Tori dragging her back through the fence, out from under those deadly, steel-shod hooves. Iron-jaw had always had an evil temper. Then Ganth had ridden him to death in the Haunted Lands, searching for the Dream-weaver, his lost love. When the stallion had come back as a haunt, the changer Keral had claimed him for his master, Gerridon.