The Song of Homana (19 page)

Finn stood waiting with the horses. He, like myself, wore his warbow slung across one shoulder. But he wore no ringmail or boiled leather, trusting instead to his skill to keep him free of harm. No Cheysuli wore armor. But perhaps I too would leave it off, did I have the chance to wear an animal’s form.

I took the reins from him and turned to mount. But I stopped the motion and turned back as Rowan called to me.

“My lord—wait you!” He hastened toward me in a rattle of mail and sword. Like us, he prepared to lead an attack against one of Bellam’s patrols. “My lord, the lady is asking for you.” He arrived at last, urgency in face and voice.

“Electra asks for nothing,” I told him mildly. “Surely you mean she has
sent
.”

Color rose in his face. “Aye,” he said, “she has sent.” He sighed. “For you.”

I nodded. Electra sent for me often, usually two or more times in a single day. Always to complain about her captivity and to demand her immediate release. It had
become a game between us—Electra knew well enough what she did to me when I saw her. And she played upon that effect.

In the six weeks since Finn had captured her, nothing had been settled between us except out mutual attraction. She knew it as well as I. Ostensibly enemies, we were also eventual bedmates. It was simply a matter of time and circumstance. Did I wish to, I could have her before her internment was done. But I gambled for higher stakes—permanency, in reign and domesticity—and she knew it. She used it. And so the courtship rite went on, bizarre though it was.

“She waits,” Rowan reminded me.

I smiled. “Let her.” I swung up on my horse and gathered the reins, marking how my men waited. And then I was gone before Rowan could speak again.

Finn caught up to me not far from the camp. Behind us rode our contingent of soldiers: thirty Homanans armed to the teeth and ready for battle once more. Scouts had already brought reports of three Solindish patrols; I would take one, Rowan another, Duncan the third. Such warfare had worked well in the past months; Bellam already shouted impotent threats from his stolen throne.

“How much longer do we keep her?” Finn asked.

No reference was necessary. “Until I have Torry back.” I squinted against the sun. “Bellam’s last message said he would send Torry out of Mujhara with an escort—and Lachlan also. Electra will be back with her father soon enough.”

“Will you let her go?”

“Aye,” I said calmly. “It will be no hardship to let her go when I will have her back so soon.”

He smiled. “No more hedging, from you. No more modesty.”

“No,” I agreed, grinning. “I have come home to take my uncle’s throne, and I have every intention of doing it. As for Bellam, we have harried him long enough. In a month, or two or three, he will come out of Mujhara to fight. This thing will be settled then.”

“And his daughter?”

I looked directly at him, tasting the dust of warfare in
my mouth as we moved toward our battle. “She is Tynstar’s light woman, by all accounts—including her own. For that alone, I will make her mine.”

“Revenge.” He did not smile. “I understand that well enough, Carillon, having tasted it myself—but I think it is more than that.”

“Political expediency,” I assured him blandly. “She is a valuable tool.”

A scowl pulled his face into grim lines. “In the clans, it is not the same.”

“No,” I agreed quietly. “In the clans you take women as you will and care little enough for the politics of the move.” I glanced back at my soldiers. They followed in a tight unit, bristling with swords and knives and ringmail. “Men have need of such things as wives and children,” I told him quietly. “
Kings
have need of more.”

“More,” he said in disgust, and his eyes were on Storr. The wolf loped by Finn’s horse, silver head turned up so their eyes locked: one pair of eerie, yellow eyes; one pair of amber, bestial eyes. And yet I could not say who was truly the beast.

Or if either of them were.

Our attack swept down on Bellam’s patrol and engulfed the guardsmen. I halted my horse some distance from the melee and set about loosing arrow after arrow into selected targets. The Atvian longbow, for all its range was good, lacked the power of my Cheysuli bow; until my arrows were gone, I would be well-nigh invincible.

Or so I thought, until one Atvian arrow, half-spent, struck the tender flesh of my horse’s nose and drove him into a frenzy of pain. I could not control him. Rather than lose myself to a pain-crazed horse in place of an Atvian arrow, I jumped from the horse and set about doing what I could on foot.

My Homanans fought well, proving their worth. There was no hesitation on their part, even facing the archers who had so badly defeated them six years before. But we were greatly outnumbered. Bellam’s men turned fiercely upon my own, slashing with swords, stabbing with knives, screaming like utter madmen as they threw themselves
into the fight. So many times we had swarmed upon them like gnats; at last they swatted back.

I discarded my bow when my arrows were gone, turning instead to my sword. I waded into the nearest knot of men, slashing at the enemy. Almost instantly I was engaged by an Atvian wielding a huge broadsword. I met blade with blade and gasped as the jolt ran up through my arms to my shoulders, lodging in knotted muscles. I disengaged, counterthrust, then sank my own blade deep in his chest.

The man went down at once. I wrenched my sword free and staggered across the body, ducking another scything sweep near my head, swung around and cut loose the arm that swung the blade. The Solindishman went down screaming, spraying blood across matted grass already boggy with gore. One glance showed me the battle had turned decidedly in Solindish favor.

The trick was now to get out. My horse had been left behind. But most of the enemy was on foot as well, since we struck first at their mounts, and a foot race is more commonly won by men with greater reason to run. I had reason enough.

I looked for Finn and found him not far from me, as ever, shouting something as he closed with a Solindish soldier. He wore his human form, eschewing the savagery that accompanies the shapechange in the midst of battle. It was a matter of balance, he had told me once; a Cheysuli warrior remains himself even in
lir
-shape, but should he ever lose himself in the glory of a fight, he could lose himself forever. It was possible a warrior, crossing over the boundaries of balance, might remain a beast forever.

I did not care to think of Finn locked into his wolf-shape. Not forever. I needed him too much as himself.

And then I saw Storr running between two men. His tail was straight out as he streaked across the bloodied field. His ears were pinned back against his head and his teeth were bared. I knew then he ran to aid Finn, and I knew he was too late.

The sword came down and bit into the wolf’s left shoulder. His yelp of pain pierced through the din of battle like a scythe. Finn heard it at once, or else he heard something
more within the link. Helplessly I watched him turn away from his enemy to look for Storr.

“No!” I roared, trying to run through the slippery grass. “Finn—look to
yourself!
”

But he did not. And the Atvian spear drove into his right leg and buried itself in the hillside.

I threw myself over dead and wounded, enemy and Homanan alike. Finn was sprawled on his back against the ground, trying to wrench the spear from his thigh. But it had gone straight through, pinning him down, even as he sought to break the shaft with his hands.

The Atvian spearman, seeing his advantage, pulled his knife from its sheath and lunged.

I brought down my sword from the highest apex of its arc, driving it through leather and mail and flesh. The body toppled forward. I caught it before it fell across Finn and dragged it away, tossing it to one side. And then I cursed as I saw the damage that had already been done; how he had laid open the flesh of Finn’s face with his knife. The bloody wound bisected the left side from eye to jaw.

I broke the spear in my hands and rolled Finn onto one side, grateful he was unconscious. I pulled the shaft free as the leg twitched and jumped beneath my hands. Blood ran freely from the wound, pooling in the matted, trampled grass. And then I pulled my liege man from the ground and carried him from the field.

Finn screamed Storr’s name, lunging upward against my restraining hands. I pressed him down against the pallet, trying to soothe him with words and wishes alone, but he was too far gone in fever and pain. I doubted he heard me, or even knew I was there.

The tiny pavilion was rank with heat and the stench of blood. The chirurgeons had done what they could, stitching his face together again with silk thread and painting it with an herbal paste, but it was angry and swollen and ugly. The wound in his thigh they had drained and poulticed, but one man had gone so far as to say he thought it must come off. I had said no instantly, too shocked to
consider the amputation, but now that some time had passed I understood the necessity of the suggestion.

Did the leg fill with poison, Finn would die. And I did not wish to give him over to such pain.

I knelt rigidly at his side, too stiff and frightened to move away. The doorflap hung closed to shut out the gnats and flies; the air was heavy and stifling. Rowan stood beside me in the dimness of the tent, saying nothing, but I knew he felt his own measure of shock and apprehension. Finn had ever seemed invincible, even to those he hardly knew. To those of us who knew him best of all—

“He is Cheysuli.” Rowan meant to reassure me.

I looked down on the pale, sweating face with its hideous wound. Even stitched closed, the thing was terrible. It snaked across his face from eye to jaw, puckering the flesh into a jagged, seeping serpent. Aye, he was Cheysuli.

“They die,” I said in a ragged tone. “Even Cheysuli die.”

“Less often than most.” He moved forward a little. Like me, he was splattered with blood. Rowan and his men had gotten free without losing a single life. I had lost most of my unit, and now perhaps Finn as well. “My lord—the wolf is missing.”

“I have dispatched men to search.…”I said nothing more. Storr’s body had not been found upon the field. And I myself had seen the sword cut into his shoulder.

“Perhaps—once he is found—”

“For a Cheysuli, you know little enough of your customs.” Abruptly I cursed myself for my curtness. It was not my place to chastise Rowan for what he could not help. I glanced up at his stricken face, realized he risked as much as I in this endeavor, and tried to apologize.

He shook his head. “No. I know what you say. You have the right of it. If the wolf is already slain—or dies—you will lose your liege man.”

“I may lose him anyway.” It seemed too much to hope he would live. And if I gave the order to take his leg—

“Carillon.” It was Alix, pulling aside the doorflap, and I stared in blank astonishment. “They sent for me.” She came into the tent, dropping the flap behind her, and I saw the pallor of her face. “Duncan is not here?”

“I have sent for him.”

She moved closer and knelt down at my side, amber eyes fixed on Finn. Seeing him again through her vision, I nearly turned away. He wore a death’s-head in place of his own.

Alix put out her hand and touched his bare arm. The
lir
-gold with its wolf-shape was smeared with blood, dulled by grime; it seemed a reflection of his death. But she touched his arm and then clasped his slack hand, as if she could not let him go.

I watched her face. She knelt at his side and held his hand so gently. There was a sudden horrified grief in her eyes, as if she realized she would lose the man who had given her over to her heritage, and that realization broke down the wall between them. Ever had they been at one another’s throats, cutting with knives made of words and swords made of feelings. They were kin and yet more than that, so much more, and I think she finally knew it.

She tipped back her head. I saw the familiar detached expression enter her eyes, making them blank and black and odd. Suddenly Alix was more Cheysuli than I had ever seen her, and I sensed the power move into her soul. So easily she summoned it, and then she released a sigh.

“Storr is alive.”

I gaped at her.

“He is sorely hurt. Dying.” Grief etched lines into her smooth face. “You must go. Fetch him back at once, and perhaps we can save them both.”

“Where?”

“Not far.” Her eyes were on Finn again and still she clasped his hand. “Perhaps a league. Northwest. There is a hill with a single tree upon it. And a cairn marker.” She shut her eyes a moment, as if she drew upon the memory of the power. “Carillon—go
now
…I can reach Duncan through Cai.”

I stood up at once, hardly aware of the protests of my body. I did not need to tell her to tend him well. I merely went out in my bloody, crusted leather-and-mail and ordered a horse at once.

∗   ∗   ∗

Rowan came out of the pavilion as I rode up with Storr clasped in my arms. I dismounted carefully, loath to give the wolf over to anyone else, and went in as Rowan pulled aside the doorflap. It was then I was conscious of the harpsong and Lachlan’s nimble fingers.

He sat on a campstool at Finn’s side. His Lady was set against his chest, resting on one knee, and he played. How he played. The golden notes, so sweet and pure, poured forth from the golden strings. His head was bowed and his eyes were shut. His face was rigid with concentration. He did not sing, letting the harp do it for him, but I knew what magic he sought.

A healer, he had called himself. And now he tried to heal.

I knelt down and set Storr at Finn’s side as gently as I could. Carefully I placed one limp brown hand into the stiffened silver fur, then moved back. The harpsong played on, dying away, and at last there was silence again.

Lachlan shifted a little, as if he awoke. “He is—beyond my aid. Even Lodhi’s, I fear. He is Cheysuli—” He stopped, for there was little left to say.

Alix was in the shadows. She had left Finn’s side as I entered, making room for Storr, and now she stood in the center of the tent. Her braids were coiled and pinned against her head but glittered not, for it seemed there was no light within the tent. No light at all.