Authors: Tim Akers
* * *
A sound reached Ian as he lay in his bedroll—a soft murmuring from the night. He rolled to his feet and stared into the darkness. Beyond the perimeter of the camp, he could see shadows pooling. He crept closer.
A single rider waited at the edge of the forest. The man held a spear across his lap and stared between the trees, shifting in his saddle to peer into the murk. The man’s horse cropped the grass at the tree line. The sound of the beast’s teeth clapping together was what had drawn Ian’s attention.
The man could be one of the Tenerran knights, driven from Greenhall and making his way north to the safety of the Fen, independent of the Blakley column. He could be a scout of House Adair, or Halverdt, or the outrider for a larger force. Or he might be a lordless knight, unfortunate enough to get caught along the border in difficult times.
Ian looked back to the camp, and saw Sir Doone crouching twenty feet further down the tree line, staring at him. She signaled him back, then crept into the shadows. Ian followed. They met among the sleeping knights of their company.
“Thinking of saying hello?” she hissed at him.
“No, of course not. We don’t know who it is.”
“Not yet, but he’s none of ours.”
“He could be a scout from House Adair.”
“No rider from the Fen Gate would be caught south of the Tallow, not since Gwen Adair stirred the pot.” Doone felt along the ground by her bedroll, coming up with a pair of spears. She pushed one into Ian’s hands. “He doesn’t seem to have noticed our presence. So we watch, and if he sees more than he should, we stop him.”
Ian nodded. Together they snuck back to where the rider sat, then split up, finding his flank and waiting. The man had moved farther into the forest, perhaps just following his horse’s appetite, perhaps because he thought he saw something among the trees.
The rider wore armor, perhaps brigandine, perhaps simple hunter’s leather, but his spear was too long for boar-hunting. Ian tried to get closer, to see if there was a tabard across his chest, or barding on the horse.
His heel came down in mud, his leg slid forward, his back crunched against the dry bark of a tree. He held his tongue, but the sound of his fall carried through the forest.
The rider straightened but didn’t turn his head. Instead, he started to ride slowly out of the forest, approaching the crest of the hill where Ian and Malcolm had observed the Tallow earlier that day. He moved without panic or speed.
Maybe he didn’t hear…
Sir Doone stepped out of the trees and let fly. Her spear arced silently through the air and thumped into the rider’s shoulder. The man twisted but didn’t fall. A second later he spurred the horse forward. In moments he would be over the crest and out of range of their spears.
“Idiot, throw!” Doone yelled. Ian snapped out of his horror and stood, running out of the tree line and hauling back with the spear. It would be a long throw, and hard to make, but it felt good as he released. He watched as the spear reached the top of its flight, hung there for a moment, then dipped and raced back to the ground.
It landed quietly in the ground, the shaft humming. The rider thundered past it, up the hill, and then disappeared over the ridge.
“Godsfuck,” Doone spat. “Wake your father, and the rest as well—we need to set out immediately. With luck he’ll bleed to death before he reaches help. They’ll know we’re out here, but hopefully…”
She drifted to silence as another sound rolled over the plains. There was a shout, and then a pair of flames crested the hill: a pair of spearmen, torches held high, the tri-acorn and cross of House Halverdt on their chests. They yelled down the hill, and then a new thunder rose from the grass.
A column of riders came over the hill. They followed the scouts’ waving torches, the sound of their passing like clattering metal and falling stones.
Doone was already running. Ian turned and followed, shouting for his father to wake, for the knights of Tener to gather arms and prepare to fight. The first torches winked to life among the trees, and the sound of sleep-addled knights and their attendants mingled with the gathering of steel.
The war had found them.
It would not wait till morning.
* * *
Malcolm woke to strange lights among the trees and the taste of blood in his mouth. He was standing, naked, with blade in hand. A man was dying at his feet.
“My lord!” a voice called from his left. Malcolm turned and saw a knight rushing in his direction. The man faltered at the sight of the lord of Houndhallow naked and soaked in blood, but only for a second. “We are found, my lord.”
“I am awake,” Malcolm muttered. The knight blinked, nodded, and stepped close.
“A Suhdrin scout stumbled on us. Your son and Sir Doone thought to ambush the rider, but he was not alone. We don’t know their number or bearing, but they are upon us.” The knight glanced around, looking for something to cover Malcolm’s body. Malcolm recognized the man, but couldn’t put a name to his face. One of MaeHeart’s bannermen, he thought, but without tabard or the light of Strife, Malcolm couldn’t be sure.
The knight retrieved a cloak and placed it on Malcolm’s shoulders.
“It’s fine,” Malcolm said, brushing the cloak aside. He looked down at himself. His body, ridged in scars and gray with hair and rippled fat, shivered in the night air. The hulking musculature that had been his youthful pride was turned to crust and crumb, old bones sticking through skin as weary and worn as parchment. He straightened his back, threw back his shoulders, and scanned the battlefield. “I thought it was a dream.”
“No, my lord.”
“Then let us fight. Gather the knights to the center and leave the spears among the trees. Get rid of those lights, in case they have archers on the ridge. We don’t want to give away our numbers or position, if possible.”
“Yes, my lord,” the knight said, then hurried away. Malcolm called after him.
“Where is my son?”
“None know, my lord!” the man yelled as he disappeared into the shadows. Malcolm sighed and blinked into the darkness. There was a steady stream of torches pouring down from the ridgeline and into the forest, moving fast and bounding, as though on horses. There were voices all around, and the clash of steel. He looked down at the dead man at his feet, put a toe to the corpse’s shoulder and turned it over. Suhdrin colors on his chest, and fair hair on his scalp. Good. He hadn’t mistakenly killed one of his own in a waking delirium.
This moment of peace was interrupted by a push in the darkness. The trees around Malcolm were suddenly crowded with knights and men-at-arms, all in various states of undress, trying to escape the onslaught. Horses appeared among them, the riders striking down at the defenders, spraying blood and fear. Malcolm was moved back, stumbling as the fleeing Tenerrans pushed away from their attackers.
“Enough!” Malcolm yelled over the fray. “Men of Houndhallow, to me! Rally! Rally!”
The footmen around Malcolm paused, surprised to find themselves in the presence of their lord. He shouldered them aside and rushed the closest rider. The man was hewing blindly through the press with a horseman’s axe, heedless of how far ahead of his fellows he had gotten. Malcolm slid to the man’s side, avoiding the dashing hooves of his mount, waiting until the rider turned toward him.
The man looked down at the naked, scarred, wild-eyed attacker at his boot, and sneered.
He raised his axe.
Malcolm swung twice, fast and long, the bare tip of his blade dancing across the long muscles of the rider’s chest, just beneath the armpit. The Suhdrin’s right arm went limp, and the axe with it, the weight too much and the fury of battle too great. The axe cartwheeled to the ground. The rider drew a short blade with his other hand and tried to stab Malcolm in the face, but he danced back, forward, and back again, hammering the forte of his sword into the man’s gut. The rider fell, and then the horse turned back the way it had come, galloping a path through the attackers.
The retreating men of Tener rallied, rushing around Malcolm to take the battle forward. Malcolm followed, screaming and naked and blade-hungry, disappearing into the night with his sword held high and the blood of his foes in his mouth.
* * *
The battle continued until morning, and by the time Strife’s warmth found the shadows of the forest, there were many dead among the trees. Half of Malcolm’s host lay silent, most cut down before they could don armor or defend themselves, lost in those first few chaotic moments of the attack.
Three times their number of Suhdrin had fallen, half of them the riders who had charged into the woods, the rest archers and spearmen who had followed their brothers into battle, only to be trampled during the rout. The last moments of the fight had been grim, exhausted men and women battling until the breath left their lungs and the strength was gone from their bodies. It reminded Ian of the lesser melee at Greenhall, when he had watched Martin Roard fight in mud and dishonor, seeking some glimpse of what true battle would feel like.
The column had been a scouting patrol, riding as quietly as they were able among the foothills south of the Tallow, fortunate enough to stumble on the Tenerran campsite in the darkness, and unfortunate enough to find battle. Those who had not died in the darkness were fleeing east, to find the godsroad and reinforcements.
Malcolm stood on the ridge, watching the survivors beat hooves through the whirling grass. Ian came to stand beside him.
“Father,” Ian said, “I’ve brought your robes.”
“Robes?” Malcolm asked. He looked down. He was still naked, the scraggly hair on his chest and loins flaked with blood, his limbs smeared with mud and sweat. He was shivering in the first light of dawn. “Yes, thank you.”
Ian helped his father cover himself, then stared down at the retreating column.
“A good fight,” the younger Blakley said.
Malcolm snorted with contempt.
“A bloody mess. Half of those who are dead never woke up, and none of them had time to prepare for the fight to come.” He shrugged deeper into the robes, clenching them to his chest, hugging the dented sword to his ribs. “And those riders will tell tales of mad, naked, bloody pagans howling through the woods.”
“Do you think any of them knew they faced the lord of Houndhallow?” Ian asked with a smirk.
“Gods grant that they don’t,” Malcolm snapped. “Gather the men. Get them on their horses. Array the dead and bless them to Cinder, then give them to the forest. We have no time for burial rites.”
“Father…”
“I will mourn their names at the Fen Gate, and raise tribute to them in Houndhallow,” Malcolm said irritably. “The gods will see them to the quiet. But we must ride!”
“We may not have the opportunity,” Ian said. He pointed down the narrow defile between rolling hillocks. A host was riding toward them from the east. Three abreast and winding over the hills like a river, the riders sounded horns as they approached.
“Well, gods be good.” Malcolm squinted in their direction, letting the robe fall from his shoulder. “At least we have friends to guide us.”
Ian peered at the column of riders. At their fore, a banner slipped free of its silk, and then caught its colors in the wind. It was the red and black of the Fen Gate.
The iron fist of Adair.
G
WEN RODE SWIFTLY
down the hill, gathering the view. A tangle of men on foot paced along a ridge just north of the woods. To the west, there was a column of riders in full retreat, their line ragged and panicked. They flew no colors, but Gwen knew Suhdrin scouts when she saw them, with their high saddles and meaningless horns. They thought of themselves as junior knights, and often raced into battles that would be better harried, charging shield walls when their training and equipment suited a softer approach.
The men on the ridge were another matter. They looked a loose group, in varying uniform and, though armed, seemed to lack the cohesion of a military force.
When her scouts had brought word of torches and war along the border, Gwen expected to find a Tenerran column in full regalia, perhaps marching west from Dunneswerry, or returning from action deeper in Suhdra. Now she worried that she had roused her banners and ridden south in support of a band of mercenaries, or worse.
“Form a round and fly the banners,” Gwen called over her shoulder. “I will speak to their leader. Don’t hesitate to strike if you see trouble.”
“I see trouble enough from here,” Sir Brennan said.
“They look too ragged to be much threat,” Gwen answered.
“Mayhap, but Acorn’s men found threat enough.”
“Aye, well, who’s to account for Suhdrin fear?” Gwen laughed. “Stay your hand. If they saw fit to thrash some of Halverdt’s men, then I’ll see fit to speak with them.”
“They have colors, my lady,” Sir Baxter said from her flank.
“Oh?”
“There. The tall one on the hill. I’ll swear he’s wearing the hound.”
Gwen narrowed her vision. Sure enough, a few of the men milling about the ridge were wearing black and white, with the Blakley hound on their chests or emblazoned on their shields.
“Perhaps they’ll have word of their lord,” Gwen said. “I’m sure the duchess of Houndhallow would be happy of that.”
“Long as the news is good,” Brennan answered. “If they come from Greenhall, perhaps Sir Merret is among them.”
“Gods grant it,” Gwen said. She hadn’t liked sending Sir Merret to Halverdt’s court, but her father insisted that the duke of Houndhallow and the other Tenerran knights celebrating the Allfire should be warned of what trouble might be coming their way.
In silence they covered the short distance between hills. Her men rounded behind her, forming a circle of swirling cavalry lines, bright with spear and banner. Gwen took Sir Brennan with her, and rode up the ridge to meet the loose crowd of swordsmen who waited. They looked rough, blood spattered and tired to a man. There were women among their number, as well, all looking as if they had spent the night slaughtering cattle. They watched her indifferently.
“Who among you can speak for this host?” she asked as she rode up.