Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 04 (34 page)

           
I shook my head. "Not a
powerful weapon."

           
"But the only one we have. We
cannot afford another. All we can do is let this rivalry sort itself out—with
what subtle aid we can give the sorting—until the Homanans will listen to
reason." He offered his arm and pulled me up. I blew out my breath in
shock even as Serri pressed against my knee. Men littered the floor. Some were
dead. Some were near it. Others were merely wounded.

           
Much of the Mujharan Guard still
filled the hall, though others remained in the corridor enforcing the Mujhar's
peace.

           
"Gods," I said in despair,
"what madness infects this realm?"

           
"Not madness," Rowan said.
"Rather, call it ambition. The desire for a throne."'

           
"And Carillon's bastard is
behind it."

           
Rowan's expression was horribly
bleak. "How the father would hate the son. - - ."

           
"Would he? Could he
really?"

           
"For this?" Rowan nodded.
"If he could rise up from out of his tomb, he would put an end to this. He
would put an end to his son. But he cannot . . . and so we must do it for
him,"

           
"You would do it?" I
asked, "Could you slay Carillon's son?"

           
Rowan smiled a little. "I am
pledged to the Mujhar of Homana, and after that to his son. Carillon's time is
done; Donal is Mujhar. And the son I will serve is you."

           
I grinned. "You will be an old,
old man."

           
My father grimaced. "And I will
be a dead one. Let us speak of something else." He turned as if to step
out from behind the table and off the dais, but one of his guard approached.

           
"My lord, a message has
arrived." He held out the sealed parchment. "It was to be given to
you at once."

           
"My thanks." He broke the
wax and unfolded the creased parchment. And then he looked at Rowan.

           
"Ships," he said.
"Solindish ships, sighted off the Crystal Isle. Hondarth is in
danger."

           
"And so it begins again."
Rowan wiped and sheathed his bloodied sword. "My lord, how shall you
deploy us?"

           
"I will do it as Carillon once
did, when he was endangered on two fronts. You and I will go to Hondarth. My
sons I will send to Solinde."

           
Rowan smiled a little. "And I
will say of them what once I said of you: they are unschooled in warfare and
the leading of men."

           
"Aye, but they will learn. I
send the Cheysuli with them."

           
Gods, I thought, Solinde.

           
My father looked at his sons.
"I cannot put it more plainly: in the morning you go to war."

           
Gods, I thought, Solinde.

           
"Rujho—get down

           
Even as I lunged out of the saddle I
felt the nip of arrow at shoulder, plucking at the leather of my jerkin.

           
My foot was half-caught in the
stirrup; the horse, shying a single step from the wail and whistle of arrows,
dragged me off-balance. I fell, twisting awkwardly as I tried to free my foot
before my knee was wrenched out of its proper alignment. Heard hum and hiss of
additional feathered shafts; jerked my head aside as fletching dragged at a
lock of tawny hair.

           
"Get down," Ian repeated.

           
"I am down." Irritably, I
jerked my boot from the stirrup and rolled, flattening on my belly, scowling at
my brother. Like me, he lay belly-down in the thin dry grass of the Solindish
plain, barren in the first gray days of winter. "Where are they? How
many?"

           
Ian, peering westward through the
screen of grass, shook his head. He pulled his warbow out from under a hip,
rolled sideways to take an arrow from his quiver, nocked it. Slowly he rose,
hunching behind the thigh-high grass. He blended perfectly with the stalks and
scrubby vegetation: amber, ivory, sienna; no greens, no browns, no richness,
only the dull saffron of banished fell. The land was made bland in brassy
sunlight as it burned through the flat light of a winter's day.

           
Just beyond Ian, at his left, crouched
Tasha, chestnut indistinctness dissected by slanting stalks. Nothing moved to
indicate she lived, not even the tip of her tail. She was stillness itself; I
was reminded, oddly, of the wooden lion in Homana-Mujhar, crouching on the
dais.

           
Serri?

           
He came, even as I thought of him,
dropped low in the slouching walk of a wolf who skulks, avoiding contact with
the enemy. His tail was clamped at hocks, curving inward to brush tip against
loins, protecting genitals.

           
Tipped ears lay back against his skull.
He was hackled from ruff to rump.

           
Beside me, he crouched, much as
Tasha crouched. He stared at the distances. Ihlini, lir. Ahead.

           
I looked at once at Ian, intending
to tell him; saw the grim set of his mouth and realized there was no need for
me to speak. Tasha had already relayed the information.

           
Ihlini. At last. After two months in
Solinde, entangled in skirmishes that did little but waste our time—as well as
wasting lives—we were to meet the true enemy in this war. Not the Solindish,
though they fought with fierce determination. No. Ihlini. Strahan's minions,
who served Asar-Suti.

           
Ihlini. And it meant Ian and I were
summarily stripped of our Cheysuli gifts.

           
Even now I could feel the
interference in the link with Serri. A numbing, tingling sensation, faint but
decidedly present, lifting the hair on my arms, my neck, my legs.

           
Irritability: something insinuated
itself within the link I shared with Serri, shunting the power aside. It was as
if someone had split a candleflame in two, snuffing one half entirely . . .
spilling the other half into a darkness so deep even the light was swallowed
up. I could feel the power draining away into the earth, leaving me, going back
into its mother. And I was not certain it would return.

           
I shivered. How eerie that the gods
give us the gifts of the earth magic, then take them away when we are faced by
the Ihlini. . . .

           
How disconcerting that we are
stripped of our greatest weapon when confronting our greatest enemy.

           
"More than Ihlini," Ian
muttered. "They do not use the bow. They leave that to others."

           
"Atvians?"

           
"Atvian bowmen are perhaps the
most dangerous in existence."

           
"Except for the Cheysuli."

           
Ian cast me a glance. "Do you
forget? There are only two of us. I am the last to decry our warrior skills,
rujho, but I am also the first to face realities. Judging by the number of
arrows loosed, we are badly outnumbered."

           
"Only for the moment. The camp
is not far from here—I will send Serri for reinforcements."

           
Ian nodded grimly. The link no longer
functioned normally, but I trusted Serri's instincts better than my own.

           
As I put my hand on his shoulder,
the wolf rose, turned, loped away, heading eastward. Toward the Homanan encampment.

           
For two incredibly long months we
had been in Solinde, breaching the borders and advancing steadily until we were
easily three weeks from the Homanan border. From Mujhara, farther yet. And from
Hondarth, where our father remained, we were at least a two-months' ride.

           
We had come in with mostly Cheysuli,
but Homanan troops had followed on our heels. It was not war such as I had
expected, being comprised primarily of border skirmishes and raids by
quick-striking Solindish rebels, but I soon learned that death was death,
regardless of its manifestation.

           
Carillon's methods, one of the
captains had told me. It was what defeated Bellam when Carillon came home from
exile. If nothing else, the Solindish have learned in the intervening years.

           
Oh, aye, they had learned. They knew
that if you cannot raise a warhost of thousands, you raise what you can of
hundreds. And use them carefully.

           
How many times? I wondered. How many
more times will Solinde levy war against Homana?

           
"They come," Ian
whispered.

           
Aye, they came. As I crouched in the
thin Solindish grass, I watched the Solindish come. So carefully. So very
carefully; like locusts methodically consuming the life of every stalk, they
trampled down the grass even as they used it for a shield. I could see no men,
no shapes; hear no words or weapons. Only the soft and subtle sibilance of an
approach through winter grass.

           
There was no question the enemy knew
where we were. Though we were screened by the grass even as they were, our
horses marked our presence. Grimly I looked at them: Ian's gray stallion and my
own red roan, browsing idly in the grass. Bits clinked, trappings clattered; Ian's
stallion snorted.

           
And then, abruptly, the horses no
longer grazed. They stared. Westward. Toward the enemy.

           
Serri, I said, hurry. Though I knew
he could not hear me.

           
Ian darted upward, loosed an arrow,
crouched down almost at once. I heard a shout from the enemy—it was of
discovery, not of pain—and realized what Ian had meant to do. They marked our
position very well now . . . and it was time we left it.

           
Ian caught my eye, pointed toward
the horses. It was unlikely we could mount and escape without detection, but we
could use the stallions for a distraction. Also a living screen. Much as I
disliked the thought of sacrificing my horse, I disliked more the thought of
sacrificing myself.

           
I nodded. Flattened. Tried to
belly-crawl toward the horses without disturbing so much of the grass as to
give our purpose away.

           
But we reached neither of the
horses. Without warning, the grass in front of us burst into smoke and flame.

           
It was an acrid, oily smoke that
filmed our faces, our eyes; tried to breach our mouths and make its way down
our throats. I coughed, gagged, spat. My eyes burned.

           
Teared. I could see nothing but
smoke and flame.

           
The horses snorted, squealed, ran.
Westward, away from the enemy.

           
Gods, but how I wished Ian and I
could do the same.

           
But we could not see to do it. We
could not even breathe.

           
Out of the smoke there came a man,
and then another.

           
Solindish, with swords in their hands
and determination in their eyes. Another, Another. But I could not see to count
the others.

           
Beside me, Ian lurched to his feet.
I wanted to jerk him down again, to catch an arm and jerk, but I did not.

           
I could only cough, wheeze, spit—and
watch as he loosed arrows from a bow that trembled from the trembling of his
hand upon it. He could not see, and yet he fought.

           
Two of the Solindish went down at
once; Ian's skill was such that even half-blinded, even choked by acrid smoke,
he could find the target. In this case, two. And in silence he nocked yet
another arrow.

           
More men stepped out of the
billowing smoke. And behind them came the Duini.

           
I knew him at once. Somehow, I knew
him, though I had never seen him.

           
Blood calling to blood? No. That was
Strahan's weapon, to make me think we were linked through blood and heritage.

           
And yet, it made me wonder.

           
Much as my brother had, I lurched
upward to my feet.

           
I jerked my sword from the sheath at
my hip. The first man came in with his rusted blade—rusted blade—and swung at
my head. It surprised me; not that he would strike, but that he left himself so
open. No swordsman, this. Just a man. A man with an old, old sword. And a man
about to die.

           
A single step forward, even as I
ducked beneath the blow. A single thrust with my own blade. I felt the tip cut
through the leather of his belt, scrape momentarily against a soft brass
buckle, continue onward into belly, parting flesh, muscle, the vessels thick
with blood. And how it spilled, the blood. How it ran out of the man to stain
the fabric of his tunic, the silver of my steel; to splash, drop by rubescent
drop, against the thirsty stalks of saffron Solindish grass and dye it lurid
crimson.

           
I unsheathed the blade yet again,
pulling it from the human scabbard, and turned to face the enemy once more.

           
This time it was the Ihlini.

           
Smoke peeled back from his shoulders
as he crossed the ground to me. He wore gray, a pale lilac gray, twin to the
smoke billowing at his bidding. His hair was black, his eyes blue; I thought at
once of Hart, my second son.

           
"My lord," he said,
"a message from Strahan." The Ihlini was calm, quiet-spoken. And he
smiled. I judged him only a year or two older than myself. Young, strong,
powerful. Filled with the confidence of his mission. Consumed by his
dedication. "He says: 'Tell Donal's cub he should never have wed Gisella.
Tell Donal's cub one day he will come to me.' "

           
The sword hung from my hand. I had
only to lift it—

           
But I did not. He had taken the
intention from me,

           
"No doubt," I answered.
"No doubt I should not have, because it will be Strahan's undoing. I have
children of the woman, Ihlini—sons. Sons. And so the new links are
forged."

           
The smoke was a nimbus around him,
clinging to his shoulders, hands, boots, like seasail to a spar. It rose,
billowed, built a wall, swallowing those around us until we were two men alone,
confronting one another across generations of hatred, distrust. . . fear?

           
Could it be the Ihlini feared us?

           
Honesty undermines the falsehoods of
arrogance: I knew I feared the Ihlini. And I was not afraid to admit it.

           
Silence lay around us. Within the
walls of smoke there was no sound. The world had surely stopped. And without?
Perhaps the wheel had warped; I thought he had made the time to stand quite
still.

           
I faced him. "Strahan has said
Ihlini and Cheysuli are kin. Children of the Firstborn."

           
He smiled a little. "It is said
we are."

           
"Do you believe it?"

           
"I know better than to
disbelieve a thing that may be true." He shrugged; ash spilled down his
shoulders.