“History repeating itself, eh?” Arkoniel considered this, then leveled a stern finger at Tharin, Ki, and Lynx. “Don’t you leave her side, you hear me? A dead warrior is even less use than a figurehead.”
They swept down on the steading with drawn swords. A low earthen wall surrounded the house, barns, and three stone-and-wattle corrals. Tobin and her warriors rode down the few outlying pickets and cleared the walls, hacking down any defenders who ran to meet them.
It was Tobin’s first mounted fight, but she felt the same inner calm as she hacked down the swordsmen who tried to unhorse her. She fought in silence, but heard Ki and Tharin shouting as they fought beside her, and Grannia’s women screamed like demons. Pale hands waved and gestured over the top of a corral, and Tobin could hear the screams of the captives there.
Lynx rode into the thick of the fight and dismounted.
“No!” Tobin shouted after him, but he was already gone. If he was determined to court death, there was nothing she could do for him.
The Plenimarans fought fiercely, but were outnumbered. Not one was left alive when the battle ended.
Ignoring the dead, Tobin rode to the nearest corral. It was filled with women and children from Ero. They wept and blessed her as she helped tear down the palings of the gate, and crowded around her horse to touch her.
Every Skalan child had heard dark tales of people being carried off to Plenimar as slaves, a practice unheard of in the western lands. Those lucky enough to escape and find their way home brought dark tales of degradation and torment.
A woman clung to Tobin’s ankle, sobbing and pointing toward the barn. “Never mind us! You must help them in the barn. Please, General, in the Maker’s name, help them!”
Tobin dismounted and pushed through the crowd and ran to the open barn door with Ki at her heels. A fallen torch smoldered in a pile of hay, and what they saw in that smoky light froze them in their tracks.
Eighteen naked, bloody men stood against the far wall, arms held over their head as if in surrender. Most had had their bellies slashed open; intestines spilled down around their feet like ropes of grisly sausage.
“Tharin!” she shouted, picking up the torch and stamping out the burning hay. “Tharin, Grannia, get in here. Bring help!”
Lynx came up, then staggered back, retching.
Tobin and the others had heard dark tales of what Plenimarans did with captured warriors. Now they saw it for themselves. The men had been beaten, then stripped, and their hands pulled over their heads and nailed in place through the wrists. The Skalan attack must have interrupted the enemy at their sport, for three had not yet been disemboweled. To Tobin’s horror, a number of those who had been were still alive, and began to struggle and cry out at her approach.
“Lynx, go for healers,” Tobin ordered.
Tharin had come in, and caught Lynx by the arm as he turned to obey. “Wait a moment. Let me have a look first.”
Tharin let go of Lynx and drew Tobin close, speaking low into her ear as other soldiers crowded in at the door. “These that are cut open? Not even a drysian could put them right and it can take days to die.”
Tobin read the truth in his friend’s pale eyes and nodded. “We’ll speed them on.”
“Leave it be. They understand, believe me.”
“But not those three who aren’t butchered. We’ve got to get them down. Send someone for tools.”
“Already done.”
One of the three lifted his head at their approach, and Ki groaned. “Oh hell, Tob. That’s Tanil!” The man next to him was alive, as well, but had been castrated. The third was dead or unconscious.
Tobin and Ki went to Tanil and got their arms around him, lifting him to take the weight off his nailed wrists.
Tanil let out a hoarse sob. “Oh gods, it’s you. Help me!”
Grannia and several of her women went to work with farriers’ pliers while others held the wounded men upright. The one who’d been castrated let out a scream as the nails came loose, but Tanil gritted his teeth, lips curled in a silent snarl of pain. Tobin and Ki lowered him to the ground and Lynx threw his cloak over him and cut strips from it to bandage the wounds.
Tanil opened his eyes and looked up at Tobin. She tossed her helm aside and stroked the dark hair back from his brow. He’d been badly beaten, and his eyes were vague.
“Korin?” he panted, eyes wandering from face to face. “I lost him … Stupid! I turned and he was … I have to find him!”
“Korin is safe,” Ki told him. “You’re safe, too. We made it, Tanil. Tobin’s brought Atyion back to save the city. It’s all right, now. Stay still.”
But Tanil didn’t seem to understand. Throwing off the cloak, he struggled weakly to get up. “Korin. I lost him. Got to find …”
A red-haired woman who’d been among the captives knelt by Tobin and touched her arm. “I’ll tend to him, Highness, and the others. This was my farm. I’ve got all I need for them.”
“Thank you.” Tobin stood up and wiped a hand across her mouth. Some of the disembowled men had been taken down and laid out in the hay with cloaks pulled over their faces.
Tharin was dealing with those who still lived. As Tobin watched, he stepped close to one still nailed. He spoke close to the man’s ear and Tobin saw the dying man nod. Tharin kissed him on the brow, then quickly plunged his dagger up under his ribs, into his heart. The man shuddered and went limp. Tharin stepped to the next man.
Tobin turned away, not wanting to see more, and stumbled into a young woman who’d come up behind her. She was dressed in the tattered remains of a silk gown. Sinking to her knees at Tobin’s feet, she mumbled, “Forgive me, Prince Tobin, I only wanted to thank—” She looked up and her eyes went wide.
“I know you, don’t I?” Tobin asked, trying to place her. She seemed familiar, but she’d been beaten, too. Her face was too bruised and swollen to recognize. Someone had bitten her on the shoulder, and the wound was still bleeding.
“I’m Yrena, my—” She started to say “prince” and stopped, still staring.
“Yrena? Oh!” Tobin felt her face go scarlet. “You were—”
The courtesan bowed her head, confusion still plain on her face. “Your birthday gift, Highness.”
Tobin was aware of Ki staring at her as she raised the woman by the hand. “I remember you, and your kindness, too.”
“It’s more than repaid, for the fate you spared me tonight.” Yrena’s eyes filled with tears. “Whatever else I can do, I will.”
“You could help with the wounded,” Tobin replied.
“Of course, Highness.” Yrena took Tobin’s hands in hers and kissed them, then went to help the red-haired woman. Sadly, there was little left to do. Only one other man lay beside Tanil. All the others were dead, and soldiers were singing the dirge.
Tharin was wiping his knife with a rag. “Come away, Tobin,” he said softly. “There’s nothing more to do here.”
A scream rang out beyond the house, then another, followed by shrill Skalan hunting cries.
“We must have missed a few,” said Tharin. “Do you want prisoners taken?”
Tobin looked back at the mutilated Skalans. “No. No prisoners.”
Chapter 56
The Wormhole stronghold was lost during the fourth day of the siege. The Plenimarans were systematically burning the districts of the city and Iya watched from a distance as the stone buildings above the Wormhole blazed like furnaces. Old Lyman and the others too old or infirm had been sped on, passing their life force into friends or former apprentices. There had been no safe place to move them.
The city was unrecognizable. The last of the free wizards crept through the raddled landscape like ghosts. Even the enemy had forsaken the wasteland they’d created, massing instead around the smoke-blackened bastion of the Palatine.
Iya and Dylias gathered the survivors near the east gate that night, sheltering in the ruins of a granary. Of the thirty-eight wizards she’d known here, only nineteen were lef
t, and eight were wounded. None were warriors, but they’d moved with stealth and attacked small forces by surprise, banding together to use their newfound strength against necromancer and soldiers alike.
Some of them had fallen by magic—Orgeus had been caught in a magical blast of some sort and died instantly. Saruel the Khatme, who’d been with him, had lost the hearing in one ear. Archers or swordsmen had killed others. None had been taken alive.
Too many precious lives lost, Iya thought, keeping watch through that long night. And too much power gone already.
As she’d suspected, wizards could draw strength from one another if they chose and it was compounded, not diminished. The fewer of them there were, the less power they could muster. And yet they had fought well. As near as she could tell, they’d killed all but a few of the necromancers. Iya had killed three herself, slaying them with the same heat she’d used to melt the cup the night she’d first visited the Wormhole. She’d never turned that on a living being before; they’d fizzled and burst their skins like sausages. It had been a most satisfying sight.
“What do we do now?” a young wizard named Hariad asked, as they crouched with the others in the smoky granary, sharing what food they’d been able to scavenge.
All eyes turned to Iya. She’d never claimed to be their leader, but she had brought the vision. Setting aside the stale crust she’d been eating, she rubbed at her eyes and sighed. “We’ve done all we can, I think. We can’t get into the Palatine, and we’re no match for an army. But if we can get out, we might be of some use to Tobin when she arrives.”
And so it was decided. Iya and her ragged defenders abandoned the city and fled under cover of darkness and magic, making their way through the scattered Plenimaran pickets beyond the ruins of the north gate.
Following the same route Tobin had taken three nights earlier, they found their way to the copse where Eyoli still lay hidden. She expected to find a corpse, for she’d had no word from him since the night he was wounded. He’d managed one message spell, telling her of the ambush, then nothing.
Instead, she was amazed to find him unconscious but alive. Tobin had left him bundled in Plenimaran cloaks beneath a large oak, with half a dozen canteens around him. The crows had been busy among the dead scattered on the open ground beyond the trees, but the young mind clouder was untouched.
It was a cold, clear night. They built a small fire and made camp under the trees. Iya gave Eyoli what help she could and he came to at last.
“I dreamed—I saw her!” he croaked, reaching weakly for her hand.
Iya stroked his brow. “Yes, we all did.”
“Then it’s true? It was Prince Tobin all along?”
“Yes. And you helped her.”
Eyoli smiled and closed his eyes. “That’s all right, then. I don’t mind about the rest.”
Iya stripped the crusted bandage from his shoulder and wrinkled her nose at the smell. The wound was full of pus, but there was no sign of the spreading rot. She let out a sigh of relief. She’d grown fond of this fearless young man, and come to depend on him, too. She’d lost count of the times he’d passed through the Harriers’ net, carrying messages. He’d mastered the message spell, too, which still eluded her.
“Saruel, bring what simples you have left,” she called softly. Iya wrapped herself in her cloak and leaned back against the tree while the Aurënfaie cleaned the wound. Summoning what strength she had left, she sent out a seeing spell, skimming above the darkened countryside to the Palatine. They still fought there, but the dead lay everywhere and the three necromancers she’d been unable to hunt down or vanquish were busy before the gates.
Turning her mind north, she saw Tobin and her raiders bearing down on a Plenimaran outpost, and the army that followed close behind. “Come, my queen,” she murmured as the vision faded. “Claim your birthright.”
“She has claimed it,” a cold voice whispered close to her ear.
Opening her eyes, Iya saw Brother crouched beside her, his pale thin lips curled in a sneer.
“Your work is done, old woman.” He reached toward her, as if to take her hand.
Iya saw her own death in those bottomless black eyes, but summoned a protection spell just in time. “No. Not yet. There’s more left for me to do.”
The spell held, rocking the demon back on his haunches. He bared his teeth at her. Freed from Tobin, he seemed even less human than before. He had the greenish cast of a corpse. “I don’t forget,” he whispered, slowly melting into the darkness. “Never forget …”
Iya shuddered. Sooner or latter this piper would demand his pay, but not yet. Not yet.
A sound like thunder woke them at dawn. The earth shook and twigs and dead leaves rained down around them. Iya eased the stiffness from her back and limped to the edge of the trees with the others.
Their little copse was about to become an island caught between two great opposing waves. A dark mass of horsemen was nearly upon them from the north and Iya made out the banners of Atyion and Ilear in the forefront. To the south, a host of Plenimaran infantry was marching to meet them. In minutes they’d be at the center of a battle.
And where are you in all that, Arkoniel? she wondered, but knew a sighting spell would be wasted energy. There was no way to help him, even if she knew where he was.
The attack on the farmstead was no more than a raid, and a bit of good luck in the dark. No ballad or lesson had prepared Ki for the reality of battle.
Somehow word of their coming had reached the city. They’d gone less than half a mile from the farm when they saw a large force advancing to meet them.
Ki had listened as well as he could to old Raven’s strategy lessons and histories, but he was happy enough to leave such things to Tobin and the officers. His only thought was to do his duty and keep his friend alive.
“How many?” Tobin asked, reining in.
“Two thousand or so,” Grannia called back. “And they’re not stopping to set stakes.”
Tobin conferred briefly with Tharin and Lord Kyman. “Put foot and archers in the fore,” she ordered. “Atyion’s horse will take right wing, Ilear on the left. I’ll stay at the center with my guard and Grannia’s company.”
The Plenimarans did not stop to parlay or entrench, but came at them in ordered ranks, spears gleaming in the sunlight like a field of silvery oats. Banners of red, black, gold, and white tilted on standards at the front. The forward lines marched in tight squares and used tall rectangular shields to form a wall and roof against arrows.
The Skalan archers went forward first, in five ranks of a hundred each. Aiming high, they shot over the shield line and sent wave after whistling wave of feathered death into the ranks of infantry behind them. The Plenimarans answered with flights of their own and Ki wheeled his horse and threw his shield up to protect Tobin.
Orders flew up and down the front line, bellowed from sergeant to sergeant. Tobin raised her sword and the foot soldiers set off at a trot to meet the Plenimaran line.
Tobin watched for an opening, then gave the signal again and kicked her mount forward. Ki and Tharin flanked her as they went from trot to canter to full gallop. When he could make out the faces of the enemy Ki drew his sword with the others and joined in the war cries.
“Atyion for Skala and the Four!”
They crashed into the melee and very nearly came to grief. A pikeman caught Tobin’s charger in the side and it reared. For one awful instant Ki saw Tobin’s helmeted head framed against the cloudy blue sky above him. Then she was falling, tumbling backward into the maelstrom of surging horses and men.
“Tobin!” Tharin cried, trying to urge his horse through the press to get to her.
Ki leaped from the saddle, dodging and ducking as he sought a flash of her surcoat. A horseman knocked him sprawling, then he was rolling to avoid the trampling hooves that seemed to come at him from every side.
It turned out to be the right direction, for suddenly she was there in front of him, laying about with her swo
rd. Ki ducked another rearing horse and dashed to her, putting his back to hers just as a Plenimaran knight broke through and swung a saber at her head. Ki caught the blade with his own and felt the shock of it all the way to his shoulder.
Tharin rode free of the press and brought his blade down on the man’s head, knocking him off his feet. Ki finished the job.
“Come on, Kadmen has your horses!” he shouted.
He and Tobin mounted, but were soon afoot again as the line ground to a halt. It was like scything an endless hayfield, this fighting. Their sword hands were blistered and numb and glued to their hilts with blood before the enemy finally broke and ran.
“What happened?” Tobin asked as they climbed back into the saddle.
“Colath!” the cry came down the line. “Colath has come to our aid.”
“Colath?” Ki shouted. “That’s Lord Jorvai. Ahra will be with him!”
The Plenimarans were on the run by then, with Jorvai’s orange-and-green banner close behind.
“No quarter!” Tobin cried, raising her sword. “After them, riders, and give no quarter.”
Eyoli was too sick to move, and there was nowhere to take him anyway with the two armies clashing around them. Iya cast an occlusion over him where he lay and set wards to keep him from being trampled. Arrows sang through the foliage and Iya heard a cry, then the dull thud of a body hitting the ground.
“Iya, here. Hurry!” Dylias called.
A party of Plenimaran archers was running toward the trees. Iya joined hands with Saruel and Dylias, and they began the chant. Power surged through them and with the others Iya pointed a hand at the enemy. A flash like lightning sizzled from the wizards’ fingertips and twenty men fell, struck dead in an instant. Those few who survived turned tail and ran.
“Run, you dogs. For Skala!” Dylias cried, shaking his fist at their backs.
The battle swirled back and forth across the plain all morning and the wizards manned the copse like a fortress. When the last of their useful magic was spent, they took to the treetops and hid there.