Elvenborn

19

Kyrtian sat uneasily on his horse in the chill darkness just before dawn. He had brought in his troops just after midnight, positioning them as if this was going to be a real fight and not the sham thing that he and Moth had arranged. After all, the only people that knew it was a sham were his own people on both sides of the coming battle, all of Moth's people, and he and Gel. It was a given that some of his commanders (if not all of them) were reporting to one or more of the Great Lords. Kyrtian wanted them to report the most impressive victory yet—and the most decisive.

This would be enjoyable only if he was down there with his troops; he would have given a great deal to be able to leap out of his saddle and head up the men he knew so well. Well, the only reason it would be enjoyable is because I know how much of this attack is sham.

Ancestors, but it was cold! Armor and padded gambeson weren't doing a lot against the dankness, which penetrated everything. In fact, the armor was only making things worse; it sucked heat away from him instead of holding it in.

And—was there actually dew condensing on it?

A cold droplet sparkled for a moment just before his eyes, then dropped off the tip of his helm to splash onto his nose.

There was. He shivered and tried to stop himself; it only made his ridiculous, useless, over-ornamented armor rattle.

Not possible for him to join his men where they waited for the signal to attack, of course. The Great Lords who were his ultimate masters here would, one and all, have had him hauled up in front of them for recklessness and blatant disregard for his position.

So he had to sit on a horse on a hill—making an excellent target, incidentally, had his magic not been so strong—and direct his fighters from afar. Never once dirtying his hands with actual combat, oh, no. That was beneath his dignity as a commander, and damaging to the authority of Elves in general and the Great Council in the person of its designated commander in particular.

At least this time he would have something to do besides sit and watch and issue an occasional order. Moth's young rebels were going to be very visibly in the field today; they were also going to be wearing some of that bizarre jewelry she'd told him about. They couldn't work any magic while wearing it, but that didn't matter, since most of them didn't have that much in the first place. It would protect them from his levin-bolts; they wanted to demonstrate in the most public forum possible that their fathers could no longer threaten to strike them down in that particular fashion.

I cannot imagine that. I just can't. I know intellectually that there are men out there who think of their sons as possessions, and are perfectly willing to destroy them and try begetting a son again if their "possessions" offend them, but I still cannot fathom it in my heart.

Since their fathers didn't know it was only sets of gold-plated cuffs and torques that protected the rebellious Young Lords, and not some new sort of magic, this demonstration was going to set the Council rather well aback.

The rebels aren 't just Young Lords either, though most of them here are. Moth had given him a brief summary of the rebellion—and to say that he'd been shocked was an understatement. There's a considerable number of the ones who are Lords only because they aren't human, the scornfully disregarded Elvenlords no one talks about—the ones with little magic. Moth had introduced him to two of those bitter rebels, men Lord Kyndreth's age if not older. I wonder if the Great Lords have any idea how cordially they are hated by so many of their "inferiors " ?

Mind, this invulnerability to levin-bolts wasn't going to do the rebels any practical good, in the planned scenario. Kyrtian's army was too large and well-organized, and when the rebels fled, their army would fall apart. Kyrtian's men had orders to take anyone who surrendered as a prisoner; the rebels had no illusions about the loyalty of their slave-fighters. When they fled, their army would drop weapons and capitulate. Kyrtian's victory was a certainty—as finely scripted as a Court dance and as predictable.

It was definitely getting lighter. When he'd first brought his reluctant mount up here beneath these trees, it had been too dark to see. Now the horizon had lightened, and he could make out the dark shapes of trees and undergrowth beneath him, and in the distance, the square and rectangular bulks of the buildings where their quarry waited—supposedly asleep and unaware of the army about to descend on them.

Good thing we aren't going to have to besiege this place; we'd be here for months. Before battles, or even the practices he and Gel had held on the estate, he usually got a tightening in his stomach, a dry mouth, and his skin felt hypersensitive. Not today; in fact, if anything, he was bored and he wanted it over with. The conclusion here was foregone; the only question was whether or not any of Moth's people would be injured before they could surrender.

The Young Lords had actually chosen their supposed stronghold well—although there wasn't a man on the Great Council who would have valued it properly. For the last couple of centuries it had been the very minor holding of a very minor El-venlord who had not been swallowed up by some greater Lord only because he never quarreled with anyone, never gave offense to anyone, and raised nothing more desirable than herbs and spices. This was finicky work, far more than any Great Lord had any interest in undertaking, so V'trayn Ildren Lord Je-remin and his wife, daughter and slaves had been left in peace. Until the rebellion, that is. At the moment, Lord Ildren and his household were safely waiting out the conflict in their cara-vanserie in one of the cities.

So much for him; what was of interest was his manor, which in the far past had been one of the original fortified manors of this region, built back when humans had armies and were considered at least a threat to Elvenkind. It had been further fortified at the beginning of the first Wizard War, making it quite a snug little retreat. It was Kyrtian's opinion that its former owner would have done better to remain buttoned up inside it rather than fleeing to the city and the cramped discomfort of his tiny caravanserie.

But he hadn't, and the rebels had appropriated it as a place to house and train their human fighters.

It had been, therefore, of minor strategic importance until this moment. But he and Moth had decided that for today's purpose it would play the role of the rebel's headquarters, so that when the Young Lords all went to ground on Moth's estate after a spectacular rout, no one would be looking for them there.

It was a given that no one on the Council would wonder why people who had been clever enough to choose a defensible structure like this one as their headquarters would also leave it for a pitched battle outside the walls of the structure. Analyzing the enemy's strategy was not a skill that the Great Lords of the Council exercised. So long as things went their way, they were not inclined to ask why or look the situation over very closely.

Which is why they are in this particular quandary in the first place.

Birds twittered softly and sleepily overhead. They had begun to wake; it wouldn't be much longer before the attack.

Light seeped into the landscape, revealing it in shades of blue-grey. Rounded shapes were bushes, trees. Pointed ones, rocky outcrops. And in the far distance, leagues below his hill, the squares and rectangles were the fortified manor.

The light strengthened, although the only sign of the sunrise to come was the steady brightening in the east. A single figure stood sentry on the walls below; those of the Great Lords observing this in their telesons must be laughing now. One sentry! And the gates wide open!

The gates were wide open so that the army within could boil out easily—which, in a moment, when the sentry "spotted" the first of his troops attempting to approach by stealth and sounded the "alert", they would.

The distant figure suddenly moved, and the thin wail of a trumpet carried up to Kyrtian's ears, and the peace of the morning shattered like brittle glass as fighters erupted from every gate, shouting, their voices rising to Kyrtian in a confused babble.

Time to give the signal.

Kyrtian stood up in his stirrups, pointed his right hand skyward, and launched a bolt of magic up to the deep blue-grey bowl of the pre-dawn sky: not a levin-bolt, but one of the harmless illusion-bolts often used to enliven evening entertainments, a soundless shower of colored sparks of light high in the air. And now it was the turn of his army to emerge from the places where the men had lain hidden half the night, not shouting, but eerily silent, like an army of spirits....

But they didn't stay silent for long; that was too much to expect of flesh and blood. Halfway down the hill their nerves or their excitement got the better of them, and their own throats opened with a collective roar. Beneath his horse's hooves, the ground shook, and the terrified birds burst out of the tree above him.

At that moment, before the two armies had even met, Kyrtian spotted the Young Lords coming out of the gates of their fortress. He knew them by their colorful armor, riding out through the flood of their own fighters, their horses carried along like flotsam in a stream.

Ha!

He had been told not to hold back, and he didn't. As soon as the foremost of the riders got free of the human sea about him, Kyrtian aimed—gathered his power from the depths of his soul—clasped both hands above his head, and let loose a levin-bolt at the nearest.

The levin-bolt streaked from his clasped hands across the space between them, a fire-streaming comet, and those who saw it and had the time to react flung themselves screaming out of its path. Anyone with any experience of levin-bolts would see that this one was deadly—and strong.

It hit—it hit! Kyrtian's throat closed for a moment—what if Moth was wrong? But in the same moment, he knew, he knew that Moth had not been wrong, for his fatal levin-bolt in the moment of striking fragmented into a thousand shards of light, blinding his view of his target for just a moment. In the next moment, there was his target, unharmed—though the poor horse was frozen in place, all four hooves planted.

Yes! It works! Now sure that he would not kill someone, Kyrtian didn't hesitate, and at last he had a little of the thrill of battle, the exultation of success; bolt after bolt flew down the hill and into the chests of the Young Lords; bolt after bolt shattered on their defenses just as the first had.

By now the fighters of both sides had cleared out of the way of the bolts, which meant that aside from a few scattered pairs locked in combat, the main body of troops weren't actually fighting anyone. That, too, was part of the plan.

But instead of taking heart from the failure of his levin-bolts to kill—as any sane commander would have—the Young Lords apparently "panicked" when confronted by a mage of superior power.

They turned tail and fled; not in a body, but breaking from their army, sending fighters tumbling out of the way of the hooves of their bolting steeds, and scattering in every possible direction except towards the enemy, whipping their horses in a frenzy of feigned fear. And at the sight of their leaders in a rout (which was, of course, the signal to certain of the human fighters to move into the next phase of the plan), the rebel army itself suddenly broke off combat before it had even begun. Leaderless, it was every man for himself, and the humans were under no obligation to carry out the orders of masters who had abandoned them. Most surrendered or fled within moments. The lion's share of the ones who fled were Kyrtian's—brought to augment the Young Lords' troops and make the army look formidable enough to have been a real threat. Kyrtian's men, throwing down their weapons the better to flee unencumbered, were heading for a Gate that would take them home.

The rest dropped their weapons as well, but threw themselves on their faces to surrender—Kyrtian had counted on that, and he had the satisfaction of seeing that the surrendering fighters managed to impede those who might have followed the ones who fled.

Now there was some pleasure, the thrill of seeing a plan unfold perfectly, though there was and would not be any of the excitement and triumph of a real victory.

The Great Lords' fighters pursued—but the vanguard was composed of more of his own men, and they managed to obstruct the passage of the men behind them by getting tangled up with those who were surrendering. This managed to impede the rest of the fighters, slowing them and permitting the vanquished to get a head start. By the time real pursuit got underway, the enemy was already too far ahead to pursue effectively afoot. So, given that Kyrtian gave no orders to urge them on from his hilltop command-post, they began the easier task of taking charge of those who surrendered. Moth and Lady Viridina had taken the precaution of tampering with every slave-collar to make it seem that the Young Lords had found a way to override the rightful owners' compulsions. Gladiatorial slaves—the only ones that were reasonable candidates for combat—weren't so plentiful these days that anyone would even consider killing or punishing these men for something they could not help; if their original owners couldn't be determined, they'd probably be allotted among the Great Lords as booty.

Further enrichening the coffers of those who don't need it. Kyrtian felt almost depressed, as he watched the chaos of the battlefield sort itself into tidy groups of prisoners and captors. There didn't seem to be many dead or seriously wounded; there were a few distant figures still on the ground, but they were moving in a way that suggested injury but not serious trauma.

I should be glad of that. And he was—but he also felt as if he'd been cheated, somehow; all of the preparation for a battle—more, far more, in the way of planning and organization— but none of the excitement. The most he felt was gratitude that it was done with and there were so few casualties.

The sun was only just cresting the eastern horizon, the merest fingernail-paring of hot rose, and the battle was over; so far as the Great Lords were concerned, the war with their rebel offspring was over, too. Now would come the hard part; hunting them down individually, or waiting for them to come crawling back, looking for forgiveness. That was what they would be thinking, anyway, and Kyrtian was not about to allow them to discover any part of the truth.

He signaled to his horse, and let it plod back down the hill to his tent. Time to prepare himself for Lord Kyndreth's congratulations, and pretend to an elation he didn't feel.

The subcommanders milled about in the background, not daring to approach such exalted personages as Lords of the Council without being summoned, but clearly hoping to be noticed.

Kyrtian, on the other hand, was very much the center of attention, and not feeling particularly comfortable in that position.

"Brilliant!" Kyndreth boomed, as Kyrtian ducked his head modestly. "Brilliant! Clearly they never guessed you would force a march after dark to get into place before sunrise."

"I had made a point of always bivouacking before sunset until I knew where they had made their headquarters, my lord," Kyrtian said, as Lord Kyndreth accepted a glass of wine from one of the slaves. "I wanted them to see a pattern and become used to it."

Kyrtian's tent had been cleared of everything except tables and chairs borrowed from those of his underlings who insisted on traveling with suites of furniture; with carpets on the floor and slaves holding trays of refreshments, it could not have looked less like his campaign headquarters. But Lord Kyndreth had insisted on Gating here ("with a select few of the Council, nothing to trouble yourself about") to tender his congratulations in person. "Nothing to trouble yourself about" had entailed non-stop, frantic work on the part of his staff up until the very moment that the temporary Gate opened and Kyndreth and entourage marched through.

"Ha—of course, you'd never done such a thing before, so they lacked the imagination to suppose that you would do it now," Kyndreth laughed, as the other three Great Lords he had brought with him nodded wisely. "Of course, old Levelis never did such a thing either."

"Levelis," said one long-faced Lord sourly, "never exerted himself to travel more than a league or two at a time."

"Levelis is an old fool," Lady Moth snapped, joining the discussion, wineglass in hand, "and if it had been left up to him, I'd still be penned up on my estate next Midwinter."

Moth rode over, escorted by her bodyguards, soon enough to welcome the Councilors along with Kyrtian and to serve as his hostess. This was not the first time in the conversation that she had made a point of mentioning that Kyrtian had rescued her from the rebels, and it probably would not be the last.

"Entirely possible, my lady," the sour-face Councilor said, with a slight bow. "And now what do you plan, young commander?" he continued, turning to Kyrtian.

Kyrtian sighed. "Now, my lord, comes the most tedious, most time-consuming, and least-rewarding part of this campaign," he replied. "We hunt down the fugitives one at a time and bring them back to the Council for judgment. I'd calculated that something like this would occur, and planned for it from the beginning; this is a task for smaller parties of men, and if you will permit me, my lords, I would prefer to use my own men if possible. I can count on them not to damage the fugitives when they are caught. As for the rest of the force—well, if it were my decision to make, I would disband it. An army is essentially a great beast that is all mouth and stomach out of which no useful work can be gotten when it is not engaged in a campaign."

"We will—take that under consideration," Lord Kyndreth replied, with a glance at his fellow Council members. "It does make sense, however."

He's thinking about the Wizards. Kyrtian took a sip of wine and tried to look unconcerned.

"Oh, come now, Kyndreth, the boy's right," said the sour one, appropriating a tidbit from one of the trays and examining it as if he expected to find a bug on it before putting it cautiously in his mouth. "There's no point in keeping these men sitting about doing nothing more useful than military maneuvers when we could have them all back on our estates doing some meaningful work, even if it's only in the breeding pens."

He's not. And he might not be in favor of another Wizard War if the subject were broached at the moment.

"And Levelis," pointed out a Council member in midnight blue and deep green, who was making steady inroads on the wine without showing the least sign of intoxication, "would immediately advise to keep these men out here under his command."

"And you know how I feel about" Levelis," Kyndreth acknowledged with a faint smile. "Another salient point, but one that is better discussed in Council, don't you think?"

"Hmmm," said the fellow in blue, but didn't add anything more.

How is he drinking so much and staying sober?

Kyndreth immediately changed the subject back to the current victory, but Kyrtian couldn't help but notice that there was an aspect of it that he did not touch on—the rebels' ability to counteract his own levin-bolts. It was the fourth member of Kyndreth's party who brought it up.

"I had no notion that you had so much magic of your own— and how were those brats managing to dodge your levin-bolts, Kyrtian?" he asked, incredulously. "I thought they hadn't but driblets of magic of their own!"

He shrugged. "I never saw anything like it," he admitted. "Even if they had been using shields as I know them, the levin-bolts wouldn't have acted in that way when contacting a shield. I'm baffled."

"Huh. I wonder if they found anything in my library.. .." Moth mused, as if thinking aloud—but her sly glance at Kyrtian alerted him that she was about to present him with an opportunity for something.

But what?

"Your library, my lady?" Kyrtian asked, obeying her prompting. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, when I got into the Great House on the estate, the library was in a right mess," she replied promptly, "books down off the shelves, piled up on the tables, left lying open—something on the order of the huggle-muggle your father used to create in there when he was doing his research, Kyrtian, but on a larger scale. My household is cleaning up the chaos now, but to tell you the truth, it's as if they were following his lead and looking for something."

"Perhaps they found it—" Kyndreth said slowly, speculation creeping into his gaze as he looked from Moth to Kyrtian and back again. "Perhaps—having discovered that the son's little eccentric hobby was so deadly to their cause, they thought to counter it by following the father's example."

Kyrtian did his best not to stare at Moth with his mouth open in shock, gathered his wits, and seized the opportunity he'd been given with both hands. "If that is true—and I do recall my father being very enthusiastic over something he found in Lady Morthena's books—then the rebels might have done just that, and we need to discover what it is that they found!"

"Agreed!" said the Councilor in blue, instantly. "Someone should begin immediately!"

I wish mother could hear that. My father has just gone in an instant from crazed eccentric to vindicated.

He turned to Lord Kyndreth. "My lord, if I may be so bold— anyone can track down fugitives; it's only a matter of having good hunters and endless patience—but I know the direction of my father's research as no one else could. Would the Council be pleased to permit me to course this particular hare?"

Lord Kyndreth's speculative expression gave Kyrtian the thrill of excitement that the sham battle had not. "What, precisely, was he looking for?"

"A way, or perhaps a device," Kyrtian said, very slowly, "for those with little magic to amplify that magic." Even as he said that, he realized that this would not be pleasant hearing for those whose powerful magic kept them at the top of the hierarchy. "Presumably it would do the same for those with great magic as well," he added quickly. "I would assume it would work for anyone who used it, whether 'it' is a device, an object, or a method."

"What sent your father into Lady Morthena's library, Lord Kyrtian?" asked the wine-loving Lord, with every evidence of interest.

"He was a student of our history, and could not fathom why we were unable to replicate some of the feats of the Ancestors, when according to the fragments of chronicles he found, even the least of the Ancestors could accomplish what the Great Lords could," Kyrtian replied carefully, looking earnestly into the older Lord's intent eyes. "And he could see no reason why magic should be thinning in our bloodlines."

"A good point." Kyndreth mulled that one over, as the other Councilors looked interested, even eager. Even the sour-faced one lost some of his dour look.

Kyrtian thought about saying more, thought again, and held his peace. It was Moth who dropped another tidbit into the pool for the shining carp to gobble.

"It was all of the oldest books that were left lying about," she observed innocently. "The same sorts of chronicles exactly that Kyrtian's father used to look at. And my word—the dust was unbelievable!"

"Kyndreth, I think we ought to let the boy investigate this," the sour-faced Councilor said decisively. "Let him keep his own fighting slaves in case he finds nothing and elects to hunt down our fugitives, while you take the rest of the army back to the mustering-barracks. We can decide what to do with it after Kyrtian determines if there's anything to this hunting about in the old chronicles or not. Meanwhile, we've got men and arms ready to send out on the chance that one of our puppies manages to scrape together another force and mounts an attack on one of the outlying manors."

"Good plan!" seconded the one in blue, and drained his wineglass. "Personally, I think they're going to crawl back to us begging for mercy, but I'd rather be ready for the treacherous young dogs just in case."

Lord Kyndreth looked in bemusement from one to another of his fellow Councilors—evidently he was the one who normally concocted all the plans in Council of late, and he was somewhat taken aback that these three had suddenly devised a solution of their own.

"We don't need a majority vote for this, Kyndreth," the wine-lover pointed out. "Kyrtian won't actually be doing anything, not unless he decides that there's nothing to be found in that library, and by then the whole Council will have had a chance to sit."

Lord Kyndreth laughed. "I see that you have already made up your minds," he said, genially—though Kyrtian wondered if there was a hint of annoyance, and even anger, under his smooth words. "As it happens, I am entirely in agreement with you, if for no other reason than that it gives our fine young commander an opportunity for some well-earned leisure before we lay any further burdens on his shoulders." He cocked an eyebrow at Kyrtian. "I am correct in recalling that you consider delving into mountains of musty old books to be an enjoyable leisure activity?"

Kyrtian laughed. "You are correct, my lord," he agreed, smiling a genuine smile for the first time that afternoon. "Like father, like son, you see."

"Well then." The smile Lord Kyndreth returned never reached his eyes, but there was no sign of disapproval that Kyrtian could detect in it.

I suspect his annoyance is reserved at this moment for his fellow Councilors.

Kyndreth spun, and fixed one of Kyrtian's subordinates with a steely gaze. "You've heard the plan, Astolan. You're in charge of everything but Kyrtian's slaves. Give the lot a good feed and good rest, then march them and the prisoners back to mustering-barracks. We'll sort out the prisoners there. And see to it that you make as good time coming back as Lord Kyrtian did going out."

Lord Astolan went flushed, then pale, and drew himself up straight as any of Gel's recruits. "My Lord!" he responded, with a crisp salute, followed by a bow, just for good measure.

Kyndreth transferred his gaze to the others. "The rest of you see that he succeeds in making good time," he concluded, making it perfectly clear that the penalty for failure would land on all of their shoulders.

Before they could make any reply, Kyndreth's attention had already gone back to the other Councilors. "Shall we make our departures, my lords?" he asked, making it very clear that he was leaving, and if the others wanted to remain, they would have to find their own ways back. And since he held the key to the temporary Gate ...

There was no dissension.

Kyrtian escorted them to the Gate, and watched the strangely shining structure fade and disappear after they passed through it. He returned to his tent to find Lady Moth entertaining his subordinates with scandal.

"Well, Astolan!" he said cheerfully as he pushed the tent-flap aside. "My things are already packed up and out of the way, and yours are here—well, part of them anyway—so why don't I just round up my slaves and escort Lady Moth back to her estate and leave you free to follow Lord Kyndreth's orders?"

Astolan swelled with pride and self-importance. Clearly he hadn't expected to be confirmed in his new—if temporary— command so soon. "Certainly, my lord, if that is your wish—"

"It is; if we start now, we will all be at Lady Moth's estate well before sundown," he said firmly, and offered Lady Moth his arm. "My Lady?"

She swept him a curtsy, and allowed him to see a glimpse of the wicked amusement in her eyes before accepting his arm. "My lord," she replied. "Let us go in search of that so-admirable chief of your slaves, that so-stern fellow Gel, and be on our way. I cannot wait to be home, now that I know that my home is safe again."

How is she managing to keep a straight face? "I shall be at pains to keep it ever so, my lady," he replied, deadpan, and was rewarded by the shaking of her shoulders as she tried to keep from laughing as they swept out.