Crossroads and Other Tales of Valdemar (29 page)

The morning crawled on. The sun was well up now, glinting off the dew on the grass. Soldiers in the line held their positions, occasionally shifting their feet or drinking sparingly from water bottles.

Suddenly there was a cry as the Tedrel lines started moving. Their front ranks left the main body and advanced toward the little stream just ahead of Rury. They moved at a trot that sped up as they came down the slope.

“Dress your ranks!” shouted Sergeant Krandal. “Hold in place.”

The Tedrels were up to a run, now, a wordless roar coming from their throats. Thousands on thousands charged down the hill, shaking the ground. Rury felt the vibration through his boot soles.

“Level weapons!” The front line of Tedrels reached the stream, lurching and splashing across.

“Hold steady!” Sergeant Krandal could barely be heard over the noise.
“Hold the . . .”
The rest was lost in crash, screams and drumming thunder as the lines slammed together and two armies each leaped for the other’s throat. On either side of Rury, Tedrel fighters, unheeding of danger or unable to check their rush, impaled themselves on spear and pike points. For every Tedrel who did, two more fought to get past the spears and close with the fighters of Valdemar. The roar of clashing arms and screaming soldiers was deafening.

Rury nearly blacked out from the waves of emotion. He tasted bile in his throat. His head felt as if it would explode. A big Tedrel in bronze and leather armor knocked Rury’s spear point aside with a shield rim and charged in. He hacked down and his sword bit into Rury’s spear shaft with a crack. The shaft buckled. Rury saw death in the warrior’s eyes, felt hate pouring from him as the Tedrel’s sword came up again. The noise seemed to mute and time slowed to a crawl as Rury brought up the splintered remnant of his spear shaft and blocked the sword coming at his head.

Something happened, clicking into place in Rury’s mind. The physical act of defending himself combined with the hurried training from Herald Erek and Sergeant Krandal’s words.

He didn’t need to stop the feelings, he just had to let them divert as they flowed into and through him. The hammering in his head and the sickness in his gut vanished. He felt the rage and fear of two armies coming to him, and felt it refracting, turning into . . . something else.

He held up the broken spear shaft like a talisman with his left hand and fumbled for his sword. The Tedrel swung again, but stopped short as Sergeant Krandal’s spearhead hit the man’s shoulder. The thrust didn’t bite deep through the Tedrel’s armor, but it hung him up.

The hours of training kicked in. Rury gripped his own sword, fist up and blade-down, and swept it out of the scabbard, slashing across the Tedrel’s face. The cheek and nosepiece of the Tedrel’s helmet turned most of the cut, but Rury’s backhanded return stab took him just below the chin. The Tedrel dropped like a puppet with cut strings. His blood bathed Rury’s sword and spattered his surcoat, filling Rury’s nose with its coppery smell. A tidal flow of primal emotion roared into Rury, the greatest feeling of his young life. The dying Tedrel’s anger, fear and lust surged and churned inside him, turning to something that felt strangely like love. Love of his enemies. Love of battle. Love of killing. At that instant Rury Tellar became an angel of death.

Spears and pikes stabbed from behind and around him as Rury’s comrades fought to fill the gap left by his broken spear. Another Tedrel forced an opening with his shield and rushed at Rury, his war hammer swinging high. Rury calmly stopped the charge cold by thrusting the splintered end of his spear shaft into the warrior’s face, followed with a sword stab over the shield’s rim. Whether the sword struck the Tedrel’s face or throat, Rury couldn’t see. He heard the man cry out and felt him sag, but the Tedrel didn’t go down. Rury tried to draw the sword back, but it was stuck, jammed in bone or armor. He released the sword and wrenched the hammer from the man’s faltering grip, then brought it around to crash on the Tedrel’s helmet. The blow threw the man’s body back into the Tedrel line.

In the moment’s respite, Rury dropped the splintered spear shaft and had his buckler off his belt and up, still gripping the war hammer. The weapon was no nobleman’s decorative piece, just a steel head with a long, narrow hammer face and wicked points on back, sides and front, mounted on an oak haft nearly as long as his arm. Whatever its form, it was a hammer, and Rury had spent four years at the forge using one. Driven by his hard-trained muscle, the hammer rose and fell on the pressing Tedrel host. Armor and bone crushed. With nearly every blow a man went down. The Tedrel fought to get a return blow on Rury, but Sergeant Krandal bellowed orders, and the militia’s spears stabbed and clicked like giant, deadly knitting needles, taking down any Tedrel who gave Rury too much attention. Bodies piled before them, making a barrier that let their spears and pikes reach across to dart and tear.

Every Tedrel who died in pain and fear and rage fed energy into Rury. Every blow was like a lover’s touch, every scream a sweetheart’s whisper. He wanted it to never end. He would kill until no one lived on this bloody field, just to keep the song of love and death singing through him.

The Tedrels fell back a dozen steps, and arrows rained down on the Valdemaran line. Armor and luck proved good enough for the Oakdell militia, and they took little hurt. But the Tedrels had pulled back out of reach of his hammer, and Rury stood with impatient resentment.

The roar of battle eased for a moment, and he heard cries of commanders, getting louder as they relayed orders. Glancing to his left, Rury glimpsed the King’s banner plunging across the stream and deep into the Tedrel host. And then Sergeant Krandal was shouting at his back.

“Advance the line! The king is leading! Advance the line! Move up to support the king! Move it! Move it
now
!
CHARGE!
”

Like a hunting dog released from its leash, Rury scrambled up and over the slick line of Tedrel bodies, trailed closely by the rest. There was a shock of wet and cold on feet and shins as they splashed into the shallow stream, now running a muddy crimson. Past the opposite bank stood a locked line of Tedrel shields. This time it was the soldiers of Valdemar who crashed into a line of steel. Rury gave it no thought. He only wanted to regain that wonderful feeling that came with killing.

His hammer crashed down on a Tedrel’s wooden shield, splintering the arm that supported it. Another blow smashed a helm. The rest of the militia were with him now, exploiting gaps made by Rury’s relentless blows. The Tedrel line gave ground before the young demon with the hammer and those terrible, thirsting spears.

“No!”
thought Rury.
“Stay! Stay and let me love you!”
He smashed the shield of a lone Tedrel left in an opening cleared of live enemies. The shield sagged down, but before Rury could strike the killing blow a spear head thrust past him and took the Tedrel cleanly. As the man fell, Rury felt the rage of a child whose toy was taken.

Take
my
kill, will you? Thwart
my
love?
Rury turned to see Aed pulling back his spear.

Then let
you
be my love!
Rury smiled as he raised his hammer.

Far up the line the King’s banner trembled and fell. Rury drew back his hammer, ready to send it smashing down on Aed’s helmet.

Instead, lightning struck Rury.

A bolt of searing emotion ran through his mind and body, rushing through his veins, so intense he felt his fingers and toes must be sparking and flaring. It was a wave of feeling that screamed of pain, despair, death and the loss of loved ones.

It was too much! Too much power. Too much pain and raw emotion. Rury’s mind reflexively redirected the bolt, casting it back out across the battlefield. His legs buckled and he sank to his knees, felt the hammer pulled from his grasp. He heard savage screaming as he fell, something about the King’s death. He glimpsed Aed swinging the war hammer wildly, and Sergeant Krandal roaring wordlessly, running into the enemy ranks with his spear gripped high.

And then the dark closed in.

 

Erek limped as he picked his way across the wreckage of the battlefield, closely followed by Deanara. His uniform and the Companion’s trappings were torn and dirty, here and there stained with blood. Communications and Intelligence people weren’t supposed to be front line troops, but after the Valdemaran reserves had been ordered out to intercept the Tedrel cavalry ravaging the countryside, every Valdemaran who could hold a weapon became a combat soldier. Even with his mental shields up, he’d felt the call of grief and rage that marked the King’s death. He and Dee had thrown themselves into the battle as ferociously as any. Erek wasn’t certain who had channeled that wave of emotion, but he had an idea, and he had to find out.

Around them was what the worst of the nine hells must look like on a sunny day. Nothing in the universe is so horribly, totally messy as the aftermath of a battle. The metallic smell of blood and pungent aroma of feces from the dying and dead hung in the still air. The injured moaned and screamed. Figures on the ground writhed or lay much too still. Others like Erek and Deanara picked their way across ground littered by broken weapons, discarded armor, and awkwardly sprawled bodies. It was difficult getting through some sections without walking on limbs, torsos or faces. The former front lines were marked by raggedly piled rows of dead, like windrows of cut hay ready for harvesting.

He found them twenty paces or so beyond one of the largest piles, to the right of what had been the Valdemaran center. Sergeant Krandal sat sprawled in a small cleared area, bareheaded and with part of his armor stripped off. Rury lay with his head cradled in the sergeant’s arms, sobbing like a child. Both were bloodstained and filthy. Sergeant Krandal looked up at the Herald’s approach.

“How did you fare, Sergeant?” said Erek.

Sergeant Krandal gave a pained, crooked smile. “Better than we might have hoped. We gave far better than we took, but we did take losses. Six dead that I know of. Aed took an ax to the shoulder. Lots of walking wounded. Dortha’s got the rest out with the company, mopping up.” He winced and shifted his seat, and Erek saw the sergeant’s outstretched leg seeping blood through a crude bandage ripped from a surcoat. “I took a scratch on the thigh, enough to make me stay put.” Krandal looked down at Rury, who was quiet now, like a child who had cried itself almost to sleep.

“The boy seemed to master that empathy thing about the time they closed with us. He fought like a Karsite demon after that. That was mostly why we weren’t overrun. Then right after the King died, when we all somehow
knew
he’d been killed, I was filled with grief and rage like I’d never known. That’s when I saw the boy go down. He wasn’t struck down, just dropped like he was dead. There wasn’t time to check on him then. We were all too busy trying to rip out the Tedrels’ throats with our teeth. At least that’s what it felt like. It was as if the boy’s demons burned him out and jumped to all of us.”

Erek knelt and laid a hand on Rury’s forehead as if checking for a fever. Deanara snorted gently and drew nearer, and Erek reached back and laid his free hand on her velvety nose. He drew breath sharply after a moment, removed his hands from Rury and Dee, and stood up.

“Find something?” said the Sergeant, frowning. Erek sighed.

“Dee thinks he was something like a conduit for what you and I and everyone else felt. I agree. When the King was killed, when he and his bodyguard and their Companions and the other mounts were being cut down, the Companions knew it. Those directly involved
felt
their Chosen pierced and dying, felt the pain and panic and death of their fellows. They put out a combined mind-scream that must have hit Rury like a thunderbolt. My guess is he threw it back out over the army, probably translated somehow so that even the least sensitive Valdemaran could understand it.” Erek stood stiffly.

“We can’t find any trace now of his Empathic talents. I think you’re righter than you know when you say his demons burned him out. What he did was an instinctive reaction, but that’s how we all felt the King’s death at the same instant. Whether or not he meant to do it, it helped turn the tide of the battle.”

Krandal stroked Rury’s head like a concerned mother. The boy’s breathing evened out.

“Will he recover?”

“We need to get him to the Healers. You, too, for that matter. He’ll certainly be affected, but no youngster goes through a war unchanged. With help and time, I think he’ll be well enough.” Erek paused and frowned. “We’d best keep this to ourselves, at least for now. The Companions will know, and some of the Heralds, but they won’t gossip about it. I’ll pass it on to those in the Guard with a need to know.” Erek stopped abruptly as Rury opened his eyes and raised himself up on an elbow.

“How do you feel, Rury?” said Erek.

“My . . . head hurts.” Rury replied. “But not like before.”

Sergeant Krandal let out a long breath.

“At least you’re alive, lad.”

“I heard what you said,” said Rury to Erek. “I didn’t mean to send those feelings back out to everyone. It was like catching a red-hot iron. You just want to throw it back.”

“I’m sorry you had to bear that, Rury,” said Erek.

“I’m glad it happened, I guess.” replied Rury. “I don’t think I liked what I was feeling before that. Or maybe I liked it too much. When it hit me, it was like a basin of iced water in my face when I was having a nightmare.” He paused and closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. “And you’re right, I can’t sense other people’s feelings now.” Another thoughtful pause. “Is it true the King is dead?”

“It’s true,” said Erek soberly. He raised an arm and pointed to where a small group of riders picked their way down to where King Sendar lay fallen. At their head rode Princess, no, now Queen Selenay. “King Sendar’s dead, but his kingdom still lives, and the Princess; thanks to you and all of us who fought today.”