Hall of the Mountain King (14 page)

The snap of her neck breaking was abrupt and hideous, but
more hideous yet was the stillness of her rider. The three men behind could not
stop, could only swerve and pray; of those ahead, one nearly died himself as
his mount shied away from the plummeting bodies.

The last man slid to a halt on grass, trembling, the senel
gasping, the soldier cursing in a steady drone. Mirain’s voice cut across both.
“The gods have taken their tribute. The army will tend the bodies when it
passes. On now, for the love of Ianon. On!”

They lost the second man on a road of stones and scree. The
spotted gelding stumbled and fell and came up lame; although his young rider
wept on his neck, they left both to limp on as best they could. Avaryan was
sinking and the country worsening, and they had lost their first bright edge of
speed. And two gone already, with the night before them and the worst still far
away.

But at last it seemed that the gods of this cruel country
were sated. The company settled into a steady, ground-devouring pace, close but
not crowding, shifting as one or another dropped back to rest a little. Only
the Mad One never relinquished his place; he ran before them all, untiring,
with only the merest sheen of sweat to brighten his flanks.

Avaryan set in a torrent of fire. The stars bloomed one by
one. Brightmoon would rise late and half full; Greatmoon climbed the sky at
their backs, huge and ghostly pale.

The Mad One ran as one with the shadows, but Mirain kept
about him a last shimmer of sunset. It crowned him, faint yet clear; it glowed in
the scarlet of his cloak.

“Sunborn,” someone said, far back behind Vadin.
“Avaryan-lord. An-Sh’Endor.” He had a fine voice; he made a chant of it, though
no one else could spare breath for aught but living. Vadin found it echoing in his brain, set to the beat of
Rami’s hooves. It was strong; there was power in it, the magic of true names.
It bound them all to the one who led them, who found the way for them through
the crowding dark.
Sunborn, Avaryan-lord,
An-Sh’Endor.

Just before the first glimmer of dawn, Mirain bade them
halt. He had found a stream among the stones, and a patch or two of
winter-blasted grass. They cooled their gasping mounts, watered and fed them,
rubbed them down and dropped, falling into a sleep like death.

Vadin fought it. He had to see—he had to be sure—Mirain—

oOo

He opened his eyes on sunlight. They were strewn over the
slope like the aftermath of battle, save only that no carrion birds had come to
torment them. Those were circling, hopeful but not yet bold.

Mirain stood near him, face turned toward the sun as if he
drank its sustenance. Vadin remembered part of his dream that might have been
real: a dark sweet voice singing Avaryan into the sky.

The prince turned, smiling slightly. Although Vadin knew
beyond questioning that he had not slept, no weariness scarred him.

His smile widened a fraction. “Priesthood,” he said. “It
thrives on long vigils.” He bent, set something near Vadin’s hand. “Eat. Drink.
It’s growing late.”

Vadin groaned, but he obeyed. Mirain went round from man to
man with a word and a touch for each, a cake, a bit of fruit, a gesture toward
the stream.

No one else voiced a complaint. In very little time by the
sun, they were up and saddled and astride. Their water bottles were full, their
mounts refreshed, although they rode with care at first to limber stiffened
muscles.

The sun warmed them; the wind was clean and keen. They
stretched into racing pace.

oOo

The Black Peaks rose before them, curved around the high
vale of Umijan. Somewhere in that tumble of ridge and valley, crag and tarn,
ran the enemy.

Sunset would find him at Umijan’s gates. Sunset must find
them within, with Baron Ustaren their sworn ally.

“Pray gods we get to the Gullet before the traitors,” said
Jeran, who was Marcher born, “or they’ll swallow us while Ustaren watches.”

The Gullet: the last stretch of the race, the long narrow
way between walls of stone, rising slowly and then more steeply to the crag of
the castle. Eight troopers and a prince, armed only with swords, mounted on
spent seneldi, could find neither cover nor defense there.

Vadin was not afraid. He was far too intent on keeping the
pace. Thus when they started up yet another of a thousand nameless slopes, he
stopped without thinking, and only wondered when he saw the Mad One’s saddle empty,
Mirain running low to the crest.

Still unthinking, he half fell to the ground, pursuing as
stealthily as his exhausted body would allow, coming up beside the prince.

The ridge looked down on a river meadow walled with crags
and swarming with an army. Mounted men, men afoot, even a few chariots,
advancing as the tide advances, steady and inexorable.

“The Gullet?” Vadin whispered, although he could see nothing
that resembled a castle.

“Not yet,” answered Mirain. “But this is the way, and there
is no other, only a tangle of blind valleys.”

Vadin peered at the walls. They were not precisely sheer to
his hillman’s eye, but a senel could not climb or traverse them. And the valley
was full of rebels. With no wood or copse to conceal a passing company, only grass
and stones and the bright path of the stream.

Jeran was beside them, greatly daring, whistling softly when
he saw what there was to see. “They’re slower than I thought: still an hour’s
gallop from the Gullet.” He was haggard, caked with dust as they all were,
trembling with weariness, but he grinned. “We’ll make it yet, Sunborn.”

Mirain did not react to his new title. He was intent on the
army. “Arrogant,” he muttered. “No scouts. No vanguard. Rearguard—No. They’re
all in the valley. We’ve come at them sidewise, that’s luck, but not luck
enough. Unless . . .” He paused, eyes narrowing. “Look; they’re in good order,
but not as good as they should be. They don’t expect trouble.”

“Will we give them some, my lord?” Jeran asked quickly, with
a ghost of eagerness.

Mirain’s eye glinted upon him. If Vadin had not known
better, he would have sworn that Mirain was as fresh as a lordling newly risen
from his bed. But his steadiness had to be an act of will: the strong face of a
king before his people.

Better that than the other choice, that he was much less
human than he liked to appear. He touched the Marcher’s shoulder, and the man
glowed, waking to new vigor. “Tell the men to rest a little. If any dares not
trust his mount or himself, let him be truthful. We must reach Umijan before
yonder army.”

No one would admit to weakness. No one flinched under
Mirain’s stare, although he did not spare the power of it, searching each
hollowed face.

At last his head bowed. He breathed deep, as if he had come
to a decision. Slowly he raised his hands. “We are all at the edge of our
endurance. But we must ride as we have never ridden before, and we must ride
straight through the enemy. Else we are all lost.”

The unmarked hand spread toward the seneldi. Even the Mad
One’s proud neck drooped, although he tried to arch it under his lord’s eye;
his sides were matted with sweat and foam, his breath coming with effort.

And he was the best of them all. Mirain turned his golden
palm to catch the sun. “I have no strength to give you all, but what I have, I
would give to our seneldi. Have I your leave?”

They stared at him, dulled minds struggling to understand.
Vadin had an advantage: he had seen what Mirain could do.

“Magic,” he said sharply, to wake them. “God-power. He’s
asking leave to put a spell of endurance on your beasts.”

One by one, raggedly together, they assented. They were
Mirain’s now, heart and soul. They watched him with awe and—yes—love, as he
laid his hand on each broad brow beneath the horns of the lone gelding, between
the eyes of the mares.

And life flowed back into the spent bodies. Light kindled in
dimmed eyes; nostrils flared, testing the wind.

Last of all Mirain came to the Mad One. That one hardly
needed his touch to swell and preen and stamp, but Mirain stood long by the
strengthened shoulder, both hands on it, cheek against the tangled mane.

With a sudden, almost convulsive movement he turned. Not
Vadin alone caught his breath. In so little time, Mirain’s face had aged years.
But he sprang into the saddle, straight as ever, and the Mad One moved forward.
“Come,” Mirain commanded. “Follow me.”

They rode openly over the crest, down the long slope toward
the mass of the army. Whether by some trick of Mirain’s power, or because they
had not looked to be overtaken, the rebels made no move against them.

Perhaps, with the sun in their eyes and the dust rising to
cloud their advance, men judged the swift newcomers to be stragglers of their
own force. No banner taught them otherwise, and no armor glinted warning.
Filthy, worn to rags, mounted on lathered and gasping seneldi, the strangers
might as easily have been fugitives in search of sanctuary.

There was space to skirt the left flank, a stretch like a
road between army and cliff, and Mirain claimed it, with his men pounding after.

Vadin heard a voice, a call that sounded like a question,
growing peremptory. He crouched over Rami’s neck.

“Run,” he prayed. “Longears, Rack-of-bones, love of my life,
run
.”

His right eye was full of the glitter of weapons. His back
crawled, yearning for its lost armor.

He fixed his whole being on the flying tassel of the Mad
One’s tail. It would carry him out of this. It would bring him safely home.

The voice begot echoes, not all born of air and
mountainside. “Hold, I say! In whose name do you ride?”

“My own!” Mirain bellowed back. “Behind you—Moranden of the
Vale—a day’s ride—”

The Mad One veered. Mirain’s arm swept the rest onward, but
he sat his stallion well within bowshot of the captain who had hailed him.

Vadin was bone-weary but he was not yet dead; he knew what
Mirain was trying to do, and he had strength left to be appalled. He caught at
the reins.

But Rami with her velvet mouth, Rami whose obedience had
never been less than perfect, Rami had the bit in her teeth and would not turn
aside. He heard Mirain’s voice, indistinct with distance. The lunatic was
telling them where Moranden was, and how many men he had, and what his spies
had said; but not what Mirain himself had said.

And the army had slowed to hear him. The ranks behind were
straggling. Some were cheering.

“But you,” called a captain with a voice of brass. “How do
you know this? Why are your men—” He broke off. He spurred his senel closer to
the Mad One, who danced away, horns lowered. “Who are you?”

Mirain laughed and bared the torque at his throat and spun
the stallion about. “Mirain,” he called over his shoulder. “Mirain Prince of
Ianon!”

The Mad One seemed to take wing, so swift was his escape.
Behind him the army milled in disorder. But some of its men were quick of wit.

Something sang, sweet and high and deadly. The Mad One came
level with Rami.

A senel shrieked. Down—one was down before them with an
arrow in its heart. Rami swerved; the Mad One leaped over the struggling body.

The rebels were beginning to move. It struck Vadin then,
purest truth. If Mirain could hold them with his voice, could not one man hold
them with his sword, tangle them further, gain more precious moments? Rami was
free again, light in his hands. He gathered the reins to turn her about.

A band of unseen steel imprisoned his wrists. The mare
strained forward.

The Mad One’s eye burned briefly upon Vadin’s. Mad himself
and raging, helpless as a man in chains, Vadin craned over his shoulder. Six.
They were only six. Knots of men and beasts marked the fallen.

One of the six was free, or set free, stealing the glory
Vadin had chosen. Riding in that swooping arc, singing a wicked satire,
whirling his bright sword.

Arrows could not touch him. Spears fell spent about him.
Singing, he plunged into the foremost rank, and men howled and died.

“Mirain!” Vadin stormed at a rider of stone.
“Mirain!”

The vale narrowed before them. There at last beyond doubting
was the black gorge and the loom of Umijan against the setting sun. Behind them
the army had loosed its most deadly weapon: a company of mounted archers.

“Ride!” cried Mirain. “Trust to the god and ride! Umijan is
before us.”

Aye, like the very keep of hell, black Gullet, black crag,
black castle. And the last of the Gullet was the Tongue, and that was a path
against one sheer wall, for the other dropped away to a precipice and far below
a cold gleam of water; and this eagles’ track reared steeply to the frown of
the gate. Truly Umijan could never be taken, for there was not even space for
three men abreast to assail its walls, and the cliff that edged the path melted
into the very crag of the castle.

If Vadin had had a grain of strength left, he would have
laughed. He knew the gods did. Of all that terrible race, this must be the
worst, with arrows raining and life pouring away and one misstep the road to
certain death.

With every stride he knew Rami’s great heart would burst.
The air beckoned, the emptiness beyond the narrow polished path, singing of
rest.

He clung to the pale mane, straining as Rami strained,
willing her to run swift, run straight, run steady. “Only a little way now.
Only a little. Up, my love. Up to the gate. Up!”

She heard him. The archers or the road had taken Vian. There
was only Jeran behind him, and little Tuan, and Mirain—Mirain mad to the last,
herding them, defying death to take him.

Tuan’s staggering roan went down, barring the narrow way.
The Mad One swayed on the very edge of the precipice.

Tuan shouted, shrill as a child, and howled as Mirain swept
him headfirst across the saddle. The stallion gathered and hurtled over the
dying mare.