The Wandering Fire Part 5

Only each other, she sent.

Only each other at the last, he replied. Then she flew off, glittering, and as dawn broke over the mountains he began the long walk back to the camps of men.

CHAPTER 5.

"The first battle is always the worst," Garde said, moving his horse toward Kevin so no one else would hear.

The words were meant to be rea.s.suring, and Kevin managed a gesture of acknowledgment, but he was not p.r.o.ne to be dishonest with himself and he knew that the shock of battle, though real, was not his deepest problem.

Nor was it envy of Dave Martyniuk, though honesty compelled admission that this was also a part of his mood now, just after it had all ended, with the electrifying appearance of the winged, s.h.i.+ning creature in the sky. Dave had been extraordinary, almost terrifying. Wielding the huge axe Matt Soren had found for him in the Paras Derval armory, he had roared into battle, outpacing even Diarmuid and wreaking violent havoc among the wolves while screaming at the top of his lungs. The big man had even gone one-on-one with one of the enormous, fanged brutes they called urgach. And he had killed it too; blocking a vicious sword thrust, he had launched a backhanded sweep of the axe that had half severed the creature's head and sent it tumbling from the back of its giant steed. Then Dave had killed the six-legged horned beast as well.

And Kevin? Quick, sharp Kevin Laine had been his torchbearer at the time. Oh, they'd given him a sword to fight with, but what did he know about fighting wolves with a sword on horseback? Staying on the plunging horse was challenge enough in the screaming inferno of that fight. And when he had gained enough s.p.a.ce to realize how utterly useless he was, Kevin had swallowed his pride, sheathed the sword, and grabbed a burning torch to give Dave light enough by which to kill. He hadn't been too good at that, either, and twice had been nearly felled himself by Dave's whirling axe.

They had won, though, this first real battle of the war, and something magnificent had been revealed in the sky. Kevin clung to the splendor of that image of the winged unicorn and tried to lift himself enough to share the triumph of the moment.

Yet it seemed that someone else wasn't happy; there was a confrontation taking place. He and Garde edged their horses closer to the knot of men surrounding a husky brown-haired Rider and Tore, Dave's friend, whom Kevin remembered from their last days in Paras Derval.

"And if you ever do so again," the brown-haired man was saying loudly, "I will cripple you and stake you out in the Plain with honey on your eyes to draw the aigen!"

Tore, impa.s.sive on his dark grey horse, made no reply, and the other man's bl.u.s.tered threat fell fatuously into the silence. Dave was grinning. He was sitting his horse between Tore and Levon, the other Rider Kevin remembered from their last time.

It was Levon who spoke, quietly but with immense authority. "Doraid, be done. And hear me: you were given a direct command in battle, and you chose that moment to discuss strategies. If Tore had not done what I asked you to do, the wolves would have turned the flank of the swift. Do you wish to explain your action here or before the Aven and the leader of your tribe?"

Doraid turned to him furiously. "Since when does the third tribe command the seventh?"

"It does not," Levon replied with equanimity. "But I command this guard, and you were there when that command was given me."

"Ah, yes!" Doraid sneered. "The precious son of the Aven. He is to be obeyed, and-"

"One moment!" a familiarly inflected voice snapped, and Doraid stopped in mid-word. "Do I understand what happened here?" Diarmuid continued, moving into the ring of Riders. "Did this man refuse a direct order? And is he complaining about it now?" The tone was acid.

"He did," Tore spoke for the first time. "And he is. You do understand correctly, my lord Prince."

Kevin had a blinding attack of deja vu: an innyard to the south, a farmer crying, "Mornir guard you, young Prince!" And then something else.

"Coll," Diarmuid said.

"No!" Kevin screamed and launched himself in a flat dive from his horse. He hit his friend, Diarmuid's big lieutenant, with a tackle that sent them both flying to land with a double crunch in the snow among the stamping horses of the Dalrei.

He was about a half second too late. There was another man lying in the snow, not far away: Doraid, with Coll's arrow buried deep in his chest.

"Oh, h.e.l.l," Kevin said, sick at heart. "Oh, b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l."

Nor was he eased to hear a chuckle beside him. "Nicely done," Coll said softly, not at all discomfited. "You almost broke my nose again."

"G.o.d. Coll, I'm sorry."

"No matter." He chuckled again. "I was half expecting you, in fact. I remember you don't like his justice."

No one was even looking at them. His wild leap seemed to have been utterly pointless. From where he lay on the ground, he saw two men face each other in the ring of torches.

"There were enough Dalrei dead tonight without adding another," Levon said evenly.

Diarmuid's voice was cool. "There will be enough dead in this war without our risking more by allowing what this man did."

"It was a matter then for us, for the Aven, to decide."

"Not so," Diarmuid replied. For the first time he raised his voice. "Let me remind you all, and better now than later, of how things are. When Revor was given the Plain for himself and his heirs, he swore an oath of loyalty to Colan. Let it not be forgotten. Ivor dan Banor, Aven of the Dalrei, holds that t.i.tle in the same way that Revor himself did: under the High King of Brennin, who is Aileron dan Ailell, and to whom you swore an oath of your own, Levon!"

Levon's color was high, but his eyes never wavered. "I do not forget it," he said. "Justice is still not served by arrows at night on a battlefield."

"Not so," Diarmuid said a second time. "There is seldom time in war to serve it any other way. What," he asked softly, "does the Law of the Dalrei invoke for what Doraid did this night?"

It was Tore who answered. "Death," he said clearly. "He is right, Levon."

Still on the ground with Coll, Kevin realized that Diarmuid, pupil, once, of Loren Silvercloak, had known exactly that. And after a moment he saw Levon nod his head.

"I know he is," he said. "I am my father's son, though, and I cannot order a death so easily. Will you forgive me, my lord Prince?"

For reply, Diarmuid swung down from his horse and walked over to Levon's. With a formal gesture he served as footman to help the other dismount, and then the two of them, both young, both fair, embraced, as the Dalrei and the men of Brennin shouted their approval.

"I feel like an idiot!" Kevin said to Coll. He helped the other man to his feet.

"We all feel that way sometimes," said the big man sympathetically. "Especially around Diar. Let's go get drunk, friend. The Riders make a lethal drink!"

They did. And there was a great deal of it. It didn't really lift his mood, though, nor did Diarmuid's indulgent response to his precipitate action earlier.

"I didn't know you liked Coll so much!" the Prince had said, triggering a round of laughter in the huge wooden house in which most of them had gathered.

Kevin faked a laugh; he couldn't think of a reply. He had never felt superfluous before, but more and more it was beginning to look as if he was. He noticed Dave-Davor they called him here-huddled with Levon, Tore, and a number of other Dalrei, including a teenage kid, all arms and legs and disordered hair who, he'd been given to understand, had ridden the unicorn that flew. He saw Diarmuid rise up and make his way through a giggling cl.u.s.ter of women to join the group. He thought about doing the same, knowing they would welcome him, but it seemed pointless somehow. He had nothing to contribute.

"More sachen?" a soft voice said in his ear. He tilted his head to see a pretty brown-haired girl holding a stone beaker. Coll winked surrept.i.tiously and s.h.i.+fted a little bit away on the bench, making room.

Oh, well. "Okay," Kevin said. He smiled. "Are you joining me?"

Neatly she slipped in beside him. "For a little while," she said. "I'm supposed to be serving. I'll have to get up if my mother comes. My name is Liane dal Ivor."

He wasn't really in the mood, but she was bright and sharp and carried the ball herself much of the time. With an effort, wanting at least to be polite, Kevin did a little halfhearted flirting.

Later, her mother did appear, surveying the scene with a hostess's eye, and Liane scrambled off with a surprising oath to serve some more beakers of sachen. A little later the conclave at the far end broke up and Dave came over.

"We're leaving early in the morning," he said tersely. "Levon wants to see Kim in Paras Derval."

"She wasn't there yet," Kevin protested.

"Gereint says she will be," the other replied, and without amplification strode off into the night, b.u.t.toning his coat against the cold.

Kevin glanced at Coll. They shrugged. At least the sachen was good; saved the evening from being a total write-off.

Much later, something else did as well. He hadn't been in his bed very long, was just feeling the heavy covers warming up, when the door opened and a slim figure bearing a candle slipped inside.

"If you ask me for a breaker of sachen," Liane said, "I'll break it over your head. I hope you're warm in there." She placed the flame on the low table beside the bed and undressed. He saw her for a moment in the light; then she was under the blankets beside him.

"I like candles," she said.

It was the last thing either of them said for a long time.

And again, despite everything, the curving act of love took him away with it, so far that the colors of the light seemed to change. Before the flame burnt out he saw her bend back above him like a bow, in her own transcending arc, and he would have spoken then if he could.

Later it was dark and she said, "Fear not. We went so deep because we are near to Gwen Ystrat. The old stories are true after all."

He shook his head. He had to travel a long way back to do that much, and farther still to speak. "Everywhere," he said. "This deep."

She stiffened. He hadn't meant it to wound. How to explain? But Liane stroked his forehead and in a different voice whispered, "So you carry Dun Maura within yourself?" Then she called him, as he thought, drifting, by another name. He wanted to ask. There were questions, but the tide was going out and he was far along with it, much too far.

In the morning when Erron woke him with a shake and a grin, she was, naturally, gone. Nor did he see her before they rode off, the thirty men of Diarmuid's band, he and Dave, with Levon and Tore alongside.

For Dave the journey northeast to the upper reaches of the Latham had promised reunion and in the end had offered both that and revenge. From the moment he'd understood that the man Diarmuid was to bring back was Gereint of the third tribe, his heart had begun racing with antic.i.p.ation. There was no way they could have kept him from joining that party of the Prince's men. Loren wanted Gereint for some reason having to do with figuring out the winter, he gathered. That didn't matter so much to him; what mattered was that soon he would be among the Dalrei again.

The roads had been cleared east as far as Lake Leinan, but the going became harder as they turned north the next morning. Diarmuid had hoped to make the camps before sundown, but it was slow going among the drifts and into the teeth of the bitter wind that blew un.o.bstructed down from the Plain. They had given Dave and Kevin wonderfully warm woven coats in Paras Derval. Lightweight, too-they knew how to work with wool and cloth here, that much was obvious. Without the coats they would have frozen. Even with them, when the sun went down, the going became very bad, and Dave had no idea how far away they were from the camps.

Then all thoughts of cold had disappeared, for they had seen torches moving in the night, heard the screams of dying animals and the shouts of men in battle.

Dave hadn't waited for anyone else. He'd kicked his big stallion forward and charged up over a mound of snow, to see a battlefield spread out before him, and, astride a horse between him and the melee, a fifteen-year-old boy he remembered.

Diarmuid, the elegant Prince, had caught up with him as they galloped past Tabor down the slope, but Dave was scarcely aware of anyone else as he plunged into the closest pack of wolves, hewing on either side, aiming straight for the closest urgach, with a memory of deaths by Llewenmere to drive him on.

He remembered little else, as battle fury overtook him. Kevin Laine had been beside him with a torch for light at one point and they told him afterward that he had slain an urgach and its mount by himself. The six-legged horned beasts were called slaug, they told him. But that was after.

After Tabor, astonis.h.i.+ngly, had appeared in the sky overhead, riding a lethal winged creature with a horn of its own that shone and killed.

After the moment when the wolves had fled and the slaug had borne the urgach away in flight, and he had dismounted to stand facing his brothers again. A great deal had been made whole then as he felt Tore's hard grip on his arm and then Levon's embrace.

There had been an interlude of some tension when Diarmuid had had a Dalrei slain for insubordination and then faced Levon down in a confrontation, but that, too, had ended all right. Kevin Laine, for no reason Dave could grasp, had tried to interfere, but no one else seemed to have taken much notice of it.

Then they had ridden back to the camp and to Ivor, who had a new t.i.tle now but was still the same stocky, greying man he remembered, with the same deep-set eyes in a weather-beaten face. Ivor said, to lift Dave even higher, "Welcome home, Davor. A bright thread in darkness spins you back."

There had been sachen after, and good food by the fires, and many remembered faces. Including Liane's.

"How many times am I going to have to dance an urgach kill of yours?" she asked, bright-eyed, pert, her mouth soft on his cheek where she'd kissed him on tiptoe before moving off.

Tabor had come in quite a while later, and he'd wanted to embrace the boy but something in Tabor's face stopped him. It stopped all of them, even his father. It was then that Ivor had gestured Dave over to join a meeting around a smaller fire off to the side of the room.

With Dave, there were seven people there, and Diarmuid, carrying his own beaker, made a slightly disheveled eighth a moment later. Dave wasn't sure what he thought of this Prince; he'd been rather more impressed with Aileron, the older brother who was now High King. Diarmuid seemed altogether too suave for Dave's taste; on the other hand, there had been nothing soft about the pace he'd set on the ride, or the control he'd a.s.serted in the matter of the Dalrei he'd ordered killed. Ivor, Dave noticed, hadn't brought the issue up either.

And Diarmuid, despite the drinking, seemed very much in command as he concisely outlined the wish of the High King and his First Mage that Gereint the shaman ride back with him to Paras Derval. There to join with the mages in seeking the source of the winter that was slowly grinding them all down under its malevolent heel.

"For it is malevolent," the Prince added quietly from where he'd crouched in front of blind Gereint. "The lios have confirmed what we've all guessed. We would like to leave tomorrow-if it suits the shaman, and all of you."

Ivor nodded an acknowledgment of the courteous proviso. No one spoke, though; they waited for Gereint.

Dave had still not gotten over the uneasiness he felt in the presence of this wrinkled ancient whose hollowed eye sockets seemed, nonetheless, to see into the souls of men and down the dark avenues of time. Cernan, G.o.d of the wild things, had spoken to Gereint, Dave remembered-and had called Tabor to his fast, to the animal they had seen in the sky. That thought led him to Ceinwen, and the stag in Faelin Grove. And this was his own dark avenue.

He turned from it to hear Gereint say, "We are going to need the Seer as well."

"She hasn't come yet," Diarmuid said.

Everyone looked at Dave. "She was bringing someone," he said. "She sent us ahead."

"Who was she bringing?" the man called Tulger asked from beside Ivor.

But a rare discretion led Dave to murmur, "I think that's for her to say, not me." Ivor, he saw, nodded his agreement.

Gereint smiled thinly. "True," the shaman said. "Although I know, and they have arrived by now. They were in Paras Derval before you left." This was exactly what drove Dave crazy about Gereint.

Diarmuid didn't seem bothered. "With Loren, probably," he murmured, smiling as if at a jest. Dave didn't get the joke. "Will you come then?" the Prince continued, addressing the shaman.

"Not to Paras Derval," Gereint replied placidly. "It is too far for my old bones."

"Well, surely-" Diarmuid began.

"I will meet you," Gereint went on, ignoring him, "in Gwen Ystrat. I will leave tomorrow for the Temple in Morvran. You will all be coming there."

This time even Diarmuid looked discomfited. "Why?" he asked.

"Which way did the wolves fly?" the shaman asked, turning unnervingly to where Tore sat.

"South," the dark man said, and they were silent. There was a burst of laughter from the largest fire. Dave glanced over involuntarily and saw, with a sudden chill, that Liane was sitting next to Kevin, and the two of them were whispering in each other's ears. His vision blurred. G.o.dd.a.m.n that flashy skirt-chaser! Why did the slick, carefree Kevin Laines always have to be around to spoil things? Inwardly seething, Dave forced himself to turn back to the conclave.

"You will all be there," Gereint was repeating. "And Gwen Ystrat is the best place for what we will have to do."

Diarmuid stared at the blind shaman for a long moment. Then: "All right," he said. "I will tell my brother. Is there anything else?"

"One thing." It was Levon. "Dave, you have your horn."

The horn from Pendaran. With the note that was the sound of Light itself. "I do," Dave said. It was looped across his body.

"Good," said Levon. "Then if the Seer is in Paras Derval I would like to ride back with you. There is something I'd like to try before we go to Gwen Ystrat."

Ivor stirred at that, and turned to his elder son. "It is rash," he said slowly. "You know it is."

"I don't know," Levon replied. "I know we have been given Owein's Horn. Why else if not to use?" This was reasonable enough on its own terms to silence his father. It happened, however, to be quite wrong.