The Door into Sunset (45 page)

“Four hours or so,” the Queen said. “Our forward force came up with the Arlene van just before sunset, but it was too late to engage, so we all pitched camp around then. The sorcerers and my Rodmistresses are feeling one another out at the moment. Nothing major, and our position is the better: so we can afford the sleep. Tents for these people,” she said to the officers who had come to stand around her, “and beds. Now.”

Herewiss looked over at Hearn. His father was regarding him with the usual lazy, sleepy regard, and with a look of simple pride that was almost worth more than any sleep. But, “No,” his father said, “it can all wait until the morning. We’ve another eight miles to march before things even start to get interesting. Go to bed, son.”

Freelorn took Herewiss by the hand and led him off: and for once, Herewiss didn’t mind.

Ohhaih wnh’ehhe’Thae
,

Its subtleties are many,

‘
Thae-eilve sta’stihuw

and Its end is not yet:

hh-Aas’te’re’sta thiehuw,

nor will be while sun shineth,

as’ahiie deha’thae es’dhsuuw

yet there comes the day of choices,

iw-khai Hreihhad vuidhuw

when the Chieftainhood lies in ruin,

‘
ou rhai’stai’tdae nnou’annvuw:

and other wings shadow than ours:

stamnek’eia iwkhai mnekuw,

when the forgotten is remembered,

‘
ou dei-vehhyih hrihhuw:

and the irretrievable regained:

khaiiw mda’i’t’dae s’rai-luihuw,

when the
sdahaih
rise and sing edicts,

sda’i’t’dae’ou deiystihhei’uw.

and the
mdahaih
do as they’re bid.

He-steh hr’nn’s’raihle es’dhsuuw

Then the Great Choice comes upon us,

ouh’he haurh’thae rui’iuw

in which shall hearts be known,

o’wh-taiush’sdau ou’t’hhuduw

and the cast skin be put on again,

ou’ taiush-rui’ihd rahhuw

and all outworn certainty be buried

as’hh’asryhn iwkhai eilvuw!

as the day ends in fire....

M’athwinn ehs’Dhariss,

c. 1100 p.a.d.

(tr. d’Welcaen)

Morning came up misty on the first of Autumn: not surprising, since the Darthenes were camped so close to the Arlid valley. All the hot days in summer and early autumn were followed by cool nights and fog, which might take half the morning to burn off completely in the lower-lying vales. It was the Shadow’s own weather to campaign in, but there was no helping it.

There was no clarion cry of trumpets to get up by—where Herewiss and Freelorn were sleeping, someone came by about half an hour before dawn, banging on a pot and shouting, “Rise up, all, trough’s full!”

Four hours was not enough sleep for Freelorn, but he sat up, scrubbing at his eyes, and poked Herewiss. “Come on,” he said. “Welcome to the high art of noble war. ‘The trough’s full.’“

Herewiss groaned and tried to hide his head under the pillow. Another head appeared, and rested itself on the end of Freelorn’s camp bed: Sunspark, in hunting-cat form, blinking.
What’s a trough?

Lorn shook his head, then paused while going through his pack, and straightened. In his hands was the Lion surcoat.

“Dusty,” he said, shrugging into it, “better get moving. You know who doesn’t like to be kept waiting at breakfast.”

“Mmmnnhhhh,” Herewiss said, and turned over, covering his eyes. “She ate half of it before we got there last time, didn’t she.” He sat up, rubbing his face, and reached down to Sunspark. “How are you today?”

No worse,
it said.
I could use about half of one of the local forests.

Herewiss looked thoughtful. “Maybe we can talk Eftgan into letting you burn a couple of the Arlene supply camps. Plenty of wood and canvas and so forth.”

If she can work me into her plans,
Sunspark said,
I would be heartily grateful.
Its voice had an edge of humor to it: it was looking at Freelorn as he settled Hergótha’s sheath around him and stepped back and forth.

“Keeps banging into my legs,” he said to Herewiss. “I can’t get it set right.”

Herewiss looked at him speculatively. “Héalhra must have been taller than we thought. Here, wait a moment.” He climbed into his own clothes, then came over to Freelorn and started working at one of the side-buckles on Lorn’s belt.

Freelorn looked at him sidewise. “Do we have time for this?” he said softly.

Herewiss glanced up, and smiled: but the smile was sad. “No, but I can think about it, can’t I?”
Especially when there’s no telling whether we’ll ever have time to share again in this life—
“Try this,” he said, changing the hang of one of the straps fastened to the scabbard.

Lorn kept his face still, hearing the thought. He took a few steps, walked back again. “I think that’s done it,” he said. “But I think I may want to go over to a backscabbard like yours, in the long run.” He went back to his pack and stuffed a tunic back into it.

He felt Herewiss looking at him, thinking:
Goddess bless him, he still has no doubt that there’ll be a ‘long run’. May it only be so.

From your mind to Her ears,
Freelorn thought.

Outside, the dark was just beginning to pale into grey. The lady with the pot went by again, shouting, “Come on, you lot, it won’t be full forever! And it’s a long time till dinner!”

Herewiss and Freelorn and Sunspark glanced at one another in varying degrees of amusement, and went out to see what the trough had in it.

*

It was a table, actually, outside Eftgan’s tent, and she and her officers were busy demolishing its contents: hot bread, and butter, and a roast of beef, and a cold boiled bacon with sharp sauce, along with hot wine and hot tart barley-water to wash it all down with. Segnbora was there ahead of them, sawing away at the roast, her attention on Eftgan.

The Queen was buttering bread and talking to Erian, her commander-general: a tall, black-haired woman with the dark skin of someone born down by the Steldene border. “Straight in, Queen,” Erian was saying: “no point in delay. We have the advantage at the moment, even in this mist—Meveld’s van is all swamped in it, and once it burns off even slightly, we’ll be able to see where we’re going with just eyes.”

“Where are the rest of the Arlenes?”

Freelorn pulled a hunk of the hot bread for himself. “About thirty-five hundred of them were arrayed close to the city last night,” Erian said. “A thousand are holding the near side of Anish, and about five hundred are on the near side of Daharba.”

“They’re more concerned about us trying to force a crossing southward,” Eftgan said. “I wonder why....”

Erian shrugged at her. “No way to tell yet, but it’s worth bearing in mind. Another thousand, the van, our people pinned down last night about two miles east of where the road goes between Elsbede Hill and the Bottoms, over by Hetasb. They’ll be trying to move as soon as they can make out where we are. So I’d like to be off this high ground fairly quickly.”

“Order’s been given for that,” Eftgan said. “Half an hour and we move. Anything else?”

Erian looked thoughtful. “There were some reports of movements in the night, or suspected movements, north of Elsbede—the Rodmistresses thought they heard minds up that way. But since they were busy with about half a dozen of Cillmod’s sorcerers at the time, they’re none too sure of their own accuracy.”

“Attention to our own rightward flank, then, as we move. How did those encounters go?” Eftgan looked over her shoulder at a white-haired woman sipping at a cup of hot wine.

Freelorn smiled slightly and glanced over at Herewiss, for the lady was Kerim d’Ourven, the Chief Wardress of the Brightwood, with whom Herewiss had had more than the occasional disagreement while he was still trying to focus his Fire. Herewiss, though, was absorbed in folding a slice of roast beef inside a fat slice of bread and slathering horseradish all over it.

“We killed ten of them, Queen,” Kerim said. “There were some peculiarities about the business, though. Backlash that would normally have killed an average sorcerer doesn’t seem to be doing so.”

“It won’t for any of them,” Herewiss said, having just gulped down a bite of his bread and meat. “Their minds are not their own: the backlash that would normally rebound into their minds and bodies is being siphoned off elsewhere. And most especially, backlash won’t affect Rian, so warn your people, madam. But I suggest that they leave him strictly alone until much later in the day, when the battle starts turning in our favor. That’s when Rian will show his hand.”

Kerim looked at Herewiss doubtfully. Freelorn knew that she had been, not precisely hostile toward Herewiss, but uncertain about the whole idea of the rightness, the propriety, of a male having the Fire. He remembered Herewiss describing one of their discussions on the subject. “Of course,” Herewiss had said, “she knew about the old days, how everyone had had the Flame, but these days we have to be content to have things the way the Goddess has allowed us to have....” Lorn remembered his ironic look. “‘The old days’. She said it as if she meant ‘the
bad
old days’. I got the feeling she thought it was a good idea that men lost the Fire: great rough clumsy insensitive things, they might have done something, you know,
male
with it.” Herewiss had chuckled softly. “Well, Goddess protect her from the new days. She won’t like them.”

“How many more sorcerers have they got?” Eftgan said to Kerim.

“It’s hard to tell, Queen. Many minds in the approaching army groups are guarded against casual touch. We think there are about two hundred, all told.”

“Tell your people,” Eftgan said, putting down her cup, “that I want those sorcerers killed. That is to be their greatest priority. I will not have half my army useless or dead due to warfetter, which they will certainly try to use on us, seeing that backlash isn’t a problem for them. Find their minds, mark them for one or another of the working circles, and destroy them. We have no time for mercy today, not as far as they’re concerned—they’ve chosen their side, and must take the consequences of their choice.”

Kerim bowed. “What’s our strength in the Fire today?” Eftgan said.

“Three hundred forty-nine,” said Kerim, “about half mounted. Of those, a hundred and ninety are independent—the rest are working in circles of varying size.”

“Very well,” the Queen said. “Tell your people that, if Herewiss asks them for any kind of assistance whatsoever, they are to drop whatever they’re doing and give it to him instantly. Whatever he’s engaged in at that moment may win us the battle. Or it may not: but that’s not to be their evaluation to make. His authority is to be considered as equal to yours in this regard.”

Freelorn kept his face quite still while watching Kerim’s reaction. She bowed, but to the Queen, not Herewiss; and the expression she wore was less than happy. Then she took herself away.

Eftgan sighed, and glanced over at Herewiss after a moment. “I suppose that was unavoidable,” she said. “Where will you be riding?”

“I was going to ask you where you wanted me.”

“Wherever you think you need to be, is my first answer. But somewhere near the leading group’s right flank, otherwise.” She picked up her cup again and took one last deep drink. “I’ll be with the left: Erain is minding the center group, and the banner. The Brightwood levies are over on the right. Lorn—?”

“Unwise to keep the two principals too close together,” he said. “I’ll go with Erain.”

“So will I, then,” Segnbora said. She was leaning on the Lion banner, where it was struck into the ground not too far from Eftgan’s.

“Well enough,” Eftgan said. “I intend to keep the rest of our forces rather strung out behind the first curve of assault, at least until I see more of how the battle begins to shape itself. We shouldn’t meet the Arlenes before Ostelien hill, no matter how hard they march: their main force is still too near Elsbede.” She wiped her hands with a napkin and loosened Fórlennh in its sheath, and looked around at them. “To work then, all,” she said, “and may She go with us.”

*

The sun was begining to show peach-colored through the mist as Freelorn watched Herewiss ride off toward the northward-flung wing of Eftgan’s troops, who were now breaking bivouac. All around them tents were being struck, carts packed with untidy bundles; here and there horses were being saddled—this part of the army was a mixed group, armored mounted and unmounted men and women, and some unarmored or light-armored foot

They had kept the goodbye brief, according to custom between them.
Just as well,
Lorn thought to himself, watching Sunspark ambling away, and the Flame winding about Khávrinen’s hilt where it jutted up behind Herewiss’s shoulder. It was not his usual, leisurely flow of Fire, but a tense, quick wrapping and curling, hectically bright even in this morning sunlight.

He’s terrified,
Freelorn thought.
And I’m just numb. I could hardly feel anything when I let him go. But that was probably just as well, too. Would I really want him to feel how scared I am? What if we never—what if I—

He cut the thought off: it was a waste of his time, and anyway, the whole business was with the Goddess now: they would at least meet on the Shore, if nowhere else. He glanced over at Segnbora, who was muttering to herself as she rigged a brace and cup, hung from her saddle, for the pole of the Lion standard to go into. Steelsheen, whom the Queen had had brought with her from Darthen, was standing quietly chewing her bit and looking vacant. Segnbora, though, looked rather drawn.

“No sleep last night?”

“Uhh?” She glanced up at him, then back to her work. “I slept well enough.”

“No word from Hasai, then.”

She sighed and leaned against Steelsheen. “No. And there’s been no sound from the
mdeihei
, either. Not absence: but complete silence. I did
something
when I cut my shadow off... but I don’t know what. He’s gone. I did that. I just hope he can come back....”

Someone was making her way toward them, leading a couple of horses. Lorn looked at her half-heartedly. Eftgan had told him in passing that she would find him a horse this morning, but what was the point, it wasn’t his horse, and anyway --