Daggerspell (49 page)

“We’ve got to staunch those wounds!”

Aderyn shook his head no and staggered up to lean on Jill’s shoulder. She half carried him over to join the two elves beside Loddlaen’s corpse. He lay twisted on his back, his face clawed, his thigh slashed open from the silver dagger, his chest pierced with the silver arrow. Aderyn raised his hands heavenward.

“It is over. Let him go to the halls of light for his judging. It is finished.”

Rolling across the meadow came three great knocks like thunder from a clear sky. Jill cried out, her blood running cold at the sound. Slowly Aderyn lowered his hands and glanced at the corpse. Even in the gauzy moonlight Jill could see that he was fighting with all his will to keep himself under control. Jennantar laid his arm around the old man’s shoulders and, whispering gently in Elvish, led him into the trees.

“Let’s get this lump of meat back to camp.” Calonderiel idly kicked Loddlaen in the head. “The sight should gladden our cadvridoc’s heart.”

As they stooped to pick up the body, Jill heard Aderyn wail, a long high keening from among the trees. On and on it went in a frantic rhythm so painful that she was glad when they were finally out of earshot. Although she was stunned that Aderyn would mourn his enemy, all she could assume was that the old tales were true, and that working dweomer together made strong bonds between men.

When they staggered into camp with their burden, one of the guards recognized Loddlaen and howled his name. The rest of the army came running. Laughing and slapping each other on the back, the noble-born and the commoners
alike crowded round when they dumped the body at Rhodry’s feet.

“So the bastard bleeds like any other man, does he?” Rhodry called out. “Here, men, how do you feel about his cursed dweomer now?”

The army answered with catcalls and obscenities. Rhodry held up his hands for silence.

“It would only be honorable of me to return the councillor to his lord, wouldn’t it? I wonder what the piss-poor little weasel will think when he sees this?”

The men laughed and cheered him roundly. Jill looked up at the silent dun and wondered if Corbyn and his men could hear the noise. With a touch of dweomer-cold, she knew that tomorrow would bring the battle. The only way that Corbyn and Nowec could salvage one scrap of their lost honor was to sally and die.

Later that night, Nevyn attempted to contact Aderyn. He could feel his old pupils mind, grief-struck, torn, filled with a pain so palpable that a few tears came to Nevyn’s eyes. He broke off the attempt and left Aderyn alone with his mourning. Later there would be time to talk and learn the details, but Nevyn knew the most important thing: Loddlaen was dead. He left the brazier and flung open the shutters over the window in his chamber.

Far below him the tiny town of Dun Gwerbyn lay wrapped in darkness and silence. Once a dog barked; once a lantern bloomed briefly in a yard, then went out. The sleeping householders would never have to know what strange dangers had been threatening them and their overlords, and Nevyn was profoundly grateful for it. Over the past week, he had been contacting the other dweomermasters in the kingdom, who were scattered like a wide-meshed net across the land. A few had picked up traces of the dark dweomer close at hand, and now all were alerted. Soon Nevyn might have news of his fleeing enemy. He hoped so, because he would have to take steps against him as soon as he could.

“And tomorrow will see the end of this little tangle,”
he remarked to the starry sky. “Oh dear gods, keep my Jill safe.”

The camp was struck, the baggage train sent farther down the meadow. In the brightening sunlight Rhodry’s army sat on their horses outside Dun Bruddlyn and waited. In a last honorable gesture to the enemy, Rhodry had positioned his men far enough back so that Corbyn would be able to get his entire force outside before the fighting started. Off to one side, Jill rode between Sligyn and Rhodry himself. Ready behind them was a squad of picked men to guard their dweomer warrior.

“Remember your orders,” Rhodry said to Jill. “You hang back and let the rest of us cut your path to Corbyn. Then he’s yours.”

Jill smiled at him; now that the time had come, her fear was far away, a little coldness in the pit of her stomach. Under her, Sunrise stamped, battle eager and ready. Suddenly the wind carried the sound of silver horns, ringing in the dun. Jill pulled her mail hood over her padded cap, settled her helm on top of it, then got her shield into position as javelin points winked up and down Rhodry’s line. As the distant horns sang out again, she drew her sword.

The gates to Dun Bruddlyn creaked open. With Lord Peredyr at its head, the main body of Rhodry’s army surged forward, held steady for a moment, then charged as the enemy poured out the gates in waves, turning and wheeling into a ragged line to meet the charge. Javelins arched through the air and fell as the field exploded with war cries.

“Get into position!” Rhodry yelled at the squad.

The men surrounded Jill, but they kept several yards away to give her room to maneuver once the fighting started. She rose in the stirrups and looked out over the field, where dust swirled in thick clouds. Nowec and Corbyn’s men fought gamely, riding in pairs with their horses nose to tail as they fended off the mobs around them. Jill saw a thick clot of fighting around Nowec with Peredyr in the middle of it. The noise was horrible; somehow
she hadn’t expected that battle would be such a deafening, shrieking thing.

“There!” Sligyn screamed. “Just coming out the gates!”

His green shield trimmed with silver, Corbyn galloped out on a black horse with a squad of men behind him. With a yell, Rhodry waved his squad forward at the trot. All at once Rhodry started to laugh, a cold, fiendish delight straight out of the Dawntime. The squad leapt forward at the gallop and burst into the midst of the fighting. Jill felt like a leaf caught in a torrent as they wheeled, screaming and slashing, to face off with Corbyn’s men.

Up ahead, Rhodry was howling with berserk laughter, and Jill saw his sword swing up bloody in the sunlight. Through the dodging, shifting mass of men and horses, she could just see him, hard-pressed by two of Corbyn’s men while Sligyn tried to come in at his flank. All around men slashed and swore; horses reared as they tried to shove forward. All at once Rhodry’s laugh changed to a bubbling mirth that Jill instinctively knew meant he was in grave danger. She risked rising in the stirrups and saw Corbyn’s men parting ranks—and letting their lord through. Corbyn was going to make one last try on Rhodry’s life, and she was the only one who could stop him.

At that moment, Jill went berserk. A blood red haze flared up to tint the world; a war cry welled out of her mouth; she could no longer think. She swung Sunrise free of her startled squad and kicked him straight for Rhodry while she slashed and swung and went on shrieking. When a man on a chestnut wheeled to face her, Jill charged in, a battle of nerves that she won when he pulled aside out of her way. When Sunrise turned perfectly to follow, Jill got a good strike on the rider’s exposed side that drove him round in the saddle. Before he could parry, she slashed him across the face backhand. Screaming he fell forward under the hooves of his own horse.

As the chestnut stumbled and went down, Sunrise dodged without a word or touch from Jill, and she was
through, falling into place at Rhodry’s left. Just ahead in the mob was Corbyn’s silver-trimmed shield. As she parried a blow from the side, Jill got a glimpse of Gorbyn’s face, sweat-streaked and snarling as he slashed at Sligyn. Sligyn dropped his sword and clung wounded to the saddle, an easy mark for Corbyn’s next strike. Jill howled and slapped Sligyn’s horse to make it dance back—out of the way barely in time. One of Sligyn’s men grabbed its reins and fled with his lord.

“Corbyn!” Jill screamed. “Your Wyrd’s riding for you!”

He heard her. She knew it from the way he tossed his head and turned her way. For all that she was covered with dust and sweat, he must have realized that she was a lass, too, because for the briefest of moments, he froze. Howling the foulest oaths she knew, Jill fended strikes from the side and pressed straight toward him. Suddenly he wrenched his horse’s head around and fled, shoving through his men. One of them wheeled directly in front of Jill to cover his retreat.

“Coward!”

Then Jill’s rage stole her voice. Hitting hard, slashing, barely remembering to parry, she drove for the rider ahead. All at once he broke and wrenched his horse around to gallop off as shamelessly as his lord. Sunrise leapt over a dead horse, and they were free of the mob. Under a pall of dust the battle, swirled across the meadow. Here and there were clots of fighting around one lord or another; single combats were scattered across the meadow; men rode aimlessly, nursing wounds. Far away the black horse carried Corbyn off at a comfortable trot.

“Bastard. Sunrise, catch him.”

The western hunter flung himself forward at a dead run, as if he, too, had sighted their prey. Leaping over dead bodies, dodging around combats, they charged across the field, risking their lives on the rough ground. In the screaming battle noise, Corbyn never heard them coming until it was almost too late, but as Sunrise put on one last burst of speed, some evil god or other made Corbyn glance
round. He smacked his horse with the flat of his blade and made the black dart forward.

“Stand!” Jill screamed. “Coward!”

Sunrise stretched low and tried to keep up, but he was sweating in acrid gouts of gray foam as the fresh black pulled inexorably ahead. In tears of rage, Jill pulled him to a jog. Corbyn was going to get away, and all because he was a cursed coward. Then the black reared up, pawing madly, and came down hard with an elven arrow in its throat. Corbyn rolled free barely in time and staggered up, groping for his sword. With a howl of laughter, Jill swung down and ran for him. Dimly she was aware of Calonderiel, riding to join her.

His sword in hand, his shield at the ready, Corbyn dropped to a fighting crouch. Under the sweaty dust, his face was dead white. With a shout, Jill thrust forward in a feint, then swung up. Barely in time, he caught the blow on his shield.

“Oh, I can fight, can’t I?” Jill said. “You’re going to die, Corbyn. How do you like dweomer-prophecies now?”

When he slashed at her, she parried easily, the faster by far, and stabbed in from the side. Blood welled up through the mail on his left arm. She pulled free and parried his clumsy answering strike. With the last of the strength in his left arm, he threw the shield at her head. Jill ducked easily and dodged in from the side. She feinted, dodged, feinted again until he had no choice but to turn and step back, again and again, until he was trapped between her and his dead horse. Shouting a war cry, he flung himself sideways and stumbled. Jill got an easy cut on his face. Blood welled on his cheeks.

“For Rhodry!” Jill thrust forward on his name.

She struck Corbyn full in the chest, and his mail shattered. The sword bit deep just below his breastbone. When she pulled it free, Corbyn fell forward onto his knees and looked up at her with bubbles of blood breaking on his lips. Then he folded over himself and died at her feet.

“Well played!” Calonderiel called.

The berserker fit still upon her, Jill swung around to see him dismounting. He was watching her warily, his violet cat eyes wide with a touch of fear, and he kept his distance.

“Jill, do you know me?”

“I do. You can come up.”

She turned back to the corpse and saw Corbyn’s shade. A pale bluish form, a naked body with Corbyn’s face, it hovered over the corpse while it stared at her, its lips working soundlessly, its eyes filled with bewildered terror. Jill screamed aloud.

“What’s wrong?” Calonderiel grabbed her arm.

“His shade. Can’t you see it?”

“What? There’s naught there.”

Corbyn watched her in an anguish of reproach and fear. From the way his, mouth moved, it seemed that he was trying to ask her something. Calonderiel threw his arms around her and hauled her bodily away.

“We’ve got to get to Aderyn.”

As suddenly as a blown candle, the berserker fit left her. Jill clung to him and sobbed in his arms.

The battle was over. Sword in hand, Rhodry rode back and forth across the field and shouted orders to his men. They began to dismount, some collecting the horses and leading them away, others looking for the wounded among the dead and dying. Peredyr and Edar fell in at Rhodry’s side.

“Have you seen Jill?” Rhodry yelled at them.

“I have,” Peredyr said. “Corbyn’s dead, sure enough. I saw that Calonderiel fellow taking Jill to the chirurgeons. She was weeping, but she could walk.”

“Oh, by the gods, she’s been hurt!” Rhodry felt tears rising in his throat. “And a fine man you must think me, letting a lass take a cut meant for me.”

“Hold your tongue!” Edar snapped. “You had no choice in the matter, none.”

“Here, lord cadvridoc,” Peredyr said. “Come look at Corbyn, and then see how shamed you feel about letting a poor weak little lass ride in your battle.”

As soon as he dismounted by Corbyn’s body, Rhodry saw what Peredyr meant. Jill’s blow had shattered a well-made mail shirt and spitted Corbyn like a chicken.

“By the hells!” Rhodry whispered. “Did she truly do that?”

“I saw her with my own eyes, or I wouldn’t believe it,” Peredyr said. “She laughed while she did it, too.”

Rhodry found Jill near Aderyn’s wagon, where the old man was working over one of the wounded. Jill sat on the ground and leaned back against the wagon wheel while she stared blindly out at nothing. When Rhodry knelt in front of her, she said nothing.

“Where are you hurt?”

“I’m not. No one ever go so much as a nick on me.”

“Then what’s so wrong?”

“I don’t know. I truly don’t know.”

That was all the answer Rhodry got, too, until Aderyn was done tending what wounds he could. Still exhausted from his battle of the night before, the dweomermaster stood stiffly to one side and watched as a servant sluiced blood off the tailgate with buckets of water. He caught Jill’s hand and squeezed it.

“Are you cut?”