Chills crept up the girl’s spine. “We won’t, Lioness.”
Alanna smiled. “Thank you.” She drew a deep breath and went to bid good-bye to the children once more.
The Lioness had been gone for two days. Daine had collapsed early into her loft bed, worn out from her evening’s lessons.
She dreamed: it was a pleasant night in her badger set. With her belly full, she listened to the kits play. She was about to go for a cool drink of water when her dreams changed. Trees and a moonlit sky tumbled around her. Boats filled with men came onto the beaches, and men crept among the trees. Speaking softly and fast, they lit fires, scorching the roosts and blinding her. Into flight she tumbled, over the roaring cold and salty place with panic in her throat. There was the light ahead, the one the forest bats had sung about, a beacon of safety. She was the greatest of the People—she could protect them when strange men broke the night rituals!
Daine gasped and sat up. “Odd’s bobs, what was that about?”
With her excellent night vision and the light of the full moon that came in the windows under the eaves, she saw that the rafters overhead were thick with bats. A good thirty of them, mixed breeds, watched her with nervous eyes. Three were hoary bats, named for the frost on their brown fur. By themselves they would not have been a surprise: they weren’t sociable bats, not like the clusters of big and little brown bats that hung with them, or the handful of pipistrelles.
“Wing-friends, what’s amiss?” she asked softly. “Come and tell me.”
Within seconds she was a bat tree, with little bodies festooned on her curls and parts of her nightshirt. All of them trembled in terror.
“Hush,” she told them. Closing her eyes, she thought of deep and even breaths, of safety in caves, of the drip and echo of water in high chambers. Slowly the bats took her calm into themselves. Small talons changed their grip, this time so flesh was not caught along with the cloth. The trembling eased and became a thin vibration. Some of the bolder ones returned to the rafters, to give her air. She sent the calm out with them, enticing more of those who clung to her to take the perches they were used to, hanging from wood. The ones left were the hoary bats and the leaders of each group.
Daine opened her eyes. “Now. Let’s hear it—one at a time.”
It was all she could do to stay calm when they described what they had seen. It was her dream: men, strangers, coming from the woods and from boats on the water, hiding under the trees. She had to clamp down on her witnesses a little to make sure of the numbers they were describing. Bats tended to count by the way they roosted: their idea of numbers was flexible, and depended on the breed of bat. Daine knew she couldn’t tell the baron or the Riders her friends had seen six quarter-colonies or whatever the total was. Not only would that not be helpful, but they would think she was crazy.
To the hoary bats, who roosted alone, the men had arrived in flocks, like deer they saw grazing at night. Moreover, each bat had come from a different part of the wood that ran along the coast. After scribbling with a stick of charcoal on her drawing pad and squinting to read her own marks, she concluded that each hoary bat had seen nearly fifty men.
The big brown bats had seen at least two colonies—sixty men or so. Most of the pipistrelles were from one place and had seen less than half of one of their colonies—almost fifty. One lone pipistrelle from the wood north of the Swoop identified another half-colony. The little brown bats had come from the east and south. Each of their sightings came to two tenth-colonies; for them that meant two hundred men, all told.
All the bats assured her their counts had not overlapped, and that she took as truth. Their concepts of numbers might be odd, but a bat’s knowledge of territory was precise to a pin.
Daine looked at the numbers, her skin tingling in shock. If the bats were right, they had seen more than five hundred strange men coming overland or by sea and landing near the cove. The bats were more familiar with the locals than those humans might have believed possible. The little animals insisted the strangers were not their humans. Moreover, the strangers all wore metal over some parts of their bodies, and all carried or wore wood tipped with metal, and bars of metal. Daine could see their faces in the bats’ minds: they were the hard faces of warriors.
Carefully, without frightening the animals, she eased into her breeches and boots. In the process she talked two of the hoary bats into staying behind. The others, the head of each colony, the lone pipistrelle and one particularly scared hoary, clung to her nightshirt and hair. They would go with her, they said.
Sarge, who ran the trainees on night watch, and Kally sat in front of the stable, talking. From the look of things, the princess had been unable to sleep. “Daine?” Sarge asked when she emerged. The girl’s blue eyes widened.
Abruptly Daine saw herself as they—as humans—must see her: small, wriggling animals swarming on her, clinging to hair and clothes. They tried their best to be clean, but a couple of them had lost control of their bowels.
I must look like a monster. Daine swallowed a lump in her throat. She hadn’t realized how much Kally’s opinion—or Sarge’s—had come to mean to her.
“I have to talk to the baron,” she whispered without looking at them.
Kally walked over hesitantly. She stopped, then reached out to touch a furry body. The little brown bat transferred his affections to her in a leap. She squeaked, then let him snuggle into her collar. “He smells you on me.” Her tiny smile trembled and held.
Sarge got up, his brown eyes kind. “Come on, girls.”
The master of the Swoop was in his study. The queen and Josua, the captain of the Swoop’s guards, were there as well, seated in comfortable chairs, while Numair stared out one of the windows.
“What’s all this?” George asked. His sharp eyes took in Daine’s riders as well as Kally’s small hanger-on. Thayet yelped when she saw Daine; Josua was on his feet, dagger half-drawn. Numair looked around, frowning.
“Please—don’t startle them.” The bats caught the surge of her own fears. She made herself take a deep breath and get under control. Don’t open your eyes, she cautioned the bats. The room was cozily lit from a human standpoint, but not from theirs. “They won’t hurt anyone.”
“It’s only bats, Mama.” Sarge’s mouth twitched: it was impossible to tell that Kally herself had been upset by them only a few minutes ago.
Thayet and Josua stared at Daine.
“It’s important, sir,” she told the baron. “I wouldn’t have brought them if it wasn’t.”
“May I?” Numair asked, pointing to the hoary bat.
The animal’s nose was already questing, having located interesting smells on the sorcerer’s clothes. Gently Daine handed him over: in one of Numair’s gigantic palms, the bat was dwarfed.
“What news have your friends brought for me?” George asked. Daine looked at his face, but saw no trace of mockery or disbelief.
Either he’s the world’s finest Player or he believes in me, she thought. “Have you a map?”
He gestured behind her. She turned and saw a table covered with sheets of parchment: on top was a map of Pirate’s Swoop. Holding down a corner of it was a box of small, colored pebbles. Consulting with her friends, she put one at each location where strangers had been seen, explaining to the adults as she worked. “All this since twilight,” she said when she finished. “We think it’s more’n five hundred, all told.” She looked at the picture she’d made, and blanched. The stones formed a half circle a mile away from the castle and village of Pirate’s Swoop. They had been surrounded in the dark.
NINE
SIEGE
Things moved so fast Daine’s head spun: Pirate’s Swoop was more than prepared for night attacks. Within minutes Captain Josua, Thayet, and Sarge had left to quietly wake the village and bring the people back to the castle.
With them they took Daine’s promise the livestock would move quietly. Once she had explained things to them, the village animals were eager to help.
She felt ashamed of herself for showing them images of the raiders’ imaginary stewpots in such gruesome detail, but told herself the cause was a good one. Even the geese and chickens had been willing to go along after that.
Next she asked the bats to return to their friends in her stable. You won’t like the people I’m going to talk to now, she assured them, and they believed her. George had asked her for spies who would spook less easily than the bats, and that meant only one thing: owls. Daine had to admit owls were unnerving to deal with, and she liked them—the bats did not. While they weren’t natural enemies, there was always a chance an owl could make a mistake, and apologies meant nothing to a dead bat.
With the bats gone, she went to the limits of her range, contacting owls and explaining her problem. She wasn’t surprised to find that the silent predators were already angry about the invasion: the strangers had chased all the game worth hunting into burrows in earth and tree.
Waiting for the owls’ report, she and Numair went to the observation deck. From there they watched as the Swoop’s gates quietly opened and guards and Riders headed for the village, to help the people pack and move. Daine noted with approval that the hooves of all the horses and ponies were muffled. With the moon full and the night clear, they didn’t need torches—a small blessing, since the invaders also had used moonlight to keep their arrival secret.
The owls reported, and Daine wrote their information on her paper. When they finished, she added the total with fingers that shook. She checked her numbers and came up with the same total. A third check bore the same result.
Her voice emerged as a squeak. “Lord Baron?” He had come while she was working. “I have the whole thing.”
He raised his eyebrows. “So soon?”
“Owls are fast.” She pointed out the total—a little more than six hundred men had infiltrated the woods. “The owls say they aren’t moving. They’re camped. No fires, but they’ve settled.”
“Waitin’ for dawn,” the baron said. “Waitin’ for that.” He nodded at the sea. Two miles out a fog bank lay on the ocean, its top as high as the tower on which they stood. It took her a minute of looking before she saw what was wrong: the curved dome was clean, as if the thing were shaped by a sculptor. It was also dead on the water. Fog was neither tidy nor slow. It moved fast and overwhelmed everything in its way. This close, she should not have been able to see the sky, and she ought to have seen it move by now.
“Numair?” George asked. The sorcerer was leaning on the wall, his eyes closed. A transparent black cloud surrounded him; bits of light flickered in it like fireflies.
He shook his head. “It’s opaque. I can’t even feel the weather-working spells that are holding it in place, and there have to be spells. Fog is defined by natural law like any atmospheric creation. In the absence of those laws, we have to assume magic, which I should be able to detect. Since I can’t detect it, that argues the presence of dampening spells in the fog.”
“Dampenin’ spells.” George’s face was tight. “We’re boxed in, then—like rats in a trap. Whatever’s in that fog will hit us in the mornin’, sure as the Crooked God cheats. Why’d we have no idea this was comin’?”
The mage looked at his friend. “George, there are more illusion spells and diffusion spells than there are stars. Scrying is an inexact magic: I have to know what to look for. All right, I’m good, but even I can be overwhelmed or outflanked. Alanna and Jon would tell you the same thing.”
George put a hand on Numair’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean you failed at your job. It’s just been a long time since I’ve been sucker-punched. I don’t like it.” His face had taken on harsh new lines. “They’ll crush us, between what’s out there and those six hundred at our backs.”
“And the army won’t come before we’re bruised at least,” Numair said.
“Aye.”
“How many warriors here?”
“Eighty—not countin’ the Riders.” George drew a deep breath and looked at Daine. “What can your friends do to help?”
She swallowed. “Don’t ask me to make them fight,” she pleaded. “They’re not—this isn’t about them. I can’t ask them to fight and die for humans.” Shivering, the girl remembered the marsh and the slaughtered birds. “Please say you understand.”
George’s silence drew out for a long moment and it was impossible to read what was in his face. At last he smiled and patted her arm. “I don’t, entirely, but then I’m all too human. Will you ask them to watch, then? To let us know if more soldiers come, or if the ones out there start to move?”
She nodded, and whispered, “Thanks.” Sending out her request, Daine settled to wait for her friends’ reports from the woods. As she listened, guards and Riders began to return with the villagers. Never before had an evacuation gone so well. The livestock had been waiting for their owners to come out. There were no problems with catching animals, not even chickens. The trainees, at least, had a good idea of why this was so. The villagers did not, and fled to the castle as if their own animals had turned to ghosts.
Dawn. The first raiders came into sight, to find the village empty and the castle gates closed. The battlements were lined with warriors who did not look surprised in the least to see raiders outside their walls.
When the sun rose above the horizon, fog rolled over Pirate’s Swoop.
A gentle hand was shaking her, and a wet tongue was bathing her face. Daine looked up and saw Onua, Kalasin, and Tahoi. “I’m sorry, I must’ve gone to sleep.” She turned scarlet with embarrassment and tried to get up. Her knees buckled. “Goddess! How long have I been here?”
Onua caught her on one side, Kally on the other. “Since the middle of the night. The baron says we owe the warning to you and your friends.”
“Thank my friends. I just passed the word on.” She massaged the cramps from her legs. Kally gave her a roll stuffed with fruit and held a jug full of juice to go with it. Daine was still hungry when she finished. “What’s going on now?” she asked, accepting a sausage roll from her young friend.
“We’re in trouble. This”—Onua’s wave took in the fog surrounding them—“isn’t just fog. It carries dampening spells for the Gift—plenty of ’em. We’re not sure how many sorcerers are out there holding it, but there have to be a lot of them. Whoever engineered this planned for everything.”
Daine looked at the two humans. “That hurts you both, right? You’re both Gifted.”
Onua nodded. “Lucky for us, there’s no need for magic just yet. Numair got word out to the palace and to the king before the fog came in.”
Daine looked at the woman, wondering if the mage had found anyone nearby who could help. Reading her, Onua shook her head.
“I’d best put on clean clothes, then, and get my bow.” She caught an angry call from below. “And let Cloud know I’m alive. She’s upset with me.”
“Can I go with her?” asked Kally.
Onua smiled. “Of course. Just make sure you stay with Daine. If you run into your brother, have him report to me.”
Daine glanced around to see who was there, and saw the queen, Numair, and the baron, with trainees and guardsmen armed and keeping watch. “Where should I report to?”
“Here. Take your time. Nothing can happen as long as this mess hangs over us.”
She nodded. “Let’s go, Kally. I need to clean up.”
Roald and Thom were waiting for Daine in her loft. She shooed them downstairs while she changed, combed her hair, got her weapons, and comforted the frightened bats. In the stable below she soothed the ponies, all of whom knew something bad was going on. She was uneasy, herself. She’d been fogged in before at the Swoop, but it wasn’t the same. The mist felt dirty, and the hackles were up on the back of her neck. The two boys, both Gifted, were in worse condition than Onua and Kally, and clung to Daine’s hands as she walked them back to the inner court.
On her trip down she hadn’t looked at the new arrangements: now she did. Long tents were set up
for healers. Water barrels were stacked everywhere. Temporary corrals held the village animals. Seeing them, Daine went to thank them, assure them they were safe, and reinforce the need for their good behavior. It was the first time anyone had explained that raider attacks were the reason why they were so often dragged up to the castle without warning. Understanding that, they were more than eager to help.
“Honestly, you’d think people would have told them before now and saved everyone trouble,” Daine growled. “Speaking of people, where’s their masters?”
“Some are on the wall,” Thom said. Looking up, Daine saw villagers armed with bows, shields, and metal caps among the guards and Riders. “The rest are in the lower levels. We’re dug into the rock. There’s plenty of room down below.”
She was startled. She’d never dreamed there might be more to the castle than what she saw. “How many more surprises does your da have up his sleeve?”
Thom grinned. “A lot.”
Sarge waved to her from the wall. She waved back, hoping her face didn’t reveal her thoughts. She had human friends here too—friends who might be hurt, or die. With Ma and Grandda gone, she’d thought she was free of that kind of pain, but she was less free than ever. She’d never love anyone as she had her family, but others had come to be important to her: Evin and Miri, who gave her acceptance; Onua, an elder sister; the Rider officers, respect for her judgment. Each of those people now was a potential wound.
Thinking grim thoughts, she climbed the outside stair to the deck, the children following her. I should’ve stayed wild, she told herself. I never should’ve got back up on my hind legs.
Never? another part of her asked. Never means not meeting sea lions and griffins. Never means not hearing whales sing. Never means not learning how to heal. She sighed.
On deck once more, she saw two guards and two trainees, Elnore and Padrach, on duty with bows strung and ready. The queen and Onua were armed as well. Buri, like Sarge, was elsewhere on the walls, keeping an eye on the other trainees. Baron George was talking quietly to one of the guards.