On mornings when the fighting had not yet begun, the leaders of the Ardhan army met at dawn in the queen's pavilion. Although Bryon had the standing invitation issued to all the ducal heirs, he seldom attended, preferring to eat with his men. On the morning after his visit to Crystal's tent, he surprised everyone by not only appearing, but by having managed to wash, shave, and find a clean set of clothes.
He made an elegant bow to the queen, saluted first Mikhail, then his father and the other dukes, grabbed a plate and a mug, and found a seat beside Crystal. If he wanted to speak to her about the night before, however, he was to be disappointed. After greeting him with a somewhat absent smile, her mind, to all outward appearances, was wholly on the war.
"I'm afraid it's true, Majesty, " the Duke of Lorn said sorrowfully as conversation resumed. "My daughter arrived last night with confirmation. Halda has fallen. "
Tayer's eyes filled with tears and, almost involuntarily, she shook her head slowly from side to side. Mikhail appeared to be carved from stone.
"What of the Royal Family?" he demanded gruffly. Hanna, Mikhail's only sister was Halda's queen.
Lorn's daughter, Kly, a small, muscular brunette, spoke up. "The news I have is three days old, dating from when the pass was taken by the Empire. Then, |
the Royal Family was safe in their principal seat, but by now the castle must have been overrun. So long dependent on their mountain barriers, Halda has... had almost no defenses. "
A sound, half moan, half sob, welled up from Tayer's throat.
"Do not despair, Majesty. " Kly's matter-of-fact tone was more calming than sympathy would have been. "I believe the Royal Family escaped and are hiding in the mountains. "
"Why?" Mikhail did not yet let himself hope. Better Hanna be dead than a captive of Kraydak or his men.
"I was in Halda often during my three years as a Messenger and I saw the escape plans. Halda's Guard Captain long feared this day would come. And, although it is not common knowledge, Halda's Guard Captain is a wer. "
"Wer!" More than one member of the council spat out the word as though it left a bad taste in the mouth. The members of the race the wizards had developed were few in number, seldom seen, and almost invariably hated.
"Wizard spawn, " growled the Duke of Cei, his fat face twisted with distaste.
"More likely to side with Kraydak then against him!"
"No. " Kly's voice was quiet and assured. "The wer hate the wizards with an intensity hard to imagine. The names of the wizards are curses to them and Kraydak's is the most cursed of all. " She turned to Crystal and, with no change of expression, added. "They've still not decided about you. "
Crystal inclined her head. What the wizards had done to create the wers was terrible beyond belief. The wers had a right to eternal hatred of their creators and, although it had happened thousands of years before her birth, she was a wizard.
"If it's not common knowledge, " said Lorn, "how did you happen to find out that this man was a wer?"
Kly favored her father with a level gaze.
He blushed slightly and mumbled, "Never mind. "
"Milord. " Kly addressed Mikhail directly. "There isn't a person alive that knows the mountains better than Rayue. There are caves and passages that go on for miles and have served as emergency shelter for the wer for generations. I believe that, for now, the Royal Family of Halda is safe. "
Mikhail held her eyes for a moment longer, then, finding hope in her certainty, nodded.
"Now, if you'll excuse me, I'd like to go check on my horse before the fighting begins. " As she left, she exchanged grins with Bryon. She had been Messenger to Belkar as well.
The council broke up soon after her departure. It was getting light and the battle lines were forming on the Tage Plateau.
Crystal stood, as she had stood since the first day the armies had engaged, alone on a rocky outcropping with an unobstructed view of the battlefield. Her hair whipped about in the wind and she felt, with growing uneasiness, the power building in the east. The air hung heavy with it and the sky was growing a greenish black. She waited nervously, gathering her own power to counter what had to be a major blow. As always, she faced the day wondering why she had not already been destroyed.
Although she had no way of knowing it, Kraydak wondered the exact same thing.
On each day of the battle he had sent a little more power against her and each day she had met it and managed to survive. Once or twice, as she turned his attack in a totally unexpected way, he'd felt that, maybe, there was more to this wizard-child than he suspected and, perhaps, it would be amusing to discover what. And then he'd remember the prophecy-out of Ardhan would come the last of the wizards, the last creature capable of defeating him-and he'd try again to destroy her.
On a hillock, not far from where his daughter waited, Mikhail and his staff sat surveying the scene. Messengers had become couriers and already the traffie was heavy between the commanders and Mikhail. He hated not being able to fight himself, but his skills as a tactician were needed much more than his skill with his great black sword. His eyes went to where the Elite were grouped to take the brunt of the day's charge and he wished with all his heart that he was among them.
The armies joined and Crystal braced herself for the release of Kraydak's power. When it came, it was typical of his attacks but much more complicated than most. It began to rain. No ordinary rain, this was cold, and vicious, and selective. It rained only on the Ardhan army. Only the Ardhan troops got wet and cold, only their footing became slippery and treacherous. Even when soldiers grappled in close hand to hand combat, Kraydak's army stayed dry and sure-footed.
Crystal couldn't tell if Kraydak had wrapped each of his men in a force shield and then caused it to rain or if he was directing the rain itself. She faced a master weaving of many types of power with only a slight idea of how to begin unraveling it.
As the day progressed, and the battle raged, so too did the battle between the wizards. Crystal began to understand what Kraydak had done and was having some success at undoing it. The rain came in scattered bursts now, whole sections of the Plateau would be dry, while in others rain fell on Ardhan and Melacian alike. In places where she could not stop the rain, Crystal tried to turn Kraydak's power against him and so an Ardhan soldier, cold, wet, and miserable, found himself up against a Melacian who was wrapped in blistering he?t and dehydrating rapidly. The odds began to even out and by midafternoon, although the conditions were both uncomfortable and unusual, neither side could say they had an advantage through magical means. The wizards now held each other in a precarious balance.
"Oh, well done. " Kraydak could not have been more pleased had he trained the child himself. For her deft handling of the day's problems, he forgave her even the attack of the night before. And although it would not happen again, he treasured the experience; he didn't remember the last time he had actually been hurt. Of course, he couldn't let her think she was free to cause him distress and just get away with it. He checked the interweavings of their power and smiled.
"Let's see how you deal with this then, little one. "
The Melacian army began to fall back and a cheer went up from the Ardhan side, a cheer that turned to cries of horror as the dead shambled up from the rear of the Melacian ranks. The fallen, gathered each night from the battlefield, had been patched together and reanimated in a grisly parody of life. Their feet dragged through the mud, their lips were pulled back from their teeth in a rictus grin, and they still bore the wounds that had sent them to Lord Death. Here lurched a man with a great hole in his chest through which could be seen a gray and rotting heart. There staggered one whose head lolled drunkenly to the side, for the muscles needed to support it had been ripped away. Others walked on legs or swung arms not their own and rude stitches showed where limbs in better shape than the originals had been attached. Some carried swords, some spears, but they all carried terror as an added weapon.
The dead were not skilled fighters, but they didn't need to be. The same ghastly power that gave them a semblance of life and sent them out to kill, also gave them a strength few living could match. They were tireless and almost impossible to stop. Killing blows had no effect, for they were already dead, and the weary men of the Ardhan army found it necessary to chop these new opponents into pieces to stop them. Even then, very often, the pieces fought on.
Had it been possible to turn and run-to flee screaming from corpses that fought wrapped in the gagging stench of rot; to hide where a clammy hand could not close round your throat and continue to squeeze even after it was no longer attached to an arm-there would have been few Ardhan soldiers left on the field. But there was nowhere to go, so they choked back their fear and fought on.
Kraydak's living soldiers took strength from the victories of their unliving comrades, and threw themselves back into the fray.
When Crystal saw the dead advance, she bit back a scream. These shambling horrors were the stuff of her nightmares and she had to deal with her own terror before she could deal with them. Each decomposing feature, each hideous parody of humanity, struck a blow at the barrier of her power.
"Can't you do anything?" she called to a young man weaving his way through the battle, pausing here and there beside those who had fallen.
"What they do with the bodies is none of my concern, " Lord Death replied, his features changing constantly as he spoke, and then he continued on his way unseen.
Crystal clutched her courage tightly and reached out to smash one of the dead to the ground. The freezing rain began again. The delicate balance of power slipped and disaster threatened. Her heart in her throat, Crystal grabbed back control and realized that Kraydak had effectively tied her hands. If she destroyed the living dead, she lost control of the elements. If the Ardhan soldiers were forced to fight the crippling cold and wet as well as their physical enemies, the Mela-cians would easily win. But if she let the walking evil be... as she watched, one of Belkar's captains went down with a spear slammed through his chest by a crawling monstrosity that dragged its guts on the ground behind it.
From his vantage point at the Plateau's edge, Mikhail ground his teeth in rage. He couldn't think of a thing that would do any good. Maneuvering was next to impossible, almost the entire army fought one on one and far too many men fought those they had defeated once already.
"Milord, " gasped a courier, riding up on a lathered and blood-flecked horse,
"they're breaking through to the south. Aliston is falling back. The duke asks you send him reinforcements. "
Mikhail scanned the Plateau. An arm of the Melacian army had curved around, forcing the Ardhans to fight on two fronts, the east and the south. Up against the living dead, the southern front was falling back. Much farther and the Melacians would be behind the Ardhan lines.
"Get through to the Duke of Hale, " Mikhail barked. "Tell him to regroup his cavalry and get over there as fast as he can. "
"Yes, sir!" And with a weary salute, the courier was gone.
Mikhail doubted even Hale's cavalry would be fast enough to reach Aliston before the line was breached, but meanwhile there was something he could do.
The need for a tactician was over. He drew his great black sword, whirled it once around his head to hear it sing, and set his heels to his horse's sides.
The beast leaped forward, as glad to be moving as its master was. They pounded down the hill and flung themselves into the battle.
Aliston's weary men rallied as Mikhail hit the Melacian line like ten men not one. The dwarf-made sword moved so swiftly it looked like a black flame and flesh and blood and bone went flying from everywhere it struck. The dead began to die again.
It was almost enough.
Then Mikhail's horse was cut out from under him, disemboweled by the dying blow of one of Melac's captains. He jumped clear and continued to carve his way forward, his height and strength giving him an advantage over the foe that even the loss of the horse couldn't totally remove. But numbers began to tell and for every man he cut down it seemed another two rose up to fill the place.
Soon he was stopped and, back to back with Aliston, surrounded by corpses and twice corpses, the two warriors fought to hold what he had regained.
Although he was covered in blood and dripping with gore, Crystal knew her stepfather had less need of help than anyone else still fighting. As much as she wanted to blast an area of safety around him, she forced herself to look away and do what she could for those who needed it more. She had discovered that, although most of her attention was needed to hold back Kraydak in the heavens, she could still manipulate small areas on the ground.
The angle of a sword blow, that would surely have separated head from shoulders had it connected, changed slightly in the air and slid off the edge of a shield instead.
A Melacian stepped on a rock which rolled slightly and sent him flying.
An archer with a direct line of sight to the Duke of Hale drew back her bow and put an arrow into the eye of a comrade.
The barbs of a Melacian spear hooked on an Elite's heavy armor and while trying to free it, the spearman himself was speared.
A craggy-faced young man with brows that drew a black line across his forehead slipped on another's blood and fell jarringly hard to the ground. As he lay gasping for breath, one of the undead loomed suddenly over him, spear raised to strike. Whispering a good-bye to his wife and child, for he knew he was on his way to Lord Death, he watched in amazement as the stitches holding the creature's spear arm to his body came unraveled and arm and spear fell harmlessly to the ground. Even the undead managed to look slightly surprised.
"I kept my promise, " Crystal told a breeze, and then sent it to tell a young woman with honey-colored curls.
Kraydak's power threw itself at her barrier in waves. With each strike, she could feel her defenses wearing away, crumbling under the subtleties of Kraydak's at-tacks and her own terror of the walking dead which she still fought to control. She feared this would be her last battle, hers and Ardhan's. The army couldn't beat the undead without the help she was unable to give. Her fists were clenched at her sides, sweat plastered her tunic to her breasts, and her hair flapped lifelessly in the wind. Her ears began to ring.
She began to hear horns.
Surely that couldn't be in her head.
It wasn't.
"To war!" called out the War Horn of Riven. "To war!" And out of the forest to the south streamed the men of Riven, the duke leading the charge with the horn to his lips. He blew again.
All through the Ardhan army, hearts lifted at the sound and men and women found the strength to fight a moment longer.
"TO WAR!" Then the duke put aside the horn, drew his sword, and the Riven warriors threw themselves at the backs of the Melacians who had almost broken through to the south.
The call of the horn went through Crystal like a ray of light. She drank it in, gathered it up, and threw it as hard as she could at Kraydak's might.
Which wavered but held. She added her joy in Riven's arrival, the hope that rose in every breast, and the love of the farmer's young wife. Kraydak's attack crumbled and the setting sun burned red and gold through the fleeing clouds.
At the touch of the sunlight, the undead paused and then, like puppets with cut strings, they collapsed to the ground. Riven's men soon drove the remaining Melacian soldiers into a full retreat while the Ardhan army leaned on their weapons and cheered.
Fewer people than usual gathered outside the queen's pavilion that evening.
Lorn had died with an arrow in his throat. Cei was in surgery with a spear wound in his belly; his fat had saved his life. Hale would not leave his men, for few of their horses had survived and in Hale a horse was regarded with as much tenderness as a child.
At Mikhail's approach, Tayer forgot queenly dignity and threw herself on him regardless of the blood which stained her hands and gown a lurid red. An embarrassed Riven was welcomed with much backslapping, his lateness forgotten in the perfect timing of his arrival.
Crystal collapsed on a camp stool and began stuffing herself with meat tarts in an attempt to fill the emptiness that clawed at her from within. She had come very close to using every last bit of power. Belkar came and stood beside her, his face gray beneath the dirt and blood.
"Have you seen Bryon lately, " he asked. "Have you seen my son?"
Crystal's face blanched and the remaining color drained from her eyes. "No, " she said, realization dawning. "Not for hours. "
They looked at each other and then both turned toward the battlefield. Was he out there? Did he lie staring up at the stars too wounded to move, bleeding, dying? Had he already gone to Lord Death?
"I'd know if he were dead, " Crystal whispered, listening to the pain rising from the wounded and trying find Bryon's within it. "I'd know. "
"Better dead than out there, " rumbled the duke. "Mother knows how long until they find them all. "
The thunder of approaching hoofbeats distracted them and they glanced up from their fears.
"Why the long faces? Didn't we win?"
"Bryon!"
Bryon smiled wearily. The joy in Crystal's voice and the welcome in her eyes made the whole wretched day almost worthwhile.
Crystal bounded to her feet, the meat tarts flying unheeded to the ground.
Relief and something more flooded the places where power had been expended.
"We feared you'd been killed. "
"Not hardly. Not a scratch on me. " He slapped at his armor with disgust. It looked a great deal like he'd spent the afternoon swimming in an abattoir. "All this blood belongs to somebody else. Several dozen somebodies, as a matter of fact. " He kicked a foot free of its stirrup, but before he could lift his leg clear of the saddle, a blue bolt arced down from the sky and smashed him to the ground. Screaming in terror, his horse bolted.
"NO!"
The world stopped while Crystal threw herself down at Bryon's side, but he was already beyond any help she could give. He tried to grin, and as he died she saw herself reflected in his eyes.