Daggerspell (40 page)

Riding hard, Cullyn galloped after, but a man on a black cut him off, coming straight for him. As Cullyn wheeled his horse, he got a glimpse of pouchy eyes and a dark-stubbled chin under the enemy’s helm. They swung, parried, trading blow for blow while he swore and yelled and Cullyn stayed dead silent, flicking away the enemy’s sword with his own until in frustration the man tried a hard side swing that left his right unguarded. Cullyn caught the strike on his shield and slashed in to catch him solidly on the right arm. Blood welled through his mail as the bone snapped. Grunting in pain, he dropped the sword and tried to turn his horse. Cullyn let him go. He wanted Corbyn.

Ahead, Sligyn’s squad was mobbing around Corbyn and some of Corbyn’s men, fighting ably to defend their lord. Cullyn urged his horse forward just as a fresh squad of green-and-tans galloped up.

“My lord Sligyn! The flank!”

But the enemy was riding for him, not for Sligyn. Cullyn wrenched his horse around to meet the enemy charge just as they swarmed around and enveloped him from all sides.

“The silver dagger! Get him!”

Cullyn had no time to wonder why they were mobbing a silver dagger as if he were a noble lord. A blow cracked him across the left shoulder from the flank as the man in front of him angled for a stab. Cullyn parried it barely in time and twisted away, slashing out at the man pushing in from his right. They could get four on him at once, and all he could do was twist and duck and slash back and forth. He caught a strike on his shield that cracked the wood; then he felt a stab like fire on his left side. Over the screaming battle noise he heard Rhodry’s laugh, coming closer.

Gasping with pain, Cullyn killed the man in front of him with a slash to the throat that collapsed his windpipe
and knocked him off his horse, but there was another enemy waiting to take his place. A hard blow made fire run down Cullyn’s left arm. He twisted in the saddle and tried to parry, but the shield dragged his broken arm down. With a curse he let it fall and twisted back to fend a blow from the right. Rhodry’s laugh sounded louder, but still too far away.

Suddenly the man at Cullyn’s left flank screamed, and his horse reared to fall dead. Something sped through the air past Cullyn’s face. The arrow pierced the mail on the enemy at his right with a gout of blood. The man tried to turn his horse, but another arrow caught him in the back, and he went down with a cry. The mob peeled off and tried to flee, but they turned straight into Rhodry’s men, charging to meet them. In the last clear moment left to him, Cullyn saw Jennantar riding up with a curved bow in his hands. Cullyn dropped his sword and tried to hold on to the saddle peak, but his gauntlets were slippery with his own blood. He stared at them in amazement as darkness came out of nowhere, and he fell, sliding over his horse’s neck.

It seemed that he was trying to swim to the surface of a deep blue river. Every now and then, he drew close; he could see light ahead and hear what sounded like Nevyn’s voice, but every time, a vast eddying billow would sweep him back down where he would choke, drowning in the blue. All at once, he heard a voice, mocking him, a smooth little voice that poured into his mind like oil. It seemed that the voice was coming closer out of the billowing blue stuff around him. At that point he noticed a glowing silver cord that stretched from his oddly insubstantial body down to—somewhere. He couldn’t see its destination. Another wave enveloped him in a shifting, sinking blueness. The voice poured over him again, taunting, mocking him for a dead man.

Suddenly he saw Nevyn—or a pale blue image of him—a ghost, a shadow? In whatever form the old man was striding to meet him, and as he came, he was chanting in some peculiar language. The blue river seemed to
slow, to hold steady. Nevyn reached out and caught his hand.

All at once, Cullyn found himself awake. A solid, fleshly Nevyn was leaning over him in sunlight. In spite of his warrior’s will, Cullyn moaned aloud from the pain burning down side and shoulder. When he tried to move, the splints on his left arm clattered on the wagon bed.

“Easy, my friend,” Nevyn said. “Lie still.”

“Water?”

Someone slipped an arm under his head and raised it, then held a cup of water to his lips. He gulped it down.

“Want more?” Rhodry said.

“I do.”

Rhodry helped him drink another cupful, then wiped his face with a wet rag.

“I tried to reach you in time,” the lad said. “Please believe me—I tried to reach you.”

“I know.” Cullyn was puzzled by his urgency. “What of Corbyn?”

“Escaped. Don’t let that trouble you now.”

The sunny sky circled and swooped around him. He fell into the darkness, but this time, it was only sleep.

While servants carried Cullyn away and laid another wounded man on the wagon bed, Nevyn washed his bloody hands in a bucket of water. Only he knew how hard he’d had to fight to save Cullyn’s life; he was rather amazed at himself, that he’d actually been able to go into a trance and stay standing up. A little green sprite crouched on the ground and solemnly watched as he dried his hands on a clean strip of cloth. Nevyn risked whispering to her.

“You were right to warn me. My thanks to you and your friends.”

The sprite grinned, showing blue pointed teeth, then vanished. If the Wildfolk hadn’t warned him, Nevyn might never have realized that someone was up on the higher planes, trying to drive Cullyn’s etheric double away from his body and then snap the silver cord that bound
him to life. Someone. Not Loddlaen, but someone who stank of dark things, someone who was standing behind him or perhaps even hiding behind him.

“You overreached yourself badly, my nasty little friend,” Nevyn said aloud. “Now I know you’re there, and I’ll recognize you when we meet again.”

Just before dawn Jill woke, tossed irritably in bed for a while, then got up and dressed. When she came down to the great hall, the servants were yawning as they took the sods off the fire and fanned the coals to life. Lady Lovyan was already seated at the head of the honor table. When Jill made her a bow, Lovyan waved her over to sit beside her.

“So, child. You had trouble sleeping, too?”

“I did, Your Grace. I usually do when Da’s off to war.”

A servant hurried over with bowls of steaming barley porridge and butter. While Jill and Lovyan ate, the men on fortguard began trickling in in twos and threes, yawning and chivying the servant lasses. One of them must have tripped or suchlike, because from behind her Jill heard the clatter and ring of a scabbard striking against a table. She started to turn round to look, but the noise rang out again and again, like a bell tolling, louder, ever louder until she heard a battle raging, the clash and clang of sword on shield, the whinnying of horses, men screaming and cursing. She heard her own voice, too, babbling of what she saw

as indeed she did see it, spread out below her in the meadow, as if she hovered over the battle like a gull on the wind. Rhodry was trying to force his way into a mob around one rider, and he was howling with laughter, utterly berserk as he swung and parried with a blood-running sword. The man inside the mob could barely swing; he turned desperately in the saddle. Cullyn. Jill heard her voice rise to a shriek and sob as Jennantar’s arrows sped past her father and one by one, began to bring his enemies down. At last Rhodry was through, leaping off his horse in time to catch Cullyn as he fell

and the battle noise faded away into the sound of her
own sobs and Lovyan’s frightened voice, barking orders to the servants. Jill looked up straight into Lovyan’s face and realized that her ladyship had her arms tight round her. Leaning over her was Dwgyn, captain of the fortguard.

“Your Grace,” he burst out. “What—”

“Dweomer, you dolt!” Lovyan said. “What else could it be, and her a friend of Nevyn’s and all?”

Jill’s tears stopped, wiped away by the icy realization that Lovyan was speaking the truth. She felt herself shaking like an aspen in the wind as a servant ran over with a bit of elderberry wine. Lovyan forced her to drink it.

“Jill, is your father dead?”

“He’s not, but he’s as close to it as he can be. Your Grace, please, I beg you, I’ve got to ride to him. What if he dies, and I’ve never gotten to say farewell?”

“Well, here, my heart aches for you, but you’ll never be able to find the army.”

“Won’t I, Your Grace?”

Lovyan shuddered.

“Besides,” Jill went on, “that battle was hard-fought. Lord Rhodry’s going to need as many men of the fortguard as you can send him. I know I can lead them straight there, I truly do know it. They’re only some twenty miles away. Please, Your Grace.”

Lovyan sighed and stood up from the bench, then ran shaking hands through her hair.

“Done, then,” she said at last. “Dwgyn, get thirty men ready to ride straightaway.”

As Jill ran up to her chamber to get her gear, she was cursing her Wyrd, hating herself and hating the dweomer for taking her over. But for her beloved father’s sake, she would use any weapon that came her way.

There were times when the depth of his pride surprised even Rhodry himself. His back hurt so badly from the kicks and bruises of the day before that he could barely stand, and now that the berserker fit had left him, he was feeling every new blow that he’d gotten, but he drove himself to accompany Sligyn on a tour through the somber
camp. The men were bringing in the dead from the battlefield. Everywhere Rhodry heard men cursing or keening as they recognized dead friends. They needed to see their cadvridoc on his feet.

“Do we call this a victory or not?” Rhodry said.

“Corbyn’s the one who fled, eh?”

Down near the supply wagons, Jennantar and Calonderiel were standing guard over the prisoners, who slouched on the ground in twos or threes, clinging together for comfort. Most were wounded, but they’d have to wait for the chirurgeons to finish with Rhodry’s men.

“Any news of Cullyn?” Jennantar asked.

“Still the same.” Rhodry wearily rubbed the side of his face. “I came to thank you.”

“No thanks needed. He did his best to save the life of a friend of mine. I would have loosed more shafts, but I was afraid of hitting you and your men. I came close enough to killing Cullyn as it was.”

“Better you than one of those scum.”

“Well, you pulled him out in the end, eh?” Sligyn laid a fatherly hand on Rhodry’s arm. “All that matters, eh? In the laps of the gods, now.”

Rhodry nodded. He could never explain, not even to himself in any clear way, just why it was so important that he be the man who saved Cullyn. He should have pulled him out of the mob just so they would have been even on that favor. It was important, perhaps the most important thing in his life, that each owe the other nothing—and yet he couldn’t say why.

His tunic red with gore, Aderyn trotted up with a couple of servants laden with medical supplies.

“Your men are all tended, lord cadvridoc. But Nevyn said to tell you that Lord Daumyr just died.”

Rhodry tossed back his head and keened. Now a noble-born man had died for his sake. Sligyn tightened his grip on Rhodry’s arm and swore under his breath.

“I’ll be working on the prisoners,” Aderyn said.

Beckoning to the servants, he walked away, looking for those who were the worst off.

“Ah, by the hells,” Jennantar said. “I still don’t see how Corbyn got away. I was sure you and Daumyr had him trapped.”

“So was I.” Sligyn shook his head in furious bafflement. “It was foul, stinking, evil luck, that’s all. Lot of little things, like Daumyr’s sword breaking. And then that horse went down in front of mine, and I couldn’t reach him. Luck, ill luck.”

One of the prisoners laughed, an hysterical mutter under his breath. When Rhodry swung around to look at him, he flung up one arm and cringed back. His blond hair was crusted with blood.

“I’m not going to strike a wounded man,” Rhodry said. “But what are you laughing about?”

“My apologies, I didn’t even mean to. But it wasn’t luck that let our lord escape. By the gods, you’ll never kill Corbyn! It’s the demon-shot sorcerer. He made a prophecy, you see.”

“A what?”

“Loddlaen made this prophecy. He got it from his scrying stone.” The prisoner paused to lick dry lips. “It says that Lord Corbyn can never be slain in battle except by a sword, but he’ll never be slain by any man’s hand. It’s true, my lord. You saw what happened on the field today. It must be true.”

Sligyn’s florid face turned pale. Aderyn turned to listen.

“Aderyn?” Rhodry said. “Is there any truth in this?”

“The lad’s not lying to you, my lord. So Loddlaen must have made a prophecy.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Does the cadvridoc really want me to tell him if the prophecy’s a true one?”

“It must be, or you’d be assuring me that it’s false.”

Aderyn gave a sigh that was more like a groan.

“I’m sworn never to lie, but at times, I wish I’d never made that vow.”

Rhodry turned and blindly walked away. He felt his death lay a heavy arm around his shoulder and walk with
him. Puffing a little, Sligyn caught up with him near the edge of the camp.

“Now, here. I don’t believe a word of it, eh? Doesn’t matter if it is true. Lot of horseshit.”

“Is it, now? If Aderyn can turn himself into an owl, why can’t he know the true or false of a prophecy?”

Sligyn started to reply, then looked away and chewed furiously on his mustache.

“It’s a cursed strange feeling, being doomed by dweomer,” Rhodry went on. “And doomed I am. When Corbyn chooses to cut his way to me, no one’s going to be able to stop him. When we face off, I won’t be able to kill him.”

“Only one thing to do, eh? Send you back to Cannobaen.”

“Never! And what good would my life do me, if I spent it as a shamed man?”

All at once Rhodry felt his berserker’s laugh, welling out of his mouth. He tossed back his head and howled until Sligyn grabbed him and shook him into silence.

By late afternoon, the news was all over the camp. Rhodry had never had the experience before of seeing an army’s morale crumble like a bit of dried mud rubbed between a man’s fingers. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Although the noble-born blustered and swore like Sligyn, they looked at Rhodry with a horrified pity. Rhodry walked through the camp and tried speaking personally to the men in the hopes of wiping away a fear so strong that he could smell it. At first, some of the men tried to jest with him, but as the afternoon wore on, they drew back as if he were a leper, this man whom the gods had cursed, lest his ill luck rub off on them.