Rules of Ascension: Book One of Winds of the Forelands (59 page)

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Authors: David B. Coe

BOOK: Rules of Ascension: Book One of Winds of the Forelands
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“Yes, my lady.”
She walked away, leaving Hagan and the second minister.
Danior cleared his throat. “If there’s nothing else, swordmaster, I think I’ll get some sleep as well.”
“Actually, there is, Minister.” Hagan faced the Qirsi. He still didn’t like him, he wasn’t even certain that he trusted him completely. But he had nowhere else to turn under the circumstances. “I’ve promised the duchess that I would remain by her side when the fighting begins, and I intend to. But I want you to be there, too. If something happens to me, or if I’m too occupied by the battle to guard her and you judge her to be in danger, I want you to raise a mist and get her away.”
The minister regarded him with unconcealed surprise, his yellow eyes gleaming with the light of Curgh torches, his thin face looking almost hawklike.
“Is there something wrong?”
The man shook his head. “No, nothing. I just never imagined you would trust me with any task at all, much less guarding the lady’s life.”
Hagan hesitated, uncertain of what to say. “I’m sure the duchess will be safe with you.”
“Thank you, swordmaster. I’ll do my best to justify your faith in me.”
Hagan watched the Qirsi ride toward the back of the camp before turning his attention once more to Kentigern’s army and assigning the watches for the night. He didn’t expect to get much sleep, but neither did he trust himself to keep watch on Aindreas and his men until dawn. And this gave him something to do. The swordmaster would never have admitted this to the duchess, particularly now, but he had never led an army to war before. He had been
training the men of Curgh for more than ten years, and he had led small parties into the Moorlands and the coastal hills to capture bands of brigands. But Curgh’s army hadn’t been in a full battle in over a century.
His reputation as a warrior, which had spread throughout much of the Forelands, was founded almost entirely on the success he had enjoyed in sword tournaments at castles in Eibithar, Wethyrn, and Caerisse. He had studied military tactics nearly all his life. He knew what to do with an army. But unlike Aindreas and his swordmaster, Villyd Temsten, who had at least fought skirmishes with the Aneirans, Hagan had almost no experience with true warfare.
He tried to tell himself that it wouldn’t matter, that Aindreas and Villyd hadn’t been to war in years and the soldiers of both armies were new to combat. He knew better, though. At that moment he would have given up half his men to have Javan there with him. Not that the duke had been in battle any more than he, but Hagan would have felt far more comfortable relying on Javan’s instincts than his own.
After taking his own watch, and then riding among the men with one eye still on Kentigern Wood, Hagan finally lay down on his damp bedroll and tried to sleep. He had seen no further movement by Aindreas’s army, nor did he expect any more. Reluctant as he was to give himself over to sleep, he knew that he should, that he and his men would be better off in the morning’s battle if he did.
He had expected to lie awake for much of the night, but almost immediately fell into a deep slumber, only awaking when the first pale glimmerings of day had started to touch the eastern horizon. Many of his men were already up, as was the duchess, who rode among the soldiers, greeting them with a confident smile and soft words of encouragement.
She’s better suited to this than I,
Hagan thought
,
feeling a surge of fear
. I should have been doing that.
He rose, and looked toward the wood. There was already a good deal of movement in Aindreas’s three camps, and the swordmaster cursed himself for sleeping so long.
“Swordmaster!”
“Yes, my lady,” he said, tearing his gaze from the torches of Kentigern’s army.
The duchess looked tired, as though she hadn’t slept, and in spite
of the smile she had offered the men, she looked pale and afraid in the faint light of the coming dawn.
“Have you thought of a way to position the men that will counter what Aindreas has done with his army?”
He nodded. This much, at least, he had done. “We should divide our bowmen as they’ve divided their army, positioning enough of the archers on each of our flanks to keep Aindreas’s men from getting around behind us. We’ll lead with our third group of archers. I want to try to thin their numbers somewhat before the close fighting begins. Aindreas has come this far to meet us, so I doubt he’ll wait for us to attack first. He can’t allow us to get past them or his castle is lost. We, on the other hand, can afford to take a more defensive posture. As long as our lines hold, we should be fine.”
She gave a wan smile. “I’ll have to trust you, Hagan. I understand so little of this.”
The swordmaster nodded, saying nothing, but wondering if he really deserved the faith she had placed in him.
The duchess watched him expectantly for several moments. “Should we ready the men?” she finally asked.
“Yes, of course. Forgive me, my lady. I’m … I’m still shaking the sleep from my head.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine.” His horse stood nearby, and he walked to the beast now, swinging himself into his saddle and riding with the duchess back to where the men awaited them. As quickly as they could, Hagan and his lieutenants arranged the men in a broad curving formation, the archers set as he had described to the duchess, and the pikemen and swordsmen arrayed around them.
The sky remained grey and the air misty. They couldn’t see the sun as it rose behind them, but there could be no mistaking the brightening of the plain, or the strains of “Orlagh’s March” drifting toward them from Aindreas’s army.
Aindreas’s men had arranged themselves in tight formations, the center one led by the duke himself, high upon his great horse. Villyd and Kentigern’s Qirsi led the other two. The singing of Aindreas’s men had grown louder, but still they hadn’t started toward the center of the plain. Hagan wasn’t certain why.
He glanced back at his men, only to find that nearly every one of them was watching him. Most of them looked so terribly young,
barely older than Xaver, that the swordmaster felt his chest tighten at the sight of them. How many would survive this battle? They knew how to fight; he had trained them well. But seeing the fear in their eyes, he suddenly doubted that would be enough.
It took him a moment to realize that they were waiting for him to speak. Abruptly feeling self-conscious, he looked toward the duchess and Danior and found that they were eyeing him as well. This was the last thing he needed just then. He had never been good with words. Inspiring an army was the province of a duke, and though he had been born a noble, he had spent his life as a warrior.
He cleared his throat. “We fight for Curgh,” he said.
The men gave a cheer, though not one that was likely to strike fear into the hearts of Aindreas’s army.
“We fight as well for our duke, who is to be king.”
Again, they shouted their agreement.
“But most of all,” he said, facing Shonah, and drawing his sword. “We fight for our queen.” He raised the flat edge of his blade to his forehead and bowed to her.
This time the Curgh army gave a full-throated cry that reverberated across the plain like thunder.
Kentigern’s army shouted as well, as if answering Curgh’s challenge, and an instant later, a single arrow arced into the sky from the center of Aindreas’s army. The last echoes of both armies’ war cries faded away and it seemed to Hagan that all eyes were on that barb as it paused high above the open ground before beginning its swift descent to the earth. And when it struck, burying itself in the ground between the two camps, both armies surged forward, the roar of hoarse voices and the ring of drawn steel shattering the brief silence.
I
t was what she imagined it would be like to be caught in a whirlwind. Amid the fearsome din of screaming men and clashing steel, the dizzying tumult of flailing limbs and slashing weapons, Shonah could barely remember where she was and which men were hers. There was something terrifyingly arbitrary about the violence that surrounded her. This wasn’t war, at least not as she had thought it would be. This was a maelstrom of blood and pain and death. There was no control here, no tactics were at work. Men were maiming and killing each other, bleeding until the grasses of the plain were darkened and slick. Call it frenzy. Call it madness. But to make more of it than that would have been a lie.
The duchess held her sword in her hand and there was blood on the blade. Riding beside Hagan as the battle began, she had fought alongside the men of Curgh just as Javan might have, hacking at the foot soldiers of Kentigern who grabbed at her and tried to pull her from her mount. She was so close to Aindreas that she could see the spittle flying from his mouth as he shouted commands to his men. Atop his enormous horse, the duke fought like one of Bian’s demons, whirling his horse from side to side with astonishing agility and leveling blow after bloody blow at Javan’s men.
Shonah had told Hagan the night before that she hoped her presence on the battlefield would force Aindreas into a mistake. Instead, it appeared to embolden Kentigern and his men. They surged in her direction, as if they believed her death alone would
bring them victory. After only a few minutes—though it seemed far longer than that—Hagan’s defense began to sag under the weight of their assault and the swordmaster screamed for her to go.
She tried to turn away, to ride back toward the rear of their lines, still swinging her sword at the men who reached for her. But she saw no path of retreat. Arrows hissed by her head and still more men pressed toward her.
I’m going to die here
, she thought, fear seizing her heart like a taloned hand.
But in that instant a voice cut through the bedlam, so calm that it startled her.
“This way, my lady.”
She turned and saw Danior at her side, a reassuring smile on his pale lips. He gestured toward a small gap in the fighting, and as he did, the duchess suddenly found herself surrounded by a rising mist, as cool as rain, and as impenetrable as mail. She could still see the minister, but little else. Even the cries and the clatter of weapons were muffled by the Qirsi’s cloud.
“Follow me,” he said. “And stay close.”
The duchess hesitated, straining to see Hagan through the swirling mist. She didn’t want to leave him, though she knew that she was of no help in this fight, that indeed she was endangering everything.
“My lady, please.”
“Yes, I know.”
Still she lingered. In her mind’s eye, Shonah could see the swordmaster fighting, his sword dancing, wraithlike, a blur of glittering steel and bright blood. He hadn’t Aindreas’s bulk and brawn, but he was quicker than the duke, and, she believed, smarter as well. Long ago, Javan had told her that when it came to battle, he would always trade strength for speed and wits.
“Duchess, we must go!”
This time she kicked at her horse’s sides, following the Qirsi back toward safety. There was a tangle of men in their path, all of them locked in combat, and the minister wound his way through them as quickly as possible, like a man trying not to be noticed. Seeing Shonah ride past, a few of Aindreas’s soldiers tried to extract themselves from their battles to strike at her, but the men of Curgh wouldn’t allow it. When one man did manage to take hold of her leg
and try to pull her from her mount, Shonah hacked at him with her sword. He howled in pain and she sped forward, out of his reach.
Once she and the minister were finally beyond the last of Curgh’s men, Danior’s mist began to dissolve and fade, allowing the duchess to see the battle once more. The war cries still reached her, as did the howls of the wounded and dying. But she could see little of the fighting and so had no sense of how the battle was going.
“Are we winning?” she asked the minister, not taking her eyes from the knot of men before her.
“I don’t know, my lady. Kentigern appeared to be pushing back our center, but I believe our flanks are holding.”
It was more than she could tell. She should have been up there still. This was her army. She had said so again and again since leaving Curgh, to Aindreas as well as Hagan. Yet here she was hiding at the rear of the army, waiting for a victory or a defeat in which she would have no part. She would have given anything in that moment to have Javan beside her.
He’d be beside Hagan, as you should be.
“I should go back.”
“You’ll be killed, my lady. And dozens of men will die trying to protect you.”
She bit off a curse that would have shocked her husband, galled by the truth she heard in the minister’s words.
“My apologies, my lady,” he said quietly.
Shonah shook her head, closing her eyes briefly. “You have no reason to apologize, Danior. You’re merely telling me what I know to be true.” She glanced at him, making herself smile. “You saved my life, and you have my thanks.”
“The duke would have expected no less of me, my lady. He expects—” The Qirsi stopped, his eyes widening and his narrow face turning even whiter than usual. “Demons and fire,” he whispered.
Turning in her saddle to see what had come, Shonah felt her stomach heave. A long column of soldiers was approaching the battle plain from the east, following the course of the river. They bore a banner of black, silver, red, and white. The wolf and the moons. Glyndwr.
Javan had never had any quarrel with Kearney, but neither had they ever been friends. Kearney’s father, on the other hand, had been closely allied with the House of Kentigern.
“It’ll be a slaughter,” Shonah said. “Hagan hasn’t a chance.”
“Shall I raise—?”
She didn’t wait for the Qirsi to finish his question. Spurring her mount to a full run, the duchess rode toward the Glyndwr army, her sword raised, her golden hair falling free so that it trailed behind her. She might not have been a warrior, but she knew how to ride, and she knew that she could get to Kearney long before he joined the battle. She had no idea what she’d say or do once she reached the duke, but that seemed far less important than just getting to him. She could hear Danior calling to her, trying to convince her to turn back, but she didn’t even look at him.
It was only when she drew near the Glyndwr army that she realized there was more to Kearney’s appearance than she had ever imagined possible. He had two Qirsi with him rather than one, and another man who looked oddly familiar.
She reined her mount to an abrupt halt, her hands suddenly trembling so fiercely that she dropped her sword. It was Tavis. Kearney had Tavis.
The duke rode toward her, as did the two Qirsi, her son, and one more man who she guessed was Kearney’s swordmaster.
Tavis reached her first, dropping himself off his mount almost before the creature had halted. Shonah dismounted as well and ran to him, wrapping her arms around him and burying her face against his shoulder, her body racked by sobs. At length, she pulled back, looking at him through her tears. He had scars all over his face, as though he had already been through a battle. He flinched slightly as she looked at him, his dark eyes flicking away, his own tears dampening his cheeks. She couldn’t begin to imagine how he had suffered. Just the thought made her chest ache.
“Are you … are you well?” she asked, forcing him to meet her gaze.
“As well as I’m likely to be.”
She opened her mouth, shut it again, unsure of how to ask what she wanted to know most. But it seemed words weren’t necessary.
“I didn’t kill her, Mother. I give you my word as a Curgh.”
She embraced him again. “I believe you.” She truly did, though only now, feeling relief warm her heart like sunlight, did she realize how deeply she had doubted him.
“Why are you here?” she asked a moment later, releasing him once more. “Why are you with Glyndwr?”
Tavis shook his head. “I couldn’t possibly explain all of it right now. It’s enough to say that the duke has granted me asylum.”
“Asylum?” She looked up at Kearney, who had stopped his mount a few strides from where they stood. “You give him asylum and then you bring him here?”
“Mother—”
She held up a hand, silencing the boy. “What is this, Kearney? Are you playing games with my son’s life?”
“Hardly, my lady,” the duke said. He was a handsome man, his youthful face belying the silver of his hair, even now with his expression so grave. “Lord Tavis is here at his own insistence and that of his companion.”
“His companion?”
“That would be me, my lady,” one of the Qirsi said.
She had barely taken note of him before, but now, eyeing him closely, she saw that he was unlike any other man or woman of the sorcerer race she had ever seen. He sat tall on his mount, with broad, powerful shoulders that gave him the look of a soldier rather than a minister. Like all the others of his kind he had yellow eyes and pale skin, but rather than giving him an appearance of ill health as these features so often did, they made him look formidable, almost frightening. He wore his hair long and loose, and it danced around his face now in the freshening wind.
“And who are you?” Shonah asked.
“My name is Grinsa jal Arriet. I’m a gleaner with the Revel.”
“And how have you come—?” She stopped, staring at him. “A gleaner? Are you the one who attended his Fating?”
“Yes, my lady.”
His eyes had wandered beyond her, and for a moment the duchess thought he was avoiding her gaze.
“What role have you played in all that’s happened to my son?”
“I’d be happy to answer that, my lady. Later. But right now, men are dying before my very eyes. I think it’s time we stopped this war.”
Reminded of the fighting, Shonah turned to face the battlefield. She wasn’t thinking clearly. Tavis, the war, Javan. It was all too much for her. Of course they had to do something. It shouldn’t have taken this strange Qirsi to remind her of that.
The men of Kentigern and Curgh showed no sign of having seen the Glyndwr army. They were far too intent on slaughtering each other.
Shonah retrieved her sword and climbed back onto her horse. Tavis remounted as well.
Kearney steered his horse next to hers and stared toward the battle. “How do we stop them?”
“Your army?” she suggested.
“No,” the Qirsi said. “That will only add to the carnage.”
Shonah regarded the man through narrowed eyes. There was something about him that commanded her consideration. She couldn’t help thinking that he was more than he claimed to be. Certainly he didn’t speak with the voice of a mere Revel gleaner.
“Then what?” Kearney demanded.
“A wind.” This time it was the other Qirsi who spoke. She was as attractive as Grinsa was impressive. She wore her hair tied back in twin braids and she wore mail and a sword that looked slightly foolish on one as slight and delicate as she. Then again, she was no smaller in stature than Shonah herself.
Is this how I appear to the men?
the duchess asked herself.
“My first minister,” Kearney said, glancing quickly at Shonah. “Explain yourself, Keziah. What would we do with a wind?”
“Draw their attention, at least for a moment. That may be all we need.”
Glyndwr nodded. “Do it.”
The woman glanced for just an instant at the gleaner, before closing her eyes and taking a long breath. At first there was nothing, indeed an unnatural stillness fell over the plain, so that it seemed to Shonah that the only sounds in the world were the clashing of blades and the cries of dying men. In the next moment, however, the air around her began to stir, as if Morna herself had waved her hand over the three armies. It built quickly, until it was a gale racing over the grasses. Shonah’s hair whipped around her face, and she felt her horse pushing back against the wind just to stand upright.
Within a few seconds it had reached the two armies, hammering at them so forcefully that they couldn’t help but pause in their fighting to look in the direction from which the tempest had come. Seeing the banner of Glyndwr, many of Kentigern’s men let out a cheer. But Aindreas and Hagan sat unmoving on their mounts, glaring at one another, as if each was trying to gauge what the other intended to do next.
“It worked, Keziah,” Kearney said, hollering to be heard over the roar of her gale. “You can stop.”
Almost immediately the wind began to slacken. The woman opened her eyes, glancing once more toward the gleaner and favoring him with a small smile.
Aindreas shouted an order to his men, and though Shonah couldn’t hear what he said, his tone was such that she half expected the armies to resume their fighting. Instead, men on both sides lowered their swords.

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