Inda (52 page)

That was what Tanrid had missed: foot warriors. No horses. They wouldn’t have speed, but they could use terrain that cavalry couldn’t. Like rocky hills.

“How m-many?” the Sierlaef snapped.

“At least a wing, probably more.”

All they had was one flight—a third of a wing—plus their personal armsmen.

Tanrid flung himself down, reaching for their map, now much the worse for folding and refolding and coming through rainstorms. He beckoned to the Sierlaef, who had just opened his mouth to command the camp to mount up and ride west at the gallop. “Look,” he whispered.

The Sierlaef stared down. They couldn’t ride west. Of course, the bridge would be ruined. And forcing their horses to swim across would provide easy targets for even the worst shots. “South.”

The signal to mount up and abandon camp ripped into the soft, still summer air, thrilling rises of notes, followed by the war drums, as the boys grabbed their shields, bows, and quivers, and cantered southward in the foreign moonlight, riding in perfect formation.

There they saw the lines and lines of waiting warriors advancing from the south.

The Sierlaef’s mind veered. They had ridden straight into a well-planned trap. “ ‘Tack!” That was all he could get out—and no one listened.

Cassad flicked his reins against his horse’s neck, sending the animal plunging up next to Tanrid, who scanned back then forward again.

“Fan out?” Manther called from Tanrid’s other side in a voice tight with pain. Not to the royal heir, but to Tanrid.

The Sierlaef saw it all as his father’s two Runners closed in tightly on either side of him, weapons at the ready: the Sier-Danas, the dragoon captain, turned to Tanrid, not to him. And Tanrid galloped at a slant, catching one of the heralds’ horns, and blew three times, the signal for righthand shift. Then the Sierlaef saw Tanrid’s plan, and knew it was good. He’d sensed the ruse, he’d foreseen some sort of attack, and now he knew what to do. And the Sierlaef didn’t. The real truth was that though he was in command and he would one day be king, he didn’t really know what to do.

Except fight.

He clapped his heels to his horse’s sides on the trumpet’s signal. The well-trained riders swept to the west almost as one; then the long horn wailed again, signaling, “Shoot!”

Buck gripped his shield close, the shield he’d slung at his horse’s side every day for weeks but hadn’t really touched since their first ride through the pass. Who would have thought these farmers could put together a whole army? He rode easily, knees gripping his sweet four-year-old mare, who was obedient to his wish. Well, they would go down fighting, then, he thought, exulting in the freedom of righteous rage.

Tlen muttered the Waste Spell three times, but he still felt like he had to pee.
For Father,
he thought, struggling to find some purpose, some of the elation he saw in Buck’s face, but all he could think of was Kepa Ain’s laugh before he rode off wearing Tlen’s own House coat, his jaunty wave. Tlen’s right hand tightened on his sword hilt, his left forearm settling his shield into its long familiar position, aligned along his body so it looked from a distance like the wings of a hawk folded for the stoop.

Hawkeye lifted his head and howled out yips. Battle, finally!
Maybe this will please Father at last,
he thought, the fox cry burning his throat. How many times had he been forced to hear, “You’re the son of a princess, and you haven’t yet seen a drop of blood shed in battle. I live for the day you can show your mettle!”
This is the day, Father.
“Yip! Yip! Yip!” From behind came answering yips from his men, and he laughed, a laugh scarcely less wild than his fox yips.

Still galloping, everyone strung bows, fitted arrows, took aim, all as swift and smooth as in uncounted drills, and shot at the advancing forms. The lines wavered, serried, and again the horn, and again the whiffling flight of arrows, but what was that ahead? More of them?

Light? Light! The dragoons, trained to deal with water, bridges, with fighting once they’d jumped off their horses, now used fire: one carried, as always, campfire embers in a special silver holder, and now he rode along just as he had in countless drills, touching fire to oil-soaked strings that the dragoons bound around their arrows, their fingers nimble even in the darkness.

On their own signal they fired, sending golden arcs crossing the sky into that vast, unorganized mob of Idayagans, and summer grasses caught fire here and there. Again the ranks wavered, but there were too many of them, the Marlovans could see that now. Far too many, and the Idayagans were about to close in from the east as well as the south.

We’re outnumbered thrice and thrice again,
Tanrid thought, slinging his bow over its saddle clip. He shoved his quiver around to the middle of his back, then angled his shield up his forearm. He drew steel, in both hands. Last, because he knew how this horse got distracted and then turned wild, he put his reins in his teeth. His hands shook, and he recognized desire, but it was a desire different from sex, it had nothing of tenderness in it, the exquisite husbanding and releasing of force. This was a different desire, a more powerful one. He rode hard toward the enemy’s steel, knowing that at last he could unleash all his strength, that there would be no more wargames, not today. Every blow was meant to destroy.

“Yip! Yip! Yip!” Tlen and Hawkeye shrieked the fox cry, and now everyone around joined in. “Yip! Yip! Yip!” in a voice that meant “Kill! Kill!”—a cry that raised the hairs on the backs of the necks of those in the front ranks of their enemies: maybe they’d caught these terrible horse warriors by surprise, and they certainly outnumbered them, but that sure hadn’t scared them.

Hearts on both sides hammered faster than horses’ hooves, faster than the war drums thrumming at the outer wings of the riders, and the war horns blared their brassy challenge at the sky.

The dragoons slung their bows over their backs and readied their lances and shields, standing up in the saddles, heels locked down in the stirrups. The horses, sensing the imminent charge in the actions of their riders, tossed and pawed and whinnied as they formed up into tight lines.

The Marlovans were outnumbered, but they would go down fighting, and that was all Manther could think. He was already faint from loss of blood, but the pain was gone, and he seemed to float on his horse’s back as they homed on the target.

Tanrid grinned when he saw the ruddy light spreading, silhouetting the enemy, to catch the gleam of fire on steel, and then the dragoons galloped straight into the first ranks of the enemy, lances smashing through shields, and the men holding shields, so that rings of shock rippled back through the Idayagans, while horns called and recalled.

The dragoons were halted by the packed mass of enemies, each clearing a space by yanking out their swords and laying into the disorganized, half-panicked masses with ferocious skill and speed, just as the rest of the Marlovans hit in a second wave.

Tanrid wept with joy, with despair, for he did not want to die so far away from home, but—slash, shove, smash! Three, four enemies fell, his cavalry sword too fast, too deadly in its swing for inexpert straight swords to parry, especially upward, or for those big, heavy shields that they couldn’t see over, had obviously not been trained to maneuver, to block.

“Tanrid?” That was Cassad.

Tanrid spat out the reins, guiding his horse now only with his knees. But that was familiar, too: one of the first games the ponies played at the academy was riding obstacles with your hands tied behind your back.

“Round the Sierlaef!”

They were completely surrounded now, the front ranks of the Idayagans in total disarray, but unable to retreat as the mass of their forces pressed in from behind. An Idayagan captain shouted, trying to rally his troops, and pointing with his sword at the Sierlaef’s golden shield. Tanrid, seeing this action, sent his horse plunging toward Aldren-Sierlaef. The Marlovan strategy had narrowed to that, he thought: their duty was to close around the royal heir, until the very last one fell.

Tanrid obediently wheeled again, tightening in with the others, a circle long drilled. They all fought on, but still the enemy kept pressing forward, untrained, ill-equipped, the real threat their numbers. Tanrid and the Sier-Danas round the Sierlaef struck again and again at faceless enemies until their arms shivered like string puppets’, their breath burned their dry throats, the smoke made their vision blur, their horses stumbled with weariness. They circled the heir, just as their own men closed around them. Cassad and Tanrid both saw, too late, four of the enemy force a gap and launch themselves against Manther, who fell, still weakly swinging his sword, his old academy tunic black down the side, before the Jaya-Vayir armsmen closed in and the four vanished under Vayir steel. Riderless horses ran about in rare pockets of empty, trampled field, tails ghostly in the red light, and Tanrid began to weep in bitter rage, for these were not worthy foes—they barely knew how to fight—but they would win from overwhelming numbers.

Rage gave Tanrid enough will to lift his sword again and again, though he knew his last thrust would be soon; his horse had stumbled twice, great-hearted as she was.

It was then that the horns cried in the distance, sounding like an echo, a dream, but coming faster, too fast for a dream. And then the ranks around them faltered, many falling back, faces turning west. The Idayagans knew it before the Marlovans: the Harskialdna, somehow, was there, not way to the northwest riding blind toward the ruined bridges, but right
here,
galloping to the rescue.

And so the Harskialdna had his moment of glory at last, but it was an empty glory, though he would smile and preside over the victory dances afterward while his men proclaimed him
Harskialdna Sigun,
because it was not, after all, his rescue. It was Jened Sindan’s.

Chapter Ten

T
HE Marlovans now ruled an empire larger than Sartor. Following the news came the repercussions.

For the Pim ships, the first result was the sight of the Pim agent rowing out the day they arrived at the harbor of Bren. “The Venn are putting trade sanctions on Iascan goods,” he warned. “Sail fast, or sell up.”

Captain Beagar summoned the other two captains, canceled all liberty, and kept the fleet anchored out in the bay, even though it meant paying extra for goods to be brought in and out by the villagers in small boats who made their living doing just that.

The second result occurred when the
Pim Ryala
tacked down the last of the strait, trying to catch the last of the western winds before winter swept up from the southeast.

“Deck hai! Venn sail hull down, west-northwest!”

Venn. They’d seen them before; they’d always passed by. No one paused in their work. The bosun and purser were still arguing about the stowage of the hundred-year glowglobes against the heavy seas of winter; the bosun’s mates oversaw a party replacing the foremast topsail lifts and braces; Inda was teaching a new rat how to coil down ropes.

“Venn! Hull up, and closing!” the lookout yelled.

Inda grabbed the rope from the girl and coiled it fast, knowing what would come next:

“Flags!” Beagar yelled from the door to his cabin.

Inda already had the glass from the binnacle. He ran up the shrouds to the mainmast.

The tall ship sailed with such speed the water purled down the sides, leaving a splendid wake. Long, lean as a cutter in line, though quite large, its prow curved up rather than jutting forward in a bowsprit: Inda had seen that singular profile on the horizon a few times. For the first time he saw one close. Towers of square sails augmented by boom-extended studding sails high and low gave the ship the look of a raptor in flight. The spread of the foretopsail stretched in the shape of a highly stylized bird, with symbols above and below.

The Venn ran signal flags up.

Inda checked three times before he called, “Says to come dead. We’re to be boarded.”

From the look on the captain’s face he had expected to be required to report aboard the Venn, not be boarded; the first was humiliating, the second both humiliating and deadly serious. “Sheets up,” Beagar said heavily.

The hands ran to their stations, and for a short time the only sound was the flap of loosened sails. The ship swiftly lost way, lolling slackly on the ocean.

Inda watched from the masthead as the Venn ship flashed its tremendous square sails: first the studding sails vanished, then the royals dropped and the lower sails clewed up, all at the same time, with the same sort of deadly grace as a riding of dragoons approaching at a gallop, lances lowered at exactly the same moment. The Venn was now stripped to fighting sail, giving a clear view for archers in the tops.

Everyone on the
Pim Ryala
wondered uneasily why the Venn readied for battle when making contact with a merchant vessel.

The Venn ship closed on the weather side and then spilled its wind, heaving to beside the
Pim Ryala
. Inda swept his glass aft and caught sight of the
Ryala
’s consorts, busy shortening sail to maintain a prudent distance. There was nothing else to do. These tall-masted, ocean-crossing Venn vessels weren’t just full of highly trained sailors, they were also full of marine warriors and—rumor insisted—mages.

The deck watch lined up on either side of the waist, silent as the Venn lowered a longboat and sent over a large, armed party of those marine warriors, rowed by equally tall, strong-looking sailors in precise rhythm.

Inda watched, then belatedly realized he ought to be down there on deck. He leaned out to catch a stay, but a strong, hairy hand grabbed the scruff of his neck. “Bide,” Scalis muttered, spitting downwind. “Don’t move.”

Sky and sea stayed serene, seabirds arrowing overhead, heads flicking right and left as they watched the perplexing actions of the humans below, crawling about their wooden nests. Scolding, unheard, the birds flapped away. Below, the tall Venn marines climbed nimbly up the side and onto the deck. They ignored the custom of the southern seas and waited for the merchant captain to salute them first. He did, stone-faced, though inside Captain Beagar was sick with anxiety.