Moving Water (25 page)

Facing calamity, Evis was mute. Beryx blew another mosquito away and gazed on, eyes unreadable. My stomach was a cold, flat pit.

“No wonder,” I said at last, “she didn't worry about pursuit.”

“Mm.” That sounded cryptic too. He squirmed back into the scrub. “No point in rousing that yet. We'll post sentries and wait for dark.”

I drew some comfort from the thought that sentries would conserve his own strength. We huddled under the trees while the rain poured down to seal our wretchedness. Callissa, mercifully, said nothing. The twins were big-eyed and mute, but when Beryx woke they converged on him. “Be my guests,” he smiled, tucking one under each arm. “Driest rooms in the house.”

From his left armpit Zem asked with desperate composure, “Sir Scarface, you did kill the dragon, didn't you? In the end?”

“Of course.” He sounded reassuringly matter-of-fact. “That's why I'm an aedr, you know.” Zam's head emerged, I saw others' interest. Anything to occupy them, I thought.

Beryx evidently agreed, for he went on, “Magic was the only way to kill it, you see. So I had to find an aedr. Someone”—he looked sidelong—“who'd teach magic to me.”

Zam popped up too, eyes wide in gorgeous awe. “Fengthira?” He did not, I noticed, stumble over the name. “She taught
you?
”

“She did.” He was smiling faintly. “Yes.”

Zem was nearly bouncing in place. “So once you knew magic, you killed the dragon.”—“And then Everran was safe.”—“And you could be king again.”

The smile faded. “Not quite,” he said softly. “Once I was an aedr—I couldn't go back to being a king.”

Puzzle pieces showering into place, I sat stone still lest I break the thread. Zem and Zam were thinking with their eyes. I wanted that thread intact too.

“Aedryx aren't kings,” he told them lightly, smiling again. “It isn't right.”

This digested, Zem asked a strange question. “But—an aedr could be a soldier—couldn't he?”

“I don't see why not,” Beryx agreed. The query that woke in his eyes was never answered. Amver pelted up from the southern sentry-point with a face shouting ultimate catastrophe.

“Sir, sir! There's half a phalanx coming up behind us—'n they're beating the timber on the way!”

Beryx's voice slashed the tumult to bring Amver up as on a rope. “How far?”

“Sir, a mile, less'n a mile—”

“And how fast? How fast!”

“S-sir they keep halting, they gotta wait for the flankers, the timber knots 'em up—”

“Stand to your horse!”

A crack that lifted the whole camp. He was all aedr now, irises writhing in the heat of calculation swift as light. He glanced at the sky. Whatever he saw there, the resulting expression turned me weak with fright.

I had no time to ask. His face twisted in denial, conflict, distress. Then it set.

“Not Math,” he muttered. “But. . . .” And was on his feet with the lunge of a rearing snake.

“Sivar, take Zem. Karis, take Zam. Alkir, you know your tree? Be sure, man!” His eyes skewered me. I nodded, praying it was truth. “When we go, make straight for that. Lead my horse. Don't talk to me, and whatever you see, don't stop! You hear? Don't stop!” He took six huge strides to the bay and swung himself up.

My hand shook on the wet clammy rein. Behind was the hubbub of panic half unleashed. Beryx shut his eyes, propped his left wrist on the bay's wither, and drew the first harsh extended breath.

Nothing happened. His face contorted, his muscles shuddered, the bay backed under the merciless pressure on his ribs, crueler and crueler grew the battle for each riving breath. And nothing happened. A wizard tearing himself apart while we stared helplessly, doom closed on us, and the gray rain dripped from a bleak gray sky.

Only when I cast a desperate glance across the Astyros did I realize with shock that the rain was pelting down out there so hard its ricochets jumped from the mud, so hard that visibility had shrunk to a scant quarter mile, outposts, forts, watch-towers all lost in a sheet of solid white. My heart leapt, and sank. What use was cover, with guards posted twenty yards apart?

A surge of wind hit the trees. Behind it came the rain, beating clean through the foliage, pounding on our heads. The colts began to spin and plunge, it was pummeling us like fists. I heard the front wash on across the timber in one huge airborne wave. Overhead growled the fruity, thick-throated thunder that escorts deluge rain.

Beryx gasped and dropped, face down on the bay's neck. With terror's severity I jabbed the bit to restrain the horse. He was shaking as if every muscle were unstrung. I could just hear his words.

“Count . . . five hundred . . . or wait for yells. Then go. Fast as you can ride.” He straightened, head bowed into the deluge, black hair streaming waterfalls over a bloodless face. His back arched. As I counted ten I heard the resumption of those racking breaths.

Two hundred. Three. I was choking with tension and fear, not least that I would lose the count. Four hundred and fifty. Fifty-one. Evis bounced and gasped. “I heard something! From Salasterne! Sir—”

“Four-sixty—wait! Sixty-one . . . two. . . .” And tearing the rain like paper came the scream of Salasterne's trumpets as they sounded the Attack, the Alarm, General Stand-to, Alarm, Alarm!

“That's it!” It came out of me in a grunt as the colt, mad with waiting's tension, fairly fired us into the rain.

How we got over the Astyros at that pace, in that downpour, I conceive to be a direct mercy of whoever-you-like. There was no visibility. I galloped for a stump I had laid in line with the heagar, picked another beyond it and bucketed on, praying that if Beryx's colt tripped without a firm hand on the bridle he was long enough in the rein to gallop himself up. From behind came the dead thunder of hooves in mud and the yells of men too crazed to think what they were saying, over all was the cavalry rumble of the rain. . . . They'll never see us from the road! I was yelling it in silent manic delight, And we can ride the cordon down—

With shattering instantaneity we burst out of the rain and tore in virtually clear air and full view of the forts across the last quarter mile of the Astyros, we would be atop the archers in twenty strides, my hand leapt for the bit as my mouth opened for a frantic futile Halt! and Evis' black jammed its shoulder into me while he screamed and howled like a man watching his horse take out a close-run race, “Come on keep going it's all right it's all right!”

My eyes shot left, a smoky breakfast fire flashed under us and was gone with not an archer by, my eyes shot up and they were running, running like madmen, but not for us, they were bursting their hearts to reach Salasterne and nobody there would think about us, the trumpets were still shrieking and up every side of the stockade poured a flood of little bandy-legged men in spiked helmets and fish-scale armor and mud-brown cloaks whose color was more familiar than my own eyes. The colors of Phaxia. A surprise attack.

War reflexes are burnt deep. Even then my heart made an extra pump, my bridle hand leapt automatically for the wheel that would fling us to their aid and Evis nearly deafened me. “He said don't stop, he said don't
stop!
”

Before I could argue Stirsselian leapt at us, unmoved, inimical, blank, fresh terror stopped my breath. Then there it was, a midnight cloud above the clethras, the giant heagar.

I would undoubtedly have swept the whole unit clean past it onto the causeway without attempting to draw rein, I was too crazed to think of anything else. But as we tore round the tree's buttress Beryx twitched and almost burst my head.

We ended half on the causeway, horses going mad in the same tranced drive to run as ours. He literally fell off the bay and crumpled in the mud, I abandoned both beasts to dive and catch him up. Hooves flailed about us while he jittered convulsively in my arms, far gone and driving himself to get out the last crucial commands.

I bellowed the orders and enforced them by sheer manic will. The colts fled broadcast, going like bolters, the humans stumbled past us onto the slimy, treacherous logs, he was pushing me with a nerveless hand, choking, “Go, GO!” Disobediently I lifted and dragged him with me, aware even at that pent-in moment of some change in the outer world. Then I realized what it was.

The trumpets had fallen quiet.

At the clethras' brink I could not help one backward glance. Rain blotted half the Astyros. I could hear its tidal roar. Salasterne loomed black and distinct against that curtain of white. But no fiendish little knife-fighters capered in triumph on its catwalk, no bodies, Assharran or Phaxian, lay writhing or moveless in the mud. There were no Phaxians at all. Just a crowd of archers and garrison who confronted each other over arrow and sword-point, motionless, too thoroughly confounded even to scratch their heads.

We were on the first bridge, with Evis helping Beryx to stagger between us, before I finally understood. Then I yowled like a cat-a-mountain and pounded bruises into his back.

“It was Pellathir, it was Pellathir, wasn't it? You lovely crack-brained lunatic, they were never there at all!”

He was reeling, white and wet and spent beyond all but an attempt to laugh. He answered in mindspeech, clever
soul!>

Then we both laughed so hard we fell over, and the others had to rush back in fresh panic to pick us up.

he said, as we tottered off again.

“Wrevur—” It slammed back at me. “Weather-work! You mean—you didn't just conjure the Phaxians? You made the rain as well?”

He sagged on my shoulder, eyes falling shut.

I literally hugged him, still too delirious to care for anything but the stupendous splendor of the trick. “It got us out, didn't it? When any mortal general would have sat down and cut his throat? Who gives a tinker's ill-wish about Math!”

* * * * *

It was a long time before we sobered up. What if we were penniless, provisionless, horseless, shelterless, faced with a fifty-mile walk in pouring rain over an unscouted road to Phaxia? We had escaped Assharral. Foiled the Lady. Shared a stratagem that would have made military history, if any historian could ever be brought to write it down.

“And,” added Beryx proudly, “it didn't kill a single man.”

We congratulated him as we trudged, contented except for Zyr, who was engaged in a wake for his colt. “Why,” I asked, “did we leave the horses behind?” At which Beryx shook his head. “Too dangerous out here. Besides, I hope it might—er—mitigate the crime.”

I could not see it mattered, now we were forever beyond the Lady's power. Sivar had just asked with not-quite-pure facetiousness, “Sir, whyn't you send all this rain off to Assharral?” when Evis, tail-scout as usual, called in a carefully wooden voice, “Sir! I think there's something behind.”

Beryx stopped in mid-stride. He shut his eyes. I heard him whisper, “Oh, no.” He called without looking round.

“Are you sure?”

A pause, while we all strained our eyes. Then, yet more woodenly, “I'm sorry, sir. I'm sure.”

Beryx still would not look. “Can you tell what it is?”

There was a change in the rain-smeared umber length of the Taven, that stretched blade-straight back to the Astyros' open light. I knew the answer before Evis spoke.

“Troops.”

Silently, Beryx groaned. I wondered why he had not used farsight, recalled he had still leant heavily on me as we went, saw he was using it now. He spoke again.

“How far?”

“I think . . . two miles—mile and a half.”

“Mile and three-quarter,” interjected Sivar. I realized where Beryx had been looking when he said, summoning strength, “Hurry then. It's a mile to the next bridge.”

We hurried, and they gained, though their pace was not fast. There was something dreadfully familiar about that steady, smooth advance. Once Beryx himself glanced back. His eyes dilated, and he began to scurry faster, with jerky, un-coordinated strides.

It was a major bridge over the first tidal channel, six pontoons anchored by a web of cables to the clethras that flanked a muscular, dirty-chocolate stream, tree-trunk bridge-spans floored with planks. Cat-footing in the slime, we crept across.

The troops had closed to three-quarters of a mile. “Phalanx,” said Amver, superfluously. We could all see the broad white shields, blazoned with a black moontree, as they shone dully in the rain, the fitful shimmer of helmet or mailcoat or the gleam of a sarissa head, fifteen feet above.

Beryx cast a hunted glance at the clethras, deep in fluid mud, at water's shine between the mud-coated tussocks in the marshes ahead. Evis said, “Sir—sir, we'll have to cut the bridge. No cover up there. And the children—”