Arch Wizard

Chapter Three

Ironthorn had long been a vale where the cold and careful courtesy of meeting and mingling only in certain neutral places-the market-moots in Irontarl, and at Har's Bridge and Blackstones Hill-kept the three rival lordly families of Hammerhand, Lyrose, and Tesmer from rising to bathe the valley in open red war.

Though vale-folk and traveling traders alike spoke of "the ever-brawling knights of Ironthorn," those frays erupted with fists and daggers in the taverns, between a hot-headed few, not from end to end of the valley with armies that slaughtered, pillaged, and burned.

The abiding hatreds of the lordly families had not quite turned them into nest-despoiling fools. Yet.

By grudgingly-forged agreement, underscored by cold graves on all sides of the dispute, the forest around Ironthorn had been deemed a place for hunting stags and boar, not men. Its trails were open to all, and it was understood that men who walked or rode there would leave their armor and their bows at home, and carry nothing more menacing than their everpresent swords, belt daggers, and boar-spears. Stags were to be ridden down and speared, or for the most daring, taken with sword and daggers; arrows were for bustards in the sky above, and vermin-four-legged vermin-in the fields below. Not that bows were much use against Ironthar knights and senior armsmen; no armor was worn in the valley that was not treated with the spells that slowed and then turned aside iron. A strong man could bring a sword to bear on an Ironthar-armored foe, fighting through the magic with teeth clenched in effort, but the bow had not been made that could drive even the mightiest war-quarrel home, through the air, to bite.

Yet despite the ban, this day saw two armed and armored warbands out riding the largest forest trail-the only one where two horses could just pass without touching, if the riders were careful. The trail that wandered through the Raurklor heights from one end of Ironthorn to the other, and beyond. The two forces were riding right toward each other.

Neither intended to meet the other, or even knew the other was abroad. Both were bound for hostile territory, on violence bent; purposes that inevitably brought them, in time, face to face.

Where mounts were reined in, hard.

The two forces then regarded each other in a stony silence that for many breaths was broken only by the snorting of their head-tossing mounts. One band numbered eight in all; the heir of Hammerhand and seven knights, three of them riding with visors down, as if expecting war.

The other mustered twelve: the Lyrose heir and his two younger brothers, three bowmen whose saddle-slung crossbows were only a few turns shy of full, firing-ready tension, and six knights.

"Well, now," Eldred Lyrose said at last, flashing a brief and mirthless smile, "it seems the forest yields up stranger game at our every hunt. Ready bows."

His eyes never left the Hammerhands as he spoke those last words, so calmly that two of his bowmen did not at first take them as an order, and had to scramble to join the third in cranking windlasses to bring their bows to full, straining tension.

"Do you customarily hunt in full armor, Eldred?" the Hammerhand heir asked coolly, making a casual gesture that brought swords sliding out of scabbards in hissing unison amid the Hammerhands behind him.

"It seems I scour out vermin when full-armored, Dravvan," Eldred Lyrose replied softly, and raised his riding whip to point at Dravvan Hammerhand.

"Bowmen, scour me this talkative one," he announced with a smile, then added, "Fire at will."

Three crossbows loosed their quarrels in a triple crash-and Dravvan Hammerhand's head spun bloodily around on his shoulders, neck broken and skull shattered by three heavy war-quarrels bursting into it in eager unison.

There were gasps from the Hammerhands and shouts of glee from the Lyroses-ere the foremost Hammerhand knights spurred forward with furious bellows of "Fell magic! Slay them! Slay them all!"

Eldred Lyrose's casual manner vanished in an instant as he spurred his horse off the trail and out of the way, seeking to circle around behind the Lyrose warband as he snatched at the helm bobbing on his saddle.

"Kill me yon Hammerhands!" he shouted as he rode. "Let not a one of them-"

A low-hanging bough swept him out of his saddle into a startled landing among the dead leaves. The rest of his words would have been drowned out anyway in the loud tumult of snorting horses, shouting men, and ringing clangs of furiously-swung swords clashing with each other and rebounding off armor. Horses reared, lashing out with hooves and crying their displeasure, as men fought to find room enough among the trees to swing their blades.

Dravvan rarely rode anywhere without his bodyguard, three strong and serpent-swift veterans. They led a charge, aghast at Dravvan's death and the impossible manner of it-his armor should have stopped that bowfire! — and it so happened the spot where the Hammerhands had halted upon seeing their rivals afforded them space enough to spur their horses, whereas the riders of Lyrose were hampered by trailside trees.

So it befell that one Lyrose knight, in less than the time it took him to draw breath again after roaring out his mirthful approval of Dravvan Hammerhand's fate, was driven from his saddle by the sheer force of the sword cuts seeking his face. Head ringing, he fetched up against a tree, dazed and stumbling, and was ridden down and trampled ere he could raise his blade with any strength.

The bowman behind him, helmless and in lighter armor bearing weaker iron-warding spells, was promptly rendered faceless by a deep-biting Hammerhand blade. He hadn't even started to topple from his saddle ere swords were slashing out across it, to hew the crossbow held by his nearest fellow into ruin.

Then the Hammerhand bodyguards were in among the Lyrose, hacking and thrusting at wild will, dealing death viciously with no thought for their own safety.

That savagery won them two more kills before a Lyrose blade first drew blood. The wounded Hammerhand bodyguard, reeling in his saddle and beset from all sides, caught sight of the running Eldred Lyrose-and spurred his mount right at the terrified Lyrose heir.

He was dead with three Lyrose swords in him before his snorting, plunging mount reached the oldest son of Lord Magrandar Lyrose. Yet his screaming, pain-seared warhorse, sides slashed by Lyrose blades and the dead man on his back falling hard and heavily down to the left to batter against trees and drag the saddle painfully awry, charged right through Eldred Lyrose, hooves thudding hard. On it galloped, fleeing wildly through the trees deeper into the Raurklor, leaving a trampled, groaning man thrashing feebly in its wake.

Swords were swinging in earnest now, everywhere, as the Hammerhand bodyguards sought vengeance and above all the deaths of the bowmen, and the Lyrose knights eagerly sought to carry out their lordling's orders.

Riding just behind the Lyrose heir were his two brothers: cruel Horondeir, a loud, fair-haired burly giant with a grin on his face and his sword drawn, and sly, quiet Pelmard.

Horondeir had fairly crowed at the sight of the new war-quarrels working so well-downing the Hammerhand heir, too! Now his gleeful bellows had given way to grunts of effort as he fought for his very life, surrounded by thrusting Hammerhand blades. Pelmard was nowhere to be seen.

Save by Eldred, who had time for one glimpse of his younger brother grinning down at him ere the hooves of Pelmard Lyrose's warhorse crashed down on his skull, twice and thrice. Pelmard deftly reined it around to return to the battle, its hooves dancing hard atop his brother.

Only one Lyrose knight saw what had happened, and Pelmard smiled a tight smile and drove his sword right through that man's opening mouth, before it could so much as exclaim a word. He spurred on, and that killing went unseen in the swirling fray.

"Back!" he shouted, pulling his horse wide of the trail, deeper into the trees. "To me, men of Lyrose!"

He was well content. The enspelled war-quarrels gifted to House Lyrose by the wizard Malraun had been everything the wizard had promised them to be, his cruel older brother was dead, and oafish Horondeir was doomed to die, too, if he didn't get clear of the busily-hacking Hammerhands. The Lyrose knights had been hastening to Horondeir's aid, but if his own rallying-cry drew them off just long enough…

"Over here!" he shouted again. "To me, Lyrose!"

He couldn't even see Horondeir, who was somewhere in the heart of a great knot of milling armored men on horseback, all of them plying their swords like madmen at a farm-reaping. Some of those men were screaming. A Lyrose knight fell from his saddle, one uselessly-dangling arm bouncing free as his corpse landed. Then a Hammerhand knight went down, falling on his face without a sound atop the fallen man of Lyrose.

One of the screams ended suddenly, and something wet and heavy flew out of the fray to thump and roll past Pelmard. His horse shied away, almost braining him on a tree, and he had to fight with his reins before he dared look down at the grisly thing again.

It had stopped facing him, staring up at him in unseeing horror, its mouth agape. The head of his brother Horondeir.

Then the fray was whirling around, and Pelmard realized in horror that Hammerhand knights were coming for him.

Desperately he clawed the head of his horse around and raked its sides with his spurs. "Home!" he shouted. "Home, Jhallon!"

A flung dagger bounced off his shoulder to spin tauntingly in the air before him, just for a moment. Then Jhallon, ears laid back, was racing through the trees as swift as any arrow, heading for a brown ribbon in the trees before them. That ribbon was the trail, winding its way through the trees. The trail back to Lyraunt.

Pelmard Lyrose let go of his sword and clung with both hands to the raised, flared front of his saddle, as the thunder of hooves rose behind him.

Either some Lyrose knights had won free, or the Hammerhands were still after him. Just now, with tree after dark tree seeming to leap past him in an endless whirl, he didn't dare try to look back.

"Be careful, my son. Oh, be careful. It is so easy to put a boot wrong when walking among the Ironthar-and the price may well be your life, there and then. They have been warring with each other for so long that burying blades in folk faster than someone can sink a sword into them is what they do."

The young and darkly handsome Stormar managed not to sigh. "I have heard this before, Father, and not forgotten. Trust me."

"No, Amaddar, that I do not. You swallow a sigh and seek to stride off, lost in your own impatience. Hear me."

That tone in his father's voice, even now when it was but an enfeebled, ghostly echo of his lost vigor, brought Amaddar Yelrya to a halt, as still as any statue. He turned around, and looked down into that wasted face with nothing but eager obedience on his own. He had been well taught.

"For years now," that failing, familiar voice told him, "Ironthorn's verdant farms and busy gemadars have been ruled uneasily by three rival lords. Lord Burrim Hammerhand is the strongest. He uses the badge of an iron gauntlet-a left-handed gage, mind, upright and open-fingered, on a scarlet field-and rules from Hammerhold, a castle on a crag just north of Irontarl, the market town of Ironthorn. The town stands on the banks of the Thorn River."

By the greatest of efforts, Amaddar managed to avoid sighing, rolling his eyes, or letting any exasperation at all cross his face. Lions of the morning, he was going to tell it all.

"Just south across that river is Lyraunt Castle. There Lord Magrandar Lyrose rules, lording it over three side-valleys to the southwest. His badge is a pinwheel, like a caltrop, of three steel-gray thorns, joined at the base, on a yellow field. They say the wizard Malraun smiles on House Lyrose."

Amaddar nodded, struggling to seem interested, trying to look as if any of this was new.

"In the southeast is the valley of Imrush, where Lord Irrance Tesmer rules from his keep, Imtowers. He's the one who used to have all the gems, and buys slaves from every Stormar who'll sell. His badge is a purple diamond on a gray field."

Amaddar nodded. "So he I should cultivate," he murmured, just to show he'd been heeding. "He'll welcome me."

"No!" His father's eyes blazed like two golden suns for an instant, ere fading again. "Stay far from the Tesmer lands, have naught to do with him, and do not, for any reason at all, surrender your real name to any Ironthar!"

Amaddar frowned. "Why?"

"Tesmer's wife was-probably still is-very beautiful. I… she will remember me. So will her lord, and doubtless seek to close claws on the son, when he can't reach the father."

Lion, this was new!

Amaddar realized he was gaping, and shut his mouth with an effort.

"Father!" he heard himself say reproachfully, a moment later.

His father's eyes flashed again. "The gold that reared you to have such pride I earned in season after season of dealing with Lady Telclara Tesmer. We understood each other very well, and when you're older, you'll see better why that leads to… the other."

"But… Mother…"

"Knew all about it, suggested it before ever I rode all that way north, and hooked the cunning Lady Tesmer and played her like a master, with me the straining fishing-line between. Go ask her if you believe me not, and come back to me wiser."

His father lifted one wasted, trembling hand long enough to level one long and accusative finger at Amaddar. "Then perhaps you'll stop fighting down yawns and pretending to listen, and learn enough to keep yourself alive in Ironthorn for a day or two. Perhaps."

Two Hammerhand knights had been everywhere in the battle, hewing and thrusting and whirling to deal death elsewhere before wounded foes could strike back.

One was tall, and fought with his visor raised. The weathered face that stared sternly out of his helm was one even the youngest knights of Lyrose knew: Syregorn, a laconic, scarred man who had long been one of Lord Hammerhand's most trusted veterans.

The other was one of the Hammerhand rearguard, who'd ridden with visors down. This anonymous knight was faster and more reckless than Syregorn in the fray, darting here and there like a hungry falcon. His sword had laid open the throat of Horondeir Lyrose, and he was now swinging it hard and fast at the last few Lyran knights, as the fray dwindled down into a tight knot of snorting, kicking horses in the trees.

Pelmard Lyrose-now heir of his house-was well away and beyond catching, now, if he didn't fall off and his mount avoided breaking a leg.

In the tight fray he'd left behind, a knight of Lyrose suddenly swerved away from a chance to hew a Hammerhand flank, and spurred out of the hacking, ringing heart of the battle to flee after the Lyrose lordling.

The falcon-swift Hammerhand knight pursued the hurrying Lyran, crouching low and urging his mount to greater haste by dealing stout slaps to its withers with the flat of his blade. Like an arrow he raced away from the dwindling knot of bloodied, sword-swinging knights.

He had almost caught up the fleeing Lyran before that knight heard the drumming of pursuing hooves, turned in his saddle, stared in alarm, and swung his sword wildly.

The racing Hammerhand caught the Lyran blade with the tip of his own and swung his sword in an awkward arc to abet rather than dispute its slash. Overbalanced, the knight of Lyrose was swung right around in his saddle, crying out in pain, and-was impaled for a moment on a tree-bough his terrified horse had already ducked past.

A moment was all the Hammerhand knight needed. His own blade sang down under the edge of the Lyran helm and around as he swept past, drawing a deep and bloody smile across the throat beneath.

Almost beheaded, the knight of Lyrose flopped bonelessly in his saddle, sagging back as his sword tumbled from his dying hand. His body followed it-all but one boot, firmly trapped in its stirrup. The horse raced on through the trees, terrified anew by the ringing, clanging carrion it was now towing.

The Hammerhand knight slowed his snorting, bucking mount and let the Lyran horse flee, turning to follow the trail slowly back to where horses snorted, the smell of blood was strong… and the battle was done.

Syregorn was grimly ordering the bodies of the Lyrose brothers be bound to their horses, and the severed head retrieved. He'd had no need to give orders to his four surviving knights regarding the reverent raising of the dead Dravvan Hammerhand.

"Pelmard?" was all he asked the returning knight, who tore off her helm to watch her dead brother gently laid on his snorting horse, his head wrapped in a Lyran cloak someone was too dead to need any longer.

"Escaped me. Taking with him his father's excuse for raising war."

She pointed at one of the knights of her house to get his attention, and snapped, "Find every last Lyran war-quarrel, and the bows! We must discover if they can pass all our iron-wardings, or we'll all be rotting vaugren-meat, and soon!"

"Yes, Lady," the knight murmured, lowering his eyes from the bright ribbons of tears down the cheeks of the woman who was now the next ruler of Hammerhold. If she somehow lived long enough.

Amteira Hammerhand didn't care if all Falconfar saw her tears.

Dravvan was dead. It was all up to her, now.

Trying to look menacing, Rod slowly drew his sword. As he did, it flashed with a brief, bright white light-and the bracers on his arms winked back at it.

The lorn stiffened, and stopped striding forward.

He stared at it, hefting the sword, trying to look as if he buried the thing in handily nearby lorn every day.

The lorn regarded him as expressionlessly as only lorn can, that mouthless, unchanging skull-face staring back at Rod. Betraying nothing.

God, it was big. Even without that bone-shattering tail, it could probably tear him apart with casual ease. Studying it, close enough to see the little line of breathing and speaking holes under the line of its jaw-well, the chin of its face, even if it lacked a mouth; it certainly looked like the underside of a human jaw-and the two pincers, now slid back inside little sheaths of flesh there, Rod had to fight down a shiver.

Whereupon it sneered at him-he could tell it was sneering, as plainly as anything, though its skull-face remained a frozen mask-sat down, and started eating a hearty meal of Aumrarr. Those pincers slashed and sliced, the flesh that sheathed them rippled and flexed like little gripping hands, and the throat tube with little teeth lining its inside thrust forward obscenely to suck in the blood and meat…

Revolted and suddenly furious again, his fear gone, Rod shook off the gauntlet on his free hand and put it into the pouch that held the rings. Fumbling with the chain until he got its clasp open, he started putting on rings, working by feel and never once taking his eyes off the lorn.

It went on eating, affecting unconcern, but it was watching him closely.

Which meant, for one thing, he dared not retreat. And would be dead once night fell, or sooner. Probably sooner.

Ult Tower, don't fail me now…

Two of the rings made his fingers tingle. Rod raised his hand until he could see them. Staring at the one on the left, he tried to will it to do something. Anything.

Nothing happened. He tried visualizing flames shooting out of it to scorch the lorn, saw the lorn blazing and blackening, collapsing, slate-gray hide melting and crumpling… nothing.

He gave up, and glared at the ring on the right, bearing down with his will until he was trembling and sweating, his head starting to pound. Suddenly-

Nothing happened. And went right on happening, damn it.

The sword… no, it wasn't reacting to the rings, even though their tingling was growing stronger.

Blazing up like Rod's temper. A God-damned arsenal of magic he'd snatched from Ult Tower, things that glowed and hummed and bloody well buzzed-and not one of them, not one of them, could he make work. The bloody armor had damned well melted away!

He-

No. No, none of it was going to work. Not at all. It would tease him, glowing and humming and tingling like fury, but-

Shaking his head, Rod reached down, plucked up his gauntlet, and slid it back on.

It promptly flared into bright life. Some of the metal fingers spat sudden flames into the air.

The lorn stiffened again, lifting its head.

Rod quickly closed his gaping mouth, made himself smile, and pointed at the beast's inscrutable skull-face.

And a thin tongue of flame spat from his fingertip, right at the lorn.

The beast was gone before the fire arrived, dropping its meal in a sudden scramble, great clap of slate-gray wings, and bound into the air.

It was fleeing! Just like that!

Up it climbed, clawing at the air with its wings in seemingly frantic haste, racing up at the hole in the canopy of leaves that was letting the sunlight in, as Rod wagged his finger at it and pointed again, rage and-yes, exultation rising in him.

His jet of flames fell well short of that lashing tail, but the lorn looked back at him fearfully, and flapped all the faster.

Rod sighed. It was getting away.

No, it had got away… and was gone.

He looked down at all that was left of the Aumrarr-one severed foot, still encased in its boot-and, exultation gone in an instant, had to fight down a sudden urge to vomit.

Sighing harder, he turned away.

Somewhere overhead, the lorn gave tongue to a strange, ululating call.