TWOLAS - 06 - Peril's Gate (25 page)

VI. Clan War Band

O
n
his knees in thin snow, Earl Jieret, caithdein of Rathain, braced his gloved hand on a
sharp rim of rock to anchor
h
is reeling senses.

'My lord, you're unwell?' said an iron, gruff voice to one side. Sidir knew him as deeply as his oldest scar, being one of the fourteen survivors of the slaughtered generation lost to war on the banks of Tal Quorin.

Beyond reply, the red-bearded clan chieftain jerked his chin in negation. His head whirled still. The nausea that had just emptied his belly yet knifed through him in dousing, white waves. He gripped the rock; waited, sure as rain the sickness that siezed him was not the result of spoiled meat.

He suffered a resurgence of disorienting darkness, then a moment of rippling confusion as his stressed senses gradually stabilized. The aftermath receded, leaving him stranded in the pallid light of winter afternoon. Above him, torn clouds cast their marching shadows across the high, ocher grasses tipped through the snow-covered barrens of Daon Ramon.

The day had utterly ceased to be ordinary: the subliminal cry that had knifed through the land resounded still in his memory. As though for one moment the rock and the soil of Rathain had been given voice to express an event of agonized extremity.

Jieret s'Valerient, Earl of the North, knew but one man for whom such an outcry would manifest. More than the realm's
dedicated
caithdein,
he was also blood bond to a prince granted lawful sanction for crown rule. Their paired fates stood linked with Rathain's destiny, a tie that transcended the enactment of ceremony. Asandir of the Fellowship had himself conducted the ritual of affirmation. His was the adept command of the mysteries that had transmuted a handful of dross soil into the silver circlet that conjoined royal flesh and living earth into a lifelong partnership. A Sorcerer's seal had set the husbandry of five territories on the brow of the mortal man blood-born to uphold the high kingship.

'My lord?' whispered Sidir, strained to anxiety as the silence extended.

Jieret braced his leather-clad shoulder against the weathered slab of the rock. Still distinctly unsteady, he scrubbed his pale face with a dousing handful of snow. 'Trouble,' he gasped, as his tight throat unlocked.

He pushed off and arose. The ground underneath him felt too solid, a disjointed, unimaginable distance removed from the uncanny wave of subsonic vibration and refined light that had transmitted his prince's raw anguish. Sidir caught his groping arm in assistance and steadied the first, awkward step.

'We'll have to ride hard,' said Earl Jieret, succinct. His large hands, out of habit, checked the hang of his weapons, then jammed down his brindled wolf hat. 'If I must hazard a
caithdein's
guess, an enemy force has outpaced our intent and already made camp at Ithamon.'

'From where?' Sidir as ever showed no surprise. His stance stayed poised and quiet, except for a gray-shot wing of seal hair, that the wind flicked and lashed across his high forehead, and the stoic, deep lines etched into his windburned features.

'Jaelot, most likely, which means they're bone stubborn, to have stayed the course through Baiyen Gap.' Restored to himself, Jieret closed the few strides to his horse and vaulted back into the saddle. He snapped a curt hand signal. The swift, all-but-silent flurry of movement that drew his war band from close cover around him did not fire his usual pride and fierce confidence.

The rest of his hunch was too ugly to hazard. Certainly his gift of Sight had never before provoked sickness. Yet Jieret was no spirit to shrink from harsh facts. Survival came first. He had to weigh the frightful possibility that the Teir's'Falenn who embodied clan hopes had suffered a violent blow to the head. If the Master of Shadow was in enemy hands, not only Rathain's future, but the fate of the world rocked on the brink of disaster. Luhaine's given warning had been harshly concrete when defining the grim balance that hung upon Arithon's life thread.

'Ride!' Jieret shouted, his broad shoulders too determined to bend before the abject terror that raked him. His place was to stand at the shoulder of kings, and if need called, like his father, to die there. The anguish hurt worse than a tearing wound, that Ithamon lay fully twenty leagues eastward, on the far side of a chopped spread of ravines and rough, untenanted territory.

He might drive his company until their horses foundered, with nothing gained except grief. At two hundred strong, his hard-bitten war band could not cover the distance without rest. Nor could they forgo the short pauses to hunt, while the small, shaggy hill horses prized for their hardiness scoured the lee hillsides for fodder. They faced nothing less than ten days of hard travel, given fair-weather conditions. Even a select strike force sent in advance would reach the ruin too late to matter.

Bad odds did not reconcile Earl Jieret to the looming possibility of defeat. He would ride past the Wheel of Fate, if need be, to stand with his prince for the passage. Over the next crest, the fresh wind in his face, he counted three hours to sundown.

'Come on, you windbag sack of hot tripes!' He weathered the bucked stride as the surly hill pony flattened ears to the stab of his heels. 'You won't like the life you'll be forced to lead if my prince meets his hour of reckoning.'

When the shortest days ended on Daon Ramon Barrens, the light ebbed from the arch of the sky like water drained out of a bowl. The lingering afterglow lit a band of citrine above the cut-sable folds of the hills notching the western horizon. Early stars claimed the deep cobalt of the zenith, nicked flecks of silver that brightened and burned over the swept rock, and deep-drifted, snow-clad swales. The clan companies led by Earl Jieret called a halt to last until the late-night rise of the moon. They would let the hill ponies recover and graze, and snatch rest and sustenance as they could, while the cold settled biting and bitter, and spiked hoarfrost dusted the thickets.

No fires were lit. Posted scouts stood sharp watch on the ridges, their best assurance no trouble approached the howl of the free-ranging wolf packs.

The clan courier sent out of Halwythwood overtook them at last. Only canny experience let him spot the deep fold where they camped, thinly covered by scrub and dead bracken. He answered the sentry's crisp challenge, well aware that drawn bows would stay trained upon him until a cousin affirmed his identity. Led in by the watch on perimeter patrol, the man found Earl Jieret hunkered down on his bearskin cloak, kneading knuckles that reeked of wintergreen horse liniment into the iron-tight sinews of his neck.

Disheveled, exhausted from unimaginable setbacks, the man delivered the message he had borne like a knife in the chest throughout fifty leagues of hard travel. 'My lord, I bring desperate news from the west.'

'Sit!' Jieret ordered. 'You look ready to fall over.' He unhooked a flask from the thong on his cross belt, a silver-inlaid horn filled with neat brandy. 'Speak again when you're steady.'

The scout was still youthful, if pitifully haggard. He swayed, then crumpled, in sore need of sleep. His fur jacket was matted. Stout leathers were shreds about calves and knees, ripped to ruin on the briar. To close the long lead and overtake the clan war band, he would have run league after league on foot, one arm linked through a stirrup to spell his wearied horse. Nor had he spared time for the rites at the standing stones, to placate the ghosts that whirled thick as floss on the roadway from Caith-al-Caen. Some of their haunted light shone in his eyes as he gathered frayed nerves and related details of the Alliance armed force now mustered and marching from Morvain.

Earl Jieret snapped an oath through shut teeth. A bystander ventured a question.

'No mistake.' Fingers clamped white on the neck of the flask, the courier gasped out the disheartening gist. 'Our scouts snagged a townsman who strayed too far from camp. He talked. We know Lysaer
s'Ilessid
himself's south of Narms. He's got a sunwheel priest and ten veteran officers spearheading a second strike force of experienced headhunters. Ath help us, they're guided. The target of both war bands is the ruins at Ithamon. They're expecting to corner Prince Arithon.'

'Save us all, they will find him.' Jieret shot to his feet. More than strong fumes from the liniment sheened his eyes to an anguished brilliance. 'How has this happened? Jaelot's ahead of us! Morvain and Narms move abroad in deep winter. If Lysaer's involved, we have to presume they're acting in concerted strategy. We could find ourselves facing the brunt of an Alliance campaign on the wide-open ground of the barrens.'

No band of armed clansmen could stand down such numbers, not without forest or mountains to cover them. Nor could Arithon withstand a head-on encounter with his half brother. The affray at Riverton had confirmed the bleak course of the murderous insanity brought on by Desh-thiere's curse. Jieret felt all of a sudden unmoored, as though the harsh cut of the wind scoured through his hollow sense of foreboding. Far too likely, the clan company mustered from Halwythwood might not leave the barrens alive.

For of course, they must fight. Turning tail would save nothing. If Arithon died, and Alliance ways triumphed, then across the four kingdoms Lysaer held in sway, clan bloodlines would be laid waste under a decree of extermination.

His tone sparked to iron, Jieret signaled the perimeter scout, who listened, close-mouthed, at his shoulder. 'Get me Sidir. Wake the other Companions. Tell them we face a disaster.'

Unless a clan counsel could find the means to call down a miracle, Rathain's dwindled liegemen could suffer a repeat of the grief that had blood-soaked the banks of Tal Quorin.

* * *

Under the frost-point blaze of the stars, and amid icy wind in the bracken, the Companions gathered to weigh the course of their forthcoming action. Chafing chilled hands, breaths plumed in the cold, they lit no small fire for comfort. Their wary presence left almost no track on the desolate face of the landscape, with reason. These were the men of Deshir who, as boys, had survived the grim knives of Etarra's vengeance three decades and one year in the past. On Daon Ramon that night, at the side of their chieftain, were nine of the original fourteen who remained of a slaughtered generation. Three others had since died in forays against headhunters, one in Arithon's service at Dier Kenton Vale. Another guarded Halwythwood, as war captain and advisor to Jieret's family. The youngest, and least reconciled to the deaths at Tal Quorin, still maintained an obdurate presence in the endangered clan warrens of Strakewood.

The hate ran bone deep, for what they had lost. Stark as storm-weathered granite in their rawhide-laced furs and worn weapons, they huddled in darkness to answer the feud that never ceased threatening their people. No moon yet shone to reveal their expressions as the dire news was unfolded. Yet Earl Jieret could sense desperation like bared steel in Sidir's scouring silence. The same stifled foreboding was repeated in Theirid's crossed arms, and Braggen's fixed grasp on his sword hilts. Opinions were given in minimal phrases. No man disputed the need to split forces. Arithon s'Ffalenn could not be abandoned to suffer the Mayor of Jaelot's sentence of execution; nor could Lysaer
s'Ilessid
be permitted to savage Daon Ramon with war
u
nder drive of Desh-thiere's curse.

The relentless flaw that gutted each strategy became the unyielding reality of numbers. 'Send too few to Ithamon, we risk losing our prince to the enemy
.'
Sidir pointed out. His habitual, acid-etched clarity was enforced by the ramming stab of a finger. 'Send too many, and the others who ride north to set traps on the Second Age road through the barrens can't prevail. A handful won't buy his Grace any time to escape open land and reach safety.'

No one belabored the unpleasant truth, that the war band which rode to stand down
s'Ilessid
must shoulder a suicide mission. Earl Jieret had witnessed the firestorm of destruction Lysaer's gift of light had visited upon the war fleet at Minderl Bay. The swept, snow-clad downs of the barrens would give his clansmen no shelter. Each foray to divert the Alliance advance must be closed under ruinous disadvantage, from a state of relentless exposure.

'We're going to be targets, no mistake about that.' Theirid spat in contempt, the black-fox tails tied into his clan braid a barbaric mane down his back. 'Can't pin them with arrows, either. Not if they slink like the townbred at Valleygap, and cower beneath their supply wains.'

Braggen laughed, sour. 'Well, they can't very well cram their draft beasts under the axles beside them.' He lifted his massive shoulders in the shrug that trademarked his hot-tempered courage. 'Can't move on Daon Ramon without their supplies. To buy time for our liege, starvation will stall them. The wild game can be hazed off, as well.'

No one dwelled on discussion of the carnage that must surely follow such forays to tweak the tail of the tiger. The Caithwood campaign had left none in doubt of the Alliance intent to eradicate ancient clan bloodlines. Each back-and-forth volley of debate thrashed over which way to divide the inadequate strength of their war band.

'We sleep on it
.'
Earl Jieret determined at length. 'At moonrise in three hours, we'll cast final votes and decide. Dharkaron avenge, if we're wrong, we lose ground just as surely as if we waste time chasing more pointless arguments.'

'We can drink to good hunting.' Sidir loosed a brittle, snarling laugh. 'Who among us thought we would ever die abed? I never did fancy being shut inside walls through a siege.'

In a camaraderie sharpened by pending crisis, Earl Jieret unstoppered his flask and shared his last brandy amid the brotherhood of his Companions. 'May the blood on my blade be Lysaer
s'Ilessid
's
.'
he vowed as he sent them to rest.