IX: Battles

Rothesay shook her head gently. The helmet fitted so snugly over her coiled braids that it moved with her like a part of herself, some strange insect skull of boiled leather and bronze bands. She tapped her new bronze cheekbones anxiously, and sickened herself imagining what they were meant to prevent: edge of sword or axe slicing the tender flesh, cracking the thin bone above the teeth and smashing it into her mouth, her teeth themselves like pebbles tossed in a bloody foam on her tongue and choking in her throat when she would try to scream. . . . Her belly roiled, she chilled, then flushed hot again under the brassy morning sun. She fluttered the breast of her coverings, mail, leather, linen and all, to fan herself, and wished for coldness, darkness, silence, stillness.

On second thought, she wished just to be away, home, and happy.

Her mail shirt, tiny bronze rings riveted into a supple metal cloth, must weigh several stone, but she needed to touch it to assure herself of its protective presence. She had grown accustomed to the strength of Arngas against the things she encountered daily; yet there was still so much disparity between the weight she expected and the heft she experienced, and the hauberk felt like so much wool. Absently she stroked the brown neck of the horse between her knees: Stand-in-grass—Tams Longleg, as Caltern called him—found it heavy enough.

She liked Tams. As Rory had spent the fortnight practicing surgery, she had spent it learning to ride, and she and the Longleg had taken to one another. He had a brilliant turn of speed when the mood took him, but that was seldom. His was a phlegmatic soul—Caltern remarked that if Tams died on his feet at dawn, no one would notice the difference before sundown—ideal for a nervous novice rider in any case, but he liked Rothesay’s easygoing humor, that did not try to make a battle-charging thunderbolt of him. They ambled comfortably together as the Runedaur train wound down from the mountains and along the great river to the sea.

Like all his kind, he had no capacity for anticipation. The threat of battle roused no unease in him; but his rider’s subdued terror this morning, so unlike her usual idle cheer, troubled him. His ears flattened, and he snorted and whuffled till she remembered to pat him, which soothed her as much as him, or more.

Though the morning was still early, sweat stuck her linen shirt to her ribs and she pulled at her garments again, but the draft made small difference in the muggy heat, and was vaguely unpleasant besides. Everything irritated. Even the rich green of the grassy swells over which the armies sprawled seemed bilious, and the glaring day-stars of sunlight burning on spearhead and shield clawed the eyes. A mile behind her, Andrastir’s cloud-white walls reared, but the dawn wind from the harbor beyond had failed and the smell of the sea was lost to her, leaving steaming grass, horse piss, horse sweat, man-sweat, her own sweat. She tried not to breathe.

“Hot already, or just nervous?” asked Rory, easing his horse up beside her. Like her, over all his gear he wore a great black tabard, silver-edged, the silver skull of the Runedaur gaping upon chest and back, three incongruous silver butterflies rising from its maw. Their brothers out of Kingscroft wore the same, but with a spray of silver holly leaves in one corner.

“Yes,” she snapped.

He nodded, chewing idly on a stalk of grass. “You should be all right.”

“That’s good, if all my friends die?”

He shrugged. “It’s a hellspawned game. You can take the misery as it comes, like a mountain; or you can make a whole mountain range out of that and all your fancies about what might be, too.”

“More Runedaur wisdom?” she sneered.

“Yuh-huh. You’re free to be as miserable as you please, Sugar.”

“I want to be not miserable at all!”

“You can do that too. You could’ve stayed home—”

“No,” she sighed.

“—or you could lose yourself in action.”

She glimpsed his grin beneath his cheek guards, and swung a gloved fist at it. He dodged with a laugh; she was glad to have missed, reassured of his skill.

A small company rode past: deep blue trimmed with a double line of copper, the colors of Carastwyth, but these had triskelions of silver thorns for a badge. To Rothesay’s question, Rory explained that the thorny emblem marked the second son of Carastwyth, and so the men were those of Prince Mathspen, himself a mere child now mounted at the rear deep in a forest of protective retainers.

She glanced back. Bright pavilions were pitched hardly a furlong away, peeking over a little knoll. Blue and copper pennants floated from the peak of one; the purple and silver of Andras trailed from another, and black and silver ribbons marked the Order’s tent, brought and pitched by Kingscroft. The crowd before the tents shifted and parted, and she saw a rider who seemed to be helmed in silver, till she realized it was hair, and that of Princess Aristande herself. A grim, powerfully-built woman, whitehaired in her fifties, she would not ride into combat like a barbarian girl bent on marriage, but moved now to her post of generalship on the knoll itself. Men spoke with deep respect of her eye for strategy, and she was eagerly rumored to be writing a book on the art. Her standard-bearer followed, holding tall a great silver wand; at its tip, flared dragon-wings of rich purple silk, ribbed with silver and spangled with dew-bright gems, spread far outside the elaborate silver ring meant to encircle the device: Andras refused to be contained by any force, even tradition.

Rory seemed in no hurry to place himself wherever he was supposed to be, but stayed by Rothesay, identifying for her all the colorful tokens they could see, both nearby and across the swale, where the armies of the Brean milled restlessly. Dun Hildr flourished yellow leather, blue beads and a roan horse’s tail; and Dunamblach, red leather, blue and white tassels, and a pair of grey wolf’s paws. Dun Fearic—she recalled the name from her ride with Dav a month ago—stood under black leather stretched in a batlike shape, and yellow beaded leather ribbons. High-king Odhru’s own Dun Brean raised dark red hide; and what looked like white and black beads, said Rory, were strings of lion’s teeth and shark’s teeth respectively. He should know: it was Dun Brean he had fled to become Runedaur.

The imperial forces lined the swelling hills in silent, stoic array; now and again Rothesay saw one man or another tip spear or bow to measure his place against a comrade and adjust his position minutely. Against them, barely a furlong beyond, the Geillari massed like a dammed flood, their only apparent arrangement being to face their foes. Shouted slogans roared across, laced with the hawk-screams and corbie-cries of the women among them vowing Sferan livers for their stewpots on the night.

Time was, when the spectacle of a woman, man-large as she seemed to the gracile Sferiadh and her face a rictus of battle-madness, rushing them with an ululating shriek as keen as her long spear, drove Sferan soldiers to rout. A Geillisel, out to prove by her own valor the strength of the sons she could bear, was an apparition beyond the reach of Sferan nightmare. Only among Runedaur was such a diabolical perversion as a woman warrior to be found; not even Aristande laid hand to more than a pocket knife. And so, perhaps, by such grim association the simple imperial foot-soldier may have credited his foe with greater power than she in truth possessed—though he called it “dishonorable” to strike so weak a creature as a girl, to explain his retreat.

No more. Now, the Sferiadh schooled themselves to think of her more as an overlarge blonde carrion-crow. Some few considered it almost a moral duty to destroy these monstrosities in feminine form; yet far and away most simply preferred to avoid them, where possible, and to kill quickly, where not. Yet it remained that, by this custom, the Geillari could command more to the battlefield than the Sferiari could.

Rothesay reckoned up the numbers uneasily. There might be a thousand imperials, including some two hundred Runedaur; there had to be twice that many of the Geillari, or more, but they had no friendly city with great high walls at their back. She wondered how that affected the balance, and what victory, for either side, would look like.

A small troop stood apart to the north, not clearly with the Sferan forces yet plainly not King Odhru’s; they were white, grey and silver, even to their horses. If there were women among them, she could not tell from here. “Who are they?”

“Who?”

“The grey company, there on that little rise.”

Rory looked, and looked at her. “Maybe you ought to go lie down, Sugar.”

Her startled glance met his real concern for her. Abruptly she understood: ghosts, and Rory could not see them. There were none at Colderwild, as far as she had been able to search out since escaping the Arms-master; that puzzled her, but she had not had time to think about it. She peered now eagerly at the phantom troop, trying to better make out their armor and their former colors. “Never mind, they’re already dead,” she reassured Rory vaguely.

“Yuh? Maybe I’ll just go lie down, then.” He worked his helm strap into a more comfortable place under his beard. “They on our side?”

“I guess they’re on their own side.”

“Better them than me.”

Over the rise, and passing straight through the dead platoon, came a band of maybe three dozens of cavalry, as gold as the dead were silver. Garbed in red and orange and yellow, and their long spears like banner poles riotously ribboned with the same, they rode huge blond and cream beasts in a perfect phalanx. Gold and bronze gleamed about them. Rothesay could hear a silence fall among the northern forces of both armies as the fiery riders neared; and then a howl of anger surged wavelike from the Geillan warriors, and one of savage cheer from the Sferiari, as the phalanx chose sides.

“All right, who are they, then? I know they’re living!”

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Rory cupped his hands to his mouth and added a welcoming ululation that all but burst her ears before he replied with fierce joy, “Ever hear of the Sisterhood of Sorche?”

Her head whipped back around to stare at the newcomers settling in among some of the Andreisi troops. “They’re real?”

So it seemed. Back in Harrowater, the Sisterhood was little more than a nursemaid’s tale, told to scare naughty little girls into proper docility. “The Sisters will come and take you away, if you don’t get down out of that tree, missie! And you will never have a house and never get a husband, you’ll have to live in the Wild with dirty hands and filthy hair and have only leaves and raw fish to eat!” The Sisters took up spears, never to lay them down for spindles; they raised swords, not babes, and barred anything male from their company. In Harrowater, even whores were less despised, by Geillari and edgelings alike.

Rothesay chuckled wickedly. Despised—unless they were bringing those spears and swords in on your side, seemingly!

Close at hand, a small force of their own folk flowed past on foot, a black cloud, with one bolt of silver: a woman Rothesay did not recognize, a Kingscrofter by the black holly leaves chasing her hem. Unarmed, unarmored, she came to daunt the enemy with magic—and to tempt them to kidnap. Her very presence offered a measure of protection to those near her, as the Geillari would seek to take, and not destroy, this well of power for their someday sons. Raids for the Gifted were the plague the Sferiari hated most; edgelings had clung to their homes by pretending to have no magic, and therefore none to pass on. But the sorceresses of the Runedaur were unlike other women. Rothesay had heard tales of how some of them sometimes permitted themselves to be taken, only to prove that the word ‘prisoner’ was a matter of perspective. Carialla was renowned for this game, and more than one Geillan chief had paid the Runedaur handsomely to come take her home—to come persuade her to go home—again. The power to walk in someone else’s dreams, they found, was not one to be mocked.

Many wore Colderwild’s simple butterflies, and many of those bore faces she did not know: rarely was more than half a hall home at once. Thirty had come down from the hall, students excepted; half again as many had materialized from nowhere over the last week. And they were all knights, moving to the front lines in simple gear, while she and the other students, mounted and richly appointed—her tabard flashed with jewels, the bronze of her helm was silver-chased and she could feel her white horse-tail crest bob every time she moved her head—held the rear. Rory explained: the Geillari knew the Sferiari held their princes and their commanders, who of course must be their greatest warriors, at the rear. When they would meet the Runedaur knights and masters, and taste their terrible skill, what must they think of the Runedaur rear-guard?

Rothesay stared at him. “You’re joking!”

He shrugged, grinning. “Far as we know, they haven’t caught on yet.”

“So what happens when they make it back here and find I can’t even scare crows?”

“So long as it surprises you, they’ll find out they were right!” he laughed.

Another handful of Runedaur strode past, most with holly, two with roses; some with birds that probably represented Raven’s Trace though on the black-clad knights they looked like doves. Then one with a butterfly on his gauntlet reached up to slap her knee and she looked down into Kahan’s vast white smile.

All her distress and discomfort melted away, and she was back on the road along the Holywell, idling with her friend in the Colderwild war-train, talking of everything and nothing, the pleasantest days she had known since—she could not say when.

She had challenged him the first day out with Dav’s remark that Kahan was contriving to command her favor; he had laughed. “Of course! What else better to do?” At length he explained, with dancing eyes, “I’m finding out what manner of man you like. And I’m finding out whether I like being such a man. Won’t it be nice if I do?”

“Idiot!” she had retorted, but in laughter.

And she discovered what he thought of war’s killing. A man went to war because he was willing to die, if need be, ultimately for some reason important only to himself. For Kahan, it was purely and simply for love of Dav; and if Rothesay did not understand that at all, who said she should? By his very presence on the battlefield, he had accepted death as a possible destiny, and one he had preferred over standing by, idle, and alive.

“Some men go only because they’re afraid their comrades will think them cowards,” she had pointed out.

He agreed. “They prefer to die under their own names than live under the name of coward.”

“So you oblige them?”

That had cost him his smile. “If it has come to that, to war—yes, I oblige them,” he said softly. They had kept silence then for a long time.

Now there was no time for more talk, only to clasp hands, to command one another to come out alive “or I’ll never speak to you again!” and to wave. At least, she waved; Kahan kissed his fingertip and pointed firmly at her, and she blushed and grinned like a fool, and watched him walk on without really seeing him, the half-moon light of last night seeming suddenly more real than Areolin’s summer glare hammering upon her now.

He had whispered truce in her ear, and catching her sleeve, drew her a little way across the grass, away from the campfire where disquietingly cheerful knights and witches sang softly in turns, and students squirmed.

Their shadows were black in the wash of silver light, on the grass as gray as wolf hair; the skin of his face looked like star-steel. “May I kiss you?” he asked simply. And waited patiently while she discovered where she had dropped her jaw. And assured her, eyes twinkling, “I won’t break if you say no!”

She shook her head, a flutter of contradiction, not refusal. “No! It’s, it’s—well . . . . No one’s ever asked before!”

He grinned, ruefully, at some memory at once humorous and painful. “No, we never do, do we?” he chuckled, seeming to understand her entirely. Then he dipped his head and raised wide eyes, quite foolishly, and clasped his hands patiently. “May I?”

A surprised cough burst from her. “Er . . . yes?” And shivered, though the night was too warm.

The tips of two long fingers stroked her cheek once, and again. His eyes were lost in deep shadow, except for a remote star each, the reflections of what she could not guess. If his mouth did not smile, neither did it seem grave; altogether he had the look, she thought, of the rapt absorption of an infant discovering another child. And then the stars under his brows blinked out, he leant forward, and touched his mouth to hers.

A spiderweb of lightning laced from her lips, to her ears, to her spine and down every limb; she felt as effervescent as when she first awoke in Arngas’s tomb, as though she had become a creature of froth and not flesh and bone at all, and in danger of melting to the earth. If his eyes were closed, hers were wide open, but she saw nothing, the whole world was become the soft warmth of their lips touching, their breath mingling. He smelled of leather, and of the heather ale that had been offered around after supper, and—of himself, she supposed, a salty muskiness; she liked it. His fingertips slipped to her neck, glided to her shoulder, to the naked skin just under the edge of her linen neckline and the trespass startled her back to flesh again, a young girl in a man’s arms, quite mortal, and alive. A strange frisson, like fear and yet splendidly unlike, shivered through her, and the breath trembled in her. She suffered his other hand to slide round her satin-clad waist and he drew himself against her till their bodies touched from knee to breast; he was very warm, but she shivered again, and hoped her knees held. His mouth opened, slightly; the tip of his tongue brushed the edge of her lip; she gasped and the tongue was gone, but he pressed her mouth with his a little more warmly. Her hands, uncertain what to do with themselves, fumbled at his sides as satiny as her own, so delicious against her palms and fingers, delighting in the muscular hardness of him under his thin slithery coverings; but she did not venture to embrace him in return, instead blushing like a child guilty of stealing apples, as if liking the feel of him under her hands was trespass of her own. She hoped he didn’t mind—or notice.

The fingers on her shoulder crept back up her neck, tickled and tingled under her ear, giving her a delicious shudder, and thrust deep into her hair despite her braids. He pulled her close, stepped into her as if he would blend them into one body; her head cradled in his hand, he kissed her strongly, pressing her mouth open with his and again tasted her lips, the edge of her teeth, the tip of her tongue and withdrew his own. Confused, she froze, puzzled by the hollowness of their open mouths conjoined; till he sent his tongue again, wet, warm, flesh-sweet, heather-bitter, curling playfully around hers and then returning, reluctantly maybe, to its own place and at last she understood she was being invited, over the border into this unknown country. Shyly she ventured forth her own tongue, felt the hard, slick threat of the border-guard of teeth, and, passing them, found herself joyously welcomed, his tongue writhed about hers seeking to find some way to hug it utterly around, his lips pressed and nibbled at hers and gently he sucked at her as if he would drink in her very soul, her thighs turned to water and her knees did buckle.

His embrace tightened till she found purchase again; the border closed, though he suckled at her lips a little while yet, as though some sweetness lingered there that he would not leave behind. Her lips pressed after his, loath to give them up, and he kissed them again, but lightly, and pulled his hand from her hair to stroke her cheek again. His eyes shone, and his almost-smile played about his face.

“Thank you,” he said, quite seriously, though his smile broadened.

But she was not yet ready for smiles, only gazed straight back at him, with nothing at all between her ears and only wordless memory upon her tongue.

His face softened. “So, it’s like that, is it?” he murmured. She did not understand, nor kissed his fingertip when he touched it to her still-parted lips. He stroked her satin back, pressing hard with the heel of his hand, returning her gently to their old character of contact, for she had grown used to his massaging her shoulders, hands, arms, even feet and calves, in recent weeks; and, his arm still about her waist, ambled back through the dim moonlight to the Runedaur campfire.

The hot and terrible morning slammed back into her thought, just as a mass of Andreisi-colored spearmen closed Kahan’s back from sight. Her head snapped sharply around to Rory, but long since too late: he was nowhere in view. And she spat a curse between her teeth. Mother Goddess Tuhudre, why did You ever bother making men?

Rory had eaten breakfast with her, quieter than usual; she had attributed it to the day’s impending horrors, till they had wiped clean their bowls and he asked suddenly, “Why’d you kiss him?”

“He asked!” she barked, embarrassed that anyone noticed, annoyed that he chose to make it any of his business, distressed most especially that he cared.

He bent to tighten a bootlace savagely. She glared at his back. Girls in Harrowater used to brag when men quarrelled for their favors; she did not understand. Jealousy turned even the pleasantest fellow into a mangy, bad-tempered cur snarling over a bone—and wholly intent on the other curs rather than the contested bone, at that. Rothesay saw nothing for a bone to brag about.

“Kiss of Peace?” he had suggested, straightening again, and the flush in his face could be only his boot-lacing inversion. She relented: this cur, if he must be one, contrived to hide his mange as best he could, and hardly snarled at all, not where the bone could hear, at least. She kissed his lips resolutely; but his moustache tickled under her nose and she jerked away, her face wrinkling in surprise.

At once her heart wrenched, fearing that she had given him yet more cause to snarl, but the sun-god beamed delighted from his face in the dim mess-tent, and he shoved a stubby finger at her. “That’s how you know it a’n’t your sister kissed you!” He made her a salute, and, still grinning, strode out into the light.

And now he had stormed off somewhere, wrathful and brooding; and if he died today without having made peace with her, she would learn spirit-summoning so she could call him up and berate him for it for the rest of her natural days.

But anger made a fine tonic for battle. Caltern mustered her company—not all the masters were at the fore—and trumpets sent up a chorus of brazen screams and men roared like a monstrous tide, and had Caltern’s laconic command not leashed her to her fellows, she had charged with the first line, over the middle lines if necessary, all dread burned away. She fidgeted, her young companions fidgeted, together they screamed encouragement towards whatever companies they recognized, and their horses stamped.