Within the Hollow Crown (32 page)

And then, over the sound of the crumbling rocks, and over the dying gasps of the dragon, and through the smoke, and through the fire, and through the blood, Jareld heard the most gorgeous sound he had ever heard.

It was a tenor, singing a beautiful rendition of a beautiful song. It was from some opera, and when Jareld recovered from the concussion, perhaps he would remember which one. But it was an uplifting piece, about dreams, and triumphs, and surviving the death of your father, or some such nonsense.

Jareld couldn’t even remember the translation of the words, but he was comforted by them. He was soothed.

And then he heard another sound he did not expect. It was someone laughing. Jareld turned his head, and saw through the eye that wasn’t covered in blood Michael, lying on his back, most of his bones broken, bleeding, and dying. But he was laughing. Jareld didn’t understand why, but he was laughing.

“He can sing!” Michael said through his laughs/death-coughs, “Who would have thought he could sing?!”

After that, Jareld couldn’t remember much. The singing got louder, and then he and Michael were lifted up and run out of the room. The stones collapsed around them as they went through the doors. Then, Jareld felt himself getting very dizzy, all of a sudden, and he passed out.

Book 7

Futures Forged

Chapter
87: The Siege

The day was growing long.

Landos looked out over the battlefield. The grass just north of Hartstone Castle had become a sea of dead bodies. Almost all of them were from the Kingdom.

Landos had started the battle with approximately fifteen thousand soldiers, fighting against Argos’ twenty-nine thousand. With the Castle around them, the scholarly assumption would be that it was an even fight. But anyone watching the battle knew that the Rone didn’t stand a chance.

The soldiers of the Kingdom fought hard, and fought well. But the Turin seemed to be catching every lucky break in the book, while the Rone seemed to be falling at the first touch of combat. It was a magic that none could explain, even when they could use it. And Argos could use it.

Besides the devastating mismatch between the ranks of soldiers, Argos himself was a factor. At several points, he would unleash a meteor of fire, or a sweep of lightning. Occasionally, he just drew his sword and charged into a group of spearmen. When the melee was over, he was always the only one standing.

Landos watched, helplessly, as his army was depleted. Scores of dead bodies fell in every direction, and the Turin marched nearer to the Castle.

Finally, Landos sounded the retreat. Those soldiers as could make it to the gates ran for cover. The others perished. Landos closed the gates. The siege was on.

If someone had time to count, they would have discovered that on the battlefield outside, ten thousand Rone soldiers had died. By comparison, only two thousand Turin soldiers had perished. It was the greatest loss the Turin had suffered, and it wasn’t nearly enough.

The Turin didn’t have many siege weapons with them, but as it turned out, Argos could double for one in a pinch. The north wall didn’t collapse at the first spell he cast, but after causing a minor earthquake under the northeast corner of Castle Hartstone, the walls came tumbling down.

Landos ran through the halls.

“Calvin!” he shouted, “Calvin!”

The very earth shook as the north wall continued to give way. Landos stumbled a bit, but then kept running. A soldier ran the other way, carrying a missive.

“Have you seen Calvin?” Landos asked the soldier.

“Sir,” the soldier said, “Calvin died at the gate getting the last units in.”

The rumbling stopped, but then the Turin let out a battle cry and charged over the rubble and into the courtyard. Through a window, Landos was able to see the onslaught continue to get closer and closer to the keep.

“Who’s in charge of the west wall?” Landos yelled over the din.

“A Lord Kelliwick from Arwall,” the soldier said.

“Tell him to get his men off the wall,” Landos said. “They’ll do more good in the courtyard than they will dying when the wall collapses.”

“Yes, sir!” the soldier ran off.

Landos kept running. He didn’t even know what he had set out to do, and he was pretty sure it was pointless anyway. They were all going to die.

Chapter
88: The Eye of the Storm

Jareld woke to a warm sensation in his chest.

The warmth started at his diaphragm, then spread to each muscle, each bone, each limb. As it spread, it found pain that Jareld didn’t know was there, but then released the pain before Jareld truly had to experience it. It was soothing. It was refreshing.

Finally, he tried to remember who he was. Before he opened his eyes, the first thing he noticed was the smell. For the first time in a long time, he smelled fresh grass. It was the sweetest smell he could remember.

Then, he became aware of singing in the background. It was the same beautiful tenor, singing a different song now, with a slightly faster tempo and slightly sillier lyrics. Something about a cow falling in love with a fence.

Finally, Jareld opened his eyes. It hurt to do so, because there was a bright light shining down on him. He realized that the bright light was the moon, which was nearly full, and was coming down onto the clearing of grass upon which he was resting.

Then Jareld noticed the woman standing over him, pressing her hand against his abdomen.

“Lady Vye,” Jareld said. “How long…”

“You’ve been unconscious for nearly seven hours, as best as I can tell,” she said. “I was also unconscious for a while.”

Jareld turned his head, feeling his neck muscles move from complete stiffness. Corthos was sitting against a tree, resting. Flopson was in a branch of the same tree, singing.

“Sorry,” Vye said. “I came to you last. It looked like you’d pull through anyway.”

Jareld lifted himself onto his elbows, taking in the landscape. They were near a fortress, which rested up a hill to the south. Currently, they rested in a small alcove of a forest. Jareld could see an old rope ladder that climbed up into a large oak tree. The rope was very old, and probably wouldn’t support more than a child at this point.

“We’re just outside the House of Vye,” Lady Vye said. “This is a place I used to go, when I was younger, with my brothers. When we were leaving the dragon’s lair, I decided to transport us all here. I figured it would be safe.”

Vye recounted briefly how Corthos had carried her out, and how she decided then to open a portal, even if it killed her. It nearly did. Not being able to think clearly, she thought of the one place she was very familiar with, and found the strength to open a door of smoke.

She didn’t accomplish this without a penalty, however. Her left hand, which had been dying, was now completely useless. She hadn’t been able to move it since then. She was wearing a metal gauntlet, which was strapped to her arm with a leather belt. Jareld could see the black veins crawling up her elbow, like little arms of death.

Flopson had already been waiting outside the Great Hall of the Castle Zenith with the unconscious Sarah Deliem (Now Sarah Rone). Jareld knew this much, because he had seen Flopson escape with the Queen while Devesant had been engaged with Michael, Corthos, and Vye.

Corthos and Flopson, the least injured of the group, went back into the Great Hall and retrieved Michael and Jareld, then returned, just as Vye was about to pass out. They barely got everyone through the door before Vye collapsed and the door evaporated.

Corthos had tended to the wounds of everyone as best he could, but eventually Vye, now in a more natural surrounding, had woken up and was able to apply magic to heal herself. Once she was able to do that, her energy returned faster, and she was able to heal Michael, Sarah, and Corthos. But she always needed to rest after each person, and so it had taken quite some time.

Vye further explained that ever since Michael and Sarah had been conscious and healthy, they had retired to the House of Vye, where Vye hoped they were resting comfortably. She didn’t mind sharing with Jareld, however, that she thought the two of them weren’t getting much sleep at all.

“That reminds me of something,” Jareld said.

“Sex?”

“Babies.”

“Aren’t you romantic?” Vye scoffed, sitting against a nearby tree.

“No, there’s something very important…about Michael’s kids.”

“Michael doesn’t have any kids,” Vye said, nodding back at the House of Vye, “Yet.”

Jareld’s mind was a swimming mess. There was something terribly important that he was sure he was supposed to remember, but his body and mind had been through so much in the past weeks…

Jareld turned suddenly when Lady Vye sniffled.

“Are you alright?” Jareld ventured.

“Yeah, yeah,” Vye said, “I’m just exhausted.”

“My friend died, too,” Jareld said. “You know, if you wanted to talk about it.”

Vye smiled.

“Thanks,” she said. “Not yet, though, huh? We may not live long enough to grieve.”

“What are you talking about?” Jareld said.

“Just that there’s plenty of dying left to do,” said a voice behind Jareld, “Though let us hope it isn’t our deaths that must come.”

Jareld stood and brushed himself off. Michael and Sarah entered the alcove, arm in arm.

“Master Jareld,” Michael said, “It is good to see you on your feet.”

“And you, Your Majesty,” Jareld said, bowing. Then, he turned to Sarah, “Your Majesty, Master Jareld of Brimford at your service.”

“A pleasure,” Sarah said, curtseying. “I hear we both owe you much.”

“Just in the right place at the right time,” Jareld said.

“Nonsense,” Michael said. “I doubt one man in a million could have put it all together down there, not to mention getting me out alive using a curtain.”

“You do me too much honor, King Michael,” Jareld blushed.

“Well, as Vye said, we can do all the mourning and praising later, but first, we have one more order of business. I just received the latest information from the Castle Hartstone, and it isn’t good. As things stand, they won’t survive the night. We came back from the brink of death, and we have rested as much as we can be allowed. But now we have to go to war, and it is my hope that our arrival will mark a changing of the tides.”

“How do you figure that five of us are going to change anything?” Vye asked.

“We have this,” Michael said, drawing the Saintskeep and holding it out for the others to see. “I have reason to believe that the power of the Kings of Rone comes from this weapon. That it could give us the strength we need to vanquish our enemy. Will you follow me into battle?”

“Aye, I owe them Turin a few good cuts,” Corthos bellowed, crossing his cutlass over the Sword of Kings.”

“No way I’m missing this fight,” Vye said, adding her blade to the ritual.

“Well,” Jareld said, “You only live once.” He also put his sword in the circle.

“Don’t forget me, stinky-pants.” Flopson’s contribution was his collapsing dagger. But the look in his eyes was, for the first time since anyone could remember, serious.

“For the Kingdom of Rone,” Michael said. They all raised their weapons in a collective, “Hurrah!” It was time to go to war.

Chapter
89: The Battle of Deliem

The company rode swiftly through the night. The moon was bright, the roads were clear, and their horses were fresh. Vye wanted to teleport them there, but Michael thought it would be better if she was fully rested when they faced the enemy.

They finally came over the last hill and beheld the devastation.

Under the night sky, it took some time to gather it all, but the Castle Hartstone was completely surrounded. Dead bodies were everywhere in numbers unfathomable to the eye. The East Wing of the Castle had been destroyed. The North Tower and Wall were gone. The Keep was on fire.

The Turin fought with passion, cohesiveness, and grim determination. The Rone fought in desperation.

“Gentlemen,” Michael said, “Lady Vye. This is it. Whatever it is you think you can do, now is the time to do it. By morning, we may all be dead. But before our deaths, let us be sure the enemy remembers the fight.”

“Where are you going?” Vye asked.

“I’m going to engage the leader,” Michael said.

“As am I,” said Flopson, drawing his pillow.

“No, Flopson,” Michael said, sterner than he had ever spoken to the jester in his life. “I have to fight the villain, because I have the sword. And Vye has to come with me, because I’ll die much faster without her. But anyone else who joins us will die in vain. Flopson, you can do a lot of good out here, but not at my side. This one time I ask you, for only this one time, to find your own path.”

Flopson looked almost hurt, but then straightened up, dropped his pillow, removed his jester’s hat, and saluted. Usually, he would do this in mockery, but everyone there could tell he was doing it in earnest.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” he said, then rode off.

“Let’s go!” Michael said, as he drew the Saintskeep. He did not realize what effect this would have, but it was enormous.

The Saintskeep, called the Sword of Kings, was more than magical. It was imbued with the ability to lead. It would not make a prince out of a pauper, but in the hands of a leader, it could change the tide of battle. It unified. It gave hope. It gave strength.

At once, every soldier of Rone awoke. Even though they didn’t know the line of Kings had survived, or that the King was on the battlefield now, they felt something rise within them. Their hearts beat faster. Their wills turned to iron and their determination became steel. They sensed the opportunity to survive the night, and they were given the desire to grasp victory.

There were fewer than five thousand Rone soldiers left alive, compared to approximately twenty-five thousand Turin, but the fight was finally fair. The magic that Argos was using to make his army superior had been countered. The Saintskeep leveled the battlefield.

Well, it wasn’t quite level. The magic was even, but defending their homes, the Rone were now the better army. And momentum became a factor. Just after the Saintskeep was drawn in battle, Landos ordered the catapults to fire into the heart of the Turin cavalry. The Turin, being accustomed to unexplained victory, couldn’t understand why the volley was well-aimed, nor why it killed more than two hundred men within seconds.

The Turin felt that moment. They could sense that the magic which had protected them for weeks was now failing them. They knew it as their comrades began to die. They suddenly came to the understanding that they couldn’t win. And once someone believes he cannot win, he never will.

Michael charged in, waving his sword high so that all could see it. It glimmered, and the hearts of the Rone were warmed. With Vye on his left, Michael cut a path through all the Turin soldiers that stood before him. Many of the Turin fled at the sight of the Sword. The others were trampled to death.

Jareld did not join the King. For all his heroic talk, he was not prepared for the battle. The stench of death. The scores of the enemy. He was not prepared to fight them all. But as he stood and looked at the devastation, there was one thing he thought he could do.

“Corthos!” he called over the din of battle, “Corthos, come help me!”

“We are in a battle, matey!” Corthos said, dispatching a Turin soldier.

“I know, but I think we can do something very…cool!”

Flopson made good use of himself. He realized that the Turin had been enslaving Rone citizens along the way. These citizens were being used to carry the supplies for the Turin army, under threat of death. Flopson managed to sneak behind enemy lines, without being spotted by any of the Turin, and free those slaves. Then, he armed them all, and had them attack from behind the Turin lines.

Michael and Vye continued to ride into the courtyard. Michael looked about until he spotted the tall, white-haired Turin Master. Finally, in the middle of the field, in the middle of the chaos, in the middle of the night, he encountered Argos.

Argos sensed the Sword. He turned on his horse and stared down Michael and Vye. The three of them dismounted and approached each other. There was no parley. Words were not needed for such an meeting. Michael held forward the Saintskeep. Vye held her own weapon. Argos drew his sword, the Claymore that usually went through two bodies with each swing.

Immediately the melee began. Michael felt he was out of his element, but the Saintskeep seemed to provide him with skill, and he was able to keep up with the monstrous Argos and the right arm of Vye.

Argos immediately tried to kill Michael with the candle spell, knowing that it wouldn’t work on Vye. But now, it seemed, it wouldn’t work on Michael either. The Saintskeep absorbed it.

Usually, the disadvantage of using a Claymore the size that Argos was using was that you couldn’t move it as quickly. But Argos was not limited by such restraints. His movements were fluid, his strikes deadly. It took everything Vye had to keep up, and Michael was only alive by the virtue of his weapon.

Once again, however, Vye realized she was on the defensive. Even now, after all this, she couldn’t gain the initiative. She had to change the balance of the fight.

So, she started to sidestep. She kept trying to get to Argos’ backside, while Michael kept the parry going in front of him. Argos was forced to change his orientation almost constantly, keeping both enemies in front of him.

Vye realized that now she had the initiative. No pair of warriors had ever fought Argos as they were fighting him now. He was reacting, and she could take a chance. So she decided to use magic in her favor. She created a fist of earth, which grew from the ground like a sapling on steroids, and had it grip at Argos’ ankle.

Argos saw this and immediately swept his hand to destroy Vye’s creation.  But that was all Vye needed. In that split second, Vye was able to flank Argos from the other side, which he didn’t have time to anticipate, and cut him across the shoulder.

Argos let out a scream. There was pain in the scream, but there was almost more of something else. Something Vye could only describe as terror.

---

Sandora could feel the tide shifting as well. She was at the vanguard, pushing the Turin ranks through the courtyard, trying to breach the keep. But the Rone were aiming better with their volleys. They were swinging better with their swords. Sandora was tempted to call a retreat, but she knew Argos would never let her live that down. In the most literal sense.

She heard a shout, her own soldiers crying a warning in her direction. She was right under the ruin of the North wall, and some industrious Rone were rolling a huge boulder off the interrupted parapet. The boulder rumbled off the edge, hanging in the air for a split second before finding gravity.

It descended on Sandora like a boot stomping out an insect. But Sandora had lived through worse. A lot worse. She shielded herself, creating a force around her body to absorb the impact. The stone shattered around her, like an egg landing on a tortoise.

It still stung, of course. You don’t put out that kind of energy without feeling it. The clash of a boulder hitting a force is still just a lot of fucking kinetic energy. It’s just that the energy was dispersed. Evened out. It would take Sandora a moment to recover.

But she didn’t have a moment. Because just then, a Knight started charging across the courtyard.

Sandora thought she had gotten rid of all the mounted soldiers. This one must have been at the East wall. But why had he circled around here? And why was he charging only at her, and not the soldiers under her command.

“In the name of the King!” the Knight shouted, “You will answer for the deaths of the Queen and the Prince!”

It was Sir David Noble, scarred and vicious, his lance bearing down on Sandora’s chest. Sandora wheeled around, trying to defend herself. If she had had two more seconds to recover from the boulder, she would have been fine. But Noble had timed his charge perfectly. He was striking between breaths, winning this battle by the splinter of a lance, as the saying goes.

So instead of Sandora sweeping him aside with a wave of her arm, Noble skewered her at the end of his lance. He carried her body twenty paces, like a human kebob, through the broken North wall. He planted the lance into the earth, letting her decorate the battlefield as a testimony to Rone justice.

Then he drew his sword and continued to fight.

---

Jareld ran past the enemies and past the fire. Occasionally, Corthos had to cut down a couple of Turin soldiers if they got too close, but he managed to keep Jareld safe as they entered the courtyard of the Castle Hartstone.

At this point, it was a free for all. Since the destruction of the East Wing, there was really nothing to stop the Turin from flooding the courtyard, and that’s what they were doing. But Jareld ignored them all as he made for the stables.

“If ya want ta leave the fight, we dunnot need new horses!”

“No,” Jareld said, “I don’t want to leave the fight. I want to find a flag.”

“A what?”

“A banner. Listen, Prince Nathaniel was killed here. And according to the timeline Michael gave me, while we were down in the Caves, the body was never transported back. That means the Royal banner is here.”

“So?”

---

Argos could feel the tide turning against him. All his careful planning, his contingencies, his preparation... And now he was facing two fighters that he couldn’t defeat.

And one of them was Michael, with the Saintskeep. He had been promised, by powers greater even than him, that if he brought Sarah to the Dragon’s lair, the Saintskeep would not enter the battle. He had made a pact with dark forces, with the Divinates of this world, that if Michael was lured into the Caves of Drentar, he would not return.

Had they lied to him? Had they betrayed him? Or had Michael overcome their trap? Either way, he feared the second part of the prophecy: That if he fought Michael, he would die. He had gone to great lengths to avoid this encounter, and yet, here at the moment of his victory, Count Michael had come to serve him his defeat.

Argos bent at the knees, then jumped. It was a credit to his magic more than to his well-developed calf muscles that he landed twenty meters away. He just needed some space. Michael and Vye sprinted to his new location, but by the time they arrived, he had already opened a door of smoke, and fled to safety.

The smoke started to dissipate. Vye held her hand up, willing the portal to stay open a moment longer.

“Do we follow him?” Vye asked.

“We shouldn’t let him get away,” Michael said.

“Our victory doesn’t necessarily include his death,” Vye reasoned. “If he flees, that leaves us to clean up the battlefield. Maybe we should consider ourselves lucky.”

Michael frowned.

“No,” he finally said, “If what Halmir said was true, everything that’s happened these last few weeks has been his doing. And I fear that if we let him live, we’ll just be fighting this battle again someday. Any sense of finality will, in fact, include his death.”

“Your Majesty,” Vye said, “It’s your call. But I urge you to let it go.”

“He killed Gabriel,” Michael said, taking a deep breath and jumping through the Gate. Vye steeled herself and followed...

---

Jareld and Corthos ran up the spiral staircase of the south tower. It was, at that point, the only tower that Argos hadn’t crumbled with balls of fire.

They reached the top, and Jareld ran out onto the catwalk. If he was going to do this, he would have to be visible.

He crossed to the north parapet. Arrows flew, swords clashed, the fire in the keep raged. But Jareld ran forward with his singular purpose.

Finally, he reached the parapet, from where he could see the entire battlefield, and the courtyard, and the other towers, and virtually every soldier fighting on either side of the battle.

“Corthos! Now!”

Corthos handed Jareld the post, and then he unclipped the banner. The banner of the King. Jareld put one leg up on the parapet, and waved the banner with all of his might.

“Behold!” he cried at the top of his lungs, “Behold, the King is with us again! The King is with us!”

And then, beyond Jareld’s expectations, a single horn sounded. Whenever the King’s banner is flown in battle, the heralds are supposed to call the Fanfare of the King. Jareld was expecting them all to be dead, or at least to have abandoned their horns. But there was one, somewhere in the depths of the fight, who still had his breath and still had his instrument. Above the din of the fight, everyone now heard the signal of the King.