The Wicked Day (38 page)

The eastern approaches of the valley were soon black with the marching masses of the army. The wind blew along their path, fleeing at their advance, and it brought to those on the heights of the gap a rumbling thunder of bootsteps, of creaking armor and stepping horse. The noise sounded like the growl of some strange monster, a being more massive than giants or dragons, growing louder and louder as the wind sought to escape the valley. Storm clouds hurried along in the sky so that as the ground darkened with the approaching masses of soldiers, so did the sky. They were nearer now, much nearer.

“Shall we give these scoundrels a good beating, my lord?” Galan Lartes sauntered up to Owain’s side, spear in hand. “My lads are champing at the bit. I’ve half a mind to ride out and tell them to hurry it up.”

“Is all Vo of such good humor?” asked Owain. “Would that I had a hundred more of you here, for a cheerful heart is a brave heart.”

“Aye, my lord. I think it chiefly the fine wines we make. And that we are a little duchy. We do not have the pomp of Hearne or Vomaro to put a smile on things. So we smile for no reason, and we’ve gotten into the habit, despite the bad weather or unwanted company.”

At these words, Galan bowed mockingly to the east. Owain laughed, but as he glanced down he saw that the young man’s knuckles were white as he gripped his spear.

The attack came just after noon. It came like a wave of the sea, a dark mass that surged toward them, roaring and towering ever higher. At least, it seemed so, for the morning light dimmed as if a shadow had fallen upon the sun. Arrows hissed into the wave, but they vanished like stones thrown into the sea and with just as little effect.

“Steady, men!” shouted Owain. “Hold your line! Hold!”

The wave hit the fortification with a splintering crash, a rending of metal on metal, of timbers splintering and snapping, of screams and shouts. The thin line of the defenders reeled back and then flung themselves forward, buttressed by the men of Harlech under the command of the duke’s son, Rane. He gave no command to his men, but they wheeled and turned with him like one living creature that bit and slashed at the flanks of the dark wave, dashing to wherever the defenders teetered on the brink of collapse. Arrows whipped down through the air from the archers higher up on the slopes. The dark wave rolled on, smashing and roaring against the fortifications. It tore away more and more, each time it returned, the ground slick with blood and mud.

“Is the sky falling as well?” said Bordeall.

He looked up, his face blanching near white. His axe was smeared with gore in his hands. Owain also looked up and thought he was going mad. It seemed as if the dark clouds overhead had been torn into bits. Little dark spots falling from the sky. Dark spots moving erratically. No, flying. They were flying.

“Birds,” he said. “They’re birds.”

“Crows,” said Bordeall.

“Archers!” shouted Owain. He motioned over one of his sergeants. “Have the archers look to the sky.”

“Aye, my lord.”

The man clambered up the slope to where the first line of archers crouched among the heather and the rock. Owain could dimly hear him bellowing orders over the crash and tumult of the battle. It was not a moment too soon. With a high-pitched piercing cry, as if calling with one voice, the crows fell. They dove down through the sky, through the rain, falling like spear points. The arrows met them and the sky was filled with feathers and blood, but the archers were not enough. The sound of the crows’ impact was like steel on steel. Men died without seeing their death. They died with broken helms, pierced necks, and blind faces. The line faltered behind the fortification.

“Hold!” shouted Owain. “Hold the line! Lartes! Get your men up! Get your men up!”

“There’s our enemy,” said the duke of Harlech, pausing beside Owain in the midst of battle. His sword ran red with blood. “Look there.”

Lannaslech pointed. Far beyond the surging masses of soldiers facing them, the ground down along the riverbank rose at one point. It was a gentle slope, but enough to create a rise that lay bare. The advancing army split and flowed around it. A horse and rider stood upon the rise. The rider was armored all in black, and the horse was just as black with shining coat. Its eyes seemed to gleam red, even at such a distance. There was a strange and awful stillness about the rider. A heaviness, a ponderous certainty and implacability of purpose in how that black helm stared across the distance. But then the howling wave crashed again upon their line and they had no time to consider the rider.

The line wavered, stretched, held for an agonizing handful of seconds, and then broke. It broke in death and blood and men trampled down into the wet earth. The ragged remainders retreated back up the gap, back up to the next fortifications and the fresh thin line of steel waiting there. Further down the valley, the dark horseman rode forward, and the sea of his own army drew back, keeping well clear as if they feared the rider, feared whatever face stared from behind that black helm. The horseman rode up to the first ruined fortifications and halted. The air seemed colder. The day darkened, as if there was no longer any sun behind the clouds. Both sides stood in silence, and it was a silence born of equal dread for the solitary horseman.

The silence was broken by the twang and hiss of an arrow. The arrow came from somewhere higher up on the slopes of the gap. Higher and behind Owain. His eye caught and held the shaft’s flight. The arrow sped with perfect aim, straight at the rider’s helm. It struck with a tremendous clang. Steel point on iron. But the rider did not move. It was as if he were carved out of stone. Immovable, unalterable, as heavy and as unshakeable as the earth itself.

Lay down thy arms.

Owain could not tell if the voice spoke out loud or whether it was only in his mind. The voice was ponderous, slow, almost whispered. A voice oddly weary with its own dreadful weight. Owain staggered and slipped down onto one knee. Around him, his men waited in tense expectation, gazing down the muddy and trampled heather at the army lapping against the bottom of the gap like the sea. Owain did not think they heard the voice.

Bid thy men lay down their arms. Let them open their hands in peace to death, for the Dark has come to Tormay. The night doth fall here. It is a night that began in long ages past, before the light shone forth, and it hath no end.

The words fell like stones, singly, in Owain’s mind. Each one heavier than its predecessor until he was so heavy, so weary with their weight, that it was all he could do to keep his eyes open. Surely he should rest. A little sleep. The slopes of the gap were silent around him. There would be no noise to bother his rest.

There is a rest deeper and better than sleep. Death.

“Steady,” said the duke of Harlech, standing alongside Owain.

“Can you hear him?” said Owain. He drew his shaking hand across his brow.

“Somewhat. I think he speaks only to you, but I can hear enough. I’d rather face the army before us alone than that horseman.”

“There’s a face behind that helm, surely,” said Owain. “There must be. I feel his gaze. But maybe there’s nothing there at all. Just an empty helm. Where’s Jute?”

And then the earth shook beneath them. It heaved and trembled and shuddered. The muddy ground slid across itself in a whisper, then a rush, then a gathering roar. The rocks on the heights of the gap tumbled down, and the embankment above the river collapsed into the water below in a confusion of spray. There were shouts and screams and the frantic yells of men dug in behind the various fortifications as the earth fell away, plunging them to their deaths in the icy water below. The last thing Owain saw was the horseman. He sat immovable on his steed, as before, the black helm staring up at the slopes of the gap. And though the earth shook around him, he and his horse did not move at all. The horse and rider were like a statue. The sky teetered and tilted over them all like an endless expanse of frozen iron, of hammered darkness that had locked away the sun. Something struck Owain a tremendous blow on his head and he knew no more.

His skull ached. It felt as if the bone had been shattered like an eggshell. He tried to reach up a hand but could not. And then his mind cleared and Owain came back to full consciousness, coughing and gagging. The ground moved and shook beneath him. No. Not the ground. A galloping horse. He was slung over a horse, jammed down against the pommel with the mane flying in his face. Someone gripped the back of his coat with an iron hand.

“Let me up!” Owain shouted. “Blast you! Let me up!”

The horse came to an abrupt stop and Owain found himself looking into the anxious face of Arodilac Bridd.

“Bridd! What are you doing here? Let go of me, d’you hear?!”

Arodilac released his hold on the captain’s coat and let him slide down to the ground. He swung down after him. Owain slowly became aware of other horsemen around them, of horses being pulled up sharply and of many eyes on him. His head hurt abominably.

“My lord,” Arodilac said, “we must—”

“Don’t tell me what we must do, Bridd. I distinctly remember leaving you under Lucan’s command at the gate.” Owain staggered then, unable to maintain standing. A hand caught him, steadied him. Arodilac. He realized, dimly, that a great many soldiers stood around them, dismounted from their horses, but none of them looked his way. They were all looking somewhere behind him. Looking back. Back toward the slopes of the Gap.

Owain turned. His eyes would not focus properly. A dim and lowering sky, full of clouds, hung over the heights of the Gap. Rain spattered down, and he wiped it from his eyes. His hand came away bloody. They were a distance away now, halfway down the valley that lay between the Gap and the meadowed slopes before the walls of Hearne. Black specks swarmed along the rocky heights in the distance. Owain fumbled in the pocket of his coat for the farseer and brought it to his eye. His vision swam and then cleared into one round window brought close. Men fighting on the top of the Gap. His men. Fighting at the last fortification at the top of the heights. A dark-armored wave crashing against the paltry steel of their swords and spears. The flag of Hearne snapping in the wind. The tiny black shapes of crows circled overhead, diving and falling. And there, there at the center of the fortifications, a tall, burly figure with axe in hand, white hair stained with blood.

“Bordeall stayed,” said Owain.

“Aye, my lord,” said Arodilac wretchedly. “He bade me take you away. Said he’d take my head off right there if I didn’t turn and ride. No need for more of us dying, he said.”

Owain looked again, screwing the farseer against his eye as if the sudden sight might bring him right to where it was. But there was no more white-haired figure swinging his axe. The dark wave broke over the fortifications, surging and raging, and then it swept past. A horseman crested the highest rise on the heights, moving slowly and without haste. A stray bit of sunlight angling down through a momentary rent in the clouds fell on the black helm. The eye-slit in the helm seemed to be staring straight at Owain over the distance. He jammed the farseer back into his pocket, his hand trembling.

“We were supposed to hold out longer,” he said to no one in particular. “At least for a day. Even two.” He cleared his throat, tasting blood in his mouth. “And Harlech?” he said, his voice harsh.

“They stayed as well, my lord,” said one of the horsemen nearby.

“Back to Hearne, and quickly.”

But Owain could not mount a horse on his own. His hands would not grasp the reins and there was no strength in his legs. Arodilac heaved him up onto his charger and then they were off in a drumming of hooves.

They came to Hearne in the late afternoon, with the horses weary under them, and the rain wavering into snow and then back to rain all through the day. It was a wet, cold, miserable ride and the walls of the city were a welcome sight. The road was slick with mud and crowded with refugees. Oxcarts and handcarts, horse-drawn wagons and wheelbarrows, people hurrying along with their lives on their back. There were herds of sheep and cattle here and there as well, lowing and baa-ing their confusion as they were chivvied along. It was a grinding welter of misery, and no one walked that muddy road but they did not look back anxiously every few minutes. With the rain and the gloom, however, there was nothing to be seen other than the phantoms of their own imaginations.

“The livestock,” said Owain, waking somewhat from the near slumber he had fallen into.

“My lord?” said Arodilac.

“Confiscate their livestock and get it into the city. We’ll need it for food.”

The tower of the gate loomed over them. Flags flapped wetly in the rain. Torches flared within the gate and the horsemen rode under the arch. The clip-clop of hooves echoed back from the stone walls. Spear butts slammed down onto the ground as the soldiers at the gate came to attention. Owain swung down from the horse and walked across the foregate to the tower. He staggered once, but caught himself and continued on, staring in front of him and not seeing the ranks of soldiers drawn up in rigid attention. He did not see the men of Thule, Hull, and Vo. He did not see the practice ground crowded with canvas tents. His head ached. Someone took his arm, saying something, but he pushed them away. He somehow made it up the stone steps.

Owain closed the door of his study behind him and sat down behind the old oak desk. His father’s desk. Rain streaked the window with gray and twilight. He tried to remember why he was there. The door opened. Someone stood at the sill. Lucan. That’s who it was. Lucan, the young lieutenant. Promising lad. Must learn how to deal with subordinates, though. Doesn’t understand yet what authority truly means.