Zandru's Forge (52 page)

At this distance, Carolin could not hear the screams of the men who had loved and aided him, but all through that night and the many nights of dreadful flight which followed, he felt them like the points of a hundred daggers turning slowly in his breast. Never before had he thought his laran a curse.

Carolin and his men traveled quickly, hiding by day and riding hard by night. Once a small company of armed soldiers flying pennants with Lyondri’s insignia galloped by as they sheltered in a tangled wood. Orain swore they’d been seen, but the soldiers took no notice and pressed on on their own business.

They made for the Hellers and Nevarsin. The monks cared nothing for the struggles of the lowlands, but they offered Carolin and his men shelter, saying that he had harmed no one, whereas his enemy, Rakhal, would kill him for his own ambition. They would not join in Carolin’s cause, but neither would they surrender him.

During one brief daytime stop, when even fitful sleep would not come, Carolin lay wrapped in his cloak and tried to rest. At his side, Orain snored softly, and Carolin dared not move for fear of waking him. Since their flight from Highgarth, Orain had driven himself almost to exhaustion until Carolin had to command him to let other men stand watch in turn.

Rest,
he told himself.
Sleep
...

He did not want to close his eyes, for in the darkness of his mind, the fires of Highgarth still burned. He shivered, his soul sickened by the memory.

He saw a Tower crumbling into ruin, blasted by a rain of fire, the bodies of men and women blazing like torches.
Varzil! Maura!
he cried out, but his friends were not among them, yet they were so many. A great black stallion lay in a pool of blood. A land once green with pastures became a barren desert broken only by the twisted skeletons of trees. A young woman with eyes like a hawk’s wept helpless tears in the night Orain twisted in agony under Lyondri’s knife. Varzil stood bathed in white fire, his eyes blind with pain and loss and terrible purpose.

Would this be the fate of everyone who followed him, everyone who trusted and believed in him?

High in the mountains, in the shadow of Aldaran, an army waited for its King. Would he lead them to victory or to ruin? This war between cousins would set brother against brother, father against son.

Had Rakhal ruled with a fair and just hand, had he treated his people as a king should, respecting and protecting them, then Carolin would have gladly yielded up the throne to him. If he had learned nothing else during his exile, it had been how little he wanted to be king.

Though he might fail, he had no choice but to try. He had sworn it, and of all the things left to him, his honor was the most precious.

As the hills grew steeper and more rugged, the weather turned foul. Carolin and his men traveled now by day, for few other men used the mud-churned roads.

They passed under the shadow of a ragged grove of pitch-pine. Carolin drew a halt, signaling with hand instead of voice. No one spoke. Only the steady whisper of the rain and the breathing of the horses broke the silence. The sound came again, a faint rustle, the muted clink of unshod hoof on stone. His fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword, but he did not slide it free.

Chervine,
not horse. A man on foot, maybe more.

Carolin’s skin tightened. As one, he and his men turned to face the sound. The next moment, a heavyset man appeared, leading a laden stag pony. Behind him, silent and dour, came two others in animal-skin cloaks, armed with heavy staves. Their leader’s clothing, once fine, was torn and stained, Carolin suspected, with more than trail mud.

For a long moment, the two parties stared at one another. Honest men did not roam these rugged hills, not in the rain. Carolin and his men looked like outlaws themselves in ragged clothing, having long since done away with any badge or emblem which might identify them.

Carolin’s black mare snorted and pawed the ground, restless with the tension. He patted her neck. “We bid you good travel, strangers,” he said, pointedly not asking their business.

The heavyset man did not reply at first, perhaps measuring the odds of battle or flight.

Carolin said, “I think you are neither thieves nor felons, but desperate men like ourselves. You need have no fear from us. We are no threat to any man who offers us none.”

At his words, the other man’s stance softened. He nodded. “Like better men than us, we seek exile here.”

“Then be on your way,” Orain said, nudging his horse to the fore, “for we are no hunters of men.”

“That you are not,” the man said. Clearly, he had made up his mind to speak, rather than pass by in silence. “I think there is one who hunts you, perhaps the same as seeks me.”

“Who might that be?” Orain said.

“By the word of the usurper whose backside warms the throne at Hali, I am a landless man. The crime for which I lost my farm and was flung into Rakhal’s prison under sentence of losing a hand and my tongue? My children shouted, ‘Long live King Carolin!’ as one of Rakhal’s men passed by my village. So here I am, ready to serve any king who will bring down Rakhal and his henchman, Lyondri.”

“We, too, serve the exiled king,” Carolin said, “but if you would join our company, we can offer no sure hope of victory.”

“I ask only to fight against my enemies,” the man said in a voice resonant with bitterness. “I have heard that King Carolin is gathering an army somewhere in the Hellers. If it is your purpose also to join them, we might share the road.”

Something of the wolf stirred behind Carolin’s slow smile. “Then we ride together, friend. How are you called?”

“Alaric.” The man gave no other name, for here in this lawless place, he had left the past behind.

They rode together, even as Carolin said, for another tenday, until they came to a little valley overlooked by a castle. Built into the living rock of the crags, it was little more than a fortress, but the men who lived here were distant kin of Valdrin Castamir and gave Carolin and his men welcome, though the news they brought was bitter.

“I can spare only a few men,”
Dom
Cerdric told Carolin, “for in these lawless times, we are beset by Ya-men from the heights on one side and bandits which haunt these passes on the other.”

Instead, he presented Carolin with an even greater gift, three sentry birds. They were great powerful birds, resembling
ky
orebni,
the savage scavengers of the heights, more than proper hawks. Long feathered crests arched over their eye sockets. Their heads were naked and wrinkled, and their beaks gleamed like obsidian. Though they were far from beautiful and an odor of carrion arose from them, they were a magnificent gift. A trained
laranzu,
his mind linked with one of them, could spy out the land, locate enemy forces, track the movement of armies.

You will be my eyes, and perhaps through you, I may bring about a speedy end to this war,
Carolin thought. From Nevarsin, they might contact Tramontana, to see if any of the workers there might join them.

Dom
Cerdric’s saddlemaker attached blocks to three of the saddles for the sentry birds to perch upon. When offered fresh meat, however, the birds refused to eat. Before long, they became listless and irritable. Some of the men had trained hawks, but could not make out what ailed the sentry birds. Carolin began to think the gift was in vain, for the birds were failing and might not live until they reached Nevarsin.

Late one day, they climbed a little forested knoll. Away to the northwest, a high mountain loomed. Beyond it in the failing light, snowcapped peaks glimmered like pale shadows. Orain spotted a curl of smoke just off the road ahead.

Carolin’s
laran
stirred. He sensed no threat, although an undercurrent of fear ran through the mind of the boy—no, a young woman—who crouched in the thickest part of the trees.

Another dozen paces took them around a curve and into sight of a small clear space with the remains of a fire. The coals had been carefully covered so that no chance spark might set the hills ablaze. Whoever she was, this girl was forest wise.

“Come out, boy,” Orain called. “We mean you no harm.”

The girl emerged from the thicket, leading a horse which by its coat and staring ribs had lately seen hard travel and poor fodder. Carolin recognized the girl from his waking vision outside Highgarth, the proud bearing, the eyes shadowed yet alive with fire, like those of a bird of prey. She herself looked like a runaway hawkmaster’s apprentice, with her rough garb and improvised perch on her saddle.

As her gaze met his, Carolin felt an instant kinship with her. Like him, she traveled in disguise, shadowed by fear. Would that he might meet the future with the same courage he saw brimming in her eyes.

At the girl’s signal, a magnificent
verrin
hawk swooped down from the sky and caught her lifted forearm. She looked tenderly at the bird. “She is mine, for I trained her with my own hand.”

From her red hair and sure manner with beasts, Carolin wondered if she might have MacAran blood, as well as a touch of their empathic
laran.
“In this wild land,” he said, “your hawk could fly away if she would, and in that sense at least, you own her as much as any human can own a wild thing.”

She caught his meaning and gave him a smile of rare radiance. But when he asked her name, she looked away and muttered, “Rumal.”

Keep your secrets, then, little hawkmistress. No harm will come to you or your hawk from any man of mine.
From her bearing and speech, she was gently-raised, perhaps in the lands north of the Kadarin. Her horse, although thin, had good breeding. He could not imagine what had driven her to travel like this, alone, wearing a boy’s boots and breeches, her true nature concealed. Yet he sensed that she, too, was an exile, homeless, driven from her kin through no fault of her own except her own honor.

On impulse, Carolin asked the girl if she knew anything about treating ailing sentry birds, and was surprised when she approached them without fear. When told the birds had been fed only the best and freshest meat, even when the men went short of food, she replied, “There is your problem, sir. Look you, these are scavenger birds, which feed on half-rotted meat. They must have fur and feathers, too. These birds are starving because they cannot digest what you’ve given them.”

Each creature feeds according to its nature,
Carolin thought as Rumal set about arranging for carrion for the sentry birds. The birds permitted her to handle them, and he saw how quick and light her hands were. Soon she and Orain were deep in discussion about what to name the birds.
If only men could learn to live in the same way.

What if it were Rakhal’s nature to pillage and abuse his people, or Lyondri’s to destroy anyone who stood against him?