Lord of the Changing Winds (41 page)

The new desert, following the harsh dry wind, struck across Minas Ford and an instant later across the Casmantian army. Sand hissed across the cobbles. Red dust rode the wind, tinting the air the color of blood. The griffins flew low, well within bowshot, directly over the Casmantian ranks. Men cried out in alarm, lifting their bows. Arrows rose, striking griffin after griffin. Griffin after griffin faltered… then caught its balance and regained its place in the sky. Far above the battle, far out of bowshot, Bertaud found a single dark griffin wheeling in slow circles, and knew that though a griffin might tear apart into fire and air, no griffin would die by arrow or spear this day.

At the forefront of the Casmantian soldiers, the Arobern turned to the small figure beside him. The cold mage Beguchren, for it could be no one else, lifted his hands, fighting the desert. Bertaud did not know whether he truly felt the man’s cold power struggle against the fire or whether he only imagined he felt it.

From the first ranks of the griffins, Eskainiane suddenly cast back his bright wings and stooped like an eagle. Bertaud thought the griffin meant to strike down the mage bodily, but he did not. Instead, he cried out, the long piercing shriek of a hunting eagle, and burst violently into flaming wind.

The cold mage put his hands over his face and staggered; if he made a sound, it was lost beneath the cries of the griffins. The Arobern supported his mage, and though Bertaud could not see his expression, the Arobern’s attitude had now become one of furious acknowledgment of defeat. He turned and shouted to his men, waving his arm in urgent command, and as his officers picked up and repeated that command, the flights of arrows ceased.

The griffins wheeled slowly above the Casmantian army. They did not descend to strike, but slid through the hot air to spiral around Minas Ford, coming lower still, sunlight flashing from their savage beaks and pooling in their molten eyes. Griffins landed on rooftops, talons and claws tearing gouges through wooden shingles, their outspread wings tilting for balance. Others stayed in the air, sweeping slowly in a wide spiral out across the village and back over the Casmantian army; a long narrow line of fire followed their curving flight, leaping up all around that army and then dying back, leaving little tongues of flames flickering in the red sand.

A single griffin, gold and red, slanted down across the light toward the Arobern. It landed, light as a cat, directly before him. The King of Casmantium, as any of his opponents knew, did not lack boldness. He stepped forward to face it.

“Nehaistiane Esterikiu Anahaikuuanse,” said Kairaithin, suddenly standing beside Bertaud’s horse. The horse shied; all the horses were suddenly shying and trying to rear, and Iaor and Adries and Bertaud found it simplest to dismount and send them away.

“She was the mate of Eskainiane Escaile Sehaikiu and of our king,” continued Kairaithin as though he had not noticed the disruption. “She has lost yet another
iskarianere
today. Now that Escaile Sehaikiu is no more, it falls to her to carry our word to the King of Casmantium. He had best be courteous. She will bitterly mourn her mate.”

“And what is that word?” Iaor asked him. He was pale, but his tone was bland. He had clasped his hands behind his back, Bertaud saw, and thought probably they were shaking. He knew his own were.

Kairaithin’s smile had nothing human about it: It was like the smile of the desert, utterly pitiless. “We will not be lightly offended,” he said, and his smile tautened. “We will
ring
his army—both his armies—with desert sand, if we must; we will lay the desert beneath his boots and beneath the boots of his men and hunt them like earthbound cattle across the red sand. Let Beguchren Teshrichten challenge
this
working. He has already found it is beyond him.”

“Why did you do it?” Bertaud asked in hushed tones.

“Many of us ceased to exist,” the griffin said, and harshly, “
But we will not be the tools or playthings of men.
”

It was to Bertaud that the griffin directed that furious statement, he knew. But Iaor did not know that. The king said quietly, “For breaking the Arobern’s power, I thank you, even if you did not do it for us.”

Kairaithin’s lip curled. He barely glanced at the king. “It was well done, to show Casmantium our strength… so. Esterikiu Anahaikuuanse has given the Arobern our terms. He will deliver himself and all his men into your hands, Safiad king—for men to deal with men—or we will go to whatever lengths we must to destroy them ourselves.” His black eyes glanced sideways at Bertaud. “What will he choose?”

“You ask me?”

“A man to judge what men will do. Well?”

“He will yield,” Iaor said quietly. “When he sees that continuing this battle now will do nothing but spend all the lives of his men, and to no purpose. He will yield.”

T
he King of Feierabiand took the formal surrender of the King of Casmantium an hour before dusk, seated in the best chair Minas Ford had been able to provide. The chair was not particularly fancy. Iaor made it a throne simply by his presence in it. His face was drawn with the strain of the long day, his eyes bruised with weariness, and he had elected, for convenience as much as effect, plain soldierly dress. Bertaud saw that now, for the first time, there were touches of gray in Iaor’s lion-colored hair. This only made the older man look more than ever like a king.

The chair had been set beneath a hastily erected pavilion by the bank of the river, with the lowering sun at the king’s back. This was not the harsh sun of the desert. The red desert had engulfed Minas Ford, but it had not quite come down to the river. Thus the pavilion, set out of the sand in the cool evening.

Iaor’s small army had been drawn up to his left; Eles’s guardsmen and the people of Minas Ford had a place of honor before the pavilion. The Casmantian soldiers, those who had been with the Arobern, stood in their ranks, disarmed and under a light guard, to the right. The other Casmantian army, receiving a messenger the Arobern had sent to them, had not come farther into Feierabiand, but rather had held its place on the far side of the desert.

Kairaithin, in griffin form, sat near Iaor’s chair on one side, and Bertaud himself stood on the other.

The king of the griffins was not present, but the savage white griffin, Tastairiane Apailika, sat a little beyond Kairaithin. Bertaud did not know what the attendance of these particular griffins signified. Kes probably knew why Tastairiane Apailika in particular had been sent to watch these proceedings, but she sat on the ground between Opailikiita’s feathered forelegs, her own arms around up-drawn knees, and looked not at all approachable.

The girl’s hair had been brushed out—it was the first time Bertaud had ever seen it free of tangles and knots—and braided with a strand of honey-colored beads. And she had finally changed out of her makeshift Casmantian dress. She wore a plain pale-yellow gown that had no adornment at all. Bertaud suspected that Kairaithin had found, or perhaps made, the clothing for her; it seemed to him a detail that would matter to the griffin mage, though he could not have said why.

Kes looked older and less waiflike, but still not very human. Her feet were bare, her skin nearly transparent; she seemed barely to contain an internal light. She had not shown any desire to put herself in the company of the Minas Ford people. Most of those folk looked at Kes, quick anxious astonished looks, with a great deal more intensity than they spared for the king. She did not look back. She had her head tilted against Opailikiita’s leg, and her own attention seemed reserved for the Arobern.

Brechen Glansent Arobern walked forward between the two armies, past the townsfolk and the griffins, and stopped before Iaor’s chair. He had not been bound—“No,” Iaor had said, undoubtedly thinking how nearly this moment had gone the other way, “let him keep his pride. We will see how little else we can leave him.” So the Arobern was not chained. He had only been disarmed. He looked intent, energetic, not in the least humbled; his focus was not inward, on his own defeat and humiliation, as one might have expected, but outward, on Iaor.

He walked forward quite steadily, a big man with powerful shoulders and a face that was strong, even harsh. His dark beard accentuated the strength of his jaw and made him look stubborn, which he probably was; his eyes were quick and brilliant and utterly redeemed his heavy features from any appearance of dullness. When he got to Iaor, he did not kneel, but bowed, and then studied his conqueror with every appearance of lively curiosity as he straightened. He was tall enough, and arrogant enough, to make it seem by his attitude alone that his was the predominant will in all this company.

Iaor smiled. It was not an amused smile. He had not wanted to humble the Arobern, but, Bertaud thought, he had rather expected the Arobern to show a certain humility of his own accord. That was lacking. Iaor did not demand it. He only said, with a mildness Bertaud recognized as his father’s, signalling dangerous temper, “Brechen Glansent Arobern. Your country and mine were not, I thought, at war. And yet here we are. Why is this?”

The Arobern lifted powerful shoulders in a shrug. “Well. I thought it would work. Yes?” His Terheien was harshly accented, but perfectly understandable. “I thought I would come across the mountains and take your Bered and Terabiand, yes, and all that country to the east of the river, and make a new province for Casmantium. Then the road through the mountains might be made better, and Casmantium could profit from Terabiand’s harbor. You understand, I did not think the
malacteir
, the griffins, I did not think they would fight for you. I thought the other way: That you would fight them and so be made weak.”

His eyes went to Kes, where she sat at the feet of her griffin friend. She looked back at him with eyes that were filled with fire and the memories of the desert.

“I did not expect the
malacteir
to find a girl like that one. And then when I caught her, I did not think the little
festechanenteir
would slip my hand. And then she came into her power. So all I meant to do turned and went another way, yes? The
festechanenteir
turned the weapon I thought I had set against you so that it came against me instead. So I was wrong,” he finished simply, and turned his attention back to Iaor. “So you have the day, yes? What will you do, Iaor Safiad?”

It might have been a humble question. The Arobern did not ask it humbly.

Iaor tapped the arm of his chair in a gentle rhythm. He said, even more mildly than before, “Naturally, I wish to restore relations between Feierabiand and Casmantium to their former amicability. I am certain you share this desire, Brechen Glansent Arobern. A reasonable indemnity will do. I presume your brother will pay it. Of course, it is one of your brothers you left holding your throne?”

“Yes. He will pay. For me. For them.” The Arobern nodded over his shoulder toward his men.

“You are fortunate in your brothers.”

“Yes,” agreed the Arobern, very simply.

“And when next you conceive a plan to acquire a new province? I wonder whether your brother is perhaps less ambitious than you are, Brechen Glansent Arobern. I wonder if perhaps I would be wiser not to send you back to Casmantium, whatever price your brother offers me for you?”

The Arobern tilted his head back, assured and arrogant. “It would offend Casmantium if Feierabiand held her king beyond the time it takes to gather the indemnity. I do not think you should do that, Iaor Safiad.”

“Don’t you? Well, I will accept an indemnity for the damage you did to my lands and my people, and an indemnity for your men. But I think it only just to give your own person to the griffins, whom you wronged first and more grievously. And your remaining cold mages, of course.”

This was a surprise. Bertaud blinked, wondering whether Iaor had come up with this idea on the instant. It was not, perhaps, a terrible idea. It would be impossible for Casmantium to argue that the griffins did not have a claim. And certainly no one would expect an offense against griffins to be paid off with gold; no, if they were to collect an indemnity, in what other coin would they take it but in blood? And Iaor might very reasonably be thinking of ways to keep the griffins well-disposed to Feierabiand.
That
would set Casmantium well back.
And
Linularinum. Both countries respected ruthlessness. They would no doubt be very impressed if Iaor could persuade the griffins to become Feierabiand’s allies. Especially if he purchased this alliance with the blood of a rival king.