Havenstar (60 page)

‘How long to
Shield?’ she asked Scow.

‘If we leave
the packs, if we change horses at the border we can be there
tonight.’

‘Then we ride
now. We must warn Meldor, warn everyone. Warn them that Davron
is...’ But she could not finish. She could not name him their
enemy. She stopped, gathering herself together with conscious
physical effort. She felt cold, frozen, as if ice were working
through her body from the inside out.

Dead
,
she thought.
Maker, I feel as if something inside me is
dead.
.. ‘Strike the tents,’ she said.

~~~~~~~

That same
morning Meldor was woken by his scribe, Nablon, also known as the
Ant.

Like Colibran
the Cricket, Nablon had feelers, but the resemblance ended there.
His feelers were short and pointed forward to shade eyes that were
round and glossy black. His cheeks were marred by external
mandibles, appendages ideally suitable for cracking nuts and marrow
bones, meeting in front of his human mouth. The rest of Nablon was
wholly human. It was unfortunate that when he was agitated the
mandibles clacked together of their own accord, and that morning at
dawn, that’s exactly what they were doing.

‘Margraf,’ he
said, shaking Meldor.
Clack-clack
. ‘Margraf!’
Clack.
‘Wake up. An emergency—’

Meldor woke,
immediately alert. He was used to early rising although usually in
a more pleasant way, with a cup of char and the sounds of hot water
splashing into the basin on his wash stand. Clacking mandibles were
quite another thing. ‘What is it?’ he asked and groped around his
bedpost for his dressing gown. Nablon thrust it at him.

CLACK
.
‘An attack,’ the scribe said.
Clack-clack-clack-clack
. ‘It’s
started. There are hundreds of Minions coming with their Pets. They
are pouring out of the hills and gullies, on all the maps we have.
It is much worse than we feared. Margraf, there are
thousands
of them—’
Clack-clack-clack-clack!

Meldor
remained quietly calm. ‘Have they got to the border yet
anywhere?’

‘No, not yet,
but—’

‘Did you look
at the maps of the route from the Eighth?’

Clack-clack
. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘And?’

‘There are
forces there. A large army it looks like.’
Clack-clack-clack-clack
…

‘Ah. So
Portron did go to the Sanhedrin, eh? Now that is the news you
should have given me first, Nablon. Davron’s not back yet, I
suppose?’

Under the
tranquil questioning Nablon began to calm. ‘No, Margraf.’

‘As I
expected. It had to happen this way,’ Meldor said and bent to wash
his face. The water was cold. When he lifted his head again and
held out his hand for his towel, he added, ‘And no point in sending
after him. What’s done is done by now. Go tell Pennet to come in.
And arrange for my breakfast to be taken in the map room.’

Nablon handed
him the towel and went, his clacking beginning all over again.

Pennet,
Meldor’s valet, helped him to dress while a string of flustered
officials came and went and he gathered information and issued
orders. It seemed the vast number of the Minions and pets were
approaching from the east. There, Havenstar was bordered by an
irrigation dyke filled with a mixture of water and ley, a barrier
they’d named the Channel.

When Meldor
arrived ten minutes later in the huge map chamber, a room initially
intended to be an audience hall, he asked to be taken to the area
where the channel maps were mounted. Three long rows of sloping
boards had been erected to make a triangle approximately in
proportion to the borders of Havenstar. On these, a set of Keris’s
border maps had been mounted in a continuous line. As Meldor
approached, Nablon turned away from where he had been studying the
maps, his feelers stiff and his mandibles clacking unceasingly.
‘Margraf, it’s getting worse with every passing minute!’

Next to him
stood the man in charge, a one-time Trician called Zeferil of
Overton. He’d been excluded for blasphemy and was now Meldor’s
ley-lit commander, in charge of Havenstar defences. Right then
there was a glazed look of shock to his eyes, but he’d held himself
under rigid control.

‘A major
invasion, Margraf,’ he said. ‘On all fronts, but it seems to be
concentrated on the Channel. Elsewhere there are smaller numbers. I
suspect they aim to have a number of skirmishes along the Writhe
border and even south of the Riven just to keep the guard there
busy enough so that we can’t bring them to support our forces at
the Channel. I’ve ordered a full alert,’ he added. ‘All trained men
and women are to report for duty, with mounts where possible.
Couriers have been sent to warn all the border corps, although I
imagine they’ll all know by now. Margraf, I’d like your permission
to go to the Channel area.’

‘No. you stay
here with the maps. Here you will have an eagle’s view of what’s
happening. What more could a commander ask for?’

‘The
opportunity to fight, damn it,’ he said. ‘We are half a day’s
bloody ride from the Channel here! How can I give orders that can’t
be carried out for six or eight whole blasted hours? Margraf, I
didn’t expect a challenge on a scale like this! Fuck the encoloured
bastards, they’ll swamp us.’

Nablon looked
scandalised at his language, but Zeferil had been a Trician, and he
did not perceive of himself as being innately inferior to a
Margrave who was not Trician born. Consequently, he saw no need to
moderate his language—or didn’t until Meldor said, in the kind of
voice that did not invite discussion, ‘You stay here. If you were
at the middle of the Channel, it would be three or four hours to
either end of it. And what about other places along the borders?
Here you can see what is happening everywhere and send orders
everywhere. And it is not half a day’s ride to the Channel if you
make use of relays of runners with good tainted mounts to take
those orders as I know you have long since arranged. I also know
you’re using wildbells for the first leg. Right now I want
instructions sent out forbidding anyone at all to go beyond the
borders of Havenstar for any reason whatsoever. Not by as much as a
footfall, and that includes Havenguards.’ He nodded dismissively
and Zeferil drew himself up smartly, made the kinesis symbol of
obedience and subordination, and turned away to bark out
instructions.

Meldor grasped
Nablon by the elbow. ‘And now, I want you to describe to me exactly
what it is you see on the maps, without too much excitement,
please.’

~~~~~~~

Davron, on
guard duty that morning, had heard something just before dawn. A
faint scrabbling in the darkness, somewhere on the slope below him.
Outside of Havenstar he went armed again, so he slipped one of his
throwing knives out of its sheath, then crouched, trying to see who
or what was approaching. They used no stealth. Their advance was
steady and far from noiseless, as if they were unaware of the camp,
or felt themselves to be in no danger from it.

Restless, he
peered into the darkness. The sigil on his arm felt tight and he
scratched at it absently. Something gleamed. A glimpse of starlight
on armour, a man’s breastplate perhaps, or even the shiny hide of
an animal. Only one, nothing he couldn’t deal with. He scratched
again. He could have sworn he felt his sigil move, which should
have been impossible. It was melted into his flesh, after all.
Gripped by a sudden fear, his heart contracted.

Sweet Maker.
Not now. Not so soon.

A purple gleam
came out of the darkness, a single beam of light. It stabbed
fitfully, then bent to home in on him. It hit his arm even as he
moved, and pain flared under his sigil, searing. He knew then, and
half-turned to yell into the camp, but stopped with the gesture
half-made and the words frozen. He could not do it. He couldn’t
call for help, couldn’t retreat, couldn’t resist. The purple light
drew him.

He walked
towards it, ensnared, reeled in like a fish on a string. Yet he
could still think, still feel. He knew exactly what was happening
to him, and why, but there was not a thing he could do about
it.

His mind
screamed his rejection.
No! Not now— Not yet.

He knew it was
useless. This fate was all he had, and he’d chosen it when he’d
elected to save his wife and child from the curse of tainting. He
was heading towards a destiny so terrible it was beyond his
comprehension, and there was not a thing he could do about it. For
five years he’d lived knowing this moment would arrive. He’d hoped
to die when it did, killed by his friends. Instead he was walking
coolly out into the night, unable to raise the knife in his hand to
defend, or kill, himself.

Reaching deep
inside his being, into his reserve of courage, he tightened his
barrier to any feeling of regret. He prayed as blind Meldor prayed,
without kinesis. He sent words—not symbols that had lost their
depth of meaning—out into the night, knowing the Maker probably
could not hear, yet saying them anyway. He smothered the shame he
felt and tried to stand tall even as he attempted to cast around
for any solution that would save Havenstar from his obliterating
hand. In the face of crushing despair, he still looked for a sliver
of hope, because he would not surrender. When he prayed it was not
for help or forgiveness, or even for death—but for victory.

I will not
give up
… Keris found a way to make the Unstable stable;
couldn’t he find a way to defeat the Unmaker?
Meldor believed it
possible. I know Carasma better than any man alive
…

It was short
walk into the darkness. Every step was torture. Every memory
tainted with guilt.
I will not give in!

The Minion who
waited for him had the appearance of a middle-aged man, a tough and
wiry fighter with flat eyes that held no mercy and no compassion,
or even interest. The pet that slobbered at his side was a horror
of scales and spines, with a face of an obese hog and a horn in the
middle of its forehead. It had a rudimentary intelligence and he
heard it say hopefully, ‘Eat, Master. Sogol want eat man.’

The beam of
purple shone from a ball of ley the Minion grasped in his hand.
When Davron confronted him, he asked, disinterested, ‘Are you
Storre?’

‘I am.’

‘Lord Carasma
the Unmaker wishes to see you. He says to tell you that your time
has come.’

The words
dried out the insides of Davron’s mouth, so that he had to lick his
lips before he could reply. ‘I guessed as much.’

‘My name is
Galbar. You are to go back and get your horse and saddle, quietly,
without waking the camp. Then return to me and we will ride for the
Writhe.’

‘My
packs?’

‘You won’t be
needing anything where you’re going.’ The Minion’s lack of interest
in his captive was as chilling as inhumanity would have been. ‘Go,’
he said, and Davron went. He could do nothing else.

He didn’t
rouse the camp, or leave a message. He did nothing except what he’d
been told to do. Refusing to expend his energies on useless regret,
he quelled his frustration. When he returned with his horse, Galbar
was already seated on his tainted mount, waiting. He gestured for
Davron to saddle up.

‘Eat,’ said
the pet, eyeing him hungrily. ‘Master—Sogol want eat man,’ it said.
‘Want now!’ It sounded petulant, like a spoiled child, and bent to
sharpen its horn on a nearby rock..

Galbar ignored
it. ‘Follow me,’ he said when Davron was ready. He turned his mount
without bothering to see if he was obeyed. So confident of his
mastery over his prisoner, Galbar had not even bothered to disarm
him. Davron thought of lunging for the ley ball generating the
light that tethered him, but the idea was stillborn, mired on the
coercion.

They rode in
silence. Galbar set a swift pace and he followed. He touched his
knives and fingered the handle of his whip, even as he shut his
mind to the numbing despair threatening to overwhelm him.

~~~~~~~
~

On the Channel
side of Havenstar, Heldiss the Heron was the first to see the
Minions coming, not surprising since he was two foot taller than
anyone else thanks to his elongated stick-thin legs. Heldiss,
one-time Havenbrother and guardian of a rope-bridge in the wilds of
the Unstable, was now a Havener like his two sons. One of them was
a baker in Shield, the other now stood beside him, watching the
Minions stream towards them. The long horizontal line of attackers
was continuous, as far as the eye could see in either direction,
and it was five or six deep. Worse even than the Minions were the
Pets that accompanied their masters. They ranged from human-like
fauns and satyrs with horns, to lumbering monsters the size of a
small hut on legs. The number of teeth, fangs, talons, claws and
other needle-sharp prongs they had between them would have supplied
enough cutting and chiselling and slicing power for all the
carpentry shops of the stabilities.

‘Middenshit,’
Heldiss muttered. ‘We’re dead unless the Margrave comes up with
something new.’

He and his men
stood behind an earthen rampart bordering the ley-soaked water of
the Channel. Both the ditch and the rampart would provide some sort
of obstacle to the invasion, especially as most of the attacking
force would not be expecting the water. The Channel had the
appearance of a small ley line, but it was newly seeded with
sharpened caltrops. Heldiss was hoping that in spite of the ley,
they’d last long enough to do some damage to the enemy.

In the
meantime, he surveyed the approaching forces and wondered why the
midden he’d listened to the Margrave when the blind man had
suggested it was time for all Havenbrethren to come to Havenstar.
They’d been standing by the canyon containing the Deep at the time,
just before that girl had been attacked by the manta ray, and the
Margrave’s deep sonorous voice had been hypnotic. It hadn’t
occurred to him then to refuse…and now here he was standing waiting
to be slaughtered. He glanced at his son. Well, there was one good
reason for returning, right there, he supposed. His sons, his
grandchildren—they had a home here, a future, if only these
corrupted bastards could be defeated.