Son of the Hero (32 page)

We didn’t have a lot going for us in the coming battle against the Etevar, and if we didn’t grab the castle, the odds would be insane … well, more insane. But taking Castle Thyme was no guarantee of success—not by a long shot. There was no way that one man, even a regulation
Hero
, could make up for all the numbers unless he had a few rabbits in his hat and a lot of luck. The Etevar had a better-trained and much larger army, and a better wizard. Parthet was the first to concede that.

“Let’s get started,” I said—somewhere around eleven o’clock. Keeping track of time was still a hassle. My watch had started running again after we left Fairy, but it acted strange. Once it had even run backward for an hour.

We walked from the orchard to the castle. Horses would only be a giveaway on this raid, and our army didn’t have many horses to start with, only about three hundred. Most of our fighters were foot soldiers, infantry. We moved as quietly as you could expect several dozen men in armor to move. Annick picked our way through the woods. I hadn’t included her in my plans for the raid, but she dealt herself in and silently dared me to try to keep her out of the fight. I didn’t try.

The castle was also silent. I didn’t expect to hear carousing. A drunken debauch would have been asking too much of luck. Lurking in the shadows forty yards from the ditch, we watched one of the sentries walk his post on the parapet, visible only when he passed one of the crenels. The postern faced west, the main gate south. Two of my men scurried across the open stretch with ladders while Annick and several others covered them with bows, just in cast the sentry caught on. He didn’t. In twos and threes, the rest of us crossed the clearing, timing our moves with the sentry’s tour on the wall, then we jumped down into the dry moat.
Dry?
There was muck and mud a foot deep in it. The smell left no doubt as to what we were wading through. Castle Thyme didn’t have a sewer system.

Getting our people up near the postern wasn’t all that easy. There was only a narrow ledge at the base of the wall, not wide enough for safety, let alone for comfort, and no one wanted to fall in the crap below.

Parthet had to go at one side of the door, close enough to work his hocus-pocus. I was at the other side so I could charge in first when the door opened—my “right” as Hero. Annick had wormed her way right behind me, even ahead of Lesh and Hambert. Altogether, there were eight of us up on the ledge. A dozen more soldiers waited in the bottom of the ditch or on the ladders, and about the same number crouched on the other side of the ditch, trying to look invisible. The rest of our strike force was in the trees, forty yards away, with a rough plank bridge to throw across the ditch as soon as we were inside keeping the defenders from dumping their end of the bridge into the crap.

“Okay, Uncle. Your show,” I whispered.

He grunted. “You have that flashlight?”

“If you need it.”

“I need it. There’s not enough starlight to conjure a good fart. Play the light along the hinges, slowly, while I get started.”

I had fitted a half-shield of leather to make the light harder to spot from above. I turned the light on and moved the beam the way Parthet directed. The hinges were large metal strips that extended almost the entire width of the door. Smooth rounded boltheads were visible, but there was no way to dismantle the hinges from the outside.

Parthet chanted softly. I couldn’t understand a word of it. Either magical formulas were exempt from the translation magic or it was just gibberish Parthet used to psych himself up. As he continued, he got louder, making me worry that the sentry would hear. But before I could work myself up to shushing Parthet, the top hinges started to glow a dull red and I smelled wood burninglike old railway ties. Then the second hinge started to glow and the first got brighter, and hotter. I turned off the flashlight and stuck it in my hip pocket when the metal was light enough to see by. Tiny flames became visible around the metal, then large streaks of the door charred visibly.

“Put your shoulder to it,” Parthet said. “A sharp rap.” I edged sideways. Bashing into glowing metal didn’t seem very smart even though I had leather and chain mail to protect me, but we had to get inside, and the longer I hesitated, the more chance there was that the sentry would see us.

My shoulder scarcely touched the door before it popped inward, hinges and all, so quickly that I almost fell into the castle. I caught my balance against the far wall, getting my hands out before my head could slam into the stone, before I could hit hard enough to jar my bad ribs. I drew Dragon’s Death and turned toward the guardroom and great hall of Castle Thyme, where we expected the first challenge. I didn’t have much room to swing the elf sword in the hallway, but it would make life problematic for any defenders who tried to get too close to me.

Lesh and Annick were in the corridor with me by the time I got set, before the first defender appeared. He shouted an alert, then charged, even though my sword was twice the length of his and he couldn’t get close without opening himself to the bite of Dragon’s Death. But I was limited too. All I could do was keep prodding, making short jabs at him, forcing him to back off while I looked for swinging room. The guard tried to stall me long enough for his help to arrive. When he was nearly back to the room behind him, he made a desperate attempt to get past my blade. His maneuver didn’t work. I sliced at his head, backhanded, and he went down to stay.

After that, it was one short duel after another until all of our strike force got into the fray. I had to fight two more Dorthinis, but the encounters were nothing to write home about. Against these enemies, Dragon’s Death was once more almost weightless. At need, I could handle it with one hand, as easily as I could swing my own smaller sword.

Then the fight was over. The rest of the garrison surrendered when it was obvious that we had the numbers. These Dorthinis were all good soldiers. There was no “fight to the last man” nonsense. Just as well. I had no stomach for a massacre, not even of the men who had ambushed and killed my father. But I didn’t waste any grief on the Dorthinis who died before the surrender.

Once we had accounted for every member of the garrison, we lowered the drawbridge so our reserves could come in with the horses to wait for the Dorthini army to arrive and pass. The rest of our troops moved into their phony siege positions. We raised the drawbridge again well before dawn.

When the first Dorthini scouts arrived in the morning, they saw the Varayan army besieging Castle Thyme. We sent a cavalry patrol to chase the Dorthinis, with instructions to make sure that they didn’t catch them. We
wanted
the Dorthini scouts to escape and carry the news of the siege to the Etevar. We had our slim surprise primed … if we could make it count.

20
The Dance of Ghosts

We left the Dorthini flag flying over Castle Thyme, seven gold lilies—stylized like the French emblem—on a black field. Harkane had my pennant ready to replace the Etevar’s when we “announced” ourselves. I slept for a short time, but managed to wake myself when I started to slip back into the dream that had captured me the night before. I was walking down the steps to the crypt and, somehow, managed to stop and wake before I found myself in the company of all my predecessors again.

I didn’t try to sleep again after that.

The morning dragged on. The van of the Dorthini army was two hours away, then one hour. Parthet used some of the sea-silver to open a passage between the castle and the cottage in the orchard so we could keep abreast of the news … and so we would have a bolt-hole in case of disaster. A small band of our cavalry skirmished with Dorthini outriders a couple of miles from the castle, then retreated in good order. We wanted to harass the enemy just enough to keep them from trying to make contact with the castle garrison. Castle Thyme was our Trojan Horse, and we couldn’t afford to give away the secret too soon.

Parthet didn’t know of any Dorthini magic comparable to the doorways, but he couldn’t rule it out either. Since the Etevar had the new-and-improved-model wizard, anything was possible. We patrolled every corridor and passage of Castle Thyme, watched everywhere.

From dawn on, I stayed on the parapets, under cover of a shed that had been erected to give sentries a place to get out of the weather. Parthet stayed with me, except during his brief excursions to the orchard for the latest news. The rest of “my” people also stayed close through the morning.

The Dorthini van was in sight before the Varayan forces “besieging” Castle Thyme started their slow withdrawal across the road into the rolling countryside toward the orchard. Dorthini cavalry came forward to engage, to try to keep our army from settling into strong defensive positions before the Dorthini infantry caught up. Our people had to keep the area around the castle hazardous enough to justify “Dorthini” defenders keeping the drawbridge up and the gate closed. We had replaced the postern door; it at least
looked
normal.

There were no surprises in the early morning. Everything went right according to plan. I could even be detached about it, recalling battles that Dad had made me study while I was a teenager, looking for comparison—or for any tip I could dredge out of those memories to help us. I didn’t have any crazy urges to get out into the fighting right away. I felt no guilt at being safe while others were fighting and dying. I knew that my turn for danger would come soon enough. The only problem I had was with memories of my crypt dream. I
heard
Vara talking to me again, reminding me that he had sworn that no Hero of Varay would die alone as he had, telling me that they would all be with me when my time came.

Are there real ghosts here? I asked myself many times that morning. More and more, I was starting to believe that the answer was probably
yes
. Vara’s voice seemed to be too real to be simply my imagination.

It was almost noon before the Etevar arrived with his personal guard and the bulk of his army—the infantry. My pulse picked up while the armies went through the motions to set up battle lines—movements that appeared to be a lot slower than they really were. It was almost a ballet, a dance of death. Our people stayed close enough to the castle to justify the defenders leaving the drawbridge raised. My danger sense started going full blast—and I could see thousands of reasons.

Then the armies seemed to become static for a few minutes, with just minor movements behind the front lines on both sides—like two immense football teams waiting for the opening kick-off. Our army surged forward toward the Dorthinis. Baron Resler was in charge down there on the “field,” pending my arrival. The fighting—the bleeding and dying—started in earnest. There would be no whistles blowing to stop
this
warfare every few seconds, no flags thrown for unsportsmanlike conduct.

I was above the battle, if only in a strictly physical sense. In the first minutes, I could see the entire field clearly. It wasn’t like moving markers on a sand table to recreate a battle. There was no mistaking this for a movie war either. I didn’t have any trouble remembering that this was real. There was the flash of sunlight off blades. Dust rose from thousands of feet and hooves, gradually obscuring the view. There was blood—gallons of bright red blood—all over. There was screaming.

And there was death.

“The Heroes of Varay are waiting for me to join them,” I told Parthet without taking my eyes off the battle.

“What are you talking about?” he demanded, grabbing my arm, turning me toward him.

I told him about the dream, briefly, and kept looking back down at the battle. The two of us were alone on the parapets of Castle Thyme for the moment. My other companions had joined our reserves, all cavalry, in the courtyard. The men stood by their horses, keeping them as quiet as possible, crowded in between the walls. My horse, Gold, was down there too. Timon was holding him for me—as close as the boy was going to get to any fighting. I hoped.

“Don’t let the dream get to you, lad,” Parthet said when I finished my narrative. “Dreams can’t be trusted.”

“I’m not sure it was only dream,” I told him.

“Best put it aside like a dream, lad,” he said.

I shrugged and concentrated on the battle. I couldn’t put the dream aside that easily.

“I hope you’ve got a few tricks up your sleeve,” I told Parthet as the time for my sortie approached.

“I can make a show, lad. There, you see the Etevar?” Parthet pointed into the mass of men south and just barely east of the castle, at a pennant like the one flying over our heads. “The two men in black there. The Etevar is the shorter one. The other is his wizard. I can feel his magic, and he’s not even using it.”

I saw the men Parthet was talking about, but they were too far off in the rising dust of the battlefield for me to see any details of their appearance. Tall, dressed completely in black, and riding black horses. And, new glasses or not, Parthet could hardly have made out any more.

The Varayan army started to give ground slowly and in good order, luring the Dorthinis on, making sure that the Dorthinis paid a price for every inch, and making sure that there were no inviting gaps in the Varayan line. The last of the Dorthini army moved west of the castle, following their prey. At any minute, a royal messenger might ride up to the gate and demand entrance. It was time for my act. I hugged Parthet before I went down to my horse and my troop.

“Take care, Uncle,” I told him. “We don’t want to waste all those new eyeglasses.”

“And you, lad.” Parthet grinned and shoved me gently toward the stairs. “Remember what I told you. Don’t pay attention to dreams.”

Easier said than done.

The sixty-odd members of my troop mounted up when they saw me coming down to the courtyard. I climbed on Gold and waved at Parthet. Once we left the castle, he would be in an exposed position. We weren’t going to leave many people with him—just Timon to run my pennant up the flagpole once we started fighting, and two men to operate the winches for the portcullis and drawbridge. Castle Thyme was sealed up again as soon as we rode out. That would give Parthet and the others time to scram through the portal back to the cottage … unless the Etevar’s wizard could negate that magic.