The Warlords of Nin (36 page)

When they had gone, Eskevar called for Oswald and said, “Fetch me the armorer. I will speak with him at once.”

Oswald appeared doubtful and frowned deeply, his old features crinkling up into a web of lines and creases.

“Do not look at me so! Fetch me the armorer at once, I say!”

Without reply the chamberlain bowed and went out. In a little while there was knock on the king's chamber door. Oswald came in, followed by a swarthy man with muscles that bulged and rippled as he moved.

“Tilbert, Sire.” Oswald presented the man and left without looking at the king.

“Tilbert,” the king said. The man nodded and remained at attention, his face stern and alert. “Ready my armor and my weapons. I will need both soon—within three days. Ready yourself and any tools you think best; you will be needing them.”

At that moment the chamber door swung open without a knock, and Queen Alinea came into the room. Tilbert bowed to the queen.

“My lord,” said the queen with a curtsy. She was slightly out of breath. “Why is this man here?” She indicated Tilbert, who looked puzzled.

“I am speaking with him.”

“And about what I can guess. My husband, certainly you do not entertain any false notions of going into battle.”

The king moved to dismiss Tilbert with a quick wave of his hand. The armorer bowed from the waist and started out.

“Wait!” said the queen. She turned once more to the king and fixed him with a smoldering stare. “Durwin is gone and so you think that you may now do as you please, is that it? You are still very weak, Eskevar. Think of your health.”

“You may go now, Tilbert,” said Eskevar. The man left the chamber quietly. Alinea crossed to the king's chair and fell to her knees beside Eskevar, seizing his right hand in both of hers.

“I pray you, my king. Do not go! It will be the death of you!”

Eskevar scowled furiously at his wife; her actions offended him. “The rascal Oswald told you.”

“What does it matter? My darling, you are just up from your sickbed, and you have not your full strength. Wait at least until you feel stronger.”

Eskevar put a hand to her lovely head and laced his fingers in her hair. “My lady, I would that I could stay. But I cannot, nor can I wait one day longer than it takes to assemble an army to march.”

“But why? Let your lords serve you in this. Theido and Ronsard would tell you the same if they were here. They are on the field now; let them assume command.” The queen's voice quivered on the edge of tears.

“It may not be,” he soothed. “The larger part of the council still opposes the call to arms that I have sounded. They are not convinced there is sufficient reason for them to march in war upon the whim of their raving monarch.

“Do you not see? They believe me ill and of troubled mind. They think I joust at shadows. I must go ahead of my army and convince them I am fit to command and that my judgment is unimpaired. Maybe then they will join us. I pray they do before it is too late.”

“But is there no other way?” Tears ran freely down Alinea's cheeks and fell in dark spatters upon her blue gown.

“I must go. It is the only hope we have,” the Dragon King said gently.

“Oh, my lord,” cried Alinea. “It is an evil day that takes you from me thus.”

“That it is, my queen. Most assuredly it is.”

38

T
he Wolf Star could be seen glinting cold and bright as soon as the sun slipped below the western rim of the sky. It rose before the other stars and set last of all. The people of Mensandor, if they had not noticed it before, now were wary of it. Doomsayers went from city to city, spreading rumors of death and destruction and prophesying the end of the age. The weak-minded believed these rumors and fled to the temples, seeking the shelter of sacred soil where the gods would protect them. More stout-hearted citizens stood their ground and waited and watched. But all listened to the wind and paused in their daily tasks to lift their eyes to the far horizon as if they expected at any moment the approach of something they dared not name aloud.

Theido and Ronsard, having weakened the army of warlord Gurd, turned their attention to the army of the warlord Luhak, who was advancing at a fast pace to the north. Arriving late at night, having traveled ten leagues that day with little rest, the king's forces struck once more on their midnight raid. Once again they caught the enemy by surprise and slew many.

On the next attempt, however, a confused signal almost defeated the Dragon King's army. The warlord's troops were waiting in a wooded draw, and Ronsard's knights met them. But before Ronsard and company could disengage and break free, the archers attacked, and many good men fell by friendly hands. The king's men withdrew from the field, leaving the Ningaal exultant.

As for Quentin and his party, the four ascended the empty foothills of the ragged mountains and labored up into the dismal heights. The way proved slow and difficult, even with sure-footed animals and Durwin's knowledge of the more passable routes. They lost their way and spent three arduous days crossing and recrossing the same trail and finally gave up, camping that night in the same spot where they had camped three nights before. One of the pack animals threw a shoe straining over the rocks and had to be set free. Many supplies were abandoned in order not to overburden the remaining animals.

The dark cloud had deepened its shadow over the land. Mensandor seemed to be a country quivering on the edge of the abyss. The roads were filled by day with travelers hurrying from here to there in an effort to find escape. The temple courtyards became choked with peasants seeking sanctuary. At the high temple above Narramoor, the trail leading to the temple had blossomed into a tent city from the base of the plateau to its crown. All along its narrow length, people huddled in their tents and waited for what they had been told would come: the destroyer god, descending to earth to slake his thirst with their blood. And at night, all over Mensandor, men watched the star grow brighter and cowered in fear at the impending destruction thus proclaimed.

Steadily, despite Theido's and Ronsard's best efforts and most valiant and courageous fighting, the Ningaal drove further north toward Askelon. The king's knights were solidly outnumbered, and the enemy soon grew wary of the crafty defender's tricks, becoming more and more difficult to lure into traps and ambushes.

On and on the enemy pushed and at last achieved the very thing the Dragon King's army feared the most: the four warlords joined their forces. The soldiers of Boghaz and Amut forged through to meet Gurd's remnant and Luhak's fairly intact regiment at the outer fringes of Pelgrin Forest. No invader had ever pushed so far inland in recent memory. No enemy had ever defied the Dragon King's knights as did the Ningaal, whose combined forces shamed the stalwart defenders.

Under Myrmior's inspired strategy, the Dragon King's army fell back into the forest to wage a war of ambush and retreat among the paths they knew so well. This increased the rage of the enemy, and that rage induced him to make mistakes and lose men. But the relentless push to Askelon continued, slowly and surely and with mechanical precision. It seemed as if nothing would stop the cunning invader.

“We cannot continue this way,” said Theido wearily. It was the end of another long day of sting-and-run among the oaks of Pelgrin. The commander sat in Ronsard's tent, ashen-faced in the fluttering torchlight. “We are giving up too much ground, even though our losses in men are lower than we could have hoped, thanks to Myrmior.

“I think it is time to send word to Askelon for the king to make ready for a siege. Though I hoped it
would not come to this, they should begin preparing the castle for our return.”

“It would seem that in time we could bear these Ningaal if we but had more men,” observed Ronsard. “Could we not send Wertwin to the other lords to entreat them to take up arms? Now is the time if ever there was. They cannot fail to recognize the danger now.”

“Abandon any hope you may hold of persuading those jackals to join us. They have had every opportunity. Why, we are but ten leagues from Askelon now!”

“Even so,” Lord Wertwin offered, “allow me to ride to Ameronis and the others. They are not cowardly men and will be reasonable once they know the need. I will bring them around.”

“Go, then, my lord. Do what you can. But go with all speed. There is little time left. Each day we are pushed farther back.”

The nobleman stood and, though weary to the marrow and reeling on his feet, said, “I will leave tonight and take but two of my own with me. The others I will place under Ronsard's command.” With a quick bow he left, and the others returned once more to their nightly exercise led by Myrmior, who listened intently to the reports of the day's forays and then applied himself to creating some new strategy for the next day. He seemed to have a gift for anticipating the movements of the enemy and for diversions and surprises that allowed the king's men to hound and harry the plodding Ningaal.

“From what you have told me,” Myrmior said, gazing at the map skin before him, “the Ningaal have tightened their divisions and march with a vanguard of their fiercest warriors. That is good—it means our raids are starting to worry them—but it also means that they will be much harder to trap and impossible to ambush from now on.”

“As if it were not difficult already,” said Ronsard. “I believe our time of nibbling away at the enemy's strength is at an end. Yet we dare not meet them face-to-face. If we could be assured of fresh troops soon . . .”

“I cannot think what we may do,” replied Theido. “But you are right. We cannot charge them with lances or meet them toe to toe as we are often wont to do. I will defer to Myrmior's counsel yet a little longer.”

“Lords, you flatter me,” Myrmior said. “I have no secrets here, and I freely tell what I know so that you will know just how perilous is our position. It is very grave for us, my brave friends. I do not see a weakness that we may exploit; they have countered all our tricks this time.”

He looked at the map, head bent down, eyes red-rimmed from sleepless nights of studying and pondering the movements of the foe as reported to him by the assembled commanders.

“How far are we from this river?” he said, stabbing his finger at the map.

“Let me see,” said Theido. “That is but a branch of the Arvin which lies two or three leagues to the west. It is not so large as it appears on the map, I assure you.”

“Nevertheless, I have found a plan which may gain us but a little more time.” Myrmior smiled triumphantly. “A very subtle plan.”

39

T
he cold wind whipping off the sharp snags of rock stung Quentin's face, and the howl deafened him as it ravaged the bare peaks and screamed down into endless empty places. He kept his cloak turned up to cover his ears and wished that he had brought warmer clothing. Though only four days had passed since they had reached the elevations of the Fiskills, it now seemed ages since he had felt the warmth of the sun and seen the green of summer-filled hills. In every direction, wherever he turned his eyes, he saw the same thing: an infinite vista of jagged gray-and-white peaks jutting sharply against the blue sky.

Each day was much the same: cold and windy, without respite. At night they camped under a star-filled sky on ledges, in crevices and fissures out of the wind, but the rock was cold and hard. In the morning they awoke to the harsh, white light of a sun that shed no warmth upon the day—unless by chance they happened to find a spot hidden from the wind where they could stop and eat a bite before continuing. Then Quentin would feel a brief bit of warmth seep into him, tingling on his skin like dancing fire.

But those respites were rare and never long enough, for Durwin, sinking more and more into silence and a dour mood, pushed a merciless pace along the crag-bound trails. The party, at first so full of goodwill and high spirits, now dragged along dolefully, each one lost to himself and his own thoughts, their faces as gray and cheerless as the bare rock around them.

Quentin's thoughts turned toward Theido and Ronsard and the battles he imagined they were waging far away. More than once he wished he could be there beside them, instead of floundering here, lost in a world of dull rock and white light and severe blue skies—as often as not clouded with gray, wispy clouds that shredded themselves on the tors and spilled a damp, chill drizzle to thoroughly quench any spark of hope that they would see the end of their seemingly endless journey.

At night he lay awake and watched the dread star bend its fearful beams through the thin air of high altitudes. It now filled its quadrant with light and was the brightest object in the sky at night, save the moon itself. Quentin even began to believe that the star would grow and grow to consume the world and set off the conflagration that would prepare the earth for the new age. These thoughts, and others like them, filled Quentin with a sense of hopelessness he had never known before. And as the search among the high rocks continued day after day, he began to think that doom was certain and that it was already too late to forestall the inevitable.

One morning Quentin was shaken out of his gloomy reverie by Toli, who had gone ahead to check on the trail, which threatened to narrow beyond the ability of the horses to maintain their footing.

He heard a shout, looked up, and saw Toli, red-faced with excitement and the exertion of running, flying down the rock-strewn path.

“Beautiful!” Toli shouted when he was within range. “Come and see it! A valley . . .” He puffed breathlessly. “It is wonderful! Come!”

Instantly Durwin's face lit. “So it is! I believe we have found it at last!”

But Durwin was already toiling up the path behind Toli, who sprang lightly as a mountain goat over the flat slabs of rock, pointing and waving ecstatically.

Quentin turned to look at Inchkeith. “Well, a fair sight would be welcome to these burning eyes, I would reckon,” said the hunched armorer. “Even if it is not our journey's end.”