Everran's Bane (10 page)

She kissed me again. Then she rose and said with no hint of bitterness, “You must go now. The king might have need of you.”

* * * * *

The king did summon me next morning. He was in bed, conducting simultaneous breakfast, council, and correspondence, which latter he promptly delegated to me with an order to “light a fire under these Confederate ninnies, even if it's too late.” The Regent made no appearance, unlike the army of servants forestalling his every need: but when scribes and council departed he waved them away, saying, “No, wait, Harran. Play for me a while. ‘Calm me down.'”

A quotation from Thassal I had thought unheard. He was looking pulled and pale. I would have chosen something simple. But as he lay back, eyes closed, he asked, “How's your battle-song?”

I played what was done. He listened quietly, then bright-eyed, then openly laughing. At the end he cried, “You two-faced singing serpent!” and went to clap his hands.

As I sought desperately for words, he said, wistfully but without self-pity, “There are so many things you can't do one-handed. Ride a warhorse. Peel an apple. Play a harp, I suppose.”

I did not add, use a sword and shield, wield a sarissa, draw a bow. He opened an eye and grinned. “Never mind, Harran. At least I've learnt to shave.”

“Self-defense?” I inquired blandly, recalling certain horrendous interludes at Astarien. He retorted with spirit, “The most horrible barber I ever suffered.” And as we laughed together I gave thanks to the wisdom of women, which let me share laughter and memory with a whole heart.

* * * * *

A day or so later the first champion arrived.

He strode into the audience hall as if he owned it, wider than Asc and twice as tall as Inyx, his barrel chest cased in a gold-inlaid steel corselet, his fur trousers tucked into knee-high cross-laced boots, a double-headed axe over his shoulder, a silvered boar-crest helmet on the back of his blonde curls. His bright blue eyes and sweeping corn-gold moustache and general air of rambunctious confidence shouted Hazghend to the skies. Dropping the axe-head with a clang on the marble pavement, he boomed, “Where's this dragon of yours?”

“In Stiriand,” replied Beryx, evidently used to Hazyk manners. He looked closer. “Gjarr—am I right?”

“Gjarr it is,” nodded the giant. “How'd you know?”

“We met in Hazghend. Tyr... Kemmoth, I think. You'd gathered up a pair of corsairs. We took one off your hands.”

“By Rienvur, that's right! Galley on my port side—somebody jumped aboard and chopped the captain, left us the starb'd one just before I sank. Nice piece of work.” His eye said with perfect unconsciousness, perfect friendliness, Poor soul, you couldn't do it now. “Dragon tickle you up a bit, I see?”

“Just a little,” Beryx replied gravely. “There'll be a mirror signal soon to report its position today. Do you want any help? Horses? Archers? Diversions?”

Gjarr laughed aloud, a splendid flash of white teeth in sea-bronzed face, and slapped the haft of his axe. “Oh, I think Skull-splitter here'll be all the help I need.”

I saw Beryx and Inyx exchange one straight-faced sidelong glance. Then Beryx said demurely, “As you like. The maerian will always be here.”

Hawge kept the axe: it was taken with the intricate swirl of fire-red hazians and scintillant blue-white thillians that made the hand-grip on the ivory haft.

The next was supreme archer of the Quarred army, born in the Hasselian marshes where they can shoot out a duck's eye before they talk, a lithe darting black snake of a man with the best reflexes I ever saw, a vanity that would have sat loose on Hawge, and a very canny wish to see the maerian before he risked his life. Beryx sent to the Treasury. As it was borne in, the sunlight turned it to a cataracted eye full of baleful, beautiful fire, and the archer licked his lips. He said, “I'll be back.”

He took on Hawge from ambush. Unluckily, he chose a rock-heap, and when his first arrow went in an eye, Hawge demolished ambush and archer with one infuriated swipe, before using a hind claw to pluck the arrow out.

It had whole vision just in time for the next contender—contenders, I should say, for they were two big blonde Hazyx as loud and cheerful as Gjarr, who liked to fight in tandem, one with spear, the other with axe. Hawge trod on the axeman when it turned to see what had pricked its other flank, and the spear-haft was wooden: an unhappy oversight.

After that they came thick and fast for a while, more Hazyx, hot to retrieve the national pride, a couple of Quarred phalanxmen, an Estarian mercenary wielding a mace, a Holmyx who, despite hearing my battle-song, went into action with horse and lance. Inyx watched them come and go with baleful amusement, Everran took a perverse pride in its unkillable bane, and Beryx grew grimmer with every disastrous trial.

He was walking now, though with difficulty, and still shy of strangers, but nothing would have kept him from the market when the first Confederate traders came. I went down too, for I love trade-days: new faces, new things, and if you are lucky, a new song.

This party was Estarian, sallow, meaty, dully-dressed but whistle-clean, the shrewdest bargainers in the Confederacy. They had come for hethel oil and, arriving the night before, had already unpacked and filled the town with drunken carriers. The bales of woven stuffs, tools, pottery, and Estar's myriad other manufactures were neatly disposed opposite the tall pointed Meldene oil jars, the scales were set up, half Saphar had begun its private chaffering, and traders and guildsmen were waiting for the king.

He took the high seat. Mint-tea was served, the overture began. It would last for hours: grave compliments, discreet news fishing, veiled probes for a weak bargain point, before anyone mentioned the goods, let be something so vulgar as a rate of exchange. Having seen them accept the new Beryx without blinking, I left on my own affairs.

A jewel merchant always came with the first Estarian traders, though he rented rooms all year in the north colonnade, and he did not barter but bought and sold for gold rhodellins all the precious stones of the Confederacy. Last year he had shown me a bracelet, a goldsmith's whimsy of fine-beaten gold, set with plaques of smoke-blue enamel to feather a chain of the tall graceful birds we call terrephaz, the blue dancers. Graingrowers say yazyx: thieves. No guildwife had thought it dear enough, and it had already been touted in Estar, so I doubted he had taken it back.

We sat in his outer room with a view up the steamy market bustle to the heights of Asterne above the palace roofs. A mirror signal was winking rapidly as the boy brought mint-tea. We had just opened a parcel of uncut maerians when a hullabaloo broke out and people began to run like startled goats.

The Estarian raised his brows: a suave, elegant person, his pose was never to be in haste. Then his tea-boy burst in, red-hot with news. “The dragon, harper, the dragon! Come to th'Raskelf 'n et all Quarred's flocks!”

I left without bothering to excuse myself. People were behaving as if Hawge were overhead. The Estarians looked affronted, the guildsmen panicky, a winded signaler was gasping at Beryx's side.

“Raslash... last night... Fire north. Shepherds... today... Lost whole flock!”

He had to breathe or burst. Over his crimson-faced heaving Beryx's eye shot round the market, and I jumped forward in response.

“Send Inyx here,” he rapped. “Tell Asterne to confirm. Then get a scribe and rescind that proclamation and send the messengers immediately. No more champions.” His mouth tightened. “Wasted lives and stirred it up!” And he turned with iron calm to the Estarians.

“Excuse this interruption, gentlemen. A slight problem in the north. Nothing to worry you.”

* * * * *

It did more than worry them. Hurrying downhill behind the first messenger, I met him coming up on the chamberlain's arm. He had tried it alone and failed, and was plainly galled to the quick as well as infuriated by his helplessness. “Gone,” I said before he could ask about the message. “Where are the—”

His eyes narrowed to blazing green chips. “Upped ensigns. Gone home. Risk your own gear, but you can't run oil over Bryve Elond with a dragon just up the road.”

“Oh... Oh.” The disaster was beyond words: the trade-route cut, our oil and wine unsold, Everran starved of cloth, tools, pottery, arms, the Estarians' news spreading the damage over the Confederacy. “The... The sheep?”

“Sent Inyx—here, Kyvan, that'll do. Harran can see to me.” He held his side. “Rot it, I'll
have
to stop.” We paused under the arch. “Told Inyx, take the levies. Mount archers, beat it off. Shift the flocks. Shepherds'll run in circles alone.” I could feel his own urgency to be there, hot as iron in a forge. “Only one flock taken yet. We have to get them away. At any cost! Confederate stock. And I told them it was safe.” His face twisted. “First the Guard, then the champions. Then the traders. Now the sheep. The thing's put a spell on me. Every choice I make is wrong.”

A week later Inyx came into the king's presence chamber, walking with a stick, his battered leather corselet black with soot, trousers nearly solid with horse-sweat, a helmet mark framing his sooty face under the flattened hair. “They're out,” he growled, transferring his helmet from armpit to cup-stand. “Send me to shift fowls next time, not —ing sheep.”

Kyvan rushed for a chair and wine, Beryx produced a brief tight smile. “How bad?” he asked.

Inyx took a long draught, wiped his moustache, and looked his king in the eye. “Three hundred and eighty,” he said.

Beryx said nothing. I knew his thought was not of three hundred and eighty widows, their present grief or future livelihood, or of the three hundred and eighty themselves. He was thinking of the order that had sent them there.

“Good lads.” Inyx's voice was slightly thickened. “Good as the Guard.” His ultimate accolade. “Stood like rocks when I told 'em and shot like—like Hazyk skirmishers. Lost two more flocks, then Morran got 'em marshaled while I took the dragon on. Smart lad, that one. Bunched 'em up like a red Quarred dog and had 'em across Bryve Elond right after dark. Six turn-ups we had to cover him. And riding horses down between 'em to make ground for the next.” He took another long swallow, and sighed. “But, Four, it's nasty work. The burns... Hospital camps all over the Raskelf. And a lot of 'em... went hard.”

Beryx averted his face. The presence chamber is a winter room, small, intimate, with walls of folding rosewood panels and a thick crimson Quarred carpet to echo the rosewood roof. The fire was out, the panels folded back to admit dusty air and hot, glazed slaty summer blues and yellowed greens. But as Inyx spoke the room seemed to heat, to darken, to fill with men dying in anguish under the lurid glow of the dragon's breath.

Inyx shifted in his chair. “Not your fault.” He sounded quite truculent. “We didn't ask for it, we've just got to deal with it as best we can. Same as any war.” He grunted to his feet. “It's away to Saeverran now. Stand-easy for a bit.”

At those first words something had moved in Beryx's face. Now it vanished and he looked up sharply. “Are you all right?”

Inyx stared. Then he produced one of his rare, acid grins.
“I
don't rush out with an iron basket round m' middle,” he said rudely, “looking for a glorious death.”

Beryx's face cleared in a laugh. “Go and find a bath, you old ly'ffanx. You stink.”

* * * * *

Quarred was prompt with a sonorous official complaint. Beryx's reply, considerably pithier, said that help sent when asked would have prevented any damage. We had barely dispatched it when the skies over Saphar turned a sullen brown with smoke.

Hawge had left the Raskelf in something of a tantrum: baulked of its woolly feast, it had been harassed by a swarm of hard-riding, fast-shooting archers who did not wait to be smashed with a tail, scattered too quickly to be properly incinerated, and persistently fled in the wrong direction when chased. I have since pieced together the true story of that blend of desperate stands, foolhardy attacks, lightning retreats, and miraculous rallies by which Inyx, using raw troops over mountain country, not only held but rebuffed a dragon. He did less than justice to his part in it.

Hawge did not feed in Saeverran. It flew dead north for Kelflase and spewed fire all the way on the Slief beneath, then crossed the Kelf to dine on a big Gesarre vineyard's laborers. But it crossed Saeverran in a hot spell, during the summer's first westerly gale.

Sending Zarrar to the fires, I told him this would be his journeyman's work: from my very self I hid that I could not bear to go from Saphar, the king—and the queen.

Zarrar came back very quiet, though composed, and is only now making the songs. “Something like that,” he said, “takes time.”

The songs are terrible but magnificent: images of fire that rings the horizon like an endless incandescent worm, whose lakes lie amid flaming red-gold beaches with the stars of dying trees in their depths, fire that fills the zenith sky with scarlet to make midnight clear as noon, that comes down on the wind in squadron after squadron of reaching, racing, scarlet and vermilion flame, that roars louder than floodwater and at a mile distance sucks the breath from a man's lungs, that throws forward its skirmishers in swarm upon swarm of sparks that jump firebreaks and run across saturated roofs and reduce days of frantic labor to five minutes' jeering flare.