The Lady of Han-Gilen (14 page)

He pulled off his helmet and tossed it into the nearest
hands—an Ebran’s, a youth in the prince’s livery, his charioteer.

As the boy gaped, Mirain said, “I claim my prisoner and all
that is his. Who challenges me?”

No one moved.

Mirain’s sword hissed into its sheath. “So.” His eyes flashed
across the field. “I claim my prisoner, and I set him free. You—you—you. A
litter for the prince. Who commands now for him?”

“I command for myself.” Prince Indrion could barely sit up.
His face was grey, his eyes glazed, but his voice was clear enough. “I yield,
my lord king. On this sole condition: that neither my men nor my town be
destroyed.”

“I had meant it to be so,” Mirain said. His hand clasped the
prince’s; his smile illumined the air between them. With his own hands he saw
Indrion settled in a litter and borne from the field.

Ebros was conquered. Mirain’s army held the town; Prince
Indrion’s camped without, under the walls. In the grey evening, men with
torches moved slowly over the battlefield, heaping the dead for burning,
bearing the wounded to the healers’ tents on the edge of the Ebran camp.
Wherever they passed, the croaking of carrion birds followed them.

Elian could hear it even in the keep. Having seen to it that
Mirain doffed his armor and washed away the stains of battle, she had been
banished to her bed.

She had not struggled overly hard against his will. He had
only gone to break bread in hall with the captains of both sides, and she was
bone-weary. She had bathed long and rapturously; she had put on a clean shirt,
soft over her many bruises and her few, slight wounds; she had lain as Mirain
commanded her across the foot of the enormous bed reserved for the lord of the
keep. But sleep would not come.

Her bed was soft, her body no less comfortable than it had
been after many a long hunt. She was numb with exhaustion. And she lay open-eyed,
hearing the harsh cries of the birds called heirs of battle, children of the
goddess, eaters of the slain. Where men fought, they fed. They grew fat on
slaughter.

She lay on her face deep in the featherbed. In the darkness
behind her eyes, the battle unfolded itself, clearer by far in memory than it
had been while she fought in it. She saw her bright sword swing up; she saw it
fall and grow lurid with blood.

She was a warrior now. Her blade had been blooded. She had
learned to kill.

None of the songs told of what came after the fierce joy of
the charge: the blood on the trampled grain, the scatter of limbs and entrails,
the carrion stench. There was no splendor in it. Only a dull ache, a sickness
in body and brain.

They called her valiant, the men of Mirain’s household.
After the battle they had given her their accolade, the armor of the Ebran lord
whom she had slain, such a trophy as a squire could not claim save by the will
of his lord’s whole company. And seldom indeed could he win it in his first
battle.

If they could see her now, they would despise her.

Or worse, they would know her for a woman. They would mock
her, a girlchild who played at manhood, a hoyden princess who feigned the voice
and manners of a boy. And there forever would be her fame: in the rude jests of
soldiers, where it well deserved to be.

She rolled onto her side. Her stomach heaved; her body
knotted about it. “No,” she said aloud. “No!”

Abruptly she rose. She pulled on trousers and boots and
snatched up the first warm garment that came to hand. Mirain’s cloak; but she
made no effort to exchange it for a coat of her own. It was warm; it covered
her; it carried a faint, comforting scent of him.

The town was quiet, startlingly so. Mirain’s army, forbidden
either sack or rapine, had also found the stores of strong drink well and
firmly guarded. Well fed and sparingly wined, they kept order as in camp, with
discipline which many a southern general might have envied. And, Elian thought,
remarkably little grumbling.

The gate-guards knew her; they let her pass unchallenged.
She paused beyond them. The sky was dark, starless; a thin cold wind skittered
over the field.

Torches flickered there, moving to and fro like
ghost-lights, rising and dipping and sometimes holding still for a long count
of breaths. Among them she discerned humped shadows, mounds of the dead. There
were three: Ebran, Ashani, Ianyn.

Round the curve of the wall spread the Ebran camp, a huddle
of fires, a silent massing of tents. Neither voice nor song rose from them, nor
the muted revelry of Mirain’s men, nor even the keening of grief. Defeated,
pardoned, they took no chances on their new lord’s mercy.

But one pavillion more than made up for the silence of the
rest: the healers’ tent between the outer wards and the battlefield. Here was
clamor, such an uproar as might rise out of hell: moaning and shouting, cries
and curses and shrieks of pain.

Close to it, the tumult was numbing, overlaid with a gagging
stink and lit with a red demon-light. But worse than the assault on the body’s
senses was that on the mind, wave upon wave of mortal agony.

Elian staggered under it. The tent flaps gaped open; within,
men lay in row on row, lamplit, with somber-clad healers bending over them. The
wounded, the maimed and the dying, all mingled, friend and enemy, in a red
fellowship of pain.

Someone jostled her, muttered a curse, pointed sharply
toward a comer. “Walking wounded over there. We’ll get to you when we get to
you.” Before she could speak, the man was gone, tight-drawn with the immensity
of his labor.

She edged into the tent. Whatever had brought her here would
not let her escape, though the manifold odors of suffering set her stomach in
revolt. Battling to master it, she stumbled and fell to her knees.

A man stared at her. A northerner, dark and eagle-proud but
abject with pain. A great wound gaped in his side, roughly bound with strips
torn from a cloak. He was dying; he knew it; and his terror tore at all her
defenses.

She flung up both hands against it. One brushed the wound,
waking agony. Her power swelled like a wave and broke.

Part of her stood aside and watched it and was grimly
amused. Blessed, O blessed Lady of Han-Gilen! She who dealt wounds could also
heal them; she who slew could bring new life to the dying.

No, not she. The power that dwelt in her, mark of her
breeding as surely as the fire of her hair. For those were the three magics of
Han-Gilen: to see what would be, to read and to master men’s souls, and to heal
the wounds of body and mind.

Prophet, mage, and healer; by the god’s will she was all
three. Under her hand the flesh lay whole, marked only by a greying scar.

She looked up. Dark eyes met her own. Mirain bowed his head,
equal to equal. This gift too he had, the legacy of his father.

He knelt beside a man in battered Ebran armor. She moved
past him to another who waited with death at his shoulder.

oOo

Thunder woke Elian from a deep and dreamless sleep. For a
long moment she lay bemused. She could remember in snatches: laboring far into
the night, finding at last that nothing remained for her to do; every man was
dead or healed or would heal of himself. She who had been weary when she began
had passed beyond exhaustion.

She had felt light, hollow, almost drunken. So wonderful,
this healing was, the only magic that left one more joyous than one began, that
healed the healer as well as the one she tended.

Mirain had appeared out of the shadow of the tent, smiling.
She swayed; he caught her, himself far from steady. Leaning on one another,
they made their way to the keep.

They ate, she remembered that. The bread was warm, the first
of the new day’s baking. The wine was rich with spices. There was fruit and new
cream and a handful of honey sweets.

Mirain was as gluttonous for them as she. They laughed,
counting them out, half for each and one over. “You take it,” he said.

“No, you.”

He grinned and bit off half of the confection and fed her
the rest. There remained only the wine, a whole flask of it, strong and heady.
Elian, warm with it, loosened the laces of her shirt and let it fall open as it
would.

He watched her, head tilted. “You should never do that where
anyone can see you.”

“Not even you?” she asked.

“Maybe.” His finger brushed her cheek lightly, tracing the
paling scars. “It must be sorcery. When you stand in armor or in my livery, I
see a boy, a youth, Halenan when he was young. But now, no one with eyes could
possibly take you for aught but a woman. Even your face: it’s too fine to be
handsome. It’s beautiful.”

She snorted. “Some of the men say I’m too pretty for my own
good, scars and all. And much too well aware of it.”

“No. That, you aren’t. I remember when you used to lament.
Your eyes were too long and too wide; your chin was too stubborn; your body was
too thin and too awkward. For all that anyone can say, you still believe it.”

“That’s the best part of this game. No one treats me the way
people treat a beautiful woman. A boy is different, even a pretty boy.”

He reflected on that in the way he had; but the wine had
lifted his barriers. His eyes were as clear as water, with a brightness in the
heart of them.

“You are
not
ugly!” she said sharply.

He laughed. That had always been the end of her complaining.
He would say, “Ah, but I really am as unlovely as you think you are.” And she
would cry out against him, and he would laugh, because he believed himself, and
she never would; and that was the way of their world.

She seized his face in her two hands and glared into his
eyes. “There are plenty of handsome men in the world, brother my love. But
there is only one of you.”

“Thank Avaryan for that.”

“Yes, for begetting you. Who else would have let me be what
I want most to be?”

“But what is that?”

She let him go abruptly, filled his cup, thrust it into his
hand. “Now’s no time to go all cryptic and kingly. Here, drink up. To victory!”

He might have said more, but he paused. His brow lifted; he
raised his cup and drank. “To victory,” he agreed.

They had drunk, and drunk again. And then, what? Sleep, yes.
There had been a very mild quarrel, that she would spread a pallet on the
floor, with so wide a bed, and he needing so little of it.

She lay on celestial softness. He had won, then.

Carefully she opened an eye. It had been good wine; the
light was bearable. Mirain slept in utter and youthful abandon, with the whole
long line of his side not a handspan from her own.

Whatever his quarrel with his face, even he could not deny
that the rest of him was well made. That was clear to see; for he slept as he
always slept, as bare as he was born.

And so, this drunken night, had she.

Her breath caught. If anyone ever, ever heard of this, then
there would be a scandal in truth. Who would believe that they had done
nothing?

They had had wine enough and to spare, but they had not
fallen to that. He had not even hinted at it. Had only looked at her long and
long, smiled at last, and taken the far side of the bed, with an acre of
blankets between.

Again, thunder. It had been rolling at intervals since first
she woke.

This burst shook her fully out of her dreaming. Not thunder;
a swordhilt on the massive door.

For an instant she froze. They knew—they all knew. They had
come to denounce her. Liar, deceiver, harlot—

Idiot. She rolled out of bed, snatched the first garment
that came to hand, pulled it on. Swiftly but quietly she slid back the bolt.

The man without was shaking with urgency: a big man, Ianyn,
one of Mirain’s household. Even as the door opened he cried, “My lord!”

And stopped at the sight of her, seeing only the hair at
first, and his own disappointment. Of course it would be the squire who opened
the door.

Face and manner shifted, and stilled again. His eyes
widened.

She glanced down swiftly. She was covered. She had her
shirt.

Her thin, unlaced, entirely undeceptive shirt.

It came as memory comes, swift, piercing: a vision not of
what was past but of what was still to come. The man, his message delivered,
returned to his companions, and he had a new and startling tale to tell. One
that traveled as all such tales must, swifter than fire through a dry field.

Foresight passed. In its aftermath she knew only a weary
irony. All her fears—she had shrugged them aside as folly. And they had been
prescience.

Mirain’s voice spoke close to her ear, shattering the
impasse. “Bredan. You have news?”

The king’s presence and his own training brought Bredan to
attention. His eyes strove not to follow Elian as she gave Mirain the doorway.
“Urgent news, sire. The Lord Cuthan sent me to wake you.”

“Go on.” Mirain was wide awake; and he was blocking Bredan’s
view of the chamber.

“Troops, sire,” the man said, recalling his urgency. “South
of here, across the river where Ebros and Poros meet. A whole army, thousands
strong. They march under royal banners, princes’ banners. The Hundred Realms
have come to fight us.”

Mirain did not flinch or falter. “All of them?” he asked.

“My lord counted upwards of five thousand men, and
twenty-odd standards. Including . . .” Bredan paused, and
swallowed. “Including Han-Gilen.”

“Following? Or leading?”

Bredan swallowed again, very carefully not attempting to
find the Gileni face behind his lord’s back. “Leading, sire.”

“Yes,” Mirain said as calmly as ever, “Han-Gilen would lead.
Go now, Bredan. See that my captains are told of this.”

“Aye, my lord. Should we post guards?”

“See to it. And send a man to the lords of Ashan and of
Ebros. I’ll speak with them after I’ve broken my fast.”