“Noble knights, brave sirs! I come from Lord Wertwin,” the breathless soldier said as he flung himself from his saddle. “We were on our way here and were joined by the enemy.” He gulped air; sweat ran down his neck and into his tunic. His armor was battered and dashed with blood.
“How far?” asked Ronsard.
“No more than a league, sir,” the knight wheezed.
“What was the disposition of the battle when you were sent to find us?”
The knight shook his head slowly; his face was grave. “There is little hope. The enemy is strong, and there are many of them. My lord was surrounded on three sides, his back to the lake that lies at the edge of the forest.”
“There is no time to lose!” shouted Ronsard. “Marshal, sound the trumpet! We move at once!” He dashed to his charger and began shouting orders to the men who had gathered around to see what the commotion foretold.
In three heartbeats the greensward was a confusion of knights buckling on armor and clamoring into their saddles. Out of chaos emerged a ready-mounted, fearsome host. Theido and Ronsard each took their places at the head of the column, and the army moved off at a gallop, leaving the armorers and squires to lead the wagons and follow along behind.
The clash of battle could be heard long before it was seen. The king’s forces dropped down the wooded slope into a broad, grassy bowl, which formed the higher end of the lake’s basin. Once below the level of the lower trees, they could see that the enemy had indeed surrounded Wertwin’s troops and were attempting to push them into the lake.
Theido and Ronsard ranged their army along the rim of the bowl and, when the knights were in position, sounded the attack. They came swooping down out of the wood and encompassed the field, driving straight into the thick of the enemy.
The startled Ningaal turned to meet this unexpected charge and found themselves blade to blade with a fresh foe. Ronsard half expected that the sight of the king’s knights descending in numbers upon them would send the horde scattering into the wood, where they could be driven to earth like cattle.
But the warlord Gurd’s men were seasoned to battle. They dug in and met the flying charge head-on. Many Ningaal lost their lives in that first surge. But dauntless and seemingly immune to fear, those who survived the onslaught merely stepped over the bodies of their comrades and fought on.
Theido forced a passage through to the shoreline of the lake and struck toward where Wertwin labored in the thick of the battle. When Theido reached him, the brave commander’s horse’s hind legs were in the water. Several valiant knights, having been unsaddled, had drowned along the strand in shallow water, unable to right themselves.
The fallen were everywhere. The blood of friend and foe alike stained the gray shingle a rusty red.
Ronsard led his contingent around to the rear to begin a pinching action upon the enemy caught between Theido’s forces and his own. By sheer force of weight—the knights being mounted, and the enemy on foot—Ronsard was able to join Theido in short order, successfully dividing the Ningaal into two isolated halves.
“We are outnumbered!” Ronsard called when he had driven to within earshot of his comrade.
“Our horses and armor will sway the balance!” Theido retorted.
The blades of the knights flashed in the sun; their shields bore the shock of fierce blows. On horseback the knights were almost invulnerable—living fortresses of steel—their beveled armor shedding all but the most direct strikes against them. On foot, however, the slow-moving, heavy-laden knights were disadvantaged by the lightly protected but more agile Ningaal.
The tide of battle ebbed and flowed for both sides. The clash of steel and cries of the wounded and dying filled the air, and carrion birds, having tasted blood on the wind, now soared overhead. With a mighty shout the Ningaal, at some unknown signal, suddenly rushed the mound that Theido and Ronsard had managed to gain. The tactic allowed them to rejoin the two halves that had been divided.
“We cannot hold them long,” said Ronsard through clenched teeth, his blade whistling around his head. “We must break through now, or we may be trapped against the lake once more.”
“Aye, well said. Have you any suggestions?” Theido grunted as he slashed and wheeled in his saddle, thrusting and thrusting again.
“A charge along the shoreline and then back into the woods!” shouted Ronsard.
“Retreat?” asked Wertwin. “I would rather fall with my men.”
“Let us say that we are moving the battle to more favorable ground,” cried Theido. “If we stay here much longer, we will be pushed into the lake once more. They are too strong for us!” He turned and shouted his order to the marshal, who obediently sounded the horn.
The knights of the Dragon King drew together and pushed along the shoreline of the clear blue lake; those scattered further afield disengaged themselves and followed in their wake. Several riderless horses joined the retreat, and knights on foot ran alongside, not to be left behind.
When they had reached the shelter of the wood, where the ground sloped upward, Ronsard halted and turned his men to face the foe once more. Theido’s and Wertwin’s knights streamed past and continued deeper into the wood. Ronsard called to his knights to be ready to dismount after meeting the first attack. He had decided in the close quarters of the wood it would be better for his men to fight on foot and use the higher ground to their advantage.
But the Ningaal did not follow them into the wood.
“What is this? They withdraw,” Ronsard cried in disbelief.
Instantly Theido was beside him. “I do not understand. It is hours to sunset, but they are leaving.”
“We will give chase!” cried Wertwin.
Ronsard cautioned against this, saying, “Let them go. Whatever moves them, I do not think it is fear of us. They were giving blade for blade down there. They are not fleeing. It may be a trap.”
“We could crush them!” objected Wertwin.
“No, sir!” said Theido. “A moment ago we were in difficulty to hold our own. That will not have changed because they choose to withdraw. Ronsard is right—they do not leave the battlefield out of weakness.”
Theido cast his gaze across the tufted field now bearing the bodies of the dead and dying. Upon the mound they had just left he saw a lone figure mounted on a sturdy black charger. The figure raised the visor of his plume-crested helm and turned his face to where Theido, Wertwin, and Ronsard stood at the edge of the wood. Then he lifted his sword with its cruel curved blade high above his head in salute.
“It is the warlord,” said Theido.
“He taunts us!” hissed Wertwin.
“It is a salute, perhaps. A warning,” said Ronsard grimly.
The warlord lowered his sword and turned aside to follow his army, now moving away along the opposite side of the lake, leaving the field to the birds and the moans of the wounded and dying.
“Send a party to bind our wounded and retrieve the armor of our fallen. We need not fear another attack today,” said Theido. “Then let us go back to camp and hold council. I would hear what Myrmior has to say about what has happened here today. He may have much to tell us.”
32
Under their banners of blue and gold and scarlet in the council ring, the lords of Mensandor sat in their high-backed chairs. Eskevar glared down from this throne upon the dais, his thin, knotted hands clutching the armrests like claws.
“The foe does grow each day stronger. How long will you wait, my lords? How long? Until your castles are burning? Until the blood of your women and children runs red upon the earth?
“And to what purpose? Do you think that by hiding within your gates you may save your precious gold? I say that you will not! The enemy comes! He is drawing closer. The time to move is now!”
The Dragon King’s words rang with surprising force and vigor, coming as they did from a man who appeared only half of what he had been, so wasted was he by his illness. The gathered lords, now all accounted for—aside from
Wertwin, who had made his decision and was with Theido and Ronsard—sat in silence. No one wished to be the first to go against the king.
“Do you doubt the need?” asked Eskevar in a softer tone. “I will tell you how I perceive the need: I have sent my personal bodyguard, my three hundred, to stand against the Ningaal. Lord Theido and the Lord High Marshal Ronsard lead them, and they are joined by Lord Wertwin and his standing army of a hundred.
“These are gallant men and brave; but there are not enough. We must send tenfold knights and men-at-arms to stand with them if the Ningaal are to be crushed and banished from our shores.”
Lord Ameronis, in a voice of calm reason, said, “That is precisely the point we would question further, Sire. This enemy . . . this Nin, whoever he is . . . we have heard nothing of him. How do we know that he is so strong and his numbers so great? It would seem to me that we would be more prudent to send a scouting force to ascertain these and other details before embarking upon all-out war with an imagined enemy of unknown strength.”
“How well you speak, Ameronis. I would imagine, as you have had ample time to compose your thoughts, that you are quite settled in your mind as to how you will go.” The king paused to let his sarcasm hit its mark.
“Lord Ameronis opposes the call to arms!” shouted Eskevar suddenly. “Who else will defy his king?”
Eskevar’s sudden unmasking of Ameronis’s subtle opposition shocked the assembly, and in that moment several of the lords who had agreed to join a coalition of nobles against raising and funding an army now wavered in their opinion. It was a dangerous thing to defy a king outright, especially one as powerful as Eskevar. It might not be worth the gold they would save in the end.
But Ameronis recovered neatly. “You misunderstood me, Sire. I do not oppose action where it is plainly necessary. When the time comes to stand upon the battle lines, I will be at the head of my knights and at your side.”
Lord Lupollen, Ameronis’s neighbor and friend, his closest ally in the council, spoke next. “If this enemy is as great as you say, Sire, would we not have heard of him before now? That is the puzzling thing.”
There was a murmur of assent at this question. Eskevar looked sharply at Lupollen and said, “You also I know, my lord. That your king has sent his own knights into battle should be proof enough for anyone loyal to the crown that the need exists. Why do you doubt your king?”
Eskevar stood in the silence that followed his remarks. He looked at each one of his lords in turn, as if he would remember the exact set of each chin and the expression upon each face.
“I have said all I can, lords of Mensandor. And I have allowed others to speak where I thought most advantageous.” He was speaking of Esme, who had again pled her request for help before the council earlier that day. “I have nothing more to say. It is up to you. If Mensandor is to survive, we must not tarry.”
He stepped down from the dais and moved out of the circle of the council chairs. He spread out his hands imploringly—hardly a characteristic gesture for the Dragon King, and it was not without effect.
“I leave it in your hands. Do not wait too long.”
He left the Council of War deep in hushed silence. No one dared speak until he was far away from the room, and then the arduous debate began: Ameronis and Lupollen and their friends in opposition; Benniot, Fincher, and several others just as strongly in favor of supporting the king’s call to arms.
The argument was bitter, loud, and long, lasting the length of the day. Eskevar returned to his apartment in the castle to brood darkly upon the stubborn blindness of his independent, self-sufficient lords.
With every league the foothills of the Fiskills marched closer, changing in color from misty violet to blue above the mottled green of the forested hills. The party had set out due east cross-country toward the lofty heart of the rugged mountain range. In this part of Mensandor the Fiskills seemed to rise sharply out of rolling hills gently sloping upward to their very feet. They were a wall, as Celbercor had intended them, a soaring fortress against all save the most foolish and determined. It was this fortress Quentin, Toli, and Durwin dared to assail.
Each day the land rose higher. Quentin fancied he could feel the wind freshen and the cool air of the mountain heights waft down to breathe upon them in unexpected moments. In the happy countryside, with its small, well-groomed villages, it became increasingly harder to believe the ominous events that had loomed so large when in Askelon. Even his own experiences in the camp of the Ningaal seemed as if they had happened to someone else and Quentin had merely heard about it. If not for his injured arm dangling from the sling, Quentin would scarcely have believed the tale.
Only at night did the sharp reminder prick him; it came in the form of the star, growing slightly larger night by night. It now seemed to outshine every other star in its quadrant. Hard and bright, it sent a corona of milky rays outward from its hot, white core. Everyone must see it now, thought Quentin, lying rolled in his cloak at night. Everyone must surely feel the evil it portends.
But by the morning’s light, the Wolf Star faded, as did all the other lesser lights of heaven. The spell of the glowing star was broken by the coming of dawn.
“How far before we come to Inchkeith’s abode?” asked Quentin as they made ready early one morning to get under way.
“No great distance, I think. If the trail permits,” Durwin replied, “we will sleep in feather beds tonight.”
“Are we close, then?” Quentin had no idea where the home of the legendary arms maker might be. But the rocky highlands they were now traversing did not strike him as the sort of place a master armorer would be found.
Durwin walked up the slope of the little hill where they had camped. Quentin followed, squinting as he moved out into the light of a crimson sunrise.
“Do you see that ridge of bare rock beyond the near valley?”
Quentin nodded. The ridge was a ragged gray wall that cast a black shadow across the green blanket of the pine-covered valley. “He lives beyond the ridge?”
“Not beyond it—within it!” laughed Durwin. “Or very nearly, as you shall see. Inchkeith is a strange man; he has many strange ways. But he is the man for us.”
“You know him, Durwin? You have never mentioned him in my hearing until most recently.” Quentin regarded his hermit friend with something approaching suspicion. Not that there was anything at all unlikely about Durwin’s being acquainted with such a man.
“There is much I do not mention in your hearing, my young man. Only half of what I know will fit in my head at any one time!” He winked and laughed, his voice booming in the clear morning.
Toli whistled from below. When they joined him, all was ready.
“If we are to sleep on feathers tonight instead of pine needles, we had better away. See how long the shadows grow already.” Toli’s dark eyes flashed with good humor. He was once more in his native element. Every day he seemed to slip more and more into the quiet enigma he had been when Quentin first met him years before. Give him back his deerskins and bone knife, thought Quentin, and he would be once more the Jher prince.
“You would prefer pine needles, I would wager, Toli. But lead on! The day, as you say, is speeding from us!” Quentin, with difficulty but unaided, swung himself up into Blazer’s saddle and turned his face to the warmth of the rising sun.
Toward midday, towering banks of clouds sweeping down from the north in a long line, gray as smoke beneath and white as new-bleached wool above, rolled high above them. The churning mass swelled and billowed, spreading a great flat anvil at its soaring crest as the fierce upper winds took the bank and flattened it.
“There will be rain soon,” said Toli.
“Do you think it will hold off until we have reached our destination?”
“Possibly,” replied Toli, squinting his eyes into the sky. “But the air is already growing cooler. Thunder whispers on the wing. The rain may hold and it may not.”
Quentin could hear no thunder, b
ut since Toli had mentioned it, he did seem to notice that the feathery breeze lifting the leaves in the trees around them now bore a cooler touch.
“Then let us not tempt it further by stopping to wag the chin!” cried Durwin. “Let us ride dry while we still may. A hot supper will make up for a meal missed on the trail.”
“I am for it!” called Quentin. “Let’s away!”
Durwin urged his brown palfrey forward, followed by Toli with the two pack horses; Quentin brought up the rear and kept a wary eye on the gathering clouds overhead. They had made good time that morning, stopping only to refresh the water in their skins at a rushing brook in the heart of the valley. Every time Quentin chanced to look up, the great gray wall of rock, glimpsed as a looming rampart between the shaggy branches of pine, seemed to have advanced dramatically closer.
Presently Quentin heard the splash of a nearby stream as it tumbled over rock. The party left the sheltering pines and came to a wild and rocky channel carved out by a shallow river that bounced and frothed over black stones, round as loaves of bread. The tumbling water, for all its activity, rose barely to the horses’ fetlocks, but it was broad as a ward yard. Durwin struck along the loamy band and turned upstream parallel to the face of the ridge.
Standing pools of water along the bank mirrored the bulging blue-black clouds overhead. The wind had freshened, and Quentin could smell the musty earth scent of rain.
The stream angled along a sweeping bend lined with tall, finger-thin, long-needled pines that whispered in the rising wind. “The rain is on the way!” shouted Durwin.
“Our destination is not too much farther, I hope,” called Quentin as he came abreast. “Perhaps we should find shelter and wait until the first downpour has passed.”
“If I remember correctly, we have not far to travel. Look ahead.” The hermit pointed to the gray cliffs directly before them once more. “See where the water emerges from the base of the ridge wall? It is just ahead.”