Son of the Hero (28 page)

“He has,” Annick called from the door. She was out of breath from running. “They’re coming across the plaza with a siege tower now.”

“I’ll take care of Parthet,” Mother said. “You’d better go evaluate the threat.”

Yeah, and I thought I’d better check it out too. We all went except Mother. Annick and I had our bows. Maybe we could pick off a few of the enemy and make them think that the elflord’s magic had failed. If they thought that the garrison was awake, they might not press the attack. I sent Lesh to round up the rest of the soldiers from Basil while the two I had with me accompanied Annick, Harkane, and me to the curtain wall.

There were more than three hundred men advancing across the plaza. Half were pulling on ropes, dragging a wooden tower—a framework with stairs and a drawbridge at the top. The near side was covered with wood and hides. A few more soldiers were behind the machine, pushing. The rest advanced in ranks, keeping station on either side of the tower.

“You ever shoot a flaming arrow?” I asked Annick.

“A what?” was quickly followed by, “Oh, I see. No, but am I right in thinking that this is a good time to start?”

“Yeah. Try to set the tower on fire.” I took matches from my pocket. “These are supposed to be waterproof. They may work, if you can find anything flammable to tie to the heads of the arrows.”

I got busy with my bow while Annick went into the guard shack. She came back with lamp oil and a bunch of rags to tie around her arrows. I needed a couple of shots to get the range—it can be tricky shooting down at an angle—but once I did, I scored hits. After the last of my aluminum arrows were gone, I found a crate of the local wooden variety by the weapon racks. They weren’t quite as accurate, but they did help slow down the elflord’s army. They weren’t expecting fire either. Annick started a half-dozen small fires on the tower. Neither the leather nor the wood had been wetted down. They had no water handy to put out fires. I guess we
were
a complete surprise. Their leaders must have assured the soldiers that Xayber had taken care of the garrison.

The tower quit moving. Men scrambled to knock away the flaming arrows and tried to beat out the flames while others ran off to do the Jack and Jill routine. I wished them the same luck, but wishing didn’t do any good.

Lesh showed up with ten men, the rest of ours and a few of the regular garrison who seemed to be awake finally. Two of our Basiliers claimed to be decent archers. I sent them for bows, arrows, and rags and told them to help Annick with the arson. With a little luck, I hoped we could set more fires than the enemy could extinguish. But once the attackers started pouring water on their contraption, fires were harder to start. After twenty minutes, we quit trying and concentrated on picking off soldiers. Four archers could only slow them down a little, though. They had the numbers, and once their leaders put some backbone into the grunts, they’d come on. And once they got the siege tower in place, it would be just a matter of time before they overwhelmed us.

“Massey, wake up!” Lesh shouted. I turned. Massey was one of our Basiliers. He stirred and shook his head.

“I don’t know what happened,” he said. “I got so sleepy.”

“It’s working on us,” Annick said. “Are you okay?”

I shrugged. “I don’t feel sleepy. You?” She shook her head. Lesh and Harkane seemed alert—most of the other Basiliers as well. But one, Tebber, was yawning fit to split his head open. The locals were nodding too, off and on. The magic was still working.

A gust of icy wind made me turn to look out at the Mist. There was heavy fog on the sea, maybe a half mile out and coming closer. I hoped that the breeze would help keep us awake at least.

“If that fog rolls in, we won’t be able to see our targets,” I said.

“Then we’d better get as many as we can now,” was Annick’s practical reply. She started letting off arrows as quickly as she could nock and aim. For once, I didn’t feel like curbing her instincts. Extra speed didn’t seem to hurt her accuracy either.

Riders were moving around the edges of the group of soldiers in the plaza now, urging them on. I saw three swords like Dragon’s Death, elf swords on elf warriors, officers in the army of their lord—the elvish equivalent of knights, I suppose. The foot soldiers pressed forward, dragging and pushing the tower. They weren’t breaking any speed records, but soon they’d be able to move archers to the top and keep us busy. Once we lost the height advantage, our job would be a lot more dangerous. And, almost as I thought that, the archers did start climbing and the tower’s speed decreased a little more.

“What about that metal thing you carry under your shirt?” Annick asked.

The gun. “It probably won’t work here,” I warned, but I drew the pistol and flicked off the safety. It was as good a time as any to find out for sure. I set my bow aside and took a two-handed grip on the pistol. I aimed and pulled the trigger, expecting nothing.

Bang
. “I’ll be damned,” I muttered. But I hadn’t hit anyone. I took more care the next time and saw one archer tumble from the siege tower into the men who were pushing it. The next shot wounded another archer in the arm, putting him out of action. Then a click. I worked the slide to eject that cartridge and tried again. Another click. I pulled the trigger again, then cocked the gun by hand and pulled the trigger once more. No luck.

“Well, it was a good idea while it lasted.” I holstered the gun and picked up my bow again.

I glanced north. The fog was definitely closer. South: so was the tower. Lesh and the other soldiers with us had started testing their strength with spears. There were bundles of wooden lances with fire-hardened tips. With a little oomph behind them, they could pierce padded leather and take the air out of a man in mail … as I knew from experience. They also gave us a few more chances to try firing the siege tower. Those spears could support more fire than the arrows. Not enough to make a difference, but it did slow the attackers again.

“We’ve got ten, maybe fifteen minutes before they get that tower in place,” I said, loud enough so that most of the people on the battlements could hear. “I’m going down to see how Parthet’s doing. I’ll be back.”

I’ve never gone in for jogging, but that wasn’t the time for a casual stroll. Parthet was awake, but flat on his back and not moving much. I didn’t expect him to be up dancing jigs. I recalled how I felt after my first set-to with the elflord, and that had lasted only minutes, not days.

“What’s it like out there?” Mother asked calmly.

“They’ve got a siege tower almost in place, with the men to use it. On the other side, we’ve got the heaviest fog you ever saw racing in off the Mist. And the men I brought from Basil are starting to fall asleep.”

“How did you free me from the elflord?” Parthet asked weakly.

“I broke in on your connection with the rings and told him he was starting to bug me.” Parthet smiled, just a little. “What were you doing squaring off with him, anyway? I thought you were going to send a message to his king.”

“I did. At least, I think it got through. Then, when people started dropping off to sleep here I had to try something to help.” Parthet was quiet for a moment, gathering strength. “You were overdue and there was no one else to turn to.”

“You wouldn’t by chance have a quick spell for overturning a siege tower, would you?” I asked.

“Not a quick one, and I’m too weak to use the slow one I do have.”

“Can I use it?”

“No, lad, not even if I had time to teach you the words.”

“Mother, if I open the way, can you get Parthet through to Basil?” She nodded. “Okay, let’s go. We don’t have much time. If there are any men left to send to help us, get them here fast or it’ll be too late.” I picked Parthet up and carried him. He wasn’t very heavy, but heavy enough to put a noticeable strain on my back and ribs. I gritted my teeth and followed Mother out of the room. After I got them both transferred to Basil, I raced back to the outer wall.

The siege tower was within a dozen feet of the moat, but it wasn’t moving very quickly at all now. There were no pullers left, just pushers. The odds were too heavy in front of the rig. The fog had arrived, though. It already hid the northern wall of Arrowroot.

“That can’t be natural,” I said as I started using my bow again. Annick didn’t bother to answer. She was still shooting arrows as fast as she could, concentrating so fully that she didn’t seem to notice the blood on her fingers from the constant chafing of the bowstring. The muscles at the side of her neck stood out each time she drew the string back to her cheek. The fog kept coming toward us, a wall as straight as any ever built by a construction crew, catching us from behind and moving across the moat toward the tower. I could barely see Annick, and she was only six feet from me.

I heard muffled shouting below—command tones.

Here they come, I thought. I put down my bow and drew the elf sword, moving toward the spot where the siege tower’s drawbridge would come down. We waited in the isolation of that fog, listening to an occasional muffled noise coming from beyond the wall. I could feel my back starting to ache again, so I grabbed a quick sip of the painkiller.

Wood creaked finally, but there was no thump of the drawbridge coming down, no sudden surge of my danger sense.

“What’s keeping them?” Annick whispered.

“Something’s happened,” I said, an understated expression of the surprise I felt as the feeling of danger started to wane for the first time since our arrival in Arrowroot. I took a moment to try to probe with the sense—and I wasn’t even sure that I could use it that way.

“I think they’re pulling back,” I said after a moment.

I heard a loud yawn inside the castle, then a thick “What the hell’s happening? Where’d this blasted fog come from? Where am I?” One of the garrison soldiers, fresh from his long nap. Lesh answered him, and, also inside the castle, somebody started blowing a horn.

“That’s the alarm!” a new voice shouted.

“Where’s the trouble?” another asked.

“Settle down,” I said, not quite in a shout. “We’ll know what’s going on soon enough. Watch for the siege tower outside the wall.”

That brought another assortment of comments from garrison soldiers. There were running feet inside the castle, in the courtyard, and on the stairs, as men raced to their battle stations, a week or two late. They were stumbling into each other and over obstructions. The fog was so thick that I couldn’t make out my own feet unless I moved them.

“Somebody bring Baron Resler here,” I shouted. “This is Gil Tyner.” I didn’t add titles, but I heard a distant-sounding voice say,
“The Hero of Varay. “

“They’re all waking up,” Annick said, her voice closer than before. “Did you scare the elflord off when you challenged him?”

“I couldn’t scare Xayber off with the 82nd Airborne behind me,” I said. Let her puzzle over that for a while, I thought with a chuckle.

“The fog’s passing,” someone said from the north side of the keep. Other voices took up the refrain and got clearer. A few minutes later, the tail end of the fog crossed the parapet where we were waiting. It was another perfectly straight line, fog on one side, clear air on the other. The fog moved across the moat, toward the town, picking up speed once it was clear of the castle. The siege tower was standing right at the edge of the moat, but there were no enemy troops in sight … except for about a dozen bodies left sprawled in the plaza.

The tower and the bodies were surprises to the soldiers who had been sleeping. “Where the hell did
that
come from?” was a popular question.

The fog bent toward the east like an echelon movement in a parade. There were no live soldiers in the plaza, no elf warriors waving claymores, no trace of any enemy but the dead.

“They used the fog to pull out,” Harkane said.

“They’ve run off!” one of the Basiliers added.

Annick dropped her sword. I turned when I heard metal clatter on stone.

“Great Earth Mother!” she swore. “You’ve beaten the elflord
again.”

18
Doors

I knew that it wasn’t that simple—it couldn’t be—but I was so astonished by Annick’s reaction that I couldn’t correct her mistake just then. Maybe the way I faced the elflord contributed to his decision to pull back from Arrowroot, but I couldn’t be the main reason. Xayber and I hadn’t come to our main event yet. I wasn’t looking forward to that. No, something else must have convinced the elflord to call off the siege. Even if he thought I was a hotshot elf warrior out to make life difficult for him, Xayber had a bunch of elf warriors in the attacking force. This had to be Parthet’s victory. His message must have reached the Elfking and started something in Fairy, behind Xayber.

Soldiers finally came through from Basil. Maybe the barn hadn’t burned down first, but that was only because somebody had blown out the match. It took time to sort out the confusion in Arrowroot. Resler got patrols out to check on the town’s residents, to make sure that the elflord’s army was really gone, and to see to the dead that had been left behind. I went to Basil to check on Parthet. He was in bed, propped up, awake and eating. Mother was confident that he would recover.

“It’ll take time, though,” she told me in the hallway outside his room. “At his age, he can’t spring back the way he once would have.”

“Do what you can,” I said. “We’re going to need his magic when we meet the Etevar. He’s certain to have his wizard along.”

“I don’t know.” Mother shook her head doubtfully. “Three days? He may need that many weeks.”

“We don’t have weeks. Unless there’s another qualified wizard lurking around that I don’t know about.”

“There isn’t. Uncle has never trained an apprentice.”

“Well, one thing anyway. You can be my link to open the new doorways. I’ll set up one in Arrowroot, pop over to Coriander, and set one up there—with a little luck, maybe the elflord has abandoned that siege too—then come back here to start my ride to Thyme.” Mother nodded. I stared at her for a moment. Our roles had changed drastically since I arrived in Varay, and I was just becoming aware of that. “You can handle a passage when we transfer the troops too, I guess.”