The Red Wyvern: Book One of the Dragon Mage (36 page)

“Silver daggers!” A voice raised, another joining in. “To the silver daggers!”

Suddenly and seemingly from nowhere the men of the Ram came pouring through the open gates, and behind them bobbed the blue shields of Glasloc, sweeping the Boarsmen away. Branoic could see them so clearly that he looked up, and sure enough, the sky was turning grey with dawn.

Branoic flung himself down to a kneel and grabbed Peddyc by the shoulders. Blood oozed between his fingers. The tieryn opened his eyes and shut them again. Whether he lived or died Branoic didn’t know. More and more of the prince’s men were pouring through the gates and spreading out in the ring, where the shouting went on and horns shrieked. Although he doubted if he could carry Peddyc, Branoic decided he’d rather be cursed than leave him to be trampled. He slipped one arm around the tieryn’s shoulders.

“Branoic! Hold! I’ll help!”

Young Lord Anasyn broke free of the fighting and reached his father’s side. Together they could lift the unconscious Peddyc and inch their way through the gates. Branoic was frantically wondering where the chirurgeons might be when he glanced around and saw Nevyn running to meet them.

“My lord!” Branoic choked out. “Caradoc!”

“I know.” Nevyn was shouting over the general bedlam. “I saw him die. Come along, let’s get—ah, ye gods! I’m sorry, Sanno. It’s too late.”

Since neither Owaen nor Caradoc would be seeing him break orders, after the silver daggers rode out Maddyn armed. The mail felt so gruesomely heavy after his long years away from war that he realized he’d be unable to fight no matter how badly he wanted to. Cursing as only a silver dagger can, he stripped it off and threw it on the floor of his tent.

At least he’d be with the battle in spirit. Maddyn walked uphill to the third wall and climbed the catwalk to vigil the last of the night away there, out of the way of the real warriors, or so he thought it. Every time the clouds lifted enough for him to see the moon, she rode lower in the western sky. Finally, just as she was setting altogether, Maddyn heard the distant shouting that, he’d later learn, meant that Caradoc and his men were making their false attempt on the postern. Maddyn swore and started round the wall toward the sound, only to turn and rush back when the real attack hit the main gates.

Since the fourth wall stood uphill, he of course couldn’t see over, but he could watch the Ram’s men leap up below him and start forward. In the false king’s dun the shouting grew louder; horns blared; the Ram’s men began running for the fourth wall with Glasloc close behind.

The sky turned grey. Below Maddyn the gates creaked open and horsemen thundered through. Maddyn squeezed into a crenel between two merlons and hung over the edge. When he saw Nevyn running across the ring toward the gate, Maddyn slid down to the parapet and took the ladders down. He met the old man at the downhill side of the third wall.

“Maddo!” Nevyn yelled. “Get some horses! There’s a couple of your men at the ruined dun. They must have made it back through the bolthole.”

Maddyn turned on his heel and raced downhill to the silver dagger’s camp. He commandeered a couple of servants, and together they saddled five horses. Leading two with empty saddles they set off, trotting most of the way, galloping in short spurts when the ground allowed, walking now and then to rest their mounts. The sun had hauled itself a good ways up from the horizon by the time they reached the ruined dun.

Red-haired Trevyr was sitting on a bit of broken wall. Blood crusted on his face and lay thick on his muddy shirt. At his feet lay Albyn, sprawled like a sack of meal. Maddyn knew he was dead the moment he saw him. He dismounted, threw the reins of his horse to one of the servants, and hurried over. Trevyr looked up at him as if he were thinking himself delirious.

“It’s me,” Maddyn said. “Nevyn scried you out.”

“May the gods bless him! The captain’s dead. We tried to get to him, but he went down in the middle of a mob.”

For a moment Maddyn could neither move nor speak. In the sky above, ravens shrieked and wheeled. Trevyr raised a hand black with dry blood as if to fend them off. It looked like all his fingers had been broken by one blow, and Maddyn wondered how he could possibly move it.

“Did they get the gates?” Trevyr said.

“They did. Owaen still lives, and Branoic. Can you ride?”

Trevyr considered this question for a long moment, then tried to smile. The wound on his face cracked and oozed.

“I don’t have much choice, do I?” He glanced down. “Allo died out here. At least he made it this far.”

“Lilli!” It was Anasyn’s voice, howling toward her. “Lilli, hurry!”

Lilli rushed out of her tent. Still in his mail Anasyn stood waiting for her, and the way he stood, head back, hands clenched in fists, his mouth twisted in pain, told her what must have happened.

“Father?” she whispered.

“He’s dead. Branoic and I got him free of the fighting, but it was too late.”

Lilli threw back her head and keened, a long wail that seemed to burst out of her heart. Anasyn threw his arms around her and pulled her tight. They held on like children, swaying together while he wept.

“He’ll be with Bevva in the Otherlands,” Lilli said. “They’ll be together now.”

At that she could weep, sobbing and keening in long hysterical gulps while her maidservants crept out of the tent and hovered uncertainly nearby. Anasyn stroked her hair and murmured, “Here, here,” over and over again. At last she calmed herself and looked up. With his warrior’s control he’d stopped weeping; his face seemed drawn on parchment like one of Brour’s diagrams, all stretched tight and flat. Around them stood a circle of men, watching silently. Nevyn pushed his way through.

“Lilli, I’m so sorry,” the old man said. “Tieryn Anasyn, the prince has need of you.”

“I’ll go to him straightaway,” Anasyn said. “Please—keep an eye on my sister?”

“I will, lad. Don’t worry.”

Lilli laid a hand on Nevyn’s arm and looked around dazed. Tieryn Anasyn? Of course. Anasyn was the Ram now, and it was his warband who stood watching her with such sad eyes, as if she were doing the mourning for all of them. Peddyc’s captain stepped forward.

“We’ll avenge him, lass. Don’t you trouble your heart about that.”

Lilli tried to thank him, but the keening burst out of her mouth instead. Nevyn grabbed her arm and unceremoniously dragged her into her tent, where she could mourn with her women around her.

By noon the situation clarified. The prince’s men held the entire hill except for the crest and Dun Deverry itself. The regent’s forces held the broch complex and the inner ward around it, defended by one last towering stone ring. This left the deserted village and its patches of open ground a no-man’s-land of some sixty yards wide between the prince’s men on their wall and the regent’s on theirs. The side ward that contained the bolthole belonged, however, to Maryn, as did the dun’s cattle and swine.

“We can send more men through the bolthole now,” Maryn said. “It’ll be a fair bit easier to attack the king’s position over that low wall.”

Nevyn was about to reply when they both heard shouting on the fourth wall—screaming, really, a berserk howl of pure rage. When the prince took off running toward the sound, Nevyn was forced to follow. He barely restrained himself from shouting, “Be careful, Your Highness,” as if the prince were still a child. Maryn flung himself onto a ladder and climbed to the top of the wall. Nevyn scrambled after and found himself in a mob of silver daggers.

“Look, Your Highness!” Branoic snarled. “Just look.”

Across the no-man’s-land and atop the regent’s last wall someone’s head had been raised on a pike and stuck onto the wall twixt two merlons. As they watched, a couple of the regent’s men flung the headless body over. It fell spraddled into the dirt.

“It’s Caradoc.” Owaen was near choking on rage. “The piss-proud dogs!”

“You’ve got good eyes, lad.” Nevyn shaded his with his hand. “But, truly, I think it is, though I’m not sure at this distance.”

“It is,” Branoic said. “I say we go get him back.”

The silver daggers cheered, but the prince grabbed Branoic by the arm and shook him.

“You’ll do naught of the sort!” Maryn snarled. “None of you will! Upon my direct order, do you understand me?”

The silver daggers stared for a long moment, then nodded, murmuring agreement. Branoic was the last.

“Understood, Your Highness,” he said, but he sounded near tears. “Is it beyond my station to ask you why?”

“It’s not.” Maryn softened his voice. “When you get close to the wall, they’ll kill you, that’s why, with javelins if they have some or stones if that’s all they have left to throw. It’s a trap.”

“Oh.” Branoic flung back his head. “I hadn’t thought—”

“None of us are thinking very clearly.” Maryn paused to stare at the blasphemy on the far wall. “I hate to leave him there, but he’d not want his men killed in vain, would he?”

“He wouldn’t,” Branoic said. “My apologies, Your Highness.”

Nevyn felt his own rage run cold rather than hot, an icy thing that left his mind perfectly clear. Caradoc’s soul was beyond caring what happened to his dead body, Nevyn reminded himself. But to allow his friend’s remains to be mocked as they rotted? Intolerable! He may have been two hundred years old and a master of the dweomer, but he was a Deverry man still in his heart. Nevyn turned and strode along the catwalk until he stood well away from the crowd around the prince. He needed to concentrate.

On their far wall the regent’s men were laughing, calling out taunts incomprehensible at a distance though the tone carried across well enough. Nevyn’s rage turned into fire, pure and white hot. In his mind he called upon the Lords of Fire, who came to him as friends to share his rage. Shimmering pillars of silver light formed around him, and in each one floated a figure, vaguely man-shaped but fashioned of fire, the glowing red of embers, the golden lick of flame.

“My friend lies dead,” Nevyn thought to them. “I would give him a pyre like a hero from the Dawntime, but I cannot reach him with wood and oil.”

In his mind he felt their answer, a rage that some mere mortal would deny their peer anything he might want. Slowly Nevyn raised his arms above his head. He paused for a moment, staring at Caradoc’s body, at the pitiful severed head upon its pike, then slowly lowered his arms till his hands pointed across the ring to what was left of the captain. He called out one sacred word.

Silver light leapt down from the sky; a strange metallic flame tinged with blue fell upon Caradoc’s body with a roar and gust of fire. It leapt up, reaching out long silver fingers for his severed head upon the wall. Suddenly the head flamed, too, a torch brighter than the sunlight around it. The men who’d been mocking screamed as they ran, scattering on the catwalk and suddenly disappearing as they climbed down to the ground and no doubt ran for the dun. On their wall the silver daggers stood in utter silence, staring at the magical pyre. In but a little while the flames died down, flickered on bare ground, and disappeared. All that remained of Caradoc were handfuls of pure white ash, scattering in the wind, then gone.

Maddyn had just left Trevyr with the chirurgeons when one of the Ramsmen brought him the news. He headed for the fourth wall, but by the time he reached it the prince was leading the silver daggers downhill. Nevyn came last, looking grimly pleased with himself. When Maddyn fell into step beside him, Owaen dropped back to walk with them.

“It’s over,” Owaen said. “You missed quite a performance, bard. The regent’s men shrieked like frightened lasses, but it was a pleasant sound for all that.”

The prince led them to his pavilion, where Oggyn, his scribe, and a pair of servants were waiting for him. When the silver daggers started to disperse, he called them back.

“I’ve got somewhat to say to all of you,” Maryn said. “For the sake of the silver dagger itself I’ll swear you a vow. Every man of you left alive shall have a boon from me—lands, title, horses, what little gold we have—anything at all! Ask, and I’ll grant it.”

“My liege, you’re too generous.” Maddyn felt his eyes well with tears. “But you have my thanks from the bottom of my heart.”

From his place behind the prince’s shoulder Nevyn was scowling. Maryn had left himself open to greed, Maddyn knew; as the new leaders of the troop, he and Owaen would need to make sure that their men asked for something reasonable.

“I only wish Caradoc had lived,” Maryn went on. “I’d offer him the Cerrmor rhan on the spot.”

“My liege?” Maddyn said. “There’s one thing that Caradoc wanted above all else. He told me this a hundred times. He wanted us—wanted the silver daggers—to outlive him. The wars will be over soon, and maybe no one will need mercenary troops like ours, but it would gladden his heart in the Otherlands to know that silver daggers still rode in Deverry.”

“Then he shall have it!” Maryn turned to the scribe. “Write this down: as long as my line rules this kingdom, let there be silver daggers, for as long as they wish to ride. Let it be known forever as Caradoc’s Boon.”

Nevyn’s scowl deepened. When the old man realized that Maddyn was watching him, he smoothed it into the bland and empty smile of a courtier.

Later Nevyn explained, as they were walking together on the outermost wall in the cool night air. Before and below them the ruins of Dun Deverry spread out. Walls of broken stone rose from the shadows or pitted the darkness, a dead black against the living night.

“Tell me,” Maddyn said. “What have you got against us, Nevyn? When the king made that vow to Caradoc’s spirit, you looked like you’d bitten into a Bardek citron.”

“I’ve got naught against you. It’s the men who’ll come after you that trouble my heart. The silver daggers have won themselves a place in legend, truly. The kingmakers, bards call you. What’s going to happen if some other man decides he wants to be king, somewhere down the long road of Time, and corrupts whoever’s leading you then?”

“Oh. Oh ye gods, I hadn’t thought of that! My apologies, my apologies from the bottom of my heart! I’d not have asked for such a thing if I’d thought about that.”