Even a minor food shortage can cause panic, and there were already a great many fields with crops unharvested while the farmers were forced to become soldiers. The fear grew into hysteria quickly, exacerbated by the absence of light. People were not meant to live their lives shrouded in darkness eternal. People kept fires burning constantly, to comfort and warm themselves. The woodcutters worked by torchlight.
* François du Lutetia, A History of Narvonne
☀
13th Day of New Summer’s Moon, 297 AC
“I’ve got him,” Lucan said, and with Florent’s help heaved Trist up onto the back of a horse. Acrasia stepped back, her dress fading into the endless night, only the pale skin of her face and hands, and the breeze-tossed strands of her luminescent hair, visible.
“Take him back to his wife,” the faerie said, after a moment, her eyes shards of glittering ice. Then, she dissolved into motes of light, and was gone.
“All I need is a wine-skin,” Trist protested, slumping down over the neck of the mare he’d been hoisted onto. “And a few moments.”
“No time,” Sir Florent said. He’d lost his helm somewhere in the fighting, and there was blood all over the lower half of his face, soaked into his white beard. “We don’t have enough men - the Kimmerians got past us into the city. We need to get to the keep.” The older knight took the reins of Trist’s horse, and with a shout kneed his own steed into motion. Lucan rode beside them, but Trist didn’t see Sir Erec anywhere.
The southern quarter of the city was chaos. The Kimmerians had brought their torches with them from the boats, it seemed, and thrown them into houses as they spilled north. A week ago, Rocher de la Garde had been the wealthiest port in the Kingdom of Narvonne; now, Trist realized, it would be a miracle if there was anything left by the end of the siege.
When they reached the gates of the keep, the three knights found a crowd of people pressed up against each other, all pushing to get inside. The wailing of children and the shouting of men and women filled the darkness with such a racket that Trist could hardly tell what was going on. Lines of men-at-arms stretched out to either side of the crowd, acting as a sort of funnel or escort, and the knight commanding them stepped forward to hail the three riders.
“Florent, is that you?” Dame Etoile called, striding forward to meet them as they reined in their horses.
“Aye,” the old knight confirmed. “Sir Trist is wounded. You need to get him inside. Sir Lucan and I will help hold here.” He drew his sword.
“You two,” Etoile commanded, pointing at two men-at-arms. “Take the reins of the Exarch’s horse and get him inside. Once you’re in the courtyard, send someone to fetch Lady Clarisant.”
“I could not stop them all,” Trist admitted, turning away from Etoile. He couldn’t have got down from the mare if he’d tried; the blood loss from the wounds in his legs must have been catching up with him, because he felt faint, and it was all he could do to hang onto the mare’s neck and not fall out of the saddle.
“You did as much as you could, Cousin,” Lucan said, drawing his own sword and taking up a station next to Florent and Etoile. “We saw you kill their captain. I only wish we’d been able to get close enough to help.”
“Make way!” the men at arms called, pushing aside men and women alike and leading the horse, with Trist on it, through the crowd. He was tired. After two days and nights of nearly constant fighting, he was exhausted, truth be told. And it wouldn’t hurt to rest his eyes for just a moment, he decided. The mare would do the walking for him. It wouldn’t hurt…
Trist woke screaming as the broken spear was ripped from his left thigh.
“Hold him down!” His wife’s voice, the only familiar one in the room.
“By the Angelus, he’s strong!”
“He’s a bloody Exarch, of course he is!”
There was someone on both his arms, someone lying across his torso, someone holding each of his feet. Trist pulled at them, trying to sit up, and managed to almost raise his arms when Clarisant’s face appeared in the torchlight, just inches from his own.
“Trist,” she said, sharply. “Hold still. I need to sew your wounds shut. Are you awake enough to use your Boons?”
He allowed himself to fall back onto the ground. It was hard stone. “Aye,” he said. “A wine-skin.”
“Give him a wine-skin while I get to work with a needle,” Clarisant commanded, and someone held a bladder with the stopper removed up to his face. Trist reached deep inside himself, uncoiling the sparking orange thread of the Graal Boon, and touching the end of it to the wineskin. Somewhere below the man lying across on his torso, a needle punched in and out of his skin, drawing a string of catgut through his flesh. To distract himself from the pain, Trist focused on the wine-skin, watching until it glowed orange like an ember, with the power of the Boon.
“Now,” he gasped. “Let me drink it.”
A man-at-arms put the wine-skin to his mouth and tipped it back; Trist swallowed three times, then pulled back, coughing. “Give the rest to the wounded,” he said when he could speak again. The light of the torches was dimming, and the feel of Clarisant’s sewing was very far away.
“Trist!” she called. “Stay awake. Don’t close your eyes.”
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His wife wanted him to stay awake, but Trist was still so tired. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, and his eyes closed in spite of himself.
When next he woke, Trist was in bed, a pillow under his head, covered in soft blankets. The bed-things smelled of Clarisant, and he smiled, then stretched his body. When he moved his legs, a jolt of pain shot up through his spine, and he sucked in a breath and opened his eyes.
He was in his wife’s childhood bed-chamber, lit by candles. The curtains of the bed had been pulled back on one side, and there was a maid sitting on a stool next to him.
“You’re awake!” the girl exclaimed. She couldn’t have been older than thirteen. “I’ll run and fetch the Lady Clarisant, m’lord,” she promised.
“How long?” Trist asked, his voice thick and his tongue swollen and dry. “The keep stands? Where is my wife?”
“Lady Clarisant is with the wounded,” the maid said, halfway between the bed and the door. “I don’t rightly know the hour, m’lord,” she admitted. “What with the darkness and all. You just lay back and rest, and she’ll be here soon.”
When the door had closed behind the girl, Trist let himself fall back into the pillow. After a moment, he reached his hand down, under the covers, to find the wound in his left thigh. He found himself entirely naked, aside from bandages, and when his fingers touched the wrapped injury, a shock of pain made him hiss. He could feel both his feet, at least; no barber-surgeon had sawed anything off.
“I’m still not strong enough,” Trist admitted, to the dark and the silence.
“Not yet,” Acrasia agreed, standing over the bed. “Not strong enough to do what you will need to, when you go to Vellatesia.”
“And what is that?” Trist asked her. “Break the power there, undo something, you’ve said. But I do not know what that means. When are you going to tell me?”
“When you are ready,” Acrasia said. “I do not believe your wife will be pleased if she finds me in her rooms, alone with you,” the faerie remarked, with a bitter sneer, and vanished. A moment later, the door swung open, and Clarisant rushed in.
“Trist,” she said, hurrying over to the bed. “You’re awake.”
“I am.” He reached a hand out, and she took it in her own. “How bad are things?”
“If you were any mortal man,” his wife chided him, “You would have lost the leg. Your magic with the wine is the only thing that saved you. You’ve lost a lot of blood, and you need time to balance your body’s humours. I’ve sent for food from the kitchens.”
“More liver,” Trist complained, with a smile. “Kale and spinach. We have been here before, my love.”
Clarisant’s cheeks blushed a pretty shade of pink at the words. “In the future, I would prefer to sew linen shirts for you, and not your leg,” she told him.
“I will live.” Trist could feel the power of the Boon, caressing his tired muscles like a hot bath. “Give me another wine-skin, and I will be back on my feet soon enough. But how is the city?”
Claire sighed. “My brother pulled everyone he could back into the keep,” she explained. “Once the Kimmerians were in the city, there was no way to hold the gates, he said.”
“There were thirty-thousand people here,” Trist murmured. “You said it yourself. They could not all possibly fit into the keep.”
“No,” Claire admitted. “Father Erasmus led many down into the catacombs, before sealing the entrance at the Cathedral. But we have also lost many, Husband. I don’t think anyone knows exactly how many. You’ve slept most of the day, as near as we can tell. My mother has been tracking the time as best she can; she has a strange glass with sand in it, which she bought from a traveling merchant years ago. She says that it is near sunset, now. I fear what the darkness will do to people, if this lasts much longer.”
“They have not pressed the assault?” Trist asked her.
“No. Once we gave up the gates, they began moving their siege engines into the city,” Clarisant explained. “Sir Florent thinks the delay is only while they get those set up, however, and that they will begin on the walls of the keep soon enough.”
“And they still have the Serpent of Gates,” Trist recalled. “At least we are all far enough from the sea, now, that we need not worry over Forneus.”
“Unless the daemon takes its human form. Let me get you wine,” she said, rising. Clarisant must have been waiting for him to wake, for there was a carafe on a table to the side of the bed, and two goblets. She poured until one was full, then came to sit on the bed next to him. Trist reached out a hand to touch the goblet, wrapping his fingers about hers, and stirred the liquid with a strand of his Boon until it shone.
“There are a lot of wounded,” Claire said, as he drank. “When you can walk, it would help if you came down to them in the courtyard.”
Trist let go of the goblet, and she turned to set it aside. Veins of fire rolled down through his body to his legs, where they set to work burning at his wounds, and he released a shuddering breath. “If you help me dress,” he said, “I will come now.”
It was embarrassingly difficult to get him not only dressed, but on his feet - which Clarisant only permitted after she had confirmed that neither of his wounds had broken open. The Graal Boon was speeding his healing beyond anything reasonable, but even that, it seemed, could not heal wounds instantly. Dame Etoile had needed a night’s rest to get back to fighting strength after her injuries, and Trist suspected he would require about the same.
Nevertheless, leaning on his wife and wearing only breeches, a linen shirt, and boots, he made his way down to the courtyard, where a stool was brought for him, and barrels of wine rolled up from the cellars of the keep. Trist touched each barrel in turn with the power of his Boon, and then the wine was shared out to the rows of wounded men-at-arms, conscripts, and most distressing of all, the innocent men, women and children who had simply been caught in the wrong place and somehow survived.
One of the last to come to them and get a cup was Sir Florent, who tapped his nose gently. “Took a shield to the helm,” he admitted, “Down on the beach. Bent the metal all out of shape and broke my nose. Broken nose hurts like the daemons, lad. Anything to help it heal faster.”
“Can we last the night?” Trist asked the older knight.
Florent shrugged. “Might be.”
A crash resounded, and all three of them turned to look at the walls surrounding the courtyard, where the torches up on the parapet marked men-at-arms.
“Seems they’ve got their siege engines in position,” Florent grumbled. “We could use you tonight, Trist, if you can get on your feet.”
“It’s too soon,” Clarisant shot back. “He needs a full night of sleep, to rest and heal.”
“I will not get one,” Trist said with a sigh. “Will you help me into my armor?”
Clarisant frowned, and was clearly about to protest, until Florent broke in. “Better to die in armor than in a sickbed, my lady.”
“Fine. Come along, then.”
To the crash of rocks against the keep walls, the two of them helped Trist back inside. He feared the next assault might be the last.