Daughter of Lir (61 page)

Minas grinned with utter lack of mirth. “Serves you right,”
he said. Emry bent his head to the justice of that.

“I do not accept you as my father,” Minas said. “If you
demand it, I will challenge you. I will probably win. Your people are very
brave, but none of them teethed on the bones of an enemy.”

“No,” Emry granted him. “I’m not your father, or stepfather
either. But we are kin. You are my sister’s man, and I am your mother’s. Our
children share the same blood.”

“We are enemies,” Minas said flatly.

“Kin can be the worst enemies of all,” said Emry.

“My brother loves you,” Minas said. It seemed he had to say
it, to begin to understand it. “My mother . . . loves you. She
would never take a foreign husband else. Is it a spell? Do you have your
mother’s powers after all? Did you think you could destroy us?”

“I am not Etena,” Emry said.

“No,” said Minas. “You are not. Your people have more
strength to resist her than mine do. You submit to women as if it were a
natural thing. Her greatest power is to take men by surprise, and rule them who
never expected to be ruled by a woman. Those who expect it seem proof against
her spell.”

“I hear that she has taken the temple and set it against my
father.”

“The temple was set against your father before she ever came
to plague it.”

“Poor Etena,” Emry said. “She’ll never rule the world.”

“You think so?”

“I pray so.”

“We can all pray,” Minas said. He yawned and stretched.
“Will you take the bed? I’ll sleep on the floor.”

Emry grinned. “I have a bed of my own. And five years’
absence to make up for.”

“Then you had better make up for it.”

Emry was still smiling as he sought his own place. The
familiar passage, the door, the room with its treasures of a life he had almost
forgotten, struck him strangely after the lash of Minas’ wit.

It was only when he had shut the door that it struck him. He
was feeling again. Aera’s son had opened his heart that she had closed so
deathly tight.

This was not such a country as the People had conquered
before. Instead of camps of tribes and clans, they faced chains of cities, and
forts of wood or stone perched like eagles on crags.

But Dias was possessed. He would, he must, find his brother
in the great city. Instead of taking the towns, he took the river and the road
beside it.

The enemy had never thought that the charioteers would sail
up the river in boats, or take nothing but the riverbank and leave the towns
untouched unless they had need of provisions. Then raiders would swoop down,
seize what they needed, and take to the river again.

The People were as disconcerted as the enemy. “We are not
boatmen!” they had cried when he gave them their orders.

But his will was firm, and he would hear nothing that stood
against it. He mounted a hill above them and called to them in a great voice.
“Come with me! Do what the People have never done before. This country is
prepared for us—for what we’ve always been. Let us astonish them. Let us ambush
them. Let us conquer them as they never looked to be conquered.”

He won them. Quiet Dias had lit with a fire that swept them
all before him.

They passed by the citadel of World’s End on its crag, took
the boats on the quays below, and the boatmen with them, and thrust toward less
strongly defended cities. Wherever they could take boats, they took them, and
shipped warriors in them, and chariots, and even horses.

Two days past World’s End, having driven back a force that
rode out from the stronghold to harry them, they found what they needed: a city
on a level of the river, and a crowded mass of boats in its quays. Many had
fled from downstream; more seemed to have sought refuge there. There were enough
to make a great army on the water; and Dias meant to take them.

First they took the walled city by storm, broke down its
walls by sheer force of numbers. Against arrows from above they had shields
that Metos had shown them how to make, hide stretched over woven withies and
sealed tight and hard. From beneath these they shot arrows tipped with fire.
The city’s wall was wood; for all its people could do, it burned.

Aera was among the chariots that drove through the burned
and broken wall, close behind the mass of mounted warriors who had done the
breaking. In the confusion of war, she had found it remarkably easy to vanish
among the warriors. She was tall for a woman, and spare; with her breasts bound
tight and her hair braided like a man’s, she roused no one’s suspicions. There
were so many men here, of so many tribes; so many of them now followed Dias’
fashion of shaving the beard. Who, after all, would look for a woman among the
fighting men of the People?

She rode in the warrior’s place behind a young man of the
Red Falcon clan, whose name was Vatis. Vatis had a gift with horses, and could
get his chariot and his team of red mares in where no one else could go. Aera
was no great warrior, but spear and war-club took little enough skill. She
could leave the finer arts to the bowmen and swordsmen, keep her charioteer
alive and beat back enemies who rode or ran howling toward the chariot. It was
all any warrior needed to do.

It was remarkably satisfying. The men with their black
beards reminded her vividly of Emry—she took a grim pleasure in overwhelming
them. The women, who were as likely to be armed and in armor as the men, fought
much more viciously. Against them she was fighting for her life.

And yet it was clear to her that most of the enemy were not
fighters. Those that were, were spread thin. The rest fought as they could,
with little skill. Soft people, gentle people, not only unused to killing, but
often incapable of doing it. The blows they struck swung wide or came down
feebly. They were striking to wound or maim. They were not striking to kill.

Emry could kill, and had. He was a warrior, a king’s son.
But he had never danced with the others around the heaps of slain, nor would he
drink from a skull-cup, though he had earned a king’s treasury of them.

He was a gentle man. Soft? Yes. But hard too, and cruel in
ways that she had never understood until that last day.

These people were simply soft. They had courage, but not
enough to sustain them against the People. The People truly did not care if
they died. These people did, profoundly. They loved life too much to be eager
to leave it.

She had been striking blindly. Now she struck with intent,
to kill, and kill quickly. The chariot lurched and rolled over bits of wall and
fallen bodies. The mounted men were piling to a halt, as herdsmen will when the
flock was driven tight together. Arrows rained down from rooftops. Flames
leaped up: part of the city was burning.

A city was too close, too crowded for chariots. They needed
open land, and room to move, to turn. They drew back while they still had room,
leaving horsemen to finish taking the city, and came together on the field.

Dias was there, grinning a wild battle-grin. Aera could see
what anyone with eyes could see: that the enemy had taken the bait. All their
fighters were trapped in the city. The road by the river was clear, and the way
open to the boats.

They thundered down the road or on the grassy verge,
whooping, yelling, singing. There was a guard on the boats, but it was a
pitiful few. Could they truly not understand what Dias was doing? Could they
not turn their minds from defense of their cities, and move to defend the
river?

A woman launched herself at the chariot, shrieking something
in her own language. She had a spear with a long bronze head. She stabbed with
it, aiming at Vatis, at his hands that held the reins. Aera raised a sharp
light lance, sighting along it, measuring the distance to the woman’s heart.
Time slowed. Her thoughts were clear. Bronze was deadly, but fire-hardened
wood, sharpened to a needle’s edge and aimed by a cold eye, was just as
dangerous. She thrust the lance home.

The woman died in a state of perfect astonishment. Aera met
her eyes as the life poured out of her. She was no killer, no more than the
rest of her people. It seemed almost an affront to her that Aera was.

o0o

They found not only boats in that place, but a vast store
of provisions in wooden houses that some of the young warriors nearly burned,
but wiser eyes stopped them. They took the provisions—much of which consisted
of fodder for horses: truly a gift of the gods—and burned the storehouses
after, loaded the boats and pressed the boatmen into service and went on up the
river.

Some of the People were beginning to understand about boats.
Young charioteers, riders and warriors, took to the smooth flow of the water
and the art of skimming over it, even in boats laden down with horses and
cargo. They made a contest of rowing against the current, testing strength
against strength, and learning quickly that if they did not all pull together,
they tangled their oars and overset the boat.

Aera would have preferred to stay on land. But after they
had taken that trove of boats, Dias divided the horde. More than half it, he
set free to raid and pillage wherever they pleased, as long as they kept moving
toward Lir. The rest, all that could ride in boats, aimed straight for the
city.

The river that had been such a terror for so long was now
their best friend and ally. The land was in turmoil: riders and chariots
swarming over it, attacking in a score of different places at once. The
defenders could not gather, could not focus in a single battle. There were too
many tribes and clans, too many raids, too many towns to protect.

There was little enough fighting on the river. When they passed
forts on the crags, arrows would rain down, or flights of stones, but never
enough, and seldom along the farther bank. Sometimes boats would come at them,
full of armed fighters. None of those had shields. Archers could pick them off
at will, or if they eluded those, men in smaller, lighter boats would surround
them and overwhelm them and take their boat.

o0o

Dias loved the river. He rode in a boat that was narrower
than most, with a higher prow, graceful on the water like a swan. Aera found
ways to be on that boat, even as perilous as it could be if he or one of his
warband recognized her. But no one was looking for the king’s foster-mother in
the company of his warriors.

She kept to the stern, crowded in with boys who would never
have known her face, and watched him. He smiled often. She had not seen him do
that since Minas lived among the People. Even when his men grumbled,
complaining that all the fighting was on land and there was nothing for them
here, he only laughed. “You’ll have all the fighting you could wish for, once
you come to Lir. That I promise you.”

Lir was coming closer. There were more forts, more strongly
guarded. There were archers on the banks, and once a fleet of boats moored
together from bank to bank. That was a strange battle, rocking and swaying,
fighting as much against the water as against the enemy.

As the fight engaged, an army swarmed out of the wood along
the bank, aiming for the first of the boats. Aera raised her voice in a shrill
of warning, a fierce ululating cry that stopped every man of them cold.

Aias was riding in a boat like Dias’, a little apart from
the rest of them. He snapped an order to his men. They dug in oars, beating
toward the bank. Their boat wallowed for long enough that Aera’s heart was in
her throat; then suddenly it leaped across the water. Aias and a handful of
others in the bow drew swords and knives. Under cover of archers from behind,
they fell on the third or fourth boat from the bank, hacking at the ropes that
bound it to its fellows.

There were only a few men in it. The army was still running
toward the bank. Aias hurled two of the defenders into the water in one great
heave. His fellows disposed of the rest, sometimes bloodily.

The boat broke free. The current caught it and whirled it
about. The boats on either side, no longer anchored, fell prey to the current.

The army had lost its bridge. The chain of boats was easy
enough prey, as lightly manned as it was; the bindings that had made it so
dangerous now were its downfall. Boats bound together could not maneuver, could
not escape the swarm of attackers.

o0o

“A dozen new boats,” Dias said in satisfaction. They rowed
by night, choosing not to camp as they had before. The bank was too thick now
with towns and forts. They stayed on the river, rowing more slowly, taking
shifts so that everyone could rest.

Dias was well pleased with the day’s work. His hands were
still wet from washing; he had addressed a captive just now, learned what the
man knew, then cut his throat and flung him overboard. The man had bled a great
deal. Dias had washed off most of the blood; one or two of his warband were
still scrubbing it from the boat.

He perched on a heap of baggage almost on top of Aera, and
smiled at the moon. “Three days,” he said, “and we come to Lir.”

“Three days if no one stops us.” Aias’ boat came up beside
Dias’, matching pace with it. They had all learned to do that without fouling
oars or capsizing boats.

Dias folded his arms on the rim of his own boat and grinned
at his friend. “You think anyone will?”

“I think there may be other traps upstream,” Aias said. “A
scout came in—hailed us from the bank, and we pulled him aboard. Sirtis’ clan
is dead. They ran into an ambush, took a town that seemed to have no defenders—but
there was an army hiding in the hills. They’re all gone, to the last man.”

“All of them? The scout?”

“Died telling it.”

Dias gave that a moment’s silence. But the loss only fed his
wild humor. “So: the women can fight after all. Good! I was afraid this would
be too easy.”

Aias grinned back at him. “We’ve lopped off a limb or two,
but now we’re coming to the heart. They’ll fight for that. I let off a handful
of riders and sent them to see what they can see. They’re all from White Horse
country: dark-haired men with beards. With luck they won’t be suspected before
they come back to us.”