Requiem for the Sun (32 page)

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Authors: Elizabeth Haydon

BOOK: Requiem for the Sun
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Anborn, Shrike, and the soldiers listened, their conversation dying away when the first notes sounded, rapt at the melancholy melody. When she was finished, the circle of men drew in a deep, collective breath, and let it out again in a synchronous sigh.
“Now for another, if you are up to it, lady,” Anborn said, draining his tankard. “Can you favor us with ‘The Sad, Strange Tale of Simeon Blowfellow and the Concubine's Slipper'? It's a favorite of mine, as you know.”
Rhapsody laughed, feeling the tightness in her chest and abdomen abate a bit. “A Gwadd song? You want to hear a Gwadd song?”
Anborn adopted a comic air of injury. “Why not?” he demanded. “Just because the Gwadd are tiny folk —”
“Make good footstools,” added Shrike rotely.
“— doesn't mean they aren't fine singers —”
“Tender when stewed with potatoes —”
“And crafters of wondrous ballads —”
“Can substitute as haybutts for crossbow practice —”
“All right!” Rhapsody choked, mirth making her ribs hurt. “Stop that at once.” She sat up as straight as she could and cleared her throat. “I need my harp,” she said, positioning herself more comfortably. “Would one of you fine gentleman be so kind as to retrieve it from the carriage?” The guards rose quickly to their feet, looking askance at the ancient Cymrians so willing to be crude in front of the lady, to no apparent displeasure on her part.
Anborn sighed comically as one of the men jogged to the carriage to get the instrument.
“Sounds better on a concertina,” he said knowingly to Shrike.
“Or a fiddle strung with Gwadd-gut.”
Rhapsody put her hand over her mouth to quell the mixture of nausea and laughter that rose up at the comment. “One more statement like that, Shrike, and I will move over near you so that when I retch, you can be the direct beneficiary of it.”
“Tsk, tsk,” intoned Shrike, shaking his head. “Never known her to be so mean and ornery before, have you, Anborn? Wonder what's got into her? Oh, wait — that's right. It was your nephew.”
Anborn cuffed his oldest friend on the ear and glowered at him.
Quickly Rhapsody took the lap harp from the guard, tuned it and began to play the comically heartrending air from the old land, the song of the Gwadd hero Simeon Blowfellow and his lost love's shoe.
“Another! Sing another, lady,” Shrike encouraged when she had finished the tragic tale.
“How's for a lullabye?” Rhapsody asked in return, shifting the harp to her other knee. “Not just because it's late, but because I need to practice.” The men nodded their assent, and she began to sing an old, soothing night air, the origins of which she didn't remember.
Sleep, little bird, beneath my wing —
Anborn turned suddenly pale in the reflected light of the campfire; his hand shot out and gripped her forearm.
“Sing something else,” he said tersely.
Rhapsody blinked, taken aback. “I'm sorry,” she said quickly, trying to discern the expression on his face, but could only make out the shadow of his eyes and mouth.
“Do not be sorry. Sing something else.”
Unnerved, she thought back to the wind-song that was her own lullabye as an infant, knowing that none of those assembled would have heard it before, and so would not take a dislike to it as Anborn apparently had to the last one. Haltingly she began to sing it, her voice reflected in the gentle crackling of the campfire, the pulsing of the flames that licked the blade of Daystar Clarion.
Sleep, my child, my little one, sleep
Down in the glade where the river runs deep
The wind whistles through and it carries away
All of your troubles and cares of the day.
Rest, my dear, my lovely one, rest,
Where the white killdeer has built her fair nest,
Your pillow sweet clover, your blanket the grass
The moon shines on you as the wind whistles past.
Dream, my own, my pretty one, dream,
In tune with the song of the swift meadow stream,
Take wing with the wind as it lifts you above,
Tethered to Earth by the bonds of my love.
When she was finished, Anborn looked over at her for the first time since the air began.
“Lovely,” he said quietly. “Where did you learn that one?”
“From my mother,” Rhapsody said. “She had a song for everything. Liringlas ascribe a song to almost every event in life. It is tradition among the Lirin that when a woman discovers she is with child, she chooses a song to sing to the growing life within her. It is the first gift she gives to the baby, its own song.” She looked off into the darkness beyond the campfire's blurry light. “Each of my brothers had his own, but this is the one she sang when she was carrying me. The Liringlas mother sings the song she has chosen through the course of each day, through mundane events, in quiet moments when she is alone, before each morning aubade, after each evening vesper. It's the song the child comes to know her by, the baby's first lullabye, unique to each child. Lirin live outside beneath the stars, and it is important that the infants remain as silent as possible in dangerous situations. The song is so familiar that it comforts them innately. Puts them to sleep.”
Anborn exhaled. “A noble tradition. Have you chosen one yet for my great-nephew or niece?”
Rhapsody smiled. “No, not yet. When it is right, I will know it. Or so they told me. Now, if you'll permit me, I think I will sleep. Rest well, gentlemen.” She stretched out to sleep by the fire.
Anborn watched her affectionately through the better part of the night, his brow furrowing when she winced in pain in her sleep, his eyes shining as she slumbered peacefully.
After the watch had changed, Shrike came over to him and crouched down beside him.
“Withdraw for a moment,” he ordered the four guards who had come off watch. They looked to Anborn for confirmation; the General nodded.
When the soldiers were out of the way, Shrike drew a thin, battered cutlass and held it out to his old friend.
“Take it,” he said.
Anborn looked away. “Not tonight.”
Shrike shook the weapon at him.
“Take it,”
he said, more firmly.
Anborn declined again. “I cannot bear it tonight, Shrike.”
“If you are going to be lost to melancholy thoughts, at least go into that heavyheartedness with having experienced the sight, not just the memory.”
Finally the general turned and looked at his man-at-arms, who, as always,
stood just behind him, at his back. He sighed and took the cutlass, holding it up to the firelight so that it reflected in the blade.
Shrike stood very still, watching Anborn as he sat, lost in memory, reliving a moment in time gone forever, a sight that Shrike, alone in the wide world, by virtue of a Namer's word bestowed on him long ago, had the power to allow him to see again.
When the image faded, he returned the cutlass to the man-at-arms and took hold of his useless legs, stretching them.
“I suppose I should thank you,” he said distantly.
“No need. You never do.”
“For good reason,” the General said as he settled down to sleep. “There are some things a man should abstain from allowing himself to see, no matter how desperately he wants to. Now summon the guards back and let them rest.”
I
n the morning, the journey to the dragon's lair resumed, through fair weather, three warm days and three cool nights, uneventful and easy.
Until the first bolt struck.
27
E
arly morning on the fourth day, they were half a day's journey from the narrowest crossing of the Tara'fel river when Shrike lurched forward in his saddle.
Shrike always rode rear guard, directly behind Anborn, covering the General's back literally as he had for centuries figuratively. So when the first bolt was released at the beginning of the ambush, it was aimed at Shrike, riding at the end of the guardian circle behind the carriage in which Rhapsody slept.
Despite his years, Shrike was blessed with uncommon speed, and so had time to catch a fleeting glance of the double volley of bolts that severed the spinal columns of the soldiers riding before and to the sides of him as the men reeled forward simultaneously, their legs suddenly as useless as Anborn's.
The bolt aimed at him had caught the high-backed saddle, shocking him with its impact, but giving him the opportunity to wheel in his seat and fire his crossbows into the eyes of two of the men who had appeared from the trees behind him. He noted the rustling of the branches, the rise of dirt and dead leaves into the air as they fell back, but did not hear them hit the ground.
Time slowed maddeningly; he could hear the pounding of his heart, the scream of the horse as it reared, the crashing of the forest branches all around
them. In that one last, instantaneous moment of sight, before the second bolt struck him, before the blood welled into his throat, Shrike heard his own voice, from which he was quite dissociated, loose in a shout of alarm.
“We're under
attack!
Drive on! Drive on!”
The third bolt split his breastbone, ripping his breath away. Shrike fought the darkness dropping in from the corners of his eyes as the crossbow fell from his left hand, the bolt gouging the horse as it skittered down its side, and put all of his concentration, all of the torn spiderwebs of his conscious focus, into one last shot.
He fired again.
The bolt went wide, or so it seemed, and yet it appeared to him, in the haze that had settled now in his eyes and mind, that another body fell from the trees.
He noted an impressive absence of pain as he rolled off the twisting horse's flank, heard nothing now but the pounding in his ears, the emptying of his heart as the blood gushed out of his chest, pooling onto the forest floor beneath his face.
He heard Anborn shouting his name, the sound growing dimmer until in reverberated into nothingness.
“R
ide! Surround the carriage!” the General thundered, reining his horse back as Shrike fell to the forest floor, his life spilling out into the loam. He slapped the horse, using the hand signal it knew, directing it across the road, bisecting the pathway, and, stonebow in one arm, he drew his bastard sword with the other, murder in his eves.
Rider and animal halted; then galloped forth at an inverse angle again, dodging another hailstorm of bolts. Anborn leaned forward over the neck of the horse, hearing the sickening tattoo of the careening carriage wheels as the drivers beat their team, the guardian soldiers thundering along beside it, then charged forward into the woods from whence the crossbow fire had come, slashing with fury unleashed.
The crunching of bone, the spewing of blood, of leather, of brain, the true, solid reflections of the accuracy in which his marks were met, did nothing to quell the fury that had boiled over, and was now scorching all in his path. Gone was the detached pragmatism with which the Lord Marshal had conducted himself through some of the bloodiest campaigns in the history of the continent. He could not contain the anger, laying on a slack-faced crossbowman so viciously that after six rapid blows the corpse was unrecognizable.
He heard in the distance the sound of hammers firing and stopped, reining the stallion in place, then turning in horror.
Ahead of the carriage the crossbows fired again. One of the drivers, shot through the forehead, fell heavily to the ground, taking the reins with him as he slipped under the wheels.
The coach wobbled crazily, tilting off its wheels, as the royal guards struggled to keep up with it, firing at any movement they saw in the woods at the edge of the roadway.
From either side of the carriage, two of Rhapsody's guards attempted to leap from their horses to gain control of the coach and drive it to escape. One succeeded, the other making a grab for the running board, only to be shot as well.
“Fly!” Anborn roared to the riders and the coachman, but they were out of range of his voice.
He sheared the reins and swept around, driving his mount back through the forest edge, bearing down on two men on foot who had turned and were fleeing toward the forest road. Man and animal, in single-minded concentration, rode the first one down; Anborn waited until he felt the horse's hooves crush the first man's head like a melon before firing into the back of the neck of the second, sweeping him out of the way with the bastard sword as he spun and fell.
Ahead in the tree line he could see shapes moving, a score or more, and knew that it was only the rear flank of the force that had laid the ambush. His gorge rose as he leaned close to the neck of the stallion in pursuit, knowing the carriage was probably surrounded by now, the guards outnumbered or dead.
He did not think about Shrike.
R
hapsody woke as she was flung across the carriage.
In the haze that had settled into her mind since conceiving the child, she struggled to come to consciousness, her perspective thrown off kilter both by the wildly tilting carriage and her own internal lack of balance. At first she couldn't even remember where she was, fraught in the clutches of the strange and exaggerated dreams that had been plaguing her.
She heard voices outside the carriage window, the shouts of her own troops, and, more distantly, muffled calls in a language she didn't understand.
Shakily she felt for her sword.
This can't be happening
, she thought, trying to clear her head and at the same time hold on to her stomach as the carriage swerved again, slamming her to the floor.
As her ear banged against the planks of the jolting carriage floor, she could hear a whooping cry go up, and her blood ran cold.
It was a call of impending victory.
T
he seneschal was waiting half a league up the road.
He could hear the sound of the carriage approaching on the breeze, followed by the keening cry. He looked over his shoulder and called to Fergus, at the head of the remaining troop mounted atop the horses they had acquired in the last week.
“There's the signal. She's coming. Take her off the road.”
Fergus gave a quick nodded and gestured to the troops, then kicked his horse forward into a rolling canter.
The seneschal raised his hand over the metal drum half full of oil in front of him. He opened the door in his mind that would let the demon come through, invited.
Kryv,
they whispered together in a single voice.
With a billowing roar the oil ignited, ripping into a sheet of flame. A rolling plume of black smoke and sparks ascended, torching the green leaves in the canopy above the road. The fire quickly settled into a hot, bright blaze, a contained inferno.
As the troops rode past, the archers, headed up by Caius, hung back, their long bows, nocked with tar-tipped arrows, at the ready.
A
s the carriage wove down the forest road, the remaining six guards covered the driver, spurring their horses desperately, trying to keep time with the panicked team that was struggling to break free from the burden it was towing.
Two more pockets of assailants, one on the left rear flank, the other ahead on the right, rode out of the woods, firing a cross-hail of bolts, some aimed at the guards, but more trained on the driver and the team.
Rhapsody's driver and guards were now so badly outnumbered that it was all they could do to keep the carriage on the road. The rear flank seemed bent on driving them right, while those approaching from the woods ahead were veering left. The driver's hands, bloody from gripping the reins, threatened to give out as he yanked the team left, away from the gullies at the side of the road.
As they crested a rise in the road, another phalanx of riders, three this time, charged out of the woods, directly perpendicular to the coach. They charged, firing first at the driver, who slumped on his perch, then at the carriage and the guards, hitting some of each, driving the team northward, off the road, and into a low-lying area just beyond.
Rhapsody's remaining guards, borne down on now by four times their number, stopped and drew, interposing themselves between the oncoming marauders and the carriage.
It was like trying to hold back the sea with a shield.
The attackers fell on the guards, slashing them to ribbons, driving their horses off into the forest with the bodies still hanging from the saddles.
Up ahead, the three riders propelled the driverless carriage closer and closer to the deep swale off the road. One rode alongside the team, slashing with a sword at the hitchings, hacking until the team separated from its burden and galloped off, still yoked together, into the deep green shadows of the forest.
The driverless carriage, with one last great jolt, teetered on the edge of the swale, then overturned, crashing down on its right side. It lay in the gully, vibrating, its wheels still spinning impotently.
F
rom atop a slight rise in the forest road, the seneschal nodded with satisfaction.
“Set it afire,” he called to Caius, who was turning pale where he stood. “Stand ready to take her when she comes out.”
In response, the archers dipped their pitch-tipped arrows into the fire barrel, renocked, and, at a second signal from the seneschal, let fly.
The missiles sailed through the air and sank quickly into the wood of the carriage, echoing with the pleasant pattering sounds of rain on a wooden roof.
The seneschal gestured a third time; the breeze picked up, racing along the forest road, driving leaves and small branches ahead of it.
The carriage smoldered for a moment, then, as the wind blew through, tore into flames.
F
arther back along the forest road, Anborn could see the black smoke from the fire that was engulfing the carriage. A curse more profane than any he had uttered in centuries tore forth from his throat; he swung his bastard sword all the more deeply across the chest of the last of the attackers near him, slicing the man open from nipple to nipple, then urged his horse forward again.
He charged up the forest road in the direction of the black smoke.
F
or a moment the fire burned, unabated, and seemingly unnoticed.
Then, in the middle of the smoke, the door that had at one time been the left side entrance to the carriage opened unsteadily, and Rhapsody's hands appeared. She was holding Daystar Clarion, drawn, in her hand; it resembled nothing more than some sort of firebrand, blending in with the flames that were surrounding her. She tossed it aside for a moment where it rested, unheld, as she pulled herself out of the carriage, holding a wet kerchief over her lower face, and crawled out onto what was now the top.
All around her the forest appeared to be burning, though she knew from her tie to the element of fire that, for the moment, it was just the coach and the dry grass of the swale directly under it. Just beyond the great sheets of flame she could see figures hovering, some on horseback, some on foot.
None of them were her guards.
Her mind, foggy and thickheaded a few moments before, honed down into clear, pragmatic thoughts. She had nothing to fear from the flames; she was the Iliachenva'ar, the bearer of the elemental sword of fire, and as such was impervious to it. So she determined she was better suited to waiting inside the circle of bright heat and light than the guards were.
She was wrong.
A door of sorts seemed to open in the firewall, parting as if in response to a command. The men on foot moved through the flames, approaching her cagily.
Oh gods,
she thought, racking her brain for solutions.
They must be hosts of F'dor, or a demon's thralls at least. Oh gods.
She looked over her shoulder.
Eight or nine more men were behind her, approaching her slowly, their blurry shapes crossing and blending into one another in her confused vision.
Struggling to quell the panic that was rising, she coughed to clear her throat from the smoke, and grasped Daystar Clarion again, concentrating on the deep connection that she had to the blade, drawing its power through her hand to steady herself. She thought back to her training under Oelendra, the previous Ilianchenva'ar. The ancient Lirin woman had bound her eyes, making her spar with her opponents blind, requiring her to use the inner vibrational signatures that the weapon allowed her to see.
She closed her eyes, focusing on the power of the sword.

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